Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 89-minute talk at Buddha House, Khensur Rinpoche anchors his theme with a kitchen analogy: just as wishing for a good meal won’t produce one without knowing the recipe, wishing for happiness achieves nothing without understanding its causes. After opening with a short guided meditation on love and compassion, he distinguishes physical happiness — arising when the five sense organs meet pleasant objects — from mental happiness, shaped by how conceptual thought recalls and interprets experience. Both are unstable; only liberation from saṃsāra offers happiness that truly does not change. The second half explains why Dharma, understood simply as helping others and avoiding harm, is more powerful than wealth for lasting wellbeing, and why people who pursue happiness through harming or stealing from others have confused the causes of suffering with the causes of happiness. Pitched at general audiences with no prior Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 41 2000 03 12 PT Happiness.mp3
UUID: 80860993-fc7f-48bd-9324-a95024c7c637
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks 1988-2003 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 2000-03-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 89.4 minutes
Words: ~3,671
Hello? So we’ll be saying a few short prayers from beginning of the talk and then afterwards we do a short meditation then focus on today’s talk. The page one verse three and then the page one verse two. Sorry. We’ll do the number three first and then go back to number two. So we’ll be doing a short meditation about the happiness and love. So what we’re doing with meditation is focusing on wishing — how wonderful it is to have happiness for both oneself and others — and wishing to have happiness for both oneself and others, plus also taking the entire responsibility to let them have happiness. So we’ll start a meditation with the intention of wishing: how wonderful it is to have happiness for both oneself and others, and that both oneself and others have happiness.
Now taking responsibility: I will make them have the ultimate happiness. Likewise, also wishing that both oneself and others be free from all these sufferings. By doing this, you’re cultivating or meditating on compassion. And now, wishing that all beings be free from sufferings, then I will take all the responsibility to free both oneself and all sentient beings from suffering and its causes.
So the meditation which we have just done before is called the meditation of cultivating a compassion and love. So by performing such a meditation, we have derived lots of benefits from doing this. So as one understands, all sentient beings — humans, animals, and so forth — are by nature alike in one thing: they wish for happiness and do not want suffering. So happiness is the main thing: to have physical and mental happiness, or to attain mental and physical happiness.
Because if one has or any kind of sentient beings receive the happiness, the benefit of this, one has an easy feeling, comfortable physically. Not only that, one also has a mental stable or mental happiness and feel very happy. And there are certain things which we call the unwanted — which are sufferings or unhappiness. Whenever we encounter unwanted things, it causes us to have uneasiness, both physically and mentally, except for those great yogis. The yogis are in an exceptional or different case in that even they don’t really get the mental uneasiness.
It’s not necessary for them to have mental uneasiness when they encounter with the body or physical sufferings. And there are certain bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas are called the beings who have or has had cultivated the altruistic intention, which is called the bodhicitta. The person, the bodhisattvas who does the meditation called the equalizing the self and others, or equalizing and changing self and others. So those who does those meditation, they never felt unhappy with the suffering.
They willingly accept this difficulty or disaster. It’s because those Bodhisattvas have a strong affection, love, and compassion towards sentient beings. Due to this, it is their practice to receive or take upon themselves other sentient beings’ sufferings. So this is the reason they feel happy when they receive the other’s difficulty or the suffering. So whenever it happens, they feel happy because it is a sign that their practice is really progressing or increasing.
So those Bodhisattvas offer great compassion and love to sentient beings, which is as strong as the love of a mother who has a strong affection and love towards a single child. It is true that a mother never wants to see her son or her daughter undergoing suffering or problems, and she is willing to accept any difficulty and problems of that particular child, and sometimes she can even pray that she herself would die instead, as a replacement or for her baby. Today we’ll be talking about what is happiness and how to cultivate that happiness, because everyone has the same intention or wish — that may all beings have happiness. So as for happiness, there are two types of happiness we will be dealing with. One is called physical happiness and the other is mental happiness — the Sanskrit word for mind being “chitta.” So the physical happiness comes from one’s feelings, from what forms of living one has. So we speak of five aggregates within ourselves. There are the five aggregates which are called the first one, the body or form. Second is feeling. Third is recognition.
