Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The workman who mocked a king’s ambitious stupa plan — and later earned a beautiful voice by offering a bell in remorse, yet still suffered a repulsive body because he never fully confessed his fault — anchors a vivid passage in this 84-minute commentary by Khensur Rinpoche on the Precious Garland. He traces karma through a sequence of concrete cause-and-effect pairings: generosity produces material wealth, humility produces high rebirth, offering lights produces radiant appearance, and pleasing speech produces the capacity to read others’ minds. The commentary then turns to the mind’s power of transformation, quoting Śāntideva on familiarization, before closing with examples of children habituated to killing insects, stealing, or studying — illustrating how past conditioning shapes present character even against better judgment. Suited to practitioners working steadily through this text.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 23 PG 1991 08 27.mp3
UUID: 1f30abd0-6913-484f-bcec-d2b3c10f6df2
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Precious Garland 1990-1991 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1991-08-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 84.6 minutes
Words: ~1,795
In order to benefit both oneself and another for the next three minutes. Or the path of secret mantra. To help them to bring about the cessation of the afflictive emotion of attachment, and thereby they can achieve liberation. On the other hand, the path of the realization of emptiness — the way of transforming attachment, hatred, and all of the various afflictive emotions into a power. It’s a factor in the world that whatever articles that we might wish to gain, whatever materials we might want, they each have necessary particular causes in order to bring them about.
And whatever it is that we want, whatever end we want to achieve, it’s necessary that we make effort in bringing about those causes to achieve that particular end. With respect to carrying this analogy into the context, with respect to the bodhisattva having various and many types of qualities, And each of those excellent qualities has a unique cause which is necessary to cultivate in order to achieve each of those unique causes. Beneficial for both oneself and others. Not to be miserly. It’s because of our miserliness that when we make effort, we’re not able to gain material well-being.
It’s somehow material well-being can have great material well-being. And why it is this kind of that? It’s because those with great material well-being have in the past practiced generosity, whereas those who have little material well-being have not. And have achieved that status because previously they had no pride. But on the contrary, they respected others, they held others highly, and they acted in a humble manner toward others.
Thereby, having the past, having acted in that way, they have achieved this highest status at present. How did they achieve their status? It is because in the past they had no pride, having bowed again and again in respect, and thereby this beneficial result is achieved, is the result of that. What is the cause of such a quality? What is the prevalence of sight?
This is brought about by offering lamps, lights to images of the Buddha. There is the story of a king who proposed to build a reliquary monument, a stupa. He proposed that the circumference of the stupa would be equal to the length of the rawhide cut from the skin of one animal. And that that length would be circumference of reliquary monument, the stupa. And one of the work persons criticized the king and said that would be so big, we would never be able to finish it. There’s simply not enough time to undertake such a great undertaking.
And the king didn’t listen and went ahead and he finished the great stupa. And the workman felt very ashamed and said, Why did I criticize the king that way? And he turned out to have an extremely beautiful voice. Everyone loved to listen to his voice, even the animals loved, the cattle loved to listen to his voice. But he had an extremely repulsive body and was extremely poor and weak.
So the cause of his having achieved this in such a contradictory way: he had this beautiful voice because he generated a sense of regret at having criticized the king regarding this proposed stupa, and developing a sense of regret, had offered a bell to the stupa, to the reliquary monument. By that cause, he was able to achieve this beautiful voice. On the other hand, he was born with an extremely weak and repulsive body. On the contrary, we should speak to others in a pleasing manner, that which pleases others, and not speak of others’ faults because this will hurt their minds. So rather than speaking words which will hurt others’ minds, speak in such a way as to please them. Not speaking in ways that hurt the minds of others, but on the contrary speaking in ways that please the minds of others. One will in the future as a result of this activity achieve the clear awareness of being able to mirror other people’s minds.
One will be able to understand what mental qualities they have, whether they have attachment, anger, etc. One will be able to mirror the minds of others. As a result of having acted in this way well, one would achieve the miraculous power of flying, being able to fly through the sky like a bird. And this was because of this present practice and if we need to achieve its result, we can achieve it by means of creating this particular cause.
