Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute healing workshop, Ven Kaye Miner guides practitioners through the Buddhist practice of tonglen—sending and receiving—as a method for developing compassion and removing obstacles to inner peace. Miner begins by distinguishing healthy compassion from attachment, emphasizing the essential balance between an open heart and a clear mind. He then builds the foundational practices step by step: mindfulness and breath meditation, equanimity among all beings, loving-kindness, and direct compassion, before introducing tonglen itself. The practice involves breathing in the suffering of others and breathing out healing goodness, a reversal of the white-light meditation covered the previous day. Miner illustrates the power of compassion through the example of praying for a dying friend with AIDS, whose dramatic healing experience came after an unseen group performed tonglen on his behalf. He addresses common fears about being overwhelmed by others’ suffering and clarifies that genuine, unlimited compassion prevents burnout—a principle exemplified by his teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche. The final section includes a live Q&A on group karma and Buddhist concepts of universal mind, demonstrating how the teaching adapts to practitioner questions in real time.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 Healing Workshop 1995 07 09.mp3
UUID: a1ebf973-f458-4caf-bccf-4f6f1a483163
Teacher: Ven Kaye Miner
Collection: Healing Workshop (Ven Kaye Miner)
Date: 1995-07-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~5,687
That rather than just trying to relax and look after their own dying process, they kind of hold it together as much as possible when the people are around. Often what happens is that when the family and friends go home, that’s when they’ll die. So this blockage is not beneficial for us and it’s not beneficial for others. Depends what you mean by detachment, you see. So I think often when we hear the word attachment and detachment, we’re thinking attachment is being kind of almost like consumed.
And so to be detached means that you don’t care. And that’s not the case. Alright, you can still care, okay, and be detached. When you’re attached, it’s very much How can I put it? I mean, we went through a little bit about attachment yesterday.
I think when you’re attached, it’s very much what that thing does for you. When you’re detached, it’s like the reverse of that. Something to do with expectations, yes, that’s right. Do people hear that? We need a balance between the open heart and the quiet mind.
Absolutely essential. Think if you’re doing any work with people who are quiet mind and you’re detached. Distant, yeah. Did people hear? Too much quiet mind, can be distant and aloof.
All of this is about balance. Think I said the other day Buddhism is actually about the middle way, not going to either extremes. So I think to be truly effective, to be able to feel the pain, to take on the suffering of others, to be there really nurturing and helping, you’ve got to be healthy yourself. And when I’m talking about healthy, I’m not talking just about healthy body, I’m also talking about healthy mind. Knowing the balance.
The balance so that you don’t get so caught up in the wave of the people suffering that you, you know, are useless. It’s the balance that comes from seeing clearly what’s going on, from understanding how the situation has evolved, of understanding what can be of benefit and what won’t. This is where the wisdom comes in. Know, the compassion and the wisdom really hand inherently, absolutely essential together. So when we’re talking about removing the barriers, of developing fearlessness, of developing this willingness to take on the pain and suffering of others.
When we’re talking about those things, we’re talking about it in a balanced, healthy way. We’re talking about it in a skillful way. We’re talking about it in a way that is not theory entirely, not just kind of again projecting, you know. It’s a completely integrated way of being. And what happens is that it becomes natural.
It becomes easy. Your motivation is pure. Your understanding is founded on valid, wise principles. Principles. And so as a result of that, I think you can do almost anything.
I think that you don’t necessarily suffer burnout. My teacher, Lama Zopa, absolutely amazes me. Now this guy never crawls into a bed like we do at night and goes to sleep. I’ve seen it. I know him.
I’ve spent years around him. He doesn’t get him to bed between the sheets and go like that. I have seen him nod off for a while, but it might be just like leaning against the back of his seat like that. But he never crawls into a bed like we do. Blows my mind.
Now, he might be lucky if he gets an hour’s sleep a night. Does heaps of meditation, which is obviously very good. But how does he keep going? And he has hundreds, thousands of people that come to him with their problems. They have he’ll be arriving in a center somewhere, and the fax machine goes crazy.
