Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Can generosity be perfected by someone who owns nothing? That question anchors this nearly two-hour Lamrim session at Buddha House, where Khensur Rinpoche first establishes mind as the root of virtue — body and speech merely follow its lead — then frames bodhicitta as the true seed of Buddhahood. A story of a Geshe candidate who failed his exam by confusing the substance of giving with giving itself makes the key point concrete: the first perfection is the mental factor wishing to give, as Milarepa showed by perfecting it without possessions. Rinpoche covers the four types of giving — material gifts, teachings, love, and protection from fear — and ends with a Q&A on a monk enduring chronic verbal abuse, drawing out teaching on patience, karma, and how meditating on compassion itself constitutes benefiting sentient beings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 24 LR 2000 08 08.mp3
UUID: c599bf62-f418-4015-81aa-df912a507f28
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Lam Rim (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 2000-08-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 116.0 minutes
Words: ~5,478
So first, we’ll develop the motivation of altruistic intention for the bodhicitta and by developing that we’ll engage in the practices of giving teachings and listening teachings. By doing so, we will cultivate a huge amount or a great deal of virtues and as a result we will have great benefits from doing such practice. There are three bases through we cultivate the actions, the virtuous actions or negative actions. Those three doors are called the body, speech, and mind. We cultivate the different types of actions or virtues through the three doors.
Among those three, the mind is the main that because of mind developed intention or motivation, it influence the rest two doors, the speech and the body and the speech to involve in the action, and that action the the action to that action to be virtuous or or non-virtuous entirely depends on where the mind is, the the influential mind is. If the mind is on positive state, the action produced through body and speech will also become virtuous. If it’s in negative state, actions will be negative or non virtuous, as well as if the mind is in a neutral state, then the action produced from body and speech will also be neutral, neither virtuous nor non virtuous. Therefore, the placing or converting or placing one’s mind into a positive state, virtuous state, is very important. So, putting one’s mind on the positive thought or positive actions, positive thought is very important, and among the positive there are the levels of the greatness of the positive or virtues in terms of virtuous activity.
As they are the greatness on the positive state of mind, the placing one’s mind or developing the mind of altruistic intention bodhicitta or keep placing your converting your mind towards the bodhicitta is the most powerful or the most effective state of mind or virtuous state of mind. Because as a result, because of that bodhisattva, the altruistic intention is very, very effective or powerful practice. By converting or placing one’s mind on the altruistic intention. Due to this, it motivates or it influences body and speech to involve the actions, and because of the original source is very powerful, effective, the actions produced from the body and speech will become very powerful and very effective. Due to this, the result of such practice will be very powerful as well as one attains the huge happiness.
So how one can cultivate that the motivation of altruistic intention or to develop the bodhicitta? By doing such practice, from the beginning, thinking that both self and others lack happiness, and it’s the happiness which is called the unchangeable happiness or uncontaminated happiness or the most perfect happiness. So both self and others, they do have happiness sometimes which are called the contaminated happiness or changeable, which is momentary, which is which changes in every moment. One one yeah, called the contaminated virtues. What the contaminated happiness what people lack is the the uncontaminated happiness.
Wishing both self and others to have that happiness and making prayers to make them let both self and others to have the most perfect happiness and happiness in it causes and developing a quality, special insight of love which is making taking responsible of wishing to responsible to have others and self to have the ultimate happiness in its causes. Through this, one meditate on compassion, love. And then develop a compassion towards the self and other motherly sentient beings because sentient beings wishing them to free from all the sufferings and its causes and making prayers for them to be free from sufferings and taking the developing a special insight of compassion to take responsible to free them from the sufferings because because those motherly sentient beings, including oneself, in general, have been suffered or tortured, suffered in the cyclic existence, particularly in the lower rebirths. So after having developed the love and compassion towards the entire sentient beings, then develop a wish to free all the sentient beings from the suffering and bring them to the state of ultimate happiness. But in order to do so, one first needs to overcome all the fault and negativity of self and attain the entire good qualities.