By means of that meditating on the afflictive emotions, in that process we will achieve by means of that cause. Of the six types of clairvoyances, the supreme clairvoyances. These are all excellent qualities, and if we ourselves wish to achieve them, then we have to know how they are achieved. What is the cause of this, what is the cause of that, How do I go about getting that excellent quality? Understanding this, then it’s necessary to make the effort and to cultivate the necessary causes and thereby we will achieve the desired result.
If we implement the cause, then we will gain the result. If you’re in your home and you wanted to make some delicious food, then it’s necessary to follow a good recipe and combine all the necessary ingredients and then we can have delicious food. Without that recipe and the effort, then you’re never going to eat well in your home. Whether it’s secular or non secular, whether that is to say, in the world if we want to achieve some result, we know that we have to go back creating the cause. Well the same holds true to the Dharma.
If there’s some type of spiritual result that we wish to achieve, again it’s necessary to create the cause. Excellent qualities of the Buddha are vast like space, and therefore if we want to achieve those excellent qualities, it is necessary that we accumulate the concordant vast causes. Upon understanding what is the cause of the desired result, merely understanding the cause is not sufficient, that there’s no use unless we put into practice the implementing the means of creating that cause. The means to create the causes to achieve the desired results, We’re not going to be able to cultivate those causes in simply one hour or one day or one month. But it’s going to be in terms of continual practice.
We have to create all the necessary conditions to achieve the desirable ends. At the beginning of our practice, things are going to be difficult because we’re novices. But each day, we practice we’re going to improve. The next day it’s going to be easier, the next day after that it’s going to be easier and and easier and slowly you will become effortless. Śāntideva said that there is nothing that does not become easier upon familiarization.
But initially not having been trained, not having practiced, it may be extremely difficult. But each day as we make effort, it will become easier and easier to the extent that we become more and more familiar with the means. The mind has a fantastic potential. This consciousness is of ours. Whatever we seek to learn, we can come to understand it.
There’s nothing that we cannot achieve. But it has this dynamic quality and that it is such that we can develop it in a course of one day, and in a course of each hour. Additionally, the mind also has the capacity to bring about destructive elements. It can act in extremely negative ways. This is because we are so very habituated to negative states of mind that we have a liking for them and we’re continually repeating them.
So we can progress in our training. One of has the capacity to improve. And that each day as we train, our mind will improve that much more. If upon achieving our mind that much more, then our excellent qualities will result that much more And we will have eliminated that much more of our various faults. Actually it’s difficult for our practice to go wrong.
Why is that? Because of our previous habituation to negative states of mind that we have throughout our past associated our minds with negative states, the various afflictive emotions. And due to the power of this familiarization with negativity, it’s difficult for us initially to develop healthy states. But a man has the flexibility whereby it can get this dynamic quality, where it’s able to change. And by gradually habituating to more and more positive states, the mind has the power to eliminate all of its suffering whatsoever. We have that ability.
We can achieve a state where we will experience no suffering whatsoever, but we will only experience mental and physical bliss. Why is this? Because all of the very sufferings that we experience have as they’re caused to those thoughts within the mind. These thoughts can be eliminated from the mind. They can cease these thoughts from the mind.
And all happiness arises through positive states of mind and we can increase those such that through the process of lessening the negative states there will be no causes of suffering. By promoting the positive states, we improve the quality of our life. The quality of our life, whether it be good or bad, does not arise in dependence upon external factors. It lies in dependence upon one’s own mind. By one’s own mind, one creates karma, various activities, and these are the causes for all our happiness and suffering. In the case of this workman, as it was said, he did feel regret at having criticized the king, but he did not fully acknowledge or confess the negativity.
Had this individual applied the four opponent powers, then this negativity could have been completely purified. So it’s due to having previously been habituated to this negative state of mind, previously having been habituated. So just because one is used to something doesn’t mean one will like it. Some children have a natural liking to kill insects. This is due to their habituation to having killed in the past.
Some children have a natural liking to steal, again a habituation to having stolen in the past. Some children like to study. This liking comes from habituation from the past. I think — what do you think? As to coarse positive or negative activities, we have a sort of innate understanding of what is positive and negative.
Our liking through habituation overcomes our understanding. So like the child that kills an insect — because they’d like to kill, even though they know it’s wrong, still, by the process of habituation, they continue to kill.