Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute talk, Lama Lhundup uses a practical mental experiment to dismantle the attachment and aversion that underlie our suffering. He invites students to mentally sort a large group of people into three categories—those we like, those we dislike, and those we feel indifferent toward—then examines the logical basis for each grouping. He shows that attachment and hatred rest on arbitrary, moment-to-moment judgments: a benefit in this life triggers liking; a small harm triggers dislike. Drawing on the premise of past lives, he argues that enemies have been our mothers countless times and loved ones have harmed us equally across countless rebirths, so there is no rational foundation for either emotion. He then explains how these appearances—pleasing faces, displeasing faces—are generated by our own mind through attachment and hatred, not inherent to the people themselves. By understanding that attachment and hatred are mistaken consciousness, we can cultivate immeasurable equanimity, the even-minded foundation needed to practice Dharma authentically. Suited for practitioners beginning to engage with Buddhist logic and emotional transformation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 C o P.mp3
UUID: e9a1f389-fd11-4440-a865-5ac24ac91c43
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Changing our perspectives (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.8 minutes
Words: ~3,004
Holy bodhisattva Śāntideva said that this human body which possesses the leisures and fortune is of great meaning and is difficult to find again. If we do not make of it use of it by ourselves by the practice of Dharma, then when we die, it will be difficult to find again. So, Having been born in not merely this life. This is not our only life. We have been born countless times in the past.
But if we’re frank and honest about it, up to this point, we have not been able to really eliminate all the problems and difficulties that we face in all our lives. Not Not only have we not been able to eliminate the difficulties in all our past lives, but from our birth up to our present time whether we’re twenty, thirty or forty years old, we still are faced with the same difficulties, the same problems that we’ve had before. We haven’t alleviated them in the slightest. So all the various problems and difficulties that we have faced in the past and that we are now confronted with, we begin to question what are the causes and conditions bringing about these problems. There are many explanations of this and many ways in which we can teach the methods for going beyond this.
And Today we want to kind of concern ourselves with the method of meditating on the Four Immeasurables. We’re going to talk about the Four immeasurables. What are the four immeasurables? Immeasurable equanimity, immeasurable love, immeasurable compassion, and immeasurable joy. So with respect to the first, that is immeasurable equanimity, as we have explained before, within our mind our difficulties exist within our mind.
Up to this point, we have experienced a steady unbroken stream of suffering. If we were to ask upon what is the main causes and conditions dependent upon all these various sufferings arise? All the problems that we face, the difficulties, are dependent upon attachment to one’s own side and aversion to other side. So you know, we can begin with an experiment. Think of a great number of people, a thousand or ten thousand, maybe one hundred thousand people.
And we take this large group of people and begin to divide them up and how we feel towards these people. Some of the people we’re going to feel we’re going to like, we’re going to feel very close to, for example, our relatives, our friends, maybe our children. So we set them to one side, all these people that we like a great deal that we feel close to. Then the other side we’re going to have a group who we consider as enemies, people we have problems with that we don’t like. So we take out of this large group of people we set them to another side.
And then there’s a group left over to where we feel neutral or indifferent. We have no feelings of liking, we don’t dislike them, we have no feelings whatsoever, we just feel indifferent. So we set this neutral group in the middle and we’re going to look at these three groups of people that we’ve divided up. So we now we divided all these people into three groups and now we’re going to take a look at the basis for how we divided up the people in these three groups. So the one group we’ve one group is other people we feel close to that we are those whom we hold near our relatives, our wife, husband, our children, even people who live in our area, the people, our countrymen.
We have a feeling of closeness to these people. And what is this based upon? We will find that this is based upon attachment. Now that we look at the other group, the second of the three groups, the people we don’t like, Some are actual enemies to us. Others, we put in that group simply because they might be our relatives’ enemies.
Not only that, we might put these people in the group because, for example, You’re Australian. I’m becoming enemies of Australia. They’re not even our actual enemies, but because they are enemies of Australia, we put them in this group of the people we don’t like, we have problems with. What is this classification based upon? It’s based upon hatred.
So we have a great deal of attachment. Individuals have a great deal of attachment for their wife, their husband, their children, for their home. And through the power of attachment, we engage in we collect negative karma and negative actions. And these people who we like so very much, if they were to be hurt, if someone hurts them, toward the who hurt them, we become angry. Not only that, but in order to please all the people who we hold close to us, we engage in many negative actions in trying to bring them gifts, giving them gifts so we in order to get gifts for them, in order to please them, we commit various types of negative actions.
