Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A clay-bead counting analogy — if you ground all of Australia into mala beads, you still couldn’t tally how many times your current mother has mothered you — anchors this 92-minute session as Khensur Rinpoche continues the sevenfold cause-and-effect instructions. He outlines three qualities a Mahāyāna practitioner needs (sharp wisdom, honesty, and kindness of mind) and shows how a child possessing all three naturally recalls and repays parental kindness. He then distinguishes “appealing love” from love in the Lamrim sense, and contrasts samsaric happiness — which inverts into suffering like standing until you collapse — with the inexhaustible happiness beyond saṃsāra. A Q&A closes the session, addressing the distinction between immeasurable love and joy, whether renunciation is required before love can arise, and whether love and compassion are ultimately identical.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 LR 2000 03 14.mp3
UUID: 68238b74-7cda-4163-aa3d-bd6496bfaddb
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Lam Rim (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 2000-03-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 92.3 minutes
Words: ~4,842
Before you do any kind of meditation, if you do meditation with a good motivation, then as a result, one will be able to perform a very good action or good activity. As the action has been performed with a good motivation, one will have a good result and that will be very beneficial. So, we will do a short meditation on the bodhicitta to cultivate immeasurable love, prayers, and the special insight. So by wishing, cultivating immeasurable love by wishing that all sentient beings have happiness and its causes and aspirational limitless or numberless prayers, which is may they have the ultimate happiness and its causes. Then the last one is I’ll take all the responsibility to let them have the happiness in its courses.
So, you should do a meditation step by step first cultivating an immeasurable love by wishing, thinking about how wishing that both oneself and others have all the happiness in its causes and aspirational limitless prayers, may they have all the happiness in its causes. The last one is wishing that I will bring them, both oneself and others, into the happiness and let them have its causes as well. Likewise and vice versa, thinking, wishing how wonderful that if both oneself and others be free from all the sufferings and its causes and may they be free from all the sufferings and its causes as well as I will free both oneself and others from suffering and its causes. And then, in order to free both oneself and others from the suffering and bring them into the state of ultimate happiness, And so I engage in the practice to practice, to abandon all the bad natures or the bad mind and as well as the negativities within myself and cultivate the kind heartedness. To accomplish that wish, I shall hear, listen to this teaching and through this may I be able to bring huge benefits to oneself than others.
So, in the last previous teachings, we have been dealing with cultivating and recognizing sentient beings as one’s mother. And about so here, it’s been stated that if one counted how a single person has been one have been one has been one’s mother, then it is in it it is innumerable or uncountable that has been said, for example, even the entire Australian land, we just mash it up and make clay out of entire Australian soil and make little bits of that clay, like the mala bits. And if one counts, how many so you’re saying the present mom has become your mother in this lifetime, and then count the same person, the present mother has been your mother in previous life, and then counts on. The number she has become your mother are innumerable that even if you count until all the clays has been turned into a little bit, still it’s uncountable, which means you can’t count how many times she has been your mother. So as this present the current or present mother has done has been your mother for for a numberless time.
Likewise, the current father has been your father for a number numberless time and it goes for the brothers, sisters and for the neutral being, has been your neutral person, had been for number for countless time, and and as also for the enemy who has been your enemy for countless times. So, should recognize that sentient beings as one’s mother not only has been mother for once, they have been one’s mother for countless For countless time. And now, so while they’ve been your mother, now they have shown numbers, the third, the second, the one is remembering their And about recalling kindness, can see, for example, as this present parent or a mother, how she has undergone through difficulties during the time of pregnancy and then through the delivery. And once after your delivery during your childhood, parents or mother has taken care of you and the wealth they have worked so hard and cultivated and being used for you or their children and trying to give them the best food, best clothes, shelter, everything. And at the end, even at the time of their death, they will leave all their possessions like a yeah.
So the will, including their houses, everything they have, so likewise. So this in modern cases, they have helped in many different ways like all these above mentioned. And likewise, also in the religious, spiritually, they have also helped in many ways. So when one recall the kindness of their kindness, you should not only recall the kindness they have shown in this present life, you should also recall likewise they have also helped you in many ways in your previous lives as well. So recall remembering their kindness, which means that they have helped you in many different ways and been very benefit to and benefit you many many many in different ways.
