Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute Lamrim commentary, Ven Jampa Ignyen emphasizes that without bodhicitta—the aspiration to achieve Buddhahood for the benefit of all beings—even highest practices like Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā make no progress toward enlightenment. He introduces the six perfections as the path of actualization, focusing here on the first three for laypeople: generosity (material, Dharma-giving, and fearlessness), ethics (the mind guarding against harmful action), and patience. Key themes include practicing generosity from the mind without expectation, the caution against giving one’s body or limbs until emptiness is understood, and the role of vows as guideposts rather than punishments for those lacking natural ethical wisdom.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 23 2001 06 28 LR.mp3
UUID: 3063671f-831e-4407-a4c5-1ae29ceae306
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: Lam Rim 2001 Month 04-06 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-06-28
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~4,856
So we’re continuing with this text of Pabongka Rinpoche called the stages of the path. And so far we’ve been dealing with the different methods of generating bodhicitta. These two fundamental methods of generating bodhicitta that are condensed into the elevenfold system of practice which generates the states of great compassion and bodhicitta. And then various advice, various elements or pieces of advice that are given in the tradition of mind training, especially in the seven point mind training. So now, Pabongka Rinpoche then continues with the text, and this is really the teaching given on day twenty of the text.
And here in this section, Pabongka Rinpoche is dealing with the formal methods initially on he brings up the formal methods by which bodhicitta is generated. So here are the ceremonies and so forth. Previously we’ve talked about what bodhicitta is, why it should be generated, the benefits of bodhicitta, then the different methods by which bodhicitta can be generated. The seven causes of one result are the seven points of exchanging self for others, and those being condensed into the eleven point meditation of Jetsün Kamalaśīla. And then various other aspects of advice that are useful for us in our practice.
And then Pabongka Rinpoche, then he he quotes from a particular text called the summary of precious good qualities in which it’s in which it is said. The path of the victorious ones or the Buddhas of the three times is that of the perfections and no other. So in saying that, he’s indicating that after we generate bodhicitta, then we need to develop the perfections, the practices which are called the perfections. So as Pabongka Rinpoche says, that is all the Buddhas of the three times, the past, the present, and the future, have followed in each other’s footsteps, never deviating from the tasks of the perfections, of the six perfections. And there is no other path either presented in Sūtra or Tantra other than the one that engages in the development of the six perfections.
In fact, are ten perfections, but there are six which are primarily talked about. Really tonight’s subject matter is the first three perfections. That is the perfection of generosity, the perfection of ethics, and the perfection of patience. And these are essential in our current life as they will be when we enter the path in future, when we are actually engaged in the practice of perfection of generosity and so forth. So then Pabongka Rinpoche mentions this the practice of generating bodhicitta through the ritual of taking vows.
So in order to stabilize our practice and provide and establish a foundation for the actual generation of bodhicitta, then one engages in the in the rites or the ceremony of generating bodhisattva vows, where one makes a formal dedication or commitment to generating bodhicitta. So if anyone has taken initiations and so on, one will have taken bodhisattva vows in the actual ceremony. And then Pabongka Rinpoche mentions that he’s gonna teach this section later. So anyway, as long as here it’s brought up to remind us that in fact there is a ceremony for generating bodhicitta, a formal ceremony. And then as Pabongka Rinpoche goes on to say, if we have no bodhicitta, no matter what meditations we do in the hope of achieving the state of a Buddha, be they the practices of Mahāmudrā or the Mahāmudrā or Chagya, Chenmo in Tibetan, or Dzogchen, or the great middle way practices, or the practices of the generation and completion stages of Tantra, then without bodhicitta, we will not get one inch closer to Buddhahood.
This is something that’s easy to overlook, but as Pabongka Rinpoche is stressing it here, no matter what high practices we’re engaged in, whether we’ve taken initiation into tantric practices that permit us then to practice the generation and the completion stages of tantra, or whether we’re engaged in the practice of Mahāmudrā, or whether in fact we’re practicing Dzogchen. Has anyone heard of Dzogchen? So many people have heard of Dzogchen, which is a practice that is taught within the Nyingma school, or Mahāmudrā, which is a central practice within the Kagyu school, or the Middle Way practices, which are very much studied in-depth in the Gelug school, or whether in fact one engages in the practices of Tantra, here the highest Yoga Tantra, the fourth Tantric division in which there is the generation stage and the completion stage is taught, no matter how impressive the practice is, if one doesn’t train in bodhicitta, then we don’t move one tenth of an inch closer to the state of Buddhahood. So the practice of bodhicitta is absolutely central. And then as Pabongka Rinpoche says, and if that were not enough, we will not even enter the gateway of the great vehicle.
