Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A student’s question about when compassionate activity qualifies as genuine great vehicle practice opens this 32-minute talk by Khensur Rinpoche. He draws a sharp distinction between two levels of bodhicitta: the effort-requiring form, where a practitioner must deliberately cultivate loving-kindness and compassion before the awakening mind arises, and the spontaneous form, where bodhicitta wells up automatically at the mere sight of a sentient being — illustrated by comparing a novice typist who must watch the keyboard to an expert who types without looking. Rinpoche then insists that any practice done without right intention simply does not qualify as Dharma. He closes by explaining meditation as familiarization, a process so thoroughgoing that sleep, eating, and walking all become practice once the mind has sufficiently absorbed the topic.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 GS 1994 Easter.mp3
UUID: 2f61e509-8963-4ac4-95ad-31e1083879df
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: The Great Scope (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1994 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 31.7 minutes
Words: ~2,038
How to develop the precious mind of enlightenment. And if you are interested to develop it and want to what’s called attempt in developing it, then it would be good to take interest on this topic because it may perhaps be not likely until for some time now after this for to speak third person or to again speak on this topic extensively so it would be good opportunity to do that to do that. As far as extending the talk and give more well, I’m already on the cushion sitting, so it’s not a problem. Yeah. So if you wish yeah.
Just so if you wish to extend, then it’s okay. No worries. Okay. That’s the right email too. Right?
Or have some questions. Wasn’t clear about the slight difference between the two, the dharma activity retained by mind and mind. Of the great vehicle. Yep. And mere Dharma activity of great vehicle.
Generally, enlightenment mind, or bodhicitta, is of two kinds. One requiring effort and one no more requiring effort and in previous mentioned by Je Tsongkhapa about requirement of precious mind enlightenment in order to qualify the practice or activity to become of great vehicle retained by enlightenment mind. There it means activity or spiritual practice done through the motive with enlightenment mind no more requiring effort. This then will bring us to first to differentiate what is meant by enlightened mind requiring effort and no more requiring effort.
Well to start with there is a difference between the intensity of the two. One is more intense, much more, and the other is not that intense at the present state. So and it is what’s the level of one falling after in succession for one’s spiritual in one’s spiritual training. With the non requiring effort precious mind of enlightenment it means for the thought, the precious enlightened mind to arise in one’s thought still as a practitioner one needs to put effort effort such as first putting effort into thinking, reflecting about loving kindness, compassion, exalted thought and by repeatedly thinking on those thoughts there then arises the mind of enlightenment. So it is a mind of enlightenment depending on its arising on effort.
So it is called effort requiring mind of enlightenment. Whereas the no-more or no-more requiring enlightenment or effort requiring enlightenment mind means through having trained repeatedly there comes a point, excuse me, and there comes a point where the precious enlightenment mind just arises spontaneously there is no more effort required. At the very moment one sees a sentient being suddenly there is precious enlightenment mind there. This is what is meant in the previous line by a great vehicle practice or activity retained by precious mind enlightenment that the mind enlightenment in that case means such no more effort requiring precious mind enlightenment. Now this, now of course there is activities where all spiritual practice which tend not belong to the great vehicle practice but which can equally be done with the effort requiring precious mind of enlightenment or without precious mind of enlightenment.
For example someone would have developed a love, compassion and exalted thought but has not yet developed precious mind of enlightenment and in that state while being a practitioner who has developed the previous one but not the actual precious enlightenment mind such a person may engage in activities or spiritual practice helping others which qualifies to be which originally saying which yeah we can say that it can be called included as a great vehicle practice great vehicle activity but it does not qualify to be great vehicle practice retained by the mind of enlightenment. Normally, a good example I think of is the therapist who in the beginning while typing may need to need some trainings. But after the if sufficient training, there will come a stage where the therapist gains proficiency of having trained and then can as demonstrated can type without even looking at the keyboard so it can go so speedily and in the case those who have not yet attained that proficiency may type and then have to look and then type and look in this way there’s still effort required into doing the work effectively, speedily and so forth. So in that case, in the example there is in one case no more effort is required in the running of the keyboard and in the other case there is effort still required to do it.
Similarly in the case practitioner developing enlightenment there can be two stages one the earlier stage where one needs to think about love compassion loving kindness compassion special thought in order to develop mind or enlightenment and it may arise but then it may subside and next time one may again have to rethink with effort of meditative contemplation on those preceding or necessary topics and then develop mind of enlightenment and then the second stage being a precious mind of enlightenment, no more requiring effort where spontaneously at the very sight of a sentient being there is the mind of enlightenment. In the case of the two types of typist, it is matter of degree of familiarity the one has not achieved and the other has achieved. One who has not achieved the high level of familiarity still stumbles across and so forth and one who has achieved degree of proficiency in familiarization does not face that and types perfectly. Similarly, the two types of enlightenment mind, the one requiring still effort and one normal requiring effort, are levels of familiarity with the effort familiarity with the enlightened mind through meditative familiarization. Anyway, in order for a Dharma practice to become a great vehicle practice one needs to have any of the two types of enlightenment mind.
