Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Kyabje Rinpoche’s teaching here hinges on a paradox: despite countless lifetimes of self-centered striving, happiness eludes us, while other-centeredness is the root of all excellence. In this 46-minute session, he introduces thought transformation’s core practice—equalization and exchange of self for others. He first establishes why the awakening heart is supreme, then works through the reasoning systematically: recognize that all beings equally want happiness and fear suffering, just as you do. He then explains the exchange itself—not a literal swap but a fundamental shift in attitude, holding others as precious as you once held yourself. Love and compassion are the two attitudes this requires. For practitioners ready to engage this transformative practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1990-02-06 – 1A – KR.mp3
UUID: 5651fa3a-0b2c-4c39-8aa7-4ebcc82d8aa4
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1990-02-06
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,522
There are the two, self and other. Amongst the amongst these two, self is only one, single, whereas other is numberless. So we’re going to cultivate, meditate on development of the kind heart, in considering the great kindness of others, that others have been kind to us in the past, they are kind to us in the present, and they will continue to be kind to us in the future. That all sentient beings are just like ourselves, that none want to suffer, they all want happiness. So therefore, considering this, we cultivate the motivation for listening to this teaching on thought transformation, whereby we can develop the ability to establish all sentient beings and complete happiness and to eliminate all their suffering.
The great master Śāntideva has said that among the excellent types of minds that we can develop, the supreme supreme amongst them all is the awakening heart. It is the soul determinant as to whether one is a practitioner of the great vehicle. When one has the awakening heart, one is a bodhisattva. When one does not, one is not a bodhisattva. Within the great vehicle, there is both Sūtra and Tantra.
And whatever we may be practicing, it is only a great vehicle practice if we have the awakening heart. So we have said that the awakening heart is the supreme mind amongst all of the excellent minds. There is nothing greater than the awakening heart, the enlightened mind. But what exactly is the awakening heart? It is the the aspiration which seeks to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of establishing all sentient beings and complete happiness and separating them from their suffering.
So the the precious awakening heart is the the teaching which is set out in the thought training, in the mind training or thought transformation practice. Now, why do we need the awakening heart? Because it fulfills both the purpose of oneself and others. We have to have, in the awakening heart, there must be two factors which are complete. The one is that to the fulfilling the purpose of others by establishing in complete happiness and one’s own striving for enlightenment which fulfills one’s own purpose.
So it is the cause and the helper for achieving both ends. There is necessary that we cultivate two attitudes. One of the two attitudes being the precious awakening heart and the mind which strives for enlightenment. These are these necessarily must accompany one another. Just like two friends who like one another, they benefit one another.
There’s a mutual interdependent benefit which arises from accompanying one another. Likewise, we have to develop the awakening heart, the mind of enlightenment, and additionally, the mind which strives for the achievement of enlightenment. It is by the means of coupling these two together that we will achieve the final end of enlightenment. Prior to actually developing the awakening heart, we must develop the an altruism altruism, which is the that is to say, thought to benefit others. This is preliminary to the actual development of the awakening heart.
If we don’t have this preliminary of altruism, the thought to benefit others, then we will not be able to develop the awakening heart. And pre as a preliminary to developing the awakening heart, it’s definitely necessary to develop love and compassion because it is love and in dependence upon love and compassion altruism arises. And that is to say, the alt the thought to benefit others. It is previous to the development of a awakening heart, we must develop love and compassion. In the thought training which we’re following in developing the awakening heart, it is as was said, it is necessary as a preliminary before developing the awakening heart to develop love and compassion.
In accordance with the tradition that we’re following, we must which is the tradition of Śāntideva, we must we are practicing in order to develop that love and compassion the exchange of self for others. As a preliminary to developing the the exchange, we must equalize self for others. So in talking about equalizing self and others, first, we consider that however much talking considering ourselves, however much happiness we want we have, we want more. And and we don’t want even the slightest of suffering. And just like that, just like ourselves, all others are exactly the same.