Thus, everybody must concentrate on the practice of bodhicitta. For us, our central practice really is the practice of bodhicitta. And then, as Pabongka Rinpoche says, the Buddhas have perceived things for many eons with the primordial wisdom of their omniscient minds, but they have not seen a better method or any gateway to the path other than bodhicitta. So the Buddhas will teach bodhicitta because there is no superior method for our development, for our entry to the great vehicle. If they had thought of it, or if there were a better one, would have thought of it.
So then, bodhicitta must first be established. Then after that, having developed bodhicitta, then we must train in certain activities. Having the foundation of bodhicitta, and the mind of bodhicitta is this main mind that we can establish, this mental awareness that we establish, which is spontaneous, effortless, and is this aspiration to attain the state of a complete Buddha for the benefit of other beings. Prior to attaining that, we need great compassion. Some one of the signs of attaining great compassion is, for instance, the development of goose pimples.
When one thinks about other beings, one develops goose pimples, or one starts one sheds tears and so forth. These are external signs of having generated great compassion. Simply by looking at other beings or thinking about other beings, one is overcome by compassion for them. Having established great compassion, then a bodhicitta is possible, because great compassion is the root of bodhicitta. And then having established bodhicitta, then we begin the practices or begin this preparatory practices that lead to the perfection.
So as Pabongka Rinpoche then says, we must train in certain activities. It is not sufficient to merely practice or develop bodhicitta, just as someone going to India will not get there unless they physically begin the journey, you also have to train in the deeds of a bodhisattva. You should gather both the merit and the wisdom necessary that act as the twofold collection by which means we attain the state of a Buddha. The state of a Buddha is said to be possible only through the accumulation of the two collections, the collection of merit and the collection of wisdom. And from that point of view, the first five perfections are dealing with merit, and the sixth one is dealing with wisdom.
Does anyone know the six perfections? Generosity is the first. Ethics. Patience. Effort, wisdom is the sixth, concentration.
Yeah. Those five are dealing with the accumulation of merit, wisdom. The sixth one is the perfection of wisdom. And in order to attain the state of a Buddha, we need the two collections, the accumulation of merit and the accumulation of wisdom. Now, way that Pabongka Rinpoche then is going to talk about how we train in the six perfections is in two divisions.
Firstly, is how to train in the six perfections in order to ripen our own mind stream, and then how to train in the four ways of gathering disciples in order to ripen the mind streams of others. So firstly, deal with how we develop the six perfections, and then Pabongka Rinpoche gives three headings again: the general way in which to train, and then in particular the way to train in the last two perfections and then the way to train in vajrayana, or the Tantric vehicle. So firstly, we will discuss the six perfections in order in a general sense. So firstly, we’re dealing with generosity, and generosity is defined here. In Tibetan it’s Anyone now more learning Tibetan?
Means to give. So the mind of giving. Is mind. So the mind of giving. Is the brief definition of generosity.
The mind that actually gives. And it’s the thought wishing to give away one’s body, possessions, and root virtues, and so on. And then it’s classified in three types: being generous with material things. Now, just a word before we go into these, the perfections are actually practiced from the path of seeing onwards. And the paths of a bodhisattva, it’s a pity we don’t have enough time really to go into this in any depth, but there are five paths that exist.
The path of accumulation, preparation, seeing, meditation, and no more learning. And one begins to engage in the practice of the perfections from the path of seeing and the path of meditation. And those paths are really divided up into ten perfections, which correspond to the ten grounds of a Bodhisattva, or the ten stages of a Bodhisattva. And the first stage is the stage of generosity, practicing where the central, the main practice of a Bodhisattva is practicing generosity. But of course, even before attaining the path of seeing, we need to become familiar with generosity.
So we become familiar with generosity at present so later we can establish the perfection of generosity, or the practice of the perfection of generosity when we’re on the path. And then through establishing the practice of the perfection of generosity, later we can then establish the resultant state of perfect generosity, which exists on the level of a Buddha. In a sense, there’s three levels, the basis, the path, and the result. We’re present in a way we could say we’re at the time of the basis, where we have the raw material. We have to convert what we have at present into the path, and then from the path into the result of the path, which is the state of a Buddha.
