Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 51-minute session, Kyabje Rinpoche grounds the Ornament of Clear Realization in bedrock teaching: all sentient beings possess Buddha-nature; this human rebirth, rare and precious, concentrates the conditions for practice; the perfection of wisdom is the unmistaken path to Buddhahood. He then explains the text’s central structure—wisdom presented in three, six, or eight divisions depending on capacity—unpacking the eight-fold version: three exalted knowers, four trainings, and the resultant truth body. Throughout, Rinpoche stresses that we must rely on how past Buddhas achieved realization, as documented in authoritative texts, and frames this within the five paths of the great vehicle: accumulation, preparation, seeing, meditation, and no more learning.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1990-02-08 – 29A – KR.mp3
UUID: 21de6c80-1c2b-4c1a-ba5c-518752e43f29
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Ornament of Clear Realization
Date: 1990-02-08
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,722
So, we begin with five minute meditation in which we are trying to to develop the attitude that I must I myself must attain Buddhahood in order to establish all sentient beings in complete happiness and eliminate their suffering. So, the Buddha has said that that the conquerors of the three times, the past, present, and future attain Buddhahood in dependence upon only the practice of the perfection of wisdom. There is no other method than this. And by practicing the perfection of wisdom. So what do we mean what we do we mean when we say Buddha?
The word Buddha is a Sanskrit word. In Tibetan, it’s Sangye, two syllables, Sangye. And san means to have eliminated all faults, literally to clear, to make clear, to clear away all faults. Gye means to evolve or having brought to fulfillment all excellent qualities. And this is what we mean by or a Buddha.
So, let me ask the question, can we become Buddhas? And we can because we have the cause of Buddhahood within us, that each of us has a mind, that we all possess a mind. And this is the seed of Buddha. Just as in the case of a sprout. And if we have the seed of a sprout, then we can grow a sprout.
But presently, due to obstructions within the mind, this growth is obstructed. And by, through the process of meditation we can eliminate the various obstructions, the various faults, and just like a sprout each day growing, evolving until we can attain perfect, complete. But not only that, all sentient beings have this cause of Buddhahood within them, not just human beings, but insects, all animals. Anything which possesses life has the cause of Buddhahood. And it’s just like having the seed.
Once we have the seed, then the sprout will grow and finally, there will be a crop. Likewise, all that possesses life has the seed of Buddhahood and therefore will attain Buddhahood. Then what are you, what are we to do? Presently, we are not able to achieve Buddhahood. There have been, though there have been many Buddhas who have achieved Buddhahood in the past, and there are very many, there are many who are achieving Buddhahood at present.
We, for us to achieve Buddhahood, we must practice a path. We must, by practice, by dependence upon the teachings of a spiritual friend, we were putting them into practice, we will gradually unfold the excellent qualities within us until we ourselves will achieve Buddhahood. Why haven’t we been able to achieve Buddhahood in the past? It’s because that we didn’t have the aggregation of the conducive conditions to bring about our Buddhahood. That is to say, the teacher who shows us, who teaches us the Dharma and to be able to, and to put into practice what has been taught.
That due to obstructions in the path not having these, this aggregation of conditions necessary, we were not able to eliminate all our various faults such as attachment, hatred, and confusion. And due to that we were unable to achieve Buddhahood in the past. But now that we have this opportunity, we have this aggregation of conducive conditions, and now we can begin to eliminate our faults and begin to accumulate all of the excellent qualities. But now we have we are human beings. And especially with regard to human beings, we possess the clarity of mind, the intelligence, the fact that we can understand, we can come to comprehend any phenomena.
And not only that, but we have all of the conducive conditions necessary that we have met with the spiritual teacher, the Lama. We have met with the Dharma. And we have those who assist us in our practice, and we have the necessary conditions for carry on our practices. And this is a very auspicious coincidence having brought these conducive conditions together. So, we have to very much appreciate the auspiciousness of our present situation, this present life that we now possess.
And appreciating it fully strive to bring about its full purpose, its full meaning. So it’s necessary that we make use of this precious opportunity to bring about the full meaning of our auspicious coincidence in having all the conducive conditions present. And how can we best make use of, to make use of the conditions, to bring about the most meaning of these conditions is by, in general, we can say practicing the Dharma, but even more so if we are able to practice the Dharma of the great vehicle. In doing so, we can generate all the necessary realizations to achieve Buddhahood. But even if we don’t generate great realizations, we can implant predispositions like seeds, which will just like planting seeds, will in the future give rise to the realizations in future lives.
