Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Comparing cats in Australia — well-fed, rarely killing — with cats in Tibet forced to hunt constantly just to survive, Khensur Rinpoche opens this 91-minute Lam Rim session with a vivid illustration of how lower rebirths trap beings in escalating cycles of harm. He builds to the core framework: all beings want happiness but lack the intelligence to identify its causes; humans, uniquely, can. Drawing on Vasubandhu’s ten unskillful actions and their positive counterparts, he pairs each with its karmic result — abandoning killing brings long life, generosity brings wealth, patience brings a beautiful body. A needle dropped on the ground and perhaps never found again stands for the fragility of this human opportunity. The session closes with Q&A on whether pursuing future happiness conflicts with understanding emptiness, why idle gossip fosters attachment and aversion, and why anger harms the angry person more than its target.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 LR 1991 02 23.mp3
UUID: efd9da78-8b17-4bfc-acd2-894d558c912c
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Lam Rim (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1991-02-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 91.7 minutes
Words: ~5,215
Helping cultivating the awakening heart. So we’re all happy and wanting we’re all the same happiness and not wanting to suffer. If we were simply to to meditate for our own purposes alone, then this would be extremely small in our possible capacity in the development of our power, our abilities. But if we were to meditate for the common welfare of all, then this would be a very powerful practice. So it’s necessary that we develop the motivation that for the sake of myself and others, all others, that in order to eliminate their suffering, in order to bring them happiness, I’m going to meditate.
So in order to bring that about the elimination of the suffering of all and to bring bring happiness to all. How can I do that? How can I go about that? That developing this motivation that one understands that oneself has to eliminate all of one’s own faults, and bring the consummation all of one’s excellent qualities through training of the mind in the Dharma. So if I were to bring to fulfillment the growth of my own mind, then I could be of immense benefit to others.
Order to actually achieve this, I have to meditate. I have to cultivate my mind. In order to do that, I must understand what is to be meditated on, how to go about meditating, and therefore it’s necessary for me to listen. For the next three minutes, I cultivate the healthy attitude of the awakening heart that I am going to listen to these teachings in order ultimately to be a benefit to others. A quote from a verse by Candrakīrti, in which he is pointing out all of the various types of beings which exist in the universe, the vast variety of beings within the six types of migrators.
Even as humans and animals there are various varieties. Even amongst humans there are various varieties. But It is humans who are in fact the most fortunate in that they have a very powerful intellect, that they have clear minds. Whatever they set their minds to, they can learn, they can develop, and we have this capacity, this potential. But, though there are these vast varieties of beings, whether it’s humans or animals, etc, they are all exactly the same from the point of view of wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer.
So all of these beings are the same from the point of view of wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer. But they vary vastly in their ability to actually identify the nature of happiness, to be able to understand what is suffering, and though they all want to be happy, none of them want to suffer, yet many of them not being able to identify what is happiness and not being able to correctly recognize what is suffering, aren’t able to achieve their aims. They don’t know how to abandon suffering. They don’t know how to cultivate happiness. But, but, you know, we want to be happy.
We have a great liking, desire for happiness. So, it’s important that we make use of our, of our wisdom, of our intelligence in understanding a presentation of the ways of becoming happy and how to rid ourselves of suffering. So amongst humans, there’s a vast variance in degrees of intelligence in those in the effort that they make in pursuit of their ends, in their various physical and mental dispositions, their characters, and their context. We all have a natural liking for things to go well, that we enjoy when we get what we want, and we have unhappiness, that we experience some mental unhappiness when things don’t go as we would like them to be. So we have to question, upon what does happiness rely, upon what does suffering depend?
This is in the case of various types of things, articles, that are dependent upon their quality. If they are of a good quality, then it’s necessary that they have a good cause, likewise a corresponding good cause. So there’s always a correspondence between the result and the cause. in dependence upon what do things go well? What is the cause of things going as we would like them, and gaining the happiness that we’re all seeking?
This would have a corresponding positive cause. And when things go badly, this again has a corresponding negative cause. So, from the point of view of spiritual practices, what we call these positive causes are the various types of skillful actions, and those which bring about the undesirable ends, we call those negative actions. humans, we like things that go well. There’s various objects which bring us happiness, and there’s ways in which we find that we desire, that which we see.
And so questioning, well how does my own happiness come about? How can I, what types of skillful actions actually create my happiness? What are the causes of happiness, and in fact, and then how do I go about bringing about those causes? On the other hand, there are various types of suffering, troubles, those things which are undesired, we experience, and understanding what are the causes of those suffering experiences which I don’t desire? What brings these about and understanding what are the causes and beginning to eliminate the creation of those causes?
