Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 18-minute commentary, Ven Jampa Ignyen teaches Pabongka Rinpoche’s guidance on mind training (Lojong) practice, focusing on how to uproot delusions like attachment, resentment, and self-cherishing through immediate, unflinching antidotes. He unpacks the four dharmas of virtue: never repaying harm with harm, rejecting revenge and resentment, and refusing to belittle or blame others. The core teaching is exchanging self for others—reframing every mundane action (eating, reciting mantras, daily routines) as service rather than self-benefit. He walks through practical commitments including daily dawn intention-setting, maintaining vigilance over body and speech, and identifying and breaking delusions as soon as they arise. Aimed at practitioners already engaged with Lojong teachings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 20 LR 2001 09 19.mp3
UUID: ed7c5a78-a2d2-4bcb-b6b4-6ce7e3d9246d
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Lam Rim 2001 Month 07-09 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-09-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 18.6 minutes
Words: ~2,089
So in our present state of mind, whatever delusion is there, whether it’s attachment or impatience, resentment, deceit, arrogance, and so forth. Then as soon as we become aware of it, we should apply the antidote to it and treat it without mercy. We don’t have to apply any fair means when we seek to eradicate it. We can trick it, ambush it, poke fun at it, deride it, chide it, anything. Throw whatever we like at it.
But act in a way that brings to bear a useful antidote to it, an effective antidote to it. So the text also talks about the four dharmas to be performed by practitioners of virtue. For example, not to repay an evil action, with an evil action, actually. Now, Pabongka Rinpoche has gone back to the text again, so there’s only a short break from the text there. So don’t repay an evil action with an evil action.
So an eye for an eye, an ear for an ear, and so on is inappropriate. You are not a practitioner of virtue if you do not carry out these four. So we should practice in this way. For you promised before your abbot and ordination master to practice them. And, again, here, Pabongka Rinpoche is giving advice to the ordained community because they were the audience who were present back eighty years ago.
If someone says to you, you mangy old dog, do not retaliate with you thief. There’s lots of nice expressions in Tibetan. Equally, there’s many in English as well that we use, or we hear being used. So we shouldn’t, retaliate in that way. If someone hits you once, you should not hit him twice in return.
Do not abide do do not bide your time waiting to avenge some wrong as if you had been waiting in ambush, where the road runs through a a gorge to harm the person in return. Foolish worldly minded people think it is best to smile, though secretly harboring resentment. This merely shows that dharma and worldly actions are opposites. So we shouldn’t lie in wait for others that we perceive to have harmed us, endure the insults only to wait for an opportunity in the future to get back at them, bide that time. Your time will come.
It might take a month, it might take six months, but the opportunity will come. If we think along those lines, then we’re just engaged in worldly actions. And because we’re engaged in worldly actions, there’s no dharma there because worldly actions and dharma are opposites. There’s no common basis. If you know that some gross defects in another person exist, do not belittle them in front of many others or attack their weak spot.
Do not bring up any of their faults. In the same way, not recite wrathful mantras in order to destroy creatures and so forth. So we shouldn’t attack their weak spot when we recognize it. When we do something wrong, we should not deceitfully blame someone else. Also, do not be clever and blame others when things go wrong.
In other words, do not put the load of a dzo on an ox. A dzo is a larger creature than an ox. It can carry a bigger load than an ox. We shouldn’t blame others or load the responsibility of something on others, which is not their responsibility to bear. The mind is trained in order to subdue self-cherishing, but if our meditations cause an increase in our self-cherishing and you do not harm creatures because you want to gain fame, gifts, and so on, the spell has gone awry.
So again, this is another pith instruction. The spell has gone aure, meaning that practicing if we’re practicing cherishing others in order to gain fame, then there’s an indication that there’s an element of self-cherishing already in our practice. So, there, we need to take stock. So we shouldn’t do this. Do not be in a hurry to get possessions, to get possession of something that is common property or try to get the best for yourself by being there first.
That is, do not run a race. And also we should not run a race in that sense. Do not let a god become a devil, means do not let your mind training act, no longer as an antidote to self-cherishing, but bolster it instead. So don’t let our practice of mind training simply become another excuse or another means for our development of self-cherishing. And that there’s often danger that that happens with us.
We think I’m here, I’m sitting trying to meditate on self-cherishing, and other people are distracting my meditation, and then developing resentment towards them and so forth, that resentment is all is based on self-cherishing itself. So we shouldn’t convert our practice of mind training into practice for developing self-cherishing. So they make up the okay. And the further, the last one there is do not think if only my enemy would die or suffer ruin, then I would be happy. That type of thought would be seeking happiness in unhappiness.
So there are the eighteen commitments, in terms of, the commitment to self, the commitment to mind training. So again, there’s eighteen, elements of advice there in how we should proceed with our practice and eighteen things to avoid. And then there are twenty two pieces of advice in relation to our practice. We might just start a little bit on these as well. Firstly, all yogas are practiced through the one.
