Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 21-minute teaching, Ilia S. Durovic explores the first verses of the Eight Verses on Mind Training, focusing on how inadequacy and self-concern block compassion and loving kindness. He distinguishes between immeasurable compassion—a heartfelt wish that all beings be free from suffering—and great compassion, which takes personal responsibility for freeing others. Working from a philosophical foundation that well-being exists only in relationship to others, Durovic guides practitioners through the disadvantages of self-cherishing and the advantages of cherishing others, then leads a meditation on the four immeasurables and recites prayers for the long life of Khensur Rinpoche. Suitable for practitioners with some familiarity with Buddhist practice and bodhicitta.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 8 Verses D2 Med 2 111002 004 – KR.mp3
UUID: 007db3d9-0b15-44ed-9186-8a442be008c7
Teacher: Ilia S. Durovic
Collection: Mind Training
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~1,281
Oh, there’s it. So we just set down my motivation. For as long as space abides, for as long as sentient beings abide, may I too abide to dispel the suffering of others. Just to set the tone, I’ll just read a little bit again from this book. It is easy to understand cerebrally that we exist in relation to others, but as we lead our lives and follow our aspirations, are we doing so as if our own well-being were totally unrelated to that of anyone else?
If so, then we are living a fraud and our hearts don’t know what our minds are saying. As we start to live with a sense not only that we exist in interrelationship but that our very well-being exists only in relationship to others, then my well-being simply becomes a mere convention. Imagine really embodying this quality of attending carefully from the heart and mind to the well-being of others, others, even as we continue to attend to our own. Imagine living life as if we already knew that we exist with this as a norm, as a platform from which to reach realization of the absence of an autonomous controlling ego. The realization then becomes an affirmation of our way of life.
The chances become better and better that the realization would entail finding the greatest treasure and not losing it. I read that, I thought that was echoes almost of the first verse of the eight verses. Verses. So what impedes the flowering of loving kindness and compassion and the other qualities that we want to acquire as we move on the spiritual path. Something that definitely bears on the issue is the sense of inadequacy with which we engage with other people as we venture into life.
We tend to engage with a sense of need. I need a job, I need love, I need affirmation, affirmation. I need affection. I need respect. I need more money.
I need more possessions. I need more happiness. This is the real realm of the eight mundane concerns. There’s nothing wrong with needing something in and of itself, but a sense of inadequacy and incompleteness is not conducive to a heart of loving kindness. The mind that reaches out to other people, to the environment, to provide what it seems to lack itself is a mind that is ignorant of its own resources for peace and happiness.
So to be of most effective service we need to transform ourselves. Right now our limitations are severe and the needs of others are great. We need to reduce the limitations as far as possible. So from the very beginning we cultivate bodhicitta, attending to the needs of all other sentient beings, considering how to be of benefit and service. In order to be of greatest effectiveness, we may draw inwards to bring our wisdom and power to fulfillment but altruism and service are central to the practice from the very beginning and they give the practice its flavor.
Then we consider the two of the four immeasurables. There’s a difference between what we call immeasurable loving kindness and immeasurable compassion, which are extraordinary in their own right and great loving kindness and great compassion. Immeasurable Immeasurable compassion yearns from the heart. May each sentient being be free of suffering and free of the source of suffering. If it is truly immeasurable, it does not distinguish distinguish between friends and enemies.
It’s immeasurable in the sense that it has no bounds reaching out to every sentient being with a heartfelt yearning. Great compassion goes a step further. It recognizes that all sentient beings have the capacity to be free of suffering and to be happy. Why couldn’t all sentient beings be free of sources of suffering? The heart reaches out and expands and embraces them with immeasurable compassion.
May you be free. But great compassion goes further and takes on itself the responsibility, I shall make you free. That is a very powerful, profound and problematical resolution, but that’s exactly what is taught. So I’m going to suggest that we just spend the next few moments each in our own individual way, considering what I’ve just read, or considering what has been taught over this weekend. And thinking through how we can put into practice even more diligently than we have done up to now.
Trying to equalize ourselves with others, to really come to grips with the disadvantages of self-cherishing and the advantages of cherishing others. There is no difference between myself and others. We do not want the smallest suffering, yet happiness never satisfies. Bless me to be glad at others’ joy. All worldly happiness to be found comes from wishing others happiness.
Venerable compassionate Guru, bless me. May all the suffering, sins and obscurations of all beings once my mothers ripen upon me now without exception. May I give my happiness and virtue to others and may all beings have Then we’ll say together the four immeasurables. May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all beings never be separated from the happiness that knows no suffering. May all beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment and anger, holding some close and others distant. Distant. And then from the prayer book, page nine. Page 10, we’ll do I think what I might like to do at this point is on page 20, just to say the long life prayer for Khensur Rinpoche.
A falling nectar shower of immortality, a prayer of supplication for the long life of Khensur Rinpoche. Svasti. May she, the lovely one, that fair and youthful coming into being of the spring of all countless conquerors enlightened deeds. May she, the sublime goddess, the giver of life, ever shelter you within the sacred radiance of her blessing. Within your fragrant 100 petal, hundredth wisdom lies the pollen of the Subduer’s words and the full bloom of analytical skills discriminating the essence of his doctrine. Oh glorious spiritual master, please, please, live long.
Your all-but-vast listening to traditions of teachings is full. It’s 100,000 white lights of immaculate morality serving to unfold lunar flowers within the minds of the fortunate. O peerless, bounding moon, please, please live long. Opening wide with thousands of incisive reasonings, the jewel treasury of assertions and thoughts of Tibetan and Indian masters. Ingeniously, string successful necklaces of their pearls generating joy within those of clear minds.
O supreme spiritual friend, please, please, live long. By the blessings of the three secrets of the countless conquerors, and by the clarified essence of all that moves and is still mundane and that beyond, maturing into bearers of life immortal, may you remain in an immutable realm, unmoving and invincible. May all those faults of myself and others, such as breaches of devotion, lack of faith and wrong conception, created out of unconcern and obscuration, be purified. And may the wonderful fortune to be associated by the nectar taste of your guiding instructions never lessen. By the seas of infallible conquerors blessings, the sphere of reality’s truth, the unity of appearance and emptiness, and by the profound strength of our own pure faith, may the purposes of this prayer be instantly fulfilled with effortless ease.
May the jewel of supreme bodhicitta that has not arisen arise and may it never diminish but increase more and more. May all father and mother sentient beings be happy and successful. May all the abodes of evil migration always be empty. May the prayers of all bodhisattvas, whoever they are and wherever they reside, be quickly accomplished.