Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 87-minute talk, Khensur Rinpoche opens with a pointed diagnosis: fear, meaninglessness, and self-destructive behavior in modern life stem not from a lack of potential but from failing to recognize it. Drawing on Maitreya’s Sublime Continuum, he presents Buddha lineage — the innate capacity every sentient being has to achieve Buddhahood — as the remedy for five specific mental faults that block practice: self-defeatism, despair that other beings cannot be saved, denial of emptiness, the belief that one’s own faults are permanent, and entrenched self-centeredness. He works through how understanding this lineage dissolves each fault in turn, then uses a seed analogy to show how study, reflection, and meditation on love, compassion, and emptiness serve as the conditions that activate that latent capacity. A brief Q&A closes with a question about atoms and inherent existence.
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File: 10 NoM 1992 03 03.mp3
UUID: f4908b03-0598-4bb1-b79d-e33a6a93f736
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: The Nature of Mind 1991-1992 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1992-03-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 86.6 minutes
Words: ~4,279
So how are we to proceed in our meditation? If we have as our motivation the wish to benefit both ourselves and others, a sense of altruism, then our meditation will be of great benefit. So how can we develop this motivation of altruism? We can express in the thought that just both ourselves and others are exactly the same in wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer. So beginning with the love in which it’s expressed in the thought, may myself and others have happiness and the causes of happiness.
And then cultivating compassion which is expressed in the thought that neither ourselves nor others wish for suffering, suffering is undesirable. And that may myself and all others be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. That is to say, may suffering come to an end. To strengthen our love and compassion we can go on to contemplate in order to lead all sentient beings into a state free from suffering and to place them in happiness, I myself must train. I myself must engage in various practices.
Alternatively if you were going to meditate on emptiness one can contemplate that all phenomena whatsoever are merely imputed by means of terms and concepts that they do not exist from their own side. We could alternatively meditate on the Lam Rim, that is to say the graduated path to enlightenment. And we could contemplate that we now possess a human life. And it’s very wonderful to have a human life with all its great potential and its great use. And by means of our human life that we can achieve the happiness that we desire, that we can abandon the suffering that we do not wish.
And to having found this human life with this great capacity, we should engage in practice. Alternatively, we can meditate on mindfulness of breathing. And in the course of the exhalation, we can imagine that we’re sending out all our various sicknesses and suffering. All that is undesirable within us is being sent to a very long distance in the form of a black light and disappears often to the far distance. And upon inhalation, imagine that we are inhaling white light.
And this inhalation, this white light is in the nature of happiness and peace and well-being. So this is according to one’s own wishes, what they meditate on. So we’re going So Maitreya, from the text Uttaratantra — the Sublime Continuum — quotes that in the text of the Uttaratantra it says that the unraveling of the thought of the third turning of the wheel was spoken in order to abandon the five faults. And this is done by through the understanding of lineage. And therefore what is being presented is an understanding of the nature of mind in terms of lineage, understanding its qualities and potentials and capacities.
This potential or let us say lineage is explained within the Mahāyāna. Is a Sanskrit word and in Tibetan it’s or translated as the great vehicle. So it is by understanding this capacity of lineage that each of us possesses that we can overcome many of the states that many people have in present day times. Those feelings of incapacity, sense of low self esteem, lack of confidence, fear, anxiety, cowardliness. Due to this mindset, we have a sense that life is meaningless.
And many people are out of this sense of meaningless of life, simply turn to drugs and destruction. Can you So it’s not the case that we do not have potentials as a human being. Because in fact we do. We have great potential. We have great capacity.
But out of our not understanding that we possess this potential, this capacity, then various negative states as was described previously are generated. You know where people are unhappy, they’re full of fear and anxiety. Not because we don’t have the potential, but because we do not understand that we have the potential. Not knowing that we possess this wonderful potential, once it is explained to us and we study its existence, and finally come to an understanding that in fact we each possess this wonderful potential, then all of these nihilistic tendencies and fears are eliminated. So if we were, you talk from the point of the universal vehicle and with respect to the attainment of Buddhahood.
