Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Structured around a single four-line verse — “never do even the slightest of wrongs, amass a great wealth of skillful actions, completely calm your mind” — Khensur Rinpoche uses this 98-minute public talk to trace how suffering and happiness arise from action and intention. He works methodically through the ten non-virtuous actions (three of body, four of speech, three of mind), then grounds their significance in dependent arising: because results depend on causes, positive conduct yields happiness and harmful conduct yields suffering. The 1991 Gulf War enters explicitly as a case study, its roots traced to greed and wrong view, before a Q&A explores the power of prayer and the reciprocal relationship between emptiness and dependent arising.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 1991 02 03 PT Peace & Compassion.mp3
UUID: 82aa6909-7048-40f9-b407-0405ea3022a7
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks 1988-2003 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1991-02-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 97.9 minutes
Words: ~4,985
Today we’re going to talk about the spiritual practice with respect to the qualities of love and compassion, the qualities of sympathy and caring. So, you know, I’ve been, okay, [Karen?] knows some criticism — [unclear]. So, I myself, in my studies of Buddhism, studied for over twenty five years, and what I’m going to say comes from my own experience. So the Buddha himself, having left home and meditated for six years, And he meditated and he trained in order to eliminate all the various faults from his mind and bring to consummation all of his excellent qualities. And it is upon this basis that he taught and this is the basis that I will explain what I’m going to say.
So, can you just wait a minute? [Carl?] Okay. You can’t hear me, kind of wave. I sometimes have a tendency to talk softly. The Buddha, having obtained enlightenment, encapsulated his teachings in one single verse, and this is the verse that I shall be explaining this evening.
And that verse is simply the four lines that never do even the slightest of wrongs, amass a great wealth of skillful actions, completely calm your mind, this is the teaching of the Buddha. And these are the four lines I’ll be explaining. So in this world of ours, there are many great varieties of types of sentient beings. There are humans like ourselves but there are also animals and various other types of creatures. But amongst all these various varieties of sentient beings, they’re all exactly equal, the same, with respect to that they all want to be happy, but none of them want to suffer.
Amongst these, the creatures which inhabit the world, those of the animal kind, lack the instruction within their minds to gain insight, to gaining understanding. They don’t have the clarity of mind which, for example, that humans have. humans are endowed with the clarity of mind and with a powerful intellect and it is based upon this that they have a tremendous capacity that whatever is presented to them, they can gain an understanding of it. With respect to humans that in wanting to know, in wanting happiness, in wanting to liberate our suffering, we begin to investigate from where does happiness come? Where does the evolution of our problems, our suffering?
And as humans, because of our intelligence, because of our wisdom, we can come to an understanding of the various causes that bring us the happiness that we seek and to eliminate our problems. But on the other hand, animals, they don’t have this capacity to make this type of investigation, let alone to come to such an understanding. And amongst humans, there are some who though they want happiness do not carry on an analysis of well what are the causes of happiness and though they want to eliminate their problems, don’t really investigate how they can eliminate their problems. Therefore they simply remain with their suffering and without happiness. With those who are wise, they begin to ask the question, well I want to be happy, how can I bring about my own happiness?
And I don’t want to suffer, how can I eliminate my suffering? And questioning and developing, going through a process of training the mind to this end. Even amongst those who carry out this type of investigation, there are those who quickly identify what are the causes of happiness and what are the causes of suffering. In this way they can begin to train their minds in a quick manner and begin to achieve their ends. But there are some who are making this type of analysis and searching for the causes of happiness incorrectly identify the causes of happiness.
In fact, they identify the causes of happiness which are in fact the causes of suffering and they misidentify the causes of suffering as the causes of happiness. So they end up with a mistaken understanding of the nature of their experience. So there are those individuals who are caught up in what would be a great mistake and in the course of this process in the base to form their mistaken understanding, they create a lot of negativities. That their mistake is simply that they take as the causes of happiness those factors which are in fact not the causes of happiness and those factors they take as the causes of suffering, those factors which are not the causes of suffering. And the course of this, they create a great deal of negativity and difficulties for themselves.
