Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Window-shopping, Khensur Rinpoche remarks, is a form of covetousness — we project imaginary qualities onto goods in store windows, feeding attachment. That example appears in this 100-minute talk as he works through the three negative actions of mind: covetousness, harmful intention, and wrong view. For each he traces basis, motivation, execution, and completion, with three varieties of each; wrong view, the heaviest, includes denying cause and effect, the Four Noble Truths, and the Three Jewels. The talk then turns pastoral: drawing on twenty-two years of study at Sera Je Monastery, Rinpoche reassures the Adelaide audience that newcomers cannot be expected to share his conviction, then traces how faith in the Three Jewels grows from personal experience of dissatisfaction — ending with the image of Buddha as physician, Dharma as medicine, and Sangha as nursing support.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 Eye of A 1988 11 29.mp3
UUID: 74dbd972-e022-4178-9ac5-97da0f94e94f
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Opening the Eye of Awareness 1988-1989 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1988-11-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 100.0 minutes
Words: ~5,096
So we should initially adjust our motivation such that we’re going to listen to this profound teaching within the context of the great vehicle whereby to achieve perfect, complete, peerless enlightenment for the sake of all Mother sentient beings. So in the last session we discussed the various unskillful actions of the three doors. The three doors being the door of the body, the door of speech, the door of mind. And we reviewed roughly the three non-virtuous actions of the body and the four of speech. And now we’re going to begin the discussion of the three non-skillful actions of the mind.
So the three non-skillful actions or three negative actions of mind are covetousness, harmful intention, and wrong view. Covetousness, harmful intention, and wrong view. So if we just give the meaning of covetousness very briefly, then it’s simply the attachment to others, or desire for others’ valuables. So the same as we’ve in going through the previous seven negative actions, there is a basis, a thought, the execution, and finally the completion. With respect to the basis of harmful covetousness, the basis is the property or the possessions, the valuables of another sentient being, another person.
So with respect to the thought, that is the intention or motivation. Upon seeing someone else’s valuables, thinking how beautiful this object is and that I should have this object, thinking again and again, Oh, I should have this, I should have this. And this becomes the motivation for covetousness. And then the execution. This is simply making effort toward gaining the article, that valuable that you wish to have.
So then the affliction, the afflictive emotion which is involved can be either of the three poisons. And then the completion would be actually engaging in the action without any sense of shame or embarrassment. This would be the completion. There are three types of covetousness. There is covetousness which is an attachment to one’s own literally it means lineage or family in the sense that if one were in the East we would use the example of a Brahmin or one is a royal family or a Brahmin family, a priestly family.
I don’t know what we’d use in the West. One has a great family name perhaps, Rockefeller or something like that. Don’t know what equivalent there is. Attachment to one’s lineage or family name or type, this would be the first type of covetousness. This is quite prevalent in India, where, for example, a Brahmin, the member of the priestly caste, he would covet his own lineage, his own particular caste and he would hold himself above others.
He would not even want to be with anyone of another caste than himself. He holds himself very high and this would be coveting one’s own lineage. So they I mean, do they go to the extent that they would first, the outcasts would not be allowed to use the same doorway? Brahman would not use the same doorway that was used by an outcast as someone of the lowest type of castes. It’s something like segregation in the West.
Then the second type of covetousness is owning articles or things, factors owned by another person, some property of another person. And thinking again and again, Oh, I should have it. I’d like to have it. Again and again with a very powerful thought. I must have it.
I should have that thinking this again and again. And this is the second type of covetousness which is desiring others’ property. The third type of covetousness would be a type of attachment or desire for properties and articles which are neither of these above two. That is types of property which do not have any owner, specific owner, but there’s still a great desire to have them. Example, in Tibet, there was a great deal of gold in the earth and the Chinese came in.
They had a great desire to mine this wealth, to extract the gold from the earth. And so this would be this great desire to own, to attain, to get property which has no owner, neither your own nor others, would be an example of the third type of covetousness. So just a general type of covetousness that we all experience would be when we go downtown to the movie or something like that or just walking around window shopping and we saw all these nice things in the window. Oh, isn’t that beautiful? Oh, isn’t that beautiful?
Oh, and we exaggerate the quality of it and through this exaggeration projecting on qualities that in fact these articles don’t have developing attachments. So this attachment is to all these things that we’re viewing in the shop windows is covetousness. So the afflictive emotion which is the attachment for the various property of others, whether it doesn’t need to be the property of others, This attachment toward we thinking, Ah, isn’t that a beautiful man or a beautiful woman? Isn’t that a beautiful horse? Oh, I should have that horse.