Fourth is compositional factors. And the fifth, the consciousness. The happiness derived from feelings — the first happiness, which is physical happiness, is the feeling that comes through the body. Then the second aggregate is feeling, which is the one that changes in our feeling. The third one is recognition, is the one which distinguishes in our daily life to recognizing the things like table, flower, and so forth.
The fourth one is called the compositional factors, which comprises elements besides those four other aggregates of the being, and which are also among the secondary minds. The fifth one is consciousness. The mental happiness which we are just dealing with comes from the happiness of that consciousness, the fifth aggregate, which is also called the mental. There are five bases from where we derive the physical happiness, which are the five sense organs. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body.
So as we said, the physical happiness derived from five bases, which are the five sense organs. The first one is the eye, and it is like when I see something — there is a reflection — and that reflection involves two appearances. One is the physical, external one which one sees, and internally within the eye itself, that particular appearance reflects inside that eye and is seen by the consciousness which is called the eye consciousness. Whenever that eye consciousness contact with the appearances or the reflection, it produces, it has a feeling and then that Because of that contact of the eye consciousness and the reflection, it produces the feeling. So because of the meeting of that eye consciousness and the object, and that eye consciousness experiences the feeling.
If that is a very beautiful or appealing object, then the feeling is set forth as a happy feeling. So if it is a very appealing or very beautiful object, then that produces a very happy feeling.
Oh, good. Very good. Very good. Very good. So It depends.
As we said, because of the contact of our consciousness and the object, it produces the feeling of happy and unhappy. Our consciousness is the one which reflects everything within it and it never sees only appealing one at all the time. Sometimes it also encounter with the object which one or you really dislikes and do not want to say it, but there is no help. You still see the object. By seeing that it’s not an appealing one, or it’s a bad one or one you really dislike, then that induces or produces an uneasy or unhappy feeling.
Because our consciousness experiences the feeling of happy and unhappy, and that feeling acts as a condition in one’s mind — it becomes a cause for one’s mind to feel liking or disliking. So we can say that the consciousness acts as a condition to cause or produce a feeling in one’s mind. Because after one looks at an object and then closes one’s eyes, so there’s no longer the object reflecting in one’s eye, but still in one’s mind you still have the vision or the reflection. You still see the object, whether it’s a good one or a bad one. So that is the case. We can see that the eye consciousness produces or acts as a condition for the mind to receive the feeling.
Then there are some other things which are called neutral objects, which means that whenever our consciousness encounters that object, there is a feeling which is called the equanimity feeling — it is neither bad nor good. So this is another kind of feeling one receives. So taking the eye consciousness as an example or role model, it’s the same for the other sense organs: meeting with a good sound, the ear consciousness produces its feeling of happy and unhappy; likewise for the nose, based on smell; and for the tongue it’s based on taste; and the body is based on meeting with smooth or rough objects. So so so whenever any of these five sense organs meet with the pleasant objects, then they produce a good, happy feeling or produces a good feeling, which is the happiness. Any feeling or the happiness which comes from the meeting of any of those with the pleasant object is called the physical happiness.
Beyond that, we can hardly have any physical happiness rather than those five. So they are, as we said, the two types of happiness, the mental and the physical happiness. Actually, the main cause of this happiness is mental happiness, which is set forth as a cause, whereas the happiness of those physical senses which derive from the five sense organs meeting with pleasant objects are called conditions. The conditions — meaning the meeting of the senses with objects — and the physical happiness derived from them are not the perfect happiness, in the sense that they are not reliable and not stable. They change in every moment.
And as for the mental happiness, which are set forth to be many, some of them are like this: all this mental happiness derives or comes through from the conceptual thoughts, which act as the conditions. And because of the thinking of that conceptual thought, it produces the different feeling of happiness and suffering. So the happiness and unhappiness of mental states are based on the way of thinking by the conceptual thoughts. For example, like if, say, one has done something today and the end of the day, if that conceptual thoughts recalls one’s work and then recalls one’s action during the day and if that recalls are in a good saying, Rejoice in oneself, that I have done a pretty good job or pretty good work today, and because of that recalling it acts as the conditions and produces happiness within one’s mind. If that was a bad recall, like, I haven’t done much today or I shouldn’t have done this and that, and it causes the suffering.
