Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute session, Kyabje Rinpoche teaches foundational practices for cultivating bodhicitta—the awakening heart dedicated to enlightening all beings. He clarifies the two aspects of conventional bodhicitta: seeking others’ welfare and seeking enlightenment, then presents two classical methods for developing the love and compassion that support this intention—Śāntideva’s equanimity approach and Atisha’s recognition of all beings as mothers. The session focuses primarily on the mother meditation: a detailed reflection on one’s mother’s kindness from conception through childhood, her sacrifices during pregnancy and birth, and endless self-care as one grows. Rinpoche then extends this to recognize that the same being has been one’s mother countless times across infinite rebirths, making all sentient beings worthy of loving recognition as our present mother. For practitioners ready to deepen equanimity toward friends, enemies, and neutral persons.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1989-08-22 – 6A – Sun's Radiance of – KR.mp3
UUID: 3f2e780f-3994-48d8-af15-f701ba3005ea
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1989-08-22
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,770
So we should initially adjust our motivation such that we’re going to listen to this profound teaching on the great vehicle with the attitude of the awakening heart. The attitude which seeks perfect, unsurpassable, complete Buddhahood in order to establish all sentient beings equal to space and perfect, complete happiness and bliss. We’re discussing the two types of bodhicitta which will be translated as the ultimate awakening mind and the conventional awakening heart. And of these two we’re now going to take up a discussion of the conventional awakening heart. And with this presentation there is an overall two divisions.
There is the actual explanation of training in the awakening heart and the supplementary explanations. With respect to the teaching on the awakening heart, there is divided into two parts which will be the explanation of the stages and training in the mind of the awakening heart. The instructions on the actual training in the awakening heart, the instructions on the actual training of awakening heart, that’s the minor division and the second is the supplementary instruction. The instruction on the actual training in the awakening heart is the explanation which takes up the causes for developing an awakening heart. So in the text on the transcendental wisdom entitled Ornament for Clear Realizations there’s the definition of mind generation which is synonymous with awakening heart.
It states mind generation, the wish for perfect, complete enlightenment for the sake of others. And so therefore there are two parts to this quality of the awakening heart. There is the part which seeks the welfare of others and the part which has as its object enlightenment, complete enlightenment. So there is the aspect of the awakening heart which seeks the welfare of others and the aspect which observes enlightenment, which seeks enlightenment. So with respect to the awakening heart there are two strivings.
First there is taking other sentient beings, becoming aware of the fact that they are suffering and developing the compassion which seeks to separate them from their suffering. This combined with the understanding, observing sentient beings who are without happiness wishing to join them with happiness, that is to say love, and therefore striving to motivated by love and compassion to striving for the welfare of sentient beings motivated by love and compassion. This is one aspect of the awakening heart. As a preliminary to the actual development of love and compassion which is the necessary causes for the development of the awakening heart, as was explained previously it’s necessary to generate a feeling of pleasant love. That is viewing all sentient beings as having the appearance of pleasantness or having the affectionate quality, a pleasing quality, they appear pleasing.
And this developing the seeing sentient beings as bereft of happiness. Those sentient beings bereft of happiness having a pleasing quality are appearing pleasant to one in the development of pleasant love. As was explained previously with respect to pleasant love, the necessary conditions for which foster this attitude of mind. There were the two traditions, one of which was the tradition of Atisha and Candrakīrti which involved recognizing all sentient beings as one’s mother, remembering their kindness and developing gratitude or seeking to repay their kindness. And the second tradition was that of Śāntideva in developing equanimity through seeing that the equality of all sentient beings and that all sentient beings want happiness do not want suffering.
So either one of these two methods, the method of Atisha or Śāntideva, can actually lead to the development of pleasant love. But there is a difference with respect to the type of the level of intelligence of which type of person would make use of these two methods. It said that those of the most intelligence would make use of the equalizing oneself and others by use of the tradition of Śāntideva, developing equanimity, seeing that all sentient beings want happiness that none want to suffer. And in dependence upon this eventually fostering pleasant love. On the other hand, those of mediocre intelligence would make use of the former tradition of first recognizing all sentient beings as one’s mother, remembering their kindness and developing gratitude wishing to repay their kindness.