So so recalling their kindness means to recall the help you have received from them. So being being a Mahāyānist or Mahāyāna practitioner, one needs to have very good wisdoms and there are various types of wisdoms. It’s good for one to have a very vastness or great wisdom, which means the wisdom, which has a very vast perspective. And then the and the very sharp yep, sharp wisdom, which is to that one can or in very intellectual, that if one has it, one can study or understand things very easily. And then the wisdom called and have a very clear wisdom, which is that if one has this clear wisdom, then one can distinguish the things as it is and one will never have any confusions like misunderstanding the meaning of the topic or object.
That is the benefit of having a clear wisdom. And then a very profound wisdom which is by having that, one can understand the very absurd or very profound meanings of the teachings. And so those, the above mentioned wisdoms can be attained through the practices or by practicing through Mañjuśrī, which is the embodiment of wisdom. Also, being a Mahāyānist, one needs to have the very honest one has to be very honest, which means in the sense that one should be free from attachment and anger than having distinguishing between the people being called relatives as well as and developing attachment for the relatives or the dear ones and cultivate the hatred for the enemies. So one should one should be free from those attachment and hatred.
Or we should say the very honest nature that one is being free from one who does not differentiate the people by calling dear ones or in the sense not attachment towards the dear ones and not hatred towards the enemies. And plus, the third one, is also being a Mahāyāna, it’s good to have a very kind nature of our mind, which means that it’s not one shouldn’t be like a person who has who who has very angry person or develops anger very easily and who lacks respect, who hasn’t got any respect and devotion towards his or her teacher, parents, and so forth. So one should not be like that. One should have a good, very kind nature of mind that have huge respect towards one’s one’s parents, teachers and so forth. So if a person, the Mahāyāna has all these three qualities, which is very, very good wisdom, honest nature of mind, and kind nature of mind, that person can learn a lot.
So, if there is child who has these three qualities, easily understand the kindness shown by his or her parents or mother. So the child with the three qualities, that child has very good wisdom, a very honest nature of mind, and the kind nature of mind. By having all these three qualification or qualities, that child will when the child grown up he or she can see their parents, for example, like a mother, the child has become, for example, become very, very well grown up child in the sense of being quite good and worked so hard and financially okay in the position or is in position to help others. And so whenever that child, that kind of child, sees the parents during the old age and they can see their problems, their difficulties, because of their age they can’t walk properly, lots of wrinkles in their face poor eyesight and so forth. By seeing this, seeing seeing yeah.
By seeing this, the child can automatically develop within within him or herself, thinking that, oh, they have helped me during my childhood. And and at this stage, now I’m in the position to help. And and they and they and they they have a great hope in me, and and also it is my duty to now do something back. And and they they so it means the child that child can pretty easily realize all these things and and and will be very helpful for the parents. And as as the child has a very all these three qualities and they he or she has a wisdom that they understand the old nature or the true natures.
Okay. Hope it become a joke in English. So we have a Tibetan there’s a saying in Tibetan. It says that a person if there is no response for the speech or a talk, in the sense if someone talks to you and you didn’t answer back, that implies the person is a dump or Yes, kind of like a dump. A person who does not, who didn’t or who do not return food back for the food that someone offered to you, that means that implies the person is somebody offer you a food, and sooner or later, near future, if you don’t think of the kindness of offering you food, and if you don’t give the food back in some time in the future, then it implies that you are not really rude what’s the word?
A person is not a honest person. You know? You’ve been not considered as honest. So in the sense that the Tibetan saying implies showing the importance of repaying kindness or returning their kindness. Likewise, during our childhood, we were taken care of by our parents.
We are more or less like a little animal at the time, just a bit of flesh or a bit of bone along with it. So we can’t take care of ourselves and so forth, and at that time, your parents are the one who has taken care of you and because of their kindness, you are in this position at this stage and you’re well enough. Now this is the time where your parents have grown old and have lots of difficulties of going through the suffering of age and the body being burned down and forth. They have difficulty standing up, sitting down. When they sit, they just leave their whole body on the ground.
