Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A flower grows from seed, water, and earth, but those same conditions exhaust themselves and bring it to ruin — this image anchors Khensur Rinpoche’s 48-minute exploration of karma, impermanence, and the quality of human experience. After opening with a guided compassion meditation, he traces how the same logic applies to happiness, suffering, and relationships: harmony or discord between partners and between parents and children all arise from causes and carry within them the seeds of their own change. He draws on Śāntideva’s verse — happiness arises from cherishing others, suffering from self-concern — to argue that love, compassion, and abandoning harm are not moral abstractions but the direct causes of future wellbeing. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas serve as illustrations of the path. Accessible to practitioners at any level.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 TCC 1993 06 06.mp3
UUID: 6f95f5b3-001b-4a7c-9490-afa9759a87e4
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: The Challenges of Change (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1993-06-06
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 48.1 minutes
Words: ~2,231
Begin by meditating for ten minutes. We’re going to meditate on tolerance. Just like ourselves in not wanting to suffer but wanting happiness likewise, all living beings want happiness and do not want to suffer. So as I proceed in the explanation of the meditation, you should be contemplating accordingly. Beginning with the thought, it would be wonderful if all living beings to the limits of space were free of all suffering, the suffering of pain, the suffering of change, the suffering of universal conditionality.
May they be wonderful if they were free of all that suffering and the causes of that suffering, that is, say, unskillful actions. May they be free of all such suffering and the causes of suffering. You just may they be free of suffering and all those causes of suffering. The trouble. And then the dog is home.
I will free them from such suffering and the causes of suffering. In order to achieve that end, I’m going to meditate on the universal vehicle. So there are a few preliminary prayers that we recite before the talk. If you’d like to join in, you’re quite welcome. There are verses three and then two.
And verse number five. Am going to begin with a quote by Vasubandhu where he says that world is arise everything in the world arises out of karma or actions. So what we mean by the world is the environment that which exists external to living beings, the things about us, the waters, the trees, the place in which beings abide, and additionally, the beans themselves, the various varieties of beans, whether they’re human beings or animals, there are many types, many varieties, many sizes, many shapes of Living beings. So these taken together, the environment and the beans they’re in, all arise out of karma or actions. That is to say, they arise in dependence upon causes.
So all of the beings and the environment arise dependent upon causes. If there are no causes, then they don’t arise. All of these things about us and the beings are all results. That is to say, they come from causes. With respect to their various qualities, if the cause is of a poor quality or a negative quality, then the result is negative.
If the cause is of a positive quality, then accordingly the result will be positive. So everything arises out of a collecting together aggregation of causes and conditions. So, for everything that is born, all things which arise, there are causes and various conditions. And these causes and then conditions are necessary qualities which bring about their demise, their deterioration, their eventual destruction. There is no other cause which brings about this destruction than the actual deterioration of the cause which brought them into existence.
So the very causes which bring things into birth, cause them to come into existence, act as the means by which they go out of existence. There’s no other special cause needed for them to deteriorate to go out of existence. So both external and internal phenomena arise in dependence upon causes. If there is no cause, is no birth. There is no coming into being.
And this very cause is the cause for their eventual demise, their eventual destruction. The simply of the fact of being born entails its own destruction, it is one and the same. Though things may abide for thousands of years, they may be able to maintain their existence, still the cause for their demise is present. If you take the example of a flower, the flower grows independent in dependence upon causes. The causes are the seed, water, earth, etcetera.
in dependence upon these various causes, a flower grows. But when the potencies of these causes are exhausted, that is to say they are no longer able to sustain, have the ability whereby to keep the flower, support the growth of the flower, then the flower is destroyed. It withers and dies. And the same holds true for our happiness and suffering. Our happiness arises in dependence upon causes and conditions.
Likewise, suffering, that which we do not desire, arises in dependence upon like causes and conditions. Likewise with our relationships, with between, for example, parents and children, between a girlfriend and a boyfriend, between partners, harmonious or whether they’re adversary arises in dependence upon causes and conditions. So all our various unhappinesses, but specifically in terms of our relationships, unhappinesses such as of dissatisfaction, fear, all our various difficulties in terms of our relationships, the separation of the distancing between parent and their child, distancing between partners are again brought about through causes and conditions. So the quality of all of these various types of experiences in terms of results is determined by karma, the quality of our actions, karma acting as causes, whether they’re healthy causes or unhealthy causes bringing about harmony or discord. in dependence upon healthy types of causes, conducive types of causes, bringing those existence, we experience as a result harmony, we experience happiness, we experience the various desirable factors of life.
On the other hand, the resultant experiences such as unhappiness, not liking what we were experiencing, a sense of discord and frustration arise and it depends upon unhealthy negative types of causes. So whenever we experience a result that we don’t like, some type of unhappiness, then we have to remember that this experience is arising through a cause and that it is simply by implementing the methods whereby to cease creating those causes that we will cease experiencing undesirable results of such causes. If on the the other hand, if we do not cease creating the causes, then the result will not cease, no matter how much we may not like the result. If the cause is present, then uncontrollably result will arise of itself. On the other hand, if we cease creating the cause, then we will cease experiencing the result.