That is the practitioner need not perform a variety of virtuous practices because they are all included within the thoughts of exchanging self and others. So all yogas are practiced through the one. So in fact, all mind training is achieved through the one practice of exchanging self for others. Then Pabongka Rinpoche gives some examples. When you each think I have already given my body to sentient beings, Thus, in order to work for their sakes, I shall keep it nourished.
So I’m not eating in a sense for my own sake. I’ve already given my body to other beings as a slave for other beings. So my eating then becomes, denies the practice of eating then, in a sense, denies self-cherishing because it’s being done in order to help others. This is very practical. Otherwise, we eat with self-cherishing.
I’m eating, I’m eating to get strong so I can get happy. That then becomes a cause for our unhappiness. On the other hand, if we regard ourselves as if we’ve already given ourselves to others, then the process of eating simply becomes a process by which others are catered for. And to do the same thing in all our daily routines. So whatever we’re doing, we should develop that type of thought and do everything in this way, reciting mantras, and so forth in that way.
If the medicine is not proving beneficial, the doctor may both bleed the patient and perform moxibustion. So this used to occur in Tibet. The thought of exchanging self and others will likewise serve in hundreds of cases, for it is an antidote to all illness and delusion or affliction. So in Tibet, one of the general practices was cut a vein and bleed the patient if they’re not feeling well, and even put this thing in the crown, in the crack of the skull, and burn some medicine there and so forth. In other words, there are certain practices that tend to have a general beneficial effect on patients.
Similarly, the practice of exchanging self for others is the universal antidote to all illness. Perhaps this example not so easy to assimilate, but it is like having a universal elixir that’s good for everything. Exchanging self for others, is like that. We should set our motivation before all virtuous actions and follow them with a dedication of the merit. So setting our motivation and dedicating the merit are in fact, refer back to the five powers.
We had five powers the other day. They were the power of power of the white seed, Power of the white seed. What was the first one in the Determination. There it’s a power of projecting a strong virtuous motivation First thing in the morning. When we first get up, that’s the one that we have to establish.
And then the fifth one, anyone remember the fifth power? Prayer. Excellent. So those two, the power of prayer, that is at the end we dedicate all the positive potential, to overcoming self-cherishing. So we should set our motivation before all virtuous actions and follow them with a dedication of the merit.
It is also most important to determine every morning what you will and will not be doing. But this also is very important, that at the beginning of each day, if we can reflect what should I do today and what shouldn’t I do today, then it does tend to set our direction for the day. And we shouldn’t underestimate how beneficial it is to set a positive direction first thing in the morning. Then you should not give up your mind training practice, come what may either happiness or sorrow. Some people drop the Dharma or the practice of mind training when made happy by a promotion or acquisition of wealth and so on.
Some give it up when they suffer from their enemies, but we must not give up our practice of mind training in either event, whether something positive happens or something negative happens, then we shouldn’t give up our practice. They should reinforce our practice. Then we should safeguard the commitments of our mind training, and those of our other practices in general, as we would value our life itself. So we should retain our commitments in mind training. There are three ascetic practices that we should know and devote ourselves to.
They are the asceticism of identifying delusions, that of applying antidotes, and that of breaking the continuity of the delusions. So these are three ascetic practices. Firstly, identifying the afflictive states when they arise, then applying antidotes to them so that their continuity is broken. In a way, they’re asceticism because we’ve really got to sober up in order to be able to do that and extract ourselves from all the things we’re attached to and identify the afflictive states when they arise and intervene to stop their continuity through applying an antidote. So they’re like ascetic practices.
And we should pray to be able to assemble the three main causes for practicing Dharma. That is meeting with the right teacher, the right guru, being mentally fit to practice and having all the necessary conditions such as food and clothing. So those things also are necessary. And we should do the three things that should not degenerate: holding the guru in awe and respect, rejoicing in mind training, and keeping these pieces of advice through remembrance and vigilance. And we should not leave our mind, body, or speech idle, just letting it tick along in a neutral state.
We should occupy them with virtue. The virtues of body, as Pabongka Rinpoche mentions, are not merely, prostrating ourselves or performing circumambulations and so on. We should turn even our posture into something virtuous by straightening our spine. And in fact, all sorts of measures we should employ in order to uproot the delusions, shake them up, stir them up and get rid of them, stop them, sever them, and so on. And so we do need an ongoing effort directed at what is virtuous and what is positive.
And all of this advice here is directed to that end, and especially to overcoming self-cherishing, which is the foundation for all of these afflicted states. So again, this text is of great benefit and the advice, we need to contemplate over an extended period of time. So here we need patience. And as mentioned earlier in the text, patience is the greatest austerity. More beneficial for us to generate patience than to go and live on a few grains of rice in a cave in the mountains or something like that.
Far better for us to generate patience in our everyday life. That is the real austerity. It is the real austerity because we’re always becoming impatient with things. We don’t have much relief from impatience, but generating patience is the foundation of virtue. Right.
So, anyway, we’ll just stop.