Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 20-minute teaching, Ven Jampa Ignyen explores great compassion—the wish that all sentient beings be freed of every level of suffering. He guides listeners through a practical method of progressively expanding compassion: from people in the room to a city, state, and entire universe, including all humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell-beings. He outlines ten advantages of generating great compassion, drawn from Pabongka Rinpoche: it makes one worthy of offering, accumulates vast merit, purifies past misdeeds, protects from harm, and serves as the seed of Buddhahood. Throughout, he emphasizes that great compassion benefits both self and others and conforms with how things actually are. Pitched at students of the Lam Rim path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 2001 08 09 LR.mp3
UUID: 735f0957-8f76-4e55-85c5-5296a3feee59
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Lam Rim 2001 Month 07-09 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-08-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 20.0 minutes
Words: ~1,992
Anyone accept that? Anyone not accept that? Oh, any positive mental state? A moment of patience, a moment of generosity, a moment of compassion towards other beings, A moment of non hatred. Occasionally we do have positive states, don’t we?
Actually, don’t have, on our level we don’t have pure virtuous states. Our virtuous states tend to be mixed or influenced by non virtue as well. But what virtue does arise in our continuum, if we trace it back to its root source, its root source is great compassion. Is that true? Definition of great compassion.
Great compassion is compassion that focuses on all sentient beings and is the desire to that all desire to completely eliminate suffering for all those beings. The desire that all those beings be completely freed of all levels of suffering, the gross, the intermediate, the subtle. It is. Yeah. It is.
If we start to think of generating great compassion, then even generating great compassion, like if we start off with everyone in the room here, it’s not easy to generate compassion for a room full of people. Then if we start thinking about beyond this room, all the humans say Fullerton, there’s quite a lot. And then developing compassion for all those beings. But not Okay. And then developing compassion that they may be free of suffering.
And then we can extend that to all the beings in Adelaide, all the human beings in Adelaide. And if we stop and line them all up, there’s, you know, over a million people there, which is a lot. Get them all in a million people is gonna take up a fair amount of area. Okay. So then taking those beings as one’s focal object, wishing that they’d be free of suffering.
No. It’s because it’s then we would also if we think about Adelaide, we’d have to include all the animals, all the cats and the dogs and the mice and the rats and the mosquitoes, and the flies, and the cockroaches, and the worms, and the ticks, snakes, all the birds, the pigeons, the doves, the chickens. And so on for the fish. And then, of course, this is only in a limited sense. Then one would have to expand that to the whole state of South Australia.
All the humans and the animals in the state of South Australia. Right down to the smallest without excluding any, then generating the wish that they be free of suffering. May they be completely free of suffering, but not suffering on a gross level, just on that level, but may they be free of even contaminated feelings of happiness, suffering of change. And then may they be free of pervasive suffering, having contaminated aggregates. So may they be free of suffering on every level completely.
And then one expands that to the whole of Australia, but then the whole world itself. And then all human beings in the universe, wherever they may exist. And then the ghosts, hungry ghosts, may they develop, you know, like, freedom from all their sufferings, both on a gross and intermediate and subtle level. Then the hell beings. So then may all the hell beings be free of suffering and so on.
Then all the divine beings. So every being in the universe without exception needs to be included within the scope of that compassion. Otherwise, it’s not great compassion. So a being who generates great compassion actually outshines the Shravakas or the hearers and the solitary realizers or liberated beings. They don’t necessarily outshine in wisdom, but they outshine in their motivation because their motivation is so extensive.
Then they outshine even liberated beings. So one who develops this type of awareness, this type of great compassion, then also becomes a supreme object of offering. So one becomes worthy to be made offerings to because one has that type of awareness within one’s continuum, because one has generated great compassion. And the great compassion itself is so valuable, that even the person possessing that type of compassion becomes, a worthy object of, offering. And as it said, there’s one statement from one text.
Said in the sutras, you should pay homage to the new moon and not to the full moon. Likewise, anyone who draws inspiration from me should pay homage to the bodhisattvas and not to the Tathagatas. Actually, what the Buddha was saying in this is that great compassion and bodhicitta are just so important that their great compassion is the one thing that should be paid homage to. And especially to those who newly generate great compassion. When a bodhisattva mounts a chariot, they, the Buddhas, will provide delights for their five senses and entertain them.
Should there be no one else to pull the chariot, the Buddhas themselves will even draw the chariot by a rope tied around their own heads. So the mind of great compassion is so valuable that for those that newly generate, for those that generate the mind of great compassion and bodhicitta, the Buddhists themselves pay respect to them and shower praise upon them and so on. So generating great compassion is something without equal. If one was to establish something of value in the universe, it would be great compassion. If we had to nominate something of value.
