Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 18-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche argues why bodhicitta (the awakening heart) is indispensable — outlining what we lose without it. He maps the benefits: elimination of faults, perfection of qualities, genuine power to help others, merit accumulation, and purification of past harm. He addresses a subtle point: “unchanging happiness” means not freedom from momentary change, but stable joy that never transforms into suffering, unlike ordinary pleasures that become pain when clung to. He then traces bodhicitta’s development through the five paths and 22 grounds of the universal vehicle, dwelling on the first two: the awakening heart like earth (foundation for all higher qualities) and like gold (immutable, never degenerating). Suited to practitioners with Mahāyāna background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1993-10-19 – Side 2 – KR.MP3
UUID: b7b3c1f2-53bd-49a2-860f-f4a93c701651
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Three Principal Aspects
Date: 1993-10-19
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~1,082
Feel we’re gonna stop there if you have some questions. So I hope during this break that you meditated well on determination to awaken, renunciation. So probably a few of you developed well the awakening determination to awaken. So today, we we simply discussed the benefits of development of the awakening heart, the reasons why it’s necessary to generate the awakening heart, what what are the detriments if what what do we lose out on if we don’t generate the awakening heart? Mainly, should understand that in by means of generating the awakening heart, we it can act as a cause for eliminating all our various faults and bringing to consummation all our excellent qualities.
That we can be of tremendous benefit to others. We are empowered, able to really help others. That we will accumulate a great wave of collection of creative potential, and we can purify tremendous amount of our past destructive actions. So these are some of the benefits. But on the other hand, if we don’t develop the awakening heart, then we’re never going to be able to eliminate all our faults and bring to consummation all our excellent qualities.
So understanding today, we’re simply trying to understand the very preciousness and importance of generating the awakening heart. In order to develop a thought, I must develop that. I must generate the awakening heart. And and what great loss it is if we don’t go on to cultivate it and develop it. In the next teaching, we’ll actually begin the discussion of how to generate the awakening heart.
So do you have some questions? So the within the practices of equalizing and exchanging self for others, there are the practices, for example, of holding others more dear than ourself. And but also the practice of taking and giving, where we take upon ourselves the sufferings of others and we give our happiness away to them. And if one doesn’t have this this this bravery, if one is has this is timid, then these practices would only induce great fear. So we are to take on the afflictive emotions, all the various negativities of all the various types of beings, whether hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, we’re taking all those upon ourselves.
If everything is imprinted. Oh, I see. I see. How can how can there be unchanging bliss? How can there be unchanging bliss?
Yeah. So I’m I’m gonna change that. Everything’s impermanent. So I’m gonna I’ll change a little bit. So here, when when we talk about an unchanging bliss, the word unchanging shouldn’t be taken to mean impermanence in the sense of the momentary arising and dis disintegration of things, that things arise and disintegrate momentarily moment by moment.
But we’re talking but when we say an unchanging bliss, an unchanging happiness, a non fluctuating happiness which doesn’t transform into suffering. Generally, you know, when when we if when we’re hungry, we eat a little bit of food, we experience some happiness. But but if we keep eating, that happiness, that pleasure will turn into suffering. They’ll reach a point when the entity of the experience of happiness transforms into suffering or if we’re very hot, you know, and we’re suffering from heat and we go to a cool place. And the first moment of going to that cool place is pleasure.
But if we remain in that cool place for long, that pleasure will transform. It will will change into the entity of suffering. So when we say an unchanging happiness or bliss, we’re talking about in terms of the transformation of entity from happiness to suffering, from suffering to happiness, that we can change we can attain a stable, unchanging happiness where no matter how long a time they elapse, one will remain in that state of happiness. They will never transform into suffering. It is unchanging happiness.
Once one attains an unchanging happiness or bliss, it will remain for however long. It never changes into anything other than happiness. It never changes into the entity of suffering when it continuously is experienced as happiness unchangingly. But in general, when we say impermanent, we mean the momentary arising and disintegration of all functional phenomena, all things. Within the universal vehicle, there are five paths.
The first of these five paths is the path to accumulation, and it has three levels. The small, middling, and great paths of accumulation. Up to the time up to the up to the point where one has attained the great path of accumulation. There so one can generate the awakening heart and and upon that attain the small, path of accumulation. And if one does not go beyond that, there can occur the degeneration of the awakening heart at that level.
But once one attains the middling level of the path of accumulation, there’s no degeneration of the awakening heart. It’s only at the level of small that the that the awakening heart can degenerate. There are there are 22 grounds of the awakening heart, 22 varieties of the awakening heart. And the first of these is the awakening heart, which is like earth. So this is and the second is the awakened heart which is like gold.
The first, that which is like earth, is attained at the small level of the path of accumulation. And it’s the reason it’s called earth is like, you know, just as in the case of of the earth or the ground, everything grows out of the ground. Everything it’s the growth of all things depend upon the earth, the trees, the flowers, and leaves, and the branches that grow from the trees, and these, they all grow out of the earth. Likewise, out of this initial generation of the awakening heart, that that which is like earth, all the excellent qualities of the universal vehicle grow forth in dependence upon this foundation of the the the awakening heart like earth. Then once one attains the second variety, the second ground, the that awakening heart which is like gold.
Go it’s likened to gold because gold never changes, is never transmuted into something else other than itself. It’s never, becomes something else. No matter how many hundreds of thousands of years may pass, gold always remains immutable. Therefore, it is said that at this level, one’s awakening heart will never degenerate because it is like gold. So at this level of the like-gold awakened heart, it’s unchanging, undegenerating.
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.