Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Khensur Rinpoche opens by inviting students to use news images of war and famine as fuel for compassion rather than spectacle. A student question about whether one’s prayers can benefit another’s karma gets a careful answer: yes, especially in close relationships. Rinpoche then traces all afflictive emotions to their root in ignorance and presents emptiness as the only lasting remedy, gradual like a seed awaiting the right conditions. Turning to the awakening heart, he focuses on the method of exchanging self with others, arguing that love and compassion are more immediately accessible than emptiness for ordinary practitioners. The session closes with a guided meditation: inhabiting a loved one, an acquaintance, and a homeless stranger in turn, then observing one’s former self through their eyes.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 LR 1992 05 17.mp3
UUID: 3728995d-e725-4596-9b66-ff36a403998b
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Lam Rim Weekend (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1992-05-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~3,099
Okay. We can use our understandings of all the various events which are happening in the world, all the various disasters, fighting, famines which we see in order to help us to remind us of suffering in the world, as a means to help us develop our compassion, wishing that these accustom our mind, reminding ourselves of the suffering of others, and thereby helping us to accustom our mind to wishing that sentient beings be free from suffering, that is to help us develop our compassion. But also in terms of ourselves, though we may not be undergoing these similar difficulties at present, they will eventually come to ourselves. And so we can develop a sense that even those types of suffering, I want to develop a wish to be free, to liberate ourselves from the eventuality of even those kinds of suffering, because how would you feel if you were to experience those suffering? And so this would act as an impetus for you to carry on a practice of Dharma, to accustom oneself through meditation to this way of thinking, wishing to be free for oneself but also developing compassion that others be free.
So where does all of this trouble arise? From where? It arises from our various negative actions, essentially from all the various afflictive emotions within our minds. Due to afflictive emotions, we engage in negative types of actions. And out of these negative actions comes all the various troubles that we see in the world.
And so this should serve as an impetus to help us to determine, to eliminate, at least within our own mind, our afflictive emotions so that we will not continue to create negative actions and thereby increase suffering. Each day, it helps us to develop the determination that each day I’m going to, as best I can, to begin to decrease the force of the afflictive emotion in my mind, decrease the negative actions that I create, the unskillful actions, and engage in skillful activities. Yesterday we talked a little bit about karma. Through the practice of Dharma, is it possible to affect the karma of another person? A negative karma.
Okay. So in general, one experiences the results of one’s own actions, the quality of one’s individual actions, whether they’re negative or positive, accordingly one will experience a result for oneself. We don’t experience the results of others’ actions. We experience the results of our own actions. But with regard to your question, we can, though it may be difficult, by creation of our own positive actions and dedicating those positive actions to the benefit of another, and by the force of our own prayers, wishing that they not experience suffering, that they’d be happy, it’s possible that we can be of benefit to them.
But it would be difficult. This depends upon your attitude of mind. If, for example, we were to carry on a practice of meditation, and we thought, ‘Now I’m going to do this in order to benefit this other person, in order to help them remove their suffering and to bring them happiness.’ With that attitude and then making prayers of dedication toward that end, then we can affect another’s actions, the happiness and suffering. So the degree that we’re able to influence the other person is in terms of the affinity, the closeness of our relationship. If it’s a very close relationship, such as a parent and their child, a mother and a father and a child, or one spiritual teacher and one student, if they have a very close affinity, then this would facilitate being of greater influence with respect to what they experience.
Yeah. So as I mentioned yesterday, there are many types of afflictive emotions. If we condense them, we can condense them into three main types of afflictive emotions attachment, aversion, and then misknowledge or ignorance. And the root of all of the afflictive emotions, the root of all our suffering, is misknowledge, or that is to say ignorance. And if one does not meditate on emptiness and cultivate an understanding of emptiness, there is no way that we can be rid of misknowledge or ignorance.
It is the supreme method for gaining happiness. If we understand emptiness, it will facilitate our development of the awakening heart, our understanding of impermanence, all the various other realizations. It is only the way that we can ever achieve the state that we are all seeking, that is to say, a state of only happiness and having removed all possibility of suffering in the future. But to realize emptiness emptiness is extremely subtle, It’s quite difficult to come to an understanding of it. And I’m going to be talking about emptiness on Tuesday nights.
So you could gradually come to an understanding of what we mean by emptiness if you were to listen to these teachings in the future. So gaining the wisdom realizing emptiness is a gradual process. It’s just like the planting of a seed. We have to remove all the various inhibitory conditions and bring about all the conducive conditions. Just as in the case of a seed, have to supply water, soil, etc, and then we can grow a sprout.