So therefore we can see that there’s a link between this group of people whom we’re attached to, the people who we hold close and our suffering which will arise from the negative actions that we incur in trying to please them. Now if we were to if we were to think, what is the reason I’m so attached to this particular group of people? So what is the reason? If we examine it, we merely can come up with the reason that in this life that these people have given us a little benefit, that they’ve cared for us a little. And in return, we have become attached to them.
We take the second of the three groups, the people who we don’t like. Sometimes merely by seeing these people, you know, we develop a great deal of anger just by seeing them. And just by hearing their name, simply that, our mind is disturbed. And not only that, we developed if these people who we don’t like, these people who we call enemies, if they have problems, if they undergo suffering, we wish them to undergo suffering. We’re glad when they do.
And therefore in dependence upon and then there arises a dependent upon this hatred which we have for these people. We collect a great deal of negative karma and negative actions. So we have to question why is it that I have what is the reason I have for not liking this group of people? So the only reason we can come up with is that in this life, this particular group of people, they haven’t benefited me, they’ve, treated me wrongly in some small way, maybe they prevented me from, gaining the things that I want and maybe perhaps it’s only because they don’t like me. Therefore, this is the only reason we can come up with.
So we have these two groups now merely dependent upon some slight benefit on their benefiting us in some slight way. We like them And this group, the second group, merely because they hurt us in some slight way, some slight way, we have we that they’ve harmed us in some slight way, we have disliked for them. So we have to think that there’s no basis for my attachment to this group that I hold closely. Why? Because even though this group has given shown me some benefit and given me some benefit in past lives, just like this group which I hold as my enemies, they have hurt me a great deal.
And they’ve brought us a great deal of harm in all the various people, in all our various past lives. In past lives, in the course of taking rebirths, they’ve beat us. They’ve actually killed us in past lives. So in the course of infinite past lives, they have killed us again and again and again and again. If we were to pile up all the corpses of our bodies, which they through their killing us, it would fill up the world.
And they’ve not only that, they’ve they’ve stolen our possessions and and they’ve hurt us a great deal. Then because of that, you know, what what is the basis for my reason for being Because of that, you know, I have no real reason for it being so attached to this group of people. So, you know, if we think in this way, think along these lines using reasoning, then our attachment will begin to lessen and lessen. But when we’re meditating on this, we not develop dislike for people like our mother, our father, and our children. So actually, you know, what is actually hurting us is our attachment.
This is what we’re trying to eliminate. Actually, we should treat all these people with liking and love. Now we turn our attention to the second group, the group we hold as enemies. This group, we have no reason for the hatred that we feel toward them. If we look at the infinite number of past lives, during the course of these past lives they have been our mother and our father, they have been our husbands and wives and have treated us with kindness again and again.
If we look at the actual situation, if we pick out the worst enemy, the person who actually is our worst enemy, this very person has been our mother countless times in the past. If we were to consider just the milk that we have drunk from the breast of this person when this person was our mother in the past lives, that milk would fill the ocean of the earth. So therefore, considering these reasons there’s no basis for the hatred we feel towards these people that in fact they have been extremely kind to us. So we’ve looked at these two groups. We can see that the people who we hold close, there’s no basis for attachment in actuality.
And the people we hold distant, the people we have aversion for, there’s no basis for a hatred for them. Actuality, there’s no difference between these two groups. These two groups are actually equal in the way they have benefited and harmed us. But if we don’t have to talk about, you know, with respect to friend and close and distant people, friend and enemy, we don’t even have to talk about past lives. Even in this life, in one year, in one month, in one week, even in one minute, these positions can change back and forth.
So we can see this with relationship to international politics. At one time, nations are enemies and a short time later they can be close to be working together in friendship. So take an example in Tibet when the Chinese when the now the present Tibetan refugees were still living in Tibet during that period of time, the number one enemy of the Chinese were the Americans. So during this period there was a great deal of propaganda against the Americans. They would put up posters and make speeches on the radio denouncing the American people and the American country.
While on the other hand, Russia was the closest ally of China. But now the situation has changed after the passing of Mao Tse Tung. Now these days America is a close ally of China and Russia has become an enemy. So, you know, from moment to moment, these relationships are changing amongst nations, but also amongst the various people around us. So for example, you know, we can take a couple, the husband and wife.