So it’s important that we unerringly, unmistakenly identify what are the causes of happiness. That we identify unerringly, unmistakably what are the causes of suffering so that we can come to an understanding of these factors which bring these results. And once we understand them correctly, unerringly, to train in the methods for bringing about these causes and thereby we can practice well in such a way as to eliminate our suffering and to bring ourselves happiness. So the Buddha, as was pointed out in this verse, said that one should never do even the slightest of wrong. What he means here by wrong are the various unskillful actions which are to be identified as the causes of suffering.
Essentially, the causes of suffering, these non skillful actions, are the harmful actions of body and speech. So he admonished us not to engage in these negative actions. He said that that since these are the causes of suffering, these negative physical and verbal actions, that if we engage in them, then we will experience suffering and that we should refrain and not commit even the slightest negative action. If we cease these types of actions, then we will cease suffering. And the Buddha went on to say that, that if we, to cease our suffering, to cease creating these negative actions of body and speech.
But over and above that, in seeking happiness to begin to create healthy types of activities, that we should not only cease harming others, but in fact we should begin to help others, that we should develop an altruistic beneficial attitude through our actions toward others. So he went on to say that this process of practice whereby we adopt the causes of happiness, we reject the causes of suffering, are dependent upon the foundation of one’s own mind. Whatever the type of activity, the various physical activities, the quality of the action from the point of view of being positive or negative or whatever the verbal activity from the point of view of being positive or negative all arise, flow out from the mind itself, that the mind is the foundation. So the quality of these verbal and physical actions depend upon the quality of the mind. And he went on to say that the intentional quality of the mind is the root of our various activities, the quality of whether negativity or positivity and that there are these two types of mental qualities, positive and negative, and that we should seek to cease the negative states of mind and cultivate positive states of mind.
And it’s the continuous cultivation of positive and the cessation of negative which constitutes the training of the mind and bringing of happiness and the elimination of suffering. If we cease negative states of mind by the power of that cessation, we will cease physical and verbal activities. And the same holds too with respect to healthy states of mind, that in dependence upon training of the mind through practice, that in dependence upon positive states of mind, then we will experience, we will engage in positive physical and verbal actions and dependence upon that, we will experience the results of those positive causes, that is happiness. Through the elimination of harming others, that we will eliminate our own suffering. That is to say, that we will pacify our sufferings.
There is a calming and a concurrent and associated happiness which is brought to the mind. By pacifying the various harmful states of mind, then we will pacify the negativities, the physical and verbal negativities. And pacifying those, we’ve eliminated the causes of suffering and therefore we pacify suffering. And the opposite holds true with the development of positive states of mind. The complement of that in the sense that in developing healthy states of mind we engage in positive activities of body and speech creating the causes of happiness and therefore experience happiness as a result.
Everyone in the world wants to have happiness and peace and this is the way that we can bring it about. So one thing happens, one thing is we have to create the causes which will bring these as a result. And for these to go well, the Buddha has spoken of the fact that his various explanations that we as humans, in order to achieve this end, have to have a combination of both view and conduct. That we should develop a profound view and healthy conduct and that these two, view and conduct, are the root of happiness and peace. With respect to the view, there are a variety of views, many different types.
There are wrong views, there are perverted views, there are erroneous views, mistaken views and if we depend upon these types of views, we are going to engage in various types of actions which will be of harm and out of these harmful actions we are simply going to extend our suffering. It’s because a great part of the activities of the world are based upon wrong views, mistaken views, perverted views, that we engage in various types of harmful actions and out of that there is, the world is bereft of peace and So through these various types of harmful activities that individuals have mistaken ly pursued. The results are that a great many people not only do not have happiness but in fact they’re suffering. And additionally, the environment and the people in this world, there is a deterioration of the quality of life in the environment. The quality of our environment is very much dependent upon the behavior of the individuals who abide within that environment.
If their quality of their behavior is negative and harmful, then there will be an associated deterioration of the environment in which they live. But again, the opposite holds true. If the behavior is benefiting, altruistic and positive, then they will have a high quality of environment about them. But our situation is such that our environment is, because of the behavior of, the harmful behavior of the individuals living here is deteriorating further and further. So there’s this intimate relationship between the behavior of the beings and their environment and dependence upon the negative quality or conduct of the people, the beings living in a particular area that the environment will deteriorate.