So and so forth. So this is the time one should recall their kindness and then pay their kindness. Otherwise, if one does not do this in our community or in Tibetan community, the child who does not take care of their parents has considered to be considered very downwards, alright, in the community as well as and he, he or she has been called that they have a very bad nature of mind. So the Tibetan culture is Tibetan and the Indian culture are more or less same in this context. That in our community, when parents or mother, for example, grown older, the children will do their best for her and they always take care of her.
Then they take care of her even in their house. They offer their best room and go for the best food and best clothings and so forth and just tell her that, Just have a nice rest and do your meditation. So, and as the kid has been like this, the parent, for mother, care of her and doing their best for her, and the mom, the mother really likes the kids or the children. In every prayers they make, they always make prayers for the betterment of her children. So those children who really take care of parents or a mother, for example, in particular.
Those kids have been very, very successful in our community, that they have a very wonderful life and have less problems with physical diseases and so forth and everything they do become very successful and they very friendly, become very friendly with others. Due to this, as a result, the children have been very successful in their life and as they have a very good life and very successful in every step they make. And those children will never will never become crazy, and they they never they don’t need to use drugs or marijuana and so forth. So and the fact is that we have very rare or very few people being called out, very few crazy people in our community that the percentage is very, very low. So you can really you can we can hardly hear that someone has committed suicide.
So, yeah, It has been a say, what is the word now? General talk publicly. The people just talk to and when people make gossip gossiping, whatever, what they do is they look for children who are there, and the children who have been very nice to their parents and so forth, to their teacher and others and so forth, the people will say that child will have wonderful life, very successful life, so and so, because he and she does this and that. And the one who does the very bad things all the time, Bin said, he will not have a good life, So and which which actually becomes true that the one who does the very bad things, stupid things in life, the the later in their life, they they they’ve gone through very huge difficulties. So we we have seen in seabed and we have seen through our neck and arms.
So, they’ve been considered their parents considered to be a boss in their family because they have looked when the children were very young and can’t do nothing during their time, their parents had worked so hard and worked so hard and make living for the children. So because of that, they always in family, they consider the parent are the utmost person. So it has been the parents has been considered to be very some of boss of the family because the father has externally has worked so hard and internally the mother takes care of kitchen hands, looking after kids and so forth. So in both ways, one is external and one is internal. Whatever it is, they are the boss in the family.
Whatever they do in the family, the parents have been considered the most important. The next is the the children are the next. So the Indian and the Tibetan culture are a bit more similar. There’s hardly any differences. Whereas in Australia, probably it’s in different opposite way that the kids are the boss in the family, and then the mother, and then the father, and the dad.
So the Australia and the Tibetan Australian culture and the Tibetan culture are completely opposite. So whatever it is, the fact is that one has to look within oneself. So where one should place one’s position or one’s kid in family. If it’s better for the child’s life to be in his life, considering him or a child as a boss in their family, that is fine. Or if it’s placing a bit lower position, then you should do it.
It depends on yourself or you. So so as we said, it’s yeah. It it it entirely depends on one on on you. And in the past, I have heard some news or some news that had happened that some kids, they have some kids, they send their parents to the jail or in prisons, like been contacting police saying that complaining, My mom and dad is no good or Yes, good or whatever. So by calling them and their cause, they make the main cost, and then as a result, the parents have been kept in the jail or imprisoned.
And if that happens, then it’s very, very sad. So it is very important to recall recall mother’s kindness and to repay her kindness, and it is very important if to help them to have a very happy life and end up and help them to end their life happily. And as you can see that one’s mother has a great affection towards the to her child because a child it is it is because the child is a result result from result from body, come out from her body because the child has done nothing to her. Besides, the child has caused her lots of difficulties during the pregnancy and so forth, so she forget all the hardships she went through, but at the time of the birth or delivery, she develops her strong affection and love to the kids. So the child with the three qualities can understand, can recall mother’s kindness, and by remembering, by understanding their kindness, they repay their kindness as well as they can also cultivate a very appealing love to her parents.
