Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute teaching, Lama Lhundup guides practitioners through the four immeasurable meditations—equanimity, loving-kindness, great compassion, and exceptional resolve—structured as a Lamrim progression. Beginning with remembering all sentient beings as mothers and recognizing their kindness across countless past lives, he leads the practitioner to develop the heartfelt wish to repay this kindness by bringing happiness and eliminating suffering. He illustrates the meditations with practical examples: the shame of neglecting elderly parents mirrors our obligation toward all beings; developing affectionate love naturally arises when all appearances become pleasing. Moving into great compassion, he extends the scope of meditation from mother and father to enemies, then progressively to officials, beggars, and people across entire continents and world systems. He stresses that compassion means personally taking responsibility to free all beings from suffering. Finally, in exceptional resolve, he guides the practitioner to examine whether any being possesses the power to fulfill this commitment, and concludes that only attaining Buddhahood grants the ability to benefit all sentient beings. Pitched at practitioners familiar with Lamrim structure and ready for deep compassion training.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 TK and I.mp3
UUID: 6b7d8831-8701-457e-81a6-f361fd11c429
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Towards kindness and insights (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 47.1 minutes
Words: ~3,070
The great kindness of our mother of this life and I understand that she has shown this kindness again and again in a number of lifetimes and we turn our attention to our father. Not only has our father been kind to us in this lifetime but when he was our mother, innumerable past lifetimes he showed us the same kindness that our mother has shown us in this lifetime then we can move on to our relatives and take each of our relatives and try to see them as our mother in previous lifetimes and the great kindness that they showed us again in all these very previous lifetimes and then so finally we can see our enemy as having shown us this great kindness of a mother innumerable times. So then we try to imagine all the various people as going through and imagine them trying to remember the great kindness that they showed to us in previous lifetime, in numerous past lifetimes. And we take as an object an animal and this animal has been our mother in a previous lifetime and has shown us innumerable previous lifetimes, has shown us the same kindness as our mother this lifetime.
And in the process of showing this kindness, she has entered into She was brought to this state of having to take rebirth as an animal due to the karma she accumulated. So just taking the object to an animal and thinking that I do not remember but this must have been my mother in numerous past lifetimes. And not only that, she was showing me the same kindness as my mother in this lifetime and numerous past lifetimes. So just as we did with equanimity and remembering and recognizing all sentient beings as our mother, go through all the various types of sentient beings and remembering their kindness that they showed us when they were our mother, until we reached the point where we should be able to reach the point where we imagine all beings without exception have been our mother innumerable times in the past and have shown us the great kindness again and again that our mother of this life has shown us. So we bring to mind the great kindness of all sentient beings, immeasurable kindness that they have shown us in the past when they were mothers and we develop the sincere wish to repay this kindness that they have shown us.
So if we were extremely hungry sometimes and someone gave us delicious food to eat. And we would always remember this kindness that this person showed us when we really were very hungry and they gave us delicious food. And whenever we saw this person, really by seeing this person, we would be happy to meet this person and we would want to somehow repay. We would remember this kindness and we want to repay them. We’d say well you know come have a cup of tea or do you need anything, whatever this person might need and there would be a natural desire to repay once we would begin to remember the kindness.
So but on the other hand there might be some people who after they were having shown kindness by this person when they were hungry this person gave them some delicious food but this person doesn’t remember it and later on he meets the same person and this person has some problems. He needs some help and he doesn’t remember the kindness that was shown to him. He forgets this kindness and he in no way makes any attempt to help this person even though this person has been kind to him in the past and he needs help now but he doesn’t in any way help him and we would think that such a person would be quite shameful of such a person to act in such a way. Likewise, all sentient beings have been mothers in the past and have shown us immeasurable kindness again and again and for us not to seek to repay this kindness is extremely shameful. Sometimes it happens that when our parents get old, some people might treat their parents when they get old and they can’t do any work and have a hard time getting up and sitting down and going that they just want to get them out of the house so they don’t have to see them anymore.
They don’t want to see them. So not wanting to be of any help to them in their old age, not wanting to even see them is extremely poor way of acting. This is because of the power of not remembering the kindness. Repaying their kindness we remember their kindness and we develop the desire to repay their kindness. What do sentient beings desire?
