Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using a vivid image from Vasubandhu — the body as a plate, feelings as the food upon it, and the mind as the eater — Khensur Rinpoche opens this 48-minute session by mapping out the four close establishments of mindfulness and explaining why these four objects of meditation were chosen. He describes how ordinary people resemble children absorbed in play: mistaking the body for something permanent, clean, and pleasurable, unaware of its moment-by-moment disintegration. He reinforces this with a parallel passage from Asaṇga, then turns to why practitioners seeking liberation from cyclic existence must correct these distortions. The session closes by introducing the common and exclusive modes of meditative observation. Suited to practitioners already familiar with basic Buddhist psychology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 IR 1990-10-06.mp3
UUID: 0ad9b751-3c58-4b2a-afb0-74de85d1d180
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Insight Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1990-10-06
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 47.7 minutes
Words: ~1,099
So generally, such a child just spends its day happily, spends its spends all of its days happily playing. Likewise, a an ordinary person is likened to a child in that they do not know the, the, the way, the nature of Dharma, the, the way of practice. They are very much caught up in concerns of this life in attaining food, clothing, etcetera, and therefore are much much like the child playing. So this child What is it in in in this context, what is it thinking about? It thinks of the between the body and the mind, the body is is like its residence.
It is like like a room in which it occupies. It is its basis. So the with respect to the feelings, the feelings feelings are like the objects of enjoyment which are made use of by the person. Just like we, the objects of enjoyment such as food, drink that we can gain. These are these are made use of.
They’re like possessions. We we can their various qualities will bring us about various type levels of enjoyment. Likewise, the feelings are looked upon by the person as objects objects to be used. The person looks upon the the mind as the I. You know, the I the the self, seeing the mind as the I.
So the the the body is is held to be the residence of the I, the place where it abides. The feelings are looked upon as objects of use. Feelings are looked upon as objects of use of the I, possessions of the I. The mind is looked upon as the I itself. Phenomena are looked upon with the the degree of, of appealing quality or repulsive quality.
And in, and in reaction to those, these, one that develops aversion and attachment. So we use analogy in explaining this from Vasubandhu that the the body is analogous to a plate. The feelings are analogous to the food on the plate. So the body is that which is like the that in which the objects reside. In this case, the food resides.
It contains container, the plate. The feelings are what is put on the plate, which are to be made use of. The mind that is held to be the I, and therefore, it is that which eats the food. It is the eater of the food, the user of what’s on the plate. And with and the phenomena are the attitudes generated toward that food on the plate.
If it’s if it’s appealing, then attachment. If it’s repulsive, aversion. And if it’s neutral, indifference. So this is how the the the objects of observation are presented in terms of the body’s body feelings, mind, and phenomena. In in for for one who develops who see who sees the faults of cyclic existence, seeing that it is in the nature of suffering, that has no happiness, and and develops intention to be liberated from cyclic existence.
For such a for for one who has such an an intention, then he is to meditate on the four close establishments of mindfulness. So the the mind, which is picked upon as the self, resides within the body. Like, the body is the residence of the self, like the room in which the self abides. And the child holds this residence, that is to say the body, as look upon the the child is look upon the body as in an as being clean, pleasurable, unchanging. So the child is, you know, the, though we may be aware of the, of the final demise of the body at death, we do not think of the, the momentary disintegration of the body.
That is, it’s it’s subtle impermanence. That we we we look upon the body as as we would look upon today’s body as being the same body that we possessed yesterday, and we would look upon that body as the same day, same body we held, that we possessed the day before. That the body of last year is looked upon as the body of this year, and and the body of this year is is held to be the same body as next year. But there is there is not the awareness of its transitory quality, and we hold it to we look upon it as being permanent. And we also develop awarenesses which do not understand that the body is in the nature of suffering, on the contrary, that look upon the body as having a nature of pleasure, also that it has an a nature of purity about it, and that it is a it is somehow hold looks upon it as being good.
So the you know, do the childish see the reality of of the nature of the body? That the whole looking upon the body, they do not the childish do not see the body as transitory, as momentarily disintegrating disintegrating moment by moment. They look upon the body as if last year’s today’s body was the same body as last year’s, or yesterday’s body is the same body as today’s. They they conceive of the body as being permanent. They this is a mistaken awareness.
They they do not see it as being, from moment to moment, arising and disintegrating. Disintegrating. They they would think that the the present body is the same body I had this morning, and therefore, this is they’re mistaken with as to the nature of the reality of the body. Therefore, we have to cultivate a or meditate the impermanence of the body. Then then the quotation from Asaṇga.
He says that furthermore, they are the the actual so the the body is is the is the thing is is the, the, the, body is the thing in which the self dwells. The, the enjoyments are the things which the self uses. The mind is the self itself, and the phenomena are the things And phenomena are the things in relation to which aversion and attachments are generated, and which are the things which are to be adopted and rejected. So this is why these four are posited as the objects of observation of the four close establishments. We begin the second section in in which the the we’ve we’ve spoken why why it’s necessary to meditate meditate on these four.
Now how do we actually meditate, the manner of meditation? So the the common manner of meditation and the exclusive manner of meditation. And this this means the common manner is the the manner of meditation.