Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching, Lama Lhundup guides practitioners through the practice of giving and taking, the fourth of seven techniques for subduing self-cherishing. He walks through visualizing the six realms of saṃsāra—humans, hell beings, hungry ghosts, and animals—and imagining that we transform our body, possessions, and roots of virtue into whatever each being needs to progress toward Buddhahood, while simultaneously taking on their suffering. Lama Lhundup emphasizes that this practice directly weakens self-grasping by reversing our habitual clenching around our own happiness. He addresses a common objection—whether we should send beings their desires regardless of harm—clarifying that we offer only what supports Dharma practice and genuine well-being. The teaching concludes with an extended discussion on why all sentient beings have been our mother across countless rebirths, establishing the emotional and logical foundation for universal compassion. Pitched at practitioners with foundational exposure to Dharma concepts.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 7FMT.mp3
UUID: 578eebec-e980-4787-a26e-fa16d7aa9d0c
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Seven-fold mind training (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.3 minutes
Words: ~3,046
They attain a we send forth a body which possesses leisure and fortune, we’re able to practice. We send whatever send forth food and clothes, give them spiritual teachers, we give them books, whatever they need to practice, and likewise they progress through the path and attain Buddhahood. Likewise, imagine the neighboring hells and the beings there, and we send forth bodies of light and flowers, And then and then These beings in the neighboring hells, they suffer from such pains as being harmed by weapons, being eaten by insects, stepping into fire pits, walking and having their body burnt. So they experience all these various sufferings. And we give them send forth beautiful bodies and flowers and radiant bodies and flowers.
Then all the various Again, we send them whatever houses to live in, whatever necessities they needed, teachers to show them the path, and the conducive conditions to practice. Likewise, we imagine the realm of the hungry ghosts, and they hear the suffering from hunger and thirst, and we give them we eliminate their suffering and then send forth beautiful bodies. They have perfect bodies. And we send them a house to live in, various possessions, whatever they need. Then we give them a spiritual teacher to show them shows them the path.
We send them all their conditions to practice, and then eventually they depend upon all that they attain Buddhahood. Likewise, we imagine the beings in the animal realm, they’re suffering, for example, from stupidity. And we imagine that we send a light. We send them the wisdom which understands the nature of phenomena, but we send them this in the form of light, which eliminates the darkness of their ignorance, and they attain a special body. And then we give them a body which has all the necessary to practice, and we send them, as we did before, a place to live in, all the necessary possessions, helpers.
We send them a spiritual teacher and all the conducive conditions necessary to practice until they, again like the others, attain Buddhahood. So, transforming our body into a wish fulfilling gem for these sentient beings is of extremely great benefit. We’ll gain a great deal of positive energy or merit. So, you know, because of our self-cherishing, we cherish our own body very much, and by again and again giving away our body, So, because of our self-cherishing, we cherish our body extremely a great deal. And by again and again giving away our body, then we will begin to our self-cherishing will lessen.
So we’re opposing this idea of cherishing our body by giving it away. Likewise, we give away our possessions, as we did with our body. Whatever the sentient beings want, whatever they need, we transform our possessions. We give them away and transform them into the various needs and desires of sentient beings. Likewise, we give away the root of our merit, the root of our positive actions to others.
We imagine that we eliminate the suffering of all these beings, and that now we transform all our positive actions into those things which will help them along the path. We give them transform our root of virtue into wisdom or into faith in the Dharma, belief in the Dharma, into the mind of enlightenment, into renunciation whatever is going to benefit them. And so. We take the mother of this life So we take the mother of this life and we imagine that we are transforming our roots of our virtue into all conducive conditions necessary for her to progress along a path in the form of a mind of enlightenment, renunciation, wisdom, concentration, etc. And through this she attains Buddhahood.
So, we take our father, and we imagine our father, then our friends, our enemies, and finally all sentient beings that we send forth the root of our virtues in the form of a light. And this light dissolves into them and it causes them to generate the various paths. It causes them to develop faith in Dharma, wisdom, a mind of enlightenment, renunciation, or anything which is conducive to their completing the paths. Through this, all the necessary conditions for the path are completed and they actually attain Buddhahood. Yes.
So, we take on the various sufferings of the beings, and we give away or we send our body possessions and the roots of our virtue. And we combine these two. Giving and taking are combined. Back and forth, we take on the sufferings and give them take on the various sufferings and we give them all the happinesses through our body, possessions and virtuous actions, and we take on the sufferings of others and keep going back and forth, giving and taking, combining these actions. So we should take on the various sufferings of all sentient beings.
We can even take on the obstacles to knowledge of the bodhisattvas or the obstacles confronting the arhats. But we can take on these obstacles that they’re experiencing to their completion of the path. But we don’t take any on the sufferings of the Buddhists, nor do we take on the sufferings of our root teachers, our gurus. So, but in the case when we actually are giving away, giving away our body, possessions, and roots of virtue, and we should imagine that we’re giving to all beings whatsoever. We’re giving them everything that’s beautiful.