It goes through rolls and rolls of paper because people are faxing him with their problems, you know, and for advice. Unbelievable. He’s got email now. They up the computer every morning and it’s like, know, files, the hard disk becomes full or something. There’s just so many people go to him with their problems.
And I mean, some of the problems are like, you think that you’d only ever read about them in books. You think that they’d be fabricated, but these are real life problems that people are experiencing. So I often think now, how the hell can he cope with that kind of constant bombardment of people’s problems and people coming to see him and all of that kind of stuff and going visiting people who are dying and stuff like that. How can he possibly cope with all that when he doesn’t get much more than one hour sleep a night? You’ve got to ask yourself that question.
And it’s really his motivation is just impeccable. I mean, this he is so, so careful of his karma. I mean, puts people like me to shame. I’m hopeless. I’ve known him, he was doing a retreat in country Victoria and they had like a rainwater tank.
And one day he got a glass of water and he could see wrigglies in the water. He refused to have a shower after that because he thought if he had a shower that he might kill some of these little wrigglies, you know? And that that would be negative karma. I mean, unbelievable. He is so kind of careful about these things.
And there was no one else around, so But also, his morality is so good that he doesn’t ever have any body odor, which is an interesting thing. Anyway, the point is, like, how the hell can somebody kind of, you know, cope with that kind of lifestyle with all those responsibilities? And it’s because his motivation, because he has compassion, and because he actually has this willingness to be able to experience the pain of others, the suffering of others. When we’re talking about experiencing the suffering of others, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you do this meditation practice for somebody that’s in incredible pain and all of a sudden you’re going to experience their pain and they don’t. I mean, if that happened it would be fantastic.
But it’s not really working like that. What I think happens is that you develop the compassion by doing these practices. This is developing the compassion and the open heart. And they do get some benefit. As I was mentioning yesterday about sometimes doing this white light meditation beside somebody who’s ill and they don’t know that you’re doing it and then they say to you, what have you been doing because I feel so much better?
Actually, was just talking in the morning tea break about this friend who died of AIDS in February. He was very ill in December before I went overseas for a couple of months and I’d been spending some time with him at that point. And it looked like he was about to die in December. hung on to February, but nevertheless. There was one night with a group of people.
We were doing some special prayers for him and really very strongly meditating on the white light filling his body and of taking his suffering on and giving out all our goodness to him. And I rang him the next day and he said, What were you doing last night? And I said, What do you mean? He said, I had the most amazing experience, he said, of white light coming into my body and all my pain and sickness disappearing. He said, I can’t explain and describe the way I was feeling.
He said, were you doing anything? And I went, oh yeah, actually we were. Now he didn’t know. He didn’t know that there was going to be a group of people together and that we were doing that. He had no idea.
No one had been in contact with him that he’d actually felt something. So this Tonglen practice is not about really taking on all the problems and not being able to bear it. Especially if you’re already sick, because this Tonglen practice is especially useful for healing your sickness. Especially if you’re sick, if you’re thinking about you’re taking on the sickness of everybody that’s in the same boat as I mean, like, you you’ve got to be crazy. It’s just like too much to bear.
It’s not that. What you’re actually doing is when you’re taking on the problems and the suffering and the sickness of others, is it’s destroying this self-cherishing. And as I mentioned this self-cherishing yesterday, it’s sort of like the underlying creator of all of these actions that lead to suffering result. Remember that from yesterday? So by doing this visualization technique or imagining that we’re taking on the problems and the sufferings of others, we imagine that what’s happening is that we’re actually destroying this self-cherishing.
We’re destroying the creator, the root of our problems. When we’re doing this thing, we’re doing it out of compassion. And the compassion is like our greatest ally in our fight to overcome our self-cherishing mind, in our fight to be well, in our fight to overcome all of the problems and sufferings in our life. So I think we have to make this distinction between really what’s in our ego self interest and what is in our ultimate self interest. So when talking about doing a Tonglen practice, at first, you know, there is this incredible resistance from our ego side because, you know, it’s like something so alien to the way we normally think and behave.