So whatever we experience, the specific quality of it corresponds to a specific type of cause. Whether it’s something good which has happened to us or something bad which has happened to us, it doesn’t come about through no cause or just haphazardly, but in fact it has a very specific cause which it has evolved from. So we want things to go well for ourselves. That’s quite natural. In order that things go well, this requires specific types of causes.
And we can understand. We can come to appreciate what those causes are. And we not only understand it, but we can go further and actually cultivate or practice those causes which will bring about our desired ends. And that this is a, we are all presented with a wonderful opportunity in the context of our freedom that we all possess in creating the causes for ultimately our happiness. Additionally, there are undesired experiences that we don’t want to go through, various types of difficulties and troubles that we don’t want to experience.
And these two have a very specific cause and we can come to understand what are the causes of these undesired experiences that we don’t like, that we don’t want to go through. And understanding the causes, we can begin to abandon them, that we can eliminate these causes. We have this power, we have control over this, and that we can eliminate the causes of our unhappiness. If we think I’m going to cease creating those causes of my unhappiness, we have that much control, that much power to actually bring this about. So this is an extremely wonderful opportunity because we can, we have the necessary control Presently, we have the power, the capacity, the control to create the causes such that things will go well for us, that we can achieve positive, desirable experiences.
We have the control, the power necessary to eliminate those negative causes which would bring about undesired experiences. That we can begin to control the quality of our life. We have that power. We have that capacity by, through cultivating the positive causes and eliminate the negative ones. But this, though we presently have this opportunity in the sense of having control over our, our destiny, over our fortune.
If we do not practice it, we have to practice it. We have to make use of it because it’s not going to last forever. This opportunity can be quickly lost. There will come a time when we simply will not have the potential to control these factors of what brings us happiness, what brings us suffering. There is a great danger that we will lose this opportunity of control over our life and we will simply involve ourselves in great difficulties continually out of control.
But if if we were to think that, oh, I don’t see how I’m ever going to lose control over my life. But in fact, this isn’t the way things in fact are. There’s a great danger that we will quickly come to a situation whereby we will no longer be in control of our life, of our destiny. This is the impermanence of our life in the sense that our life is continually, moment by moment disintegrating, coming to an end or to a point where this very life will become non existent. Analogy would be that we have a needle in our hand, and it’s quite useful to have that needle.
And but if we were to drop it in the in the on the ground, we may not be able to find it again. So considering the impermanence in-depth, the possibility of losing this opportunity, there’s a variety of possibilities of ways that our life could end suddenly. Through an illness, through some physical illness, a car accident, through all the various natural disasters, that there’s simply no stability in our life. Our life is very much like a flash of lightning. The fact of impermanence is that we, it’s unpredictable in the fact of our death.
That someone who was quite well yesterday could be dead today. And we see somebody this morning and this evening, they die, and we never see them again. That’s the fact of impermanence of death. And upon our death, what what will happen to us? The fact is we will not become nonexistent, that we will take rebirth.
We don’t have the power not to take rebirth. That is to say, we will take rebirth. And this type of rebirth is controlled by various causes, the various types of karma that we have created. And if we were to take rebirth, for example, as a cat, what could we do as a cat? You know, what having taken rebirth as a cat, what do we do?
What is it that a cat actually understands? What does it know? You know, even if you were to teach it the Dharma, the spiritual practice, it wouldn’t understand one word of what you were talking about. It doesn’t have the capacity to develop its excellent qualities, make use of its potential. All it knows is how to catch mice, chase insects, fight with other cats.
This is about all it understands. And that is to say, it quite naturally involves itself in creating the causes of further suffering. And even though it wants happiness, it doesn’t understand how to bring about that which it desires in times of future happiness. It’s simply it’s definite that it’s going to, in the majority, involve itself in the creation of further sufferings. Cats in Australia, they lead a pretty good life.
They get fed very well, but the cats in Tibet, they don’t get fed very well. So they have to they have to fend for themselves and they have to do a lot of killing to do this. So, in such a situation that the cat is continually creating various types of negative, negative actions that through killing, that is to say harming others, and these are unskillful actions because they are the cause of suffering. And doesn’t, it simply doesn’t understand how to create the causes of happiness, types of causes such as practice of generosity, developing love and compassion, which in fact will, which are the causes of happiness and will bring about its future desired results. In such a situation, not creating skillful actions, but in fact involving oneself of unskillful actions, then things can only become worse.