You know that Buddha represents elimination of all our various faults and bringing the consummation of all our acts and qualities. The causes of this is mainly the awakening heart. And this is brought about through the generating love and compassion. Therefore it’s necessary to meditate on love and compassion to generate an awakening heart to finally become a Buddha. But we think, not understanding the fact that we have the capacity to generate all these various states and to achieve Buddhahood, that I can’t do it.
There’s no way that I can develop love and compassion. There’s no way that I can develop an awakening heart. And sinking that one cannot, one does not meditate in this way, and one does not achieve Buddhahood. So we in a way are our own obstacles to these attainments. So we were discussing these five faults which are to be abandoned.
And this is the first one, the sense of self defeatism. Not understanding the nature of who we are and sinking that I cannot do. Then this acts as an obstruction. And this is the first of the five faults. So one may think that in fact one can carry on a practice, that one can develop love and compassion, can generate the awakening heart.
But since the fact that all sentient beings cannot achieve Buddhahood, why? Because not all sentient beings possess lineage. So because all sentient beings do not possess lineage, all sentient beings cannot achieve Buddhahood. Therefore what is the use of my achieving Buddhahood since I cannot lead all sentient beings to Buddhahood? What’s the use of my practicing generosity, ethics, tolerance, and all the perfections?
And therefore thinking it in this way one does not carry out one’s practice, though one thinks one can. And this is the second fault. Another fault is, it is necessary that we eliminate, how do we eliminate the various faults from the mind? It is through meditating on emptiness. But if one were to say, well there’s no meditation on emptiness.
Why? Because all phenomena naturally exist. All phenomena truly exist. And therefore because what is this emptiness? Since all phenomena truly exist, there’s nothing which is empty.
Therefore and the thinking this way is a great obstruction to carry on a meditation on emptiness. This is another fall. So then, you know, it is also another great fault is thinking there’s no way to eliminate all our various faults. That there’s no way to bring to consummation all our excellent qualities. And this acts as a great hindrance to carrying on one’s practice and study, sinking that this cannot be achieved.
And then another great fault which is spoken of is that individually we have a tremendous self-centeredness. That holding, cherishing ourselves in our exaggerated self concern that we aren’t able to concern ourselves with others. We aren’t able to meditate for example on the exchange of self with others. We aren’t able to meditate on compassion and the awakening heart. This conception, this strong grasping at self and our self centeredness.
Then this acts as a great fault. So this is the great benefit to be derived from this explanation of lineage. In that by means of understanding that all sentient beings, all living beings, both ourselves and others, possess lineage, then this, it was taught in order to remove all of these various faults that we’ve just listed. By understanding this, all of these faults can be eliminated. Through understanding lineage, then we can understand that we have this capacity, that we have Buddha lineage.
And because we possess Buddha lineage, that we have the potential whereby to eliminate all our various faults and to bring to consummation our excellent qualities. And it is through understanding lineage that we can generate such understanding. So how can we come to this understanding? First, with respect to the the mind. There are two types of mind.
One, there is a faultless aspect of the mind and an aspect of the mind which has faults. And by faults, such types of faults as attachment, pride, hatred, and ignorance. The second category is mind, the faultless aspects of the mind. Such qualities as altruism, the wisdom, understanding, emptiness, compassion, love, and the awakening heart. These are faultless aspects of mind.
Faultless aspects of the mind are pure by their very nature. And they represent the great potential, the capacity of mind that through effort that these qualities can be extended limitlessly. And that we can generate such qualities and bring them to complete fulfillment. So the nature of the mind is pure. By nature it is without thought.