Developing a desire for it. Property, people, animals, articles. These are all types of covetousness. So we can almost say that covetousness is synonymous with attachment. And the second of these three negative mental actions is harmful intention.
And this is simply the wish or the thought to hurt someone, to bring someone harm. So the thought or the motivation behind harmful intention. Now we’re first beginning with the basis. The basis is, or that is to say the object, is any sentient being. It doesn’t have to be a person.
And then the thought or the motivation is to bring harm to the sentient being. That is to thinking in one’s mind to kill or to strike or to say some harsh words. That is some type of thought which is seeking to in some way harm that being is the motivation. So the execution is the action of the actual occasion of such an intention whereby one is motivated by any of the three poisons that is through desire, hatred or obscuration. Due to these, there exists the intention to kill, to hurt, for example, shoot someone.
The actual occasion of the intention to bring harm is the execution. So the actual completion is the thought that having thought this, thinking this would be good to do, that to kill with a gun, to hurt somebody, to stab someone with a knife, in some way to bring harm, having thought this thought, executed the thought, having this intention, thinking, Oh, this would be a good thing to do. And this would be the completion. So there can be three types of harmful intention from the point of view of the three types of motivation. For example, the first would be harmful intention motivated by hatred, whereby one in the case of, for example, of war, thinking to go into battle to destroy one’s enemy, to bring harm to one’s enemy.
In the case of just being with another people, getting angry at someone and developing the intention to hurt them, the cause of some dispute. So these would all be occasions of harmful intentions motivated by hatred or anger. Then there could be harmful intention motivated by jealousy. In the context of some competition, understanding that the other person may be better than you and developing jealousy, and motivated by this jealousy of superior qualities in this competition, developing the intention to harm them. Then the third type of motivation for harmful intention would be, for example, enmity.
Enmity. Enmity. I think e n e n m I t y. Something like The example is when even though at present there may be no overt competition or harmony between two people that because of something in the past that has happened, a grudge. Holding a grudge.
Keeping this in mind and though you’re not overtly hurting, expressing any harmful intention, that you’re just waiting for the opportunity to arise to get back at this person. You know, keeping this grudge in your mind. This grudge motivating your harmful intention to do something when the chance arises. This is enmity. Holding some kind of spite or grudge.
There’s a harmful intention arising out of grudge or enmity. So the third negative action of mind is wrong view. This is simply to hold the mistaken view of the non existence of such things as negative and positive actions. The Buddha, the Dharma, the spiritual community that negative actions do not give rise to suffering, whereas and also that positive actions do not give rise to happiness, that such things as the two truths and the four truths do not exist. So this mistaken view of the non existence of what in fact exists as nonexisting.
The basis would be any type of the various things which we’ve just listed such as negative and positive actions, the law of cause and effect of Buddhadharma and Sangha, etcetera. Then the intention, that is to say the motivation would be the So the motivation would be the assertion of the view of nonexistence. Assertion of the view of nonexistence. The execution would be the occasion of thinking that, in fact, these things do not exist. The completion would be the firm determination that in fact these things do not exist.
Coming to a firm decision in your mind that these various things do not exist would be the completion. Then there are three types of wrong views. The first would be exemplified by the wrong view which holds that from skillful actions happiness in fact does not arise and from non skillful actions suffering does not arise. Then the second would be exemplified by the wrong view with respect to the four truths. And the Buddha taught the four truths, that is the true sufferings, true sources, true cessation and true paths to the cessation of suffering.
Coming to the decision that true sufferings do not arise from true sources and one cannot attain true cessation’s in dependence upon true paths would be wrong view with respect to the Four Noble Truths. Then the third wrong view would be exemplified by deprecating the Three Jewels, that is to say, to assert the non existence of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Merely to assert the view of the non existence of the flower or a book or a table when in fact it may exist is not wrong view. The object which is being deprecated or that which is the non existence of something which in fact exists must be of something of significant value. It must be something, for example, of spiritual value such as the four noble truths, the law, the cause and effect, the Three Jewels, things of this nature.
So all of these three negative actions of mind can be motivated by any of the three afflictive emotions of desire, hatred, and obscuration or confusion. But if we talk about what is the main motivating force among these three, for each of these, then the main motivating force for covetousness is desire, that for harmful intention is hatred, and that of wrong view is obscuration. So if we talk about these three from the point of view of their degree of harm or their negativity. Then among these three, wrong view is the worst. And then after that, harmful intention.