Then we create more unskillful actions, which leads to a worse condition in the future. In that situation, creates more unskillful actions, not creating skillful actions, and things simply become worse and worse and worse. But, a human life affords us a wonderful opportunity because we can discriminate. We have the intelligence whereby to distinguish between constructive actions and destructive actions. And thereby we can begin to, to purposefully create the causes of happiness and abandon the causes of suffering.
And, but we have to know exactly what types, what are the various causes that in order that our conduct be unerring that we don’t make mistakes and what are in fact the causes of happiness and suffering. So, our way of life has to be enacted in an unmistaken manner. That is to say, we are creating those causes which will bring us happiness, beginning to cease those causes which will bring us suffering. This would be an unmistaken, unerring way to conduct one’s life. But on the other hand if we were to simply go on creating further causes of suffering, if we weren’t to purposely create the cause of happiness, then this would be a mistaken way to lead one’s life.
And this is just as if when we were going to buy some article, maybe some clothing, and we would really examine it well. We would inspect it. We would look at it very closely to see if it’s what we wanted. We don’t want to make a mistake and buy something that isn’t our liking, isn’t going to be what we want. But even if we were to buy something, even if we were to make a mistake, it’s really no big deal.
It’s not a great misfortune. But if, on the other hand, we were to lead our life in such a way that we continually created the causes of suffering, and we didn’t create the causes of happiness, then this would be a great mistake. Just like this cat continually involving themselves in leading a life involved out of error. So in a way we should try to find a way that we won’t continue to make mistakes in the way that we lead our life. Our conduct, our conduct will lead us to our desire ends and they will help us to avoid undesirable ends.
This is simply based upon, as much as we are able in the course of each day, creating healthy actions, which will bring us happiness. And, as much as we are able every day to cease creating harmful actions, negative actions, which will bring us undesirable ends. And in this way, things can only improve. Things will always get better will, you know, various rebirths, life after life, rebirth after rebirth, that things will ultimately get better and improve, higher and higher and higher, until finally we will achieve liberation. And that is to say, we will experience happiness, which is completely divorced of any suffering.
So in this, you know, through this course of conduct, things will only get better. The type of our physical embodiment will become better and better over the course of lives. That the quality of our life will improve. The place that we live will become better. The environment, food, our clothing will always be better quality throughout all of this.
Our companions will always be of a better quality. That things suffering will get less. The factors of happiness and peace in our life will increase. So, if we think about this and begin to appreciate this opportunity that we have, in the sense that we have control over our lives, that we have this degree of freedom, and reflecting upon this, then we will be, we will engage in the various practices necessary to achieve our ends So, if we were to question, well, given that I may want to practice, what is the way of practice? How do I go about it?
Basis of our practice are expressed through our body, speech, and mind. These three. So I’m quoting a verse from the Master Vasubandhu, in which he said that the Buddha initially said that in our spiritual practice, we should, on the initial level of our practice, involve ourselves in the skillful actions of our body, speech, and mind. The three of three physical, four verbal, and three mental. So the three skillful actions, three skillful physical actions are the abandonment of killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct that is having involving sexual involvement with a someone other than one’s own partner or a partner of another.
And then with respect to verbal actions, the abandonment of the four unskillful actions. And these would be the abandonment of lying, tricking people through your speech. Abandoning divisive speech, that is creating division between individuals were previously in harmony. Abusive speech, hurting people through your words. And the fourth, abandoning idle gossip, wasting one’s time talking about unimportant things.
And then abandon the three unskillful actions, the three mental unskillful actions. And the first of these is the abandonment of covetousness. And this is having a great desire for other people’s possessions. And, the second is harmful intentions. Thinking to hurt, you know, planning within one’s mind, having the intention to hurt somebody in the future.
And, then the third is wrong view. Wrong view is making definite decisions as to which are in fact mistaken as to various types of notions, for example, that there is no rebirth when in fact there is rebirth. Are saying that spiritual practices is of no use whatsoever and making these firm different decisions within your mind holding these types of wrong views. So, are all referred to, these ten actions are referred to as unskillful actions that are destructive actions since they are the causes of suffering. So, you know, why why are these negative actions?
In what way are these causes of suffering? These various actions of, for example, killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying. These, and when these are acted out, they involve hurting another person, bringing another person suffering. And therefore, are, they are considered, they’re called negative So, if we were to, all of these various unskillful actions, through engaging in them, we hurt another person, we harm someone else, we cause them suffering. The results of having done that are that we ourselves will experience future harm, that we ourselves will experience future suffering.