Without attaining those, one will not be able to free sentient beings from suffering and lead them towards enlightenment. So in order to do so making effort or in order to bring sentient beings towards the ultimate happiness, instead of ultimate happiness and free from the suffering, working so in order to do so, working for the trying to overcome one’s own negativities and attaining entire good qualities in order to benefit sentient beings is the mind or a type of bodhicitta. So developing such a mind is very very important and has a huge benefit of developing that. And after developing such mind and maintaining a meditation on such a mind for even for five minutes, even for five minutes will cultivate a huge amount of virtues. So in order to do so or accomplish such mind, I shall hear, listen I shall hear, do the practices of listening, contemplation, and meditation.
Along with such motivation, we shall do a short meditation here. The numbers are actually at the back of the front cover. The great master, future Buddha, Buddha Maitreya, has set forth that the wishing for the Mahāyāna practice is also altruistic intention or a bodhicitta because the mind which seeks for enlightenment for the sake of sentient beings is the mind of altruistic intention. Buddha means the enlightened or Buddha. Buddha means one who has abandoned or eliminated entire negativities and the faults and perfected all the good qualities.
By abandoning all the negativities and attaining good qualities, one becomes Buddha or the person is a Buddha. To become a Buddha, the altruistic intention which we have explained just before is the cause or seed to Buddha because it is like a seed. To have a sprout, one needs to have a seed. So from bodhicitta, because of the altruistic intention which acts as a seed, the Buddha born or Buddha comes. So if we demonstrate an example here, as a seed, whether it’s a barley seed or any seed of any grain, So by having the main cause which is seed and then that seed mixed with the conditions, it gives the result of the sprout, whatever, barley or anything.
For example, a person has a huge desire or a huge wish to eat rice and have a lot of rice. In order to have that rice, first one needs to know the real cause from what the comes rice comes because without knowing the proper rice without having a proper cause or the real cause of the rice, one will not have a rice for a result. Likewise, any kind of result one wishes, one first needs to have the proper or the real cause of the result that one wishes. Identifying the genuine and unmistaken cause of the particular reason is very important. For example, like one wants to have milk and the milk comes from the cow.
So in order to have milk, it comes from the cow and plus if you know the milk comes from the cow and you pull it from the udder, the breast or whatever. Okay. You you extract the milk from where it is. You can taste the milk. Right?
You can. So identifying the real cause is very important because you wish to have milk and you know the milk comes from the cow. And if you pull the cow’s horn, alright, then you mistake and you can’t have milk. Likewise, in order the result you wish and to you wish to the intended result, to have the intended result one has to realize and recognize the true and the real cause of the result. So, to become enlightened or a Buddha or developing a real cause of Buddha which is bodhicitta or altruistic intention is very important because the bodhicitta is the unmistaken and the real the main cause of the Buddha.
Without cultivating a bodhicitta or practicing any which does not combine with the bodhicitta, the bodhicitta, there is no chance of becoming enlightened or yeah, becoming become enlightened. So cultivating a real cause or the unmistakable cause is very important, But just a mere unmistaken cause or a real cause is not enough to enjoy the intended result because just by having a mere seed of rice is not important, it has to join the main source, the rice, the seed ground the seed needs to be accompanied by the conditions or the other causes like water, soil, heat, and so forth. So so so the having an unmistaken an unmistaken cause is very important. Along with it, also having the entire cause or entire requirement, presenting all the the requirements is important as well. So both the unmistaken and the entire requirements are to attain the entire requirements is important, too.
So having an entire cause or all the requirements to produce the result is important because just as we said, just by having the seed of the rice is not enough to the sprout of the rice because the the seed should be accompanied by conditions like water, soil and so forth. Without the company of all those conditions, just by the mere of the rice. Actually, the mere seed of the rice is the real cause and the unmistaken cause of the rice, but just by mere seed is not enough because you can understand that you can just keep a seed of the rice in the box and keep it for millions of millions of years or hundred years, it won’t give a sprout of the rice. Meeting with the conditions, so having the entire conditions or the entire cause is important. So bodhicitta is like the seed of the rice, and then bodhicitta is like a seed of the rice to produce the enlightened or Buddha.
