Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A leaking roof that keeps dripping while you merely wish it would stop — but never get repaired — anchors Khensur Rinpoche’s central argument in this 92-minute Lamrim session: wanting to stop suffering is insufficient; one must identify its root causes and remove them. The talk works methodically through the remaining ten unskillful actions, covering the four verbal ones — lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, and idle gossip — each analyzed through four components (basis, intention, commission, and completion), then the three mental ones: covetousness, harmful intention, and distorted views. Rinpoche draws on Śāntideva to show why reflecting on suffering reduces pride and generates compassion, and quotes Atisha on watching speech in company and mind when alone. A closing Q&A addresses whether singing counts as idle gossip. Suited to practitioners following this series on karma and ethics.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 LR 1991 05 11.mp3
UUID: 84c4031f-94d6-4a7e-96b4-fe52441b3c79
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Lam Rim (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1991-05-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 91.6 minutes
Words: ~5,277
We’ll cultivate as our motivation the awakening heart. So we as humans in this world are endowed with great intelligence, with vast wisdom, with the potential that anything that we set ourselves to we can achieve, anything that we listen to that we can understand, and this is a wonderful opportunity which has afforded us. To achieve such a type of human life again and again is extremely difficult. So while we have it this time, we must make use of it well and not allow it to become meaningless. And what is the finest way that we can make use of our life, the meaning that we can give our life, that is to establish both oneself and others in a type of happiness completely bereft of all suffering.
In order to achieve that end of establishing self and other in this happiness bereft of all suffering, we must make use of both method and wisdom to achieve that end. And to arrive at our destination, this end that we’re seeking is not a matter of simply physically walking there, but it’s a matter of transforming our own minds. Through the process of developing our minds, by means of developing healthy attitudes, there will arise healthy types of conduct and out of that healthy conduct will arise significant results, the ends that we’re seeking to achieve. And amongst all the possible various healthy attitudes that we can cultivate, there is none which exceeds that of the awakening heart. So by an attitude we mean one’s motivation, so seeking to develop a healthy motivation of the awakening heart.
In terms of this healthiest of motivation, the awakening heart, it is composed of the two factors of first love in which we aspire to bring happiness to all sentient beings whatsoever and the component of compassion whereby we seek to separate all sentient beings from their suffering. And as motivated by these two factors of love and compassion, we will then seek to bring these into fact and to establish all sentient beings in complete happiness bereft of all suffering. And how are we to bring that end about the establishment of all sentient beings in a state of happiness bereft of all suffering? In order to achieve that end, we ourselves must remove all our various faults and bring to consummation all our excellent qualities. It is by this means that we can in fact realize this aspiration.
In order to achieve that end, we must ourselves attain a happiness beyond all suffering by the elimination of all our various faults and the bringing to consummation of our excellent qualities. So, for the next three minutes cultivate the healthy attitude of the awakening heart, whereby one seeks to train in the Dharma as a means to achieve this and whereby listening, reflecting and meditating in order to be able to be a vast benefit to all sentient beings. Quoting from a verse by Śāntideva in which he speaks of the fact that from unskillful actions comes unhealthy results, both of body and mind. That from unskillful actions comes results such as the various undesired experiences that we go through, the various sufferings, and therefore when one considers this, one should always be considering how to eliminate one’s unskillful actions and this is then out of that will come a questioning, what are the methods by which we can eliminate our unskillful actions? So in discussing the methods whereby we can eliminate our various unskillful actions, we have been discussing the ten unskillful actions.
The first of these was that the unskillful action of killing whereby they’re taking the life of another sentient being and we finished our discussion with respect to that and then we moved on to the second unskillful action that of stealing, that is to say taking that which is not given and we finished the discussion of that. And the third unskillful action was that of sexual impropriety. This means that having sexual relationships outside of one’s committed relationship or with that of another person who is within a committed relationship. But additionally there are the sexual improprieties of having sexual relationship when at the full extent of pregnancy, when the pregnancy is well advanced. There is the sexual impropriety of having sexual relationships when one has taken the twenty four hour precept which forbids this.
