Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A demon who overhears Geshe Puchumwa weeping in compassion meditation and cannot bring himself to cause harm illustrates one of the ten classical advantages of bodhicitta that Khensur Rinpoche works through in this nearly two-hour Lam Rim session. He first establishes the logic: recognising one’s own incapacity to liberate all beings is precisely what motivates bodhicitta to arise. He then moves through each advantage in turn — gateway to the Mahāyāna, bearing the title “child of the victorious ones,” outshining arhats, swiftly accumulating merit, purifying negativities, and completing the paths and grounds quickly. A second story, of a scheming king unable to distract the author of the Thirty-Seven Practices, reinforces the protection theme. The session closes with a Q&A on sustaining compassionate motivation through bad days, answered through patience and tonglen-style breathing.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 LR 2000 02 08.mp3
UUID: 87ef2eb7-6fac-4e5d-af53-6fc75a8c81a1
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Lam Rim (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 2000-02-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 99.8 minutes
Words: ~4,801
So it is very important to have or to generate the intention to help intention to help. And for intention of helping, it has been set forth in the two, that intention to help oneself and for others. So the wishing to free oneself and attaining the happiness for oneself is called the intention of helping oneself. So, the developing a loving compassion towards the sentient beings, seeing that those beings undergoing through the sufferings and wishing them to free from all the sufferings and let them have all the ultimate happiness is the intention to help others. So among those two, developing the intention to help and bring help to others is very it’s very important and very beneficial as well as more part more useful than the intention of having oneself.
And then in order to fulfill the wish of that intention to help others, the wish is to free all the sentient beings from all the sufferings and bring them to a state of ultimate happiness and making a resolution within oneself to fulfill their wishes and taking all responsibility upon oneself to oneself and to work for the for the happiness of other sentient beings sentient beings is called the special insight. So though one has developed a special insight, which is making a resolution within oneself to take all the responsibilities and work to take all those sentient beings into the enlightenment state, but at this stage one will come to know that one has no capability of doing so. Yes. And because of that, having developed a special insight to to in order to to in order to fulfill the wish of that special insight, one here generates the bodhicitta or altruistic intention.
So here, one develops the bodhicitta or special altruistic intention. One develops a special altruistic intention here, it is because previously one has developed the special insight, is to make a resolution to attain enlightenment, also to bring all the sentient beings into the ultimate state, But at the point one came to know that one has no capability to fulfilling such wish, so it is because at this stage, oneself has been undergoing through the suffering and not overcome all the negativities. You have all the negativities and the faults. Because of that, one on one one is not able to fulfill the wish of that special insight. So in order to accomplish that wish of special insight, here one develops a bodhicitta, which is to attain enlightenment, it is because of fulfilling that wish of the special insight, the bodhicitta, which attaining enlightenment for the sacred earth sentient beings by purifying all the negativities and faults of oneself.
So it’s called purifying one’s own faults and attaining enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, and that particular wish or mind is called the bodhicitta. And in order to in order to fulfill the vision of the bodhicitta, one should train the wisdom and method of purifying all the negativities and attaining the good qualities. So, in order to have a good practice of taking and abandoning, which means minimizing all the negativities and developing or increasing one’s good qualities. In order to have such a good practice, one has to first train in the practices of listening, first in the listening, contemplation and the meditation. If is able to maintain these three practices very well, the listening, contemplation, and the meditation, then one can eventually accomplishes the wish of that bodhicitta or altruistic intention.
If one attains or accomplish the wishes of the bodhicitta, then which becomes that one has attained or perfected the true purposes to self and others. So here we should develop such a motivation to accomplish such wishes and along with that motivation, one motivates to listen to the teaching and the teaching to fulfill the wishes of the altruistic intention. Here, we do short meditation on the bodhicitta. The text, in the perfection teachings, the root of the verses or the text of developing the bodhicitta has been set forth by the great master, Ārya Maitreya, in his Ornament of Clear Realization, saying that the purpose of developing the altruistic intention of bodhicitta is for the sake of others to attain the enlightenment. So about the way of teaching and the practicing between the practice done or given in the past time and the practice done and given in this time, albeit slightly different.
So those two lines set forth by the Ārya Maitreya, which is the developing altruistic intention is proposed to attain enlightenment for the sake of others, and this is the root verse which shows the importance of developing bodhicitta and traditionally, one student has to write down, need to write these two, take a note of these two lines. Request you to write down the phonetics of those two words: semke, s e m k e, Shen pa, s h e n p a. Tenpa. Semke Shenpa.