So in this sense, Pabongka Rinpoche is now talking about the practice of generosity, which is the thought to give, the mind of giving. And then from within the different types of generosity, we have being generous with material things. So this, as Pabongka Rinpoche says, this ranges from giving a spoonful of barley flour. Barley flour, roasted barley flour is quite common in Tibet. That would be our equivalent of maybe giving a spoonful of cornflakes or a spoonful of some staple bread, something like that.
So even giving something small up to giving one’s life and body to others. So all of these are generosity from something very small. If we gave something to an ant, right up to giving our own body is the practice of generosity. And then as Pabongka Rinpoche says, if we cannot give something away, then we should think about how in the past we’ve been born in the divine realms as great deities such as Brahma or Indra and so on. And at these times, we were extremely wealthy.
We owned palaces and great wealth, jewels, gold, and so forth. But at that time, we failed to practice generosity. We kept it pretty much for ourselves. And then because of that, now we’re born in a situation where we don’t have many possessions. We have few resources.
So we should think that in the past, we’ve had many opportunities to practice generosity, but we haven’t done so. And so at present, we lack resources. And then thinking then that we need to practice generosity in the present, we also need to practice without expectation of gaining anything in return, without the thought that by giving I’m going to become rich in future and so on. So no matter how much we give, we should try and give without expectation. And then in giving, should try and also give appropriately so that what we give is what other people need, and it does actually fulfill their aspirations and so on.
And if we give in this way appropriately and without expectation and so forth, we act with generosity, then this will bring about a great result for ourselves. It will establish resources for us in future, but we shouldn’t, in a way, we shouldn’t give with that expectation. Even though it’s still a good thing to do, it’s tainted with the expectation of gaining something through that giving. In fact, we need as much as possible the pure form to practice a pure form of generosity. Also generosity where we’re not puffed up having given something, then we develop pride that I’ve given a great amount of money and so on to that cause, and then develop pride in that respect.
So, we should find ways of practicing generosity and developing our practice of generosity. Then secondly, we have the generosity of Dharma. So, is, for instance, teaching even a single four lined verse of Dharma to someone who wishes to listen, if done with that person’s benefit in mind, is a form of generosity. Ourselves, giving a lesson on how to read books is being generous with the Dharma. So even if we teach someone how to read, like if a person teaches their child how to read, it’s being generous with the Dharma.
Because it’s providing the means by which that child will be able to contact the Dharma. Here, Dharma here, I think, is meant in a very broad sense in terms of virtue. Teaching, for instance, a child or whoever, anyone to read and speak a language and so forth is giving them the opportunity to practice virtuous types of practice. So that is the generosity of Dharma. Generosity with the Dharma is better than any other form of generosity.
And as Pabongka Rinpoche says, here he’s giving advice mainly to monks in a monastery, but he says also your memorization, recitation, or study of text will become an act of generosity with the Dharma if you imagine yourself to be surrounded by gods who uphold virtue and by all sentient beings who are listening in. So it’s a practice in a monastery, of course, to memorize texts like, you know, this particular text. A number of monks memorized this from cover to cover. If you memorize a page a day, might take about two years to do But when one has memorized it, then one can imagine, one can sit out in the field and just imagine one surrounded by various divine beings, all mother sentient beings, and one can recite it and visualize it. One is able to teach this text to all of these beings.
And so in that way, generate a vast amount of merit by practicing generosity of Dharma. Or even if one hasn’t memorized it, one can simply read the text and visualize that there are various countless beings listening to the text and benefiting from hearing the text. And by doing so, that also is the generosity of Dharma. Many of these practices simply require the correct motivation and some imagination in one’s visualization, and ordinary practices can become ways of accumulating a vast amount of merit, even cleaning our teeth and so on. Cooking food.
One can imagine one’s cooking food for a vast number of beings. Preparing a meal for the Buddhas of the three times. And so by then, by doing that, that becomes a virtuous action, and the virtue is greatly enhanced by that type of visualization. Being generous with the Dharma does not mean teaching it formally. It could also mean using your conversation and so forth as a direct or indirect means of leading others to to the Dharma.
Those who are ordained should practice generosity mainly by giving Dharma, but they ought also to be generous with material goods if this is not too much trouble. This is what the Gadampa Geshe Sharva had in mind when he said to a group of ordained people, I am not going to speak about the benefits of giving things away, for I have already told you the drawbacks of grasping or clinging to objects. And of course, what the Geshe Sharo means is that even the ordained who have few possessions need to practice material generosity, not only the generosity of Dharma. Then the third type of generosity is the generosity of giving others fearlessness. So this could be, for example, liberating prisoners from jail, or rescuing the drowning, or saving creatures such as worms from the heat of summer when they’re caught out in the concrete or on stones and they’re about to die of exposure, and so on.
