Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 8-minute teaching, Lama Lhundup examines the ethics and mechanics of generosity through the lens of Buddhist compassion practice. He opens with a practical ethical dilemma: when should we refuse to give, even when asked? He explores the principle that if a gift would cause harm, withholding it becomes the compassionate choice—whether the case is donating a body part, lending a weapon, or supporting someone toward their downfall. He then moves to the heart of training in bodhisattva practice: repeatedly giving away one’s body, wealth, and merit, with the aspiration to eventually develop the ability to take rebirth in difficult realms to benefit those beings directly. Through visualisation—imagining the body as white light at the heart, transforming into whatever sentient beings need—practitioners generate profound merit even when direct help is not yet possible. Lama Lhundup responds to a student’s question about reconciling the concrete gift of body with the subtle light visualisation, clarifying both stages of the practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 C o P.mp3
UUID: 4529d4ab-336d-4e34-8339-abf01fb3fe90
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Changing our perspectives (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 8.3 minutes
Words: ~571
Or he’s going to make use of what we give him, whatever generosity we make, if we know it’s going to bring him harm eventually, then this is a special occasion and we should not give him whatever is going to hurt him. So, us now, for example, if someone wants a part of your body, your eye, or something like that, because we don’t have the ability to do it now, it would be wrong for us to try to make such a generosity. Or if you wanted somebody to ask you for a knife or a gun and you had reason to believe that they were going to use it to harm someone else, it would be wrong for you to give it to him. Can you? Yeah.
I just wanted you to repeat that last bit before you answer the question. So the attainment the extinguishment of self-cherishing attainment of Buddhahood occur at the same time? Thank you, So, the cause is training, as we have been explaining, training and giving away one’s body, one’s wealth, and one’s root of virtue, again and again without without any interruption, is the cause for extinguishing one’s own self-cherishing. So as far as putting flesh, because we can’t do that, we we imagine that we’re doing that? It’s bringing it in place.
Because you like to get rid of it. Yeah. Know, positive. Really? God, you can put your life.
You can get rid By the way, So, at the moment, we don’t have the ability to directly benefit these beings, for example, hell beings. But by doing this practice, we develop the ability whereby eventually we will be able to purposely take rebirth in hell in order to benefit hell beings. There are many accounts of people having developed the ability to do this. Though doing this, for example, thinking in this way does not directly benefit those sentient beings, we ourselves are developing great merit through this training process. But, though we don’t directly benefit in this training, we are not directly benefiting, for example, our mother and father and all these various people who are trying to imagine we are taking away their suffering and giving away our happiness to them, though they aren’t directly affected by what we’re doing.
There is great profit or there’s great benefit to be derived because of the great merit that we are creating. I’m thinking this about the white light and our bodies. You keep relating the two. I I’m I can’t see one as being the same as the other. So, first, we imagine, you know, we’re going to send away We’re going to give away our body, and we imagine that our body transforms into this white light at our heart.
So, we imagine white light at our heart, and this white light is body, our wealth, and all our virtues, and the fruits of all our merit. And it’s in the form of white light. And then, we send out this white light which transforms into whatever the sentient beings need: houses, food, warmth, whatever they need. Also, there’s the visualization where we actually imagine sending our body. And and this body, we imagine this body transforming into all these various objects.
Okay? Thank you. Yes. Yeah? You have some questions?
Okay? Okay. I think this is good enough. Right. Yes.
A short meditation.