So, these, these unskillful actions are, are such that they cause harm or suffering to others. As a result of that, we ourselves in the future will experience a corresponding harm, suffering. On the other hand, if we were to cease creating these negative actions, if we were to not do them, then we would as if be giving happiness, absence of that suffering to others. We would be giving them the comfort of not having to experience that suffering, that we would begin giving them happiness, and that as a result of that, we ourselves would experience happiness. It’s just the just the same in the the if we if we add chili to our food, then it’s going to be, you know, it’s going to be hot.
If we add something sweet, then it’s going to be sweet. There’s something sour, we’re going to experience sour. So the main the main advice of the Buddha was that to not harm others, but to benefit them. If one harms others, oneself will be harmed. If one benefits others, oneself will be benefited.
So in our practice, the practice of Dharma is the abandon ment of harming others. If we do this, then things will go well for us. We will be happy. We will have all the material things that we can, that we want, that our friends, we will be beautiful as a result of having abandoned harming others. On the other hand, if we don’t abandon this, if we continue to harm others, then we’re going to experience all those things that we don’t want.
That if we abandon harming others, then the result will be that things will go well. If we continue to harm others, they will not. So present we have good bodies. If we want to experience this type of good embodiment again in the future, then we have to abandon harming others. For example, cease killing others out of ceasing the killing, harming of others that we will dispose us to in the future.
Have a good party. Healthy body but also a beautiful body, then we have to practice tolerance for patience. That is to say, not returning harm for harm. By doing that, we ourselves will have a beautiful body in the future. If we want material things, material well-being, food, clothing, all kinds of good things of life.
And it’s necessary that we abandon stealing others things, but additionally with the altruistic motivation, practice generosity, practice of giving. Out of this giving, then we ourselves will receive it. If we want a long life in the future, then we have to abandon killing. Killing represents the shortening of the lives of others. In order that we ourselves will have a long life, we have to help them, we have to practice lengthening the lives of others.
That is to say whenever we can, not killing, but also saving life in order to lengthen life and therefore we and ourselves will experience a long life in the future. If, if in the future we would like to have, you know, good friends, harmonious companions, stable relationships, we want people to like us, then now we have to practice the abandoning of anger, trying not to become angry, and practicing tolerance, patience. If in the future we would like to become great masters, experts, then now presently we have to practice training our mind. If we practice if if we cultivate love, compassion, then we will eventually achieve the awakening heart, and out of this we will become bodhisattva. So, we have to, we should reflect well upon what it is that we want to experience in the future.
What is it that we would like to have in the future? And then thinking well upon that, determining that for ourselves, then determining what is the cause, and practicing the cause, creating the cause. If we don’t create the cause, we will not experience the result. If, in fact, we want happiness in the future, and we’ve got the wish for happiness and yet we kill others, we steal, then this would be a great mistake because not only are we not creating the causes of happiness that we want, we’re in fact creating the causes of future suffering. I mean, we can understand that even in the ways of the world that if one wants something next year and say a place, a particular place to live or particular article one wants to have because it’s going to make one happy, then this year one has to begin saving up for it.
If on the other hand, though we might want something next year and we don’t save up the money this year, then next year comes, we’re not going to get what we want. It’s the same next year, life. We seem to think that next life is some long distance away, but in fact if we were to breathe out and not breathe in, then it would be next life. Next life is just a birth away. So, you know, our body or our embodiment is very much like clothes, a change of clothes.
And then when it’s hot, we take off our heavy clothes and we put on something light. And if it gets cold, we add on more clothing and we change our clothes. And going from one rebirth to another, from one life to another, it’s just like changing clothes. Putting on one body, taking off one body, putting on another one. The being still remains.
The mind is that which is being clothed. So, you know, changing bodies is like changing clothes. You know, just like in well, if our clothes get dirty, we immediately take them off, and we put on something different. So if we have a type of embodiment which isn’t satisfactory, then we we can take off these clothes and find another one. So, you know, with the the clothes people wear nowadays is very much dependent upon the styles.
Styles are always changing, so people are always having to buy new wardrobes. We go through different styles too. Sometimes we wear the body of a bird or a dog or a cat. We’re continually changing our style. Having decided on particular style of embodiment that we would like to wear, we have to create the causes for that and if it’s the causes for desirable qualities of a style of embodiment are skillful actions.
We have to create skillful action. So we we have some time. We’ll we’ll take the remaining time for questions. In what way are they contradicting? Or incompatible.
