Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute session, Khensur Rinpoche draws a line that stops many meditators short: seeing the mind’s vivid clarity in calm abiding is not Mahāmudrā — that is only the mind’s conventional nature. Tsongkhapa made this distinction explicitly, and Rinpoche uses it to frame where the retreat is heading, announcing that tomorrow’s session will address the ultimate nature. Most of the talk builds through six practical meditation analogies — a child at a temple viewing paintings without analyzing detail, birds leaving no trail in the sky, dough worked until smooth and soft — illustrating how to hold the mind as object of observation without following coarse thoughts, physical sensations, or aversion and attachment. A short Q&A clarifies the difference between primary consciousnesses and mental factors, and unpacks the sun analogy (brightness, not color). Suited to practitioners already sitting a Mahāmudrā retreat.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 MR 1990 04 14.mp3
UUID: 681aaf90-6208-4914-bad5-e5757a02d90a
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Mahāmudrā Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1990-04-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.5 minutes
Words: ~1,882
So cease the coarse thoughts which disturb the mind initially but we initially do not have the ability to cease the subtle ones so we should not seek to do that. We should leave the subtle thoughts arising and only block the coarse ones. To to try to explain this a little bit further use an example that we experience both physical and mental suffering and happiness. And the physical suffering happiness arises from skillful and unskillful actions. Whereas in the case of the mental suffering and happiness arises in dependence upon, and this, there’s a word here which is it’s variously translated.
Usually sometimes it’s translated as thought or sometimes conceptions or superstitions but anyway thoughts. So the happiness and unhappiness of the mind arises through the influence of thoughts. An example, you know, we’re all here together and perhaps one day that you you look at a particular person and they they give you appear very unpleasant to you. They give you a very unpleasant vibration and you think, well what’s their problem? And then what do I do?
And you start thinking in this way all these thoughts start rising in your mind and and through the power of these thoughts, you become unhappy. And the opposite of that can happen, you know. You look at this person, they give you a very nice pleasing appearance and a good vibration and you say, oh, they must really like me. And you start thinking about why they like you and and all these thoughts start to rise and you become very happy. So, you know, we can understand from this example that the mind’s happiness and arises in dependence upon thoughts.
This person might be throughout these various experiences might be constant in his attitude toward us, but due what we take as being a pleasant appearance that they give us a good vibration, happy thoughts arise in the mind. Thoughts, particular types of thoughts arise and we become happy. That person might have the same attitude exactly toward us, but we take his appearance as being unpleasing, that we think he has a bad vibration toward us, types of thoughts will arise, and we become unhappy. So all our happiness and unhappiness of the mind is being created out of thoughts and dependence upon seeing this person, but they’re but essentially created out of thought. And the degree of suffering and happiness that we experience is dependent upon the strength and frequency of these thoughts.
And these thoughts in themselves are not stable, they’re constantly changing. And therefore this is why our happiness is constantly changing from suffering to happiness to suffering all because of this constant flux of thoughts. And likewise upon the the lessening of the number of thoughts there is a lessening of the happiness the happiness and suffering. The The fourth analogy is in the same way that a child, a small child, when going to the temple, views the paintings in only a rough manner and does not analyze them in any detail. Likewise, the mind is to view the object of observation in a rough manner without analyzing detail.
Sorry, I translated that wrongly. That is not that we are not to analyze the object of observation in detail. That the meditation is occurring not with the sense consciousnesses but with the mental consciousness. And therefore when sense objects arise they are examined in detail. When sounds, etcetera, arise, we should not analyze them or investigate them in detail.
So the fifth analogy is when birds fly together in the sky they do not follow in each other’s trails. And likewise in the course of our meditation that we will experience many physical, we will have experiences of physical happiness and suffering and that is to say various feelings of physical, various physical, physical feelings of happiness and feelings of physical happiness and suffering will arise and we should not have a very, we should not follow upon in the trail of those feelings with attachment, aversion, or neutrality, but we should stick with the object of observation, the mind itself. We should not follow after any of the feelings with aversion or attachment or even neutrals. But we should not follow in the trail these feelings but observe only the object of observation, the mind. The sixth analogy is if we take dough and initially the dough is very tough but we knead work it and eventually it becomes very smooth, light and soft.
And then we set it aside. Likewise with the mind. We shouldn’t using the analogy of, Mañjuśrī’s name in Tibetan is Jampal Yang and Jam. Jam means smooth. And what it means by smooth is that it’s separation from aversion and attachment that the mind has become soft and smooth.