Amongst all the people in the world, the wife holds the husband closest and the husband likewise holds his wife amongst all the various all the people in the world, this one person closest to him. But in but in that this this extremely close relationship, even in one moment, through a few small words can be transformed where they can be completely reversed. And they can actually immediately develop dislike for each other and consider each other as enemies. So what is basis for all our difficulties, all our problems? It is attachment and hatred.
If we don’t have attachment, hatred in our mind, then whomever we meet, we have no reason to dislike them. Whoever we meet, they’re we they’re they’re all the same to us. So in the group that we hold close and the group that we hold distant, that we have dislike for, there’s no difference. They’re actually very much the same. If we take the third group, that is the group we hold as neutral, we have no feelings about, they’re exactly the same also.
So we are creating creating enemies and loved ones through the force of attachment and hatred. Enemies and these loved ones do not exist from their own side. Through the force of attachment those people who we like they have a very beautiful or pleasing appearance to us. And but but this this beautiful or pleasing appearance the mind grasps this as the way they actually exist. We don’t think that we’re actually creating this object.
If that object really existed as it appears, then whenever we see this object, it should always be like that. Actuality, is there anyone who is always pleasing whenever we see them? So we see the person, our beloved ones, we see them appear to us very beautiful. Those who we hold as enemies, they appear to us to be unattractive, unattractive or displeasing, displeasing appearance. But we have to stop and think, does this object which appears to us so pleasing, this object which appears to appear so displeasing, is it the way it actually exists?
This object that appears so pleasing to us, to another person, it may this very same object may appear displeasing. Not only that, this person who appears to us to be so pleasing, in that very same day, this whole appearance could be transformed and that same person could then again appear to us to be very displeasing. So these these appearances, one person appears very pleasing to us, has a very pleasing appearance, another person has a very displeasing appearance to us. This appearance in no way is coming from the side of the object. If we understand that we’re creating pleasing appearance through the force of attachment, that we’re creating this displeasing appearance through the force of hatred, this will begin to this will automatically eliminate begin to eliminate this attachment and hatred.
This person who we hold appears to us very displeasing, who we hold as an enemy, hold this person as an enemy. He appears displeasing because the basis of hatred. If we understand that appearance is not coming from his side, but it’s rising through the force of hatred, then we can immediately eliminate our hatred. So we have to understand what is the reason that we can eliminate these emotions, these attachment and hatred? Because these are wrong consciousnesses.
They’re mistaken consciousness. They arise in dependence upon wrong mental application or wrong mental engagement. These objects, in fact, don’t exist at all. These objects don’t exist. If they if this if this enemy was really an enemy from his own side, whenever we met him, whenever we saw him, he should appear very displeasing, very ugly to us.
And not only that, if this person was as bad as we think he is, that we hold him to be, then whoever met this very same person would likewise hold this person to be just as bad as we think they are. He appeared to be just as displeasing. And they don’t see it this way. And for example, our enemy’s friend actually holds to him he appears a very pleasing person. So in this way, we can see that there’s no difference between friend and enemy and we can develop a feeling of equanimity towards both holding them with regard.
So if we do not have this mind of equanimity, it’s extremely difficult to practice Dharma. For example, if we were in a building and we were going to paint something on the wall, like, you know, what we might call fresco. We’re going to paint the wall with a painting. The first thing we do, have to have a very smooth, even surface. And with this with this very smooth, even surface, then we can paint a very beautiful painting on the wall.
But then on the other hand, if we have a very rough surface, very uneven, then there’s no way that we’re going to be able to paint a very beautiful painting in the wall. So likewise, in dependence upon this even smooth quality of equanimity which we develop in our mind, using this as a basis, we can paint a beautiful Dharma practice. It’s like if we have a white piece of cloth, you know, a white piece of cloth can be dyed, any color that we like very quite easily. You know, there’s no stains on it, there’s no, defects in the cloth, then taking this as this this white piece of cloth as a basis, whatever color we like, whether red, yellow, blue, we can easily dye it any color we like. So this is the way we can cultivate immeasurable equanimity by ceasing the emotions of hatred and attachment.
So, you know, whatever whatever people we meet, whoever whoever we meet, whether they’re enemies or loved ones, all these types of divisions that we made amongst people, we have to begin to see them as the same, having the same regard for them. So in this way, whoever whoever whoever the sentient being we may meet, you know, it doesn’t matter who it is, we we we, upon this basis of equanimity, we develop the thought that may they be happy, may they not suffer.