We can imagine that we’re making offerings, giving also to the Buddhas and our teachers. We can imagine that we’re giving them, for example, long life. We send forth our body, etc, and to transform into long life for our teachers. So we should vary the object of our meditation until our mind becomes very flexible. In a way, sometimes we can take on the sufferings of sentient beings in the right side of ourselves.
Sometimes the suffering of sentient beings on the left side of ourselves, sometimes our mother, sometimes our enemy. We keep different types of sentient beings trying to develop flexibility of our mind. So, in this way, imagine that we’re taking on all the suffering of sentient beings and giving away our roots of virtue to all sentient beings. Taking on sufferings upon imagining that we’re taking upon these sufferings, we’re purifying our own negative actions, our own negative karma. By imagining that we’re giving away our body possessions and which are a virtue to all sentient beings, we’re collecting a great deal of merit.
So this is the most excellent type of practice, is this purifying and collecting. So we can we’re actually harming our afflictive emotions by we’re actually directly harming our own self-cherishing. So until we actually abandon self-cherishing Once we abandon self-cherishing, we’ll be Buddhas. Until we abandon self-cherishing, we’re going to suffer. We’re always liable to suffer.
So ultimately, the purpose of mind training is to subdue our self-cherishing. To the degree that we subdue our self-cherishing, that we eliminate our self-cherishing, to that much we’ll be happier. If we eliminate self-cherishing, half of our self-cherishing, we’re going to experience half as much suffering, and we’re going to be more happy to that same degree. To the degree that we subdue, eliminate our self-cherishing, we’re going to be that much happier. But we may think, Well, I’m going to do this practice of giving and taking in hopes to be happy.
But in fact, there’s no way to attain Buddhahood for our own purpose. So we have to try to think that We should think that we should try to develop the motivation for this practice of giving and taking, not to eliminate one’s own suffering, but I am doing it in order to eliminate the sufferings of others. Only the sufferings of others. The sufferings of only others. Likewise, we shouldn’t have the motivation for doing the sending, that we’re thinking, Well, by sending I’m creating great merit.
That we should develop the motivation for doing the sending part in order to bring only happiness to others, to establish sentient beings in Buddhahood. So whatever activity we’re involved in, we should not let this I pollute our activities. Whatever we do, we’re always grasping for I. So, in dependence upon developing renunciation, then we can develop compassion, a compassion in which we consider all the various types of suffering in cyclic existence that all the various beings are undergoing. And thinking about all the suffering that all the various types of suffering that are undergoing, develop a compassion which thinks to separate them.
Not only to separate them, but take the responsibility or the sole responsibility that I alone will separate them from this suffering that they’re experiencing. We cannot bear that. We can no longer bear to see others suffering. If by generating such a type of compassion, then this practice of giving and taking becomes extremely powerful practice until we actually can develop our mind to the place where we can give away our own eye to someone. And we can, through this practice, we can actually develop the experience where we can give away our sincere generosity which is able to give our own flesh.
And even while this flesh is being given away, our mind will experience no suffering whatsoever, but will experience great joy. So within the Bodhisattva paths, after having attained the path of accumulation, the path of preparation, then the bodhisattva attains the first ground. Upon attaining the first ground, the bodhisattva does not experience suffering. So, even when he is cut, he has no suffering. He does not experience suffering.
Reason experience suffering, for example, when we’re being cut is because we have So we have a contaminated body. That’s the reason why when we’re cut we suffer. But Bodhisattva does not have a contaminated body. His body has a mental basis. The reason we have such a body that we do is through the conception, the grasping itself, the conception of a truly existent self.
For example, you know, we have because we identify with this body, causes suffering. When someone else, another sentient being is hurt, a dog is hurt, we don’t experience that suffering, do we? Because we don’t say this is my we don’t have this idea, this is my body, this feeling. So as long as we have this self-cherishing, self grasping, then we’re liable to suffer. So the method for eliminating self-cherishing is through this giving and taking.
So, you know, for us beginners, though it’s very beneficial to meditate on meditational deities, yidams, but it’s of greater benefit to meditate on such giving and taking. Without the mind of renunciation, without the mind of enlightenment, though we meditate and have faith in meditational deities, it not help us to gain a happy migration in the future. There are cases of yogis who have meditated on these deities and it’s actually caused them to take rebirth as an animal, a hungry ghost in the future. So, it’s necessary if we’re going to be liberated, we must have renunciation. If necessary, if we’re going to attain Buddhahood, then we must have the mind of enlightenment and exchange oneself for others.
