Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 49-minute session, Khensur Rinpoche draws on Maitreya to open with a distinction central to Mahāmudrā: primary mind perceives only the rough entity of an object, while secondary mental factors examine specific qualities like color and shape. This grounds his explanation of why the stable mental consciousness — rather than the fleeting sense consciousnesses — is the correct object for calm abiding. The practical core is a series of placement analogies: the mind appearing like the sun in a cloudless sky; holding the object like a large bird soaring on occasional wingbeats; and gripping neither too tight (cramping the hand) nor too loose (dropping the glass). A Śāntideva verse on subduing the mind weaves through the instruction. Suited to practitioners already on Mahāmudrā retreat.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 MR 1990 04 14.mp3
UUID: b1565418-924c-4ae5-9c09-5cd098a32c69
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Mahāmudrā Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1990-04-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 49.0 minutes
Words: ~2,108
I must attain Buddhahood for the sake of myself and all mother sentient beings to place them in complete happiness and to eliminate all their faults. Having achieved that in by eliminating all my various faults and achieving all the excellent qualities of Buddhahood, then I will be able to to bring complete happiness happiness to all my mothers who are presently troubled by suffering and without any happiness and be able to bring them a complete happiness which is divorced of all suffering. And to that end, I am going to listen to this present teaching on the great Mahāmudrā as a means of practicing and meditating the essence of the great vehicle Mahāmudrā and thinking in such a way cultivate the awakening heart for the motivation for listening to this teaching for five minutes. Was quoting from a verse by Maitreya as setting out the difference between what are called primary consciousness or that is to say mind, this technical use of the term mind, a primary consciousness, that and secondary mental factors. Primary mind and mental factors.
What is the difference between these two? And he says that primary mind is, by way of example, when one looks at the flower, it is that which sees merely the entity very roughly. That is primary mind. It sees the rough entity, merely that. So we have the primary mind which sees the rough entity of the object, merely that.
And the primary mind is accompanied by secondary mental factors. And these mental factors are that which examine the specific quality of its object. For example, with respect to the flower, it would say, this is a white flower. This is a blue flower. This is a red flower.
This is a group of flowers on one stem. So they are the accompaniers. The mental factors analyze the specific nature of the object. The primary mind merely sees or knows the rough entity of the object. So when I use this, I’m gonna use the word mind and using the technical sense I mean primary mind.
It is the king and it has a retinue of secondary mental factors. So it is the principal with the accompanying mental factors. And sometimes it can have five, be accompanied with five mental factors, sometimes ten, sometimes fifteen, sometimes twenty. So with respect to minds, we can there are two types. I’m using this word mind in the in the sense of primary mind.
Is the mental consciousness which resided since the initial union of the sperm and egg, when consciousness entered into that union, the sperm and egg coming from the parents, the consciousness entered into that union. That was the mental consciousness that resides at the heart. That’s one type. Then there are remaining five minds or sense consciousnesses. And these are the eye body sense consciousnesses.
So for example the eye sense consciousness is that which sees shapes, colors, the ear sense consciousness which hears sounds, the nose sense consciousness that which smells odors, tongue sense consciousness that which tastes flavors. And the body sense consciousness that which experiences tangible objects. So there’s these two types, sense consciousnesses and mental consciousnesses. Primary mental consciousnesses, primary sense consciousnesses. And these are accompanied or associated with mental factors.
So previously when we were practicing calm abiding, taking the mind as the object of calm abiding, we are taking the mental consciousness as the object. We are not taking the sense consciousnesses as objects for our calm abiding. This is because the sense consciousnesses are quite unstable. They’re continually coming and going, disintegrating. Whereas the mental consciousness has no cessation.
So this is the object we’re taking to cultivate calm abiding, the mental consciousness as opposed to sense consciousnesses. Cultivation of calm abiding in our meditation we are observing the mental consciousness and we are making use of mindfulness which is that which is holding the object that is to say it is holding the mind and we are making use of awareness which is examining the object of observation whether it’s about to be lost or whether it’s being held properly whether it’s being lost or not. So we’re using the mindfulness and awareness in our meditation upon the mental consciousness itself. So in the cultivation of calm abiding, taking as our object of observation the mind itself, it’s extremely difficult to take hold of the mind as the object. But it’s quite necessary to be able to observe the mind because it is the quality of the mind which it is in dependence upon the quality of mind.
in dependence upon the quality of mind all our various experiences arise whether the mind is skillful or unskillful. If the quality of the mind is negative then we will move downward in the future. If it’s positive we’re going to move upward in the future. That both suffering and liberation arise in dependence upon the quality of the mind. in dependence upon the negative activity of the mind we create suffering.
And depends on the positive activity of the mind we create happiness. So it’s important that we’re able to observe the mind and hold on to it. Śāntideva’s — I remember just quoting a verse from Śāntideva in which he said, It is necessary to take hold of the mind in order that it be subdued. Roots of a tree are the primary factor from which the tree develops, whether it be the leaves, the branches, etc, it is the mind itself from which all the other actions develop. The quality of subduing the body and speech have no power compared to the quality of subduing the mind itself because it’s from the mind itself which all the other actions flow from.
