Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 33-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche uses an everyday analogy of school to explain why a qualified spiritual guide is essential on the path. He establishes that just as students need an accomplished teacher, practitioners require a guide who embodies wisdom and compassion and shows what to adopt and reject. He then explores how Buddhas emanate in various forms—human and non-human, even as bridges or water—to benefit beings according to need. Moving to cyclical time, Rinpoche describes how lifespans and ethical conduct rise and fall in great cycles, and how Maitreya will teach when the average lifespan drops to ten years. He concludes with a core point: the quality of our individual lives depends on our own ethical conduct, regardless of whether circumstances around us improve or deteriorate.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1991-11-26 – 4B – The – KR.mp3
UUID: d75c8302-19e2-4d95-91fe-f5e9d20c7261
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Nature of Mind
Date: 1991-11-26
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~1,476
# The Nature of Mind 4b 1991-11-26
**Collection:** Rinpoche Recordings — Nature of Mind (1991-92)
**Duration:** 32.6 minutes
**Words:** 1,480
**Model:** Deepgram Nova-3
**Corrections applied:** 4
**Transcribed:** 2026-03-01 01:04
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Possessing out of their own experience these excellent qualities of wisdom and compassion, then they teach. They say this is the way this is, this is the way it isn’t. That is they teach both through their speech and by means of books. And they say this is how we are to practice. First you do this and then next you do this.
This is the way you should abandon this and this is the way you should abandon that. This is the fault that we abandon here. This is fault that we abandon next. Do this, don’t do that. Out of their enlightened activities of speech and teaching in terms of speech and books.
They present the practice of how to, what is to be adopted, what is to be rejected, and they present their practice in an unerring unmistaken manner. So therefore, dependent upon these three conditions our lineage is actualized. If we put in an analogy in a school, in order that the children be educated well, develop healthy qualities, then it’s necessary that the teacher, him or herself, be a healthy individual. And this is constituted by the teacher having certain experiences. And these experiences are expressed as wisdom and compassion.
But simply that is not enough. That additionally the teacher, in conjunction with these excellent qualities, goes ahead and teaches the children explaining what is to be studied today, how we should go about studying tomorrow and explaining what is to be adopted and what is to be rejected. And in this way out of these conditions then the children develop into healthy children. They develop excellent qualities. Because they want to achieve an end.
They have some desire, aspirations, perhaps they want to be highly learned. This is the result that they want to achieve through their studies. And this is analogous to seeking to achieve Buddhahood. And the foundation of their achievement is their own intelligence which they possess within their mind, their intelligence and diligence. But it’s necessary that dependent upon this foundation or basis that the conditions of the teacher be present and the teacher having the qualities of, it must be a healthy individual, a very sane individual and possessing excellent qualities like wisdom and compassion and dependent upon the sanity and the wisdom and compassion under the influence of these proceeding to teach the children and thereby they achieve their result, their goal.
There could be the situation. There could be the situation where the children aspire to become learned and though have intelligence and they are willing to put forth great effort are without a teacher. That is to say someone who has wisdom as to the subject they want to learn. And though they have the foundation of progressing into their goal without the condition of the teacher, then it’s not actualized. It’s not realized.
So previously I used the, today I used the analogy of school, previously I used the analogy of money. Buddha was money. So we are like these students, that we are aspiring and our aspirations are Buddhahood or the liberation which is freedom from suffering. We, just like these students, we have lineage whereas the students had the basis of effort and intelligence. We have a basis of lineage.
And in conjunction with our lineage, then the teacher presents the methods whereby we can proceed to, the teacher teaches the methods whereby to actualize our lineage. What we need in order to actualize our potential of lineage is to be shown an unerring path of what is to be adopted and rejected by a guide who him or herself possesses love. Previously the Buddha taught the Dharma and by means of this many of his students achieved liberation and Buddhahood. At times, the Buddha has not come into this world, but there does exist the representative of the Buddhas that is one’s individual spiritual teacher who teaches you the Dharma. Śākyamūni Buddha was extremely courageous in coming to our world.
It is said out of a thousand Buddhas only one would have enough courage to come into our world. So sometimes Śākyamūni Buddha is referred to as a white lotus. A white lotus is the king of flowers and Śākyamūni Buddha was such a brave person for coming into our world that he was referred to as White Lotus for being the king of the Buddhas. When Śākyamūni Buddha was living in India, many individuals tried to kill him. There were many people who had harmful intentions toward Śākyamūni Buddha. Many times people tried to assassinate him and it was out of all these harmful intentions and assassination attempts that the other Buddhas thought this was not the place to go to.
They tried in many ways to kill the Buddha. They let loose a wild elephant with weapons in his path. They threw down boulders upon him and they dug pits of fire along the path that he would fall in. In all these though they tried it, they were not able to harm him. So we’re going to stop there for today.
If you have questions, take those. Yeah. If the Buddha was to appear… So at present there is no supreme emanation Buddha. That is to say a Buddha with the various signs having aspects of all these various signs in mind. For example, the top knot, the protrusion on top of the head.
There are many signs such as wheels upon hands and feet. There are no supreme emanations with these various aspects of signs and marks. But there are emanations of Buddhas. And these emanations take both a human and non-human form. If they take a human form then they teach the Dharma, but if they take a non-human form for example they could be emanated as a bridge and then they would teach the Dharma in that particular type of emanation.
The Dalai Lama is the emanation of the Buddha, like water, cloth, bridge. So in a place where there’s no water, then the Buddha can emanate as water. In a place where there’s no food, the Buddha emanates as food. In our world.
So there will probably be a time when there will be no emanations of Buddhas. It’s when the lifespan reaches 10 years of age. The average lifespan reaches 10 years of age. Previously it was much longer and it shortens down to 10 years of age and at that time there would be no emanations of Buddhas. Ārya Maitreya will emanate and he will be one cubit in height.
And everyone will look at him and say, look how tall he is, look how tall he is. How did you ever get to be so tall? They’d be very surprised, amazed. And Ārya Maitreya will answer, I became like this through abandoning killing, stealing, lying.
And the people, because they’re so amazed at how beautiful Ārya Maitreya is, they say to themselves, I’m going to abandon killing. I’m going to abandon stealing. I’m going to give up all unskillful actions so I can become that beautiful. And by means of this abandonment of unskillful action, then people’s height and lifespan will increase greater and greater. So the height, longevity and the beauty of beings in the world is continually extending, shortening, extending, shortening.
Go through these cycles. What does this come about in dependence upon? Healthy ways of conduct. Abandoning any unskillful actions, people naturally begin to appear much more beautiful and that they live longer lives, that they can find food with little effort, that their environment becomes much more pleasant, that they have fewer problems. On the other hand, through engaging in unskillful action, the adverse begins to occur. So presently things are getting worse as compared to what they were previously.
Things aren’t as good. Why is that? Why are things deteriorating? Because of the deterioration in the conduct of people. We can see that, that the quality of life and environment is deteriorating, degenerating, that the economic situation is getting worse.
So the determining factor in the quality of life is the skillfulness and unskillfulness of our conduct. In proportion to one or the other then the quality of our life will improve or become worse. Actually these days things aren’t so bad, they’re okay. But things are going to get much, much worse. But if as individuals we were to act in healthy ways, then though the place in which we live, our country, the circumstances may deteriorate, we on the other hand, our quality of life will improve.
On the other hand, if we act in negative manner, though the general quality of the place we live is improving, we ourselves our quality of life will deteriorate.