Likewise we should not allow the mind to be associated with the aversion, attachment, excitement, and distraction. But it should be smooth, soft, and light. If we cultivate calm abiding, making use of these six analogies, we will be able to establish a very stable meditation. Our placement will be very firm. And in meditative equipoise, if we can generate physical and mental bliss, then we will generate we will develop calm abiding.
It said that calm abiding is the the root of the excellent qualities of all three vehicles. So in cultivating the calm abiding in this way we will be able to actually see the nature of the mind itself and the nature of the mind is extremely clear and vivid like clear light. It has no obstructions to it whatsoever just like the just like the sky. Before, before Tsongkhapa, most meditators thought when they had seen this nature of the mind that they had actually realized the emptiness of the mind or that is to say Mahāmudrā. But Tsongkhapa said that this is not Mahāmudrā.
That this is simply the this vivid clear appearance of the mind is the nature of the mind itself. It’s conventional nature and is not the ultimate nature of the mind which is Mahāmudrā. So, you know, we’ve we’ve talked about the way in which we can view or come to see the conventional nature of the mind. That is it’s clear, vivid brightness. And this is its conventional nature.
And tomorrow we’re going to see how in dependence upon being able to see its clarity, this conventional nature, we can go on to see its ultimate nature, that is Mahāmudrā. So if we were going to stop there for today. But if you have some poignant questions. Sticking to the point, and we can have one or two of the Hi, everyone. First distinction between consciousness and secondly, mental factors.
That wasn’t the side. Wasn’t as mental consciousness versus the sense consciousness. So there’s a difference between the differences in terms of mental consciousness and sense consciousnesses. Know, using primary sense we should be a little more technical. Primary consciousnesses or main minds.
These are there are six primary consciousnesses eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mental consciousnesses. And these are all these are main minds’ primary consciousnesses. Yeah? But in terms of primary mind and mental factors, mental factors are not primary minds. They accompany and help the main minds, the primary consciousnesses.
They are not primary consciousness themselves. There are six So the object that we are observing is principally the mind. In fact wherever there is mind there is accompanying mental factors but the principal object is mind. So example mental factors would be feelings such as happy feelings, suffering feelings, mental factor of analysis. This is yellow, this is green, this is blue.
These are, this analysis, feelings are examples of mental factors. Your mind analogy using the sun, we’re not we’re not saying it’s analogous to the color of the sun. It’s analogous to the the bright vivid clearness of the sun. It’s very bright. It’s bright.
It’s very We’re not talking about the color at all. We’re not talking about the color. This is brightness, the vivid and clarity of the sun that’s analogous to the brightness, clarity and of them for the mind. So meditation we have to try to identify the mind, recognizing the mind and hold it with our mindfulness. To try to see its nature, this clarity, brightness and vividness and to holding upon the mind itself, to place the awareness and stabilize upon that.
That you know presently our mind is like a flag fluttering in the breeze. It doesn’t stay still for even a moment and it’s difficult in this way. And why does it in the same way the mind is continually fluttering due to the continual arising of thoughts. Our mind is led here and there by thoughts, and due to this we don’t have any happiness, we don’t have any bliss. If by seeing the nature of the mind is a method whereby we can generate bliss and we can begin to control our thoughts.
That presently we have no control over our mind. We make use of dissolving the lama, becoming inseparable from our mind, this will create a stability of mind. Our mind will be well placed, will be stable. And because it’s stable it’s not going to be as to, be, there’s less likelihood of thoughts arising because the mind is stable, there’s less likelihood of thoughts arising and even if they do, they will not remain for a long time. And this way we can gain control over our mind and therefore happiness.
And by developing calm abiding, we gain control over our mind and subsequently control over our body. So presently we have no control over our mind. Our mind is other controlled and controlled by what? It’s controlled by all these various thoughts. But by cultivating calm abiding we will lessen the strength and the frequency of these thoughts.
They will begin to decrease decrease and slowly they will completely cease altogether and we will gain control over our mind and we will experience peace and bliss. So in understanding of the present nature of our mind, it is such that its quality of positive or negativity in us is determined by the thoughts which occur in it. In dependence upon, in reliance upon the quality of the mind, these thoughts, we enact various, we engage in various physical and verbal actions and these determine the skillfulness of these is determined upon the quality of the mind. But so all the skillfulness and unskillful actions of body and speech arise by the power of the mind. But present but our mind is not self powered.
It is, the mind is under the influence of thought and therefore all our actions stem from our thoughts. By developing calm abiding we will not, our mind will not go under the control of other thoughts. We have gained, the mind is gaining control over itself and therefore leading to a bliss of the mind and having the mind having gained control over itself, that which arises in the verbal, the physical and verbal qualities will then be under control and we achieve a bliss of both mind and body. So the purpose of developing is to gain control over the mind.