The way the mother can see a child very appealing to her. So as the child has a strong affection and sees the parent’s mother as a very appealing love due to this, the child has a great love and affection to the parents or to the mother. And as a result, by having that strong affection, then the child develops a huge automatically, child will have a great compassion towards the parents because that affection caused the child to have a strong compassion that he or she can’t bear when parents were suffering from the chronic diseases and so forth, when they’re going through when they are in huge pain from diseases and they always wish to have wish them to be be free from all those sufferings and have the happiness. So so so one yeah. So that child will automatically have a great compassion.
Excuse me. Have a compassion to to the parents. So it seems like they are this the yeah. So it seems that the cultivating or developing developing a love and the compassion are in seems to be in one comes before the other. So it seems that first one develops a love or affection, and and the compassion comes after this because because of having love and when one sees that the parents is undergoing through huge difficulty and problems, then the child can see the parents and feel that seeing the suffering parents, the child will automatically develop a good compassion and special wish by thinking how and they can’t bear to see the parents’ suffering, and they wish not wish them to be free from suffering, and they make prayers or prayers to be prayers for them to be free from suffering as well as they will develop a special insight afterwards thinking that I will do everything to to let them free from their difficulties.
So it seems that compassion, the affection, then then comes compassion and the special wish after the compassion. So after the affection. So the cultivation of love, affection, or love and compassion is depends on each other. If one has a strong love or affection, then one can develop compassion very easily or automatically after the affection. And if one has a strong compassion, like how wonderful he or she be free from the parents, means if we’re being free from all the sufferings or hardships and so forth.
And by having this good compassion, one easily have a strong love and affection to So it seems that the cultivation of love and compassion are interdependent or interdependent. If we demonstrate an example here, then it’s like, for example, if one has a very if is very happy within one’s mind or mentally happy, then one is free from all the sufferings or unhappiness. So likewise, if one is separated from unhappiness, then one is happy. One has a happy. And one has happy, one is being free from unhappiness.
So likewise, versa, saying if there is a happiness, then one is not free from So if there is unhappiness, then one is not free from unhappiness, but one is free from happiness. If one is free from just kind of like playing a up and down. Yeah. So the Yeah. I was doing the right thing.
So the example was, if one has a happy, then one is free from unhappiness. When one is free from unhappiness, that means one has a happiness. So likewise, if one is not free from unhappiness, then one is not free from unhappiness. That means one is unhappy and it also asserts that one is free from happiness. Yeah, it’s kind of a good calculation.
Compassion and the love or affection is like that. So if one has strong compassion, automatically one will develop a love. So we need to cultivate all these sevenfold cause and effect instructions by recognizing beings as one’s mother, remembering their kindness, repaying their kindness, and and cultivating a a appealing love. So here, appealing love and love are we distinguish those two. The appealing love is one that one sees the person who is very appealing to you, which has been very by seeing a particular person, one feels happy and comfortable and so forth.
That has been called appealing love. Whereas in love, which refers to the love, by seeing those sentient beings lacking happiness, and that happiness is not the happiness of living. That happiness constitutes is the happiness of everlasting happiness or unchangeable happiness, and the more you use, it can’t be exhausted. Likewise, it’s not the happiness which we are talking about, the living. That means the living happiness is more it’s not reliable.
It changes momentarily the more you use and then later it exalts and it produces the suffering or difficulty. Likewise, for example, if one is so cold and one wants to be in a place to feel warm or something like that, so that one, say, go to the sun and for a time being one is being happy that they’re free from the cold. And later on one feels so hot and that happiness changes into suffering. So this is not the happiness we were talking about. The happiness here is referred to the ultimate happiness, and seeing the same thing means let that happiness and wishing them to that happiness has been called a love.
So that is different. So distinguish difference between the appealing love and the love. And the compassion is the one that can’t bear seeing sentient beings going through huge sufferings, and wishing them to be free from those sufferings has been called the compassion. Yeah, so the happiness, we’re talking about the ultimate happiness, not the changeable happiness. If we demonstrate another example, for example, at this stage we all are sitting down and after sitting down and sitting for a while, we have problems with back and ankles and elbow and so forth and trying to change the positions and then wanted to of stand up.
