Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using a “Grade C person” analogy — the idea that most of us have unconsciously scripted a mediocre life and simply follow it word for word — Khensur Rinpoche anchors this 43-minute Lamrim session in psychology as much as doctrine. He explains why Buddhahood, not mere liberation, matters: full awakening puts us in optimal position to know and meet others’ real needs. He then walks through worldview (dysfunctional beliefs construct the reality we suffer in), Buddha nature as birthright, and the precious human rebirth teaching as a concrete list of freedoms most of the world lacks. Karma arrives not as moral bookkeeping but as perceptual habit — illustrated with a Rorschach blot and the half-full glass — and the session closes with a Dhammapada verse and a short mindfulness-of-breathing meditation. Accessible to newcomers while substantive for regular practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 LR 1992 05 16.mp3
UUID: 67743f0e-2346-4ebd-a404-143331114eb9
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Lam Rim Weekend (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1992-05-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.5 minutes
Words: ~4,500
And imagine that you yourself have the same exact quality. And imagine a situation play a role where you express the same quality that you now admire and respect in this other person. And you in turn are admired and respected by others. So play a role, create imaginative situation, take on this quality and express it as if, in fact, you had it. Now, think of a male that you admire, that you respect.
What is it about them that you respect so much? What quality? What characteristic? And then again, play a role, imaginably take on this quality for yourself. You now possess this quality and express it in an imaginative situation.
Think of some negative quality about yourself, something you don’t like, characteristic. Now imagine that you have the opposite counterpart, the positive counterpart of this negative quality. You play a role and express it in an imaginative situation. And think of something you like about yourself, something positive about yourself, some quality characteristic. But now imagine that this quality is much greater than it is at present, fully developed.
Create an imaginative situation where you express this fully developed positive quality about yourself. And then bring the mind back to the breath, the gentle, even in and out flow of the breath. Would you like to stand up for a minute? Mhmm. Please.
Give me a chance to figure out what I’m going to talk about. This morning, was talking about the necessity not only to remove the afflicted emotions from the mind, these distress patterns such as anger and hatred, spite, jealousy, miserliness, attachment, desire, forty thousand. Not only to remove those whereby one can achieve liberation, but to go on from there. Can you hear me in the back? To go on from there out of one’s compassion, to achieve Buddhahood, this optimum mode of being.
And whether can wrap our minds around the concept or not, and whether it’s particularly relevant to us or not. The reason that it’s necessary to achieve Buddhahood as opposed to solitary liberation is that by this achievement of this optimum mode of being, We achieve the optimum mode of being for oneself and for others. One’s own welfare has been achieved, but also we’re in optimum position to bring about the welfare of others. And one of the ways that this helps us in benefiting others is that we’re able to know what would be a benefit to others. We know other dispositions, capacities, needs, both immediate and future.
You know, it’s it’s not enough to have some knowledge. It has to be applied appropriately. It has the Buddha taught eighty four thousand different teachings. And some of the teachings, strangely enough, are almost in contradiction to one another. To some, is one some might suppose that the Buddha was inconsistent, that he was confused.
But this can be interpreted as showing his skillful means. And in gearing his teaching to the particular needs and capacities and dispositions of that particular student who he was trying to help at that particular time. Now one teaching would not be sufficient for all. This is one of the reasons the Dalai Lama genuinely, and as you probably heard two weeks ago, believes that there’s a necessity for a variety of religions. That we there’s some movement toward an extreme of ecumenalism, ecumenalism, whereby we try to make one religion.
And this is figuring that this would be overlooking the fact that we have a variety of dispositions, capacities, inclinations, likes and dislikes. And so there’s different religions for different mentalities. Some find a religion centered around a theistic concept, a god, most meaningful, most advantageous for their spiritual growth. For others, this doesn’t work. They need some non theistic means and method for developing themselves spiritually.
So within religions, there’s a necessity for all these varieties of methods. Within Buddhism itself, there’s also a variety of methods, different schools, different levels. And getting it back to I was trying to think, you know, that what would be of most use? Not being omniscient, not knowing what is applicable, and only knowing a little bit. So, you know, this becomes more and more apparent that, if you really want to help others, it’s a matter of helping yourself in terms of developing the capacity.
