Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 50-minute public talk, Khensur Rinpoche traces how negative mental states — anger, pride, jealousy — radiate from the individual to family, community, and country before offering crisp definitions: compassion as the intention to eliminate suffering, love as the intention to bring happiness to those who lack it. He outlines the first three of six practices for actualizing these — generosity, ethics, and patience — with a concrete illustration for each. A Q&A session then moves into unexpected territory: a question about the sheer scale of aspiring to benefit all beings prompts a discussion of three levels of motivation, and a question on whether mind or body is prior draws out the Buddhist view that consciousness enters the union of sperm and egg as a necessary condition for physical development. Accessible to general audiences new to Buddhism.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 18 1990 10 01 PT Topic Unknown c1 s2.mp3
UUID: e1aa4394-2de3-4f8c-975c-7301ba0dff22
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks 1988-2003 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1990-10-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 49.9 minutes
Words: ~2,370
On the other hand, a few of the mental negative factors would be anger, pride, jealousy, covetousness. These are extremely unhealthy states. So out of these various negative states of mind, various unskillful negative activities are engaged in. And the quality of our environment around the environment of a person who is continually generating these negative states of mind is that one simply is not happy oneself. That all possibility of peace of mind is lost.
But not only that, that there’s unhappiness in the family of such a person. That there’s unhappiness and disharmony amongst the companions surrounding that person. And this extends to the complete environment, their country and beyond. That this all, all this negative effect arises out of these unhealthy states. So out of this negative attitudes comes unhappiness for both oneself and others.
Various types of negative activities flow out of these negative states of mind. So essentially, what we mean by practice is understanding the temperaments of the various states, their nature, and their various benefits and the nature of positive states. And beginning as much as one can to implement, to promote positive states of mind and begin to cease negative ones. This is essentially, this means to, as best we can, to cease those types of factors which bring about harm to oneself and others, to promote those factors which bring about benefit to oneself and others. This is the essence of the Buddhist teachings.
However much we are able to evolve healthy states of mind to that same degree we will experience happiness. On the other hand, no matter what we may do, if we are continually involved in negative states of mind, then ultimately we will be unhappy people. So it’s extremely important that we consider what it means to bring about a healthy state of mind and how to go about it. So understanding the various healthy factors of the mind and understanding the necessity for the development of these healthy factors, continually putting into practice the methods for this development, continually considering the necessities for the development of one’s mind. Again and again bringing this fact to mind and the necessity for it to be happy.
And gradually your mind will improve. So the Buddha taught that with respect to the healthy states of mind, we should begin with the development of love and compassion. And you probably all understand what we mean by love and compassion, but most simply compassion is the intention to eliminate the suffering of another individual or yourself. The intention to eliminate suffering. Love on the other hand is the intention to bring about happiness to an individual who is not presently happy.
So in what way do we actually implement these, to go about bringing these about in fact, to eliminate the sufferings of those who are undergoing difficulty and to seek to bring happiness to those who are bereft of happiness. So we have to consider what can I do to eliminate this person’s physical or mental suffering? Understanding their physical and mental suffering and trying to consider how can I eliminate that situation for them? Additionally, for those who have no pleasure, physical pleasures or happiness of mind. What can, how can I go about giving them some physical or mental pleasure?
So beginning with the elimination of physical suffering. There are individuals who simply don’t have enough to eat, who are thirsty, who are without proper clothing. And so we can practice initially generosity. There’s no reason why we can’t do that. That for those who are hungry, we give them food.
For those who are without clothes, we give them clothing. And this is the way we can practically eliminate their physical suffering. Though it’s only a temporary elimination of their suffering, it is the beginning of our practice. So initially we can make use of the method of generosity. We can eliminate the physical suffering of individuals and bring them some type of temporary pleasure, happiness.
If we were to question, well, how can I go on and eliminate the the mental sufferings of others? So considering what actually brings harm to others, There is a category of the ten unskillful actions. And these are the physical actions, constitute of physical, verbal, and mental actions. For example, in terms of physical actions, the actions, unskillful actions of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, verbal actions such as lying, divisive speech, harmful speech. These all, not only do they harm others bodies, do they hurt them physically, but they also hurt their minds.
They bring them mental unhappiness. So in trying to go beyond simply alleviating physical difficulties of others and wishing to alleviate their physical, their mental unhappiness, we ourselves from our side must begin to cease those types of activities which bring mental harm to others. And that is to say, we must begin to practice the second method of ethics. And ethics is simply the abandonment of harmful ways of acting. Any type of activity which brings harm to others we are seeking to abandon.
So in practicing ethics, we are, we abandon bringing about unhappiness to others’ minds as a beginning to alleviate their suffering, which is causing them suffering. So the second practice is that of ethics. If we don’t know what ethics is, we can say most simply that it is the abandonment of harming others. That we simply do not bring, do any type of action which will hurt either the body or the mind of another individual. So, in order to, seeking to implement the practice of development of the healthy states of love and compassion, we are beginning to outline various practices for its actual, its actualization, in fact.
And we begin in seeking to eliminate the physical sufferings of others and to give them happiness to practice generosity, bringing about a temporary elimination of their physical problem and giving them some kind of physical pleasure. Additionally, in order to bring about, eliminate the mental unhappiness of others and to bring them mental happiness, we at least we cease causing them further mental difficulties. That is we cease harming others as, and this constitutes the practice of ethics. But, so we’ve outlined two practices that we can begin with generosity and ethics, and one as individual should begin to implement these. But additionally the situation will arise that though in fact you may cease harming others, others may in fact continue to harm you.