See. So if you if you understood emptiness, you would have no longer any pursuit of it. You wouldn’t have any desire to pursue happiness. Yeah. The the pony doll, So these two ways of thinking are not incompatible.
As we’ve been discussing in the teaching on Precious Garland, initially one has to achieve high status, and dependence upon high status one can go on to achieve definite goodness. Temporally, it’s necessary that we achieve high status, that we achieve a basis upon which we can go on to gain realization of emptiness and achieve duration. So this is a remedial temporary step that’s necessary to take. This is the basis for achieving liberation. Beautiful body.
Oh, if you want If you want food, clothing, material possessions in the future you shouldn’t steal? That was Beautiful Body. Before that was killing. Long life. Long life.
The first one, if you if you want a good embodiment, good type of embodiment, good type of embodiment, body, and then a beautiful body. If you want a good or fortunate type of body, embodiment, let us say, like a human body, then you have have to practice. Practice. So to have a a fortunate type of embodiment, like human body, human life, then it’s necessary to practice ethics. That would be the abandonment of the ten unskillful actions.
To have a beautiful body, one has to practice tolerance. If one wants to have a lot of wealth in the future, one should practice generosity. Nagy gonna let me give her a sheet of it. She put — cut it out.
So, you know, talking about idle gossip or idle chatter, this is simply wasting our time in meaningless activity, meaningless talk. So, out of this, is a, you know, one, during this one doesn’t create any skillful action. This idle chatter is really an obstacle to practicing the Dharma. That one simply is wasting their time. But not only is one wasting their time, but in the course of idle chatter, thought, Oh, this is good.
This is bad. Out of this one self in discussing these things which really aren’t important, which don’t have any meaning. One will, thinking this is, talking about how good this is, how much you liked it. One will simply increase one’s own attachments, desires, saying all this is really bad. Speaking negatively, putting things down, one only increase one’s own anger, aversion toward these.
And the same holds true for the other person talking, you yourself talking about how bad this was, how negative it was, that you’re going to help, you’re fostering aversion in them, anger in them, talking about how wonderful this is. You’re going to foster attachment in them. And so, it’s an obstacle to the practice of Dharma and to waste in our time, but also it’s both in oneself and others attachment and aversion. So whether our actions of body and speech, their negativity or positivity is dependent upon the quality of the mind. The basis of nature of the action is the mind itself.
It relies upon the quality of mind. If we were to say things such as you mentioned criticism out of anger then it would be negative but if they weren’t set out of anger out of some positive state of mind then they would not be unskillful actually. Do you get get angry. You should cultivate compassion for them. So you think that what they’re doing, many of their actions, involve themselves in creating a great deal of negativity and that they’re going to experience a lot of suffering out of that in the future and develop compassion for them.
Can you meditate in that way to cultivate things? So you know, becoming angry, it doesn’t hurt the other person. It only hurts yourself. It hurts yourself in creating a negative action in the anger itself, but it also is destructive in that it destroys all the positive actions that we’ve created in the past. So it’s very destructive for yourself and doesn’t hurt the other person.
So rather than doing that, why not do something that helps yourself and cultivate compassion for them? So in cultivating compassion though it may not help them. It all comes down to the motivation on why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you have an altruistic motivation to help others, then bringing about your own welfare is in fact bringing about the welfare of others. That fulfilling your own purposes is in fact fulfilling the purpose of others because you’re doing it ultimately through your motivation in order to benefit them.
So it all comes down to what’s motivation, not the actual act itself, but why one is doing what the one is doing. So, you know, is through a particular type of embodiment that we can bring about the welfare of others. For example, we need a good, we need maybe a better word than good, something like proficient type of embodiment in order to help others. So we have to create the causes to gain that type of embodiment. So, you know, if I don’t have that type of embodiment, if I don’t have all these things, then I really can’t be a benefit to others.
So first we have to get this type of proficient embodiment whereby then upon that basis we can help others. Even getting that embodiment is for the So the more things that we have, the more that we can use these as basis for helping others. If we don’t have this proficient type of embodiment, then we really can’t work in benefiting others. The wealthier we are, for example, the more that we can help others. So, have to practice generosity in order to help others through gaining our wealth for ourselves.
If we have a beautiful body, then we’re in a position where we whereby we can do more good. We can help others. And we have to practice tolerance in order to get a beautiful body in order that we can help others. You didn’t? That’s right, so initially we try to adjust our motivation so that what we’re doing is for all sentient beings, myself and others, and then out of that, what we do will be a benefit to others.