We may have the sincerest intention, which is terribly important, but we have to be able to translate this into actual fact. And this becomes the motivating force behind one’s self development. This is the reason of the existence of the necessity to achieve Buddhahood, that one is in an optimum state in order to be of optimum benefit. May I be all things to all people, so that by some means I might be able to help a few. Something like that.
So we’re talking about the graduated path. This evolution of the mind from our present situation as ordinary beings, existing within an ego based system, to a system which transcends that which we call Buddhahood, this optimum way of life. And there a process of, as Rinpoche was mentioning, of an evolution of the mind. It’s in terms of the mind itself. There’s a changing of the mind.
Our worldview evolves. Know, Buddhism is not is a particular worldview. We each, whether we’re aware or not, have our particular worldview. Most of our worldviews are dysfunctional in the sense that they’re problematic. They’re self contradictory.
They’re irrational. They don’t work. There’s a particular world view which the Buddha developed. And he found that those who who he himself and other women and men who have developed a concordant worldview experience a sense of peace, a lack of frustrations, a lack of dissatisfaction through the development of this particular worldview. There is no object of reality that we’re seeking to discover.
But there is a you know, our the very process of perception forms our reality. There is that is to say, our perceptions are belief laden. What we see about us is dependent upon our ideas, our assumptions, our beliefs, our premises. And so, you know, if if if our view of the world and the world are in disharmony, you know, if there’s some discord, And we act, then our actions will be inappropriate. They won’t be in accordance with the way things are.
And so, you know, we are continually involved in cleaning up our past messes. We’re involved in a continual struggle. There’s no peace. There’s nothing wrong with us as individuals. That is to say, we have nothing to be ashamed about as individuals.
There’s nothing wrong with us. We simply are normal. But this normality is dysfunctional. It’s a particular worldview which is characterized by dissatisfaction. But we can evolve different worldviews.
First, have to begin to believe in ourselves. This is the basis in having a sincere conviction that I can change. At some level of our awareness, there’s a sense that I can’t change. I’ve always been this way, and I’ve been damned if I’m gonna change. Something there’s not a there’s not a real sense, a real conviction.
There’s a there’s a holding on to a permanent fixed identity. And this identity, for various reasons, is usually qualified as insufficient, negative, something lacking, poor me, victim. And our life becomes a self defeating, self fulfilling prophecy. I’m a four out of a ten. And I’m a I’m a grade c person.
I’m going to marry a grade c wife. I’m going get a grade c job. I’m going to raise grade c children. And you die a grade C death. What goes in between is just details.
You just fill them in as you go along. But the plot is already set. It’s like a formula, like these these books, they’re in these formula books. They just change the characters and location a little bit, but the plot remains very much the same. So we’ve got it all worked out very much for ourselves.
And unless we do something, the script is gonna just go right along, and we’re going to follow it word for word. But it doesn’t have to be like that. There’s a certain optimism involved, and we can’t we have the basis for transformation. In Buddhism, call it the Buddha nature. We have there’s something basically, we have some unconditioned goodness about ourselves, some basic sanity, some brilliant wisdom.
As mentioned this morning, it may be temporarily obscured, faint. As was mentioned this morning, we have some love and wisdom, no matter how limited and exclusive that love and wisdom might be. We have some energy no matter how unrefined, how unspontaneous that energy might be. And these are what constitutes enlightenment, or awakening, or whatever we call that optimum mode of being, or whatever fancy word we might want to apply. This is the initial ingredients developing, following the recipe of enlightenment.
They’re there. We have the basic source of the solution to our problems within ourselves. We don’t need to beg, we don’t need to pray, ask, buy, steal. This main cause for our own happiness is within our own mind. It is our birthright.
Buddhahood is our birthright. We have to believe in ourselves. It’s not easy, but in spite of ourselves, might you might surprise yourself. You might be something more than you now conceive of yourself to be. It’s just an identity that you’ve developed for one reason or another, and it’s understandable.
