Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Starting from Śāntideva’s verse that all suffering arises from self-centeredness, Khensur Rinpoche traces a precise causal chain in this 93-minute public talk: self-grasping produces self-centeredness, self-centeredness drives negative actions, and negative actions ripen as suffering — illustrated through the image of a farmer reaping exactly what he sows. He extends Śāntideva’s argument to the body: most people are servants to their bodies, but the body can be disciplined and turned into an instrument for positive action instead. He also introduces the dream analogy — loved ones and enemies are as transient as dream characters, making attachment-driven actions ultimately pointless. The Q&A covers the four opponent powers for purifying karma, how to work with anger by reflecting on its faults, and whether genuine love and non-attachment can coexist.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 1990 05 08 PT Nature of Dharma.mp3
UUID: ab643562-60de-4fbc-adaa-1e07b1f14492
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks 1988-2003 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1990-05-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 93.3 minutes
Words: ~5,491
So initially, adjusting our motivation — from my side I’m going to give this talk tonight with an altruistic motivation. That is the kindhearted sense of wishing to benefit. And if from your side you can also generate that same quality of mind, that you’re going to listen with the intention of benefiting others, then together with these two beneficial intentions we can derive a great deal of benefit and direct what happens between us toward finding satisfaction not only for ourselves but for others. Tonight I’m going to talk something about the nature of reality and the nature of the Dharma.
I’ve had a number of years of experience now and I’m going to talk from that. So the great Indian master Śāntideva said that all suffering in the world comes about through self-centeredness, or that seeking to cherish one’s own self. And this is going to be the main subject of my talk tonight. So first we must understand what we mean by self-centeredness and begin to differentiate between self-centeredness and simply having compassion for oneself — that is, caring for oneself. This is quite a healthy attitude, to care for oneself, to have love and compassion for oneself.
So it’s important that we care for ourselves. This is quite a healthy attitude to have — this attitude of compassion towards oneself. So out of this context of caring about what happens to oneself, out of loving oneself and wishing oneself happiness, then we can begin to engage in various activities of adopting those methods which will bring us happiness, rejecting those types of actions which will bring about dissatisfaction. Such a way of acting is extremely useful and beneficial in the sense that through the adoption of positive actions and rejection of negative types of actions, we can find the happiness that we’re all seeking. We can begin to eliminate the problems which none of us want.
So as humans, we want to be happy and we don’t want to suffer. And it’s in reliance upon the way we act by getting to beginning to become skillful and the actions that we adopt and those that we reject that we can begin to find the happiness that we’re seeking. This is extremely pragmatic approach. It’s very useful. It will actually bring about its end.
So in this verse, which was quoted previously, there needs to be a distinction made in terms of what we mean by self-centeredness. As we’ve pointed out, there is a type of caring for oneself which is very healthy. And so in terms of centering one’s attention on oneself, we can distinguish two types. That type of attention one gives oneself in the context of compassion and caring for oneself — this is quite healthy, it’s quite necessary.
But on the other hand, there’s a type of self-centeredness which is brought about under the influence of self-grasping, and which expresses itself in the attitudes of hatred and attachment. This is the self-centeredness about which we’re going to speak. So in understanding what we mean by self-centeredness, as it was just explained, it’s a type of self-centered attention directed towards oneself which arises out of self-grasping. And what do we mean by self-grasping? Or another way to translate it is grasping toward a self, the conception of a self.
Or we could say “I-grasping,” “self-grasping.” And this is the root of all our problems — the quality of holding to a type of self which does not depend upon anything else. Holding, grasping to a self, an “I,” which does not depend upon any other factor whatsoever.
So out of this self-grasping, this grasping at an independent “I,” arises the state which we are calling self-centeredness. And this is in terms of: when something either confirms the “I,” or those who we identify with ourselves, our particular side — that territory which we identify with ourselves — whatever confirms that, we develop attachment. Whatever we see as threatening to that “I,” to that side which we identify with, we develop aversion. And this obviously is an unhealthy state of mind. So out of self-grasping arises self-centeredness, and all that comes along with that, with all its great desires and aversions.
