Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute mind-training teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche addresses three core obstacles to overcoming afflictive emotions: failing to remember the antidote when anger or attachment arises, lacking the strength to turn it away once remembered, and struggling to cut its continuity permanently. He opens with the principle of guarding vows above one’s own life, then offers a vivid example—a monk who could only say “patience, patience” after losing his temper—to show why intellectual knowledge alone fails. He teaches concrete practices: skeleton meditation to dissolve attachment, love meditation for anger, compassion for jealousy. The session pivots to a practical case: attachment to wealth. Rinpoche reveals how miserliness born from craving creates future poverty (rebirth as a hungry ghost), while genuine generosity paradoxically generates abundance. Suited to practitioners with experience in vows and meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1990-04-03 – 9B – KR.mp3
UUID: 65febdfd-718d-4000-ba53-60d38a3124dd
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1990-04-03
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,167
The next guideline is observe these two. Observe these two even at the risk of your life or perhaps guard these two or observe or guard these two even at the risk of your life. That in in the course of our practice that there are two that we take on, that we commit ourselves to. These two are, in the first case, the various vows that we may take. Such vows as the vows of individual liberation, Prātimokṣa, the vows of the bodhisattva, and the vows of Tantra.
That within for example the vows of individual liberation, the various the vows of the ordained, lay vows, but also refuge vows. That there are various commitments or promises that you make and you should guard these promises. This is the first. The second is that in the course of mind training that we commit ourselves to them. There are the commitments in mind training.
And that these this is the second. Now we are to guard these even at the at the risk of our life. Why? Because these vows and commitments are as if our life to the to the real practitioner. They are the life of a practitioner.
And therefore, it is it is better that you trade away one’s life than to give up the the life of the practitioner. If it were the case that someone was to force us into contradicting our vows, acting in contradiction to our vows, that they put the proposition to us that if you don’t break your vow, I’m going to kill you. What are we to do? And it said according to the mind training teachings that we are to guard our vows even at the cost of our life. In the case of, for example, a monk, if someone came to the monk and said, you have a choice, either you kill this person or I’m going to kill you.
Then the the monk should definitely say, oh, by all means you kill me. I’m not going to kill this person. And why is that? Because at worst, this person can only destroy your body. But having guarded your vows well, you will immediately take rebirth again as a human being.
But on the other hand, if you were to kill this other person, though you might remain alive for a little while longer, you would fall into hell or a hungry ghost. And therefore, this is the real practice for a proficient practitioner to guard their vows even at the cost of their life. The next guideline is as it says in the text, learn the three difficult points. Learn the three difficult points. The difficult points are firstly, to be mindful of the antidotes of the afflictive emotions.
To be mindful, to recollect the antidotes of the afflictive emotions. It is difficult. It is difficult. It is difficult to be mindful of the antidotes of the afflictive emotion. That’s the first difficulty, difficult point.
The second difficult point is to to turn aside the the afflictive emotion. It is difficult to turn aside the afflictive emotions. That’s the second difficult point. And the third is, it is difficult to cut the continuity. To finally cut the continuity of the afflictive emotions, the continuum of the afflictive emotion.
These are the three difficult points that we have, due to prior habituation in previous lives, due to this prior habituation, that we just the slightest condition can act for the arising of the afflictive emotions such as attachment, anger, jealousy, pride. It doesn’t take much. They almost they suddenly rise just on the slightest condition. Analogy to the sudden arise of the afflictive emotions is that in the case of a child a child that immediately upon having some sort of difficulty perhaps scared that it will cry out mother mother. And no one has to train it to cry out mother mother like that.
It’s due to the continual close relationship between the parent and child. And likewise that we have had this continual close relationship from beginningless time with the afflictive emotions, and they suddenly arise in the same way. So you know thinking in this way the the how habituated we are to this continual close relationship to the afflictive emotions that is no great wonder. It’s not surprising that these afflictive emotions suddenly arise. But in the case of those who are seeking to practice the Dharma that we have to begin to to understand what is the antidote to these various afflictive emotions in order to cease their arising.
And it’s important to understand what are the individual antidotes to the afflictive emotions. But still, even when we know what the antidote might be, for example, in the case of attachment, the antidote is repulsiveness, in the case of anger, the antidote is love, that when we become angry we don’t remember at that at that moment. We can’t we don’t recollect the antidote. That there’s no that by the time we get around to remembering that there is an antidote, that the action is already finished. That it’s of no use at that time because we aren’t mindful of the antidote on those occasions.
So there was there was an instant where there were in which there was a meeting amongst monks and one of the monks got extremely angry. And after, you know, he after after after he got had gotten very angry he started saying, oh, patience, patience, patience, patience. But then by that time it was too late. The action was already finished and now he was just saying patience. There was no real application of what he understood to be the antidote.