Well they don’t desire suffering, they desire happiness so we determine to whatever is necessary to bring them happiness we are going to give them that. So in repaying the kindness. There’s no better time than the present time to repay their kindness. Why is this the present the time to repay this kindness because now we have attained a human body with leisures and fortunes. We have met the great vehicle, met the great vehicle Dharma and we now have some understanding of what is to be cultivated, what is to be abandoned and in this way we can begin making use of this we can begin to repay the kindness that they have shown us.
So we should think that merely trying to bring them contaminated happiness, giving them different types of wealth and possessions, merely this is not sufficient. Should develop desire that we want to bring them highest type of happiness. So if we meditate well, recognizing all sentient beings as our mother remembering their kindness and developing a wish to repay their kindness and we will reach a point that no matter who we meet, who we see, our child, our parents, any person that we see they always appear to be pleasing to us. They will have a pleasing appearance. No one will ever have a displeasing appearance to us.
So when we can reach the point where you know, we imagine how pleasing our own child looks to us. You know, brings us just as the appearance of our child brings us a great deal of pleasure. It’s very pleasing to even look at our child. When we can see all sentient beings having that same pleasant appearance, then we have developed affectionate love or pleasing love. So by meditating well on equanimity, remembering all of them being our mother, remembering their kindness and developing the wish to repay their kindness.
We don’t need to meditate on those well. Don’t need to make special effort or especially meditate. They will naturally develop this pleasing love. So then after pleasing love, we meditate on great compassion. So if we have gained some of the experience of the path of the being of middling capacity we considered all the various types of suffering of human realms, God realms, etcetera, and the causes of suffering.
We talked about the suffering of birth, old age, and disease, all these types of suffering. When one experiences sees the suffering in oneself and then one can understand that all sentient beings are also undergoing this suffering, not just ourselves but all sentient beings are tortured by suffering and therefore we develop the thought which we cannot bear that sentient beings be tortured by their suffering and in fact we must separate them from their suffering. What is the difference between great compassion and compassion? Even the hearers and solitary realizers, practitioners of the lesser vehicle, they develop compassion. That means when they see sentient beings wanting that they be separated from their suffering.
They see a sentient being who is suffering and they want that sentient being to be separated from suffering. But that’s compassion, wanting to desire to separate sentient beings from their suffering. But great compassion is when I will separate them from their suffering. Then it becomes great compassion. So when we develop the thought which sees all sentient beings there is no difference at friend, enemy and stranger there is no difference in seeing that they are suffering and develops a great strong powerful thought that I must separate them from their suffering and we have developed great compassion.
So We can increase our compassion by degrees, meditating on different types of beings. For example meditating on sick beings, meditating on beings who are being beaten, meditating on people in prison, animals, hungry ghosts, hell beings. We can begin with meditating as the object of our mother and that our mother even though she desires happiness she doesn’t have any happiness but in fact she is being tortured by suffering and we developed the thought I am going to separate my mother from her suffering and then we move on to our father and again we develop the thought with respect to him I’m going to separate him from his suffering and then our relatives, our friends, the people in our area, our countrymen. Then finally when we can take as the object someone who we hold as enemy, then with respect to this person we can think that I must separate this person from their suffering and we have developed great compassion. So we have to train with respect to all types, many varieties of people, great officials, presidents of country with respect to beggars, poor people, different types of classes of people to train our minds.
At present we don’t develop compassion for the great officials or presidents. So we should have compassion for them. Presidents. These people by being in the position they’re in, they’re always creating a great deal of negative karma and ordering people to be killed through their orders and through the laws that they passed, many people are going to be killed and they have to share in the consequences of creating this negative karma which can only bring them suffering in the future therefore should be objects for our compassion. So such people when they die there is no place for them to go but hell.
So we can begin to expand the scope of our meditation to include more and more people and we can meditate on people in Australia that they desire happiness but in fact they are being tortured by suffering and develop the thought I will separate them from their suffering and then meditate on people in America, meditate on people in England, meditate on people in India, meditate on people in the east in general because it is quite easy to see the hardships that they are physically undergoing. We keep moving around to different varieties of people. So when we can finally get to the place where we had this wish, this thought automatically arising without any effort whenever that all sentient beings whether they benefit me, whether they harm me, whatever class, whatever race without any sort of distinction that I will separate them from their suffering when this arises strongly, automatically, spontaneously then this is great compassion. So if we don’t meditate we are not going to develop great compassion it’s not going to even when we meditate it’s not going to happen all at once. You know we meditate one, two days, three days, one year, two years, three years until there will come a time when we actually gain the experience of great compassion.
