Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 27-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche explores a paradox at the heart of the giving and taking practice (tonglen): Geshe Chekawa devoted his life to this practice while praying to be reborn in the lower realms to help suffering beings, yet at death he experienced visions of the pure lands instead. Through this story, Rinpoche demonstrates how compassion—the willingness to actively take on others’ suffering—becomes the engine of both transformative practice and karmic result. He traces the progressive practice through all sentient beings: enemies, relatives, animals, hungry ghosts, hell beings, gods and asuras, plus hearers, solitary realizers, and bodhisattvas, extending to the impurities of the physical environment. He shows how merit accumulates boundlessly when the practice is rooted in genuine compassion. The session concludes with meditative instructions on four dimensions of compassionate mind and a dedication of merits for all beings’ enlightenment.
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File: 1989-11-14 – 16B – Sun's Radiance of – KR.mp3
UUID: f03d5cb2-4ca0-44f0-9c45-0a25fa95fc62
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1989-11-14
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~1,952
So if we have a good understanding that the great compassion is important and everything in great vehicle has its root and what is called source in this great compassion. Thereby, if we do the practice integrating everything on this practice of compassion, then we can become closer to becoming a great vehicle practitioner. Otherwise, if we leave the great compassion aside somewhere and try to hang around on other practices, then it’s quite difficult to have the enlightenment mind and therefore difficult also to be great vehicle practitioner. So, basically, the practice at this point has been about the giving and taking with the special thought of or with the basic thought of being specially trying to exchange oneself with others, which is to be meant as meaning to generate the thought cherishing other instead of ever present self-cherishing. So in trying to exchange the thought cherishing other in place of the self-cherishing thought there is this practice of giving and taking and with taking it has to be with special force or strength of compassion and so far in the last teaching, the explanation so far has been about taking the compassion or taking practice being done through compassion.
Firstly, starting the taking of sufferings of one’s future lives and then to to to the next time about to die, drawing closer and taking everything, suffering and causes of suffering possible by oneself to experience upon oneself, and then shifting the visualization, taking off the suffering and course of suffering to one’s relatives and friends, and after that to those who are unrelated, neutral, and after that to enemies. So that part, everything has been explained so far. And when the training on this thought taking in visualization and sufferings of one’s own mind, that’s very well or it’s becoming very well trained, becoming good, then one can shift the focus on taking the sufferings of sentient beings within the group of animals. And when that becomes good, shift to those in what’s normally translated as hungry ghost. And when that’s becoming good, shift to those what is normally translated as hell beings.
And when that becomes good, then one can shift one’s focus on the sufferings and causes of sufferings of sentient beings in the group of of gods and demigods, asuras. And when that becomes good, then one can shift one’s focus on the taking of the sufferings causes of sufferings and faults which are within the practitioners of the hearers and solitary realizers. And also one can shift after that to those sentient beings within the group of Bodhisattvas because even with Bodhisattvas, there are a lot of what called faults in the sense meaning the what are called aspects of delusions which one can take. So one goes on taking off everybody. So with this, all these sufferings and causes of sufferings of entire sentient beings have been taken upon oneself.
Now that that comprise the taking of the contained sentient beings, and now one shifts one’s focus into taking the impurities of the container environment or the whole environmental universe. So when one does that, one takes the whole impure aspect whatever they are with the environment, one takes upon oneself and at conclusion one thinks all the environment become all pure, a term in Tibetan called all pure. For us, at the moment, it’s quite difficult to do all these taking practices. Whereas with the bodhisattvas, there is not any difficulty at all. So for us, it is quite a difficult thing, a hardship to do this practice of taking.
Whereas with the bodhisattvas, there’s no hardship. There’s no difficulty. Instead, they have more joy the more they do the taking. So how come there’s this difference? So when we check carefully, then it all faults and it all comes down to the compassion.
As strong one has the compassion that much one will feel more joyful and happy about doing this practice of taking other sufferings and causes of sufferings. And whereas if one doesn’t have this compassion, then as little the practice of taking one may do still, it will bring fear, it will bring unwantedness, and it will bring total uneasiness while doing the practice. And that’s why it has been explained in the context of the practice that taking practice is done with special skill and special force or strength of the compassion and also not being explained, not only being explained there, but also through our reasoning we can understand how more we have compassion, more that practice is possible, or practice of taking. In the past, there was a great teacher called Geshe Chekawa, and all his life, he has been doing this practice of giving and taking, especially emphasizing on taking, where he used to do the practice of taking the sufferings and causes of sufferings all that the sentient beings upon himself. And at and at at that context of visualization, thinking himself becoming very black and dark and sentient beings becoming very purified white, and they’re all being lifted or going up to pure realm pure realm or celestial places.