They, others try to hurt you in various ways, to harm you in various ways. So in, though we ourselves may be practicing ethics, seeking not to harm others, but in fact others may bring harm to ourselves. This is a possible situation. What are we to do, how are we to practice in such a situation? Therefore, brings us to the third practice which is necessary to cultivate, and that is cultivating the practice of patience.
And this is essentially not to return harm for harm. So in general, we can go on to list six practices which is necessary that we begin to seek to implement. And thus far we’ve outlined three practices, that of generosity, ethics, and patience. So, these are the teachings that the Buddha outlined whereby to help individuals to become sane and healthy human beings, whereby to help them to develop wisdom to improve their mind. And he said that we must concern ourselves chiefly with the development of our mind.
So we can’t go into this extensively, so this will perhaps be enough for today. We’ll stop. So if you have some qualms, some doubts, some questions that you like, could do that now. So if you have some questions. So, now, I’ve discussed a few of the points of the Buddhist teachings, and you from your side have to consider what’s been said, you know, whether it’s valuable, and perhaps with some of the things that have been said, you have some qualms about some doubts here.
I am wondering why is that really the case? I’m not sure about that. And this is extremely healthy. Out of this questioning, we will gain an understanding of the actual, subject that we’re discussing. So doubt and examination is to be encouraged.
So what has been said you should investigate and see whether it’s of any value to you. If you see that it’s of value, then you can practice it and out of that practice you will derive its benefit. If you don’t see the value in it now, benefit, then it still would be good to pursue your investigation, your examination to see if perhaps there’s something there which you presently can’t see. The enormity of the task. Which task is that?
So you know what we’re seeking to achieve is extremely vast in its nature. It’s a, and we can’t hope to achieve it immediately. And to think in this way would be extremely difficult. Even in our worldly activities. Who is perhaps not used to thinking expansively, has a small, very narrow perspective, is presented with a broad undertaking, a huge undertaking.
At first he simply says, can’t do it. There’s no way that I can handle this situation. But gradually he begins to expand his vision and begin to see that he perhaps does have the capacity, but initially it’s difficult for him to see that. And he may shy away from undertaking it initially. But this is simply because he’s just a beginner.
So, what to say when we begin to contemplate the leading of all sentient beings to Buddhahood, to the elimination of their suffering and to bring them complete happiness — that is the development of an awakening heart. In order to practice the great vehicle one must have extreme bravery. One must be in great wisdom. And that this is an extremely vast perspective that we’re seeking to cultivate. And initially we simply can’t wrap our mind around it.
But we don’t have the experience of it. But through cultivating it will gradually come. It definitely will. Initially, it’s extremely difficult to have the vast attitude of altruism. It has beneficial intention to help all sentient beings.
This is an extremely vast and great attitude of mind. And it brings such this this just simply this attitude is of great benefit. It and it brings about great results. Just to have this as considering this as in leading to one’s practice, having it as a motivation is extremely skillful. That whatever skillful action one undertakes motivated by this attitude, the positive potential developed is said to be equal to space.
But this development of this attitude comes about through a gradual manner, through a training of the mind, that we can, we definitely can develop this ability of the mind. And we have to begin to trust in our own ability, in our own capacity to be able to extend our mind to when they would we can actually actualize it. So in practicing the Dharma as set out by the Buddha, it is not necessary that we have the attitude of carrying on our practice for the benefit of all sentient beings. That this is in fact the pinnacle of our attitude which we can bring to our practice. But there are at least three different levels of attitudes that we can bring to our practice.
There’s this highest level, and then there is a middle level of motivation, and then there is the lesser level of motivation. These three different attitudes. And so all we can, to practice Dharma, we don’t have to be at the level, the highest level of motivation. It’s not absolutely necessary in order to carry on our practice. Yes.
Let’s see. Manifestation. Can you give me another word besides that? Is the does the mind arise out of the body, or does the body arise out of the mind? Is that okay?
So, how So we have to look at the situation from two points of view. The first one is that our present combination of body and mind, our present one that we both have, that we have both body and mind. This present body does not arise out of this present mind. This present mind does not rise out of this present body. This is in the case of these two fingers.
We have both. Their arising is not dependent upon one or any other. This body doesn’t rise out of this present mind. This one. This one.
So if we were to say that the mind is of the same nature as the body or the same — yeah. [Interpreter’s exchange — unclear.] So, I mean, he understands that this is one of the western viewpoints that is set forth, And what we are just talking about is from the Buddhist viewpoint. So if we were to question, when is the body established? I think you would have asked questions. Maybe someone would want to conjecture an answer to the question about when the body is established?
When is the body established? We have a body. When was it first established? So when does the mind arise?
We say that the body is constituted when the sperm and ovum unite. When when does the mind arise? So what can we say? So, from the Buddhist presentation, the mind enters into the union of the sperm and egg. When these two physical factors unite, the mind enters into this union.
And by the mind acts as a condition which facilitates the growth of the body, the development of the body, the evolution of the body. If if the mind does not enter into this combination, there’s no there will not be the development of a body. This is a necessary condition. The mind is a necessary condition for its development. The So initially, upon the upon the union of the sperm and egg, it’s not it’s not a a body.
It requires another cooperative condition. That is a mind to enter into this combination. And before that point, the mind and the future mind and the future body are different entities, different substances.