Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Kyabje Rinpoche opens with a vivid image: wealthy people unable to sleep, anxiously counting money while servants fetch tea in the middle of the night—illustrating that worldly pursuits don’t solve fundamental problems. The core teaching is simple but radical: develop loving-kindness and compassion as the reliable means to remove both present and future suffering. He walks through how compassion begins with understanding ourselves (we don’t want suffering, nor do others), then extends through karma’s logic: harming others produces our own suffering in return; benefiting others naturally returns as our own happiness. He contrasts this rational, sustainable method with habitual self-cherishing, which paradoxically guarantees the opposite of what we seek. True happiness comes from compassion, never from mundane sources that deteriorate into disappointment. A philosophical, accessible 25-minute introduction to Buddhist ethics.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1994-11-06 – 1B – Public Talk Loving Kindness and Compassion – KR.mp3
UUID: 5e62b110-75b1-4894-a27b-9d9610b50439
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks
Date: 1994-11-06
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~1,576
If you happen to watch at that time, they remain awake right in the mid middle of the night, still lighting candles and counting their money. They would say to their servants, get up and make a tea for me. I can’t sleep. I have to still do the counting. And those are those were facts actually observed.
They they did happen. Problems and elevate suffering to little extent and only currently currently nothing everlasting and to that degree yes they do help but in long run we would find that they really don’t solve any problems at all. Instead of being the means to solve problem, they bring more problems. The real means by which we can remove all our problems and bring happiness is to develop kind thought, altruistic thought, thinking about benefiting others because that is the real means by which problems not only of the present be removed and even all future problems can be removed and that is the means by which one can have happiness presently and for all future time. In that way, really these are the practices and the very practices which bring about them and the very thought, the loving kind ness, compassion, the altruism.
These by that way, we can say are extremely precious precious thing and the instructions which deal about them are therefore equally precious. So in that way, if that’s the case, then we it’s quite appealing appealing that we need to put effort towards developing these. So in terms of oneself, if one has compassion for oneself, that would be the way by which one can remove one’s future sufferings and problems. So the Buddhist word is sufferings, all unwanted experiences. Likewise if one has loving kindness towards oneself then that is the way through which one can bring happiness for oneself.
If one has now next part, if one has a good level of compassion towards others, then the immediate outcome in one’s behavior would be where one would stop hurting and harming others. This would relate to a point where firstly how would such compassion towards others come about? Well, it would come about if one already had developed compassion towards oneself where one has related one’s unwanted of problems and suffering that one only then would be able to relate fully like myself who don’t want suffering and problems. Others equally do not want sufferings and problems. So that’s the way the compassion would come about to others.
That way one as well who wishes happiness would realize that others equally do wish happiness. Well, if one do does wishes to have happiness for oneself, the way to go about is one needs to bring happiness to others because if one brings happiness to others then it is natural inevitability of process that one automatically in return will receive happiness. One one firstly there is this fact that the sufferings one experiences and receives are the results of having inflicted sufferings on others. If that’s the fact then to not receive sufferings for oneself towards that aim. The way to go would be not bring sufferings for others and on top of that actively apply every effort to remove the sufferings others are experiencing.
To bring happiness for oneself and to remove one’s suffering really it fully depends on the happiness and sufferings one brings about and inflicts inflicts on others. Because if one has inflicted sufferings problems on others then in return as a karmic consequence one suffers as return. Similarly, if one has been bringing happiness and helping others then in return one experiences happiness for oneself. Because of this very fact to experience happiness for oneself and to stop suffering for oneself towards that aim to bring happiness for others and to stop hurting others who is extremely noble method. In our ignorant in our ignorance, not knowing that that was that that method is the method to bring happiness and to remove suffering, we do the opposite that in our ordinary case to have happiness for oneself we go about hurting and destroying others and in order to remove our sufferings for oneself we go about hurting and destroying others.
By looking from the right perspective, our method is extremely flawed. It is completely the opposite method. Well, the appropriate method to achieve happiness and to remove suffering for oneself is where one don’t hurt others and destroy and destruct others. And that method would what in conventional current description would be called the scientific method and which in our Tibetan Buddhist philosophical language would be called the rational method, the one which can be sustained and tested to be true when proven through reasoning because it it perfectly makes sense. If opposite to that in our ordinary people’s case when we apply the wrong method, what actually happens is person thinking of achieving happiness for oneself is completely self centered and absorbing that thought and in trying to achieve happiness for oneself ignores the happiness of others and so forth and in the process if the person thinks one’s happiness is to be guarded and one has to achieve happiness oneself and in the method and the process if someone else is on the way there’s no stopping of mentally thinking about how to remove the person from one’s way.
So there is already an impure thought motive, a malicious motive to get rid of the person and hurt the person and through such motive whatever one executes by way of action as well as bound to be unwholesome. In actual experience of the other person there is a hurt and harm being inflicted from one’s part. So although in one’s wish one has wished happiness oneself, but the way one has went is where one has hurt others on the process. So if one has inflicted hurt and harm to other, then it is perfectly rational that such a a consequences of such action would equally be a same experience of hurt and suffering for oneself. So the harm which one has inflicted on other would return back that one as well in future would experience as the harm, the suffering.
So it would be in that way be seen as rational. Not only that, philosophically, deep down from the root point of looking, we would say, in such person’s action the root, the basic source of the action is self-cherishing, what is known as self-cherishing, self centeredness. Something has come out of self centeredness then whatever that comes out from such source is bound to be unwholesome and source source of suffering and so forth because that itself is unwholesome, the very source, self centeredness is unwholesome. To give an example, we can say if the plant from its and root is toxic in property, then all the stem branches and whatever germinates out would equally be toxic, where if the plant from its seed and root is medicinal in property, then everything that grows out of from it and sprouts or forth would be medicinal. So it is like that.
If one has a kind thought thinking about bringing happiness to others such as the kind thought of loving kindness and compassion, then out of such thought, there is bound to be actions what one does would actually be contribution towards others happiness and as a result one actually brings happiness others to others. If that’s the case, then all of such action bringing happiness to other, it is natural that in return, there will one would receive happiness. So in this way, out of compassion and loving kindness, there comes about happiness for oneself as well for others. Through that way, one’s life has become meaningful. Okay.
So okay. Well, stop here. The time is running off. And if you have any questions, we shall have few minutes for that. No.
That would not be true happiness, and it can be described as a temporary contaminated happiness what is normally descriptionally called the happiness which is seen from mundane perspective. So that’s right. It is not true happiness. Because it’s not true happiness because it would change into suffering. Whereas if it is true happiness, it should more one enjoy, more one has it, it still would remain happiness and say if we have a case one experiences happiness now and down the track one continuously has that experience it always will be there as a continuous happiness experience, whereas in the mundane case such as to be brought experiences brought by material things and financial, they may seem as happiness, but they are very bound, so bound to be changed instantly into disappointment, suffering, and so forth.
So they’re not true happiness. If one has a good intention by which one starts an action, then whatever one does has to be virtuous and wholesome actions. But of course, there is a fine line that the of the action one is doing must not be destructive and hurting to others because if the nature of the action is hurting then obviously it will hurt others and it would be unwholesome. So with intention to help and benefit others and as well the action being done itself is not destructive and hurting to other than whatever one does is bound to be virtuous, wholesome and it can’t be anything coming out of self-cherishing. Okay.
Thank you. Hold on.