Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 14-minute public talk, Khyentse Rinpoche uses the nature of perception to unpack a central Buddhist insight: we cannot escape our mind, and all we know of others—including him—exists through our perception. He illustrates how fixing enemies externally is futile; anger arises from ignorance and misperception, and the real work is internal purification of the perceiver. He then moves to the broader Buddhist doctrine of karma and rebirth, explaining why identical education and effort yield vastly different worldly outcomes. He uses vivid examples—stumbling into a dark room, a sublime being walking the same room with deeper understanding—to show how perception varies with refinement, and sketches why Buddhists appeal to past-life karma rather than present circumstances alone. The talk opens to questions and ends with a grounding meditation instruction.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 PT.mp3
UUID: f87fabc2-03a0-4ec6-85b5-413d6dfc802c
Teacher: Khyentse Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talk (Khyentse Rinpoche)
Date: 1986 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 13.9 minutes
Words: ~1,339
Yeah. That’s your imagination. Maybe it’s also your imagination. You cannot escape from your imagination right now. That is the problem here, you see.
You cannot escape from your mind. Try to rest from the the mind and then see. I didn’t exist for you. Before I saw you? No.
Didn’t exist. Your perception of me, my perception perception of you, is not exist before I saw you. To whom? No, to whom, to whom? Ah, now you are talking about other people, which is another your perception. You are borrowing their perception to make this perception work.
Now, don’t be so busy, buddy. Yeah, but it is because thanks to your mind that I exist. If your mind is not there, then even people tell you, Will you hear? Yeah, if there’s no perceiver, then if somebody tell you, hey, he’s there talking, listen, you won’t do anything. No.
Now it is different. Now you walk, your perception, the imagination, remembrance is still there, you see? Now I don’t think you can unless something really big happened. Know, hypnotized is also a very gross thing here. Now it will be quite difficult for you to forget me whether you like it or not.
That’s good. I’m very sure that you will not succeed. You see? My perception is already yours now. You see?
Now what will you do? I want to I want to forget that man. See? That perception already. You see?
Now it won’t work, I think. You should have never heard of me. I was going to stop. Oh, yeah, question? This depends with the purification.
There are perceivers who are more refined, which we call saints, practitioner, those who are involved, those who have improved their concentration meditation, pure meditation. That’s why we are doing meditation, in order to improve our perceiver. You see? Exactly the same. That’s why Buddhists always train people, don’t get angry to the enemy.
Enemy is there because you have the perceiver, anger. Control your anger, and then there will be no enemy. If you want to destroy your anger using the method of demolishing all the enemy, you will never succeed. If you keep your anger here inside, and in order to purify that anger, if you try to destroy the enemy, then your enemy will never end. More and more enemy will arise, so the real enemy is one’s own anger.
Control one’s anger. Purify one’s anger. Controller could be love and compassion, and anger is something that has to be controlled. The essence of both the controller and to be controlled, the essence is same, but there’s two different aspects. Pardon?
What is anger? Well, you have to control the anger if anger doesn’t bring any discomfort, you know? If you think that anger brings brings you suffering, then you should control. But if you think anger brings you luck or money or whatever, then you should have, I think. If you think that it brings you happiness, but if anger brings happiness.
Because it is, for example, it is most of the anger, yeah, anger is produced by misunderstanding, right? We can talk about something emotional and we can forget about that perception. I won’t talk anymore. Everybody? Anger is both perception and perceiver.
You understand? Anger is intention that wishes or that has the motivation to defeat, to destroy the other party, and to compete. You understand? Have competition, and there’s hatred inside. But but why why do we Why does it exist?
Exist? Because we have ignorance. For example, that’s a good question. That’s a very good question. First I explain about anger.
For example, you have ignorance of not knowing that person. Then, because you have this ignorance, somebody influenced you, saying that he is not good, he is trying to harm you, he is telling you lie or something like that. Or through your imagination, you think that he is trying to harm you, but actually what he does is to help you, and then you can have anger, and then you can destroy him. You might destroy him, which is something very bad. He has been trying to help you, right?
Anger is like that, but this ignorance comes from ignorance. Why is ignorance, you said? Ignorance is there because there is the first category of ignorance. That’s why Buddhists believe in reincarnation. Vajrayāna is what?
Yeah. You will find this kind of thing a lot, but then you really have to explain very well. For example, you will really find lot of these things in Buddhist prayers, such as Buddha can put all this universe, all this big universe on the top of one atom. That’s why he’s the most powerful. That’s why we prostrate to him.
You see? You can find that kind of thing a lot in Buddhist prayers. I prostrate to the Buddha who can put all the directions into one direction. Now this depends on with you, reader. If you take it as a fairy story, you can take it as a fairy story, and it works as fairy stories.
But if you are more a philosopher, then it’s not that Buddha is so powerful and Buddha is like muscle man and he can put all the universe on top of one atom, but he knows and he sees the reality of universe and atom. That’s why he can put it, because for him there’s no such a smallest thing as an atom, and there’s no such a biggest as an universe. So for him, he can put this universe on the top of one atom as we put one atom the top of the universe. But we have this dualistic mind of small and big. Small can put on the big, but we cannot put on the small, and then we make our own thing, right?
That’s very obvious. For example, a person walking into a dark room, completely dark, knocked by something, and until you switch on the light. You are knocked by something, but you don’t know what is knocked or what kind of article knocked you. Then you switch on the light, and you find, table. I was walking on the side of the table.
Then you realize, ah, this is the table. So that table has been now your perception. Before you switch on the light, there was no table, but something that knocked you. If a sublime being walked into that room, a not that good sublime, you know, an okay one. If he walks into this dark room, then when he knocks with something, he will feel the pain, And he immediately realized, Ah, I have a knock.
I’m knocked with something. Because two reasons. For the earlier one, there’s only one reason. There is something. Switch on the light, ah, there’s a table.
But for him there’s two reasons. There is something and there is my leg. That’s why I’m knocked, you see? But for the best sublime being, he will never walk in the first place. We have to talk about karma.
We believe in karma. That’s why we believe in reincarnation, because karma cannot be produced right now. I can briefly explain you this, but there are lots of explanations. For example, two type people trained in the same school, same height, same education, and then both are graduated afterwards, and one works very, very hard for twenty four hours maybe, still gets nothing. One doesn’t work anything, but still he’s a multimillionaire.
If you talk about this worldly education, one who works harder, he should have more money. But the fact doesn’t come like this. Why? Why one is chosen like that way? Because of karma, and that karma cannot be produced by father and mother or one’s own body.
That karma has to come from past life. That’s why we believe in reincarnation. There are lots of more explanations. I can stop here. So I can stop here.
Thank you so much.