And out of self-centeredness arises this great desire. What is the quality of this desire? It is a desire that seeks happiness for oneself alone — one’s own individual happiness — and which seeks to eliminate only one’s own individual suffering alone. So out of this exaggerated self-concern comes this great desire to bring about one’s own welfare at the expense of others, and therefore we begin to engage in various types of actions. Firstly, just out of this desire to bring about one’s own happiness alone, to eliminate one’s own suffering alone for oneself individually.
We engage in various types of bodily physical actions, such as: we will kill others for our own happiness. We will steal others’ things for our own happiness. We will have sexual impropriety with someone else’s spouse for our own pleasure alone. Motivated by this desire to bring about one’s own happiness individually, we engage in various types of negative verbal actions such as lying, tricking others — saying that which is, is not, and that which is not, is — in some way trying to influence the situation in order to bring about one’s own happiness.
And additionally, if through this desire to bring about our own happiness others are seen as obstacles to bringing about this happiness, we develop hatred, aversion. And out of this hatred verbally we will use harsh words. We will use divisive words, divisive speech — that is, creating a division amongst people who were previously harmonious and trying to separate them for our own ends. So as a consequence of developing this negative state of mind — seeking to bring about our own ends at the expense of others.
The various types of negative physical and verbal actions follow out from that. So out of this negative state of mind arises all these various physical and verbal negative actions. As a consequence of these actions, we harm others, we hurt others, that through, for example, killing, in which we cause others to suffer, we steal their things causing them to feel the unhappiness of losing that which they want to hold on to. We trick others. We use words which hurt others.
So out of this self-centered attitude arise all these various negative qualities — mental negativity, verbal and physical. And we end up harming sentient beings in general. We end up harming other people. And the other people, or sentient beings — that which has life — are likened to, are analogous to, a field. Following this analogy of sentient beings as like a field: just as in the case of a farmer, he is going to reap a harvest in accordance with the type of seeds that he sows.
That if he plants seeds which are of a poisonous variety, then all the crops will be of a poisonous nature. And likewise, if the seeds are of a particular species, then the crop will be in accordance with that species that he planted. So just as in the case of the field, that there arises a crop in accordance with whatever seeds are sown, that if it’s a seeds are of a poisonous type, then the crop will be poisonous in nature. Likewise, analogous to the field of sentient beings, that if we plant the seeds of harm in the field of sentient beings, then we are going to reap a harvest of that same quality toward ourselves, that we ourselves are going to experience suffering. We ourselves are going to experience harm as a result.
And having planted the seeds of harm in this field of sentient beings, then who is going to reap the harvest of that sowing? It’s going to be oneself, that oneself is going to experience the suffering as a return. One’s self is going to experience harm as a return of the harm which one has given to others. So harming others through our mental intention, our physical and verbal action, there arises a suffering toward ourselves. So we can see that there are actually two results of negative actions, both having a consequence of suffering.
That one is the suffering of other sentient beings, that person that we hurt ourselves. But additionally, there is a result of that action, our own suffering as in return. We can take our own experience as examples of all the various dissatisfactions that we go through every day of our lives. The various sufferings of the body, all the various sicknesses, pains that we experience, all the various mental dissatisfactions that we go through, and all the — you know, we hear others speaking harsh words about us, other unpleasant things toward us — we experience these bodily, verbal, and mental consequences of dissatisfaction every day of our life. And where do all of these dissatisfactory experiences arise?
They are a direct consequence of the harm, the dissatisfaction, the suffering that we brought others previously, they are the result, the fruit of having brought suffering to others. So whatever suffering that we experience, no matter what, whether it’s even down to a toothache, a headache, all of that suffering, that dissatisfaction has come about as a consequence of harming other sentient beings in the past. And how did this come about? You know, why did we harm others? It was simply that we were willing to harm others as a means to bring about our own exclusive happiness — to exclusively eliminate our own suffering, to exclusively bring about our own happiness — we were willing to bring harm to others.