And then there’s the sexual relation, having a sexual relationship at a place which is disrespectful, for example in front of various images or paintings. So the reason that these these are the three unskillful physical actions and they are unskillful because they harm oneself and others, therefore they are termed unskillful. Amongst verbal unskillful actions there are four, the first of which is lying. So the object of lying must be another person or a celestial being. That is to say, it must be someone who upon hearing our speech, our lie, is able to understand its meaning.
If we speak in this way to an animal, say for example a cat, it’s not lying. So as has been mentioned, as was applied previously to the other unskillful actions, there must be present the component of intention And here the component of intention is such that one is seeking to deceive the other person and this involves the various factors of possibilities such as deceiving with respect to having what one has seen that one deceives them to think that one has not seen it or what one has not seen deceiving them as to believing that one has seen or having heard, not heard or having not heard, heard, having not experienced through the nose, the body or the tongue as to what for them to believe that one has experienced or having not experienced, have them believe that one has experienced. That is to say, what is, you seek to have them believe that it is not or what is not, you seek to have them believe that it is. You’re seeking for them to believe that other than the way things actually are. So the intention is made up of the component of motivation, and the motivation can be either the root three afflictive emotions, which are desire, hatred and delusion.
And for example, through desire one thinks that if I speak honestly and straightforwardly I will not get what I want. Or thinking that if I speak straightforwardly, something bad is going to befall me and therefore desire not to experience this one deceives. Again, one can speak out of a lie out of anger or simply delusion, not understanding the situation, being obscured. So, lying is that which is spoken of verbally, that is to say it’s actually some words that we speak. But we can also lie through our body.
We’ve been describing through speech, but if someone questions us and we simply nod our head, we don’t have to say anything and we’re still lying, or we can just give some kind of shrug of the body to give the indication of something other than what is and this is lying through the body. So the completion of the act of lying is brought about when the other person understands one’s meaning. That the reason why we say that it has to be directed toward someone who understands meaning such as a human being or a celestial being. Once they have come to understand through your indication the meaning of what you’re seeking to indicate whereby you are trying to deceive them as to is, is not or not is, is either through speech or body, then it constitutes a lie. So when the other person understands either through your lie, either having nodded about physically or verbally, understands that meaning and when that other person thinks to themselves, ‘Ah, that’s the way it is’, then we have a complete act of action.
We have created a complete type of negative karma because we have the complete four components making up a complete negative karma. Those are base, intention, commission and completion. And just as a car is made up of various parts, in order to have a car we have to have a collection of the complete parts, and then we have a complete car. Likewise with respect to a complete action, that is to say a fully qualified action, in this case the action of lying, it’s necessary that we have the complete array of components of the basis, intention, commission and completion. Then the next unskillful verbal action is that of divisive speech and this involves the basis of divisive speech that which is being directed toward our sentient beings and these sentient beings can be in a state of harmony amongst them or disharmony.
So with respect to divisive speech, with all of the unskillful actions, there must be proper discrimination as to the object. That is, we must be unmistaken to the object that we in this case the individuals who we are seeking to separate. For example, if there were two people, if we use Tibetan names we could say Tashi and Dendrup or John and Mary or whatever. We see that they have a harmonious relationship and we don’t like this and we have intention to split them up. So we speak certain words in order to break them apart.
But if we have improper discrimination and we don’t break up Tashi and Dendrup, we break up Champa and Tenzin, then this would be mistaken discrimination as to the object of who we’re actually splitting up. The component must be that we have proper discrimination as to who we’re actually going to split up. So what we would the actual commission would involve, for example, you know, we want to split up Tashi and Dendrup who have a harmonious relationship and we don’t like this. So we go to Tashi and we say, you know, Dendrup is saying all these terrible things about you and he’s been doing behind your back, he’s been doing all these things. And then Dendrup and Tashi get together and they have a big fight and they split up.