Just mere bodhicitta is not enough to become enlightened or achieve Buddhahood because then bodhicitta needs a company or needs to meet with the conditions so like the rice seed needs water and soil, water and so forth. So bodhicitta needs the company of the deeds of bodhisattvas or deeds of victorious sons. So, that bodhicitta need the company of the actions or the company of the deeds of the victory sons, which are the deeds of the Bodhisattvas or the training in the six perfections. So we say the meditator the person who meditates say the hermit sits in the us, the hermit we hermit who does the meditation. So they first develop the bodhicitta or altruistic intention, and after having developed that bodhicitta, then they and they do the practice of Mahāyāna practice that they develop their bodhicitta and then they practice the bodhisattva’s practice which is training in the six perfection giving ethical discipline, patience, efforts, concentration and the wisdom.
By training in those six perfections, they become a bodhisattva, develop the bodhicitta, become bodhisattva and trained in these six perfections. After having trained for a certain period in these six perfections, during that period they perfected or accomplished the yeah. They purify us or yeah. They perfect the self purposes yeah. Self purposes.
And by having done that and after the training in the sixth perfection, then they train in the practice of gathering the disciples which is to ripen the other’s mental continuum perfecting the sixth perfection, then they train in the four ways of gathering disciples in order to accomplish the others’ purposes. In the sense, the four means of gathering disciple is to ripen others’ minds, mental continuity. So the training in the four ways of gathering disciple is to help to ripen others’ mental continuum they are all in the world to help them to subdue their mind, which is the mind, the unmistaken mind, the bad state of mind conjoined with the disturbing emotions. So in order to do so, in order to help others to overcome their bad state of mind, first one needs to overcome one’s own mental bad state of mind. Without overcoming one’s own, one cannot help others.
From the beginning, leading a very good practice by one’s own is very important. After having trained oneself for a long time, then helping to help others to overcome their bad state of mind by or through giving them a teaching will become very effective because one has purified one’s own and had attained certain realizations and through this one can help others. Without doing self practice from the beginning or training oneself from the beginning, one cannot help others because without having any realization or any qualities for oneself and giving teaching for others will not help them or others to gain any realizations. It is like one can pour nothing from an empty vase to the other empty vase. So just by pouring, it has nothing.
So likewise, first training oneself is very important. So in order to help others to gain some realization or attain some knowledge, first, training oneself in a great yeah, first training oneself and gaining to gain certain experience on particular practice is very important. Without having any experiences or any realization on self self one can do, one cannot help others very one cannot help others. So in order to help others, we should train oneself well, and by doing so, one can and then one can help others. Therefore, for that reason, from the bodhisattvas, they first train themselves, they work so hard and they experience their practice or their training, and having done so, then they later benefit sentient beings.
They do this because such a practice is training oneself and then later helping others. Doing such practice is very effective because they know that if one has a knowledge then one can benefit others better. Due to this, they train themselves first. That’s what you So they first developed the the altruistic intention, and that the altruistic intention, bodhicitta, bodhicitta acts as a motivation or intention. Having developed that motivation, then they train in the six perfections starting from the perfection of giving because that practice is the easiest among the six perfection.
So the definition of the giving is the positive state of mind which has a wish of giving or wish of contributing to others is the definition of the giving now. Generosity or perfection of giving is not the of giving or the generosity we always talk about. It’s not the things which we give, food, wealth, money, etc. Those things are not the giving or not the generosity. Generosity here or giving here is a mind or the mental factor which has a positive state of mind that is free from all the miserliness and have a wish or intention of letting or contributing or giving something to others.
So that mind is called the giving or the generous mind, but the things which we give are not the giving or the first perfection which is not the first perfection. So, We’ll tell a of like a two story here from ancient Tibet. Not really ancient. In olden days, in Tibet when the people become a Geshe, first they need to give an exam in front of His Holiness Dalai Lama and His Holiness will listen to how they Tibet is doing the exams and he can understand that person is qualified to become Geshe and that is not. One day, the exam day, and the participants towards Geshe were there debating, and one of them are quite intelligent and said to be very intelligent and good in debate.