So it’s necessary to guard the mind to be able to subdue the mind and guard it. Holding the mind with mindfulness, holding it to a course of skillful actions as opposed to negative actions, and by means of awareness examining which way is the mind actually going. Is it going in a skillful direction or an unskillful direction? If it’s going in an unskillful direction stopping that direction and reverting it to a more positive direction and in this way increasing the power of the mind. So in holding the mind it’s necessary to hold it by means of mindfulness and dependence upon mindfulness awareness arises.
Awareness is developed out of mindfulness and these two together can prevent the mind from going into negative directions but can cease those directions and redirect it toward more positive directions. So previous Tibetan masters, previous to Tsongkhapa, used this method for practicing in developing the calm abiding, that is to say observing the mind and mental factors, the direction in which the mind was moving, its activities, the factors of mindfulness and awareness and observing these natures, these qualities of the mind. This is where they went about developing calm abiding with respect to the mind. But subsequent to Tsongkhapa, they developed a method for practice which is slightly different than this previous practice as was mentioned. And this is in terms of, I believe, the six methods of positing, of placing or positing.
So, these six methods of placement or positing are presented by by way of analogy to so as to be easily understood by the student. Okay. So the first analogy is taking the mind as the object of observation, the way it’s going to appear by way of analogy. Just as when the sky is completely free of clouds, clouds, completely vacant, vacant. And at such a time when the sun shines, it it appears very clearly.
The light of the sun shines very brilliantly and clearly in such a situation. Likewise in taking the mind as object of observation the the mind itself appears like a brilliant clear light without any clouds of thoughts or various types of conceptions to obstruct its appearance. You know if the sky is completely clear then if the sun arises or the moon arises it appears very vividly and brilliantly likewise with the sun taking as the object of observation and in a perfectly clear of thoughts and conceptions. So it just as when the when the mind appears and it is there in the absence of conceptions thoughts conceptions of true existence for example then the mind appears like a brilliant bright Sun completely clear. So, you know, reflecting upon what’s just been said, it may be difficult to actually apprehend this appearance.
But remember, Rinpoche thinks it may work best if we were to generate the mind thinking, which is reflecting, contemplating, for the sake of all sentient beings. So we really don’t know what the mind is and so we could we were going to purposely generate a particular mind as a basis for observation. And this mind that we’re going to generate is the mind which is reflecting I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. We generate this mind. This is going to be the basis at which we’re going to observe.
And this mind will arise because we have purposely cultivated a particular mind. So there is a basis for it, a basis for object of observation. And it will appear like the sun. It will appear clear and bright like a sun. So the first analogy was that the that the the mind appearing bright and vividly like the sun.
The second analogy is the way in which we are to observe the object that we have that we are now observing. And this is analogous to a large bird flying in the sky. That just you know as a large bird it soars. It just flaps its wings once in a while and it just glides along. Whereas a little bird has to flap its wings very quickly all the time.
So this is analogous to how we are to observe the object of the mind. That should not, you know, that the mind appears like the light of the sun. And we shouldn’t hold it tightly. If if we hold if we when we’re contemplating if we hold it tightly, then we’re going to cause excitement and we will the object will not be able to remain. It become unstable and we will lose the object.
Also, can cause various sicknesses to the mind. We will develop a very bad mind if we hold the object too tightly. Also, we shouldn’t hold the object too loosely. If we do that, then the meditation will degenerate. The mind will become bored.
Have to hold, but holding the mind in relaxed manner. That is to say neither too tight nor too loosely, just once in a while tightening like the once in a while flapping of the wings. So here we’re talking about the way in which the object of observation is to be held, and we take as another analogy the glass. Initially if I were to hold the glass very tightly, then this would this would become very uncomfortable. I would it would cause me cramps in my hand.
But on the other hand, if if we were to hold the glass too loosely then we would drop the glass and this would be analogous to holding the object of observation too tightly then the mind would easily be distracted various thoughts would arise and we would lose the object. So in the same way that in hold the glass that we hold it neither too loosely nor too tightly. If it’s loosely we’re going to lose the glass. If it’s too tight we’re going to cause cramps to our hand. Likewise when holding the object of observation, that we should not it should be held neither too tightly nor too loosely but in a a clear and relaxed manner.
So the third analogy is in terms of how the object is to be held. And I like this to a great ocean. Australians perhaps have a lot of experience with this. This is in the case when a ship is moving through the waters of the ocean and though there are waves hitting against the ship the ship is only slightly rocked it only causes slight movement to the ship. Likewise, with respect to holding the object of observation, of meditation, that there arises different levels of thoughts, coarse and subtle types of thoughts which tend to rock the mind or the mind.
We should try initially we should seek to cease the coarse thoughts but leave the subtle thoughts not try to stop those.