Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. This guided meditation led by Thubten Chodron walks through the ten constructive actions, Buddhist ethical practices centered on abandoning harm and cultivating their positive opposites. Rather than dry doctrine, the teacher invites you to reflect on your own moments of restraint—times you had the chance to kill, steal, or lie but stopped yourself—and to remember the mental attitude you held then. Moving through each action from protecting life and respecting others’ property, to wise speech, generosity, and cultivating positive thoughts, the meditation builds confidence that you can abandon destructive patterns and integrate constructive ones into daily life. Chodron emphasizes rejoicing in the positive seeds already planted in your mind and recommits you to making these qualities habitual. Suitable for both newcomers and established practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 22 GM.mp3
UUID: 3b16e023-9933-4369-a376-9b2394a75bda
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~607
It’s also helpful to meditate on the ten constructive actions. So a constructive action is any time when we had the opportunity to do one of the ten destructive ones, but we stopped ourself and didn’t do it. Just that stopping is a constructive action. And another type of constructive action is when we do the opposite. So, for example, instead of killing, when we protect life.
So as I lead this meditation, I’ll just point out the opposite actions for you to reflect on. But, also, when you’re meditating, remember the times when you had the opportunity to do the negative action, but you stopped yourself. So meditating in this way gives us a lot of confidence that we can actually abandon these negative actions and that we can act in constructive ways. And when you’re reflecting on each of these ten, also check what your mental attitude was and try and get a sense of how you can create that same mental attitude again. So the first of the ten constructive actions is simply abandoning killing or acting in the opposite way and protecting life.
So protecting somebody who’s going to be injured, helping somebody who was injured, taking insects out of water when they’re drowning, any way of avoiding physical suffering and other living beings. So, again, remember times when you’ve done this and check your mental state when you did. And the next is simply avoiding stealing or protecting others’ property. So when you’ve safeguarded others’ property, respected it, helped protect it. And so as you’re contemplating all these ten constructive actions, also rejoice that you did them and have a sense of happiness that you did them.
And third is when you’ve avoided unwise sexual behavior or when you’ve had a very wise and kind attitude towards towards sexuality. And fourth is avoiding lying or telling the truth, but telling the truth in a skillful way so that the truth doesn’t become something that causes disharmony or pain. And fifth is avoiding divisive speech or acting in the opposite way by using your speech to help people reconcile, using your speech to help people let go of their anger so that they don’t quarrel with other people, so using your speech to create harmony. And the sixth is avoiding harsh words or speaking kindly, encouraging others, praising them, pointing out their good qualities, giving them good feedback. This doesn’t mean flattering others with a wish to manipulate them.
Simply means speaking kindly with a sincere heart. And seventh is abandoning idle talk or talking at appropriate times and being very clear about our motivation when we speak. An eighth is avoiding coveting or also thinking about how to be generous, planning on how to share our wealth and our resources with other people, how to create happiness in others by giving. Ninth is avoiding malicious thoughts or training our mind to think positively and rejoice in others’ good qualities and in their happiness. Training our mind to wish others well and having a loving heart towards them.
So the tenth one is avoiding wrong views or taking the time to learn the Dharma and contemplate it. It’s important that we learn to think clearly. The Buddhist teachings are an excellent guideline for that. So when we take the chance to learn and reflect and meditate, then we generate the right views in our heart. So rejoice in all the positive actions you’ve done and the good seeds you’ve put in your mind and make a determination to cultivate those seeds, make them more habitual, and really integrate them with your daily life.