On the other hand, if the people have a beneficial quality about their activities then the quality of the environment will improve likewise. So there are these two factors which determine the quality of our lives, these factors of view and conduct. These are extremely important. in dependence upon a positive view, positive conduct, we will experience happiness. On the other hand, our conduct is mistaken, the conduct is negative, dependence upon a negative view, mistaken view, then we’re going to bring suffering not only to ourselves, but everyone about us is going to suffer.
So the quality of our life, happiness and suffering has its root in these two factors of view and conduct in the relationship. The Buddha, in explaining what he meant by healthy conduct, positive types of behavior, said that the path to peace is nonviolence. By healthy conduct we mean types of conduct which in no way harm, bring harm. That is, that they are various actions of body, speech, mind that are nonviolent. If we perhaps give a simple example of what we mean by a violent mind or simply the quality of harming another, that the mind has an intentional quality and depending upon this, an action will ensue.
And if the intentional quality of the mind were say to kill an insect, then from this impulse of the intention would arise in action of the body in which the insect was killed and this was a harmful intention. But also if we were to have the intention to take someone else’s possession in which they were powerless to prevent us, and that this intention to take that which is not given would be a harmful intention. Another harmful activity would be that of sexual misconduct. Just as by way of example, if a spouse were to have relationships with someone outside of the relationship or if one were to have a relationship with another married individual, then this type of activity would bring harm and this would be a harm class action. Then there’s the various harmful verbal activities such as that of lying where you seek to trick someone.
Someone asks you a question, for example, and you say something is when in fact it is not or is not or when in fact it is and that you’re dishonest and out of this you cause them problems, you cause them trouble. Another harmful activity is that of divisive speech. That is to say, through speaking to one of the two parties who were previously harmonious, for example, a parent and their child or a couple, that you create a schism or division. You cause them to be separated. You divide them one from another, and this would be a harmful activity.
And again, harmful verbal activity of abusive speech and this is types of words saying things which when understood by the other person, it hurts them. It brings harm to their mind. And another harmful verbal activity is that of idle chatter, idle gossip, where waste a great deal of your time simply talking about whether this is good or this is bad which has no real meaning. So if we were to add these up, we’ve talked about three negative actions of body and four negative actions of speech making seven. We can talk about negative activities of the mind itself.
The first of these is covetousness and this can be even towards one’s own possessions in the sense of miserliness, holding onto one’s possessions very strongly, but also having a strong desire for others’ possessions and this would be a negative action of covetousness. And again a negative action of the mind that harmful intention where it’s the way that one thinks in terms of, oh this person really did a nasty thing to me previously before, or they did something really bad to a friend of mine or one of my relatives and you begin to think again and again, how am I going to get back at this person? I’m going to work out a plan where I’m going to get back, I’m going to return that harm for harm. And this would be a negative mental action of harmful intention. Then the negative action of mind of wrong view, there are many varieties of wrong views, many different types.
If we were just to list an example of one type of wrong view. If someone committed a very positive type of action and we were to hold, it doesn’t matter. There’s not going to be any particular result from that action. Or on the other hand, someone committed a very negative type of action and say, doesn’t matter. There’s not going to be any particular result.
And determining very decisively in your mind that actions have no particular types of result, then this would be a type of wrong view. So all of these ten types of activities which we’ve enumerated. What do we mean by wrongs or negative activities or harmful? Why are they negative? Because they harm others.
In some way, we’re going to put another person through our body, through our speech, or through our mind, that we’re causing some type of violence to them. And so these are the types of activities which we are seeking to refrain from when we’re enacting nonviolent manner. So if this, what do we mean by negative conduct, what would we mean by positive conduct? Positive conduct would entail more than simply not doing a negative action. It’s actually committing oneself, binding, committing, binding, holding to I will not act in this violent manner.
I am not going to carry out these types of harmful activities. Simply not simply not not doing them, but committing oneself to not doing So we cease committing negative actions. We in this thinking, I will not do this and committing oneself to refrain from doing that, not doing that action. If we practice in this manner, then this is said to be positive conduct. Why is it positive?
It’s because we are refraining from harming others and because of refraining from harming others, we benefit others and to benefit others is healthy conduct or positive conduct. And what will become, what will be the outflow of this type of conduct or positive types of activities? Because we act in this positive manner, we will bring happiness to others and as a result of bringing others happiness, we will experience happiness ourselves. Dependence upon harming others, the result will be that we ourselves will be harmed, that we ourselves will experience suffering. If we were to question what is the basis for what is the reasoning behind this process?
