Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Ven Jampa Ignyen carefully distinguishes what bodhicitta actually is — not aspiration, compassion, or love, but a primary mental consciousness with two linked aspirations: to free all sentient beings from suffering, and to attain enlightenment oneself for that purpose. He reviews the six causes method as a foundation, then introduces Pabongka Rinpoche’s exchanging self for others technique, a core practice in the Kadampa tradition tracing back to Atisha. The teaching emphasizes philosophical precision: understanding what Buddha and enlightenment mean, and recognizing why self-cherishing runs so deep that equalizing oneself with others remains extraordinarily difficult, even when the reasoning is clear. Intended for practitioners engaged with Lamrim study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 2001 08 16 LR.mp3
UUID: 5bf638da-6e21-409f-9df7-9b981982f7e6
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Lam Rim 2001 Month 07-09 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-08-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~4,217
Text. And the sections that we’re dealing with are are really at present, we’re in the great scope and we’re dealing with the methods to develop bodhicitta. And there are basically two methods that are set forth in the text. And the first method we dealt with last week and that was the instruction on the six causes and one result. Does everyone remember what the six causes are and what the preliminary precondition for the six causes is?
Equanimity. Equanimity. Which type of equanimity? Immeasurable. Immeasurable equanimity.
There’s different types of equanimity. So this one here is immeasurable equanimity. What are the other two types of equanimity? There’s also the feeling of equanimity, isn’t there? Immeasurable equanimity and the feeling of equanimity are not quite the same thing.
And then also there’s composite equanimity. So here the initial thing we meditate on is immeasurable equanimity as described in the text. This type of awareness which is focused on all sentient beings and developing an equal attitude towards all sentient beings, an even attitude, not holding some as close, others as distant, and so on. Really taking the three groups of friend, enemy, stranger, and taking that immeasurable field to be to be even, not making bumps and dips and rises and so forth out of that field. In other words, not making some close and others distant.
So that’s immeasurable. Firstly, it’s immeasurable equanimity. In general, there’s four types of immeasurable. And one of them is immeasurable equanimity. And of course, we recite them every week.
What are the other three? Immeasurable love, compassion, joy. That’s right. And the last one is immeasurable equanimity. And what are the six causes?
Seeing beings as one’s mother. Remembering their kindness. Remembering kindness. Repaying their that comes from the force of attraction, or love that draws near to all sentient beings.
Love which finds all sentient beings to be attractive. In Tibetan, it’s love that finds others as appealing. Or great love. We can also say in brief great love there. Because also it’s taking the field of all sentient beings without exception as its focal object.
And then great compassion. Right? And after great compassion? Altruism, or special insight, or superior intention? Exalted thought.
Exalted thought, or universal responsibility. His Holiness has suggested universal responsibility there. And then the result, what’s the result? What is bodhicitta? Enlightenment mind.
Awakening mind? Yes. That’s right. There’s in Tibetan there’s or bodhicitta, enlightenment mind. And then there’s also awakening mind or developing mind, which mean the same thing.
So what is the meaning of bodhicitta? It’s is it aspiration? Is it aspiration? Benefiting others. Cherishing others.
Yes. But is it aspiration? It’s not it’s associated with aspiration. It actually achieves it. Comes after aspiration.
It’s conditioned by aspiration, true. But is it aspiration? This is a bit of a trick question. One of the things is There are two types of aspiring bodhicitta. And engaging.
Yeah. No, it’s not dealing with that. It’s the general meaning of what bodhicitta is. We need to have some sort of idea what bodhicitta is. There’s a what?
There’s a statement in the realization, the ornament of realization by Maitreya which says, is awakening mind or bodhicitta. For the purpose of others, desiring to attain full and complete enlightenment. So in brief that gives the meaning, but it’s not actually the proper definition. Why are we concerned with the definition here? Because we need to identify what bodhicitta is in order to know what we’re trying to achieve.
Otherwise, it’s gonna be difficult. If we can’t pinpoint it, we can’t develop an understanding of how our present mind may generate such a state. Because potentially the causes of bodhicitta lie in our present mental continuum. We have a measure of compassion, aspiration, and these other mental states or mental factors, these, when they’re directed in a particular way, they become conditions for generating bodhicitta. bodhicitta itself is not aspiration.