And that it has the capacity to be developed and it has the capacity whereby to bring all of its very excellent qualities to complete consummation. If we understand that the mind possesses such a capacity, capacity that I have this ability, then we can go on to develop the aspiration that for the sake of all sentient beings I must generate an awakening heart. And awakening heart generates a definite ascertainment that we can achieve Buddhahood. That we can come to a valid cognition that I in fact can achieve Buddhahood by understanding that we have lineage. So it is through understanding this potential that we possess that we can bring about a cessation to all of these various faults of the mind such as this lack of confidence and sinking that one is of a poor quality.
That when this fear, in the sense that life is meaningless, this urge to simply take drugs, that all of these destructive ways of thinking are ceased by understanding our capacity. This is in the case of a farmer who understands that by means of a seed he bring forth a crop. And so understanding this, that he holds the seed is very valuable because he understands simply by planting that seed that something will grow. So the seed is very valuable to him. He holds it that way.
Understanding that we have the capacity whereby to eliminate all the various faults and to develop all our excellent qualities. That this is in the very nature of the mind, this potential to be able to bring this about. This is a quality of mind that the mind is pure by its very nature. And that understanding this and we have this capacity then we’re going to value our selves and this ability, this capacity. And by whatever we want to achieve, we can achieve that and our life will have great meaning and we can understand the importance of our human life.
So one can think that I can attain buddhahood. That I can create the causes of buddhahood. That I can generate the awakening heart, I can develop love and compassion, that I have the complete potential to generate these states of mind. Therefore for the sake of all sentient beings I can achieve Buddhahood. This is the reason that we can present to ourselves.
Understanding that we have the capacity and we can come to the thought I can attain this. And the reason why? Because I have the capacity. And knowing that I have capacity, I will attain it. And therefore this acts as the way to generate an awakening heart.
Just in general, in our various activities, the work. We don’t have to talk about, particularly in training the mind, all the various work that we may wish to engage in. Whatever it might be, we have a sense of I can’t do that, I can’t do that. And therefore we don’t. We’re out of this because we have a sense of fear, we have a sense of self insufficiency.
And by understanding that in fact I have the capacity, I have the ability, that I have a powerful mind and that this mind, I have a pure mind and that I can do it. And thinking in this way, this will eliminate all our various fears and feelings of insufficiency. So understanding that we possess lineage, then we will understand that we have the capacity. By means of this first thought that we just covered as the one that we call understanding lineage that we have the capacity that we can overcome the very first thought. Then with respect to the second thought, thinking one thinks, well I can attain Buddhahood, I can develop an awakening heart.
But the trouble is that all sentient beings, some are very deficient and they do not possess lineage. Therefore there’s no way that they can be led to Buddhahood. Therefore though I could attain Buddhahood, there’s no sense in leading all sentient beings to Buddhahood because all sentient beings cannot attain Buddhahood. So we have to understand that not just ourselves individually possess lineage, but in fact all sentient beings possess lineage. So it’s necessary to understand that all living beings possess lineage.
All possessing lineage, then we should understand that they all gradually can achieve Buddhahood. And therefore understanding this, then we can actually achieve Buddhahood in order to lead all sentient beings to Buddhahood. Even beings who may appear appear deficient, in fact possess lineage, they have a body and mind. They have a body and mind just like my body and mind. And they and their various faults are not intrinsic to their mind.
And in fact their mind is by nature pure, just like my mind. And understanding that they possess lineage, they have the capacity, the complete capacity whereby to eliminate these non intrinsic faults from the mind, then there’s no reason why that all sentient beings cannot be led to Buddhahood. And this is the way we can eliminate the second of these thoughts. With respect to the third fault, the fault in which one thinks that there is no way to meditate on emptiness because all phenomena in fact truly exist. But this is in fact not the case.
All phenomena whatsoever are empty of true existence, are empty empty of self defining existence. That is because they are dependent arisings, that they rely upon causes, conditions, they rely upon their parts. Because they are dependently established, they cannot be truly existent. And this is the reason we can set forth establishing the dependent arising of all phenomena. Reflecting in this way we can eliminate this fault of sinking there is no meditation on emptying.