In our presentation of thought transformation we will be mainly making use of the latter of these two methods, that is the Śāntideva’s tradition developing equality of self and others by understanding that all sentient beings want happiness and none want to suffer. But though we will be mainly use of the tradition of Śāntideva, we will briefly because some people can appreciate this particular type of presentation, looking at the seven cause and effect instruction which makes use of the recognizing all sentient beings, etcetera. In the tradition of Atisha and Candrakīrti, that is the tradition of the seven cause and effect instruction, we naturally it is stated that we naturally have a pleasant attitude or we generate a pleasant love toward those we hold close, those we hold dear. We naturally feel this way. They naturally appear to us very pleasant.
But we aren’t able to generate such an attitude toward our enemies nor to those who are neutral to us, who we feel indifference to. And the difference is because of the quality of their appearance that the neutral person and the enemy simply do not appear pleasant to us and therefore we do not have a natural feeling of closeness to them. We feel there’s some distance. Therefore in order to develop love and compassion it’s necessary to develop this type of pleasant love in which all sentient beings appear close to you, especially with respect to enemies and neutral persons. We want to try to develop in the development of loving compassion, a feeling of non differentiation between those who are close, who are presently close, those who are enemies, and those who are neutral.
We’re trying to develop a feeling that there’s no difference whatsoever between them. They all appear pleasant to us. And in this, in dependence upon this, we can develop pleasant love. So in order to develop a non differentiated pleasant love, we must begin to develop a sense of closeness, not only to those we naturally feel close to, but to those we now hold as our enemies and those we have neutral feelings toward. So we want to develop a feeling of ultimate closeness to all three, those we naturally now feel close to, our friends, those who are parents, those we hold dear.
Also extend this to our neutral persons, and then finally to enemies. So we begin to make use of a model of those we naturally hold close to. We feel this ultimate closeness from the point of view of spiritual practice, the ultimate model which we use to base closeness, the feelings of closeness upon, are the relationship between oneself and one’s spiritual master. Within the mundane, it is between oneself and one’s mother. These are the models of closeness that we make use of.
So if we look at our experience in this life, we can understand, we question who is it amongst all the people who has benefited us most? Who has been the most benefit to us? It is those who benefited most from the very beginning, from the time we were born up to the present time. If we ask that question, can see that it was our mother. If we don’t think about it, perhaps it won’t be clear to us.
But once we actually begin to reflect on the actual experience within our lives, who is it in fact has been the most benefit to us? Who has helped us the most. From the very beginning of our life, the great care that our mother took of us, took for us up through our life. The very fact of our life depended upon her, our livelihood, everything that we have has arisen through her kindness. We’re naturally thinking of our relationship in this way.
It’s almost definite that we will generate a feeling of pleasant love toward our mother, that she will appear very pleasant and pleasing to us, And that we use this as a model to begin to direct to all sentient beings and seeing all sentient beings in this exact same way having this pleasant love that appear to us very pleasing and this is the and dependence upon this then we can develop great compassion. If we set aside for the moment those who have entered the spiritual path of the Bodhisattvas, the various types of holy beings, if we set them aside amongst those who have not entered into a spiritual path, ordinary beings. You know, who has been the most kind to us? Who has benefited us the most? Who has been the greatest use to us in our life?
Then it’s very different. Is our mother. From the very beginning, from the moment of our conception, our mother has turned her kindness toward us again and again. Her thoughts have turned toward us again and again. That, you know, even when we were in her womb, when she was pregnant with us, all the things that she went without.
For example, perhaps previous to her pregnancy she smoked, but realizing that smoking may harm her child, she gives up smoking. Again, perhaps she took some kinds of drugs. Again, she gives up her drugs during her pregnancy. When she eats, she’s concerned about what types of food she eats, whether they’re spicy, whether they’re nourishing. Again and again, in the course of her daily life, even while we’re still in her womb, her mind is turning toward our welfare.
So not only did she care for us while we were in her womb, but even the birth itself is of great concern to her for our own welfare. She begins trying to make all the necessary preparations so that the birth goes well. You know, looking into what medical preparations might be necessary, looking into even what types of rites or prayers might be beneficial that the birth go well. Her attention turns towards us at that moment, even at our birth. And then immediately upon our birth, the great difficulty that a mother experienced during her pregnancy and the great pain that she endured in the actual process of giving birth.
