Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Thubten Chodron guides practitioners through cultivating cherishing others—a foundational Buddhist attitude distinct from guilt-driven obligation or codependent attachment. She outlines concrete benefits of this mind: it naturally makes our speech and actions benefit others, frees us from the misery of self-preoccupation, enables genuine happiness regardless of circumstances, improves relationships, and creates positive karma that propels us toward enlightenment and future capacity to help all beings. Chodron emphasizes that cherishing others is ultimately the root of both immediate and lasting happiness, for ourselves and everyone around us, and invites practitioners to resolve deeply to cultivate this quality as their own.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 35 GM.mp3
UUID: 2a87431b-7e95-4ce3-8a4e-a30d2770a537
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~589
The more we consider the disadvantages of our self preoccupation, the easier it becomes to oppose it and let it go. Similarly, the more we meditate on the advantages of cherishing cherishing others, the easier it becomes to open our heart to others and to care for them in a very genuine way. So cherishing others is very different than being attached to them. The attitude we’re trying to develop here is one where we care for others simply because they exist, not because they feed our own self centered attitude in any way. So again, by making examples in your life and by thinking of possible situations.
Recall that when we hold in our heart the thought and feeling that cherishes others, then very naturally, what we say and do makes others happy. So that attitude that cherishes others creates the cause of happiness both in ourself and in others. It’s a very good way to contribute to world peace. In addition, when we develop this attitude that respects and values others, our own lives become very meaningful. They become meaningful not only because we act in ways that directly benefit others now, but because that attitude that wishes to care for others propels us along the path to Buddhahood, and that enables us to be of extensive benefit to others in the future.
So all of that makes our life very meaningful. The attitude that cherishes others also pulls us out of our self centered ways that make us so miserable. So the more we can look at others with eyes of kindness, the happier we’re going to be ourselves because we’re gonna be controlled less by our own self preoccupation. In addition, when we really care for all others equally, then we can be happy anywhere and anytime. So our mind won’t be discriminating favorites among people, but instead, we’ll be very affectionate and caring towards everybody.
And so that facilitates our own happiness as well as the happiness of others. And the more we have the attitude that cherishes others, the better our relationships with them will be. This is an attitude which also increases the harmony in our society. In addition, this attitude that cherishes others makes us act in constructive ways, which then creates a lot of positive potential on our mind stream. And this positive potential is the cause for us to have good rebirths, and it also makes our mind very fertile so that we can easily generate all the other realizations of the path.
The attitude cherishing others not only helps them, but it also directly influences our own spiritual progress. So this heart that cherishes others is the root of all happiness, both our own happiness and others’ happiness. And it’s also the root of all of our present happiness and future happiness. So to conclude, try and generate the clear understanding that there’s only benefit that comes from caring for others in an impartial manner. And recognize that this kind of cherishing of others is very different from caring for them out of guilt or obligation or fear or codependency.
So leave behind all those quote quote ways of cherishing others that are actually based on our own self centeredness And instead, seeing only advantages to genuine affection and care for others, make a strong resolve in your own heart to cultivate that part of yourself and to let it influence your life and let it influence those around you, helping to make the world a better place.