Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 48-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche traces self-cherishing to its root—the false sense of self as separate and autonomous—and teaches the antidote: insight combined with Tonglen, the practice of exchanging self with other. He frames the work with a darts metaphor (steady hand, steady eye, hit the target), then explains why insight, not loving kindness alone, cuts through delusion and conflict. The core is Tonglen: breathe in others’ suffering as black smoke to destroy the ego at your heart, then breathe out your own happiness as white light nectar. He guides practitioners through three categories of people—those you love, those indifferent, and those causing problems—before closing with the Four Immeasurables. For practitioners already familiar with bodhicitta.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 8 Verses D2 Med 1 111002 000 – KR.mp3
UUID: 72086b8e-804a-4ae9-b5be-91df8865ad9a
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Mind Training
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~3,533
Good morning. I’m sorry, I’m wheezing a bit this morning so hopefully we’ll get through without too many coughs and splutters. Tissues at the ready. One of two things are going to happen. I’m going to keep losing my breath breath or the medication is going to kick in and I’ll fall asleep.
We’ve got a choice. Cold air doesn’t exactly suit. So good morning everybody. And for those of you who follow the NRL, I’m not sure whether you’re barracking for Manly because it’s Australian or the Warriors because they’re from New Zealand. So we’ll see this afternoon what will happen.
But the the Australians did beat the Russians. No big deal., no No big deal. For those of you who don’t know me all that well, I love sport. I’ve got Foxtel, you see. Foxtel sport.
I even watch the darts. I love the darts. Dart championships, you have to see the concentration in a steady hand. I think, you know, where are we headed for? We don’t actually want the bull’s eye all that much.
Really the best one is the triple 20, you know, because that gives you 60 points straight up. So we want to hit that one. But if you think about it, you know, what if you’ve got to have a steady eye and a steady hand and you’ve got to look at the target and you’ve got to be able to put the exactly where you want it to go so that you get the right score. And I think as a metaphor for life, that’s pretty good you know. Steady hand and good eye, get the target.
There’s only one Aussie in the top 20 in World Dart Championships. Did you know? His name is Simon Whitlock and he has a ponytail. Do you know they must have practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced practiced practiced and practiced practiced and then practiced some more in order to be that good. And I would imagine that the Aussie would have had to not drink quite so much beer because it doesn’t do for the steady hand and the steady eye.
Right. Motivation. What gets us to do the things we do? Keeping our eye on the prize, which is to become a bodhisattva. And the reason why we would want to be a bodhisattva is so that we can be of maximum benefit to all beings without exception.
For as long as space abides, for as long as sentient beings abide, may I too abide to dispel the suffering of others. And the four immeasurables. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha by the merit of practicing generosity and so on. May I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha by the merit of practicing generosity and so on.
May I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha by the merit of practicing generosity and so on, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and its causes. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and its causes. May all sentient beings never be separated from happiness and be free of suffering.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment and anger, holding some close and others distant. The meditation that we’ll do this morning is on cultivating bodhicitta. It’s the practice of equalising and exchanging self with other. And the culminating point of this particular meditation is Tonglen.
But before we begin with that, can everybody hear me? We all okay? I don’t want to project too much because it just sets off a coughing fit. Sorry about that. But this little book by Alan Wallace called The Four Immeasurables: Cultivating Love, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity has probably got one of the best descriptions and accounts and explanation of how one does Shamatha practice.
They’re really very, very good. But this morning when I was thinking about stuff, if we think yesterday what we were doing was talking about defining the I. What is the I in relation to the eight verses? So I thought I’d just read this little bit to you and then we’ll do the meditation if that’s okay. Sorry.
And he was talking about his preamble to this, is it talking about the causes of suffering and the four noble truths. It says if the root problem is delusion then the root antidote must be something that meets that delusion head on. The root antidote for delusion is probably not loving kindness. Loving kindness can serve as the antidote for hatred, indifference or self centeredness but the root antidote for delusion is the realisation of insight. Of the two wings of enlightenment, compassion and wisdom, the wisdom of insight is the one that meets delusion head on.
This is why Buddhist practice places so much emphasis on the cultivation of insight. Delusion takes many forms, but the key to all of the delusion concerning our own existence is who we are. A fruitful hypothesis, not dogma that we must believe, is that we are falsely construing ourselves as something existing independently, autonomously, separate from the environment and from other sentient beings. This little ego struggles through life reaching for all good things and pushing all bad things away. Insofar as we buy into this false construction of reality, then implicitly we have already bound ourselves to conflict.
If I, the independent autonomous approach another person, I do so not as a static rock, but with a lot of desires concerning my own well-being and the fulfilment of my happiness. And if the person whom I approach has a similar programme, we have the conflict right from the start. If there is a whole room full of people, the problem increases proportionately. We would be happier without that delusion and insight is the way to cut through it. It doesn’t happen through faith in any dogma or belief system, but is something we can know experientially without any shadow of a doubt.