Or we missed one actually. Yes. So we don’t have to write in phonetics, just that So, the aim of developing or generating bodhicitta is to attain enlightenment for the sake of others. This is the In one translation. No.
So it was last. True. So, the teaching of the bodhicitta started from those two verses, and the first was, it’s kind of like saying the questioning. The bodhicitta is or explaining the important explaining about bodhicitta. So, is actually those two words contains question or question and answer, saying what is bodhicitta and the answer was to attain enlightenment for the sake of others.
So we have given the answer during the during the beginning of this teaching when we talked about motivation, that saying the attainment, seeking enlightenment for the others working for is the is the altruistic intention. So, yeah. But it also shows that the world shows seeking or attaining enlightenment for the sake of others, it also implies that attaining the enlightenment by eliminating the false negativities of oneself. So, it is very important to develop the bodhicitta, to develop the bodhicitta. In order to So, one needs to train in the method and wisdom to generate the bodhicitta, and here, for that purpose, it is important to know the benefits of developing bodhicitta because it helps one to develop more enthusiasm to develop bodhicitta by seeing the benefits or advantages.
So, by knowing the benefits of bodhicitta, then it is a bit easier for one to put more effort in the practice of developing it. I would rather say that by knowing the advantages of developing bodhicitta, one would have more interest in doing so or developing such, because it is like in doing a business, if one knows the profit of doing some business in advance, and the profit is very good, then one will have more interest to implement or start that business and will willingly bear all the hardships because of the profit. So there have been in the teachings, many advantages has been set forth. Advantages of developing a bodhicitta has been set forth and here is the first. The first one is the bodhicitta is the entrance to the great vehicle or Mahāyāna.
It is also a distinguisher. Say, it’s like a door of a house, Buddha house door. So, in order to, we can say by looking at the door where the person is in or out, if he’s standing inside the house or say behind the door, then we should say that he’s in that Buddha house if it’s outside or before. Say it out, behind the door, that means he’s not in the Buddha house. Likewise, the bodhicitta is the one to distinguish whether the person is a Mahayanists or a bodhisattva.
If one has a bodhicitta, then he is a Mahayanists as well as bodhisattva. If or she hasn’t have bodhicitta, then the person is not a Mahāyānist as well as not a bodhisattva. So it means which becomes it is the entrance towards Mahāyāna as well as bodhisattva. So whenever one develops a bodhicitta within one’s mind stream by practicing the bodhicitta, then one becomes a bodhisattva and has also entered the Mahāyāna and become a Mahāyānist. But one should be able to maintain or constantly keep that bodhicitta within oneself.
If one lives the bodhicitta, one day looks at bodhisattva and lose it after a while, then person has dropped back again and this person is no longer a Mahayanists or a Buddhist sattva, So it’s where it is important to to maintain the bodhisattva constantly. It’s, you know. So the the bodhicitta is the one to examine whether the person is Mahayanists or bodhisattva or not. If he has he or she has bodhisattva, then the person isn’t isn’t bodhisattva, and if he hasn’t, he is not. Here it shows the bodhicitta is the entrance towards the bodhisattva or Mahāyāna and we and this is the first benefits of the of the Buddhist of So the bodhicitta is the one to examine the person.
Is the Mahāyānist Mahāyāna or not? Within the Mahāyāna, it’s been divided into two to the perfection vehicle and the secret or or it’s a tantric vehicle. Wherever one enters, whether the perfection vehicle or a tantric vehicle, but the bodhicitta is the key or is the main entrance to enter any of those two vehicles. If one has a bodhicitta, one can enter a boat and one can become a perfect ionist and or a tantric practitioner or yogi. If one hasn’t got the bodhicitta, one cannot enter any of those vehicles.
Then the second benefit is receiving the name called the child of victorious one or the son victorious one, which means that that it is like if one develops bodhicitta, then one becomes the son of the conqueror or a victorious one, which means the son of Buddha. And also, by becoming the son of Buddha, one has been in one is in the position or in the highest status or highest position. Like becoming a son of Buddhas or victories is like becoming a son of the king, which means becoming a prince. So it is the benefit of developing a bodhicitta when one receives the name or one becomes the son of victorious one or a daughter of victorious one. No.
And yeah. So one receives one receives the name or one becomes the son or the daughter of the covicturist one or the Buddhas and it’s like becoming like the kings, like a prince. The benefit, it is like this, what is the benefit of being a prince? It is because no matter how old the prince is, it’s a small say the prince is a child. But even though he’s a child, still the well educated, well educated, great persons like the king’s ministers has to pay respect for the little child.