So by eliminating these, gradually these five faults, then they are replaced by five excellent qualities. So by understanding the potential of the universal vehicle Dharma, by understanding our own potential that we can, whatever we wish to achieve, that we can achieve. We can eliminate our various faults and we can bring to fulfillment all our excellent qualities. That by understanding that this is in the nature of the reality then we can take confidence that whatever we wish to achieve, we have that capacity. Understanding that we we possess the capacity and that it is necessary to transform our mind through, by means of mind training, and to make effort in the methods of wisdom.
So we must say that we make effort in the generation of bodhicitta and this we can proceed by reflecting upon the nature of our situation, the nature of what in fact we do possess, examining it and reading many books on the subject. It’s similar to the case where by reading the newspaper we can understand what’s going on in the world. We can understand the world’s situation. Likewise by listening to explanations, reading books which set out the nature of the mind, its various capacities, its qualities, then we can understand its actual nature. And this is the way that we generate wisdom.
So in this way we can proceed in developing great wisdom. It’s through a sense of reflecting and examining the nature of various things. We proceed in analytic meditation that we want to understand what is the nature, is it this or is it not that. What is it about, what is it not about, examining the qualities, analyzing its nature. And in this way we develop wisdom.
By a means of proceeding through such extensive analysis we can develop our mind, that we can develop great wisdom, extensive knowledge. And we can understand what is the nature of the world about us. What is the nature of our situation? What are the various faults? How do those faults arise?
What are the causes of them? What kind of results can they bring about? What is the nature of happiness? What are the excellent qualities that’s necessary in order to achieve happiness? What practices do we have to engage in to develop those qualities?
And understanding the obscurations that we possess and how to remove those obscurations. And in this way we can go on to gradually eliminate all the various faults from our mind and develop all its excellent qualities. This wisdom is truly valuable. We can eliminate all our undesired suffering and bring about all the desired excellent qualities that we wish to achieve. And all of this is achieved by a combination of effort and wisdom.
Without this developing effort and wisdom, then we’re going to be obscured from the nature of the actuality of our situation. That we’re going to be left in an unknowing state and be left with fear, anxiety and all our faults will remain. There may arise some kind of doubt in your mind as to whether you actually can in fact attain these various ends. Can I actually develop all of these qualities? There’s a sense of questioning that perhaps I cannot eliminate my various faults.
This is because we haven’t really trained that we remain in a state of unknowing and questioning. If we were to proceed in our training then we would come to understand that we can in fact achieve all our excellent qualities, that we can eliminate all the various faults, that whatever we train in, whatever we wish to train in, we in fact can attain that end. So there’s Clear Realization which we can so we can set out a clear reason for establishing this fact that we can achieve whatever end that we wish. In these days there are many peoples in the world with really wonderful qualities that they have. And how did they how did they come to possess these qualities?
They developed them through training, through study. Other than this, there’s no other way. Other than training, there was no other way that they could have developed these qualities. It’s just like a child. A child is in a state of simply not understanding.
It’s an untrained state, an undeveloped state. But if the parents and the teacher encourage the child to make effort and things will go well. And through this, in the child’s training and then through this training the child comes to develop the various types of excellent qualities. And it’s only through this training. Another child did not have the benefit of an inspiring teacher or parents that helped them in their studies they end up in a state of unknowing.
They are in a state without any developed qualities. Now both of these children have the same capacity. But in one case the child made effort and developed their qualities through training and the other, though having the same capacity to develop did not make effort and therefore did not train and did not develop any capacities. So this is a clear reason. Without this training that we have the capacity, nothing is developed.
So today we’ve talked a little bit about the capacity of the mind to develop these excellent qualities and the necessity to train the mind in order to do that. The necessity of making effort and the development of wisdom. And differentiating the qualities of mind from constructive and destructive aspects. We talked about the way that we can eliminate feelings of fear and anxiety, self-deficiency, and the means to develop excellent qualities. So all of this is within the nature of the mind.