But no matter how much pain she may have gone through, she may have experienced at our birth, when we are finally born and she sees us all that pain is forgotten and she takes us in her hands as if we were a precious jewel and holds us close to her breast and does whatever she can within her ability to comfort and to promote our well-being at that moment. And while we are unable to take care of ourselves when we’re just this little baby, that she does whatever will make us comfortable. She does whatever that we need. They remove the mucus with their mouth from the baby’s nose. And also whatever mess the child makes, she doesn’t think anything of it.
She gladly cleans the child. Even at night she can’t sleep because her thoughts are constantly turning toward the welfare of her child. And even there’s a certain part when we’re of our life, when we were this small infant. If we were left to our own for even an hour, it’s possible that we could die. That every hour the mother turns her concern toward her child.
If we weren’t cared for, we would die. That every day she does something, she’s working for our benefit, trying to give us the best foods, the nicest, softest clothing, always constantly going to trouble, always working for our benefit. You know, we all know this. This is our own experience that mothers do this for their children. So our mothers try constantly to humor their child, to make it happier.
They talk to their child. And as the child progresses, as the child grows, there’s no end to the difficulties they’re willing to go through working for the sake of their child, working for money to supply it with whatever the child needs, with their food, with their clothing. There’s no other person in the world who is as kind as our mother. You know, as we grew up in order that we have her education, for example, that she sent us to school and involved in all the preparations. It was necessary to pay tuition for the school, but she gladly paid this so that we could have the necessary education.
So that person who has been the greatest benefit to us is our mother. This is why having seen this for ourselves that we feel this ultimate closeness to our mother. But not only has she been this kind to us in this life, having gone through all the difficulties in caring for us, not only in this life, but in previous lives she has acted in this same fashion again and again. And not only has our mother of this life treated us in the same caring fashion in previous lives when we were humans, which have been numberless times. But additionally, she has treated us in the same fashion numberless times when we took numberless rebirths as every type of sentient being.
That she has been our mother and treated us with care when we were a dog, when we took rebirth as her puppy, when we took rebirth and when she was our mother and we were a bird, that every sentient being that we’ve experienced, we’ve experienced the same kindness from the same mother numberless times. So just this very mother has been our mother countless times. This process of taking rebirth has been going on since beginning of this time. It didn’t have a start. It never had a beginning.
And in most all of these rebirths we’ve had a mother. And therefore since our rebirths are countless, our mothers are countless. So even amongst the people here that throughout all our previous lives and the various transmigrations that we’ve experienced together, and but though we don’t recognize the fact that we have been each other’s mother and child numberless times. Also, additionally, that the same relationship applies to not only having been each other’s mothers numberless times, of everyone in this room having been our mother, also they’ve been our father, also they’ve been our relatives numberless times. All sentient beings have been our mother in previous lives.
There’s not one sentient being that we can find who has not been our mother. So this is the way we can begin to cultivate the recognition of all sentient beings as our mother, beginning to recognize the endless cyclic nature of our process of rebirth, and that over this infinite number of rebirth, all sentient beings have in fact been our mother. So all sentient beings have treated us the same, have been as kind as our mother of this life. For example, if someone were to give you $100 this year and another person were to give you $100 last year, the only difference is in time. The kindness is equal, it’s exactly the same, the benefit that we derive.
Likewise, the kindness of our mother of this life, in fact all sentient beings have treated us with that same kindness. It’s just a difference in time. At present, we have varying attitudes towards sentient beings. We have aversion for some, attachment for others, some we like, some we dislike. What we’re trying to develop is a feeling of sameness, an even minded quality toward all sentient beings.
Now, for those who we hold as our enemy, we generate anger. For those who benefit us we like them. But way of responding is a great mistake. If in fact we look at those who benefit us in terms of previous lives, then these same people who are benefiting this life have in fact killed us many times in the past. And the same person that we see as our enemy presently in a previous life was our dear mother who treated us with great kindness and beneficence a great deal.
So we’re trying to develop a sense of not holding some close and others distant, a feeling of equanimity, even mindedness toward all sentient beings. So, maybe they’re going to tell a story about there were two Buddha’s closest disciples. One was named Śāriputra and the other is Maudgalyayāna. And at that time Śāriputra went out for alms round.