And then we meditate on love which seeks to bring happiness to sentient beings thinking that those sentient beings desire happiness they don’t have the happiness they desire, I will bring them the happiness that they desire. As we did with great compassion with this particular type of love conjoined with wishing happiness. We take different objects of meditation for some our mother and then our father, relatives, different areas, and we developed this when we finally get to a place where without any distinction, without any partiality we developed taking all sentient beings as objects we developed spontaneously a great force, the thought that I must bring them happiness, I must join them with happiness. When this thought arises spontaneously then we have developed this love conjoined with happiness. We have to train in this way again and again.
So, you know, this thought you know, this developing this thought, oh, I must bring them happiness. I must bring them happiness. The benefits from in fact merely just just thought is unimaginable. We should keep expanding the scope of our love. Thought to bring happiness to sentient beings and then we start with a small area and expand out to the country that we live in.
Then we expand out to the world and not only this world but other worlds and not only other worlds that we reach the point where all the sentient beings pervading space without limit in any direction I will bring them happiness. So there is no interspace, is there? So wherever there is space there sentient beings. Wherever we go, we’re never going to find a place where there aren’t any sentient beings. So there are a hundred. There are ten billion worlds like this world that we live in.
So the universe is designed, shaped in the middle is Mount Meru and around it are four continents. Purvavideha and Aparagodaniya and Uttarakuru — these are four continents. And there is a whole this entire world system and there are ten billion of these world systems. No matter what direction we go if we go one hundred years in this direction and one hundred years in a down direction we are always going to find sentient beings.
So this is what the Buddha said himself. So you know we cannot say that there are people that there are beings who are born here are this place there are no beings that are born. There is no place where sentient beings are not born. We ourselves have taken rebirth. There’s no place that we haven’t taken rebirth.
We’ve taken rebirth as a God immeasurable times. We’ve taken rebirth as a human immeasurable number of times. So we have to meditate with great force again and again. This thought that I am going to bring happiness to all mother sentient beings as vast as space. So to the same degree as the force of our love and compassion that much nearer is Buddhahood. So then we having developed the love we go on to meditate on exceptional resolve.
We try to cultivate the thought, thinking that all these infinite number of mother sentient beings, though they desire happiness they don’t have happiness and though they don’t want suffering they are tortured by suffering and that I myself make this firm determination without depending upon the Buddha, without depending upon the Bodhisattvas that I myself take responsibility to place all these sentient beings in happiness and to separate them from suffering. So before when we were cultivating and repaying the kindness, we decided to develop the thought that to obtain to bring to repay the kindness of sentient beings given the happiness and separate them from suffering, but here when we are developing exceptional resolve we actually make the determination that I’m going to do it. It’s like when we are going shopping and we think well I need to buy this or I need to buy that and we just are thinking about the various needs that we have but then when we actually say I’m really going to buy this and make a determination, I’m actually going to purchase it. Then make a decision, I’m going to buy it. Not only do we see a need but make a decision, I’m going to buy it.
So this is the same here in exceptional resolve. Make a decision, I take sole responsibility to bring this about. When we think about it, you know we make this decision. I must bring happiness to sentient beings. I must separate them from all this suffering.
But you know I made this decision but do I really have the ability to do this? Does any sentient being have the ability to do this? So we have to when question does anyone have the ability to bring this about to place sentient beings in happiness and to separate them from the suffering. So we question does anyone have this ability and So we have to make examination. We have to examine whether anybody has is there any being that has the ability to bring this about?
Does anyone have the power to do this? And can I myself gain this ability or this power to bring this about? So when we make an examination who has the power or the ability to bring the end that we decided upon, only a Buddha has the ability. It is only at Buddhahood that one has the ability to develop the power to actually bring this decision into reality. That even the unimaginable qualities of the body, speech and mind of the Buddha that merely the light radiating from the body of a Buddha is able to bring about the benefit of all sentient beings.
So and even the single even a single speech of a Buddha, you know, sentient beings have innumerable desires, innumerable aspirations. sentient beings have innumerable wishes, variety of wishes, they have innumerable languages but the single speech of the Buddha can fulfill all the needs and all the aspirations of sentient beings in whatever language they speak. It fulfills all their wishes. It can cover all subjects. So if one attains the Buddhahood, then one has that power.
Therefore when you consider the qualities Buddhahood and the decision that you have made and you decide that I must attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. One comes to understanding I must attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings but then questions do I actually have the ability or the power to do that? I have the ability.