It’s not compassion. It’s not love. It’s not equanimity. It’s none of those things. Anyway, I’ll just read out the definition of bodhicitta.
But anyway, this is just for almost interest sake, and we’ll summarize it down a little bit. It’s the exalted great vehicle main mental cognition differentiated by type as the path which is the entry to the great vehicle path and concordant with the aspiration focusing on complete enlightenment for the purpose of others as its aid. What this means is that bodhicitta itself is a main mind. What a main mind is, we all have main minds. Main minds are just states of awareness which hold the bare identity of an object.
The mere bare undifferentiated identity of something. That’s what a main mind does. We have main minds. We have potentially six of them. Eye awareness, ear awareness, nose awareness, nose consciousness, mental consciousness.
So bodhicitta itself is a type of mental consciousness. It’s quite special in that regard because there are a few states of awareness which become which are established as a main mind, what we could call a main mind or Tibetan, it’s or sem. And that indicates that the mind of bodhicitta is very fundamental and a foundational state which, of course, by generating it, it marks one’s entry into the great vehicle. So that’s one point in relation to bodhicitta. It’s a main mind.
It’s mental awareness and really it’s mental conception. It’s not perception, it’s conception. And it’s generated in dependence on a generic image. Another aspect of bodhicitta is that it’s said to have two aspirations. It’s a two aspiration possessor in Tibetan.
It’s a dunpa niden. Dhumpa niden in Tibetan, which means one that possesses two aspirations. And the first aspiration is it aspires to free all sentient beings of their suffering. It focuses on all sentient beings without exception. That’s its focal object.
And firstly, aspires to free all of those beings from all suffering whatsoever. And the second aspiration it has is for us to attain a state of enlightenment. So really two aspirations are there. It’s said that these two aspirations can follow one after the other for us to become sorry? For us to attain full enlightenment, for me.
That’s right. In fact, this comes out in this verse from the ornament of realization, which says, awakening mind is for the purpose of others desiring to attain the state of complete enlightenment. And That’s really what it is. For the purpose of others, ourselves desiring to attain complete enlightenment. So there’s two aspirations there, desiring to free others from all suffering, and desiring that we attain a state of enlightenment in order to do that.
So, very roughly, that is what the state of bodhicitta is. Generic image. Sorry? What is the generic image? The generic image, well, there it focuses on all sentient beings as its focal object.
So really it’s a one has a generic image, for instance, of all sentient beings. To begin with, that’s the basic object. Then the aspiration to free all of those beings, that I myself will free all of those sentient beings from suffering. There’s a generic image like that. And that in order to do that, I need to attain a state of enlightenment.
So one They’re all put together. And in fact, those two aspirations can set to arise serially as well. So that one conditions the other. Those two aspirations are linked with or associated with the mind of bodhicitta. So the second aspiration there is aspiring that I attain the state of enlightenment.
What is the state of enlightenment? Mhmm. What does one picture when one pictures the state of enlightenment? Here we have to if we have to sit down and think, I’m gonna free all sentient beings. Okay.
I can just imagine, you know, heads in billions and billions of human beings and so And then that they’re suffering. And then one aspires, may they be free of that suffering, but more than may they be free, I will free those sentient beings from suffering. Okay. That we can visualize. In order to do that, I need to attain a state of enlightenment.
We can point upwards, a state of enlightenment. I might as well point downwards. State of enlightenment doesn’t reside in a particular place. But then what do we unless we have a clear idea of what enlightenment is, then it’s gonna be difficult to generate bodhicitta as well. So what is enlightenment?
State, yes, it’s a state free from suffering. Yep. Well, the state of complete enlightenment is Buddha, isn’t it? So it’s really aspiring we become Buddha. And within that this, yeah, here we can contemplating a state which is free of every fault, all possible limitation, that such a state exists.
We have to accept that such a state does exist initially. The state of enlightenment does exist. If we have doubt about whether the state of enlightenment exists or not, then generating bodhicitta is gonna be very difficult. So in developing an idea of bodhicitta, one needs to develop a conception of what enlightenment is and of what Buddha is. Is enlightenment Buddha?
Yes. Is Buddha enlightenment? No. What does Buddha mean? Sorry?
Wait a minute, what is Buddha? Is Buddha Śākyamūni Buddha? Because we can’t aspire to be Śākyamūni Buddha, of course. So what is Buddha? Yes.