He was answering and somebody gave a question, asked a question saying, What is giving or generosity? The definition or what is giving? And that Geshe, that the person answered, substance of generosity or giving is giving. Which was wrong because the money and so forth which keep are called the substance of the giving but it’s not the giving. So he made the mistake and due to this, in that year he was kicked out and can’t become a on that year.
After the exam some people asked after that, What happened? How come you didn’t become Geshe this year and what went wrong? He said, Ah, that my substance of the giving kicked me out of Geshe. So here one should differentiate or recognize differently the substance of the giving and the giving. Money and all this the body, money, body, clothes, etc.
Etc. Which we give are the substances of giving. Giving itself is the mental factor, so the mind, the positive state of mind which has intention or wish of giving to others is the giving. So that is the mind which has intended or has wished to give to others is called the giving. By practicing that generosity and giving, just a few practices on that giving is not enough.
To become enlightened, one has to perfect the first perfection, the giving. Without perfecting then, one cannot become Buddha. In order to become Buddha, one has to perfect perfection, the giving. For example, the great yogi, Milarepa, has become a hermit in the mountains and he possesses nothing, he has nothing to give, but he has perfected the first perfection which is perfection of giving. In order to perfect the perfection of giving, one does not necessarily need to have or possess something to give to other because those are the substance of giving.
The main practice of giving or the main giving is the mind which wishes to give to others and that mind, the wish or have intention to give to others, needs to be perfected through meditating on that particular mind. So the intention of giving everything one possesses body and speech, so forth In perfecting that state of mind wishing to give to others, perfecting that mind is the giving and one needs to meditate on that mind and perfect that mind. Milarepa has perfected that state of mind, the mind of giving without having any substance to give. In order to perfect that perfection, one doesn’t necessarily need to have this and possess anything or substance of And to practice the practice of giving, it has these four main divisions that the giving of teachings, giving protection from fears, giving of love, and giving of material gifts or objects. Along with that mind, the intention of giving and giving all this one’s clothes, shelter, food, money, and so forth, is called the giving of material objects.
So if can, one has something and one can offer then it is also good to practice the practice of giving of material objects and just letting go of some things to others, giving to others and meditating on that mind the idea of giving, it’s very effective. And the practice, the giving of teaching is giving the explanation or the teaching or commentary of a single verse with the fourth sentence or four lines is called the practice of giving teachings because no, no, no. And giving the commentary of the verse, not mistakenly, not mistake is the practice of giving teachings. The giving of love is through training, meditating on love, wishing that wishing and making prayers as well as taking the developing the intention of special insight of love, wishing all sentient beings to have the happiness and its causes is the practice one is practicing on the giving of love. And the fourth one is giving protection from fears, helping sentient beings from any fear.
For example, somebody who received detention or a punishment from the king, so freeing a person from the punishment is also the practice of giving protection from the fear or serving some other animal or human being who has a danger of losing life from the harm from tiger or wild animals like tiger leopards and so forth, and helping us and also seeing little insects fluttering on the water nearly to die, helping that insect from the water or from fire freeing their life. So all these sort of practices are called the practice of giving protection from the fear. So, one does the practice of generosity or giving, one can do these types, the four types of the practice of giving and should do this practice of giving along with the motivation of altruistic intention which is bodhicitta. So, in order to practice the generosity, among the practices of generosity, the most effective and the most helpful, the utmost practice of giving is the giving, the practice of the giving of teachings. In order to do so because by giving teachings one will help others, the other to overcome the entire suffering and attain the enlightenment.