These days, it’s not easy to find things of value in the postmodernist era where value has gone out the window. But great compassion has value. And then also one accumulates an enormous accumulation of merit with ease. Generally, we don’t appreciate merit, but it’s merit. It’s only merit that allows us to establish what we want to establish.
Anything that we ever achieve anywhere at any time is only achieved through merit. As it said in a Tibetan, a person who possesses merit is able to accomplish what they desire. So if we want to achieve anything, we can only do it if we have a store of merit. Without a store of merit, we just can’t do it. We could sit there and wish for it to happen.
But if we don’t have the merit, we don’t have the currency, We don’t have the bank balance. We just can’t do it. So anything small, medium, or large on a day to day basis, moment to moment basis, whatever we achieve depends on merit. And great compassion is the excellent means by which merit is accumulated. So if one just has this awareness of wishing all beings be free of suffering, it’s accumulating merit for us.
And if it’s great compassion, meaning that it’s focused on every being without exception. We can’t exclude our next door neighbor. Or, you know, we might not like mosquitoes or we might not like snakes and so on. We can’t exclude any. We exclude even one sentient being, great compassion does not exist.
But by generating great compassion, then as it says, an enormous amount of merit is accumulated. And there are many, many sources in scripture to establish this such as Śāntideva. It is like the supreme philosopher’s stone, for it will turn your filthy body into something priceless. So great compassion and bodhicitta turn this filthy body that we possess into something priceless, the body of a Buddha. Great compassion is the seed that leads to Buddhahood.
So great compassion is something that transforms our current jaded state into the state of a perfectly pure Buddha. Thus, we should also maintain this thing we call bodhicitta. Other virtues are like the plantain tree, for it is barren once it has given fruit. bodhicitta is a living tree that continues to give fruit and grow. So great compassion and bodhicitta are something that give us or generate for us a great amount of merit.
And generating great compassion also purifies a vast measure of our previous non virtues. So by generating great compassion, we can eliminate the negatives that we’ve accumulated in the past, which continue to remain with us at present. And in a way there’s no better method than bodhicitta or generating great compassion for dealing with this vast accumulation of negativities that we have from the past. This vast accumulation of negative actions we don’t see. It’s not that it takes up any space because it’s not made of.
If it took up space, we would be huge and we’d be pretty much burdened. I don’t think we’d be able to get up from our seat. If the negativities that we had accumulated within our mind had physical form. But they don’t take up any room. They don’t weigh anything.
But they remain within the center of our heart. And they’re like a an ever present accumulation of negative potential that can be awakened at any time when the conditions arise and create suffering for us. But great compassion has the capacity to purify those, that negative accumulation. And as it said, the great sins are sure to be consumed in a moment as if by the fire at the end of time. So just as the universe comes to an end by fire, water, or wind, Actually, generating great compassion is like generating the fire at the end of the eon, which is able to destroy the entire material universe.
Generating great compassion destroys our negative potential in the same way. And then also we accomplish whatever we wish. Through generating great compassion and accumulating a vast amount of merit. Then we have the potential to establish what we wish to establish. And we are not bothered by harm or hindrances.
As it said that when a universal emperor goes to sleep, they are guarded by Vajrapāni, Brahma, Indra, and the four great kings, etcetera. But the bodhisattva who generates great compassion has twice as many protectors as universal emperors, universal kings. And they’re protected both day and night. So what this means is the mind of great compassion is a great protector for us, that protects us from external harms and interference. So there could be no greater protection for us than that.
And then also we completely establish all the stages of the path very quickly, that through generating great compassion, then that acts as the engine or the force, the potency, the power for quickly establishing all the stages of the path until we attain the state of complete enlightenment. And then also we become a fertile source of every happiness for others. And also by generating great compassion, we develop the capacity to help other beings. Anyway, these are ten advantages that Pabongka Rinpoche has set down in relation to great compassion. And it’s very good to think through these.
And inevitably we’ll have doubts about, whether this does correspond with the actual fact or not. And also about whether is it really that beneficial to generate great compassion? Is it really in our interest to to do that? But this certainly we need to reflect on because we need to act in our own interest. We need enlightened self interest.
And the very essence of enlightened self interest is great compassion. Because great compassion is something that benefits us in the beginning, in the middle, in the end. And it benefits us in a very strong and pervasive way. And also having great compassion helps other beings. It means that we look after other beings and we don’t try to harm them because we have compassion for them.
So great compassion is good for ourselves and it’s good for others. And also it conforms with the fact, with the way things actually are, that in fact, being in the universe deserves our compassion. No matter how badly they may appear to be treating us, still they deserve our great compassion. And we should examine whether we’re justified in not generating compassion towards others. But this we need to do over a long period with reasoning and introspection.