You said that our various conducts will determine our experiences of suffering or happiness. That if I commit positive types of actions, that is, say, if I cease negativity, then by bringing happiness to others, I myself will be made happy. If I don’t cease my negative activities, I will harm others and as a result of that, I myself will experience suffering. I will be harmed. What is the reasoning behind that?
So we mentioned that the Buddhist teachings were based upon the two factors of view and conduct and this reasoning behind the experiential qualities of our conduct leads back to the view and that is to say what determines right view. And what do we mean by the view? In terms of Buddhism, the view is the view of dependent arising or emptiness. Well, in dependence upon dependent arising, how do we arrive at the conclusion as to the type of conduct in which we should cultivate healthy actions and cease negative actions? In dependence upon the view of dependent arising.
There is a direct relationship between our actions in terms of benefiting or harming others and our internal experience and the external quality of our environment. So, you know, we can all understand the nature of our world and how it’s constituted simply from the point of view of how did all of these very things around us originate. They all came about in dependence upon causes and conditions, that everything arises in dependence upon causes and conditions. If there are no causes, then that thing does not arise, it doesn’t exist. Whatever exists has arisen in dependence upon causes and conditions.
We can take various types of examples to exemplify this. We ourselves, our body arose in dependence upon our parent’s body, that if our parents didn’t exist, then we wouldn’t exist. A flower arises in dependence upon its cause, which is a seed. But additionally, it needs the conditions of water, earth, fertilizer. in dependence upon these causes and conditions, the flower arises.
This room itself arose in dependence upon causes and conditions. The bricks, the cement and the workers who were engaged in building it. It rose in dependence upon causes and conditions. So this is what we mean by, very roughly, by the view of dependent arising. Everything depends upon something other than itself for its existence.
That nothing exists independently of other factors. That everything exists relative to something other than itself. That everything relies upon causes and conditions for example. It is the in dependence upon causes and conditions, it comes into existence. It needs these causes and conditions to come into existence.
Without relying upon causes and conditions, the thing does not come into existence. This is what we mean by dependent arising. in dependence upon something other than itself, it arises, comes into existence. So everything arises in dependence upon causes and conditions. Therefore everything is dependent, that nothing exists from its own side.
If something were to exist from its own side, it could not exist. It depends upon something other than itself and this is what we mean by the view of emptiness or dependent arising. So, in applying this understanding to the world about us, we can see that if a result necessarily relies upon a cause, then it depends upon the quality of the cause. The quality of the cause will determine the quality of the result. in dependence upon some type of positive cause, we will have a positive result.
Depends upon a negative type of cause, we will have a negative type of result. We all desire happiness. We consider this a very positive experience. It is a positive type of result. Resultant happiness arises and depends upon a positive type of cause.
On the other hand, suffering is undesirable. We experience it as very negative. Resultant suffering is negative and therefore must arise from a negative type of cause. This way of reasoning is simply not just a mental fantasy that we dream up, but we can see it’s the nature of our reality. So the outflow of this way of reasoning is that wanting desiring happiness which is experienced as a positive result, we begin to cultivate a similar type of cause which brings about this result, a positive cause and we call these types of causes healthy conduct, the positive types of conduct.
That is to say the abandonment of negative conduct and the cultivation of positive modes of activity. Out of this, we’re going to experience our desired happiness, we’re going to cease undesired suffering, and we’re going to experience peace and happiness. So, we’re all aware that in the present world situation, because of all the various, the fighting and wars going on, there’s really very little peace and happiness in the world. This present situation arises out of various types of negative conduct but most basically the mental conduct of harmful intentions. The harmful intention arises out of the afflicted emotions of, for example, greed, pride, seeking of power.
Out of all of these various afflictive emotions comes harmful intentions and all the various conflicts the world is experiencing. Out of these various afflicted emotions of greed and pride and the seeking of power, that other people take advantage of one another. That out of, for economic gains, when one person wants to control the resources of another, and the other person won’t accommodate them. So, in response to this seeking to control another, to, in seeking economic gain, that they develop, not being accommodated, they develop harmful intentions toward them and they begin to use all various methods to achieve their ends and coming down to the making use of weapons and war as means to which essentially was simply a development of harmful intention out of greed that it comes down to world war and others are killed and the others, other countries are brought to ruin and there’s no happiness, there’s no peace, there’s only suffering. So it would be excellent if we could have compassion for these warring parties and try to point out that they’re only creating harm and that if only we can temporarily bring about some peace between them, then this would be very excellent.