So in Śāntideva’s text, is also said, if the perfection of generosity were ridding all beings of poverty, how could the Buddha’s protector have perfected it? And even now, when even now there are those beings with thirst. Some doubts arise also about whether in fact in practicing generosity, starting from the base stage, moving to the path stage, and then moving to the result stage, in which in the result stage when one has achieved the perfection of generosity, is it appropriate to call it the perfection of generosity, for instance? Because beings are still in poverty. How could it be the perfection of generosity?
But here, perfecting generosity also is not ridding other beings of poverty. It is something a little bit different than that. You know, in a sense, the perfection of generosity is developing a perfect form of giving within the mind itself. That one’s mind of giving is completely perfected. One in fact practices the six perfections within generosity itself, and completely perfects the practice.
Generosity therefore is more than simply ridding other beings of their poverty. Pabongka Rinpoche then gives another verse out of the Bodhisattva’s deeds, when he says: They say the perfection of generosity is mentally giving to all beings all your possessions and all your karmic fruits. Thus generosity must be in the mind. So in fact, the perfection of generosity is not externally eliminating poverty. It’s this practice of mentally giving to all beings all of our possessions and all our karmic fruits.
It’s an internal practice. And the perfection of generosity comes through familiarity with the thought of giving one’s body possessions, root of merits, all our karmic results to others. And it means giving these things from the depths of our heart without any miserliness, while thinking about the various benefits and drawbacks of not doing so. So, and then as he continues, thus the important point being made here is that we should increase the thoughts of giving. And if beggars should ask us to give, then we should think to give, we should practice to give.
And the measure here is that when the opportunity comes to give, then that we’re ready to give without any thought of miserliness, then that’s a sign of being familiar with the practice of generosity. At present we’re not so familiar because often we have second, third and fourth thoughts about whether we should be generous when an opportunity arises. But really the perfection of generosity means giving away everything, giving our own life away, giving away all our material possessions, giving away all the root of merit that we have to other beings, and so forth. But that comes about only through practicing, beginning with the practice of material generosity and then developing that. This also is influenced by our self-cherishing, and often our self-cherishing will query us about what we’re going to get out of giving if we have the initial thought to give to someone else.
So our self-cherishing very much tends to limit our enthusiasm to give. So this we should be aware of because, ultimately, we need to practice generosity, develop generosity, and perfect it. I think this is common sense anyway. Then as Pabongka Rinpoche says, we should practice generosity in many different ways. As Pabongka Rinpoche says, the first three perfections should be the main practice of laypeople.
So as laypeople, we can concentrate on these three: generosity, ethics and patience. Within those practices, in the practice of generosity though, as Pabongka Rinpoche then continues to mention that it’s inappropriate to give away our body unless we’ve reached a certain level of realization. There’s a story of Śāriputra, this one disciple of the Buddha who was once walking along a path, and he saw a being on the side of the path. And at that time, Śāriputra had generated the mind of bodhicitta, and this being on the path asked him to donate, to give him his right arm. And in practicing generosity, then Śāriputra severed his right arm with his left arm and gave it to him with his left arm.
And in India, if you give anything with your left arm, it’s considered unclean. And if you’re going to practice generosity, you should give it with your right arm. And because he gave it with his left arm, this other being then refused to take it. How can I accept that? It’s inappropriate to give it to me in that way.
And then the doubt arose within Śāriputra. If I can’t even, by such an act, if I can’t even satisfy the desires of one being, how can I satisfy the desires of all sentient beings? And his bodhicitta at that point degenerated. So therefore, it’s said that until one understands emptiness, it’s not a good thing to give one’s life or give one’s parts of one’s body to other beings. But once one has understood emptiness, once one has developed in the path, then it’s possible.
And it’s something that increases and intensifies one’s practice to engage in such generosity. Prior to understanding emptiness, there is a possibility that we have not yet overcome attachment to our body parts, like our arms and so forth. So in that case, we shouldn’t give them. Sorry? We often say that, yeah, we give my right eye for that or right arm for that and so on.
But we should give away what’s appropriate. And it goes against our vows actually to give away like our life and so forth, unless we have the appropriate realizations to support that. Unless we have them, we don’t give. There’s a story of a Buddha, the Buddha in a previous life. If anyone’s been to Nepal, there is a place in Nepal which marks the site where Śākyamūni Buddha in a previous life gave his body to a tiger who had.