So those are called the mental and physical happiness. There are or there is happiness beside those mental and physical happiness. Mental and physical happiness are set forth to be unstable and they change momentarily and one cannot really rely on it. The other happiness, which is called the happiness free from sufferings — which is the happiness of liberation, being free from cyclic existence or saṃsāra — that happiness is stable and it never changes. So as we are all saying — wanting happiness and not wishing suffering — just by waiting one cannot receive happiness and avoid suffering.
So it is like the appreciating or liking one’s job and disliking another one. Just by wishing that it’s a good job and waiting, one cannot get the job. One has to cultivate or work hard with the skillful means to obtain that particular work or a job. Just by waiting or wishing, one cannot get the particular thing. Whereas, suffering as well.
If one really If just by saying that I don’t like this or don’t like the suffering, the suffering will eventually won’t go by its own, or just by wishing. One needs to involve skillful means to get rid of that suffering. Without implementing or working for or seeking skillful means to attain happiness or avoid suffering, just by waiting one cannot accomplish anything that one needs or wants. It’s wishing a very delicious lunch. Just by wishing one cannot get it.
In order to have a good lunch or good delicious food, one has to be a good chef or good chef, plus need to do all the shopping, groceries. Just by waiting or wishing, one cannot receive any delicious food, so that means that one has to work for So in order to have a delicious lunch, one needs to do the shopping to buy all the groceries to make the food. Whatever you’re intended to cook, first, to make a very delicious food, first one needs to recognize what are the perfect or right recipes. Recognize what are the perfect or right recipes. So, Like the delicious lunch.
If you do not recognize the right recipe for a particular lunch, then you can’t have a good lunch or delicious lunch because you don’t recognize the causes of the good lunch. Likewise, in order to have happiness, first one needs to recognize the causes of the happiness. Without knowing the causes of the happiness, one cannot have any or attain any happiness. So first, one needs to recognize. And by recognizing the causes of the happiness, then you can cultivate or train or obtain those causes of happiness through the skillful means.
Without knowing the causes of the happiness, then no matter how skillful one is, one cannot attain or cultivate happiness. So about happiness: they are set forth to be different types of happiness — the happiness of this present lifetime, and the happiness which travels from happiness to happiness, leading to what is called the perfect and unchangeable happiness. And to cultivate all this happiness, we have set forth numbers of skillful methods in the teachings — in Sanskrit terms, the Dharma. Through this we can cultivate, accomplish, and attain all this happiness.
There are certain types of happiness which we can say the happiness which we cultivate these days. There are other ways or techniques or other ways to accomplish the happiness of this present lifetime. But those kind of type of happiness which are not steady and one cannot really rely upon it. So about cultivating the happiness for this present life, I’m pretty sure that we all know about is how it can be cultivated or attained through what? Through, for example, keeping oneself very busy and undergoing through all the hardships since from the early morning when you wake up until the late night, work so hard.
Even when tries to be very busy that one has trouble finding a break time for lunch or food. Those hardships, we are doing it to have happiness, and that is for the present lifetime happiness, to have good food, drinks, and have been rich or have lots of money and so forth. I’m pretty sure that everyone knows about this. But it is true that we do need that kind of happiness and we do need that happiness. But those happiness, they may last or they could be very helpful until since from one’s birth to the end of one’s life.
But it’s still that those happiness we cultivate is not really that type of happiness. It’s not a reliable one. It’s changeable. So the money is the main main cause for that happiness because by having lots of money, one can have all these luxurious food and drinks and so forth. Still, we work so hard to cultivate that money which is the cause for that happiness.
Working for it, everyone still undergoes through huge suffering or difficulties. By having lots of money, there’s still lots of problems with it, or lots of suffering — that one worries about losing that money, or worrying that it may be stolen by someone, or that one’s money will eventually run out. No matter how much money one has, that will only last until end of one’s days. At the time of death, one cannot take money or one’s possessions with oneself — not only one’s money, but even one has to leave one’s own body which was with oneself since from birth.