It is not because of his quality, it is because of his name, which is Prince. So likewise, by becoming a child of the victorious one, one will outshine the Hearers in the solitary realizer in terms of disposition. So arhats of the solitary realizer and Hearers, they have a great knowledge and have attained or have been free from the cyclic existence, but they’re still because of being a son of the child of the victorious ones, those arhats still will pay respects and make homage to the child. Not only those arhats. The Buddha himself or Buddhas, they all they pay huge respect and respect to the sons or the child of victorious ones.
So Buddha, not only the arhats, the Buddha, he the Buddhas, they pay huge respect towards respect to the child of victorious ones. Way of paying how the Buddhas pay respect towards the victory’s child is if the child of victory is one is on the carriage or chariot, Chariot, but there’s no horse, just empty, so no one to prune the chariot. So if the person the person is the child or victorious one, the Buddha are willingly to drag or to pull the carriage. It is because it is because those Buddhas comes from or comes through the bodhisattva. It like a kingdom where queen has only one child, and he will take prince on his own shoulder because being the only child.
They are very happy. And the king is very happy to have a son finally. So which is the third benefit of the third advantage of the bodhicitta of shining areas and solitary realizer in terms of disposition? And by developing bodhicitta, one will become a sweeping object, a soft object of offering. It is because we become a sweeping object of offering.
Means no matter where one takes birth or in any status, whether one born as a great person or from a noble being or one born in animal realm like a dog. If one has developed a bodhicitta, then even say for example a dog develops a bodhicitta, then it becomes a bodhisattva and that particular sentient beings becomes a perfect or certain object of offerings and all gods and humans pay huge respect and make offering to that. Here, the great master Śāntideva has set forth, if one has developed a bodhicitta, then no matter how weak one is, but one is still a suitable object to make offering by the beings, the gods and the beings of the cyclic existence. So which is the fourth advantages that becoming a super object of offering? The fifth benefit is easily completing the accumulation of merit and insight because the the bodhicitta is a very good quality and by developing that quality, the bodhicitta within oneself, because of the greatness of the bodhicitta, one easily, without any hardships, one cultivates or accumulates the great amount of merits and insight.
This is also related to the sixth benefit, purifying obstructions. And no matter how strong or heavy the negativities one has accumulated or committed, if one has developed bodhicitta, through the power of it one can easily and very swiftly purify negativity. And then the seventh is accomplishing whatever one wish one wishes Because what we wish, we wish our wish. One wish is for the happiness and do not want suffering. That happiness comes by accumulating good positive actions or merit.
By developing a bodhicitta, one can easily or one can accomplish whatever one wishes because one accumulates huge amount of one accumulates huge amount of virtues very swiftly, very fast by the bodhicitta. So due to that, by having developed a bodhicitta, then yeah, the all the negativities being will be will will be minimized or abandoned and one accomplishes one wishes. So it it is because No. Which is the seven, the completion whatever one you or one wishes. Because to complete one’s wishes, one needs to have a huge amount of merit and accumulate all the negativities.
And At this stage, we can’t accomplish our wishes, which is ultimate happiness, because at this stage, we have more negativities than the virtuous action or positive action because as a result, we at this stage cannot accomplish one’s own wishes. By having developed a bodhicitta, then one cultivates the huge amount of merit and minimizes or abandons the negativities that due to this, one accomplishes whatever one wishes. At this stage, we have lots of harms causing us troubles and we have lots of obstacles which prevent us from accomplishing one’s wishes. By developing bodhicitta, the benefit is one not being affected by the harms and the obstacles, which is the eighth benefit, not being affected by harms and obstacles. So I’ll tell you the story of Geshe Puchumwa here.
Once Geshe Puchumwa was a great practitioner and a great master as well. He always does the meditation on the bodhicitta in his cave, and he always cultivates the bodhicitta and the great compassion. As a result, he felt so sad and every day he cries and all his tears roll down on his lips and his lips always remain wet. So it’s been set for around those caves. It’s been set for There are lots of demons and spirits around it, and once they’re demons, they discuss within themselves whether there is a being in that cave, we should go and finish him or eat him.
So after the discussion, one of the demons sneaked into the cave, and he saw that Geshe Puchumwa was doing a meditation and was weeping. Not only he meditates upon the bodhicitta and the great compassion within Inside, not only inside he meditates upon the bodhicitta and the great compassion, he also recites the prayers and saying may all sentient beings be free from all the sufferings and have attained the happiness. The demon who was sneaking through or peeping through the door heard those words and suddenly felt, No, we can’t harm that person because he considers us more important than himself. We shouldn’t be harming that person. This is what the demon said.