Speaking in this way in order to divide these two people is what we mean by divisive speech. So we create a disharmony by creating distress between them and saying that this person has been saying this about you. The other person becomes unhappy, doesn’t like it and it creates mistrust and finally division amongst them, between them. So here we’ve been talking about individuals who are in a harmonious relationship and seeking to create disharmony amongst them, but we can extend this to even individuals who have some disharmony, but it’s only a slight division, difficulties between them, and extending that split between them even further is also divisive speech. So the motivation is thinking to create disharmony between individuals or amongst people to create splits and this can be motivated by either of the three afflictive emotions in the sense, in terms of desire.
One has a liking for one person and wants to, doesn’t want the other person to be associated with them, so one creates this, tries to create split where the other person dislikes the other out of desire for their first person. Or it can be done out of anger. One simply doesn’t like these two people to be together. One feels uncomfortable, dislikes them being together and wants to split them up, but it also can be motivated out of delusion. So the commission of divisive speech is the actual speaking of words in order to divide.
These words can be both lies, but they can also be the truth, describing the way things actually are. But your motivation is in speaking this, whether it’s a lie or the truth, to divide these two people. And then the completion of this action is that when the other person hears what you have said and understands the meaning, whether it’s a lie or the truth, then this constitutes the completion of the action. So in order to have a complete action of divisive speech, it’s not necessary that the other individuals actually split, that there is actual division. Obviously if there is division between these two people out of the force of what you have said, then this would be divisive speech.
But even having completed these four components, even if they don’t split up, even if there’s no disharmony created, it still constitutes divisive speech. Then the third unskillful verbal action is that of harsh speech and this is directed both toward animate and inanimate objects. One can be a person that you don’t like, a sentient being that you don’t like or it can be an inanimate object. So in the case of when one’s harsh words are being addressed to a sentient being, the motivation arises out of the power of the intent to harm, and one speaks hurtful words to the sentient being, the person. The motivation can be that of either any of the three afflictive emotions attachment, for example, being attached to your own welfare, seeking to bring about the harm of the other by hurting them with your speech, hatred, seeking to directly harm them, but also delusion.
And again there must be proper discrimination or perhaps a better word would be recognition or identification of the object. For example, wishing to harm Tashi, you harm Dendrup, then this would be improper or mistaken identity or recognition. So as we said, the object of our harmful speech doesn’t have to be an animate object, it can be an inanimate object. For example, if you wanted to write a letter and you’re busily writing your letter and your pen ran out of ink, it’s, Oh damn this pen. Or if you wanted to watch television and the television isn’t working, it’s “damn this television”, that’s harsh speech.
So in the actual commission of harmful speech, it is something which is said from the mouth, it’s actual words. And these words can be both truthful but also lies. What we say is done to harm, whether it’s truthful or not. Sometimes we can say truthful things which hurt very deeply. You know, we say, if someone was blind, we say, you know, you’re a blind person.
That would hurt them very much. It’s true, they are blind, but our words can hurt them. If someone were a cripple, just say, oh, you’re a cripple, aren’t you? This could hurt them. It’s true, but it still hurts them.
Or someone was, you say to someone, Why are you always picking your nose? You know? People don’t like to hear that kind of thing. Or on the other hand, it may be true, but it still hurts them. Or on the other hand, we may make up something a lie altogether in order to hurt.
So harsh speech is simply, it can be, it’s just words that hurt, whether they’re true or false. Even speaking present words which, when if they harm the mind of the other is harsh speech. And then completion is when the, in the case of sentient beings, persons, when they understand the meaning then the act is complete. For example, if someone had been a thief previously and we say, oh, you know, you’re a thief, aren’t you? Though it’s true, they had been a thief previously, this would hurt them.