So we have, at present we are little accustomed to the various antidotes to the afflictive emotions and therefore it’s difficult for us us to remember them immediately upon the arising of the afflictive emotions. So this is the first difficult point, to be mindful or to remember the antidotes to the various afflictive emotions. But even because of our lack of skill, even when we do remember them, it’s difficult for us to turn the afflictive emotion away due to the lack of power of our antidotes. By turn away, it simply means to destroy that afflictive emotion for that present moment. This is another difficult point.
It’s difficult for us to turn away the afflictive emotion even when we do remember the antidote. And again because of close relationship with these afflictive emotions that they keep reoccurring. It’s difficult for us to cut their continuity, that is to say that they will not again reoccur later. But through, though all this is very difficult initially, through gradual training in the practices, it is possible that we can develop the abilities to immediately bring to mind the antidote to begin to turn away the afflictive emotion and cease the afflictive emotions altogether. But initially, these are the three difficult points.
So with the way that we cease or destroy the afflictive emotions is by the application of antidotes. Without application of antidotes, then these afflictive emotions are going to remain continually. There’s no way to destroy them. If we take as an example attachment, in general attachment, the general antidote to attachment is repulsiveness, Meditation on repulsive quality of the object. Now we can can with respect to an object of attachment we can be attached to various aspects of the object.
For example, its shape, its design, its color, the smoothness of its touch, different ways to explain. But if we take, firstly, the color. Let’s say that one is attached to the whiteness of the color, the whiteness of the object. Then imagine, cultivate, meditate that it’s completely blue, completely red, completely black, and this will reverse the attachment to its whiteness. So with this, for example, that the what we’re talking about is attachment to to a body, to to another person’s body in terms of its various aspects of its appearance with with respect to color trying to imagine as a different color blue or black or something like that cultivating that meditation.
Also thinking that if you’re attached to the smoothness smoothness of the touch of the body, cultivating and meditating is very rough. But according to one of the methods advised by which is an antidote to all of these various forms of attachment whether it’s to the shape or the color or the touch is to meditate on it being a skeleton. On a skeleton. The antidote to hatred and anger is the meditation on love. Also the various afflictive emotions such as jealousy and harmful intention can be overcome by making use by cultivating the antidote of compassion.
With respect to attachment to cyclic existence in general, the temporary antidote is mainly development of renunciation, but the ultimate antidote is the cultivation of the correct view of emptiness. So if we would go on, it’d be somewhat difficult. So we’ll stop there. But if you have some questions. Yes.
So one were to overcome the afflictive emotions and one simply doesn’t react at all to anything that happened. On this planet. Well, in the case of the Buddhas, they have abandoned all the afflictive emotions but by the force of their compassion, they still abide within the world as a means to teach the Dharma which is the method for eliminating the sufferings of others. Money’s no good. You know, but due to one’s attachment for money, one goes through a lot of trouble to get it.
And it’s really upset when one doesn’t get it. And even when one gets it, one it creates a lot of negativities in getting it. And therefore all of these various actions creating a karma which will in the future bring about your suffering. So therefore these things we should see that money is the root of suffering because of the suffering that it’s going to bring us in the future by all the various means that we try to pursue to get it. And when we don’t get it it’s immediate types of suffering.
To see the But on the other hand, though this may be the nature of money, still if we can make use of money as a conducive circumstance to carry on our practice of Dharma. If we don’t have the attachment then the money can be can help us to carry on our practice. It can supply us with the food, clothing, all the necessities that we need to practice. And in this this sense having money is really good but it’s the attachment to money which brings the suffering. So with this attachment to money generally follows upon that miserliness where we gather all our money to ourselves and we don’t give it away.
And generosity is the antidote to miserliness. So we’re you know, we really don’t know how to create wealth. We really don’t know how to save save up all the good things when we think about it because the way to actually create wealth is to give things away. But we out of however much we give away that much more objects of enjoyment that will accrue to ourselves naturally without any difficulty. But on the other hand we try to hold everything to ourselves and everything becomes of no benefit and actually in the end brings us harm.
So the Buddha said this, there is no greater way to achieve, to bring about enjoyments than generosity. That, you know, how much we are able to give away that much more, that many more objects of enjoyment that will come to us naturally. In the case if we give away to all sentient beings then until all sentient beings achieve Buddhahood, we will continually accrue objects of enjoyment as a fruit of that. So the reason that we have we presently have the great fortunes that we have is by having practiced generosity in the past. Simply having practiced generosity in this life, upon meeting some slight condition, that the generosity committed previously ripens into the good things of this life just upon meeting some slight condition.
And then what was the second part of that question? Oh, is that is that you agree? So this is probably true. Generally speaking the more wealth you have the more miserly you are. As your wealth increases you become more and more miserly, more and more tight fisted.
And this because you take rebirth not in heaven but as a hungry ghost. So in the case of hungry ghost, they they are because of have because of miserliness in previous lives, not practicing, not giving anything away. They have to undergo the lack of food, no food, no clothing, no drink that even in the course of fifteen years maybe they find one drop of water. And this is all because of their miserliness previously.