In order to do so, to give teaching to others, first, one needs to gather the disciple or the person towards self, let the person to like you and let the person to impress the person because without impressing other people or without others liking you, one cannot help the person, one cannot have opportunity to give the teaching and the person will not listen to your teaching and without giving teaching you can’t help the person. In order to do so, first the practicing the giving of material gifts. Because of helping the person with the material gifts, the person will come along or come towards you and then through this, because the person comes towards you and collect the person. If the person develops the likeliness towards you and then come towards you because of your practices. Through this, the person will start listening to you and then you can give teaching to help the person to free from all the sufferings and attain the enlightenment or the ultimate happiness.
So that shows that this is true this. This is the way one should practice the practice of generosity or giving. So, if one they should practice the practice of giving or the first perfection of giving. The benefits of doing so is that because first, the opposite of giving is called the miserliness, which grasps everything and holds everything thinking that if I give this or do this then I will not have that, I will not have this, and if I give this food to that, then I’ll have nothing to eat. So four.
Because of that miserliness, one holds everything and has a fear of losing things. And and due to this of that yeah. Due to this, then the the the there is no peace, happiness. One’s mind is not is is not so pliable and so forth because that has the miserliness. It puts one’s mind into great fear of losing things.
So By developing or practicing the generosity, which is the opposite of that mind of miserliness, that the giving the along with the intention of helping others, one gives everything what one has. And by doing such a practice, having the wish willingness of giving, then one mind has becomes very smooth, softened and have peace, so forth, because there is no fear at all of losing anything and that mind becomes very fragile or pliant that mind eventually becomes very pliable to anything. This is how one practices generosity or giving. It is true that at the time one practices practice of giving, at the very first moment one loses, one will not have one will lose that particular example, a particular thing you’re giving and you will not possess and you will lose that object. But you will lose the object for the time being, but the benefit of losing that is huge in the future.
For example, the person has single grain or the seed of the corn. When you sow the seed of the corn under the ground or a swale, for the time being you lose the grain from your hand but later the seed gives the sprout and it grows huge and the benefit of losing the single seed from a while ago will give you a thousand seeds of the corn. Rock wash, you have a dollar at the moment and if you give that dollar along with the motivation of altruistic intention or bodhicitta. For the time being, you lose that particular dollar but the benefit of the result of giving that particular dollar is huge and one can make use of that merit or the results of that practice until the attainment of enlightenment and that result of that practice is inexhaustible until enlightenment. When you attain enlightenment, it’s pretty sure that everything you have is inexhaustible.
I’ll just give you tell you a story to give you some laughter. Give you some laughter that in our monastery area, by la Kopi, the Indian government has established one Indian village next to our monastery. The government gives them a field and every day the government will give the people the seed, the corn seed to grow a corn in their field. So they don’t know the result of working or sowing, cultivating the crop or corn, and the government give you a couple of sacks of seeds, and instead of growing those seeds, those Indians, they eat the seeds first. It happens because they don’t know the result of growing the seeds.
And then, for a time being, the other who grow the seeds, and they were cultivating all the crops, and they had huge amount of food to eat, and those people haven’t got any, and they then just started begging. Nowadays, these days they become very clever. They’re even smarter than Tibetan local people. Yeah. We’ll stop here and take a couple of questions if you can.
Yeah. Okay. If a person has been a monk for a long time, say over sixteen, seventeen years, and tried to study generate bodhicitta and help people in any way, and he’s constantly subjected to verbal abuse every day. How and why should that person continue to help those people when they don’t want to listen or even speak to you? In general, one should develop a bodhicitta or altruistic intention for entire sentient beings.
If that kind of situation happens, one should even more focus on those particular beings who have been hard on oneself and been abusive and so forth, etc. In particular, one should pay more attention and should develop even a stronger bodhicitta and meditate stronger on bodhicitta, especially focusing on those persons. So what if it gets to the point where abuse whether it be physical or verbal gets to the point where that monk comes close to actually disrobing as a result of it. Yeah, and so If that sort of situation happens, the danger of it because of the verbal or the abusive whatever, which are likely to cause a person to lose his robes. At that time, the person himself is cautious handling the situation carefully is very important.