So the Buddha said that we should not bring harm to others, that in bringing harm to others we ourselves will suffer, and therefore we should begin to abandon harming others. So the self-centeredness, which develops out of self-grasping, is the root of all suffering — that under its control, we engage in all the various types of negative verbal and physical action. This self-centeredness is the source of all our problems. Out of this arises a tremendous desire to bring about our own ends.
There’s no end to satiating self-centeredness. If we have a hundred dollars, we wish we had a thousand. If we had a thousand dollars, we wish we had ten thousand. And we go on and on. Our desires grow greater and greater.
And when we don’t achieve our desires, our ambitions, then obviously we experience dissatisfaction and suffering. Out of this great desire arises all our various types of suffering. There’s no end to our desires. In fact, desires can never be satiated. So out of this great desire, we are quite willing to expend a great deal of energy.
We’re quite willing to go through a great deal of difficulties in all our types of actions. Some of these actions will be useful, but then again, many of these actions are completely not only not useful, they’re quite harmful to ourselves. So out of this great desire, trying to fulfill our great desires, people will quite willingly put their lives in danger for useless ends. That they’ll go through great deals of suffering which brings no happiness, which is brings no meaning to themselves. So most of the difficulty that we’re willing to go through is directed toward our body, and most of our livelihood is directed toward fulfilling the needs of the body in the sense of seeking to bring food, clothes, shelter.
We are as if slaves to our body. You know, we are constantly at the beck and call of our body. You know, it’s ordering us around. It says, I’m too hot, so we have to do something. I want some food, so then we have to get up and do something.
Constantly ordering us about. On the one hand, we go we expend a great deal of energy and go through a lot of trouble for our body, but it doesn’t return any of it doesn’t give us any benefit back to us. When our body gets sick, it doesn’t help us. When it when it dies, how does it help us? So, most of our energy is directed toward fulfilling of our body.
We save up our money — why do we save it up? Why do we need all this money? We need to buy food, to buy clothing, to have shelter, and we do this all in service of this body. So this body of ours is like the basis of a great deal of our suffering. When it gets a little bit hot we suffer.
It gets a little bit cold and we suffer. It gets a a little bit sick, we suffer. It gets a wound, we suffer. Someone says the harsh words about our body, we suffer. And then we identify with all the suffering.
I’m suffering when the body suffers. If someone were to hit us on the head, we would say, Oh, they hit me on the head. But we are not our head. I am not my body. So, you know, the vast majority of people are servants to their body.
And then one day we’re going to have to separate from this body. It’s going to become useless. One day we’re going to have to die. And then nobody wants it around. Everyone wants to get rid of it as quickly as possible. They take it out and maybe they burn it, or they have to bury it. But anyway, even when it’s useless, they have to get rid of it, have to do something with it. But so rather than being a servant of our body, we should make use of this body while we have life, and we can make this body very meaningful.
So, Śāntideva goes on to speak about how we don’t have to be servants of our body. That in fact we can reverse this position, and the body can be our own servant. We should make use of it. So we can make it work well for us. The body has a great capacity.
It has a great ability: if we direct it in a negative direction, it can produce tremendous negative results. Then again, if we direct it in a positive fashion, it can bring about tremendously positive results. Therefore, what are we to do with this body? What type of work are we to put it to? Put it to use?
Some types of meaningful actions — those which bring about a very powerful positive consequence — making use of our body and speech in physical and verbal actions in a positive sense: then we are making great use of it. So the type of use that we make of it has to be in accordance with our own best interests, to make this body meaningful — we should use our body to bring about our own welfare. If we use it well, use it skillfully, we can bring about our own happiness, our own benefit. As explained, if we involve our body and speech in skillful actions — that is to say, we make skillful use of our body — then it will serve as a means to bring ourselves happiness.
