Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 49-minute public talk, Khensur Rinpoche opens with a foundational question: between body and mind, which deserves primary attention? He argues that mind is chief — the body’s wellbeing follows from mental health, not the reverse. A food analogy drives the point home: just as knowing the nutritional qualities of food lets us choose a proper diet, learning to distinguish healthy from unhealthy mental factors lets us cultivate what benefits us and abandon what harms. He traces how this discernment begins with listening — illustrated by the image of a child learning the ABCs from a teacher — and concludes by naming love, compassion, and altruism as the healthy mental qualities that, once cultivated, ripple outward from family to world peace. Accessible to newcomers to Buddhist thought.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 17 1990 10 01 PT Topic Unknown c1 s1.mp3
UUID: ebe08a8b-0153-4e2f-b7cc-8c1f5fc30180
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks 1988-2003 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1990-10-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 49.1 minutes
Words: ~2,577
Out of a sense of altruism and seeking to benefit others, the Buddha taught many different texts. He taught various types of Dharma. But if we were to say, what is the essence of the Buddhist teachings? And that was the means by which to remove the negative factors from the mind and promote the healthy ones. So, you know, with all the people in the world, we have two common factors amongst us, that each of us has a body and a mind.
And these two factors are quite distinct, one from another. So the body is constituted of the various limbs, legs, the arms, and the various internal organs, etcetera. What we mean by the mind is that factor which is able to carry out the thinking process that carries out the functions of memory which can know the past, can hold that in its, can hold the past occurrences, can understand the present and can project understandings into the future that which acts in this way, which is able to carry out this process of thought we’re going to call mind. So this is not the function of the body. The body doesn’t have this capacity to consider what has been done in the past to hold it within itself, to examine the present and to project in the future.
Therefore, from the onset we have to understand that these two factors are distinct, body and the mind. So, most of us, let us say most humans who possess both of these distinct factors of body and mind spend a majority of their time in considering how to eliminate physical difficulties and bring about physical pleasures. And in thinking upon this, they engage in various types of activity in order to implement what they thought about. So in a way for most people the body is the master. That most of their energy and thought and time is directed toward bringing about the elimination of physical problems and bringing one physical pleasures.
And we spend all our time, for example, supplying ourselves with all our various material needs. Spend a great deal of energy and time in providing ourselves with home, shelter, food, clothing. If we’re hot then we have to find some way to cool ourselves off. If we’re cold we have to spend some time finding a way to warm ourselves. If we’re hungry then we have to eat to fill up our stomachs.
If we’re thirsty then we have to find something to drink. For most, it is the body which is the dominant factor of these two. Their life is spent in pursuit of bringing about physical needs, serving their own physical welfare, their life is physical health or pursuit or beauty or pleasures, bringing about the way most people have needs of life. And this is the way most people pass through life, being dominated by the need for physical pleasure But on the other hand, those individuals who seek to improve their minds, to evolve their minds and to implement the methods to evolve their minds in the same way that we seek to bring about and implement methods to bring ourselves physical happiness and solve our physical problems are very rare. So we should consider and try to understand which of these two we should place primary importance upon in expending our energy and time and efforts?
Which would, which should dominate? Which should be, our attention be directed toward the development of our body or our mind? Which of the two is is most important? Of these two, mind is chief. The body is secondary.
And therefore, in placing primary’s importance upon our development, it is necessary to place primary importance on the development of mind. So the evolution or the state of the body is dependent upon one’s mind because of these two, mind is chief. And it’s not the case that the quality of the mind is dependent upon the body. In dependence upon physical pleasure, we experience an extremely limited mental pleasure. But on the other hand, if our mind is happy, is at peace, then we automatically have a pleasure within our body.
It’s not the case that as we develop in our awareness, improve our minds, that there’s going to be a counter worsening of the capacity of our body. That is not the case that however much we improve our mind, body’s going to become worse in some way. With respect to the mind, because the mind is chief amongst, between these two, it has an unlimited potential that no matter how old we may be, that its capacity for development does not decrease, that we can continually increase the potency, the ability and the capacity of our mind. So because between these two, body and mind, mind is chief, it’s extremely important that we place an emphasis on development of our mind. So in general, the teachings of the Buddha were directed toward bringing about a healthy individual.
And to that end that the Buddha praised both the body and the mind as having a capacity for extreme health. That we are to seek to have a healthy body but additionally to improve our mind in order to have a healthy mind and thereby to be a healthy individual. So in consideration of the body, it’s what what types of behavior are we to engage in in physical terms? And what are physically positive actions, what are physically negative actions? And understanding which of these are healthy, which are unhealthy.
Making being able to make this distinction. And the same applies to the mind, understanding what are healthy states of mind, what are unhealthy states of mind, and seeking to implement methods whereby to increase the positive states and to decrease the negative one. So, in the development of the quality of our physical behavior and our mental attitudes, we have to know, be able to distinguish what are healthy behaviors and attitudes and what are unhealthy behaviors and attitudes. If we don’t have aren’t able to make this distinction, then we’re not going to be able to implement the methods whereby to increase the one and decrease the other. So if we just take a simple example of the food that we eat, there’s an enormous variety of food which is available to us.
But some of it is detrimental. It’s not helpful to our health. On the other hand, some types of food are extremely helpful. And so if we’re able to understand the different qualities of food and we give ourselves a proper diet whereby we avoid those which are going to impair our health and we’re going to eat more of those varieties of food which are going to bring about our physical welfare. So have to know be able to distinguish between the the qualities of the food that we So if we don’t understand the various nutritional qualities of all of these various foods, then we could end up eating a type of food which would not only be of no benefit to us, but in the long term may actually bring about some kind of illness or lack of needed substance.
