Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Lama Lhundup teaches the meditation practice of giving and taking, a core method for developing compassion and the awakening heart (bodhicitta). In this 46-minute session, he walks through the step-by-step progression: beginning with one’s mother and the intention to free her from suffering, then extending to fathers, loved ones, neutral people, and enemies. He emphasizes that those who struggle with taking on others’ suffering can start by taking their own future suffering upon themselves. He explains the visualization technique: imagining merit transformed into white light that dissolves into others, alleviating their pain and bringing them happiness, then extending this to all six realms of sentient beings. He stresses that this practice is not confined to meditation cushion time but can be applied whenever suffering arises in daily life—a headache becomes a gateway to imagine taking headaches from all beings. Finally, he illustrates the profound fruits of this training through the Buddha’s former life story of giving his body to a starving tigress, showing how sustained practice gradually dismantles self-cherishing and ripens Buddhahood. Pitched at practitioners with some background in Buddhist concepts.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 C o P.mp3
UUID: 21853f31-6c76-44f6-ad13-abf1d032ca21
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Changing our perspectives (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.2 minutes
Words: ~2,883
So, therefore, we’ve seen that our mother doesn’t our kind mother who doesn’t have the happiness that she wants, we make the exceptional resolve, the determination, I am going to join my mother with the happiness that she desires. This is the meditation on love. So then, with this feeling of wanting to bring this happiness to your mother, we transform all our virtues, all our merit, our roots of virtue, all the fruits of happiness that we may enjoy. We transform these into a great happiness like the bliss of a of a Buddha, and this bliss takes the form of a white light. And then, this white light, which is the great bliss from which we have transformed all our virtues and merits, it goes out.
We can take it out, for example, through our nose. Imagine this white light is going out through our nose and it dissolves into our mother and it brings all the happiness that she desires, both physical and mental to her. And then seeing that our the happiness that our mother is experiencing, we also develop great bliss. So, again and again, we practice this giving and taking with respect to our mother. Then, when this is going well, we practice taking as the object our father.
In exactly the same way that we meditated with respect to our mother, we now practice with respect to our father. And then, progressing in the same way, we take all the various people, our loved ones, those whom we hold dear, our friends. And likewise, we begin to progress to our countrymen and then all the people in the world, all the sentient beings, whatsoever, whosoever. If we proceed in this way, we cultivate in this way, then it will become easy to desire to bring happiness to sentient beings, whoever we meet. Likewise, can proceed to all the various realms if we have some conviction that these other realms exist.
For example, can imagine they take as the object hell beings and imagine the great suffering that they are experiencing, the infinite suffering of heat or the infinite suffering of cold. And then we imagine the suffering and we take it upon ourselves and we give away our happiness, whatever they need to And then we imagine all the various realms of, for example, animals. We take on their suffering. Again, we imagine the various sufferings of all the people and also the gods, and we give them our happiness. So, this is the way of training and giving and taking.
Some people, they do not like the thought of bringing happiness to their enemies. So, there are many people who experience difficulty in trying to imagine taking on the sufferings of others, and especially their enemies. They experience difficulty in trying to give away their happiness, especially to their enemies. They think, you know, I’ve already got enough problems. Why do I you know, how can I bear to take on more sufferings upon myself?
Such a person who can’t bear the thought of taking upon more sufferings then arises the need that we have to proceed in a different manner. So, this person should imagine he takes his own suffering, for example, that he is going to experience this evening. And he imagines the suffering that he is going to go through this evening and he takes that on himself. And he imagines the suffering that he might experience tomorrow and he takes that on himself. Next month whatever suffering may happen, he is going to take that on.
Whatever experience that he may think he is going to have to go through next year, he takes that on himself. Whatever suffering he may experience in the rest of his life, he takes that suffering upon himself. Likewise, we can go further and take on the suffering that we may experience in future lives and take this suffering upon ourselves. So, if this goes well, then we can begin to substitute our mother and and take on their suffering. And then proceed from there, taking on the suffering of those whom we hold dear, and neutral people, and then finally all people.
So, you know, it’s very necessary that we should, whenever possible, train in this, train our mind in the developing equanimity and exchange of self for others. So, you know, we shouldn’t confine our practice, our training to only when we are sitting in meditation. We can do this practice at all times, you know, no matter whether we are eating, or going about, whether we’re going to the toilet. There’s no time when we can’t be training our mind in exchange and equalizing self for others. So, whenever we experience some type of suffering, for example, we experience a headache or a stomachache, at this time, because we are very aware of suffering, if we imagine our mother or father or someone else experiencing that suffering, and that we wouldn’t want them to experience that suffering just like we don’t want to experience.