It is within the capacity of the mind. So we’re going to stop there, but it will take a few So the fourth thought was that a sense of that one insufficiency that I cannot generate all of these excellent qualities. sinking that one does not engage in the practice whereby to achieve these ends. That there’s no way that my mind simply doesn’t have the capacity to limit all its various faults and develop all its excellent qualities. And the way that we can overcome this is through understanding that we possess Buddha lineage.
And that because we possess Buddha lineage that whatever faults and stains are within the mind are not in the nature of the mind. That in fact the nature of the mind is pure and is through this realization that we can go on to develop the necessary wisdom to remove the various thoughts from the mind. Was the sense that, you know, because I’m a self-centered person, I can never become other-centered. And therefore there’s no way that I can cultivate love and compassion. But we can come to understand that self-centeredness is a fault which in fact can be abandoned.
And understanding the various detriments of self-centeredness and that it is the root of all our various faults that we possess. And on the other hand, other-centeredness is the root of all excellent qualities and self-centeredness can be abandoned. And out of this we will go on to be able to generate love, compassion and the awakening heart since realizing that we can abandon our self centeredness. So that’s the fifth I was afraid that if I explained them extensively you might get bored. Is that realization Buddha lineage?
You asking, is that to understand that one has lineage, that one No, to understand that one has the capacity to believe it. Is that what? Is that to understand lineage or is that lineage? Is that lineage? Bruise it.
Is that what? Is that to understand lineage, or is that lineage? Is that lineage? Is that in itself lineage? Yes.
Okay. So the Buddha lineage is the capacity whereby we are able to achieve Buddhahood. The capacity, this potential, this potency, this potency which allows us to achieve Buddhahood is Buddha lineage. Just as in the case of a seed, a seed has a potency, a capacity whereby to develop a sprout. It has a certain potency.
Therefore this ability or potency to develop a sprout is that capacity of the seed. Likewise we have an excellent quality and this excellent quality is the capacity whereby to achieve Buddhahood. This capacity, this potency is Buddha lineage. So if we present an analogy that in the growing of a really excellent crop, that excellent crop is analogous to a buddha. And what grows an excellent crop is a seed with possessing a non defective capacity to grow.
An intact seed which is non defective, has a capacity to grow an excellent crop. Likewise, we possess a capacity or a potency whereby to develop a Buddha. And it is this capacity which is being referred to as Buddha lineage. Just as in the case of the seed has a potency so our mind has a potency to develop into a Buddha. In the case of actually growing a sprout, as was mentioned, we need a non defective seed which has this capacity.
But in addition to this capacity of the seed, we have to add conditions of soil, water, fertilizer, etc. So it is out of a combination of the capacity of a seed to grow a crop and in addition adding the conditions of water, fertilizer, and soil that we can actually grow an excellent crop. The same holds true in germinating our lineage. It’s necessary that it be combined with various conditions in order that its potency might develop. Terms of the conditions there is the study whereby which is in terms of listening to the Dharma, reflecting upon what has been heard and then meditating.
And we meditate on such subjects as love and compassion, cultivating the awakening heart and the authentic view of emptiness. And these latter, the love, compassion, awakening heart and the view of emptiness, are similar to the conditions necessary in order to activate the seed. They are like the soil, water and earth which germinate the capacity of the seed to develop an excellent crop. These serve as to germinate our lineage in order to develop the excellent crop of Buddhahood. So listening to the teachings is extremely important.
Further as was mentioned it’s necessary to make effort and to develop wisdom and to meditate. In this way it is like watering our lineage. So can I clarify your question? Taking an atom, it doesn’t inherently exist. It doesn’t inherently exist because it is dependent upon concepts.
It is imputed by concepts. Because it’s imputed by concepts, it doesn’t inherently exist. So the atom itself does not inherit and exist. No phenomena inherently exist. Atoms are products which arise in dependence upon causative condition.
Therefore they are not independently existing. They are not inherently existing.