Do you have questions? So it’s like in most of our activities, you know, like a Buddha House, we don’t take sole responsibility to do something, we’re going to think somebody else is going to do it. And everybody else is thinking the same thing, so nothing ever gets accomplished. This is the way things really are. We’re always saying, Well, somebody else will do it.
I don’t have to do But if we actually accept sole responsibility, then we would actually develop the power to be able to do it. Through taking sole responsibility, we can actually develop the ability to do it. Otherwise we never will. So, you know, if we, if we, if we, for example, someone’s sick, and that we know we accept sole responsibility for that, we can’t we aren’t able to bear their suffering, they’re being tortured by their suffering, by their illness, and we can’t bear that. And we take if we don’t take responsibility, sole responsibility, even though we don’t like their suffering, it may not we may not actually do anything to help them.
We may depend upon others. Whereas if we actually accept responsibility, sole responsibility, then we will definitely be moved to really assist them to help them. When you talked about transforming the body into a wish-fulfilling gem for sentient beings, you said to wish for their wants and needs. Well, it it do you have a moral judgment coming in there? I mean, if they want sixty women for sex and drugs and alcohol, do you is that what you’d wish for them, or do you So you shouldn’t send them anything which would increase their afflictive emotions.
You anything which could bring their harm such as poisons or weapons. Those kinds of things you wouldn’t send them. So any type of things which would promote their practice of Dharma, would bring them temporal and ultimate happiness. For example, if you were to send man, if you were to send him a woman, this woman would be such of a type that just by seeing her, all your desires would be pacified. This is the type of woman that you would send.
This woman would be so beautiful that just to see her, the person would be satisfied. His desire would be satisfied. Can you do? I wanted to ask a question about what we got taught last week about imagining all sentient. It wasn’t just that we had to imagine all sentient beings were our mother, but that they actually had been our mother.
Is that right? Mhmm. But that included anything like animals and insects. No. I find that very difficult to do because there are so many millions of different things.
Could we must have had millions and millions of incarnations for that to be the case. How many rebirths do you believe in? Do you believe in one rebirth or many rebirths? Well, I can imagine, well One life? No, believe in rebirths.
It’s just that I can’t imagine that the earth has been around that many millions and millions of years that you can have had so many moments. And another thing that I wanted to know about because when I’ve read about reincarnation I’ve read that often you are with the same souls or whatever want call them, you know that you’re connected maybe to whoever we should mother or people that are close to you in this incarnation of the ones that you’ve been connected with in other incarnations. If that’s the case then that means that you’d have to have even more lives because if you’re connected with a certain number Do you follow what I’m trying to say? How do you know we were first born on this earth? So even this earth has gone through a numberless process of rising and disintegration, arising and disintegration.
Numberless time. So, the entire universe, as we know it, goes through a process in each eon of coming to existence and going out of existence. And this is going on So there’s a time when there’s destruction of fire, destruction of all water, of the various elements, and it’s completely empty. And this process keeps repeating numberless times. Not only that, there’s similar worlds to this world, there’s numberless similar worlds to this world in other systems.
Like this world, other world systems. Countless world. Over this process of taking rebirth numerous times, know, when we took rebirth as a dog, we had a dog mother, and then we took rebirth as a horse, we had a horse mother, a yak mother, fish mother. There’s no one we can say that hasn’t been our mother’s. If you can point to someone and say, that person or this hasn’t been my mother, then Lama Lhundup will give you all the money in America.
So this can be established through reasoning and scriptures. For example, this particular insect, how many times it was your mother? We can’t say, We don’t have this particular clairvoyance. But it’s that the Buddha has such a clairvoyance where he could say, This insect was your mother in such and such lifetimes. He can name off all the lifetimes.
Likewise, the Buddha could say, What was the cause for this being to have taken rebirth as this insect? He could say, well, previous life he committed this negative action and dependent upon that negative action, now he’s born as this insect. So there are some phenomena that we cannot understand at present. For example, law of cause and effect, which cause produces which effect. But we rely on the word of the Buddha, on what he said about these subjects in order to understand them.
But we can’t understand them directly ourselves, but we can understand through our own experience that through our practice of Dharma that we become happier people. in dependence upon this, that this acts in a way as a proof that this leads us to believe that since we’ve experienced with ourselves that by the practice of Dharma we’ve become happier, then perhaps the other things that the Buddha spoke about were also true. And in fact, that he had no reason to lie, that he had no reason to trick us, that he’s not false, that he has no ignorance, and therefore we can begin to develop belief in other things that we can’t directly understand that he spoke about. With respect to all sentient beings having been our mother, we don’t really have to rely on Buddhist texts which refute that all sentient beings have not been our mother. No one can prove that all sentient beings have not been our mother, but there are reasons which support that they have been our mother.
So we don’t have to accept merely because the Buddha said it. If we if but if we if there is a correct reasoning established, then we have to accept it. Right? Okay. Okay.
Suffering those sentient beings. Now in order for this suffering