Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 21-minute talk, Kyabje Rinpoche traces how every form of suffering—from the eight hot and cold hells to animal realms to human and divine states—stems from one root: self-cherishing thought. He argues that even practitioners who attain liberation while holding self-cherishing remain confined to the “lower vehicle” and cannot enter the great vehicle or reach Buddha status. The solution is to exchange self-cherishing for cherishing others, the source of all good qualities and lasting happiness. Rinpoche walks through the logical reasoning for this exchange, reviews the faults of self-cherishing and the benefits of cherishing others, then guides a five-minute meditation anchored in the commitment to abandon self-cherishing and adopt cherishing others. For practitioners grounded in Mahāyāna Buddhism.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1989-10-24 – 14B – Sun's Radiance of – KR.mp3
UUID: 0933e685-1f17-4cec-b7d1-341acefc7743
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1989-10-24
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~1,388
There are a whole lot of different kinds of beings, like beings in the naraka. And regarding them, there are eight hot narakas where there are intense suffering of heat all the time. And then there are eight cold narakas where there is intense suffering of cold all the time. And also there are beings who are animals. Regarding animals, there are a whole lot of different kinds of animals.
We can see in televisions how sometimes in the documentaries there are different fishes and animals under the ocean. And so all these different kinds of beings, they all have countless different sufferings. And all these sufferings come from self-cherishing thought and even the what we call sufferings which we see in the devas and in these sufferings which we see in the beings who are born as humans, they all are equally a result of self-cherishing thought. Even if a practitioner may meditate on selflessness of things, meaning even if a person may meditate on the reality nature of things, on emptiness and so forth. And by depending on these meditative paths, even if a person may be able to attain the state of liberation free from cyclic existence, even in that case, because the person still has the self-cherishing thought, therefore the person is still technically called as the, what I call, lower vehicle, inferior vehicle.
And even if he has attained liberation, he still cannot enter into, still has not entered, sorry, he still has not entered into great vehicle and has not still been able to be equal in status with the bodhisattvas and the Buddha. So therefore, literally speaking, that very fact of the practitioner, even after attaining liberation, is technically by having fallen. By falling down into the lower or inferior vehicle or path is because of the self-cherishing thought. Because self-cherishing thought is faulty in the sense that it is the source of all the faults, therefore it is a thing which we should try to abandon. On the other hand, the thought cherishing others is the source of all that we want, the good qualities, the benefits, and the unchanging excellent happiness.
So therefore, it is what I call in meaning it is saying because self-cherishing thought is the source of the fault and because thought cherishing others is the source of all the good and benefit, therefore it becomes good reason for us to abandon the first and to try to practice the thought cherishing others. And in trying to practice the thought cherishing others, of course it may be quite difficult in the beginning to do that practice, but still, due to the fact that behind somehow it is the source of all that is good. Therefore, we should persist and try to go on practicing no matter how difficult or hard in the beginning it might seem. In a normal worldly situation, if somebody has started a project and after a while if the person understands that it’s complete failure and mistake, then from that time onward the person definitely has an understanding that it is a mistake and it’s a faulty project, so he may not work or repeat the same thing again. Whereas in a normal society or in a normal world situation, if we start a project and in the beginning we may not be able to understand it’s going to be successful, beneficial or not, but after some time, turns out to be good, successful, beneficial, then we will continue to do that thing.
In that case, like in the worldly affairs project, it’s just even if there was a mistake, it’s just a very minor thing because it concerns only in extent to this life only and it hasn’t got anything to do about being free from all the faults and all the good qualities. Whereas here with this spiritual path, Dharma practice, it is something which concerns not only this life but all the future lives. Therefore, it’s something which we really have to be careful that which thing is really the thing we must be doing. Now we have to exchange the two things, replace the two things by each other, the thought cherishing oneself, self-cherishing thought with thought cherishing others. In the past, we have not clearly identified which one is the faulty and which one is the good one, the beneficial one, but now we have understood it.
From now onward we have to leave the thought cherishing oneself which has been with us all the time. And in place of that, we have to develop the thought cherishing others, caring for others. There will have to be a strong feeling that I’m really going to exchange this self-cherishing thought with the thought cherishing others. After that, there will have to be kind of a strong pledge that from now onward I will hold the thought cherishing others and will never have thought cherishing oneself. But in order to have that strong feeling and in order to have that strong pledge, firstly, one must clearly understand how the thought cherishing oneself is faulty and how the thought cherishing others is beneficial and the source of all that is good.
To have a strong feeling and to have a strong willingness to exchange these two, one has to understand clearly the faults of one and the benefit of the other. And because this is quite important, means because to have that understanding is quite important, therefore, Rinpoche has been explaining all those past days of teachings on those two special points that the thought cherishing oneself is the source of everything that is fault and disadvantages and went into elaborate details about that. In the past, he has also gone into detail about how thought cherishing others is the source of everything that is good. So meaning, why all those past elaborate teachings on those two points was principally to generate strong urge and willingness to exchange the two. If possible, course of trying to think and meditate on this point, the fault of self-cherishing thought.
So in trying to meditate on this, if you can, it is good to go into all the details as explained before, how each and every kind of different sufferings, unwanted things have arisen from this self-cherishing thought and how they all have their root in this self-cherishing thought. And that’s if one can. If not, at least the main emphasis in this practice is if one can go into that elaborate meditation, then one should meditate at least on how self-cherishing thought is the root of all the suffering and how it is the one which shuts the door for everything which one wants. So in meaning, how the self-cherishing thought is the root of all the suffering and unwanted things and how it is the door which shuts all the wanted things. So we think those two points.
And same with the thoughts cherishing others. If you can meditate elaborately, then you can meditate on each and every detailed explanation explained before. If not, at least on this point, thoughts cherishing others. At least meditate with these two points that the thought cherishing others is the one which stops all the things which we don’t want, and the thought cherishing others is the source of everything which we want. So just on these two points, we can do meditation.
So let’s meditate for about five minutes having a 100% belief 100 and decision that I will now never have the thought cherishing oneself and I will have thought cherishing others. Today we all have found the wisdom eye, which sees the first time the root or the source from where all the good qualities of the great vehicle path arise. So therefore, because today we have attained or we have found this wisdom eye, Therefore, it’s incredibly very precious. We have found this wisdom eye by which we can clearly see from where all the good qualities of great vehicle path arise. And also, we have found this wisdom eye which also sees from where all the faults and things which we don’t want arise from.
So we should try to not lose such precious wisdom eye. So maybe tonight we don’t have questions because we did meditation.