And the least of these three would be in the degree of their negativity would be covetousness. The reason why wrong view has the heaviest consequences of these three is that by asserting the non existence of such objects as the Three Jewels, the two truths, the law of cause and effect, then this will have an extremely detrimental influence on conduct. Not accepting the law of cause and effect, will naturally engage in negative types of conduct, harmful types of conduct. Same would be true the other objects which are deprecated, such as the Three Jewels and two truths. Due to the type of harmful conduct which would result from such a view, it makes it the heaviest of these three.
By engaging in wrong view, then one will not be inspired in one’s conduct to enact generosity or to try to develop love and compassion, one will not have any aspiration to practice Dharma. And this brings about harm not only to oneself but also to others. So these are the ten negative actions which are divided by way of three of physical negative actions, four of verbal, and three of mental. So with respect to the physical and verbal negative actions, the degree of heaviness of their negativity, the heavier is from the first upward of each of these two categories. For example, with physical negative actions, the heaviest negativity would be killing and then stealing and then sexual misconduct.
Rinpoche, he studied all the various great texts and treatises at his monastery, Sera Je Monastery, for over twenty-two years. He spent solely in studying. And so now he’s practiced a number of years and having had this background of study and practice. Now he has a deep conviction in the Three Jewels, the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, in the law of cause and effect, the two truths and the four noble truths. And so the other day we were giving a talk on the Dharma and he was expressing himself from the point of view of his own convictions.
And it came out that discussing that one should have faith in, for example, the Three Jewels and amongst those the Buddha jewel, that someone questioned, Well, I have doubts about this. They don’t have the same background that I’ve had. They haven’t had this opportunity that I’ve had in this number of years of training that I went through. There’s no reason why they should have the same conviction that I’ve been able to develop over these number of years. They’re very busy. Most of these people are new and so there’s no reason why they should have this same conviction.
Now he sort of feels much easier about thinking and accepting that you’re questioning and you’re doubting that it’s not necessary, that you have the same conviction that Rinpoche might have. So, Rinpoche is going to remain in Adelaide for two years. It was the thought of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, that it would be most beneficial if he stayed at least two years. And he’s come here with a beneficial intention in trying to help you to understand what he has to offer. And so, now we’re beginning to build a house.
And in the beginning, when you build a house, you need a very firm, strong foundation. Otherwise, you’re not going to be able to really develop. And one of the foundations is the law of cause and effect. So, Rinpoche hopes very much that you can actually see for yourself within your own experience, see deeply the consequences within the context of the law of cause and effect, the causes of negative actions, the results of negative actions, and try to see deeply for yourself how the law of cause and effect is operating within your own life. So, this is the foundation he hopes that you will gain experience for yourself.
Having developed this foundation, Rinpoche has great hopes for you that in the future in making effort and endeavoring in order to attain Buddhahood that you yourselves will begin to become the examples of the possibilities of Dharma and that you yourself will be able to teach Dharma yourself. Rinpoche feels very certain that the same occurrence will come to pass in Australia as it has in Tibet itself. Initially in Tibet, there was no Dharma. But due to the kindness of various kings, rulers, the kindness of translators, due to the great Indian masters, their kindness, that the dharma was transmitted to Tibet and there arose a great body of really sincere practitioners. And these practitioners were not monks or nuns.
They were just lay people as yourself. But they were able to practice well. They came to great realizations and they developed within this body of lay people eight monks initially, only eight monks. But from this grew a great monastic tradition of thousands and thousands of monks along with realized lay practitioners. He is certain that this same process is going to occur in Australia.
So, this whole question about the existence of Buddha has come up since in speaking about these various results of negative actions in conjunction with these ten negative actions for example. These are all were spoken of by the Buddha. Now if in order to have some conviction that the Buddha spoke these, then we have to actually have conviction that the Buddha existed. But we can also understand that the Buddha spoke these as if that Rinpoche is speaking this even in the sense of a parent giving advice to their child on what may be beneficial and what may be harmful for them. So, you know, we talk about the Buddha having spoken of these various actions and their negative and positive consequences.
It’s not readily apparent that Buddha exists. It’s not something that we can that simply appears to us automatically. It requires for those who haven’t studied, for those who haven’t questioned and going into the matter, it’s not apparent that in fact the Buddha exists. But historically there was a Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha, who was born in India who enacted the twelve deeds of a Buddha such as taking birth, sporting with the retinue. Then he had certain various signs to him when he was a young man.
He saw a sick person, a dead person, an aging person, and then he saw a mendicant. And then he renounced his household. He went forth training and finally he attained Buddhahood at Bodh Gaya. Slowly we have to try to gain some conviction that if there is this one Buddha, then in fact Buddha exists, then the possibility of Buddhahood actually in fact exists. And so slowly we’re going to try to come to this conviction in the existence of Buddha, We’re going to in the future try to use various types of reasoning to establish the existence.