Cubs. Has anyone heard that story? And yeah, he cut his own throat when he saw this tigress with cubs. And she was going to die if she didn’t receive, didn’t get sustenance. And in having great compassion for the tigress, then he gave his life or gave his body to the tigress.
But one shouldn’t do that when one still hasn’t realized emptiness. So then, there’s various other advice also given in this section by Pabongka Rinpoche, but we’ll move on to the next one, the perfection of ethics. And ethics is also then defined in the engaging in the deeds of a bodhisattva, which is a text by Śāntideva, in which he says, they say the perfection of ethics is to gain the abandonment of certain thoughts or is to eliminate certain thoughts. How ethics is defined is in Tibetan, which means the mind which protects or guards against negative actions. This is basically what ethics is.
Ethics is the main practice of a bodhisattva on the second ground. Gradually, by our practice of ethics in the present, we will eventually come to establish the practice of the perfection of ethics on the second Bodhisattva ground. So that’s what Pabongka Rinpoche says: Here we reverse our thoughts of harming others along with the basis of such thoughts, turning them into the thoughts abandoning these actions. Complete familiarity with this abandonment becomes the perfection of ethics. So here ethics is abandoning harm towards others, harm directed at others, either physically, verbally or mentally.
And I think we ourselves are also included in that, harming ourselves as well. For instance, the act of suicide is a negative act. It’s an unethical action to kill oneself. Similarly, to harm others also is unethical. So that to harm others in any conceivable way is unethical.
So there are three types of ethics. Ethics of restraint from misdeeds. So firstly, restraining from misdeeds the first, is a type of ethics. These are the An example of this is the three types of vows. And the three types of vows are the vows of individual emancipation, such as the vows of a monk or a nun, or the vows of a lay person.
Then we have the vows of a bodhisattva. So the different root and secondary vows taken by bodhisattva. And then the third type of vow is the tantric vows, vows that are taken by those who are engaged in yogic practices, and so on. So there are those three types of vows. As the lamp on the path says, those who hold one of the seven kinds of Prātimokṣa vows or individual emancipation vows may always hold another vow.
They have the good fortune to receive the bodhisattva vows, others do not. Here, this particular verse is talking about how the three different types of vow that exist can act as supports of One can act as a support of the others and so on. But it’s not necessary that in order to take bodhisattva vows, one needs to take the vows of a monk or a nun, for instance. But being a monk or a nun is the best basis to take Prātimokṣa vows best basis to take bodhisattva vows. Anyway, there’s many different types of vows that are mentioned.
These are all ethical restraints that are proclaimed by the Buddha. And when the Buddha was alive, he set down these three different categories of vows. Initially, when the Buddha first started teaching, there were no vows proclaimed. Then he began to ordain others, and through taking ordination, initially there were no vows, but then as faults started to arise faults within the ordained community, then the Buddha was forced to start setting down certain rules. And in that way, many vows arose, all the vows arose.
For monks, there are two hundred and fifty three vows. For fully ordained nuns, there are three hundred and sixty four vows. All of these arose really predominantly through the intervention of laypeople complaining to the Buddha about, for instance, the actions of the followers of the Buddha. And when something was pointed out, the Buddha would often say, okay, well, from now on, I will declare that to be a fault and prescribe that behavior. So that process continued during the life of the Buddha.
It said that probably for the first year or more there were no vows, and then a vow against killing was established, and then stealing and so forth. But for a period of time, because it is said only ārya beings took ordination, or beings that had actual realization, then there was no need for vows, because really a being with realization acts ethically. For the rest of us, we need ethical restraints. Otherwise, it’s hard for us to see simply what the result of an action is going to be. And the purpose of the vows is simply to guide us in a particular direction so that we’re not engaging in actions that are going to be harmful to ourselves and others.
This understanding is not naturally born to us. If it were, then we wouldn’t have any problems. We would act ethically all the time. And even though we have a general sense of what ethics is, and this is coming from inborn wisdom, really from our past lives, still because our understanding is imperfect, we still need ethical restraints. We still need certain guidelines to help us avoid negative actions.
It’s true, isn’t it? Because often it comes up, we’re not sure which way to go on a particular issue. Even in this life, initially we may have killed insects without thinking twice about it. We get the mortein out and we’d spray flies and mosquitoes and hit mosquitoes when they land on us without thinking about it. And then later, when someone says, wait a minute, that being is a sentient being, they’ve got feelings, They’re just like you and I. Then doubt arises, oh, wait a minute.
I shouldn’t. It’s not that initially we understand, oh, that’s a sentient being. I shouldn’t harm that being. It’s really only through thinking about the issues.