Demon or monster. So there are many stories like that. Another story about how the demons cause harms or distract persons from practice. It’s been said that once there was a king called Devadatta. He was said to be a bad king or said to be a devil or a bad king, During that time, he always look for a person who does practice and who is likely to attain enlightenment.
Whenever he finds such a person, he tries to help us to harm or distract the person. In his kingdom, there was a great master and a great scholar called Pudung Dorje Gyalpo, and he was a great practitioner. And the king was trying to distract him from his practice, and he was very lucky to be able to offer a pen or writing pen to the great scholar. And because of that pen, the great scholar, he stopped meditating and been interested in composing texts. And he spent all his life just writing or composing the text and then haven’t done any meditation.
And then the great teacher, Togme Zangpo, who is the author of the text called The Thirty-Seven Practices of the Bodhisattva, the same king wanted to distract or harm the great author. But when he saw Togme Zangpo, Togme Zangpo was in a deep meditation on bodhicitta and just weeping and always being in the meditation. By seeing him, the king couldn’t dare to pass a pen to Togme Zangpo. So that king couldn’t harm Togme Zangpo, and Togme Zangpo himself meditated on bodhicitta and finally attained enlightenment within one lifetime. The ninth benefit advantage is quickly completing all stages and paths.
And in the Great Vehicles Mahāyāna, they’ve been set for five paths and ten grounds or stages. Benefit by developing bodhicitta, in the bodhicitta, then one quickly accomplish all these paths and the stages and attain enlightenment $2 quickly. And one quickly attains or accomplishes all the paths and grounds and quickly attains enlightenment. It is because at this, for example, at this stage we do meditation and in our meditation we are not able to have a very clear and also sometimes fall asleep in the meditation and cannot develop any realization, gain any realizations and insight, as well as one’s mind’s been not steady. In the meditation one’s mind also scattered or wanders everywhere.
It is because we have more negativities within oneself than good qualities. So if one has less negativities and have abandoned all the negativities and have developed great qualities, good positive actions, then one will be able to maintain a good meditation and develop their realizations and attain enlightenment. By developing bodhicitta, one easily accumulates the positive actions or virtues and abandons the negativities easily. As a result, because of that, one swiftly or one quickly perfected all the paths and grounds. And and the tenth, which is becoming a source of all happiness and joyful living beings or sentient beings.
So as we said, the becoming a source of all happiness and joy for all the sentient beings. It is because from bodhicitta comes all happiness, the Hearers, solitary realizers, Bodhisattvas. It is because from bodhicitta, by developing bodhicitta, one becomes bodhisattva and through bodhisattva or bodhicitta comes the Buddha. And from Buddha comes all the areas and he teaches the teachings for the Harriers and through for the teachings to the Harriers, solitary realizers, and by preaching or teaching them, they attain enlightenment liberation from the samsaric existence. Because of these reasons, the ultimate source of all this is the bodhicitta or, say, the bodhisattva.
This is how by developing a bodhicitta, one becomes the source of all happiness and joyful sentient beings. So therefore, developing the bodhicitta is very important and if one develops the bodhicitta, then one can quickly and swiftly accomplish both purposes of self and others and attain the enlightenment quickly. It is because here the great master Candrakīrti in his Madhyamakāvatāra says that the Hearers and solitary realizers come or derive from the Buddha. Buddha derives from the bodhisattva. Bodhisattva derives from bodhicitta.
So it shows that bodhicitta is the main source to produce all the Buddhas, bodhisattvas, Hearers, and solitary realizers. So it is very important. And so therefore, it proves here the importance of bodhicitta. And here, what is this? And So, one should try to develop a bodhicitta because if one develops a bodhicitta, it is more likely one can attain, enlarge and quicker by developing a bodhicitta than practicing a tantra because without bodhicitta, no matter how much one trains in the tantric practice, one will not attain enlightenment. Also if one practices tantra without developing bodhicitta, then by practicing mere tantra, one will not even reach the first stage, one cannot enter the first part of the Mahāyāna five paths, which is the path of accumulation.
By developing a bodhicitta, one suddenly or immediately enters or obtains the first part of the Mahāyāna part, the first Mahāyāna path which is a path of accumulation. So it is very important to develop the bodhicitta. About the tantric practice, there are different types of tantric practice. Even the non-Buddhist, they have the tantric practices, but because of lacking the bodhicitta, they cannot attain enlightenment. By developing bodhicitta and training in the correct view, the view of realizing emptiness, and engaging in the practice of tantra, one attains enlightenment.