But it’s really this kind of practice and the generation of compassion, etc. Is in our ultimate self interest because as I say, it’s the compassion that is the foundation that gives us the ability to be able to have a happy and positive outcome, to be able to benefit ourselves and to be able to benefit others. Okay, so I’m just making sure that I’m covering everything here. So this Tonglen practice is what opens our minds to the truth of suffering. It destroys these forces that blocks the openness of our hearts.
And as a result, when we remove those layers, we remove those blockages, then we really are able to understand and to rest in our own true nature. Now we often talk about having inner peace. Mean, most of us, that’s what we want, isn’t it? I think yesterday there were a number of people that said, I really want to find that kind of inner peace and calmness and the strength to be able to cope with all the things in our lives. So this Tonglen practice is what’s removing those barriers to experiencing that inner peace and happiness.
So I’ll just sort of explain a little bit about the practice. Because of course I’m talking a lot again, aren’t I? Time’s marching on. When we’re doing this Tonglen practice, as we’ve been covering things over the last day and a half, up till now, they are all like prerequisites to be able to do Tonglen effectively. It’s like if you just sat down to do the Tonglen practice, right, it probably wouldn’t make much sense and it would probably be incredibly difficult to not have that much effect.
But all of these things that we’ve been talking about and the kinds of meditations we’ve been doing are a lead up to doing Tonglen. Having that ability to develop the calmness in our mind by meditating on the breath and relaxing. That’s an important foundation. Then we build upon that by developing loving kindness. And we develop loving kindness through our ability to see all beings as equal, developing our equanimity.
Remember yesterday we were talking about friend, enemy, stranger, and then seeing how those categories are not very valid because the whole relationship with people change. So we develop the equality, recognising that all beings are the same and wanting happiness and not suffering. And so with that development of equanimity, then we are able to develop very clearly this loving kindness towards all beings. Then from that loving kindness, which of course as I mentioned very clearly yesterday, we must remember, we’re part of that. We’re part of the loving kindness to others.
Others includes ourselves. So based upon that loving kindness, what comes next? Any idea? Compassion. Compassion comes next.
So as I said yesterday, love is wishing others to be happy. Compassion is wishing them not to suffer. So can you see that we’re building up? We’re building up step by step. So we started off with mindfulness to develop calmness and clarity and understanding of the nature of our mind and our own true nature.
Then we develop equanimity. Then based on equanimity, can develop loving kindness. Then based on loving kindness, we can feel compassion, develop compassion. And then based on this compassion and the whole kind of kit and caboodle of loving kindness and equanimity, then we can develop what we can call the exchange of self for others. And this exchange for self for others is whereby we are able to actually imagine ourselves in their shoes, imagining how we would feel if we were in that situation.
So we’re able to actually have that interchange. Am I clear with what that means? This exchange of self for others? And then based upon that, we really sort of develop even more this kind of compassion from just being this sort of wish that others don’t have suffering. We start to develop it more by, in our meditation, starting off with a friend.
And usually it’s best with a friend that’s got a lot of problems and actually starting to feel compassion for their situation, understanding how they’re feeling. Putting yourself in their shoes. Imagine how you would feel and developing this real compassion of wishing them not to suffer, being fully aware of their situation. So we start with a friend because it’s easier with a friend, isn’t it? Because you really care about a friend.
You really want to alleviate their suffering. Then you try and extend that compassion to the people that you’re indifferent towards. And one of the easiest techniques for that is just to put the TV on and watch the news. Really, because every night on the news there’s the most appalling situations. I mean, I don’t need to tell you, do I?
Don’t need to go so depressed about thinking about some of the things on the news. And then, you know, it becomes easy to start developing compassion towards the people that you find it difficult to deal with, what we might call the enemy. And then after that, we can actually dedicate and direct our compassion. This is where you’re starting to become active. So real, true compassion is not just the thought.