But even more important than seeking to bring about temporary lapses into peace of warring factions which are always going on in the world. That it would be as we as individuals to create peace within ourselves and we as individuals abide in peace. That we might question, if I myself am just at peace, is there really any benefit to the world? We shouldn’t be concerned because there would definitely ensue benefit to the world out of bringing peace to ourselves. Because it’s the quality of, the nature of our situation that between the two of good and bad, the healthy states and negative states in mind, that healthy states are in fact much more powerful.
So specifically, with the view of all of these conflicts which are going on in our world and all of the suffering which ensues out of these, what type of healthy attitude can we develop toward these situations? That we should seek to cultivate love and compassion for these people who are involved and try to understand how this has evolved, this situation. We talked about the relationship between view and conduct. That in dependence upon wrong views that these individuals hold, that they act in a very extremely negative way, bringing harm to others and as a result of bringing harm to others that they are accumulating a great deal of negative unskillful actions and the result of unskillful actions will be that in the future they themselves will experience great suffering. So out of this, understanding the evolution of what they are doing and the consequences which is yet to be experienced, cultivating a sense of compassion for them.
So from our side, what can we do as best to help the world in developing a healthy attitude, that seeking to develop the healthy attitudes of love and compassion, but within our own life, as much as we are able to begin to abandon negative types of activities, verbal and physical, and as much as we are able to begin to cultivate positive types of verbal and physical actions and additionally making various prayers for the peace, for the resolution of conflict, and it’s definite that out of this will come a positive result. So we on our side will be benefited from having developed skillful actions. We will create a positive potential, a person of power in such a way of action. But also in dependence upon the good qualities of our prayers which arise out of our love and compassion for others that they themselves will be benefited. So, I’ve explained a little bit today about the Buddha’s advice which he has given to us on how to carry on our practice and in this way how to benefit ourselves and how to benefit others.
So I’m not going to say anymore, but if you have some questions, we can perhaps have some answers. If you have any questions. Prayers are extremely powerful and they will definitely be of benefit. So prayers are extremely powerful, in Our prayers are extremely powerful, if we create some types of skillful actions and we dedicate, we give some direction to these skillful actions, this positive potential that we create through our prayers, then it’s definite that a positive result will arise out of this. But it’s the nature of results that they don’t necessarily arise immediately.
It’s not like bouncing a ball and having it come right back up at you. It’s just as in the case of, for example, if you want to grow a crop, you plant the seeds and the seeds don’t immediately germinate and grow into a mature plant. That it takes some time for the ripening process to take place and the same will be true of these prayers. For what end? Do you have any particular end?
So, you can make prayers to whatever desired end that you want to come about, but if you want to help the situation, the war that’s happening now, then you can make that the object of your prayers and it will be beneficial. The result of our prayers is very much dependent upon the power of our own mind. Those who have involved themselves in mind training and have developed themselves have tremendous power which they can exert through their prayers. But people on our level, though we don’t have this power, that we can develop a healthy attitude and to that degree our prayers will be effective. From the point of view of the reciprocal relationship between emptiness and dependent arising.
That if things were not empty, then they could not be a dependent arising. If they were not a dependent arising, then they would not be empty. Because things are dependent arising, they must be empty. Because they’re empty, they must be dependent arising. One infers the other, this reciprocal relationship.
I have told me it would have been better not to have gone to war. [unclear] The initiative carried on some kind of dialogue, communication in a very non intimidating manner. That would have been the best context for resolving the situation, so there wasn’t any threatening situation created. So the cause was, as you said, this great green, especially greed for the oil of Kuwait. And the condition was that there was no, it didn’t seem that there was any other way to get this oil.
There was this great desire to get this oil and there didn’t seem any method, a way of getting the oil other than warring, considering how can I get this oil, this great desire for this oil? And there was no other method available and so the turning over in the mind of how to get what I want and there’d be no other method available, then this acts as the condition for the actual implementing the war, the rising of the war, actually trying to get to the war. So the cause is the basis of the greed.