If one develops the bodhicitta, then one will receive all those above ten advantages of the bodhicitta. The great master Mañjuśrī, once told the great master Tsongkhapa saying that for the time being forget about all those teachings which are set forth to be very profound teachings; forget those teachings for a while. First, train in the three principal aspects of the path: renunciation, which is the wish to free from cyclic existence, bodhicitta, and the correct view. First training these three principal aspects of the path which are the root of all the practice and should not consider this practice something very small. He also said, if someone considered those practices saying, Ah, bodhicitta, it’s nothing much to do, not much to meditate.
Whenever one feels that if someone says this, that it implies or it shows that the person does not know how to practice. Okay. So we’ll stop here today and one or two questions. So, As we said for Hīnayāna and the Mahāyāna, within Hīnayāna there are two schools, two divisions: the Hearers and the solitary realizers. The solitary realizers are between the Buddhas or the Mahāyāna and the Hearers.
It’s been in the middle. Its realizations and its quality are slightly greater or better than the Harriers. So the solitude to realize it. The meaning is actually the person who practices in this lifetime. Later, by doing such practices, in certain level, person came to know, he or she came to know that he will attain the liberation just to mere free from the cyclic existence.
Whenever a person has felt such confidence, we call it solitary realizer because the person tried to go to a land or a place where there is no Buddhist at all and wanted to attain arhathood or liberation just by practicing himself in a solitary area. This is how it’s called solitary realizer. Yeah. Just say again what Candrakīrti said from this. Oh, it’s the Madhyamakāvatāra. So Master Candrakīrti in his Madhyamakāvatāra in the Middle Way text said the Hearers and solitary realizers come from the Buddha and Buddha comes from the bodhisattva and bodhisattva are from the bodhicitta, which means the Hearers and the solitary realizers come from the Buddha.
It is because Buddha shows the path, gives teachings to hareas and the solitary realizers, and by showing the paths and grounds to the percussionists, by practicing them, they become the hareas and the solitary realizer. This is how it’s said the Hearers and the solitary realizers come from Buddha. How Buddha comes? The Buddha comes from the bodhisattva because by becoming bodhisattva, one practices and attains enlightenment. How one becomes bodhisattva is because by developing bodhicitta, one becomes the bodhisattva.
Through this, it shows the main source of all these Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and so forth are from the main source is the bodhicitta. So it’s also the source the bodhicitta is the source of all the good qualities. And that bodhicitta also comes from the great compassion. So the great compassion also becomes the root source of all the good qualities. The way of how one cultivates the special altruistic intention or the bodhicitta will come in the next session.
Last question. It is bit bit difficult to start. Start start what? You live with your you’re in a fix. Maybe you’re never in a fix.
When you’re in a fix, Yeah. So it is true that sometimes firstly, we have to maintain that intention of helping others all the time and develop and be a volunteer to serving others or helping others. But it is true, there are some days where everything goes wrong on me, wrong on you or me, and you feel so frustrated, say, and very upset, and then you may likely blame yourself. Like yourself, it’s a wrong day to be in the world. But at this stage, what you can do is because actually it is very good to have that, and rather than feeling frustrated, one should rather be happy to have that affect or to have that suffering or affect because and think that I’ve been doing all these good things and still the bad things coming to me.
To think that, yeah, it is actually good because these are the things, are the results of the negative actions which I have accumulated in the past. The good thing is it’s happening right now, and by ripening it now, the power or the negative action I have created in the past will come exhaustion or will be exhausted, and as a result, I don’t need to face its result in the past. So it’s very it’s very good to happen right now and feel happy rather than saying it’s wrong day. Yeah, so one should rather feel very happy with the sufferings one got at this stage and think that because when one does the meditation on the bodhicitta and the love and compassion, say one does the breathing meditation, and in that meditation one focuses on the breath, inhale and exhale. So when one exhales, along with the bodhicitta, one imagines good things going out with your breath and reaching the sentient beings.
When you inhale, thinking that all the sufferings of others been ripened or have been come to you. This is how one does the meditation, for example, like in breathing meditation. If you have the suffering or get the affections or some so one faced sufferings, imagine that once you rather feel happy than becoming sad or frustrated and also rejoice that this is what I’ve been doing meditation and this is what I do, my meditation, and feel rejoice that now I’ve got suffering and that was my meditation to to take the suffering of others and and think that my meditation has become very effective and good meditation, and feel happy. So whenever one undergoes through all the sufferings, as you said, during those days, you should feel resourceful and maintain the patience. So the patience of only taking the hardships or bearing the hardships.
Along with maintaining that patience, feel rejoice and to think that I’m very happy to receive it and in the future I don’t have to undergo through all these hardships. In the next life, I will straight away go upwards. Yeah. I’m thinking. I’m thinking.