Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute talk, Khensur Rinpoche presents bodhicitta (awakening heart) as the single practice determining all advancement on the Buddhist path. All extraordinary enlightened qualities arise from this one motivation, he explains, using the seed analogy: practice bodhicitta, only Buddhahood results. He introduces the seven cause-and-effect instructions as the practical method, focusing on the first—remembering your mother’s kindness—with concrete guidance for Western practitioners on how to approach this meditation (recalling specific intervals: time in the womb, early childhood). A core emphasis is unbroken practice continuity: missing a single teaching interrupts the thread of understanding and risks losing conviction. Even without realizing the full fruit in this lifetime, generating faith and keeping the practice unbroken seeds future realization across all existence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1989-05-02 – Side 1 – Suns' Radiance Poor Sound – KR.MP3
UUID: 6e649d8f-dfc2-4a3e-bcf9-683f837cecd6
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1989-05-02
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~1,237
# Khensur Rinpoche 19890502 Suns’ Radiance Side 1 Poor Sound
**Collection:** Rinpoche Recordings — Sun’s Radiance (1989)
**Duration:** 45.8 minutes
**Words:** 1,232
**Model:** Deepgram Nova-3
**Corrections applied:** 2
**Transcribed:** 2026-02-27 14:53
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Human beings as you know, demigods and gods experience happiness. So both suffering and happiness arise in dependence upon the mind. The happiness that amongst all the various types of level of the graduated path for the beings of small capacity, middling capacity and great capacity. And it can be said that the small and middling capacity presentations of the graded path are simply within the greater system, the practice, there are the lesser vehicle and the greater vehicle, the Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna. And the greater vehicle itself is divided into two vehicles, the perfection vehicle and the tantric vehicle.
The way, you know, but the only way that we can enter into the greater vehicle and therefore the way practices of perfection and tantra is through the doorway of the awakening heart. Whether we’re practicing a lesser or greater vehicle is determined upon whether or not there is presence within our mind of the awakening heart. But it is one single factor that determines whether one is a lesser vehicle practitioner or a great vehicle practitioner or not. Whether we’re, no matter what the being might be, whether they’re human being, whether they’re animals, what other types they might do, once they generate this mind of the awakening heart, then they become a Bodhisattva worthy of homage and reverence. Extensively on both Sūtra and Tantra.
But even though he wrote all these very detailed texts on all these very detailed practices, the essential practice, the main practice is the awakening heart. The essential practice is the practice of the awakening heart, the pith of Dharma. When we meditate, what we are going to cultivate and what we are going to meditate on is the awakening heart. All the extraordinary qualities of the Buddha come about through the foundation of bringing to completion the accumulations. We bring about the welfare of both oneself and others and finally attain Buddhahood for ourselves.
From the motivation of the awakening heart that we teach the Dharma. It is by actually having a genuine bodhicitta that all the rest of the realizations of the spiritual path such as Hearers and Solitary Realizers are brought about by the qualities of the awakening heart such as loving compassion. So all the qualities from the beginning until the benefit is brought to all of the beings has as its foundation, as its source, the awakening heart. The meditation on the awakening heart has no other result than Buddhahood. All the other practices that we may involve ourselves in, all the other skillful activities, virtues that we may create can have various types of intermediate results.
But it is the quality of the awakening heart that it has only the one result of Buddhahood. It brings about this unsurpassed state. It is as if it were a unique, extraordinary cause. Just as when, for example, we plant a rice seed, we only get a rice plant. If we plant a chili seed, we only get a chili plant.
We don’t get some other type of result. By meditating, developing the practice of the awakening heart, we will only develop the result of Buddhahood, meditating, cultivating altruism and compassion. It won’t come about all at once, it’s going to be a gradual unfoldment, a gradual development. And I know it’s difficult for you to possibly come to the teaching consistently, but it’s important that we do not create a break in our practice. If we attend one teaching and we begin to understand the method for developing the awakening heart, begin to develop some faith, some confidence and conviction and then we miss a teaching, we will lose that conviction, we will lose the continuity of the development of that practice.
So it’s important that we try to resolve, though it’s difficult, to make continuous effort in development of the practice and try to make continuous effort in actually listening to the teachings. You know, even if we don’t realize the result of our efforts in this lifetime to actually develop the awakening heart, just by generating faith, conviction, making prayers to actually develop this at some time in the future is a very powerful method to imprint latencies whereby you will easily develop this quality in future existences. It’s not only will it benefit ourselves in this life, even if we don’t develop the awakening heart completely, but it’s going to bring us happiness in this life and develop the latencies whereby we’re going to develop it in every life in the future. We will be able to realize this practice. There is no greater practice than the practice of developing the awakening heart.
And I appreciate that everyone has been coming here this evening and from my side I will try to keep the message of the practice of developing the awakening heart with as pure a heart as I can and hope that you will be able to make use of it. And ask that from your side, that you also try to develop this kind hearted attitude to listen to the teaching with this pure attitude of wishing to develop this one most precious thing that we could ever hope to practice, and that is the awakening heart. And the very fact that we’re able to be here now, that the weather is quite comfortable, the direct explanation of the results of a practice would be the direct cause and the person who preceded that particular person who gave to that person who received teaching from would be the indirect cause. You don’t actually feel it’s the same situation as for example in the seven cause-and-effect instructions where the first two are recognizing all beings as one’s mother and remembering her kindness are the indirect causes for the awakening heart whereas the final of these seven causes is the direct cause.
It’s just the ultimate result whereas the others are intermediate causes. So, you know, the master made the observation that within this one’s meditative tradition of seven cause and effect instructions, the initial meditation is remembering the kindness of one’s mother. And we think that this might be quite difficult for Westerners to do because most Westerners don’t particularly remember the kindness of their mother. Instead, we should just recollect her kindness. That she bore us in her womb.
We should think of it in this interval of time — during the time of being in the womb. Then even after birth, while we were a very small child, remembering that kindness during that particular interval of time. And then as we were growing up, getting older, that interval of time. So remembering the kindness particularly for these intervals of time. So, you know, for those who have actually given birth, we can use our own experience in what we went through, you know, from our own conception in the past that we’ve had, the experiences that we felt to begin to appreciate what our mother went through in the same way that we went through for the child that we gave birth to.
For those who, you know, it’s like a situation where there’s someone doing some work. If you’ve never done that work before then you can’t appreciate what that person is going through. But if you’ve actually done that same job, then you can go, I did that myself and I know what it feels like.