You’re blind, aren’t you? When they hear these words and understand the meaning, then it’s the completion of the action. So, in the case of inanimate objects, just the saying of the words constitutes the completion of the action. They can’t understand what you’re saying. So, if having these four components would be a complete action of harsh speech.
Then the fourth unskillful verbal action is that of idle gossip, and basis can be either meaningful or meaningless speech. And some people speak out attachment, some out of hatred and some out of delusion. And then the commission is the actual speaking of the idle gossip, talking about Australia, America, Russia, China, Tibet, whatever it is, gossiping. So it involves just spending your time gossiping about what this person said, what this person did. Dale said this about this person, Trump said this and Jim said this.
There’s going on and on about what people did say and didn’t do and did say and did do. So we spend a good part of our day involved in idle gossip in this way, sitting around talking about meaningless things. So this is how we waste a great deal of our time speaking about, in this way, both meaningless and meaningful things. So, and then the completion is having said what you desire to say, whether the other person understands or not. The act is completed, the act of idle gossip is completed.
Seen how many things like this are also idle gossip. So though idle gossip is of minor negativity, we spend a great deal of time doing it. And there’s also the possibility that through idle gossip one can create great negativities by, for example, putting down someone who has really excellent qualities, just tearing down people. And this, our lying saying what is not is, or is not is, just in the course of idle gossip. So though idle gossip in itself is a minor negativity, we spend a great deal of time doing it and there’s always the danger of committing greater negativities.
So if we speak about important things in a flippant manner through the process of, in the course of idle gossip, we say, Oh, there are no Three Jewels, and cause and effect really doesn’t exist. There really isn’t any Buddha. That is to say speaking out of various types of misconceptions, superstitions, and then arising out of the course of idle gossip, there’s a great danger of creating great negativities. So the great Atisha said that when one is amongst a crowd, one should watch one’s speech. When one is alone, one should watch one’s mind.
That we spend a lot of time with other people, and it is at those times that we should watch what we’re saying, such that our speech should not be harmful and should not be negative. It also is necessary that we speak in such a way that we don’t incite others to negativities, that we might speak in such a way that we cause others to become angry at us and thereby inciting them to negativity in themselves. So when he talks about watching one’s speech, one’s speech should be not harmful and negative in the direct sense, but also in the indirect sense of not inciting others to become negative. So if we can it would be excellent if our speech was not only not harmful and negative, as such as was described, but additionally that others enjoyed listening to what we had to say, that they found it pleasant, and that it also increased their faith in Dharma, then this is an excellent type of speech. So when we’re in a crowd amongst other people watching one’s speech, when we’re alone, for example, sitting in a room, in which we watch our minds.
So while we’re sitting comfortably alone in our room, we might appear to be very calm, but in fact our mind might be involved in a great deal of negativity, so we have to watch our mind and see what it is involved in through introspection. Know, in fact, though we appear very calm, we might be thinking about killing someone. We could be thinking about stealing or thinking about how harming, getting back at someone. We might have a lot of anger in our mind or jealousy or it might be a lot of pride. There might be all types of afflictive emotions operating within our mind that we’re sitting very calmly and we should seek to cease these afflictive emotions and direct our mind toward love and compassion at such a time.
So, of the ten unskillful actions, we’ve completed the three physical unskillful actions and the four verbal unskillful actions. Now we’re going to look at the three unskillful actions, mental actions. And there are, these three are covetousness, harmful intention, and distorted conceptions. And the first of these being covetousness and the basis of covetousness is the valuables or articles, possessions of either oneself or another. For example, when you go into the city and you go window shopping and you see all these beautiful things in the window, say, Ah, I need, I gotta get that.
I want, I really want that. This way of thinking is covetousness. But additionally, even one’s own possessions, one has something which one really values a great deal. One keeps looking at it all the time, oh isn’t this great, this is really wonderful. Again and again looking and taking it out and thinking how wonderful it is.