So, it’s extremely important in our practice in seeking to eliminate all our faults and bringing about the fulfillment of our excellent qualities. That we that we have the correct cause to bring about the end that we seek. That if we want the right result, we must have the right cause. And therefore, we have to put into practice an unerring path. A path which is without mistake.
An unerring practice. An unmistaken practice in order to achieve an unmistaken result. If we’re if our causes for if the causes are mistaken are are incorrect, then we will not achieve the result that we’re seeking. So we must be sure that our practice, our cause is unmistaken. So seeking to implement an unerring method or cause to bring about an unerring result that we’re seeking.
This is perfection of wisdom, transcendental wisdom. It is by dependence upon transcendental wisdom that we were able to eliminate all faults and achieve all the excellent qualities. That it has this power, this capacity, this ability. It is dependent upon perfection of wisdom that the Buddhas of the past and the present have achieved Buddhahood and that the Buddhas of the future will achieve their Buddhahood. So therefore, we can rely on an unerring cause of the perfection of wisdom to achieve our end.
So, the perfection of wisdom is explained in its extensiveness according to the capacity of the trainee who is practicing the perfection of wisdom. For those of extreme extremely high intelligence, the perfection of wisdom is condensed into a classification of three divisions. For those in middling intelligence, into a classification of six divisions. For those of lesser intelligence, into classification of eight divisions. For those who have who were here previously that what is going to be explained very briefly, you will have already received.
You will already understand. But for those who have not do not know what these three ways of dividing are. If we explain them very briefly, when we talk about the perfection of wisdom divided into three categories, we divide it by means of there are four trainings or preparations, which is which is one category. There are three exalted knowers, which is the second category. And there is the resultant truth body, which is the third category, making three categories.
With respect with respect to this first way of dividing into three categories, the most intelligent bodhisattva takes as his object of meditation these four trainings or four preparations. And in meditating upon them, he uses three exalted knowers. And by means of this, he attains a result. This is the resultant truth body, which is to say, is the same thing as Buddhahood. So his object of meditation is the four trainings.
He uses as the minds which are doing the meditating, the three exalted knowers. And the results of this meditation are truth bodies or Buddhahood. In the second mode of dividing the perfection of wisdom for those in middling intelligence, the four trainings or the four preparations are meditated on individually. Whereas previously, for the intelligent bodhisattva, they were meditated on collectively, taken as one. But here, each of them is meditated on separately.
This makes a division of these are so there are four trainings which are objects in meditation. The Buddha, the bodhisattva is a sentient being or what is actually doing the meditating is the mind of the bodhisattva. And he makes use of three different types of minds, the three exalted knowers, and these are taken as one. These are condensed together. The three exalted knowers are collected together into one.
And the result, again, is the resultant truth body or Buddhahood. So, makes a division into six. The four trainings are individually meditated upon. What meditates upon these are the three exalted knowers collected together into one. And the result is the resultant truth body or Buddhahood, making it a division into six.
And then for the third division into eight categories, for the bodhisattva of Lesser Intelligence, again, the object of the meditation are the four trainings. Sometimes called the four preparations, I called them last year, I think. Then the three exalted knowers are generated individually and making a categorization of three. And then the result again is the resultant truth body. And by this means of taking these four trainings as objects, generating these three types of exalted knowers, meditating on these four.
All the various faults are eliminated. All the excellent qualities are increased until one attains the resultant truth body or Buddhahood. So we have a classification into four. The four trainings, the three exalted knowers, and the resultant truth body makes a division into eight. Making an analogy here of the way we’re proceeding is that if we’re in a situation where we’re going on a long journey, but we can’t go by car, we’re going to have to walk.
Perhaps this journey is going to take us a month. It’s a very long distance. So we want to completely become familiar with the path. What to expect each day, where we can stay, what types of food we’ll need, what kind of clothing, what we’re going to confront along the way. And in order to come to know this, we rely upon those who have actually traveled to this place we’re seeking to arrive previously.