And likewise, with respect to the realization of emptiness, we have to plant the seed and then supply all the conducive conditions through our meditation, And finally we can gain the wisdom realizing emptiness. So this symbol symbolizes stability. It is as if this central design is called a cross vajra. And these are as if abbreviated symbols for a cross vajra. And a vajra is symbolic of power, of control, stability.
And so this, as you call it, the swastika emblem, represents these qualities of stability, control, power. He who has the vajra has control, has power. So these are abbreviated symbols. So previous to the attainment of enlightenment, our ultimate goal is the achievement of happiness, and that we are striving for this ultimate happiness. Using an analogy, previous to not having a place to live, our goal is to build a house in which to live, and we strive to that end.
But once we’ve finished it, we simply live in it. There is no we give up the striving, we simply dwell in our house. And likewise, though we have been striving for this ultimate happiness and enlightenment, once we attain it, then we simply dwell in it. There is no more striving. We aren’t concerned about happiness anymore because we have removed the source of suffering from its very root.
So we simply are dwelling in that state. There is no need to consider it any longer. One does not have to reflect upon, one simply dwells in it. Having achieved it, then there’s no need to strive for it, there’s no need to search for it, to look for it any longer. One simply abides in It’s only people who aren’t happy who have to concern themselves with achieving happiness.
The Cultivation of Love and Wisdom. And in terms of the method, there’s two meditative traditions for the development of an awakening heart. One is called the sevenfold cause and effect precept, and the other is called equalizing and exchanging self with others. And we don’t have time to go into detail. A detailed explanation of them.
The latter of the two traditions, equalizing and exchanging oneself with others, has a five part technique. First, we develop a sense of equality between ourselves and others, that others want to be happy just like myself, and they don’t want to suffer just like myself. And we develop an unconditional positive regard toward everyone we meet. And then, in dependence upon that, we begin to look within our own experience at the advantages, firstly, the disadvantages of self centeredness. That it’s problematic.
This constant experience of having to be on guard, maintain one’s territory, these feelings of isolation, loneliness, competitiveness, adversary quality that we bring to our relationships, the inability for deep communion and communication with others, is all based upon this sense of self centeredness. The misconception as to the effectiveness or the efficacy of self serving, bringing about one’s own interests at the expense and exclusion of others, that it’s self defeating. And then beginning to look at the advantages of other centeredness, within our own experience, that many of our most joyful, fulfilling moments come about when we go beyond our usual habitual limitations, our boundaries that we confine ourselves to, that we open up to a larger world, whether it’s through the aesthetics of music or truth or the communion with the beloved. But some way that we go beyond our habitual boundaries, that we confine ourselves through this prison that we’ve created for ourselves, and opening our heart up to others is perhaps the most fulfilling moment that we have an ordinary being can experience. That in fact, love and compassion for we who are ordinary people is probably the most available means to mental health, altruism, when all is said and done.
We want to develop wisdom. Especially we want to develop emptiness with respect to want to develop the wisdom with respect to emptiness. We want to realize emptiness and selflessness. But this, as Rinpoche mentioned, is a difficult long term cultivation, coming to an understanding. But immediately, we can begin to cultivate love and compassion.
We can begin We have done it and we can build upon that. One of our problems is that we’re completely absorbed in our own problems. And it becomes a catch-22, doesn’t it? Sometimes our vision is narrowed down to this one single difficulty. It’s kind of funny.
In such a situation, there’s no solution. One’s mind is not available. One is not able to access possibility. One’s own intelligence can’t be brought to bear on a situation when it is in such a narrow minded state. It’s like we’re surrounded with clouds.
There’s no opportunity for the sunlight of our own wisdom to shine through. And we compound our problems through our own imagination by collapsing down in upon them. And the problem becomes the central focus of our entire being. And the moment, the instant you become aware of what is going on in the world, the various catastrophes, disasters, famines, wars, We can begin to put our problems in some sort of perspective. They become manageable.
It’s not that we can escape our problems, we have to deal with them. But we can put them in the proper perspective. And then they become workable, become more manageable. So there’s a certain automatic, the moment we open our mind out, that I have this problem, there are many who have even greater problems than myself. That quality of expansiveness of mind immediately helps us to deal with our own problems in a much more intelligent and effective, efficient manner.
And it’s very pragmatic. All of Buddhism is very pragmatic. It’s not based upon a sentimental notion or romanticism. These are all skillful means to help us develop our potential, to become happy, healthy, loving people in order to be able to help others to do the same. So it may not be obvious.
There are different levels that we can work on, that we can think of these different methods. We can work on it on the basis of logic and reason. But that’s not all. We should be able to reduce everything down to our own experience. And more even, there may be an intuitive sense beyond words, beyond intellect, that many of these ideas and notions appeal to, the quality of developing love and compassion, for example.