And in the teachings, in Sanskrit terms, this is called the Dharma. It is very, very helpful if one accepts or trains in this Dharma — it can help you in many different ways. The Sanskrit word Dharma means that which helps or gets rid of all the unwanted, all the sufferings, and which brings about or attains all the wanted happiness. It is true that by having lots of money, it is in some level or some amount, but in some stage it can get rid of some degree of one’s unwanted and as well as attain some wish or one’s bit of wishing happiness. But the potentiality of those that money and the dharma are in huge differences.
The dharma is way too powerful than the money. From the very outset, one may find if the word dharma is unfamiliar with oneself or it’s the first time one is hearing or without understanding the meaning of dharma, one might find it a bit strange within oneself. But the fact is that every day we do Dharma. Whether one accepts Dharma or not, one still does the Dharma because one tries to help others as much as possible and tries not to harm any sentient beings or others. Helping others and not harming them is the Dharma, so one is eventually doing Dharma.
So Australians, they like helping others or benefiting others? Whether one accepts or say dharma in verbally say dharma or not, but just by helping others, it is a dharma. So as we said that helping others is the dharma as well as not harming others is the dharma. Here one needs to know — doing this, helping others and not harming others — one needs to know what are the benefits of doing so. So once you see the reason why it is beneficial not to harm others: because harming or causing harm to others produces unhappiness or suffering to that particular person whom you harm.
As a result, the person receives unhappiness, sufferings, so forth. As a result of that, in future, the suffering or difficulty you have caused will return to one, will return and then will, or then by receiving that, you will go through all the returned sufferings as well. That is the disadvantages of harming others. So by abandoning or getting rid of that harming others, then as a result of doing so, one will not have any difficulties or sufferings in the future. That is the benefit of not harming others.
The method of avoiding suffering is abandoning harm to others, which causes suffering to them. You need happiness. In order to receive that happiness, one should bring help and happiness to others. By bringing help and happiness to others as a result, one will receive happiness as well. So that means that to receive happiness, one should help others.
So Dharma is the main, very good means that alleviates all the sufferings and brings you to happiness. But what people do in the world these days, people want happiness. They wish to remain happy, but what they do is come totally opposite. In order to receive their own happiness, they try to capture or defeat others. Through this, they turn others into one’s enemy.
Through this, they start producing or starting a war. And as a result, one goes to bombings and slaughtering of peoples and so forth, which is not the right way of doing things. The people who do this are the mistaken ones because they see the cause of suffering as a cause for happiness, and by doing so, they will not have any happiness. So, likewise, some people in these days, in order to have to have one own personal happiness or benefit, they try to destroy others’ happiness and trying to steal others’ possessions and so forth. But doing so is a mistake because by stealing, for example, stealing others’ possessions, one may receive temporal benefits which last for a couple of days, weeks, months, but in future one will have great difficulty by going through all sufferings, because by stealing others’ possessions which causes them huge suffering, that suffering will return to oneself.
So those people who are involved in those bad activities — killing other people, stealing and so forth — with the hope of deriving some happiness for oneself, those people are very confused and they are ignorant because they don’t understand the reality of things. Because of that, they see the causes of suffering as causes for happiness and they engage in such bad activities. If one knows that kind of person, one should feel great sympathy and feel sorry for those persons because they have done it out of confusion or ignorance. Okay. So we’ll we’ll take couple of questions if you have. To accept it.
Some people who are very abusive to you, and you mentally accept it or respond to it. Give it back to them — I mentally say, this is yours, mentally give it back. When you said you mentally respond or give it back, at this stage, probably you may be right that you know you haven’t done anything wrong, which is the right thing to say or giving it back.
But it could possibly be that you have done something which you don’t really understand and it is returning to you, something which you can’t remember or recall. That thing is returning to you at that time. For example, you have you do something during your childhood, and you say, you’ve grown up these days, and you may not recall what you have done during the childhood, and the person has been very abusive to you at this time. As you can’t recall your childhood, and the person didn’t say anything that you know, childhood you did this, but you have done something during your childhood and that could possibly ripen at this time, but you don’t understand it. So we’ll stop here today.
Thanks. I hope no one has any remaining questions. We’ll do a short dedication prayers from the page ten, His Holiness, and then the page five, verse eight, and nine.