On the other hand, if we make unskillful use of it by engaging in the various unskillful physical and verbal actions, then we’re simply using our body to bring ourselves more suffering. So the type of work that we should put our body to is various types of skillful actions which will bring about our own happiness, our benefit. But if we don’t do this, then we’re simply going to continue in the same direction that we’ve been going. Though we go through a great deal of difficulties and trouble in order to benefit our body itself — working to bring it food, clothes, and shelter — but in fact, if it doesn’t bring us happiness, if it continues in a negative fashion, while we’re tending and attending to our body, it’s bringing ourselves suffering.
It’s just as if we are in a situation of working hard, going through a lot of difficulties to benefit another person. Try to bring them whatever they might need. Give them food, we give them clothes, we give them shelter. But in return, all they do is ever harm us. And this is a completely impossible situation to maintain that you bring benefit to this person, and all they do is bring you harm.
What’s the use of such a situation? So, we’re very much in the same situation that we go through a lot of trouble, lot of hardship to bring our body all the various benefits, all its needs food, clothing, shelter. And if in return it simply continues to involve itself in negative actions and therefore brings about suffering, then this is an impossible situation. So Śāntideva goes on to address his own body saying: You know, if you keep up like this, if you keep bringing me harm and not being disciplined, then I’m going to cut off your food. I’m not going to give you any clothing.
So, you know, we should look at it like this, you know, questioning whether whether we should act in this way kindly to our body if it continues to bring ourselves suffering. So this is the the powerful ability of the body, its capacity. The work that we should put our body to is it should begin by ceasing all its various negative actions and begin to enact very skillful actions through the body, positive types of actions. And if we do that, then we can achieve the happiness that we want. We can eliminate the suffering that we don’t want.
So it is said that as a consequence of liking — we quite willingly, in order to benefit those we like, engage in various types of positive actions. We create positive karma for their sake. For those we don’t like, we again, because of that aversion and wishing to harm, we engage in various types of negative actions. So as a consequence of our aversion and attachment, we create a great deal of negative karma. We should look at both of these types of people as if they were in fact a dream — like characters in a dream — since they’re all impermanent. Whether we like them or whether we don’t like them, they’re all impermanent and someday they’re not going to exist. And then what is the use of all of the negative actions that you created as a consequence of your attitude toward them?
As you know, it’s comparing this life to a dream and all the various characters that arise in a dream when we go to sleep. There will arise people who we like, that we care a great deal for, and just upon seeing them we like them. And there are those who just upon seeing them we develop a great deal of aversion. We develop hatred. And so even in a dream, with respect to these various appearances, there arise hatred and attachment.
But upon awakening we say: Oh, that was just a dream. There really weren’t any loved ones in that dream. There really weren’t any enemies in that dream. And likewise, through the course of this life, there will appear many individuals, and some you will develop attachment for, some you will develop hatred for. But even they are to be looked upon as a dream, because at the end of this life — what will have been the use of all of the actions resulting from the hatred and attachment? — you are going to have to separate from them also. So, what we’re talking about are some of the faults of self-centeredness, and this was why the Buddha said that we should cease harming others.
But out of the influence of self-centeredness, we harm others and thereby bring about our own future suffering. So today we’ve discussed a little bit about the detriments or the faults of self-centeredness. And in the future, we’ll talk about the benefits, the positive qualities of other-centeredness as opposed to self-centeredness. So if you have maybe we can maybe you have some questions, we can have some discussion. Anybody like to ask a question?
Yes. So as a consequence of bringing harm to others you created negative karma, and the sickness that you experienced previously was the result of that negative karma? In what way doesn’t it make sense? So just in the case of a field — when you plant a seed, the crop doesn’t instantly arise. There is a period of waiting and ripening.
It may take a few months before the crop grows. And likewise with the result of various actions that we create. That this particular sickness was a result of a karma, but that karma wasn’t created during that period in which you were experiencing it. It was created previously. So maybe in the past life it was created.
Yes. So now you’re asking two questions. Yeah. No. I just wanna just make you yeah.