They all want happiness, and they none want even the slightest of suffering. In this, we’re all equal. We can understand this from our own experience. This appears to our mind rather easily from the fact that we know that we want happiness and we also know we don’t want the slightest of suffering. We don’t want, for example, suffering, the pain of a toothache.
We don’t want it. And likewise, if we can extend from our own experience into the experiences of others, that others are exactly like ourselves. They don’t want suffering even the slightest. They want to be happy. In this respect, we’re completely equal.
But though, in fact, we’re everyone is exactly the same. I want to be happy. I don’t want I don’t want to suffer. We’re all equal in this respect. But still, when we consider between self and others, we hold ourselves very precious.
We cherish ourselves. But on the other hand, we don’t hold others in this way. We don’t consider them in the same light as we hold ourselves. We don’t cherish them. We don’t hold them precious.
And throughout all our numberless rebirths that we have taken from the past up to now, we have held ourselves as precious. We have cherished only ourselves. We have employed every method just to bring about our to eliminate our suffering and to bring ourselves happiness. But still, throughout all of these numbers rebirths that we’ve been struggling, working so hard for our own ends, working to to eliminate our suffering, to bring ourselves complete happiness. If we look at our present situation, we’re still involved in suffering.
We still haven’t found the happiness that we’re seeking. We’ve still been circling in these dissatisfactory states from beginningless time. And and we’re presently still were involved in our self centered attitudes of seeking to eliminate our own sufferings and bring ourselves only only ourselves happiness. And we know this. We we’ve been going through this again and again and again.
And we should understand that if we continue, then we can expect nothing more in the future. That cyclic existence will have no end. There will be no liberation, no Buddhahood. Now what do you think about this? I mean, reflecting upon the fact that from beginningless time up till now, you’ve been struggling to eliminate your suffering to find happiness.
And you’ve been using the method of self centeredness as a a means to bring this about. And if you continue in this in this attitude, do you think there will ever come a time when you will achieve Buddhahood? We should reflect upon this. The fact that in the various texts, the scriptures which have come down to us, that the Buddha said that with that with such a type of attitude, there is no end to cyclic existence. That in the past and up to the present, using the method of self centered ness to bring about our own ends.
There is no end to cyclic existence. Now, the teachers of the past, the spiritual masters, this was their experience and we have to use our reasoning to see if this is in fact true, whether simply our present struggle will continue endlessly into the future. So it’s definite. There’s no question that we will not achieve Buddhahood, but also we will not develop the awakening heart. We will not develop great compassion or great love.
So there’s a there’s an expression that as in Tibet, a saying, which which, you know, if I if I explain it, paraphrase it. It’s a do do not do not look do not look up to those who speak sweetly and and those of beauty. But look up to those who have x who act but look up to those who act in an excellent manner, thinking, how can I be like that? Meaning that simply because someone speaks sweetly and said that you should do this and you should do this and that they may look well, they may look good, that not necessarily following, looking highly upon them, but looking at people the way they actually act and their excellent and wondering how can I emulate them and look up to them who act in this excellent way? You understand that?
So, you know, our main teacher of the Dharma that we should take is the Buddha himself. That this is the person that we should seek to look up to and thereby, therefore emulate. That whatever he did, then we should try to do. He abandoned self centeredness and he took up any practice cultivated other center ness and thereby, in dependence upon that, he abandoned all faults and achieved all excellent qualities. And this is the it is in dependence upon this practice that we should try to emulate.
And that is, he achieved all of this in dependence upon cherishing others. So the other centerness or cherishing of others is the root of all excellent qualities. Just like the roots of a tree. If we if if we have the roots of a tree, then everything else will follow or grow from that. Just like the limbs and the leaves, etcetera.
So we should try to recognize the distinctions between these two. The two being self centeredness and other centeredness. The self centeredness is the root of all faults. It’s the root of all suffering, suffering, the the root root of of all all afflictive emotions. On the other hand, other centeredness is the root of all excellent qualities, the root of all happiness, and all constructive actions.