So, we take that suffering on ourselves at that time. We imagine that we are taking the suffering on this headache or this stomachache, and this will lessen our suffering. For example, when we have a headache, we are experiencing the suffering of a headache, we should turn our attention outside of ourselves towards others and imagine that whoever in the world is experiencing a headache, who has ever experienced such suffering, may I take that suffering of their headache upon myself now and experience it for myself. And imagine that we’re actually taking the suffering of their headache, the pain of their headache, and that we’re experiencing that as a headache for ourselves. So, at these times when we are suffering like a headache, we should pray that, May I be able to actually take on the sufferings of all sentient beings who are suffering as I am now suffering?
Likewise, when afflictive emotions like desire or self-cherishing arise in our own mind, we recognize that now desire has arisen. We imagine, may all sentient beings who are experiencing the same type of desire I am may I take that desire upon myself. Or, if they have hatred, may I take when we experience hatred, may I take on all the hatred that people are experiencing at this very moment, may I take upon myself. So, if we constantly practice in this way, constantly train in this way, taking on the sufferings of others, taking on the problems of others, taking on the various afflictive emotions of others, not only this will begin to decrease our own self-cherishing, and there’s been infinite benefits to be derived from this practice. If we were to consider the benefits of this practice of giving and taking, if someone were to make charity to others, you know, for a hundred years giving them food, giving them housing, shelter, giving them all their needs, would be great benefit, there would be merit in this.
But even just a few minutes of trying to train and cultivate giving and taking would be of far greater benefit. So, giving so there’s giving and taking. In giving or sending? Sending. Sending.
In sending to others, we send our body, which is like a wish fulfilling gem. We send all our wealth and the root of our virtue. For example, if we were to imagine a hell being who is experiencing great suffering from heat, then we would send forth our body. We would imagine that we are sending forth our body and our body transforms into a cool breeze, alleviate all his sufferings of heat, and experiences great happiness. Likewise, if we imagine a hell being who is suffering being tortured by cold And we send forth our body and it transforms into warmth, into sunshine, completely eliminating his cold and he experiences a special happiness.
Likewise, once we’ve eliminated their various sufferings and we’ve given them happiness, but we do not stop there. We also give them we imagine that they have not only have they are happy now, but we free them from the lower realms and we imagine that we placed them in happy migrations. And not only that, we send them food and shelter and all the clothing, whatever they need. And not only that, we send spiritual masters, spiritual teachers to give them teachings. And depending upon the spiritual master, they practice what is to be cultivated, what is to be abandoned, and they practice, for example, the six perfections such as generosity, etc.
And we proceed and we imagine the realm of the hungry ghosts who are tortured by hunger. And we send forth our body which transforms into food and their suffering of hunger is alleviated and they experience a special great bliss. Yes. Then, we send forth our body which transforms into the causes for attaining a happy migration. And, depending upon taking birth in a happy migration, they meet with a spiritual teacher and again, through the practices of the six perfections, they are able to develop the realizations of Buddhahood.
Seeing that they have found complete happiness, we experience a great happiness ourselves. Likewise, we take as our object animals, and we imagine that we send forth our body in the form of white light and this transforms into alleviates all their various sufferings, whatever we imagine they may have. It alleviates the obstructions of ignorance and due to this they are able to take rebirth in happy migration. This light is transformed into houses and food, whatever they may need. And likewise, they meet a spiritual teacher and dependence upon meeting the spiritual teacher and practicing Dharma, special potentials to attain Buddhahood are ripened, and they attain Buddhahood and we experience great happiness.
Then, the various beings in the human realm, we send forth our body in the form of white light, which transforms into whatever will alleviate their various sufferings. Sentient beings, humans, have great many varieties of desires. Whatever desire we give them, we give them food, clothing, house, wealth. If they need medicine or doctors, we give them whatever they may need and alleviate their suffering. Through this, we experience a great happiness.
Likewise, we take as the object the god realms, and the gods have great desire for various wealth and possessions, so we send that in the form of white light which transforms into whatever they desire. Also, eliminate their various sufferings. For example, when they have signs of death, the approach of death, experience a great deal of suffering, so we eliminate this suffering. We remove the cause and, in dependence upon this, we implant, we imagine that we have given them a special potency whereby they will be able to realize Buddhahood. So, we we we we view all these sentient beings and we give them all the various marvels of the world, whatever is beautiful in the world.