But your conception of yourself is not who you are and never will be. Who we are is beyond our conception. We have all the circumstances necessary. In order to grow a flower, we not only need the seed, the main cause, but we need cooperative conditions. We have to put the seed in soil, add water, fertilizer.
These are the cooperative conditions necessary. The seed by itself, though necessary, is not sufficient. Though we may have good in nature, that we may have basic sanity, in itself, it is not sufficient to solve our problems. We have to add to bring it into contact with the necessary cooperative causes, cooperative conditions. And to that extent, what are we lacking?
What are we missing? First, looking at it negatively. Beginning to appreciate first our freedoms and then our leisure in terms of, you know, what are we free of? You have to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year in order to feed your family that day, like most people. Probably the majority of the people in the world, have to work seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day.
This was my experience in India. The great bulk of the population is in that position. Are you involved in a in a country which is experiencing civil war, where there’s a threat of death, destruction to you, yourself, and your family? Are you involved in are you starving in Ethiopia, a mother watching her children die? I have someone in Bangladesh whose whose home has just been washed away with the rest of their family.
You know, these things are happening every day all over the world. Are you completely caught up in materialism, where the only thing that you feel is important is money, status, power? Are you undergoing chemotherapy where the mind is dulled temporarily due to the effects of the drugs? Are you a drug addict? Are you an alcoholic?
Are you in chronic pain? Are you intellectually handicapped? We’re talking about the vast majority of the people on the planet. Are you free from all of these obstacles, these hindrances to actualizing your potential, to taking recourse to this source of sanity within your mind to help you to solve your problems? And look at look at it on the positive side.
You’re you’re kind hearted people. You have you have all of your material needs quite readily met. You’re healthy. In general, you’re healthy. You have some desire for an internal method, some desire to develop your mind, to grow.
You have some teachings available, some methods. So everything is there. The only thing that’s lacking is effort. That’s the only it’s that single ingredient. All the causes, all the conditions.
If you begin to appreciate it, to begin to acknowledge them, they’re there. There’s nothing lacking. There’s nothing insufficient. There’s nothing need more that need need be added. It’s just effort to help ourselves.
And if you appreciate what you have, then we’ll make use of it. If you’ve never appreciated, then if it never been pointed out, then it’s understandable. You know, you may have a priceless painting, and it’s tucked away in the attic, and you and you may be poor and hungry, but you have a priceless painting in the attic covered with dust. And one day, someone by accident looks up in your attic, you know, you have a priceless Gauguin up in your attic. Did you know that?
No, I didn’t know that. Wow, that really solved my financial problems. I can sell that? I can buy a new house. And it was as if you had something you didn’t realize it, you weren’t aware of it, perhaps it was never pointed out to you.
So we have to point it out to ourselves at a very deep level and begin to appreciate it. And then into the sense of, wow, I can do something. I don’t have to remain stuck. But this possibility is not going to last forever. It’s that we’re going to die.
But the time of our death is uncertain. And at the time of your death, what is going to be of any benefit to you? Whether we believe in rebirth or not, it doesn’t make that much difference in the sense that someone once said that death is a radical change of lifestyle. And we go through these radical change of lifestyles many, many times over the course of a single life, don’t we? When our whole world is turned upside down, when all our values, when all our that which is known, all that which we’ve held onto for security has been taken away from us.
And what what is going to how can we know that we’re going to land on our feet at the end of this? You know, the death death is the is the end of that the is the end of that which has been known. And the future has yet to begin. There’s a space, there’s a gap. Something has come to an end, that which has been familiar.
And the new has yet to begin, That’s what will become known. And there’s a gap. There’s a flux. There’s a transition. How do you know?
Will you enter into voluntarily into change? You know, we cannot know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Definitely, we can’t. There’s no certainty. There’s no guarantees.
Let alone what will happen in the next life. I don’t even know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Will I will I voluntarily enter into change, not knowing what the outcome is going to be because you can’t. Change is beyond your control. You can precipitate change.
You can bring yourself to the edge, but then there’s the leap. There has to be a certain faith, a conviction that I prepared. I’m going to live. I don’t know how I’m going to end up. I don’t know the details, but I know it’s going to be okay.