If one doesn’t have those two then the spiritual practice one does, the Dharma practice one does not become enlightened or great vehicle practice. And the meaning for that is the Dharma practice one does would not contribute towards one’s achieving of Buddhahood or one’s achieving of enlightenment. The Dharma, the spiritual practice we do depends on the motive, the intention, motivation with which we approaches it in the first place. If the Dharma, the spiritual practice is done not with a good adjustment of motive in the first place, lacking motive adjustment meditation in the beginning then the Dharma or the spiritual practice one may assume to be doing well does not become a Dharma practice at all, it’s not a Dharma at all. It’s not a spiritual practice at all.
In this way or in the beginning it’s therefore great emphasis in the lineage practices that one needs to spend some time first before doing any practices in formal meditation or formal thinking in developing developing the right motive, right intention following which if one does the practices it becomes Dharma, a meaningful correct spiritual practice. If such happens then the result through which results gained through such would be a good result, meaningful accomplishment, beneficial to oneself and through that way beneficial to others. For example, in the teaching sessions when the listeners, the participants are maintained very pure good motive and as well the teacher explaining maintains a good pure motive and the teaching itself is of course free, pure, beneficial in its nature then the whole activity becomes extremely pure, the best time possibly there could be and through that way the results achieved through such would be equally good, helpful to oneself and others. And in terms of accumulating and towards the end when the dedication is also done well then in terms of accumulating merits and so forth it’s a very good activity together. No questions then.
Customer. What’s the bell? Someone rings bell? Or I think you could. Yeah.
Oh, well, first in doing meditation or visualization on a given topic one needs to ascertain that it is correct and it needs to be acquired by one’s mind as an attribute to acquire and that ascertainment is done through analytical meditation. After analytical meditation one comes to ascertain that that really is so and there’s no other way that it can’t be apart from this and one then remains single pointedly focused on that in one’s and maintains it in repeated consistency which then becomes the focused meditation or popularly translated stabilized meditation and can alternatively be called the settled meditation, the focused meditation, whichever. That becomes in the formal session now and the very meaning of meditation is familiarization and that becomes a meditation. Now outside during post formal session while there is a way one can think about still in one’s mind about the topic and does not let one’s mind wander away from it. And in that way whether one is walking one is still thinking about the topic, whether one is eating, one is still thinking about it, and when one goes to bed one goes with before sleep thinking about it and the sleep state becomes meditation because the entrance into sleep was done with the state of mind thinking about that topic.
And the time when one awakes one may still think about it and that still becomes meditation. In that way whether one sits it becomes meditation, eats becomes meditation, sleeps becomes meditation, so it is meditation and to interpret that does not mean you should be spaced out right in center under the mall or somewhere. Yeah, but of course to be able to remain one’s mind thinking on given topic whether even out of post out of meditation session it requires familiarity with the topic because it is only when one has repeatedly familiarized with the topic for a certain length of time that it becomes focusable and one remains non sidetracked in one’s thinking on the topic. So it is necessary that one needs to first actually familiarize with the topic before familiarizing and carrying it along in other sessions of time. Because going back meditation in its actual sense means familiarization to repeatedly get used to the quality which one has to acquire in one’s mind.
It is meditation it is not apart from that. Now as far as the familiarization part goes, well it can be led to a stage where it can become part of mind. For example, let’s say a very flat flat and a flatly laid piece of paper. Firstly it is like that but you roll it over you roll it over into a rolled piece and because it hasn’t repeatedly rolled the moment when you unfold it open it instantly retracts back. Now in there we can say there’s habit pattern formed in the paper that it has to be retracted back because there has repeated folding of the paper.
So the example again is not to be seen as justifying and reasoning the point but just an illustration only on that label. So there it shows the repeated folding has made the paper on being opened unfold still retracts instantly. Now similarly here in our meditation whether it is on loving kindness, compassion or any qualities of mind to be acquired that we need to firstly familiarize with it and then it can be possible. So we do meditation on that purpose that it has to be familiarization process of the mind through which to be familiarized attributes or quality becomes a part of the mind and retainable with the mind. And in that way there’s a whole host of spiritual facts and topics becoming the topics of meditation.
One does meditation on impermanence, one does meditation on emptiness, realizing selflessness and so forth. In the case of topics like emptiness what happens is when one meditates on emptiness one familiarizes it with consistent familiarity and it comes to a point where the moment one’s mind thinks about emptiness it remains focused and the mind remains in the state of realization of emptiness during performed meditation session. Now there are other parts or other kinds such as qualities like loving kindness and compassion where through repeated familiarization the mind itself is transformed into the nature of compassion, into the nature of loving kindness, into the nature of precious mind enlightenment.