Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 50-minute talk, Kyabje Rinpoche calls both speaker and audience to generate altruistic motivation, then develops his main subject: the difference between healthy self-care and destructive self-centeredness. He explains how self-grasping—the belief in an independent, unchanging self—gives rise to attachment and aversion, driving harmful actions: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and divisive speech. Using the field analogy, he shows how harm sown toward others inevitably returns as our own suffering—every sickness and difficulty we experience stems from past harm. He traces this cycle to insatiable desire, which arises from self-centeredness. Finally, he argues that we are enslaved to our body yet could instead direct it toward skillful, meaningful actions. For those ready to examine the roots of their suffering.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1990-05-08 – 3A – Public Talk – KR.mp3
UUID: 702d1e50-485a-419f-a912-d383362ff940
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks
Date: 1990-05-08
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~3,116
So initially, adjusting our motivation, that from my side I’m going to give this talk tonight with an altruistic motivation. That is the kind hearted sense of wishing to benefit. And if from your side you can also generate that same quality of mind, that you’re going to listen to this with the intention of benefiting others. Then together with these two beneficial intentions, we can derive a great deal of help and direct these what happens between us toward finding satisfaction not only for ourselves but for others. Tonight I’m going to talk something about the nature of reality and the nature of the Dharma.
I’ve had a number of years of experience now and I’m going to talk from that standpoint. So the great Indian master Śāntideva said that all suffering in the world comes about through self centeredness or that seeking to cherish one’s own self. And this is going to be the main subject of my talk tonight. So first we must understand what we mean by self centeredness and begin to differentiate it between self centeredness and simply having compassion for oneself. That is, say, caring for oneself.
This is quite a healthy attitude to care for oneself, to have love and compassion for oneself. So it’s important that we care for ourselves. This is quite a healthy attitude to have one for ourselves, this attitude of compassion towards oneself. So out of this context of caring about what what one what happens to oneself out of loving oneself, wishing oneself happiness, then we can begin to engage in various activities of adopting those methods which will bring us happiness, rejecting those types of actions which will bring about our dissatisfaction. So, such a way of acting is extremely useful and beneficial in the sense that through the adoption and rejecting positive types of actions and rejecting negative types of actions that we can find the happiness that we’re all seeking.
We can begin to eliminate the problems which none of us want. So as humans, we want to be happy and we don’t want to suffer. And it’s in reliance upon the way we act by getting to begin to become skillful in the actions that we adopt and those that we reject that we can begin to find the happiness that we’re seeking. This is extremely pragmatic approach. It’s very useful.
It actually bring about its end. So in this verse by this which was quoted previously, needs to be distinguished in terms of what we mean by self centeredness. As we’ve pointed out, there is a type of caring for oneself which is very healthy. And so, in terms of centering one’s attention on oneself, distinguish two types. That type of attention one gives oneself in the context of compassion and caring for oneself.
And this is quite healthy, it’s quite necessary. But on the other hand, there’s a type of self centeredness which is brought about under the influence of self grasping, and which expresses itself in the attitudes of hatred and attachment. This is the self centeredness which we’re going to speak about. So in understanding what we mean by self centeredness, as it was just explained, it’s a type of self centered attention that directed towards oneself which arises out of self grasping. And what do we mean by self grasping?
Or another way to translate it is the conception grasping toward a self, the conception of a self. Or we could say I. I grasping, self grasping. And this is the root of all our problems. It is the quality of holding to a type of self which does not depend upon anything else.
Holding, grasping to a self, I, which does not depend upon any other factor whatsoever. So out of this self grasping, this grasping at an independent eye, arises the qualities, the state which we are calling self centeredness. And this is in terms of when something either confirms I or those who we identify with ourselves, who are a particular side, that territory which we identify with ourselves, whatever confirms that, we develop attachment. Whatever we see as threatening to that eye, to that side which we identify with, we develop aversion. And this obviously is an unhealthy state of mind.
So out of self grasping arises self centered ness, which and all that comes along with that, with all its great desires and aversions. And out of self centeredness arises this very great desire. What is the quality of this desire? It is that the desire that which seeks happiness for oneself alone, that is, one’s own individual happiness, which seeks to eliminate only one’s own individual suffering alone. So out of this exaggerated self concern comes this great desire to bring about one’s own welfare at the expense of others.
And therefore, we begin to engage in various types of actions. And firstly, just out of this desire to bring about one’s own happiness alone, to eliminate one’s own suffering alone for one’s self individually. We engage in various types of, for example, bodily physical actions such as we will kill others for our own happiness. We will steal others things for our own happiness. We will have sexual impropriety with someone else’s spouse for our own pleasure alone.