We rely on their experience and how they went. Relying upon the experience of others who have actually traveled the path, we can arrive at our destination easily. So, you know just like that, this analogy that we just made use of that our ultimate goal is Buddhahood. This is where we’re seeking to arrive. But it’s not a place that we can walk to.
It’s a matter of developing inner qualities. And so we rely, but still we rely upon the experiences of those who have traveled to the same destination previously to ourselves, the past Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas. How did they arrive? What practices did they depend upon? Eliminate?
What excellent qualities was it necessary to generate? We make an investigation and examination. And we meditate in the same manner that they did as a means to eliminate those same faults, to generate those same qualities. And we can be assured in this way that we’re going to arrive at the same destination that they did. So therefore we have to know the practice as well.
Exactly what it is we have to eliminate, exactly what it is we have to generate, and how we go about this practice. This is extremely important. If we don’t know this, then we won’t know how to practice, and we will never arrive at our destination. In general, we can say that there are three types of Bodhisattvas according to their levels of intelligence. Those of greatest intelligence, middling intelligence, and lesser intelligence.
So, we want to understand how each of these individuals achieved their ends. What was their mode of progress? How did the bodhisattva greatest intelligent practices, what faults did he eliminate? How did he generate his excellent qualities? The same applies to the middling intelligence and lesser intelligent.
What practices did they carry on? If we don’t know this, the mode of progress of these types of these types of intelligent bodhisattvas, then we are not going to know how to put in the practice the the necessary means to achieve our ends, and we will not arrive at our desired destination. Progress along the various paths. And in order to do this we rely upon the presentations, the text which set forth the presentations of the way to eliminate the various faults, mode mode of generating all the excellent qualities. These are the actual these are the setting down of the actual experiences of the past practitioners, how they attain the goal that we’re seeking to attain.
So it becomes of supreme importance that we know in order that we know the setting forth as it sets forth in these texts in order for ourselves to train in these paths. So it’s necessary to rely in order to carry on unerring practice upon those texts which set forth an unerring, the unerring experience of those who have actually arrived at the goal that we’re seeking. That we should rely on texts which are not mistaken, are bringing together of the vast experiences unmistakenly set forth in order for us to achieve our ends. And among these texts, it is the we are going to study the Ornament for Clear Realization in order to come to an understanding of how we ourselves can progress along these paths as was progressed along by the Buddhas of the past and present and will in the future. So in the Ornament for Clear Realization which I will refer to as in the future as ornament sets forth extensively the divisions of the perfection of wisdom.
Therefore, it is set forth in eight categories. Categories are first the three exalted knowers. The first being the exalted knower of all aspects, that is, the omniscience. The second is the knower of paths.
And the third is the knower of bases. These three knowers. And then it follows by setting forth the four trainings or the four preparations. And these four are firstly, the complete training in the aspects, complete training in the aspects. Second is peak training.
The third is serial training, serial or sequential. And the fourth is momentary training. Four trainings. And then the eighth category being resultant truth body. So there’s a total of eight categories to be discussed.
Within the great vehicle there are five paths. The first of these five paths is called the path of accumulation. In order to attain Buddhahood it’s necessary to collect the accumulations. The first path is the doorway into the accumulations therefore it’s termed the path of accumulation. The second path is the path of preparation.
It is the second level. Second path. This word preparation also is translated as training. So, it’s the same term that’s being used. The path of preparation.
The third path is the path of seeing. And this is where we have direct realization of emptiness. The fourth path is the path of meditation. This is where we continually familiarize ourselves with the realization of emptiness. And the fifth and final path is the path of no more learning.
This is where we bring to culmination all excellent qualities, and we achieve the exalted knower of a Buddha. So, it’s just like going through school in the various grades that we pass through. If there are five grades, first we enter into the first grade and we study the various subjects which are appropriate to that grade. When we have completed the studies at that grade we pass onto the second grade. Study the various subjects which are appropriate to that grade and then we pass onto the third grade, to the fourth grade, and finally to the fifth grade.
It is at the fifth grade that we bring to completion all our studies, that we bring to fulfillment all our training. And likewise, through these five paths, The first four are trainings and it’s necessary to train in the previous path before we can go on to the higher paths. And finally at the fifth path we bring to fulfillment our training. In this case, we achieve Buddhahood.