We move all whatever difficulties they may have. We remove their afflictive emotions such as desire and hatred. We send forth all the roots our virtue to them, and through doing this we experience a special bliss. We cultivate the thought that all the happiness experience is dependent upon the kindness of others, and all the suffering that we experience arises from our own self-cherishing. Thinking about the advantages of cherishing others and disadvantages disadvantages of cherishing oneself, this will lead to the actual development of bodhicitta, or the awakening heart.
So, at the moment, what we are doing is training. We can’t actually give over or send our bodies in actuality at the moment. So, at the moment, even if someone said, I’ll give you one hundred thousand dollars if you cut some of your flesh off, we wouldn’t be able to do that. So we aren’t able to actually give away our flesh. But, we can do it now if we train in this way.
Just as if, presently we can give away small things, for example, we can give away food or some old clothing to a beggar. Eventually, will reach the place where we can actually give our body an experience, and through this giving experience great joy. The reason we can’t give away our bodies at present is because we have a great attachment to body. We don’t have the ability to harm it because we wouldn’t be able to bear the suffering. If we again and again cultivate this giving and taking, then we will eventually develop the sincere awakening heart, a non artificial awakening heart or bodhicitta.
The ordinary bodhisattva, he has developed the awakening heart, but he is still an ordinary bodhisattva. He is able to give away even his own body because he does not have attachment for it. But still, he experiences suffering, but he’s able to bear the suffering. But the bodhisattva who proceeds and attains direct perception of emptiness, that he attains first he attains the grounds, For him, also can give away his body, but he does not experience any suffering, and therefore it’s quite easy for him to make generosity of his body. Such a bodhisattva, if someone were to ask him, when he is a bodhisattva who has attained the first ground, if someone said, I want a part of your body, would you please give me your eye?
He would not only be able to give his eye very freely, but he would experience a great bliss which exceeds that of even the lesser vehicle, Foe Destroyer. But if we don’t train our mind in this practice, there’s no way that it’s going to arise in the future. So, are many accounts in the biographies of the rebirths of the Buddha where he practiced for many eons. Over and over again, actually made generosity of his head and eyes and various parts of his body. So, there is an account when the Śākyamūni Buddha, when he was a bodhisattva training on the path, when he actually gave his body to a mother tigress.
So there was a there was a story about there were three boys who went for a walk up the mountain. The prince.. Yeah. So, on this mountain there lived a mother with her cubs, a tigress with her cubs. She was starving.
And when the children came upon them, she was about to eat her cubs. And the Buddha to be, he asked the other boys, what is the tiger going to eat? What does tigers usually eat? And the boys answered, Well, tigers eat flesh, they eat meat, but there is no meat around. So, he said to his two friends, You go ahead, I have some work to do.
So, after the boys had left, he laid down in front of the tigress who was starving. But she couldn’t eat him. So, she wasn’t able to eat him. So, he actually took a stick and began to rip his flesh apart in order to make generosity of his body to the tigress. So, while he was making generosity of his body to the tigress, he made the prayer that when I manifest Buddhahood in the future, may you be one of my disciples when I turn the Wheel of Dharma.
So, in dependence upon having made generosity of his body, it created immeasurable merit. So, by having given away his body again and again and his wealth, he was able to rid himself of his various desire, attachment, hatred, and he was able to accumulate the two collections of merit and and he attained Buddhahood. When the Buddha first turned the Wheel of Dharma amongst those who heard the teaching on this first turning of the Wheel of Dharma was the former tigress, the person who was the former tigress. So, whatever is happening, you know, we should always be trying to train in this developing the equality and exchanging self for others. You know, we should try to use whatever methods we can in cultivating this mind.
Should consider all the various disadvantages that arise from holding oneself dear or cherishing oneself and all the advantages and benefits from holding others dear or cherishing others. In general, when we talk about we talk about self, we generally are talking about a self when we say, I, I, I. And we hold that the I truly exists. We generally mean that type of self. Here, when we’re talking about the self within the context of equalizing and exchanging self for others, we’re talking about a self which doesn’t allow for example, doesn’t allow ourselves to give away our body.
Why can’t we give away our body to others is because we cherish ourselves. We hold ourselves dear. This self is the self we’re talking about in this context when we talk about exchange of self for others. This self or this I which is held very dear. This self is different than what we generally talk about.
So, if we cultivate again and again this train in this way, then the elimination of self-cherishing and Buddhahood occur simultaneously. I understand, but giving surely is very much a a responsibility.