Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 7-minute talk, Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen distinguishes two types of equanimity central to Buddhist practice. He first explains common equanimity, a wish shared across many religious traditions for all beings to be free of bias and attachment. He then introduces uncommon equanimity, a distinctly Buddhist and Mahāyāna practice that arises from recognizing that all beings equally seek happiness and freedom from suffering — this foundational equality of aspiration leads naturally to bodhichitta, the commitment to free all beings. He briefly addresses a practical ethical consequence: suicide as a grave violation with severe karmic results. The talk is pitched at practitioners studying the Three Principal Aspects and seeking to understand the distinction between generic and path-specific realizations.
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File: 2002-10-08 – LINE 09h05m33s.mp3
UUID: a2cf621a-2a70-4527-81a1-ed149de82d43
Teacher: Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen
Collection: Three Principal Aspects
Date: 2002-10-08
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~195
**Teacher:** Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen
This transcript was generated using AI speech recognition and has been reviewed for Buddhist terminology accuracy. Some inaccuracies may remain. Please refer to the original audio recording as the authoritative source.
# LINE-2008-10-02_09h05m33s.wma > **Collection:** Audio Recordings — Three Principle Aspects > **Duration:** 7.3 minutes > **Words:** 195 > **Model:** Deepgram Nova-3 > **Corrections:** 1 Buddhist terminology fixes > **Transcribed:** 2026-03-01 17:33 — So there are two types of equanimity. There is a common equanimity, which is that wish that all beings be free of a sense…
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# LINE-2008-10-02_09h05m33s.wma
> **Collection:** Audio Recordings — Three Principle Aspects
> **Duration:** 7.3 minutes
> **Words:** 195
> **Model:** Deepgram Nova-3
> **Corrections:** 1 Buddhist terminology fixes
> **Transcribed:** 2026-03-01 17:33
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So there are two types of equanimity. There is a common equanimity, which is that wish that all beings be free, that we be free of a sense of distance and closeness with respect to all beings, and that all beings likewise be free thereof. Now this is called common because it is actually shared, or the generation of a mind whose practice is shared also by non-Buddhist schools and by Hīnayāna practitioners. It exists in other religious traditions, Rinpoche says. On the other hand, the uncommon practice of equanimity Rinpoche was referring to is an uncommon practice which is a preliminary to the generation of bodhichitta, which is not shared by these other traditions, and which arises from generating a sense of equanimity with others through reflecting on the fact that both ourselves and they are similar in that just as we aspire for complete happiness and the freedom from all suffering, so do they.
For this reason, it is called uncommon. So suicide is a specific instance of murder, and therefore one accumulates the non-virtuous karma of murder, which is a lower rebirth. So it is a very severe fault.