Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Thubten Chodron guides a meditation on the three higher trainings—ethics, meditative stabilization, and wisdom—as the practical path to liberation. She begins by anchoring practitioners in the motivations developed through prior reflection on suffering and its causes, then walks through each training in turn: ethical discipline (with its benefits for relationships and rebirth, and concrete daily practices like morning intention-setting and evening review); concentration (cultivating a stable, peaceful mind through technique study, daily practice, and simplifying one’s life); and wisdom (understanding karma and emptiness through study, meditation, and mindful observation during daily activities). Throughout, she offers specific implementation steps rather than abstract teachings, helping practitioners translate doctrine into immediate action.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 29 GM.mp3
UUID: 5930472e-ff1d-4ebb-a920-c9205ac0f6b1
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~814
So we’ve meditated now on the disadvantages of cyclic existence, what the causes of cyclic existence are, and what factors make them arise. And that will give us some energy to develop the determination to be free of them. And when we want to be free of cyclic existence and its causes, then we seek a path that will bring about the cessation of those undesirable things. So the path in this context is the three higher trainings. The higher training in ethics, in meditative stabilization, and in wisdom.
So let’s begin by thinking about ethics and what advantages accrue now and in the future by practicing it. So consider the fact that if you keep good ethical discipline, your relationships with other people improve because you stop harming them. You begin to purify negative karma and stop creating future negative karma. You will have less fear and worry at the time of death because you’ll have the confidence that you’ll have a good rebirth. And you’ll also have less guilt now because your behavior will change.
So think about these and other benefits of keeping good ethical discipline. And then think, how can you implement ethical discipline in your daily life? So first of all, you can make a determination every morning about how you want to act. And then in the evening, review, check up, evaluate how you did, and make a determination for the next day. Also, taking precepts is a huge aid to keeping ethical discipline.
So you can take the five precepts for life or the eight precepts for one day. You can become familiar with the ten destructive actions and be very mindful and attentive in your daily life to check up if you’re getting involved with them. So have some specific ideas how to implement ethical discipline in your life and make a firm determination to do that. Second higher discipline is the one in meditative stabilization. And in this one, we develop a concentrated mind.
First think, what are the advantages now and in the future by developing it? How if you develop concentration, all your meditation is gonna be so much easier. The mind and the body will both be very flexible, won’t be difficult to practice. You’ll be able to gain realizations more quickly. The mind will be more peaceful both in your meditative sessions and in the break times.
So think about the advantages of developing concentration. And then think how can you implement meditative stabilization in your own life? How can you develop it on a daily basis? So the first thing is to learn the teachings on how to do it, learn the techniques, how to concentrate the mind, how to avoid laxity and agitation. In addition, we can set aside even a small amount of time each day to do that practice.
It’s something to get ourselves going in that direction. And another thing to help us develop concentration is to simplify our life so that we’ll have more time to practice. And, also, when we do practice, we’ll have less distraction from external things if our life is simple. So think of specific ideas how to develop concentration in your life and make a determination to do that. And the third higher training is wisdom.
So think about the advantages now and in the future of developing wisdom. So we’ll understand karma better, which will help in our daily life, and we’ll also understand emptiness, the nature of reality better so that we’ll become less attached, less overwhelmed by our negative emotions. In addition, wisdom is actually the thing that frees us from cyclic existence altogether, and it’s what fully purifies our mind and removes the obstacles to omniscience, enabling us to become a fully enlightened Buddha. So there’s many great advantages to developing wisdom. And then think how you can develop wisdom in your daily life.
So one way is to begin to study and think about it. Learn what emptiness is. Learn the meditation techniques to realize it. And then to try and meditate each day on emptiness. Even if we can just do a little bit, it plants the seeds in our minds and makes us more familiar with that meditation.
And in addition, during the break time, we can begin to train our mind to see everything as like illusions and so therefore not get so attached. So just even in our daily life, we can begin to question if things really exist the way they appear to us or not. So just as we walk around, as we talk with people, to have that awareness, that mindfulness, that doubt if things really exist in the solid way they appear. So again, have some specific ideas how to develop the wisdom realizing emptiness in your daily life and make a firm determination to do that.