This is a very actually, having some understanding of what Buddha is is important. Well, everybody can be a Buddha. Everyone can be a Buddha. Every sentient being here has the potential to be a Buddha. The word Buddha means awakened, and that term Buddha is given Śākyamūni, who lived two and a half thousand years ago.
But there are other Buddhas as well, aren’t there? Like, there’s gonna be countless Buddhas who exist in the universe. In fact, there’s countless Śākyamūni Buddhas who live in the universe. In fact, Śākyamūni Buddha has countless emanations, and all the other Buddhas have countless emanations. An emanation is like a being who is emanated by another being.
So even the Buddhas do have emanations, avatars. They’re like ordinary beings, but they simply they share the same continuum with another person. Like someone like Śākyamūni Buddha can have it’s a countless infinite, not infinite, but almost immeasurable countless numbers of emanations, All sharing the same continuum, the same mental continuum. No. No.
Our mental continuum as it is at present can never merge with the mental continuum of someone else as such. Although it can become completely in harmony with another continuum. But yeah, to actually merge or become another being, that’s said to be not possible. Yeah, we’ve got to put the work in. Otherwise, if it were possible, Buddhists are completely compassionate, they would have already said, okay, fellas, step up, go.
Okay. You’ve been you’ve been out there long enough, time to come home, and they’d click their fingers and everyone would be in a Pure Land. There’s no lack of effort from their side to do that. If they could do it in the next moment, they would. We’d all be there in a Pure Land, because they have boundless compassion for every sentient being.
But that’s right. We have the potential to become Buddhas, and we need to investigate what Buddha is. Whether Buddha is possible. It said that Buddha is permanent. Buddha is permanent permanent because Buddha has a permanent path.
Yep. Oh, Buddha is empty of true existence. Everything is empty of true existence. Buddha is said to be permanent. No.
Permanently empty of truth, right? It’s just that the Buddha doesn’t change moment to moment. What about Śākyamūni Buddha? Didn’t he change moment to moment? He was as a Śākyamūni Buddha was a human being, wasn’t he?
Yeah. Does anyone think Śākyamūni Buddha was a divine being? Was Śākyamūni Buddha a god? No? There’s one proof.
One proof of that is that Śākyamūni Buddha became a monk and only human beings can become monks. So that is often given as a proof for why Śākyamūni Buddha was a human. But Śākyamūni Buddha was impermanent, but it said that Buddha is permanent. In fact, there are four types of Buddha. There’s the emanation body, such as Śākyamūni Buddha.
There’s the enjoyment body, such as There’s different enjoyment bodies. Then also there’s what? There’s the Dharma body. The two types of Dharma body are the primordial awareness Dharma body or the wisdom Dharma body, and there’s also the nature body. Because the nature body is permanent, it’s said that Buddha is permanent.
Anyway, without going into that in too much depth, here briefly, we need to understand what Buddha is. We need to understand what enlightenment is. Really, enlightenment is the awareness in the continuum of a Buddha. That’s enlightenment. So we’re striving to attain a state of omniscience.
So this mind of bodhicitta has two aspirations. First aspiration is focusing on sentient beings and aspiring that they be free of suffering, and I myself will free them from suffering. And then also it’s the aspiration that I will attain the state of enlightenment. And these go together. Right.
So therefore we have bodhicitta. Now, in terms of the text itself, instruction on the six causes and one result. And then we have the second, the exchanging self for others. And this was a system set down by Śāntideva. And then this was passed on to the Kadampa Lamas.
And as it says, that in the whole tradition of mind training or Lojong, the pith instruction there is really pointing towards this system of generating bodhicitta called exchanging self for others. So this is the essential mind training that we can undertake in order to generate bodhicitta. We can use the six causes and one result itself. And that’s a complete method for us to generate bodhicitta. But also the system of exchanging self for others has got immeasurable benefit.
And as in the tradition of the Kadampa Lamas, everyone knows who the Kadampa’s were. Does everyone know who the Kadampa’s were? Kadam means pure or immaculate speech or instruction. Kadampa. Those who are following this the instructions of the the speech of the Buddha.
And so for they they’re called Kadampa’s. And they arose as Who was the founder of that tradition? In Tibet. No? Lama Tsongkhapa came after?