This is covetousness. Then there must be unmistaken identification. This would involve one observing an object and thinking how wonderful it is, and wanting to have that object for oneself or just admiring it a great deal. But there must be proper identification, you know, the object could be yellow, oh isn’t that a wonderful yellow, I like that. Or isn’t that a wonderful white, isn’t that a wonderful red, but if we were to see yellow and we think oh that’s a wonderful red, that would be improper recognition or mistaken identification.
So the motivation is to attain the object or whether it’s one’s other’s objects or one’s own thinking this is really wonderful and I want that or even in case of one’s own possessions, how wonderful it is to have it. And the afflictive emotions are either of the three root poisons that have attachment, hatred or delusion. The commission is actually making effort to attain the object of one’s covetousness. And the completion is the attainment. So if all four of these components are present then we have a complete action of covetousness.
So usually covetousness is primarily associated with desire. So then the next, the unskillful action of the mind is that of harmful intention, and this is everything that we have said with respect to harmful speech can be applied to harmful intention. There is the intent to harm. So, the motivation is the desire to bring harm, whether this be by speech or by some weapon physically, but the quality is intending or desiring to harm. And the commission is the actual harming of another person.
Then the completion is when the other person has actually been harmed, either through understanding our hurtful words, having been harmed physically. Then the third unskillful mental action is that of distorted view. So, the basis of distorted views could be, for example, that law of cause and effect, thinking that in fact from skillful actions happiness really doesn’t arise, or from unskillful actions really unhappiness doesn’t arise, or that the teaching by the Buddha on the four noble truths really don’t exist. The teachings, for example, of true sufferings, true sources, true cessation and true paths leading to cessation, there’s no really way to go about achieving this end, they don’t really exist. Or thinking that the Three Jewels of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha in fact don’t exist, holding these distorted views.
The commission involves a deprecation. Distorted conceptions involve a deprecation, that is to say take, holding that which in fact exists as to not exist. And when one has the intention to make effort in in holding such a view that deprecating these objects then this is distorted conception. Then the completion is that when one comes to a firm decision within one’s own mind that the Three Jewels don’t exist, that rebirth does not exist, that law of cause and effect does not exist, then this represents completion of distorted conceptions, distorted views. So distorted view represents a deprecation, coming to a firm decision, holding that what is in fact is, is not, or what exists does not exist.
So distorted views are extremely negative, just as we have discussed that anger has the potency whereby to destroy the root of our skillful actions, likewise, distorted views also are able to do that. According to the great exposition school, the Vaibhāṣika, there are three levels of distorted views: minor middling and great distorted views, and the great distorted views are able to completely destroy one’s roots of skillful actions. Distorted views are actually one of the greatest harms that we can bring to ourselves. So, you know, we’ve gone into some detail with respect to the ten ten unskillful actions in terms of previous talks that we had in the present talk. We’ve discussed it in terms of its basis, intention, commission, and completion.
This is to enable us to understand what are unskillful actions, to be able to recognize them, and to be able to understand how the method for abandoning them. The reason that these unskillful actions are going into even more depth according to the various divisions, the various components, the way in which they operate, is to help us to identify them. We have to understand what unskillful actions are. If aren’t able to recognize unskillful actions as unskillful actions, then we will unknowingly continue to create unskillful actions. We won’t be able to abandon them without understanding what they are.
Not abandoning them, then we will continue to repeat them again and again in the future, and out of that we will again and again experience suffering in the future. So all of this is designed to help us to be able to identify and thereby abandon unskillful actions. Nobody in the world wants to suffer, is that we still continue to create suffering for ourselves. No one in fact can harm you outside of yourself no matter what they do, whether they beat you or fight with you. The suffering that we experience is created by us creating the causes within ourselves.