But it has a utilitarian function, it has a logical basis of why it’s reasonable to make this effort to develop love and compassion, not simply because it’s a warm, fuzzy notion, but because you’ll be a happier person, a more useful person to yourself and others. So I wasn’t going to talk about loving compassion at this moment, maybe later. But I was just introducing this particular tradition, having looked at the advantages of other centeredness, then we go on to the actual exchange of self with others. And then finally, a visualization technique where we combine all this together into a practice which is called giving and taking. We’re going to do meditation just now, and I thought we would meditate on the actual exchange of self with others.
Just to give you a very rough explanation of how we go about it, it’s simply a role playing. We’re going to put ourselves in various other people’s shoes. There’s an American Indian, Native American saying, don’t judge another person until you’ve walked a month in their moccasins. We have this unidirectional view, unifaceted. We only see things from one point of view.
And this in itself is problematic. You get two people who have opposing views, and they just can’t seem to be able to open up. They don’t have the flexibility to be able to incorporate other possible legitimate views, which might be different than their own. They have this rigidity of mind. So developing a flexibility of mind where we can see things from multifaceted viewpoint.
We can see things from many points of view. We can begin to see light out of someone else’s eyes. That is to say, we can begin identify with others and begin to empathize with others. We can’t perhaps know their situation directly, their own experience. Only they can know this.
It’s inaccessible to ourselves at present, at least. But we can begin to practice empathizing and come to some feeling quality about what it might be like. What it might be like to, even though it’s very diverse from our everyday experience, obviously, what it might be like to be living in Ethiopia just now. You see these things in television, and we objectify these events. We neutralize them.
You see a person, and we don’t see a feeling being. We see a form. But we have to begin to see beings as feeling beings. This is the primary quality of a sentient life, is feeling happiness, sadness, whatever the quality might be, it is the feeling quality that is essential most in our lives. Pain and pleasure take priority over logic.
We all know this. You might think logically, rationally that I know this isn’t good for me, but it feels so good I can’t help myself. So we have to work with ourselves and with others on that very basis, on this primal basis of pleasure and pain and understanding others. What hurts them, what makes them happy? And be able to identify and empathize with what is their feeling and experience.
And this we can do by cultivating this understanding as if trading places, playing a role. So we’re going to pick certain classes of people. And we should try to feel as best we can, how would it feel to be that person in that situation? How would I view the situation out of their eyes if I were in their shoes, if I thought their thoughts, felt their feelings? We can develop some sort of flexibility of mind where we are constantly and consistently only looking at things in terms of I, I, I.
And we only think that just to be able to loosen up and think of how the opposite sex might be dealing with this same situation is a real insight, isn’t it? For many years, I thought everyone thought as I thought, that both females and males thought as I thought. But it’s not true, isn’t it? I mean, I hope you begin to understand it’s not true. It isn’t, I don’t think.
And that’s just between the sexes. But there’s different cultures, there’s different races. As your next door neighbor. They all have their unique point of view. And it may not be dramatically different than yours, but it is probably different in some respects.
I don’t know. Okay. Anyway, opening the possibility that people see things differently than you and being able to empathize with their point of view, understand them. To understand, in a way, is to love. And To understand yourself is to have we begin to have compassion for ourselves.
Thich Nhat Hanh says, love and compassion and understanding are the same thing. To understand is to love. To love is to understand. You might say two sides of the same coin. Understanding another person deeply, we will love them.
And love in the sense of the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing their well-being. So we’re going to practice the actual exchange of self for others. So we’ll begin with mindfulness of breathing. So if you take a comfortable but firm posture. One that you like very much.
Imagine that person in front of you, And try to set aside your own agenda, your own issues. Try to feel their feelings, think their thoughts. Look out of the world. Look at the world out of their eyes. So play a role, exchange places with them.
Become that person. How would it feel to be them? And look back at your old self, your former self. What do you see? What do you feel when you see your former self?
Do you feel valued? Do you feel loved, understood, respected? And tell your former self how you feel, what you see. I think of an acquaintance, someone perhaps you work with, someone that you see every day, that you have no special, close relationship with. And try to put yourself in their place.
Feel their feelings. And look back at your old self, your former self. What do you see? What do you feel when you view your former self? Do you see someone who’s friendly, someone who’s indifferent, hostile, competitive, inviting, uninviting?
Express what it is that you see, that you feel to your former self. Now imagine a derelict, someone who’s perhaps living on the streets. How it be to live like them, to be in this situation, alone and homeless? How would you feel? What would you think?
Imagine your former self, your old self walking along. And you hold out your hand to your former self, asking for help. And you look into the eyes of your former self. What is it that you see there? Do you see fear, pity, compassion, indifference?
Express what it is that you see in your former self’s eye.