Atisha, yes. It’s Sorry? It’s Atisha. This tradition, the Kadampa tradition is coming from Atisha. Atisha went to Tibet in the eleventh century.
He was invited to go to Tibet. And he went and he taught very extensively for around seventeen years. And he had many disciples, and his disciples became known as the Kadampa. And later on, after the birth of Je Tsongkhapa, he developed the system of the Kadampa into the Gelug tradition. So initially, we have the Kadampa, and this is from the time of Atisha, around ten fifty or so in Tibet, in the eleventh century.
And it was these Kadampalamas who were following the instruction from Atisha who passed this particular teaching of the exchanging self for others to Dromtönpa, who was the main disciple of Atisha. And Dromtönpa then passed it on, in fact, to Geshe Potowa and down onto Langri Thangpa, then Geshe Sharawa, and then down to Geshe Chekawa. In fact, there’s a lineage of masters in Tibet who took these teachings and established the meaning of the teachings within their mental continuum and then passed them onto the disciples. And so we have that lineage coming down to us today through the kindness of the Kadampa Lama. There are many there’s some stories in the root text, I think everyone has probably read through some of them, and these are very good to read.
Because one of the things about these practices is that they often seem very difficult for us that, you know, we get an idea of the practice, but how to actually implement it. It’s hard. It’s not easy. There’s many distractions that we have, and it’s not easy to gain a taste of the practice. Of course, this is exactly how it was for the Tibetans, exactly how it was for the Indians.
So we shouldn’t think that it’s specifically hard for us. It’s hard for everyone else as well. And it’s very useful to read of their stories because that can inspire us in the present to practice. And of course, we need as much inspiration as we can gather together. Having inspiration is very, very precious because a little bit of inspiration can carry us through and allow us to maintain effort in these areas.
And it’s really only through effort over a long period of time that progress is made. Effort is most important. So one needs inspiration in order to generate effort. And what is effort? What is effort?
Applying one’s mind. It’s yeah. Yeah. Yes. It probably is.
Yes. In using repetition. Engaging one’s mind in the practice. It is. But what effort is really referring to is liking virtue.
That’s what effort is. Taking delight in virtue. Liking virtue. How do we develop a liking for virtue? Purifying helps.
Purifying helps with everything. That’s can’t have enough purification. Oh, looking at the benefits of something. Absolutely. The more we look at the benefits of something, the positive attributes of something, the more we come to like it.
So here we need to contemplate the benefits of bodhicitta as often as we can. And then states, realizations achieved by past masters and how they achieved those, that is also very good for generating effort. But we need a lot of inspiration. We can’t have enough inspiration. So it’s good to read these accounts of the past, especially here of the Kadampa lamas of the past.
Geshe Potowa, Geshe Langri Thangpa, Geshe Chekawa, Geshe Sharawa, and so on. Geshe Chim, Jampeyang. These were all known as Geshe. Geshe means is short for Geshé Nyen, which means Kalyana Mitra, which means spiritual friend. So, they’re spiritual friends because they are true friends.
Because unlike ordinary friends who tend to be fickle, spiritual friends are seeking one’s actual benefit. And in a way, there’s nothing more precious than a spiritual friend because they are people that we can associate with that actually have our ultimate benefit in mind. Whereas ordinary friends, they may have our benefit in mind today and maybe not tomorrow and so on. So anyway, here we’re discussing this issue of exchanging self for others, Pabongka Rinpoche gives some explanation as to the origins of this practice and then how we actually engage in it. So here, he initially starts with explanation of the two types of bodhicitta.
So here we have ultimate bodhicitta and relative bodhicitta. Now the definition that we talked about before is really the definition of relative bodhicitta or concealer bodhicitta. In Tibetan it’s künzob semkyé. Kunsob means to conceal, so therefore concealer bodhicitta. It’s called concealer bodhicitta because it’s a state of awareness which really conceals the ultimate mode of abidance of the objects it contemplates.
Therefore, it’s a relative type of bodhicitta. It’s said to conceal the ultimate mode of abidance because it’s not understanding their emptiness. So this is what’s meant here by relative body cheater. And that’s fine. When we contemplate bodhicitta, what are we looking at?
We’re looking at relative truths or concealer truths. We’re looking at ordinary, we’re looking at sentient beings, we’re looking at their suffering, we’re thinking about freeing them of that suffering, we’re looking at the state of enlightenment itself. There we may be talking about an ultimate truth. And then ourselves attaining that state of enlightenment. But in general, we’re talking about relative truth.