So we have to understand what are the causes which are bringing our suffering, be able to identify them, and understand that if we understand the causes of our suffering and make effort in ceasing those causes, then our suffering will cease by itself. The type of work that we may be involved in in the world, if we don’t like it, then we can quit, and we can just cease doing it. But our suffering is not quite the same. If we don’t like our work, we can leave it, we can quit, and we’ve ceased involving ourselves in that type of work. But if we don’t like our suffering, and though we might like to quit it, that’s not sufficient, just wanting to walk away from it.
We have to understand what is the cause of our suffering, what is its root. Then once we understand that, we can cease creating the causes and we can remove the root and that’s the only way that we can cease our suffering. We can walk away from our suffering. It’s very much an analogy would be that if we were sitting in a room and when it rains, there’s a leak in the roof and the drops keep dripping on ourselves. And we don’t want to get wet.
We don’t like that. We get, Ah, I don’t like to get wet like this. I don’t like to get wet like this. Simply not wanting to get wet is not going to stop that leak. We have to go on from there and say, well where is the leak coming from?
Where is the drop coming from?’ And inspect it and then go up and actually make the repairs. This will block up the leak and this will bring about our desired ends. Though we desire to stop the leak and not get wet, if we don’t do anything about it, we’re always going to remain wet. So the same applies to our continual experience of suffering. Simply desiring not to suffer is not enough to stop it.
We have to understand its foundation, its root, where it’s coming from, that it rises as its cause, unskillful actions, and begin to cease those actions and the types of actions that we’ve spoken of here today, the three unskillful actions, physical, verbal, and mental unskillful actions. So in general, perhaps, Westerners, they don’t like to talk about suffering very much, but we have to do it. We have to become experts with respect to suffering. We have to reflect upon it. It’s extremely beneficial.
There’s a verse quoted by Śāntideva in which he talks about the benefits of reflecting upon our suffering. Firstly, in coming to terms with our suffering, it will help us lessen our pride and thereby various afflictive emotions will begin to lessen by themselves. We can’t have a great deal of pride when we see how much suffering we’re actually involved in. And additionally, coming to understand one’s own suffering, one can apply it to other beings who are involved in cyclic existence, seeing that they are undergoing the same types of dissatisfactions that we ourselves are, and out of this will rise compassion. And having reflected upon our suffering and its nature, we’re beginning to recognize its cause as being the various negative actions.
This will motivate us to abandon negative actions and begin to cultivate positive actions, and this all comes about through cultivating an understanding and reflecting upon the nature of our suffering. Yeah, let me think of that. I have a couple of questions. As a distorted view, what would be the negativity of somebody of another religion who benefited many people or became a saint or achieved great mental, So maybe you want to expand upon this. Firstly, that playing music is not idle gossip because idle gossip is something that comes out of you, it’s words that you speak.
And as far as singing, it’s not that it doesn’t bring, it might bring other people’s happiness. In fact it might. It’s dependent upon what your motivation for singing might be, whether it’s involved in an afflicted emotion. Did not get it. So if one were to seem motivated out of attachment, then it’s not a skillful action because it’s initiated out of an unskillful action, out of an afflictive emotion.
It’s a verbal action, it’s initiated out of an afflictive emotion, therefore it’s unskillful, but it’s not either lying or it’s not divisive speech. It’s not harmful speech. It’s simply classified in this general category of idle gossip because it is verbal and it is initiated out of an afflictive emotion, but it is neither of these other three. Therefore, it’s classified in this general category of idle gossip. And though the other person might enjoy it, still it’s motivated, it’s afflictive in the sense it’s been initiated out of afflictive emotion.
It’s unskillful. On the other hand, to sing out motivated by wishing to offer praise or wishing out of compassion, out of positive intention, then this obviously is not idle or gossip. For example, when we do the offering ceremony of Lama Chöpa, the Guru Puja, offering to the spiritual master, we are reciting various praises, singing various praises to the Buddha, for example, speaking of excellent qualities. And there’s no afflictive emotion present. Therefore this is not idle idle gossip because it’s initiated by a positive state of mind.