Insight is a mode of experience that cuts through the delusion incompatible with that experience and the cutting edge of Buddhist practice in meditation is the cultivation of insight. Insight. We cultivate insight through a very close inquiry into the nature of our own being and experience and mindfulness is essential here. Here. Now I might just sort of go here, we need to be very careful because there’s a lot of stuff out there particularly in psychology and I would suspect in sociology and social work, everybody is teaching mindfulness these days.
And when we enquire, the majority of people who are teaching it do not have a well practiced and regular practice of meditation. And in actual fact you can’t do mindfulness unless you do meditation on a regular basis. How can you impart something that is not coming from your own experience? The careful exploration leads to a vivid unmediated experience of phenomena over our own mental states, our feelings and desires, our perception of our body and the environment, and leads to a realisation that this I remember we were talking about that yesterday this I we have been clinging to for so long doesn’t exist at all. It’s not that we do not exist, that would be a silly conclusion, but that this particular I that we sense as separate and autonomous is simply non existent.
This little ego does not exist. The one that tries to be in charge and has a real hard time, the one that gets so fearful and tries to plug down its emotions. The sense of it definitely exists most grossly when we feel egotistical or arrogant, but this sense has no more referent than if I believed I were Napoleon and expected everyone to salute me as such. The sense we have of ourselves is just as deluded because there is no referent. The idea is to inquire carefully into our own experience, our own will, mental states, feelings, past history, future desires, a whole sense of who we are, and see for ourselves whether there is any substantial referent to this sense of ‘I’.
And if we do realise that no such self exists, where are we then? When we perceive that our very self is identityless as an experience and not just as a philosophical position, this realisation can come as the most precious of all possible treasures, utterly transformative and beyond compare. Or instead you may perceive it as a loss of the greatest of all possible treasures. Meditate arduously only to find that you have lost your most treasured possession yourself seems like time not well spent. The difference in these two experiences is really a fork in the road and the difference depends on the context in which you perceive the realisation.
We can help ourselves to move forward and toward the more fruitful of these two directions by gradually loosening our grip on our separate and autonomous sense of I, not just intellectually but in our emotional lives and the choices we make. It also helps to develop a sense of ourselves in relationship to others. I am my parents’ child, I am a spouse, I am a teacher, I am student, I am in a community, I am interrelated. The patchwork quilt of who we are derives from many sources, from what others have told us. I had a lot of confusion as a child, but I stuck to my guns and was determined to be who I am because everybody thought I was a little boy.
I was a bit of a buff girl I must admit. I preferred bare feet and wearing my uncle’s shorts rather than a dress and I never did have much hair. I think I was born a nun. I was born without hair. I had very little hair.
It was very, very short and because I was this little tomboy running around wearing our shorts and a little top and no shoes and stuff, people used to pat me on the head and say, Oh, what a nice little boy. And I used to say, I was not a boy, was a girl in exactly those same ways. My family used to tease me about that later on. So I wasn’t who people told me I was. So our very sense of who we are is itself itself a dependently related event.
It is fairly 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 other people, then my well-being simply becomes a mere convention. Insofar as this becomes real and not just an assertion, then our grip on our autonomous ego softens, and insofar as we take into account the well-being of others, their sorrows and joys, and the fact that every sentient being wishes for happiness, not just as we do, insofar as we start to live this, it becomes our reality.
As William James, he’s a great psychologist that I have a lot of admiration for, for, who’s interested that Alan Wallace actually quotes him. As William James said, our belief and attention are the same fact. For the moment what we attend to is reality. The previous reality reality of my desires, my joys and sorrows doesn’t get snuffed out, rather it becomes part of the larger family and takes on a broader context. So in keeping with what Rinpoche asked us to do, we do the meditation on equalizing and exchanging self or other.
Is no difference between myself and others. We do not want the smallest suffering, yet happiness happiness never satisfies. Bless me to be glad at others’ joy. So we need to sit with this idea for a moment, in which we give some consideration to the idea that the self-cherishing mind is a fault and an unfavourable condition and that cherishing others is a good quality and a favourable condition. So we need to identify the disadvantages of self-cherishing.
The self-cherishing attitude is a type of desirous attachment which clings to I and mine. It is over indulgence which grasps to oneself and is therefore unable to bear even the slightest harm. It views even minimal hardship as extremely disquieting while constantly inducing a sense of impending personal loss. And through self-cherishing we engage in negative actions. We just think over perhaps the past week, just sort through the week and see where did I display a self-cherishing attitude and how did I feel about that?
Did it give me a sense of joy? Did it give me a sense of belonging? Or at the end of the day did I feel even more alienated, alone, unhappy and depressed, cut off from others. All worldly happiness to be found comes from wishing others happiness. And the mind that cherishes others remembers their happiness.
