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 explores how to develop genuine compassion and the awakening heart through Buddhist meditation. He begins by establishing why cultivating a mind of enlightenment matters: even one minute of this meditation generates immeasurable benefit across all future lifetimes, far surpassing any worldly gain. He traces the lineage of this practice back to Atisha, the Indian master who brought the sevenfold cause-and-effect method to Tibet in the eleventh century. Lama Lhundup then walks through the core meditation structure step by step: beginning with equanimity toward three people — a neutral person, a beloved person, and an enemy — using the insight that past-life relationships reverse our current attachments and aversions. He shows how to expand this equanimity across regions, countries, and all beings, using concrete examples of Western travelers in Nepal to illustrate how partiality clouds our vision. The teaching emphasizes that without an even foundation of equanimity, genuine bodhisattva motivation cannot develop. For practitioners already familiar with basic Buddhist teachings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 TK and I.mp3
UUID: cccffe4e-6922-4278-87cb-4a1b33d8d851
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Towards kindness and insights (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.6 minutes
Words: ~2,747
So we have finally attained the human, this present human body. Now if we say, how can we really make it our greatest use? What is its greatest purpose? It would be not only to fulfill our own purposes, our own benefit but to use it to benefit all sentient beings regardless of whatever type of being they may be. Also need to be able to benefit others.
If we can develop a nonartificial mind of enlightenment, it’s a awakening heart, no matter what we do if we are with others in groups and in the cities living in towns then we can be of great benefit. Also if we live in isolation by ourselves meditating we are also a great benefit. No matter what we do if we have such a mind we are going to be of great benefit. Those who practice the lesser vehicle, the Hīnayāna, they have the attitude that when they are with other people because they are with other people that afflictive emotions can easily arise. Therefore they say well 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 that to rid themselves of these afflictive emotions that they’re living in isolation. So we were talking about isolation, 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 and what we are isolating ourselves from are the afflictive emotions and our own self-cherishing. So if we if it’s not necessary for us to to isolate ourselves from our self-cherishing and our afflictive emotions, then then being with others is a great benefit. Not only the benefit of this life but all lives the greatest method is this mind of enlightenment for benefiting. Just one minute of meditating on the precious mind of enlightenment. The the merit the merit created by just one minute to meditate on the mind of enlightenment, happiness not only in this life, but all the way up to attainment of Buddhahood.
People who engage in business perhaps they make a profit, they do business and 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 that we gained from meditating on the mind of enlightenment can’t uncountable. We can’t even we can’t enumerate or count the benefits derived from meditating on the mind of enlightenment. There’s no there’s 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 two methods for two methods for meditating on the mind of enlightenment. There is the method of the sevenfold cause and effect instruction 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 He had 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 is said that even at the age of eighteen months, when he was eighteen months old, he was making prayers for the benefit of all sentient beings may I practice the Dharma. So it is said that even as he grew even at the age of six years old, he was considered one he was one of the greatest masters or pandits in all of India. His parents were told that if 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 at the palace, that he would someday be king, a great king. But Atisha said no, and he went on a thirteen-month ocean voyage. So it was great hardship. The journey was great hardship for him. So they had many obstacles, and the the ship was tossed about.
So there are there are many types of harmful spirits who are trying to interfere with it going to because he he wanted to meditate on the mind of enlightenment. And so there would be many of these harmful spirits who are trying to obstruct him going. And because of the power of his mind of enlightenment, these harmful spirits weren’t able to hurt him. And so he finally arrived in Sumatra and he spent twelve years with Lama Serlingpa meditating until he got complete realization of the mind of 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 that that now the mind of enlightenment is spread all over Tibet. Merely thinking. Merely thinking that I must attain Buddhahood in order to place all sentient beings in liberation. Merely that alone will not develop a non-artificial mind of enlightenment.
At that time, when he went there, that there are many Tibetan bodhisattvas who do not know how to meditate on the mind of enlightenment. So the tradition of the sevenfold cause and effect instruction comes from the lineage from down from Sri Lanka down to the present. So seven first we’ll give the order of meditation. First we begin with equanimity then recognizing all sentient beings as mother, remembering their kindness, developing a wish to repay their kindness, Great compassion. Great love.
Exceptional resolve. So this love is called pleasing love. Wishing love. Pleasing Pleasing love. Great compassion.
And then exceptional resolve, sometimes special attitude and then the mind of enlightenment finally. So the first six are the causes and then the mind of enlightenment is the result. So unless we have as a preliminaries, 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 beginning with the way of meditating on equanimity we are going to imagine three people.