But it’s not enough simply to voice how much you dislike what you’re experiencing, whatever type of result it might be. That is not going to bring about its cessation. One has to cease creating the causes of that experience. If one does not like hot tastes, but continually eats chili, it doesn’t do any good to say how much you dislike the hot taste in your mouth. You have to cease eating chili.
On the other hand, if one gives up chili, not liking the hot taste in one’s mouth, one gives up chili, then one isn’t going to experience the hot taste. So that’s an analogy. You know, we we all like to be happy. We harmonious friendships, freedom from fear, freedom from anxiety, and joy of life. And if we if we like those and we want to experience them, then we have to implement those causes which bring those results about.
If we implement those causes, create those causes, then we will experience those ends. So if we want these various desirable ends in our life, then we have to ensure that we are creating the causes. If we don’t create the causes, then we won’t experience the result. It’s just as if we enjoy delicious food, then we have to actually cook it. If we don’t cook it, then we aren’t able to experience it, or if we just make a cake and then simply by eating the cake we experience some kind of sweet taste in our mouth, this comes as a natural end of having eaten cake.
We experience a certain type of result. So what are these conducive causes for which bring about happiness and those negative types of causes which bring about the suffering? Negative causes are such causes as unskillful actions and the afflictive emotions and whereas healthy types of causes are positive types of causes such as skillful actions. So the afflictive emotions are the root of all our sufferings. If we cease, if we abandon, bring about an end to the afflictive emotions, then we have brought about an end to the causes our suffering and we experience this state where we only have happiness and this is the state of liberation.
So how are we to achieve this in I’m quoting from a verse by Śāntideva where he said, happiness in the world arises through concerning myself with the welfare of others. All suffering in the world arises through concerning myself with my own welfare. That it is the causes by means in which we can bring about an end to our suffering, that we can create the causes for our happiness, are through love and compassion, an attitude of wanting to benefit others, a caring attitude toward others. So basically, abandoning harming others, abandoning which is the cause of suffering for ourselves and but additionally to seek to bring benefit to others. These are the causes of happiness and the cessation of our suffering, causes of suffering.
So these are the methods that we should seek to implement to make effort to express those of love and compassion, but additionally tolerance. If we cease harming others, if we cherish others, if we seek to benefit them, then we are going to create the causes for happiness and cease creating the causes for suffering. If we have extremely powerful self centeredness, a powerful cherishing of ourselves and simply set others aside, neglect others, then in the course of pursuing our own ends we are going to create a great deal of negativity and this negativity will act as the cause such that in the future we will experience a resultant suffering. Eliminate our own sufferings alone. That we we it simply doesn’t matter us matter to us what others may be experiencing, whether they’re happy or unhappy.
It doesn’t matter to us. And in the course of seeking happiness for ourselves alone, enact various activities, in the course of which we harm others. Seeking happiness for ourselves alone, we end up harming others. And in the harming of others, ultimately, we ourselves will be harmed. We simply haven’t considered well our ways of acting.
We implement various methods to find happiness for ourselves alone, in the course of which we harm others, as a a result of which, we do not experience happiness. The harming of others only brings about suffering to oneself. So our way of finding happiness is really very mistaken. On the other hand, if we were to in wanting happiness for ourselves, if we were to bring happiness to others, if we were to benefit others, if we were to make effort in abandoning and harming others, then through making others happy, we will experience a result in happiness for ourselves. So can take as an example that Śākyamūni Buddha who forsook having forsaken his own ends sought to bring about the welfare of others and experience complete happiness as compared to ourselves who have throughout our rebirths have only sought happiness for ourselves alone and we still experience suffering.
Numberless Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the past have sought to cherish others, have sought to benefit and care for others and as a result of that attitude toward others, they themselves now experience ultimate happiness. If we were to travel that same path, then we ourselves would eventually experience a state of happiness, divorced of any suffering. So this would be a very wonderful path for us to travel likewise. As an example, if someone was starving and we gave them just a handful of food out generosity, then this handful of food would eliminate the pain of hunger, and they would also be able to experience the deliciousness of the food. So they would experience both the elimination of suffering and a type of happiness where there was no suffering.
Giving a little happiness to someone out of this act of generosity of food and we ourselves in the future would, experience such happiness as a result that we ourselves would experience a cessation of anger for ourselves. So whatever we do to others, will eventually return to ourselves, whether it’s negative or positive. We were to, for example, to kill another, then through their experiencing the suffering of being killed, in the future, we ourselves would undergo this suffering of being killed. So one’s happiness is dependent upon others. By benefiting others, then we ourselves will benefit in the future.
We ourselves will be happy. By harming others, that we in the future will be harmed, that we ourselves will experience suffering. So our both our happiness and suffering depend upon others. Śākyamūni Buddha gave the advice that if one wants happiness, then one should forego harming of others. By bringing others happiness, that in the future we will be made happy.
By foregoing harming others, will we will not have harm for ourselves in the future. So in abandoning harming others, and as much as we are able to bring bring about the benefit to others, we are practicing ethics. And ethics is the means by which in the future we will experience a happy state of rebirth. You know, there there may arise occasions where someone’s you get into an argument with someone that, you know, that someone addresses, harsh words to you. They speak very badly toward you.
For you to say, well, what do you