There are many texts which go into the proof of the existence of Buddhahood such as Dharmakīrti’s Commentary on Dignāgā’s Compendium of Prime Cognition and other texts which go extensively trying to establish the fact that the Buddha does exist. So it’s very necessary to come to a conviction in the existence of a Buddha. If we don’t have a conviction that the Buddha exists, then we’re not going to make any efforts in ourselves becoming a Buddha. We’re not going to seek to create the causes of becoming a Buddha. You know, we’re not going to engage in study.
We’re not going to engage in meditation. We’re not going to try to develop love and compassion. We’re not going to try to develop the realization of emptinesses which are all the various causes of becoming a Buddha. Not going to practice Dharma. It’s only through the great kindness of the Buddha that in fact these causes now exist through his giving and teaching turning the wheel of Dharma.
It’s only because of him that we have the view of emptiness. It’s only because of him that we have the methods and the means whereby we can develop an awakening heart, the mind of enlightenment. And these were all dependent upon him giving his teachings on what he had himself experienced. And therefore it’s necessary that we listen to these teachings come into an understanding that these are in fact the causes of attaining Buddhahood and that these in fact were spoken by a Buddha to begin with. So the Buddha spoke about He gave in his great kindness, he spoke all the various sutras and tantras.
He set forth all these various teachings and these teachings which are to be practiced. And since these teachings exist, it’s necessary that these teachings become the basis of practice and therefore the reason he taught these were to help us to practice the Dharma. This is the jewel of the Dharma. Because the teachings exist, then the practice of the teachings exist. That is the jewel of the Dharma exists.
Because the practice exists, then there are those who are practicing, putting into practice and engaging and trying to gain the realizations of the various teachings. And this constitutes the Sangha or the or the jewel of the spiritual community. So the existence of the Three Jewels. So in context of the law of cause and effect, when we’re talking about the jewel of dharma, we’re simply talking about that through engaging in positive actions, we’re going to experience some kind of result from that and this result will be happiness. And if we do the opposite, that is engage in negative actions, we’re also going to experience a result and the result will be suffering.
Therefore, it is the Dharma which is trying to show us what types of actions are to be engaged in and what types we should be refrained from. So the doorway into Buddhist practice is accepting the refuge of the Three Jewels. Lama Longdol, he talked about this, that for those who took teachings on the four tenets, the determining factor between whether one is a Buddhist or a non-Buddhist is simply whether one accepts the Three Jewels as their refuge And this is the doorway into the practice of Buddhism. Now there are the practice of adopting and rejecting, the practice of negative actions and positive actions, trying to discriminate between these two is common to both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. But once we accept as a refuge the Three Jewels, then it becomes a Buddhist practice, the same type of engagement.
So Rinpoche has great hopes for us that many of us will become proficient practitioners of Buddhism that slowly through the explanations in this series of teachings and practices and meditations that we will progress along the Buddhist path and to this end he’s constantly making prayers. So, yeah, we’ll stop there. We’ll stop there, you know, we’ll just go into any questions that you have, if you have any questions. So, Rinpoche would like to see the cessation of the oppression of the Tibetan people by the Chinese and that for their own sake that they would cease creating such negative karma for their own part and that the Tibetan people could attain their own freedom and be free of the oppression. And that the Dalai Lama who now stays in India would someday be able to return to Tibet and that the people could that the dharma could flourish as it once did before and that all the relatives, husbands and wives could be reunited, that the mothers and their children, their fathers and their children could once again live together in peace and happiness.
But he didn’t say, he hoped only to go back to Tibet. See what I think. And always talking about not hiding the trouble. Mhmm. To to grab the mind from the others, to get the clear mind, to know how to think about it, and that’s all.
It was very interesting. So the reason that His Holiness doesn’t have any anger or hate is that he has habituated his mind to compassion and there’s no room for hate in the mind of compassion. Though we have no anger toward the Chinese still, we hope that they will allow us to that it will allow the Tibetan people to be free and to choose their own course of the direction of their lives free of oppression, but we have no anger toward them at all. Question. Yeah.
So the Did you say Sangha or gendu? You said the word Sangha? Yeah. So Sangha is a Sanskrit word. It’s usually translated as spiritual community.
In Tibetan, I don’t know the etymology from Sanskrit, but it would explain it from the Tibetan. The word in Tibetan is gendun. So it has two syllables. The word dge means like virtuous or positive, positive actions. So what is meant by positive here is liberation.
