Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 28-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche explores love meditation within Tonglen practice, contrasting true lasting happiness with unstable samsaric pleasures—eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty. He teaches four progressive features of love: basic love (wishing all sentient beings happiness), aspirational love (adding prayer), universal responsibility (taking personal responsibility), and supplication to the Lama-deity for blessing. Through vivid examples—a sick person who needs medicine before food—he explains how love informs the practice of giving: visualizing excellent bodies, wealth, and ultimately teachings and spiritual guides. Understanding the benefits of love practice removes hardship and generates genuine enthusiasm. He emphasizes that all meditation must be grounded in bodhicitta, the aspiration to achieve Buddhahood for all beings. The session concludes with a five-minute guided meditation on love.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1989-11-21 – 17B – Sun's Radiance of – KR.mp3
UUID: c39c1560-f12d-407b-8af1-60660c5ce5a0
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1989-11-21
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,031
It doesn’t become suffering from happiness, and it is without slightest of suffering that happiness is without even a single hair and it’s without even a single smallest particle. So it is happiness always there remaining as happiness. Whereas the present happiness or comfort of our our normal day life is happiness or comfort where if we feel hungry, then we eat food and that seems to be the happiness or comfort. And if we feel thirsty, then we take a drink. Then that seems to be our happiness or comfort.
And if we feel hot, then we take off our clothes, then that seems to be happiness or comfort. And same like when we feel cold wearing warm clothes. And that happiness is not what I call not the real happiness. It’s not very stable. That happiness is not stable.
It just changes very quickly. It doesn’t remain as happiness. And that sort of happiness is called as happiness of cyclic existence, samsaric happiness. That sort of happiness of cyclic existence is with even with animals and even with what are called sentient beings and continuous suffering, normally called as hell beings, because even for them there is occasions where they get slight temporary happiness. And now with the actual thought of love where the line says the sentient beings with happiness and causes of happiness.
So that causes of happiness refers to ten virtuous actions, three higher trainings, and the realizations and experiences and realizations of the spiritual grounds and paths. In the case of a sick person out there, and if you seem to generate a kind of a sympathetic attitude, thinking, oh, may this person be free of his sickness, in that case, that thought is not a love. Love is not that insignificant thought. But anyway, in that case, that thought is a benevolent thought, and in accordance to its degree of being benevolent, it will work out the person who has that attitude in according to that degree of thought. He will have some merit, some benefits.
So in that case, we can still maintain that that thought is very powerful in its own right because even though it being focused on one sentient being and even though it is a thought thinking, that one sentient being be free of sickness and attain happiness free of that sickness. Even though it being that, still it is a very pure benevolent attitude coming from the person’s side. So we can understand it is still a very powerful thought in its own right. So if that is the case with that one sentient being, then we can through that reasoning, we can understand very clearly if there is another if there is a real thought of love which is focused on all countless infinite sentient beings thinking, may all these countless sentient beings be free of all the samsaric sufferings and the causes of suffering and be with what I call, be with the happiness of the liberation, uncontaminated happiness. So if there is such a thought, then we can clearly understand through that example how powerful, how beneficial that real what I call thought of love would be.
In whatever spiritual practice, Dharma practices we may do, we have to think about the benefits there is with the practice and understanding the benefits, especially in the case of great benefits with specific practices like this one, if we do do the practice by remembering those benefits or being aware of those benefits, our meditation and our practice will be without hardship. We will have full interest, full enthusiasm in doing those practices. For example, with the business person, if we if the person sees there is a profit in the business, then the person wouldn’t mind about his personal, what I call hardships, and also wouldn’t mind about putting other people into all sort of problems because he’s very much bent on getting the profit. And also, he will have no the person will have no hardship working all day, all night. So same here in the context of spiritual practice, Dharma practice.
If we see the benefit and are sure about benefit, it’s natural that our practice shouldn’t be difficult. And if a practitioner does the right way of doing meditation on love starting from the first feature where the practitioner thinks, may all sentient beings, may all sentient beings be with happiness and causes of happiness. So that’s love. And that itself has enormous, what I call, benefits and it’s very powerful. And on top of that, if the practitioner does the second feature where the practitioner thinks this way, may all sentient beings be with happiness and causes of happiness, and that becomes the prayer of love.
So the difference between two being the last the second one has may in aspirational aspirational form, and there is extra benefit of prayer of love. And in the third one, if the practitioner does with the third feature where he thinks this way, may myself alone take the responsibility to actually let sentient beings be with happiness and the causes of happiness, is called the exalted thought of love, or alternatively sometimes called as universal thought, universal responsibility of love. And with the fourth one, if the practitioner thinks, may the Lama who is inseparable from deity, may the Lama deity please inspire me through your blessings for me to be able to do this actually. So that becomes the, what I call, prayer or supplication of the love. So these four being integrated into one thought and the practitioner doing it, then we can understand how powerful it would be.
