Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this guided meditation, Venerable Thubten Chodron leads practitioners through essential techniques for developing equanimity and opening the heart — the foundation for advancing to the higher-level Buddhist path of seeking enlightenment to benefit all beings. She begins by visualizing three people: a close friend, someone disagreeable, and a stranger, then investigates the mind’s attachment, aversion, and indifference toward each. Through this inquiry, practitioners discover how the mind filters all relationships through self-interest, labeling people as good, bad, or neutral based solely on whether they help or harm “me.” Chodron then guides the insight that these categories are fluid and constructed, not objective truths. By recognizing that any person can occupy all three roles across time and lifetimes, practitioners learn to release disturbing emotions and cultivate an equal-hearted openness toward everyone. The meditation develops both analytical clarity and direct emotional shift.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 30 GM.mp3
UUID: f0a67159-c4b0-4eed-b863-d365ab0ebf0f
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~797
So we’ve completed the path in common with the middle level practitioner, and now we’re ready to begin the meditations on the path of the higher level practitioner. So the higher level practitioner wants to become a Buddha in order to benefit all living beings most effectively, In order to generate that motivation, they meditate on either the seven points of cause and effect or equalizing and exchanging self with others. And then to actualize their goal of becoming a Buddha, they practice the six far reaching attitude. So we will not go through all of the seven points of cause and effect and all of the steps of equalizing and exchanging self with others, but we’ll pick out the essential ones that will help us open our heart and loving kindness to others and to ourselves. So the foundation is developing equanimity.
In other words, freeing our mind from attachments to friends and relatives, aversion to disagreeable people, and apathy towards strangers. So begin by visualizing in front of you three people. One is somebody you’re very attached to, who you always want to be with, don’t wanna be separated from. Think of a specific person. Second one is somebody that you find disagreeable, that you feel threatened by, that you’re angry at.
And the third one is a stranger, somebody that you’re indifferent towards. So now go back to the first one, to the friend or relative that you have attachment for. And simply ask yourself, why am I attached to that person? Don’t judge your answers. Just investigate.
Ask yourself and listen to what your mind says. Why am I attached to that person? And then think of the disagreeable person and ask yourself, why do I have so much anger and aversion towards them? Why do I feel so afraid or threatened by them? Again, just let your mind respond when you ask yourself that.
And then think of the stranger and ask yourself, why am I so apathetic towards that person? And, again, simply listen to what your mind responds. And then looking back over the three answers that your mind gave, we often find that these discriminations are made in terms of me. If people are nice to me, encourage me, support me, comfort me, have common interests with me, if I can trust them, then I consider them good people and become attached. If somebody interferes with my happiness, criticizes me, talks behind my back, damages my property, then I consider them a bad person, disagreeable person, and I’m angry, have aversion, or feel threatened by them.
And if I have no relationship with somebody at all, then because they don’t affect me very much, I’m totally indifferent and block them out. So these three categories of friend, disagreeable person, and stranger are created by our own mind by filtering everything through how it relates to me. So even though we think that we’re seeing people objectively as they are from their own side, in actual fact, we’re seeing them totally subjectively. Because if somebody shows their bad qualities to me, I think they’re a disagreeable person. If they show the same bad qualities to somebody else who I also don’t like, then I think they’re okay.
So I’m not really seeing the person objectively. So try and get a feel how the mind creates the friend disagreeable person and stranger, and how our emotions of clinging attachment, angry aversion, and apathy are completely created by our own mind and our own prejudices and biases. And then by letting that go, try and open your heart to have a sense of equanimity of equal hearted openness towards everybody. And another way to think that helps us develop equanimity is by recognizing that the relationship of friend, disagreeable person, and stranger changes constantly. So one person can be all three within a very short period of time.
So to make a very gross example, if somebody hit us yesterday and today gives us a thousand dollars and another person gave us a thousand dollars yesterday but hit us today, then who is our real friend and who is the real disagreeable person? There’s no reason to make relationships into concrete self existing entities in our own mind, thinking that one person will always relate to us in exactly the same way. Because when we have a big picture, especially bringing in multiple lifetimes, We see that everybody has been in every kind of relationship to us. There’s no basis on which to have attachment, aversion, or apathy towards anybody. And when we see that, then it becomes easier to let go of those disturbing emotions and have a sense of equal hearted openness towards everybody.
So try and generate that feeling.