That is the abandonment from the liberation from cyclic existence, abandonment of all suffering. That’s what is meant by the syllable ge. Dun means to endeavor or to strive for. So one who powerfully strives for liberation is a Sangha, a spiritual community. Then amongst it, there are various types of Gendons, sanghas.
For example, there’s a superior Sangha, ārya means superior. And this is someone who has actually attained a path and has some realization. So that’s the meaning of the word. Sangha or spiritual community. So you don’t have to be a monk to be a Sangha or spiritual thing.
So anyone who is striving with great enthusiasm toward liberation is a member of the spiritual community or a Sangha. So the word gendun was just as has been explained, someone who’s striving with enthusiasm for liberation, but oftentimes they would use the term Gendung pa. They would put pa on the end of it and that would refer to a monk. So that was a different word, Gendung pa, rather than just Gendung. Could you repeat that one more time please?
What what kind of practice do you recommend for focusing to gain insight into the Three Jewels? The Three Jewels? Yeah. To gain insight into the Three Jewels. Good question.
So initially, we have to try to develop conviction or belief in the dharma. What is meant here is trying to understand the law of cause and effect, trying to understand the quality of negative actions and the quality of positive actions. What type of conduct is going to bring us happiness? What type experiencing for ourselves, what type of conduct brings us happiness, what types of conduct bring us suffering. Through this experience gaining conviction in this quality of the Dharma, then we say, taught this in the first place?
And with, Ah, the Buddha taught this. And understanding that within your own experience, the quality of the Dharma, then this teacher must have a great qualities himself or herself and developing faith in the Buddha. Then the developing faith in the Buddha, understanding that gaining looking at those who actually have put these other teachings of the Buddha into practice, that is the Sangha or the spiritual community, and developing the faith in these individuals who are actually the practitioners of the teachings of the Buddha and developing admiration and thinking, I would like to do that myself. And this is the way to develop conviction, the way to come to an understanding of the Three Jewels, Buddhadharma and Sangha. So in the beginning of this process, the basis of the foundation is becoming aware of the extent of dissatisfactory quality of our lives.
Dissatisfactory quality of cyclic existence in general. The various types of dissatisfactory are sufferings, suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and the all pervasive compositional suffering. There’s three types of various types of dissatisfaction that we experience constantly, becoming aware of these and developing an anxiety or a fear. And it’s due to this feeling of anxiety, this continuation of this suffering that we experience that one will think, you know, how can I, is there any protection, is there any refuge from this fear, this anxiety I’m feeling toward this continuation of this dissatisfactory quality of my life? And dependence upon that anxiety and this questioning, we will seek out some type of real refuge and in this sense, this was the doorway into the taking, developing faith in the Three Jewels as actually being a source of refuge from this anxiety that we feel with regard to the continuation of our anxiety and our suffering.
So if we explain this by way of analogy, that now we’re healthy, we’re not sick, but if we were to suddenly fall ill and experiencing the suffering of this illness, would question, How did I get sick? What’s wrong with me? And we’d develop some anxiety, some worry, and we’d think, What can I do? And most likely we would go to a doctor. And having gone to the doctor, we would pick some skilled doctor who we had some confidence in that could help us in going to this person.
They would examine us using all their knowledge, all their skill and come to a diagnosis of our problem. In diagnosing our problem, they would give us a medicine and to help us in our cure we might we would make use of some assistant perhaps, a nurse, someone to help us to get well over to get better. So, this process of becoming cured, first becoming aware of our illness, we need the help of three individuals. We need three things. We need the help of the doctor, the medicine, and perhaps the assistance of the nurses to help us cure ourselves.
Likewise, in the example of going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and we have this sickness, this dissatisfactory quality of our cyclic existence, we go to the skilled physician of the Buddha, we take the medicine of the Dharma and we make use of the spiritual community to assist us in curing our ills of suffering. So having become ill, we have great hopes of our cure that we’re experiencing some suffering. We go to the doctor and the doctor gives us a medicine and having been given medicine, we are assisted in our progress by nurses. This is the method whereby we become cured of our illness, find relief from our sickness. Likewise, to an awareness of the dissatisfactory quality of cyclic existence and developing anxiety and wanting to be cured from this and wanting to be free of our anxiety, we go to the doctor, that is the Buddha, and upon being diagnosed with what our problem is, he gives a prescription and this is the Dharma.
This is what is to be practiced, what we’re to make use of. And in putting this Dharma into practice, we have the assistance of the spiritual community. Therefore, by going for refuge to these three, it is a method by whereby we can be liberated from the illness of our cyclic existence whereby we can attain the happiness of liberation and of Buddhahood.