Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 43-minute talk, Kyabje Rinpoche addresses how to develop bodhicitta—the awakening heart—not as an abstract ideal but as practical mind-training through daily practice. He establishes the method: applying five forces (intention, white seeds, repudiation, and prayer) through repeated familiarization, just as we develop skill in language or carpentry. The mind is like an untilled field requiring cultivation; Buddha nature is our existing seed. Using a farmer as the model—crops grow through consistent tending—he shows how the awakening heart emerges through listening, reflecting, and meditating day after day. He stresses urgency: impermanence is constant, opportunity is not guaranteed, and without applying ourselves now, Buddha nature remains dormant. For practitioners already familiar with bodhicitta concepts.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1990-03-06 – 5B – KR.mp3
UUID: b9c3ca19-8a90-47c4-8f3d-630fb6de3eb8
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1990-03-06
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~784
That if we to, then it becomes facilitated such that it becomes easier and easier as time progresses. The more we accustom the mind to it. And this is the side of the development of the awakening heart. Easier and easier as we become more accustomed. As we accustomed, the arising becomes easier.
From beginning this time up to now we have been habituating our mind to attachment. When we see something good without any difficulty we become attached to it. We see a beautiful article. Faults. It has one great quality. And what is that great quality?
It is that whatever it’s trained in, it will arrive in that in accordance with that training, that it will be transformed in accordance to in accordance to attribute that is developed in accordance with whatever it is exposed to. So if we were to make use of these five forces, the force of intention, white seeds, repudiation, and prayer and if we were to practice them every day, then the awakening heart which we have not developed up to now would eventually be developed. It would go on to be maintained and finally would grow higher and higher and this we could develop all of the excellent qualities. We can learn language.. We can learn Sanskrit language. We train that we can learn carpentry.
We can learn accounting, whatever. And our degree of proficiency in all of these various areas are are dependent upon the degree of training that we’ve engaged in. And the same holds true with respect to our Dharma practice. That the mind is a wonderful thing and that up to now we haven’t previously known the methods to create the awakening heart. But now once we have become acquainted with the methods, if each day we begin to practice them, familiarize ourselves with them, to train in them.
Since since if we do that today, tomorrow, next the next month, next year, day in and day out, Then it’s definite. It will come by itself. It is that the awakening heart will grow day by day within our mind. This is in the case of of a sprout. If we plant a seed, a flower seed, if we provide the all the if we put together all the conditions and causes, then the the flower must grow.
That’s that’s the nature of functional objects, bringing together all the causes and conditions. And likewise, if we make use of these five forces as the cause of the condition, then if we if we use them, if we familiarize ourselves, training them today and then again tomorrow and then again the next Our mind is very much like that field. It has the quality of of field in nature. And if we if we cultivate that field by the activities of listening, reflecting, and meditating, then it’s definitely that that that Buddhahood will come. That it will arrive.
We have the field. Simply that we have not applied ourselves to its cultivation. That that though we have Buddha Buddha nature, we are we act as if we are a beggar having nothing and we continue to suffer. Alright. Familiarization of these five forces.
If if we if we cultivate the field in this way, the familiarization of the five forces, we there would definitely grow the the the sprouts of the the awakening heart. And we will finally and nurturing that, we will finally reap the harvest of Buddhahood. The the there’s no reason why we can’t. And we can take as our examples the farmers And and if we can learn that skill, the agricultural skills, and there’s no reason why we can’t do that. Likewise, take it in the same way that we look at this farmer as an example of our potential, we could take the potential we can look as an example to the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas.
We are just like they were, and there’s no reason why we cannot cultivate our minds in the same way that they did and to the great harvest that they achieved. And everything is changing and if we don’t apply ourselves, there’s no surety that we’re ever going to. If we don’t apply ourselves now while we have the opportunity, there’s no surety that we’re going to have a crop. That’s even in the case of farmers that they have the seeds in the ground. The the situation is such that if no rain came, they would lose the crop.
And my question for ourselves, that we have the opportunity if if the impermanence of death which arise, we too are not going to have a crop.