Thinking that at that moment when people are really putting oneself in a difficult position, at that moment instead of getting disheartened or sad, one should rejoice at that moment, thinking that these things happened due to the karma cultivated by oneself in the past and should rejoice that this person let one’s karma to ripen during the time one is still as a human and thinking how one will suffer if those results ripen towards oneself during the lower rebirths, if one were in the hell realms, etc. We’ve written that the lower rebirth in the hell realms. Is going through huge sufferings, if there’s karma ripening on that situation, one has a problem of loneliness and so forth, and one will suffer even more. So thinking of all this and rejoicing what is happening and should develop more compassion and love toward those people making your karma to happen at this time. So as it’s stated in the Guru Puja practice saying, no matter how the suffering comes upon you like rain, think that all these are the results of one’s karma and rejoice that they are happening, now, convert all these bad conditions into the very conducive conditions and maintain the patience one should not feel sad or feel angry, which means that when that happens, you should always bear all the sufferings, thinking that these are the results of the past which one hundred percent has cultivated, and maintain patience and appreciate or rejoice for what’s happening and thinking, develop compassion towards the person who make those karma to ripen at this time and shouldn’t feel any disheartened or sad or don’t lose patience.
Even if it happens, even if that really caused the danger of losing one’s vow, then one should even work harder and think whoever one’s own guru, whoever one’s guru is, and from where one has taken the robes, and think that particular meditate, remind that particular lama kindness and try to protect. vows. Even if the person’s teacher has been abused and So, all the one should recall one’s lama from whom whoever one’s lama is and from where one takes all the vows or robes and should think nothing to do with whether lama is at this stage is sick or seriously ill or whatever. You should always think during the time when you take the robes from your lama and what sort of condition the lama was, and within that lama at that moment you have taken all the vows and made one’s own pledges, so should remind the lama of that moment and shouldn’t feel like not reminding Lama at this stage because at the time of this, the Lama cannot do anything. Lama is he himself is suffering from certain disease or whatever.
So then Mankind piece so if that happens then the putting all the teachings that one has received from the previous times, bringing them into protection towards one’s self guard is very important. If your one’s own master is not in good condition at this moment, one should also make all these teachings you’ve received from your master, put all the teachings into practice and dedicate also for the lama to recover from his illnesses and so forth. If that’s not working, that’s the whole point of the question. Mean, all that studying meditation and remembering what the teacher has taught you. Doesn’t seem to be working towards people that you took you know, when you take robes that Mhmm.
With the intentions to help all sentient beings, that’s why we take robes. Yeah. So if if no matter how hard you try, it’s not helping anybody, it should stay a month or should become a lay person, breakable vows. Oh. Oh, alright.
Okay. To benefit sentient beings doesn’t mean that one should give teaching to people, talk to the sentient beings or talk to people and collect huge amount of disciples and so forth. This is not what you benefit the sentient beings. To benefit sentient beings means the Milarepa has benefit numbers of sentient beings but he didn’t go out, collect the disciples, give teaching and so forth. But to benefit sentient beings doesn’t mean that way.
But just by developing compassion, meditating on love and compassion, wishing them to be free from all the sufferings and so forth in your meditation, during that meditation, brings you all helping all benefitting sentient beings. Through meditation and gaining the realization and attaining certain realization means that one is benefiting sentient beings. So, for example, so what we do is, for example, somebody comes in front of you and abuses you and says you are doing this and this and you suddenly abuse you, for example. Do you need to do at that moment? First, just analyze yourself and if whatever the person is true or right, then you should rejoice and thank that person.
This is the practice of the great Kadampa masters. They consider those persons as one’s spiritual teacher, one’s utmost teacher and because of pointing your fault you work on it and try to avoid that, eliminate that negativity or fault, and by abandoning that which will become a cause to attain the ultimate happiness. So if the person turns out to be true, then should not get offended or angry. One should pay thanks to the person and say response that you were true and I will try not to do certain such things again. And even if the person turns out to be wrong to you, then you should still feel rejoice that this is the result of my bad karma in the past and rejoice that it has ripened at this stage.
So we’ll stop here.