It’s the action and the action that we can do like in meditation. Mean, we can always just say, know, may all beings be free from suffering. And that’s like a compassionate kind of thought. But the action of doing a meditation for it becomes the true, real kind of compassion. So based on these other steps, we get to a point that we sort of dedicate, like that we really want to kind of in our meditation or preferably in our daily life, I mean, you know, all the time, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, etc, to really dedicate to benefit others, to have the compassionate wish for others.
We kind of direct this feeling that’s kind of gone a step further than just the thought. We direct it by actually starting to make a prayer. I don’t think you can underestimate the power of prayer. I mean prayer, for me, I used to kind of again think it was like just a formula that you knelt beside your bed each night and recite it. And I didn’t have a lot of good feeling about prayer.
But prayer is actually something very spontaneous that can come from your own heart. So you develop this prayer of really wishing that others are free from suffering, really wishing to be of the most benefit. And like David, the guy who had AIDS, when we were doing this kind of practice for him, there was this very strong, strong, strong wish and prayer in our hearts, you know, like, may he be okay, you know, may he not have any pain or any suffering, and may his death be, as calm and as peaceful as possible. It was a very, very strong kind of prayer and wish in our hearts. And he felt the power of that.
I think, just sort of as an aside, that anything that you really want in life that’s worthwhile having, if you make the prayer, it will happen. It will come about. You sort of do this dedication and try to start directing your compassion. So they’re like all the build ups to doing Tonglen. Now I’m not saying that when you go to do a Tonglen practice you have to go through and do each one of those things.
If you’ve got the time, well that’s terrific. What is more important is that you have an understanding of all of those fundamental kind of steps before you do Tonglen. So it might be that you have got to a point that in your life and in your hearts you do feel compassion. And that you are able to, you do have some mindfulness, you do understand your mind, you do have equanimity. Do you know what I mean?
You get to a point that that’s sort of like second nature to you, so it’s very easy just to do the Tonglen practice after that. I think unless you’ve got that kind of foundation, very difficult to go into Tonglen. So when we’re talking about Tonglen, we’re talking about this giving and taking or this sending and receiving. And initially, it’s probably best to start off with things that are a little bit neutral, like with the environment or something like that. And then you can do it with yourself.
And then you can start to do it towards others. And again, to those people, you can start to do it with the people who are close, then to the people who you’re indifferent about and then to the people that you have difficulty with. So that it gets to the point that you are doing it with everybody. So when we’re talking about this practice, we usually do it concentrating on the breath or with the awareness of the breath. So that what we can imagine is that our self-cherishing is like this kind of black ball at our heart, for example.
And yesterday we were doing this meditation where we were breathing out the black smoke in the form of all our negativities and things like that and problems and then breathing in the white light. Well, now what we’re doing is we’re reversing that process which I think, Stephen, you were saying yesterday that you were finding it difficult doing that meditation yesterday because you’re so used to doing like the Tonglen one. Is that right? Yeah. So what you’re doing is the reverse of that white light meditation we did yesterday.
So you’re actually like giving out all your goodness, giving out your love and your kindness and your compassion, and taking on like the problems and the suffering and the sickness of others. So there are a lot of different techniques. Tibetan Book of Living and Dying has got a particular technique. I’m giving you this little simple meditation one here. There’s an American nun called Pema Chödrön.
She’s a nun in the Kagyu tradition. She’s got a very good book called The Wisdom of No Escape. I’ve got a copy of the chapter of giving and taking here if anyone wanted to have a look at that later. So there’s different techniques and it’s a matter of finding one that again is absolutely right for you that you feel happy sort of following. But basically, because there is this awareness of the breath, and you’re breathing in the problems and the suffering of others.
Then with your breath, you’ve got to breathe out again. Do you know what I mean? It’s you breathe in, then you’ve to breathe out. So it’s not like you’re kind of going to be bogged down with this kind of taking in the suffering of others. Because immediately, you’re to be giving out the goodness again.