Can you have that conviction where you enter into almost joyfully, gladly, at least voluntarily, maybe with some reluctance in the difficult situations, letting go of the old and inviting the new. That would depend upon, you know, at the moment, if you can look back and you say, I’ve prepared myself, I’ve trained my mind, that I have some wholesome attitudes. I can fall back on my mind itself. And that I put there’s a sense of if someone is trained well. I don’t know.
What comes to mind? Let’s see. The first thing I think of is a boxer, but this is that’s not a very Buddhist example, is it? You know, like a boxer, he trains and he trains. He doesn’t know how the fight’s gonna go.
Basically, he has a certain I’ve done my best. I’m I’m really in condition. I I practice all the necessary footwork and everything. And then he goes in with a sense of confidence. He doesn’t know what how the bout is going to go, you know, moment by moment.
But he has a sense that it’s going to go well because he’s prepared. She’s prepared. Know what I mean? Maybe that’s not a good thing. Anyway, you get the idea.
That’s all that’s important. That, you know, if we develop loving attitudes, compassionate attitudes, if we develop our wisdom, then we still have some problems. Okay. But we can know that we can deal with them effectively, efficiently. And we can know that also that things are going to go better in the future.
Not only will I be able to deal with my problems more effectively and efficiently, I’m going to have fewer problems. We can take that as a generalization. We can have some kind of confidence in the future, no matter what the individual circumstances, the particularities of life might, the visititudes of life might bring us. We can say, okay, it’s okay, I can handle it. There’s certain confidence, a certain inner strength in that way of being, in that approach to life.
We don’t have to always hang on to this person, this situation, as if all our happiness depended upon that. Without this, I’m never going to be happy again. That’s the way we are. At some level of awareness, that’s the way we feel. Entering into these changes, entering into death and the small deaths which occur over the course of our life is very much dependent.
How we’re going you know, we die very much as we live. We enter into change very much as we have lived our life. And this takes us to the point of karma. I was going to go into karma because at lunchtime there was a very interesting discussion as to karma. But maybe I’ll go back to it.
Okay? Wait. I wanted to three fifteen, four, four to five. Yeah. We’ll talk about it later.
Okay? I wanted to go into karma a little bit and discuss it because there was a very interesting discussion that came up with Rinpoche at lunch, and I thought it was worthwhile. Was relevant, so so therefore it was worthwhile. But just to finish this sequence of thought as to the path to enlightenment, the path to awakening, what kinds of patterns are we developing within our mind? You know, we are very much our habits.
As I just said, beliefs inform our perception. And reality is organized according to our perception. Reality is organized according to our beliefs. With our thoughts, we make the world. So what types of beliefs?
Doesn’t patterns. Doesn’t say, what How are we organizing? You know, world doesn’t exist objectively. This is an important point. Therefore, we have a sense that pleasure and pain are out there.
And we we have a sense that they’re inherently existing in these various objects out there, pleasure, pain. And if I can only drag that back, that pleasure, and make it a permanent part of my self identity, then everything’s going to be permanently okay. If I can only drag that that undesirable, that pain, if I can only push it away and make it a permanent part of not being part of my self identity. Everything’s going to be permanently okay. We have that sense, and this is the struggle that we’re continually involved in.
But in fact, the pleasurability in the would be the opposite? Displeasurability of objects is a product of one’s own mind. It is the mind which is the determinant of all things. With our mind, we create the world. As Blake said, the mind is in its place, in its way, can make a heaven of hell a hell of heaven.
You know, you have a A simple example is if you have a glass of half glass of water. It would seem as if the objective fact is the same. You have a half glass of water. One person sees it and they see a half full glass. Okay.
Another person sees it and they see a half empty glass. Same fact, two different interpretations. Some people look at this world as a providential universe. They feel a sense of joy in participating in it. The same world, another person looks at it and they see it hostile universe, a threat to their well-being.
Same world, two different views, looking at the same object. This is a product of their karma, their attitudes that they’ve built up, these patterns by which they interpret, organize, and experience their reality. What type of reality are we creating for ourselves? This is your karma, it’s not something other than that. This is what we mean by karma.