The object is a neutral person, an enemy and a beloved person, someone whom we hold dear. These three people. Now one way of meditating is we take them in order. First, we take them in so one one way is to take them individually and meditate on them 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 is a neutral person. We have a neutral feeling. We don’t have attachment for this person nor do we have hatred for this person.
So this middle person is a neutral person. We we have no attachment for this person, no hatred. But but we also we have no we feel indifferent towards this person. We we there’s no we feel no benefit. We feel we have no intention to benefit him.
We feel indifferent. So we don’t we don’t want to we don’t want to benefit him. We don’t want to hurt him. We’re just doing different towards him. So then we imagine on the right side someone whom we like a great deal, the person we like the most.
We imagine him to be on the right side and we begin to think toward this person we have attachment. And we think why do I hold this person so dear and 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 the small reason we have attachment. We hold this person very dear. So again, take we imagine this enemy on the left side and this is a person we have anger we feel angry towards and we try to analyze what 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 are just we call facsimiles of reasons. Are only apparent reasons. Depending upon incorrect reasons we fall into hating one type of person. Depending on another reason we fall into having attachment for the other type of person. So we think of this of this person who we who hold so dear and we think that actually our attachment toward this person is inappropriate because why in fact this person is the very same person that has in our previous lives been our enemy.
You know this person who I hold so dear that I love so much, if I were to look at my past life, this very same 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 him towards this person is inappropriate. It’s not fitting. Likewise, this this this person who I hold as as an enemy because he has harmed me in some small way in this life time. If I were looking at my previous life, this same person has been of tremendous benefit to me.
This this same person has has innumerable times given up his life for me, and has given me an immeasurable wealth of possessions. Not only that, the the person who I now hold is my enemy. In previous lives, all the many previous lives when this very same person was my mother, if I emptied the entire earth and I tried to fill it with all the milk that I’ve drunk in this person’s breast when when this person was my mother. The earth could not hold that milk. So therefore, think thinking of this how how much this person benefits you, then there’s no reason to hold this person as your enemy.
So when we think thinking in this way, we we realize that this person who we hold dear and this person we hold enemy are actually equal. And our mind develops an equanimity toward the way we view these two people. So, likewise, this the the center person, the the person we feel indifferent towards. This person has in in previous lives as your father and your mother has 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 and towards all three people they have both benefited you and harmed you and equally we develop a feeling of complete equality amongst them.
Develop a feeling equanimity, holding them all the same. All three people are exactly the same. Not only these three people, but all sentient beings. Whoever we meet are all have also can be held in equal manner that we we 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 of of feeling of equanimity toward these three.
Likewise, when we when we look at at our mother, father, relatives, we have a different degree of liking toward them. Like some more than others. So there’s some some children who will they were like their mother. So there are different degrees of liking. 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 might we may like our father most. Maybe some relative we we care the most for. So, you know, we we begin to cultivate equanimity towards the difference within our mother, within our parents and relatives. We take three and we try to we take three who have different degrees 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 of meditation.
We take people from our area that we live in and we put him over there and that we have attachment for because he lives in our area. This person lives in our area. Another area that we don’t like and we take a person from that area. Another area that doesn’t matter to us and we try to develop 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. Americans, you don’t even care about it. 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, whatever people you meet, that you have an equal feeling for that there’s no that you’ve ceased all 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 says, where are you from? And he’s, oh, I’m from Australia. And he like and all at once, feels a great liking for this person because he’s from Australia. Another person, he’s he he says I’m from another country.
He could care he doesn’t care at all about this person. He has no feeling for him. So we, you know, we generally have So we have we have a a partiality toward, you know, for for, like, our countrymen. And then we have a partiality for the people who live in our area, and then a partiality for our our immediate family and our relatives. So when we realize that we have attachment for our countrymen, the people in our area, the people in our relatives, then should when we realize that we have this attachment we should think well you know this person has been my enemy in a past life and and this will this will cease the attachment and we can develop a feeling of equanimity towards all these different types of people.
So we should keep cultivating until we get an 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 all sentient beings from their suffering and placing all sentient beings in happiness. And if if in fact we have partiality, we think, well, I’m gonna benefit. I’m gonna only I’m gonna 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. We we have to make especially great effort toward other enemies.
There are some people who, when we see them, we feel aversion. 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 the flat ground foundation of equanimity in order to build develop the mind of enlightenment.