Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching, Lama Lhundup explores how to cultivate a genuine mind of enlightenment—an awakening heart dedicated to benefiting all sentient beings equally, whether one lives in solitude or in community. He begins by establishing the ultimate purpose of human life, then introduces the two classical methods for generating this mind: the sevenfold cause and effect practice, tracing this lineage back to the Indian master Atisha, who brought it to Tibet. Lhundup then walks through the first of the seven causes in detail—equanimity—showing how to train the mind to release partiality toward beloved and disliked people by recognizing how all beings have been both help and harm across countless past lives. He demonstrates this through graduated meditation on three imagined people, then progressively extends the practice outward to family, region, nationality, and all beings, emphasizing that a flat, impartial foundation is essential for authentic compassion and the mind of enlightenment to develop.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 TK and I.mp3
UUID: 8994b67c-bcb6-4999-b513-300ab754b5f4
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Towards kindness and insights (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~2,532
So we have finally attained a human, this human presence, human body. Now if we say, how can we really make its greatest use? What is its greatest purpose? It would be not only to fulfill our own purposes, our own benefit but to benefit all sentient beings regardless of whatever type of thing they may be. All simply means equally to benefit others.
If we can develop a non artificial mind of enlightenment, a awakening heart, no matter what we do, if we are with others in groups in the city living in town, then we can be of great benefit. Also if we live in isolation by ourselves meditating, we are also of great benefit. No matter what we do, if we have such a mind, we are going to be of great benefit. They have the attitude that when they are with other people, because they are with other people that afflictive emotions can arise. Therefore they say I’m going to go live by myself in isolation.
But their living in isolation is purely an attachment to their own self purposes. It’s purely for their own purposes with themselves, away from these afflictive emotions that they’re living in isolation. We were talking about living in isolation before. There are different types of isolation. Isolation of body, speech and mind.
What we really mean by isolation is isolation of mind. What we are isolating ourselves from are the afflictive emotions and our own self-cherishing. So if it’s not necessary for us to isolate ourselves from our self cherish and our afflictive emotions then being with others is of great benefit. Not only the benefit of this life but all lives, the greatest method is this mind of enlightenment for benefit. Just one minute.
I’m meditating on the precious mind of enlightenment. The merit created by just one minute of meditating on the mind of enlightenment brings happiness not only in this life, but all the way up to the attainment of Buddhahood. People who engage in business perhaps they make a profit, they do business, they make ten thousand dollars When they make an investment, they make an investment of one hundred dollars they start off with one hundred dollars and then through their business they make a profit, they get to get one hundred thousand dollars and they’re extremely pleased, extremely happy with having made such profit. But the profit to be gained from meditating on the mind of enlightenment is uncountable, we can’t even we can’t enumerate or count the benefits derived from meditating on the mind of enlightenment. There’s no greater profit that we can get than meditating on the mind of enlightenment.
So what are the methods for actually meditating on the mind of enlightenment? There are two methods for meditating on the mind of enlightenment. There is the sevenfold cause and effect method and equalizing and exchanging self with others. So this method for generating this mind seeking perfect complete enlightenment that’s coming from Tibet. How did it come?
It was originally introduced into Tibet by Atisha, the great Indian master Atisha brought this method into Tibet. So that Atisha had continuous rebirths five hundred and fifty three times as a master. Atisha was born into a royal family and he was a prince. And many people used to come to meet him, to have audience with him. And even it’s said that even at the age of eighteen months, when he was eighteen months old, he was making prayers that for the benefit of all sentient beings may I practice the Dharma.
So As he grew even at the age of six years old, he was considered one of the greatest masters in all of India. His parents were told that if he stayed in the palace, he would someday become a great king and be of great benefit to people. But if he were to become a monk, he would become a great master. So Atisha’s father asked Atisha to stay in the palace and that he would someday be king, be a great king. But Atisha refused. So it was great hardship. The journey was great hardship.
They had many obstacles, and the the ship was tossed about. Are many types of harmful spirits who are trying to interfere with his going to because he he wanted to meditate on the mind of enlightenment. There would be many of these harmful spirits who are trying to obstruct his going. And so he finally arrived in Sumatra and he spent twelve years with Lama Serlingpa meditating until he got complete realization of the mind enlightenment and he returned to India and eventually he visited Tibet. He stayed in Tibet for seventeen years and it’s through the great kindness of Atisha that now the mind of enlightenment teaching is available.
Merely thinking that I must attain Buddhahood in order to place all sentient beings in liberation, merely that thought alone will not develop the non-artificial mind of enlightenment. At that time, when he went there, there were many Tibetan practitioners who did not know how to meditate on the mind of enlightenment. So the tradition of the sevenfold cause and effect instruction comes from the lineage passed down to the present. So the seven, which will give the order of meditation. First we begin with equanimity and recognizing all sentient beings as mother, remembering their kindness, developing a wish to repay their kindness, great compassion, great love, exceptional resolve.
So the the after So this this love is is called wishing love. Genuine love. And great compassion. And then exceptional resolve, or altruistic attitude, and then the mind of enlightenment. The first six are the causes and then the mind of enlightenment is the result.
So unless we practice these first six causes, there is no way to develop the fruit that is the mind of enlightenment. So we begin with the first, the way of meditating on equanimity. First, imagine So beginning with the way of meditating on equanimity, we are going to imagine three people. So the object is a neutral person, an enemy and a beloved person, someone whom we hold dear. These three people.
One way of meditating is we take them in order. So one way to take them individually and meditate on separately. The other way is to meditate on all three together. So we’re going to meditate on all these three people together. The neutral person is in the middle, the enemy on the right, and and the beloved person on the left.