The way we the way we’re organizing our world. It’s like dots. You know, like a like a inkblot test. Yeah? Yeah.
A Rorschach chart. It it’s just a massive blobs of ink, but we organize it into some familiar pattern. Oh, there’s a dog. Oh, there’s a girl. There’s a house.
Gives you some insight into the tendencies of that person’s mind. This world out there that looks so concrete and solid, external to our own mind, we are continually involved in its mutual co creation, conventional reality. It’s a convention. This world is an agreement, and we’re continually involved in its creation. What type of world are we creating for ourselves?
What types of habits are we implanting? What types of patterns are we forming? This is your karma. You know, think, act with a pure act with a pure mind, and happiness will follow you, just as a cart follows the the hooves of the ox. Act with an impure mind, and suffering will follow you, just as your shadow follows the body.
And there is no one out to get us. There’s no agent. There’s no moralistic judgment. When we talk about skillful actions, we’re talking about actions which predisposes to organize sense data, such that we experience them as benevolent. We experience them as attractive.
We experience them such that they bring us happiness. When we say unskillful actions, we mean the development of patterns due to which, when these patterns are activated by objective conditions, they predispose us to organize that situation such that we experience it as this attractive, unattractive, as being hostile, as being threatening, as being a source of pain. Now we’re creating our own pain, we’re creating our own pleasure by the types of patterns we’re laying down within our mind. And what types of reality are we creating for ourselves in this life and future? It is in our hands, it’s up to us, we create our own karma, our own habits, our own patterns.
Does that make sense? A little bit. It’s quite neat, I think. See, if you take a break, three fifteen. We’ve only been here an hour, haven’t we?
So Out of this of this sense of I I can change, I have the basis of change, I have all the circumstances necessary, all the cooperative conditions to bring about this change. This opportunity to change isn’t going to last forever. It’s definitely I’m going to die. And the moment of my death, whether it be over the big death at the end of this life or the small death which occur over the course of this life, the only thing which is going to help me is the development of my own mind, the karma that I’m creating. And what type of world am I creating for myself?
Is it simply going to be the continuance of what has come before, or am I creating a better life for myself? It’s up to you. It’s soul responsibility. There’s a verse from the Dhammapada by the Buddha, sayings of the Buddha, in which he said, The Buddhas do not wash away sins with water, nor do they remove suffering with their hands, nor do they transfer their realizations to the minds of others. But by their showing of the truth, all will be made free.
So somehow, Buddhism has a sense that the truth is therapeutic, if we’re only willing to work to get in touch with it, that it has a liberative quality. It’s the nature of falsity that the closer you come to it, the more indistinct it becomes until finally it disappears. But it’s the nature of truth, that the more you investigate it, the more obvious it becomes until it becomes a part of yourself, until it’s integrated. One becomes the truth, one becomes the solution to one’s own problem. Ultimately, in this process of growth, we grow outwardly in terms of expanding our horizons, trying to find the appropriate way of relating with others, that we are social beings and mental health is a social phenomena.
We cannot exist healthily in isolation. Finding a way to love, to go beyond this optical delusion of separation from others, to become part of this great being of sentient life, and take our rightful place within the community of beings in mutual interdependency, and bringing about a better world. And we go inwardly in-depth in understanding our own mind. Ultimately, it’s emptiness, this lack of inherent existence. That’s another subject altogether.
So that’s the path, roughly speaking. Let’s meditate again for a few minutes, and then we’ll take a break. So, okay, you want to stand up first? Okay? Okay, good.
So just a short meditation on mindfulness of breathing. And just determine for yourself. We’re trying to grow in awareness. We’re trying to learn If anything, meditation can help us to learn how our minds operate. It’s because we don’t know how our minds operate that we don’t operate them very well.
Beginning to confront, to cut through with self deception. Just this simple process of mindfulness of breathing is a really simple minded way to become sane, to bring us to the present moment rather than living in fantasy and memory. To help us to be a little more in the present and become aware. So the moment you so become sincere with yourself and helping yourself. Use this time.
So the moment you become aware that your mind has wandered and distracted, bring your mind back to the breath. Now this is this is your job. This is your dharma for this present moment.