Additionally, motivated by this desire to bring about one’s happiness individually for oneself alone, we engage in various types of negative verbal actions such as lying, you know, that tricking others to say that which is, is not, and that which is not is. In some way, trying to influence the situation in order to develop one’s own happiness. And additionally, if through this desire to bring about our own happiness others are seen as obstacles to bringing about this happiness, we develop hatred, aversion. And out of this hatred verbally we will may we will use harsh words. We will use divisive words, divisive speech, that is creating a division amongst people who were previously harmonious and trying to separate them for our own ends.
So as a consequence of developing this negative state of mind, seeking to bring about one’s end at the expense of others. The various types of negative physical and verbal actions follow out from that. So out of this negative state of mind arises all these various physical and verbal actions. As a consequence of these actions, harm others, we hurt others, that through, for example, killing, in which we cause others to suffer, we steal their things causing them to feel the unhappiness of losing that which they want to hold on to. We trick others.
We use words which hurt others. So out of this self centered attitude arises all of these various negative qualities qualities of mental negativity, verbal and physical. And we end up harming sentient beings in general. We end up harming other people. And the other people or sentient beings, that which has life, are likened, are analogous to a field.
In the case, you know, this analogy of that sentient beings are like a field, just in the case, as in the case of a farmer, that he’s going to reap a harvest in accordance with the type of seeds that he sows. That if he plants seeds which are of a poisonous variety, then all the crops will be able to have a poisonous nature. And likewise, whatever, if the plant he, if the seeds are of a particular species, then the crop will be in accordance with that species that he planted. So just as in the case of the field, that there arises a crop in accordance with whatever seeds are sown, that if it’s a seeds are of a poisonous type, then the plants, the crop will be poisonous in nature. Likewise, with, with analogous to the field of sentient beings, that if we plant the seeds of harm in the field of sentient beings, then we are going to reap a harvest of that same quality toward ourselves, that we ourselves are going to experience suffering.
We ourselves are going to experience harm as a result. And having planted the seeds of harm in this field of sentient beings, then who is going to reap the harvest of that of that sowing? It’s going to be oneself. That oneself is going to experience the suffering as return. Oneself is going to experience harm as a return of the harm which one has given to others.
So harming others through our mental intention, our physical and verbal action, there arises a suffering toward ourselves. So, we can see that there are actually two results of negative actions, both having a consequence of suffering. That one is the suffering of other sentient beings, that person that we hurt, ourselves. But additionally, there is a result of that action, our own suffering, as in return. Now we can take our own experience as examples of all of the various dissatisfactions that we go through every day of our lives.
The various those of body, all the various sicknesses, pains that we we experience, all the various mental dissatisfactions that we go through, and all the, you know, we hear others speaking harsh words about us, other unpleasant things about us, that we experience these bodily, verbal, and mental consequences of dissatisfaction every day of our life. Consequence of the harm, the dissatisfaction, the suffering that we brought others previously. They are the result, the fruit of having brought suffering to others. So whatever suffering that we experience no matter what, whether it’s even down to a toothache, headache, all of that suffering, that dissatisfaction has come about as a consequence of harming other sentient beings in the past. And how did this come about?
You know, why did we harm others? It was simply that we were willing to harm others as a means to bring about our own exclusive happiness, to eliminate our own exclusive suffering, to exclusively eliminate our own suffering, to exclusively bring about our own happiness, we were willing to bring harm to others. So the Buddha said that that we should not bring harm to others, that in bringing harm to others that we ourselves will suffer and therefore we should begin to abandon harming others. So the self centeredness, which develops out of self grasping, is the root of all suffering. That it, by under its control, we engage in all the various types of negative verbal and physical actions.
You know, this self centeredness the source of all our problems. Out of this arises a tremendous desire to bring about our own ends. And there’s no end to satiating self centeredness. That if we have a $100, we wish we had a thousand. If we had a thousand dollars, we wish we had 10,000.
And we go on and on. Our desires grow greater and greater. And when we don’t achieve our desires, our ambitions, then obviously we experience dissatisfaction and suffering. Out of this great desire arises all our various types of suffering. There is no end to our desires.
In fact, desires can never be satiated. So out of this great desire, we are quite willing to expend a great deal of energy. We’re quite willing to go through a great deal of difficulties in all our types of actions. Some of these actions will be useful. But then again, many of these actions are completely not only not useful, they’re quite harmful to ourselves.