So that’s how the actual meditation on love has to be. And if you do love or do the meditation on love with all those four features, then your practice is vastly powerful. So in the actual context of the practice where the line says, with special skill and strength of love, one does practice of giving. So with this practice, one understands, one starts with understanding of how the actual practice of meditation on love has to be with all these four features, and then thinking may all these sentient beings be with happiness and causes of happiness. Now at that point, when you think about that, already you have done the practice of taking with special skill of compassion, taking the sufferings and causes of sufferings of other sentient beings.
And now, even though you aspire in your attitude that sentient beings be with happiness and causes of happiness, but at the moment, so far, the sentient beings are without happiness. Of course, you have taken their sufferings and causes of suffering, but they are at the moment without happiness. Therefore, now is the point you actually start doing your practice of giving the happiness and causes of happiness. As explained in the past teaching about the taking, in the case, if we imagine a situation where there is a person very much tormented by a sickness, or so much tormented by sickness that even though he may be hungry at that time, but if you go on giving in Tibetan customs the best food is a dumpling sort of thing called momo. If you give momo to the person, or as a Western custom, maybe the best thing is the cake.
If you give cake to him, then in that situation, the person would just vomit the thing out because his first priority is to get rid of his pain, not hunger. Whereas if you first treat his pain, give medicine. And when he is without pain, then afterward, if you give whatever food for his hunger, then your giving of the food is very nicely timed, very nicely timed. And also from the giver’s side, there’s a benefit that it really works to the person’s needs. And the person who eats, the sick person, he will have the delicious taste of the food.
So in the same way here in the practice, before one has already done the practice of the what I call taking in the context of the Tonglen practice giving and taking. One has already done the practice of taking. And now he is without any suffering, without any causes of suffering, but still he’s very much in want of the so he, in the sense of all sentient beings, very much in the in the want of happiness, happiness, liberation. And also, there are whole varieties of sentient beings in need of whole varieties of different things. So to some, those who are in want of food, to some, those who are in want of companion, to some, those who are in want of a good guide of a spiritual path.
So you can, what I call, visualize sending or giving all those respective things which fulfills the need of the different sentient beings. So regarding what are the things which one which one gives or sends forth regarding that, there there is a line from the great Indian master Śāntideva, which is which says, I send forth my body well and virtues or roots of virtues of the three times. So this, firstly, one sends excellent bodies for sentient beings who are in lack of what are called excellent bodies. And then you having sent forth excellent bodies to those sentient beings, you think now they are completely with all the excellent bodies. And then after that, you send forth all sorts of what I call all sorts of wealth.
So literally in Tibetan, it says objects of enjoyment. So you send forth all objects of enjoyment to those beings and think that they are completely with all the facilities. And then after that, you send your what I call, you send virtues to them, and virtues are sent forth in the form of a practicing companion and teachers or lamas who show the teachings or Dharma to these sentient beings. And then at the end, have a kind of thinking that now all these sentient beings are completely with all the excellent facilities for doing the practice of Dharma and now they really are about to, I call, about to make progress in being enlightened. So tonight, the explanation covered covered was the benefits of love and how the thought of love is and how it should be meditated or practiced and what are the things when one does the practice of giving or sending forth through the special skill of love, what are those?
Regarding the actual way how one does the sending or giving, this will be explained afterward in next sessions in the future. And tonight, now there isn’t much time left. We’ll stop here. So the benefits of love and the way how to do meditation on together with the four features has been explained. So let’s meditate on that love having four features for about five minutes.
So with the meditation on love, don’t just start like that. It has to be started like thinking. In order to lead sentient beings to the highest bliss, free of all the sufferings, I must attain the state of Buddhahood, state of complete enlightenment, and for which purpose in order to attain that state of complete enlightenment, I’m doing I’m going to do the meditation on love. So in generating, our practice, all motivation has to be that way. So the motivation in motivational push is of bodhicitta enlightenment mind, which is very precious, and the subject one is going to do meditation is love which is very precious.
Two very precious things combined together makes the whole thing extra precious. Okay. Dedicate whatever merits we have gained by being engaged in the practice of listening to this profound teaching to become cause for all the holders of teachings to remain long and stable such as like His Holiness, Dalai Lama and so forth. And also may these merits become cause for oneself and all other sentient beings to be able to generate the precious bodhicitta enlightenment mind and thereby ultimately to become close to attain the highest state of perfection enlightenment.