So your first question. Okay. So there could be this repetitive cycle of returning harm again and again toward another. And though one individual may refrain from harming, returning the harm, still the karma is there in your continuum and it will remain there unless it’s destroyed in some other means such as by acknowledging by purification methods. That karma, that latency will remain.
So even though this person refrains, the karma is there though it’s not ripening, it’s not experiencing the effect of it. You have question? I don’t appear too satisfied. So are there any experiences in which are which are not the result of karma? So all happiness is a result of positive karma.
All of suffering is a result of negative karma. There is no suffering which is experienced which is not the result of karma. Yes? So there’s a method which is called the four opponent powers. If you apply these four opponent powers then you can eliminate the latencies of the karma, the seeds of the karma.
So the four opponent powers. The first is to develop sincere regret — understanding the harmful effects of that negative action that you created and developing the thought, “I wish I hadn’t done that,” very sincerely. That is the first. Then, committing oneself as best as possible, determining not to repeat that action again in the future, reversing from that way of acting, to cut the continuum of that habitual pattern. The third is to apply some specific type of antidote. There are specific types of antidotes such as reciting the mantra of Vajrasattva, but just in general meditating on love, meditating on emptiness.
There’s some type of positive action which serves as a counterbalance to that negative action which you created previously. And the fourth would be the taking of a direction toward, in this case, the Three Jewels of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha within Buddhist context, committing going for refuge, taking that direction. And by means of these four, the negativity is purified. If you again and again apply these four, then you can eliminate the negativity from the very root and you will not have to experience any suffering consequence. Yeah.
I’d like an example of some positive things that I could put this body to. So, essentially putting it to abandoning the harmful, making use of this body to benefit others rather than harm others. And this is done through beginning to put it to use by means of one’s spiritual practice, by means of Dharma, for example. So your mind should say to your body — shaking its finger at your body — saying: No more killing. You’re not going to steal anymore.
You’re not going to fight anymore. You’re not going to trick anybody anymore. You’re not going to lie to anybody. You’re not going to use harsh and harmful words to others — directing, gaining control over your body. If you do any of these, I’m not going to give you any more food.
That’s eliminating the negative things. So, refraining from these negativities is a positive use of one’s body. But additionally, we could, for example, engage in various types of meditation — meditation on emptiness, on the awakening heart, developing loving kindness, developing love. These are very positive types of conduct. Yeah.
And how might I avert anger next time it wells up inside of me? First we have to reflect upon all of the various faults or detriments of anger. Beginning to reflect on why anger is such an unsatisfactory attitude — what are its various faults, its various detriments, how does it harm oneself? When there’s no anger, the mind is at peace. You can experience happiness.
But when the moment anger arises, you’ve lost your peace of mind. There’s no happiness. The mind is in conflict. You are experiencing suffering. You are unhappy.
Your mind is unhappy. You experience all types of various physical pains. Your eyes get very red. You can’t sleep at night. Even if you have some delicious food you can’t taste its flavor. You can’t get along with other people.
People see you and you give off this bad vibration; they don’t want to be around you. So there are always these negative consequences of anger. Under the power of anger we can oftentimes lose control. We say things, hurt people — for example with our speech. Even to our best friends we say something which will hurt them very deeply, our parents, our children. This is all under the force of anger.
Some people actually lose complete control when they become angry, and they even kill people. The Chinese have a very characteristic manner when they become angry — they stamp their feet and they slam their hands up and down. So when somebody becomes angry they get all red in the face and nobody even wants to look at you when you appear like that. You get this contorted expression on your face.
So understanding the unhealthy quality of anger and all its suffering consequences which it brings both to yourself and others — how unskillful it is. Through anger, all of the positive karma that we’ve created is destroyed. And we not only destroy the positive karma, we go on to create unskillful karma. And therefore we lose our present happiness and we lose the causes for happiness that we’ve created in the past. By understanding and reflecting upon all the various faults that anger brings to you — and it doesn’t bring any benefits whatsoever — you will begin to naturally cease becoming angry.