But somehow, even though he has been doing all his life this practice, but somehow when he was about to die, the vision of where he was going to be born next life started appearing as if he was being born in he was being born in the pure realm what called in the in the pure realm instead of down in the lower realm. So to make it more clear, all his life he has been doing this practice on that visualization and with prayer that may he go down to the lower realm, highest of the lower realms, trying to be more able to do the taking of other sentient beings in those realm. So even though he has been doing those practice and prayer all his life, but at the end of his life when he was about to die, the vision of next birth which he got was opposite instead was of being born up in. And at that point, the teacher, Geshe Chekawa, called his disciple, oh, come come quick. It’s not going to be good.
It’s not going to be good. Arrange the offerings. And then the disciple was surprised and he asked, oh, what’s the matter? And then the teacher replied back, oh, all my all my life, I’ve been doing this practice, taking these sufferings and causes of suffering, which are the negativities of sentient beings. And because of doing that practice and also praying that I’ll be born down in the highest of the lower realms, I should have actually been born being being I should actually be going to be born down in the lower realm, but somehow I’m starting start I’m start getting these visions of being born in the higher pure lands.
So please arrange the offerings for the Three Jewels that I have to make earnest last-minute prayers to the Three Jewels that my whole life’s practice and prayers may happen exactly as I wish. So all his life, he has been doing the practice of giving and taking and what I call because of that, instead of going down or falling down to the lower rebirth, he was being born in the higher realm. That’s because even though he might have wished to be born down there, but his whole practice accumulate or or cause him to accumulate a lot of merits, which shall bring good rewards. So we also if we do the practice of giving and taking, then we’ll not fall down to bad rebirths. Instead, we can perhaps go up to the higher pure lands because we would be accumulating lot of merits.
If we all together do practice on giving and taking, then we all together can go to and stay comfortably relaxed. So that’s about it on the practice of taking. And with the taking, if we do this practice, then because we are taking the sufferings of other sentient beings, all other sentient beings, therefore, we are accumulating a lot of merit. And also from the point of view that because sentient beings are countless, therefore, your practice being focused on countless sentient beings suffering. Therefore, from each even with the each number of sentient beings, if you’re going to accumulate one merit, your merits number of your merits will be infinite.
Therefore, it’s very powerful. In the example, if we sweep with one piece of one stalk of a broom, then it’s very insignificant and it wouldn’t work very much, whereas if we put together all other stalks of broom. So that’s basically speaking about Asian countries where cleaning is done through sweeping with a broom. So if we have all the stalks together, then if we sweep, it will be very work it will sweep very well. So same if we just same like that example, if we just do practices only focused on one’s own interest only, then that’s very insignificant.
Whereas if one do it with the motivation of enlightenment mind and being focused on infinite numbers of sentient beings. Therefore, one’s practice becomes very powerful. And with the taking practice, at the end of doing the taking practice, if you generate a joyful attitude thinking, oh, I have been very fortunate to be able to do this practice of taking, then it becomes a practice of rejoicing which makes you to have your merits increase more and more. And that’s been talking basically, the merits already accumulated by the taking practice, and on top of that, your rejoicing brings extra increasing amounts of merits. Now we will work on instead of question answer session, we will do meditation.
But firstly, let’s have this kind of thinking that compassion is needed from the point of view that all sentient beings have been very kind and we have to repay their kindness. So it is like example in normal, worldly society, if somebody has done good to you, then in response to that kindness of the other person, if you wish all bad things and try to give hard times to the other person, then even in the only conventional sense, you would be regarded as very, I’ll call, very, very bad person. So we will meditate about five minutes thinking on these four points, four qualities of the compassionate mind, or compassionate mind having the four qualities: may sentient beings be. So in Tibetan it’s very tricky, but still there’s the second one is making actual prayer, and first one is just in a what I call a kind of thought. So there’s a bit of what call a change, but they are two different.
So first one, these sentient beings be separated from the sufferings and causes of suffering. And second one, may these sentient beings be separated from the sufferings and causes of suffering. Suffering. And third one, may myself alone take the responsibility of removing their sufferings and causes of suffering. And may the Lama deity please bless me to actually let that happen.
So try to think and meditate, familiarize with those four points for about five minutes. We will do the dedication prayer starting from our praying that his holiness may live long for the benefit of all sentient beings. And after that, we dedicate whatever merits we have accumulated by listening to this teaching that these may become cause for oneself and all other sentient beings to attain full enlightenment. So in short, trying to make our potential deposit of the present activity the main cause of happiness for other sentient beings in the future.