So out of this great desire, trying to fulfill our great desires, people will quite willingly put their lives in danger for useless ends. That that they they’ll go through great deals of suffering, which brings about no happiness, which brings no meaning to themselves. So most of the difficulty that we’re willing to go through is directed toward our body, and most of our livelihood is directed toward fulfilling the needs of the body in sense of seeking to bring it food, clothes, shelter. We are as if slaves to our body. You know, we’re constantly at the at the bit of our body.
You know, it’s constantly ordering around. It says, I’m too hot, so we have to do something. Says, I need some food, so then we have to get up and do something. Constantly ordering us about. On the one hand, we go we expend a great deal of energy and go through a lot of trouble for body, but it doesn’t return any of it doesn’t give us any benefit back to us.
When our body sick, it doesn’t help us. When it dies, how does it help us? So, most of our energy is directed toward fulfilling the needs of our body. Save up our money, why do we save it up? Why do we need all this money?
We need to buy food, to buy clothing, to shelter, and we do this all at the expense of this useless body. So this this body of ours is is like the the a basis of a great deal of our suffering. But it gets a little bit hot and we suffer. It gets a little bit cold and we suffer. It gets a little bit sick, we suffer.
It gets a wound, we suffer. Someone says the harsh words about our body, we suffer. Then we identify with all this suffering. I’m suffering when the body suffers. If someone were to hit us on the head, we would say, Oh, they hit me on the head.
And, you know, as if they hit you know, we are not our head. I am not my body. Servants to their body. And then one day we’re going to have to separate from this body. It’s going to become useless.
And you know, one day we’re going to have to die. And then nobody wants it around. Everyone wants it. They want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. They take it out, and maybe they burn it, or they have to bury it.
But anyway, even when it’s useless, they have to get rid of it. They have to do something with it. But so rather than being a servant of our body, that we should make use of this body while we have a life, and that we can make this body very meaningful. So, and Śāntideva goes on to speak about how we should we don’t have to be servants of our body. In fact, we can reverse this position, and the body can be our own servant.
We should make use of it. So, we can So, you know, the body has a great capacity. It has a great ability that if we direct it in a negative direction, it can produce tremendous negative results. Then again, if we direct it in a positive fashion, it can bring about tremendously positive results. And if I want to, what type of, what are we to do with this body?
What type of work are we to put it to do? Put it to use? That some types of meaningful actions, those which are bring about a very powerful positive consequence of that to make use of it in physical and verbal actions in a positive sense. Then we are making great use of it. So the type of use that we make of it, make use of it has to be in accordance with our own best interests.
To this fact that we have this body meaningful, that we should use our body to bring about our own welfare. That if we use it well, we use it skillfully, we can bring about bring about our own happiness, our own benefit. So, as has been explained, if we involve our body and speech and physical and skillful actions, that is to say we make skillful use of our body, then it will serve as a means to bring ourselves happiness. On the other hand, if we make unskillful use of it by engaging in the various physical and unskillful physical and verbal actions, then we’re making then we’re simply using our body to bring ourselves more suffering. So the type of work that we should put our body to use towards is various types of skillful actions which will bring about our own happiness, own benefit.
But if we don’t do this, then we’re simply going to continue in the same direction that we’ve been working with. That though we go through a great deal of difficulties and trouble in order to benefit our body itself, it, you know, to bring it to food, clothes, and shelter. But in fact, if we if it brings us not happiness, but if it continues in a negative fashion, it’s going to while we’re tending our body, it’s bringing us ourselves suffering. It’s just as if we are in a situation of working hard, going through a lot of difficulties to benefit another person. Try to bring them whatever they might need.
Give them food, we give them clothes, we give them shelter. But in return, all they do is harm us. And this is a completely impossible situation to maintain, that you bring benefit to this person, and all they do is bring you harm? What’s the use of such a situation? Situation that we go through a lot of trouble, lot of hardship to bring our body all the various benefits, all its needs food, clothing, shelter.
And if in return it simply continues to involve itself in negative actions and therefore brings about our suffering, then this is an impossible situation. So, Śāntideva goes on to talk about that he dresses his own body saying, You know, if you keep up like this, if you keep bringing me harm and not mending your ways, then I’m going to cut off your food. I’m not going to give you any clothing. So, you know, we should look at it like this, know, questioning whether whether we should act in this way kindly to our body to bring ourselves suffering. So this is the the the powerful ability of the body, its capacity.
That if we the work that we should put our body to is it should begin by ceasing all its various negative actions and begin to enact very skillful actions through the body, positive types of actions. And if we do that, then we can achieve the happiness that we want. We can eliminate the suffering that we don’t want. So it said that as a consequence of the liking