Not only is oneself unhappy and at ill ease, but others around you are made unhappy and you steal their peace. And that’s on one side. On the other side, we should look closely at the person that we become angry at and try to cultivate love and compassion toward them. Yes? Laughter?
If you have non-attachment, but if you have attachment — is laughter in that last part? Where does laughter arise? Not out of love, no love, no hate? So I began with the first part of your question because it seemed that maybe some clarification was necessary.
That even though one possesses the state of non-attachment, they could still have the quality of love — they’re not exclusive. So you want to go on from there? Though one has non-attachment, you could still love. You could still have the quality of love. So two people can stay together not out of attachment but out of love.
So they can have non-attachment but still have love for one another. On the other hand, two people — especially young people — they come together not out of love but out of attachment. And the sign that this is probably the case is that even a slight difference will cause them to separate. They become — they’re quite quickly divorced. And that they aren’t able to have a harmonious relationship is a sign that there’s a lack of caring for one another, that they in fact are together out of a sense of attachment.
These qualities of love, compassion, and caring that we’re talking about — they are always accompanied with the attitude of wishing to benefit, wishing to help the other person. Whereas in the case of attachment, this is not the case. There’s no thought to benefit the other person. The other person simply appears extremely attractive to one and there’s a confused state. And this is the reason that you wish to maintain the relationship — not out of a sense of caring, but a sense of attraction, a sense that the other person appears pleasant and is able to bring pleasure to yourself.
There’s no sense of benefiting the other. For example, the Buddha has said to have caring, love, and compassion for all sentient beings just like that of a mother for a child. But in this love and compassion there is no attachment whatsoever. So as a question: you know, a mother and father, they have caring, compassion for their child.
Do they have attachment toward their child? Anybody want to answer? Okay. Okay. Okay.
If we know the particular negativity that we created, then we can apply the four opponent powers in specifically regretting that action. The fact is that we don’t know all of the negativities that we created. And the sign that we do have a great deal of negativity is, for example, when we try to meditate and our mind goes everywhere. It’s difficult to gain any type of realizations. When we train our mind, when we seek to train our mind, it’s very difficult for it to go in a positive direction. It keeps going quite naturally in a negative direction.
It’s an uphill battle to keep it from going in a negative direction. So when we try to think about something very deeply, especially about spiritual matters, our mind becomes blank or it just becomes dark. These are all signs that we have various negative karmas or latencies in our mind. And so toward those negativities which we cannot enumerate specifically, develop a general sense of regret. That is, I know that I have created many negativities in the past which I cannot remember specifically, and developing a sense of regret for those which I cannot remember specifically — a general sense of regret for those negative actions.
It’s not necessary — if possible, you can determine not to repeat the specific action again when you remember it. But again, it can be a general sense of not turning away from unskillful actions in general. For example, when you have a headache, you think: this is a consequence of an unskillful action I’ve done in the past. I don’t know which one. And I don’t want to experience this again.
Therefore, I’m going to try my best not to create the causes for this suffering again by creating negative actions — and therefore a general turning away from unskillful action. Yeah. For a few years you’ve been dealing with something quite seriously. Is there — I mean, is there a point where naturally that karma exhausts itself and then you feel: well, that’s finished? I mean, should you have that sense that you want to hurry up and purify it beforehand, or should you just cheerfully work through it? Apply the four opponent powers, because then you wouldn’t have to go through the experience of suffering.
Though the suffering consequences that you experience would be the sign that you are purifying the past negative karma that you created. But this might have to be done in a gradual manner. But if you were to apply the four opponent powers, then you wouldn’t have to experience the suffering of that, and it would be purified. The application of the four opponent powers is a better way to purify karma than going through the experience of it. So thinking in this way, we develop a third determination.
It is the determination to integrate the people and things in our lives around the central principle — the guiding principle — of developing our mind. Right? The central principle, the guiding principle of our lives becomes the development of our mind, and we integrate — you know — our loved ones, our possessions, all relating to this central guiding principle. So these are the three determinations. This is the way we can begin to confront death and begin to energize our mind to change.