Try to think of at least one person to whom you would say a big thank you. It could be somebody from the past or somebody from the present. Remember that the person who has taught us the most isn’t always the person who showed us loving kindness and compassion. How we make the interchange of self with others. This involves transferring your self-cherishing onto others.
I used to ignore others. I have been cherishing myself, but from now on I shall cherish others. The only thing that stands in the way of cherishing others is a lack of familiarity. And just give some thought to one thing that you might want to change about yourself. And this would be especially in relation with others.
In order to rescue all beings from the vast seas of existence, we seek your blessings to become adept in bodhicitta through a pure selfless wish and by love and compassion conjoined with the vital technique of mounting giving and taking upon the breath. Now imagine on your left is your mother and father, family, friends and all those you hold dear. Imagine at your right are those who cause you trouble, those whom you may even hate, those you hold distance. And in front of you all the way to the horizon imagine all the other sentient beings in human form sitting peacefully. Meditate on the three types of beings and we’ll end with visualizing all sentient beings as objects of giving and taking.
Taking. So first of all the person to whom you are close, someone you care for. It can be the same person as from yesterday’s meditation or it could be someone else. So remembering that we are all equal in wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer. And if we remember the advantages of cherishing others over cherishing ourselves.
Imagine the present suffering of the person in front of you. This person has suffered, is suffering and will suffer. You may not know the details of this person’s suffering but we know that all beings are subject to the three kinds of suffering. Suffering of change, suffering of suffering and pervasive suffering. Suffering.
We all suffer birth, sickness, old age and death. So imagining the present suffering of this person whom you are close to, the person you love. Imagine their suffering in the form of black smoke. The smoke moves from person and you breathe it in to the black egg of self-cherishing at your heart. So with each in breath, breathing in the suffering of the other, breathing into the black egg of self-cherishing at your heart.
Visualize the black smoke eating into the egg like strong acid, destroying, self-cherishing. But we’re not content just to eliminate the suffering of the other and to have a willingness to take on the suffering of the other. But in the true sense of generosity, giving of the self. As we breathe out, we breathe out and imagine that our happiness and our merit streaming out from ourselves in the form of white light nectar. This light is the exact counter to the suffering of the other and showers down what the person needs to be happy.
There is no holding back. Just remember that this is a very powerful meditation and that you are not actually taking on the suffering of others in its true form, but a willingness that if you had the power, this is what you would do. We are only embryo bodhisattvas at this point so we need to be careful with ourselves as well but this is not self-cherishing. This is being careful with the self. We have a lot of work ahead of us over many lifetimes before we reach our goal.
So there is this person we care about. From our own suffering, we have an understanding of the suffering of the other. We have a preparedness, a willingness, out of loving kindness and compassion, not able to bear even for a second the suffering of this other person. Breathe it in in the form of black smoke. It smashes the the self-cherishing ego, releases loving kindness and compassion in the form of white light nectar which we then breathe out towards this person.
Unstintingly giving everything that person needs, all my merits, all my happiness, all my privileges, everything I own and don’t own because nothing belongs to me. But if it did, I would give it without thought of loss. Breathing in the suffering, transforming it into loving kindness and compassion, breathing it out towards this person. May you be happy. May you be free of suffering.
Now close that off. Now move towards the person you don’t know. The person to whom you are indifferent. This person too wants to be free of suffering and wants wants to be happy, no different from myself. So now imagining the suffering of that other person This in the form of black smoke.
Again we breathe it in to the black egg of self-cherishing at our hearts. On the out breath imagine your happiness, I give my happiness all my merits in the form of white light nectar, showering the other with whatever that person needs to be happy. Close that off and just take a few cleansing breaths. And now we move to the other person, the one with whom we are having some problems. The person that we’re keeping at a distance, remembering that this person too wishes to be happy, wishes to be free of suffering.
There is no difference between myself and this person other than my own self-cherishing attitude, my own failure to see that this person is also someone who suffers and who wants to be happy. So a preparedness preparedness to breathe in and take on the suffering of this person. Breathe it in in the form of black smoke. Breathe it in to the self-cherishing black egg at the heart. Eroded and smashed that black egg of self-cherishing at my heart, releases in the form of white light nectar, loving kindness and compassion, breathing it out towards this person that is giving me a problem.
That problem is really only in my own mind. Everything I have are my merits. Everything this person needs unreservedly Giving of myself. Breathing in the suffering, transforming it into loving kindness and compassion. Breathing it out in the form form of.
May you be free of pain and suffering. May you be at peace. May you be free of pain and suffering. May you be at peace. May you be free of pain and suffering.
May you be at peace. 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 that holds some close and others distant.
We’ll just do a dedication. And we’ll do on page ten, eleven and twelve. 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 completely accomplished. What I did do is I’ve got the outline of both meditations I did yesterday and today. So if anybody would