So, just as we, it’s necessary to have, be able to distinguish the qualities of food in terms of their ability to, their nutritional quality or their detrimental quality. Once we understand that distinction, we’re going to eat those types of food which promote our health. And we’re going to begin to reject those types of food which we see as impairing our health. So the same applies to our behavioral conducts of body and speech and also with the attitudes of our mind. If we can begin to distinguish between unhealthy conducts and attitudes and healthy conducts and attitudes, then we’re naturally going to begin to practice those which are going to improve our overall well-being, our mental and physical health, and begin to diminish those which bring about the opposite.
So if we’re going to implement the methods of practice whereby to improve our overall health, both mental and physical, then we have to understand the nature of our situation, the nature of the various methods, the nature of the various things about us. And there thereby may being able to distinguish what should be cultivated, what should be practiced on the one hand, and what should be abandoned, what should be rejected on the other. If we were to question, well, what is the method? What is the means whereby I can understand this distinction of these qualities? So the Buddha taught that this process of coming to this ability to distinguish between positive and negative factors begins with the simple activity of first listening.
Hearing exactly the different, the categorization of healthy and unhealthy factors in our environment and within our mind. And upon actually hearing about them, these positive and negative factors, examining them in the light of your own experience and reasoning. And then out of that will come an understanding of the various natures of the things within your own mind and in your environment. Without this initial factor of hearing, listening, then we can never come to this understanding. Going on this advice that the Buddha taught, if we don’t understand, if we don’t have the clear distinction between positive and negative factors, it’s necessary to listen to an individual who does.
Someone who understands what is positive and is able to explain these factors are positive and why. Someone who understands these factors are negative and why. And out of this not knowing through the process of listening, carrying on an examination and using our experience and reasoning, we can come to an understanding for ourselves. Through the process of listening to someone who does understand these distinctions between positive and negative factors, understands these factors. A discriminating awareness that is to say a wisdom one will understand, ah this is in fact a positive factor.
This is a healthy, health-promoting factor. And one develops a wisdom with respect to positive factors. On the other hand, one upon explanation of negative factors which are negative and why. Examining this one will develop a discriminating wisdom awareness with respect to negative factors and then one will understand. So we, the arising of wisdom which is the discriminating awareness which is able to distinguish between positive health-promoting and negative health-undermining factors.
It begins with the process of listening. So listening to what are the positive factors, physical and verbal, one will develop wisdom with respect to positive factors. And with listening to what are the negative factors, one will develop wisdom with respect to negative factors. This discriminating awareness begins with the listening process. The same holds true for mental factors.
Someone explaining, pointing out that this is a healthy mental factor. This is an unhealthy mental factor. This is a fault. This is a negativity. This is a wholesome mental factor.
Understanding the distinctions of the qualities of our various attitudes and mental factors, then one will come to understand and be able to discriminate and recognize them as such. So analogy would be a small child just beginning school. The small child doesn’t even know how to recite the ABCs. And in dependence upon the teacher each day going over this is A, this is B. And through this process of listening, being instructing.
Then even a child who at one time didn’t know the ABCs can become a great scholar. And this development of wisdom and scholarship, discriminating awareness all began with simply listening. In coming to an understanding of the distinction of the positive and negative factors of the mind and body. One will come to an understanding of what are the various faults. What are the, for example, within in terms of one’s conduct.
What are the negative types of conduct? And listening to the detriments which are brought about through negative types of conduct. What are the excellent qualities, that is to say with respect to positive conduct, and what are the benefits to be derived out of positive types of conduct. When one begins to be able to distinguish between the benefits on the one hand and the detriments on the other, one will naturally be inclined to practice that which is going to bring about one’s benefit and to cease those types of conducts which are going to be detrimental to oneself. And out of this will come a healthy body and mind.
So out of this process of developing physically into physically and verbally healthy states and additionally healthy states of mind. This will not only benefit oneself but would also be a benefit to others. But on the other hand, previous to having listened to this distinction between positive and negative factors. And not understanding what is in fact healthy and what is in fact not healthy. One will by the force of habituation to unhealthy factors, powerlessly engage in negative types of conduct which bring about harm to not only yourself but to others.
And the same holds true for the mind, that not understanding the distinctions between healthy and unhealthy states of mind, And because of previous, out of the power of previous habituation, we uncontrollably, as it were, engage in various types of states of mind which motivate conduct, verbal and physical conduct, which bring about harm to oneself and to others. So it’s extremely important that we understand what are the positive and negative factors with respect to our body and mind. So if we were to say extremely roughly, well, what constitutes the negative factors, the negative qualities of our body and mind. And most simply, this would be those types of physical and mental factors which bring about, which give rise to harmful activities, those types of activities which harm either oneself or others. On the other hand, what are the positive factors within the two, body and mind?
And again, most simply, those types of factors which bring about activities of verbal, physical and mental activities which are non harmful to others on the one hand, but more than that which actually benefit both oneself and others are positive factors or healthy factors. But we should understand that between body and mind, mind is chief. And therefore if we develop a healthy mind, then there will follow from this the qualities of body and speech. What do we mean by a healthy mind? What are some of the healthy qualities that we’re talking about here?
The attitudes of love and compassion, the attitudes of altruism, wishing to help others, and non-harm of others. So, if we promote these attitudes of mind, that is to say we use these in our everyday life, and develop the qualities of compassion, develop the qualities of love and altruism and benefiting others, then we’re going to begin by creating a happy environment immediately about us within our own family. That we’re going to create a harmonious atmosphere amongst our friends, our companions.
We’re going to promote the welfare. This is going to extend out to promoting the welfare of our country. And eventually extend to bringing about peace in the world. And but additionally, our own we will find a great deal of happiness within our own body and mind. So such a healthy mind is an extremely beneficial mind.