So in the middle there’s a neutral person. We have a neutral feeling. We don’t we don’t have attachment for this person nor do we have hatred for this person. So this middle person, this neutral person, have no attachment for this person, no hatred but we also we feel indifferent towards this person. There’s no feeling of benefit.
We have no intention to benefit him. We feel indifferent. We have no intention to benefit him. We don’t want to hurt him. We’re just indifferent towards him.
So then we imagine on the right side someone whom we like a great deal, the person we like most. We imagine him to be on the right side and we begin to think and toward this person we have attachment And we think why do I hold this person so dear and what is my reason? And based upon the small reason that this person has benefited you in some small way in this lifetime. Maybe he gave you some food, maybe he gave you possessions, maybe money. He’s given you some small benefit in this life, some benefit in this life and depending upon this small reason we have attachment.
We hold this person very dear. So again, we take the we imagine this enemy on the left side and this is a person we feel angry towards and we try to analyze what is my reason that I hold this person as my enemy and we come up with these small reasons. For example, this person in some way hurt me, maybe he stole something from me And due to these reasons, these small reasons that in this life he has hurt me in some way, then we hold this person as our enemy. So these aren’t really correct reasons. I mean they’re just we call facsimiles of reasons.
Only apparent reason. But dependent upon these incorrect reasons we fall into hating one type of person. Depending on this other type of reason, another reason we fall into having attachment for the other type of person. So we think of this person who we hold dear and we think that actually our attachment towards this person is inappropriate because why in fact this person, this very same person has in our previous lives been our enemy. Person has killed me so many times that if I were to pile up my corpses they wouldn’t be able to fit in the world.
Therefore, my attachment towards this person is inappropriate. It’s it’s not fitting me. Likewise, this person who I hold as an enemy because he has harmed me in some small way in this lifetime. If I were looking at my previous life, this same person has been of tremendous benefit to me. This same person has innumerable times given up his life for me, that he has given me uncountable, immeasurable wealth of possessions to me.
Not only that, this person who I now hold as my enemy, in previous lives, in all the many previous lives when this very same person was my mother, if I emptied the entire earth and tried to fill it with all the milk that I’ve drunk from this person’s breast when this person was my mother, the earth could not hold that milk. So therefore, thinking of this, how much this person has benefited you, then there’s no reason to hold this person as an enemy. So when we think in this way we realize that this person who we hold dear and this person who we hold enemy are actually equal and our mind develops an equanimity toward the way we view these two people. Likewise the middle person, the person we feel indifferent towards. This person has in previous lives, as your father and your mother, been of tremendous benefit to you and also the same person has been an enemy to you innumerable times in your past life.
Therefore we develop a sense of equanimity towards this person toward all three people. They have both benefited and harmed and equally so we develop a feeling of complete equality amongst them. We develop a feeling of equanimity, holding them all the same. All three people are the same. Not only these three people but all sentient beings, whoever we meet, can be held in equal manner.
Develop a feeling of equanimity towards all sentient beings. So we should again and again cultivate this equanimity toward these three people until we get an actual experience, a feeling of equanimity toward these three. Likewise, when we when we look at our mother, father, relatives we have different degrees of liking toward them. We like some more than others. So there’s some some children who will they will like their mother.
So there are different degrees of liking if we look at it from our own point of view, from how we look at our parents and relatives, we may like our mother more. We may like our father most. Maybe some relative we care the most for. So we begin to cultivate equanimity towards the difference within our mother, within our parents and relatives. We take three who have a different degree of liking for or dislike and we try to develop a feeling of equanimity or a feeling of equality, that we don’t like one more than the other.
And then we begin to spread out to other directions. We take people from our area that we live in and we put them in one spot, someone we have attachment for because they live in our area, this person lives in our area. Another area that we don’t like and we take the person from that area, another area that doesn’t matter to us and we try to develop equanimity just by way of area, that certain areas of people we like and certain areas of people we don’t like. And then different countries like you may be attached to people from Australia. So you put that person in.
Maybe you don’t like people from France. You put them here. And maybe you don’t care about. And you don’t care about Americans. So you put them in the middle.
You get this feeling and so you begin to work with your attachment and aversion for these three different types of people and you develop an equal feeling, equanimity. So you get to the place no matter who you meet, wherever you meet that you have an equal feeling for that there’s no, that you’ve ceased attachment and hatred for the different types of people. You have a complete equanimity towards everyone. So this is our own experience. We can see this in our experience.
When a westerner goes to Nepal, for example, and he meets a foreigner, he meets another westerner and he says, where are you from? And he said, oh, I’m from Australia. And he like and all at once he feels a great liking for this person because he’s from Australia. Another person, he he he says, I’m from another country. He couldn’t care less, he doesn’t care at all about this person.
He’s no feeling for him. Have a partiality for like our countrymen. And then we have a partiality for the people who live in our area. And then a partiality ity for our our immediate family and our relatives. So when we realize that we have attachments for our countrymen, the people in our area, the people in our relatives, should when we realize that we have this attachment, we should think, well, you know, this person has been my enemy in their past life, and and this will cease the attachment and we can develop a feeling of equanimity towards all these different types of people.
So it’s extremely important to keep cultivating the equanimity until we get some experience of it. We want to develop the thought of separating all sentient beings from their suffering and placing all sentient beings in happiness. Happiness. And if if in fact we have partiality, we think, well, I’m gonna only help the people I like, and I’m not gonna help the people I don’t like, then there’s no way to develop the mind of enlightenment.
If we’re building a house we have to have a very even flat foundation. Likewise in developing the mind of enlightenment we have to have an even foundation.