So there are the two roots. One other centeredness being the root of all happiness, self centeredness being the root of suffering. What do we want? What do we we we really are seeking to achieve a type of happiness which lacks any type of suffering, completely divorced of suffering. And but we have only experienced suffering up to now, and this has been due to our self centeredness.
So we have to begin to rid ourselves of self centeredness and seeking to gain happiness to begin to practice other’s other centeredness. And this is the means of actually developing, considering the distinctions and the necessity to practice abandoning one’s self centeredness in favor of cultivating other centeredness. In the exchange the equalizing self with others. Self means I. Others is all sentient beings.
Equalizing means to begin to see that all sentient beings are equal in wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer, that they’re exactly the same from this respect. What do we mean by exchange? We don’t mean that I am you and you are me. We don’t exchange people. What we are exchanging is our attitudes, that we have previously, we have taken the attitude or we have existed with the thought of considering holding ourselves as most dear, of cherishing ourselves.
But we’re going to exchange that. We’re going to abandon that, get rid of that, and exchange it for a new way of thinking. Now, it’s like scientists might say, Well, we’re going to get a new brain. We’re going to exchange brains. This new brain, this new way of thinking is to hold others dear, to cherish others, to become other centered.
So this is what we’re exchanging, our previous attitude of self centeredness for the attitude of other centeredness. And why should we do this? That’s because we we begin to see that self centeredness is the root of all faults. And seeing this, we we we think, you know, why am I going why am I still doing this? And beginning to understand that other centeredness is the root of all excellent qualities.
Why don’t I do this? In exchanging our attitudes, they were seeking to eliminate self centeredness. Still, we do not simply disregard completely ourselves, you know, thinking, oh, it doesn’t matter what happens to me, whether I get sick or whatever happens, not going to pay any attention. This is not the attitude that we’re seeking to develop. That’s this isn’t proper to just disregard oneself.
What do we mean in exchange of attitudes? Previously, we had the attitude of holding ourselves as most important, as most precious. This was our self centered attitude. We are seeking to hold others as we previously held ourselves just like we held ourselves previously as being precious, important. We are seeking to take that attitude and to extend it to all sentient beings, to others.
Likewise, previously other sentient beings weren’t important to us. They didn’t matter. And now we are seeking to exchange that previous attitude we had towards others and extend it toward ourselves. But it’s not to say that we disregard ourselves. But in seeking happiness, we mainly seek the happiness of others, but we still bring about our own happiness.
We seek mainly to eliminate the sufferings of others, but we still eliminate our suffering. So other centeredness is comprised of two attitudes, the attitude of love and compassion. And upon considering the others who are troubled by suffering, developing the attitude which seeks to separate them from that suffering, and seeing others that are bereft of happiness, having no happiness, developing the attitude to bring them happiness. So the the attitude of other cherishing is comprised of these two of these two subsidiary attitudes. If we consider what is other centeredness composed of, it is composed of this quality of love and compassion.
Compassion being the attitude which seeks to eliminate the suffering of others, love which seeks to bring happiness to others. So in dependence upon these, we cultivate actual other centeredness. So other centeredness is composed of these two attitudes, that of love which seeks to bring happiness to others, and that of compassion which seeks to eliminate the sufferings of others. And developing this, we can we we actually bring about the elimination of suffering and to to have others possess happiness. Working toward this and developing this and develop and working toward this, we develop an altruism.
That is to say a beneficial attitude, a beneficial mind which seeks to benefit others. This is the main practice of the great vehicle, not to harm others, but to benefit them. So this attitude of altruism which seeks which is come which is arises out of love, seeking to bring others happiness and compassion, seeking to eliminate others suffering is, is, this is the practice of Dharma. This is, this is exactly it. And by means of this, in in in acting this and seeking to bring happiness to others and seeking to eliminate their suffering, we directly bring about the the welfare of others and indirectly bring about our own welfare.