So therefore, it’s relative bodhicitta, or in other words, concealer bodhicitta, since it’s concealing the actual mode of abidance of those objects. So in the discussion on exchanging self for others, firstly, initially the issues of ultimate and relative body cheater are discussed. One’s employing the method of exchanging self for others in order to generate both types of bodhicitta. And ultimate bodhicitta is the non-conceptual comprehension of emptiness. That’s what ultimate bodhicitta is.
That is the non-conceptual comprehension of emptiness in the continuum of a bodhisattva. We have to add that. Otherwise, even liberated beings have perceptual comprehension of emptiness. So differentiating those two and understanding that that’s what we’re seeking to achieve, then we examine this relative bodhicitta. And then Pabongka Rinpoche goes on to talk about how we generate therefore this relative bodhicitta, and then after that ultimate bodhicitta in in the way, in by this method of exchanging self for others.
Now there are five stages in this process. Process. And before we dealt with the six causes, giving rise to bodhicitta in the six cause and one result instruction. So initially then, Pabongka Rinpoche mentions meditating on how self and others are equal is the first of the five subsections. Now, meditating on that is preceded by the same early sections that we did before with the six causes and one result.
That is from equanimity or immeasurable equanimity up to generating great love. So we use those as preliminaries here to this practice. And then Pabongka Rinpoche mentions that we should meditate as follows. As stated in the Guru Puja, there is no difference between myself and others. We do not want the smallest suffering, yet happiness never satisfies.
Bless me to be glad at others’ joy. So taking those words, we really need to contemplate them. Contemplating them really does, although we intellectually have some understanding of their meaning, our mind is still very uneven and has not really understood the meaning of those words yet. Sort of the meaning or the words sit on the very outside of our mind in a sense, and they only can penetrate by familiarity with those words. Firstly, thinking about the words, then getting to the meaning, and then allowing that meaning to begin to affect the mind itself.
So as Pabongka Rinpoche says, in other words, at present we cherish and value the thing we call the self, but we do not regard others in this way. So the self and others are not equal. It is not right to make such an enormous distinction between these two. We ought to feel I and others are equal because we both want happiness and we don’t want suffering. So here it’s equalizing self for others, equalizing self and others, seeing really that the I in my continuum is equal to the I in the continuum of any other being.
And this is based on generating immeasurable equanimity, seeing all beings as one’s mother, reflecting on their kindness, repaying their kindness, generating great love for other beings. So then we contemplate how the I is really equal, our I and our continuum, and the I in the continuums of other beings. At this initial stage in the technique, hardly any other reasoning is used. So we can simply apply this one reasoning how the I is equal. We don’t really see the I as being equal in the least.
And it should be quite it is obvious to us that what’s important to us is the I in our own continuum. In fact, quite naturally, we think the I in our continuum is more important than the I in anyone else’s continuum. So it really is bringing out our self-cherishing, Because our self-cherishing is holding this eye to be important, holding the mere I to be important, to the exclusion of other beings. The self-cherishing we have is actually an authentic state of awareness, because it’s even liberated beings have it. So we can say that the self-cherishing that we have is focusing on the mere eye and holding the mere eye to be important.
That in fact is an authentic state of awareness. That’s perhaps one reason why it’s so difficult for us to oppose it. It’s not like self grasping, which is actually what it holds doesn’t exist in least. What self-cherishing is holding does exist. The eye does have some importance.
But for us, our self-cherishing is almost diamond strong, and we take it to be a given, an absolute fundamental given in our existence. And because it’s there and because it has such at present has such strength, it’s very difficult to equalize ourselves with others. Because we’re looking at others and saying, okay, they also exist. They have an I, but their eye is not important as my eye. And in fact, even then when we think, okay, our I is the same as the I of anyone else.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I can understand it.
It is. Yep. Yeah. I’m being I’m really starting to practice here. Yeah.
My eye is the same as everyone else’s eye. Dear, I’m good at thinking that. I’m better than other people. They’re not sitting there thinking their I is only as good as my I, but I am, and so on. And, of course, our this self-cherishing is simply so deeply rooted within us, but it’s not easy to initiate this practice of equalizing self for others.