At the end of the session, one stands up and then say one stands for one hour and later on. At the very first moment one stands up. There used to happen, and then stand for one hour or even more, then one started looking, wishing to grab a seat, to sit down. That is unreliable or changes of the happiness into suffering. And we’ve been also heard in doing in Tibet in some prisons when the prisoners were punished by the Chinese police.
They said one punishment was they let prisoner to stand for hours and hours, and later on they just can’t stand on their feet. Even they don’t want to sit, they just fall over. So so happiness at this stage, we we we have are are not the not the ultimate happiness happiness because and it changes into the happiness that changes into unhappiness and or into suffering. It is because we are in saṃsāra and that is the disadvantages of being in saṃsāra. So if one abandons the saṃsāra and attains the happiness, that’s all the happiness beyond saṃsāra.
Then whenever when one attains or obtains that happiness, then the more you use, the better it becomes. It becomes more and more happier and also becomes inexhaustible. So we’ll stop here today and the questions are welcome. Yes, please. Yeah.
Okay. Yes. As everyone knows that there are four immeasurable equanimity, immeasurable compassion, immeasurable love, and immeasurable joy. But each one has four aspects or four four aspects, which are also goes through the the equanimity the immeasurable equanimity has four four four four aspects, which are the same equanimity, compassion, and the joy. So here, the difference between love and the joy, immeasurable love and immeasurable joy is that immeasurable love is the one, the wishing that how wonderful if they have all the happiness and its causes in being free from yeah.
So all the happiness and their causes. Whereas the immeasurable love is it’s more it’s like that. So you would say so you you you feel very happy. You are yes. So joy or very happy if if they are free from all these sufferings and its cause.
Sorry, they have all the happiness and their causes. So saying that So it’s any difference. Love means wishing them to be free from all I mean, have the love, happiness and its causes. If they have all the happiness and its causes, then you will enjoy or you will laugh, so that is the kind of joy we will talk. In English we say how wonderful is the day you will.
Yeah, the love and the joy are different. See it very differently because it is the joy is more like rejoicing. For example, you have done certain things today and at the end when you’re back from your work and you just feel joy or happiness, I have done this and that. There is kind of a rejoicing within oneself and that is the joy. Whereas raffia means that wishing them how wonderful they’d be free from, so have happiness in its causes.
The immercible joy is like if they have it, then you will have certain rejoice or things. I think there is a bit shortage of words, but yeah. Is renunciation the requisite to developing love and having love? Do you need to have renunciation to have the To develop a love, no. In It is not necessary to have renunciation to develop to develop that love because for example, when one’s during at the time, so when one sees a sentient being, a particular being undergoing through huge sufferings, and at that particular spot you can develop a love that wishing how wonderful if he or she had been freed from all these difficulties.
At that time you develop a love but it does not necessarily have a renunciation. If my understanding is that happiness is the same as absence of suffering, Therefore, compassion, which is wanting to see people have no suffering Mhmm. And love, which is wanting to see people be happy Yeah. They’re both the same thing. Okay.
I’ll recheck that. The happiness which is free from Free from sufferings. Free means absence of suffering. It means free from sufferings. And the compassion is the one who wishing them to free from all the suffering and the love which is wishing them to have the causes and have it.
So what you mean? Does that mean that love and compassion are the same thing? Yeah. Okay. So they are not the same thing, but one cultivated depends on which one want develop first.
If one develops a compassion, then it automatically, the love comes after that. And if it’s a love, then the compassion comes, but they are not the same difference. It actually comes differently from the way one thinks. If one thinks from the beginning about the suffering, how wonderful if the person, the sentient being free from suffering in its causes, that time the compassion comes. At that time one develops compassion and that compassion is manifested at that time.
Covertly, one does develop a love but it’s not that obvious. So likewise, if one thinks on the first day how wonderful they have happiness in its causes, then the love is manifested and the covertly, there is compassion. So it just depends on how one directs one’s mind, the way of thinking. Okay. Yeah. Okay.