Do you know what I mean? It’s only like this, backwards and forwards. So what happens is that rather than feel that you’re kind of being overwhelmed by taking on the suffering of others, immediately you’re into the role of giving out compassion and goodness to others. Do you know what I mean? So it gives you that kind of space, that ability to go from one to the other and not being kind of bogged down.
So having said that, we need to really have the recognition, as I said yesterday, about our mind being limitless. And when I’ve been talking about our mind, I’ve been talking about our mind being essentially pure and having this sort of innate goodness about it of love and compassion. So when we’re talking like that, we can see that really our compassion is limitless. I mean, sometimes we think that we’ve only got a little bit of compassion. And you’ve heard, I mean, it was really a buzz phrase a year or so ago about compassion fatigue.
I don’t think you could ever have compassion fatigue if you’ve got true compassion. I think you can get burnt out if you really haven’t understood these things well. But if you’ve got true compassion, it is unlimited. This is what Lama Zopa has. This is why he is able to exist on less than one hour of sleep at night.
Oh, it’s about fifty or so now. And he’s been like this for years and years and years and years. Amazing. So, we need to have this understanding, this recognition, this belief, this feeling that compassion is unlimited. You know?
And so when we actually start to feel like, uh-oh, I don’t have any left. I’ve just about, you know, given it all. Then what you can do is you can do like the white light meditation, you know? The source of inspiration that we did yesterday. Imagine the Buddha or Christ or someone that represents, you know, these qualities of love and kindness and compassion and, you know, innate goodness and healing ability.
And we can imagine that they’re going and filling us up again. So if we do feel that the tank’s running dry, we just switch our meditation. Okay? We get filled up so that we can give out again. And it becomes, after a while, you start to realize that, and you start to be open enough to know that the compassion you have is unlimited.
But again, you know, it’s because it’s that soft spot that we kind of think, uh-uh, look, I can’t give it all away. You know, I’ve got to leave some for myself. But you will always have enough for yourself if you have a real open heart. Any questions on that? Well, I think we should try it.
Agree? Alright. So Well, I’m gonna do my variation. So just finding a comfortable meditation position, we shall discuss. Has anyone got anything to discuss?
Oh, we’ve got two questions straight away. Oh, good, okay. Joy would like some more explanation about collective conscious or collective karma. Anyone, any ideas? Got an yes, dear.
Mhmm. Can everyone hear? Can everyone hear? Just like dollar here. Okay.
That is working. Does this work? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
The Jewish race is a good example of that because not that I know anything about the Bible, but apparently it was the Jewish people that crucified Christ. Is that right? Well, anyway, they they obviously did something that was really negative back, back, back and the atrocities that happened to them in the war could be seen as their karmic debt. You could say a similar thing with what’s happening in Tibet now, that some time in the past, as a race, they did something negative and possibly was not expanding their spiritualism and keeping it cloistered. And so now they’re paying their debt, or they have been since fifty four.
Did everyone hear all that? I don’t know. Carol was basically saying that as a group of people or as a race, for example, the Jewish race were supposed to have crucified Christ, and therefore what happened with them in the Holocaust was attributed to that kind of karma that was committed all those centuries before. I don’t know. I really don’t know.
I don’t have the wisdom to be able to see one hundred percent what has been the cause for something like the Holocaust or even what’s been happening in Bosnia or Rwanda. We really don’t know. I do know, however, that from a calmer perspective, that You can see that, for example, a group of people, a group of thugs, for example, that go out on a rampage, obviously they’re creating some group karma because they’re involved with doing something there. But I don’t know how you could say that a small proportion of Jewish people that were involved with the crucifixion of Christ could have caused the incredible mass. There was something on TV a couple of months ago on SBS, and I just can see those pictures now.
I had never realized the extent. Anyway, I just don’t know how a small group of people, because it would have been a much smaller group of people, could have created the cause for such a larger group of people to experience that type of suffering? Can’t see that. I don’t know the answer. I know the answer.
But I mean, I can see on a limited level, as I say, with this group of thugs going out together and with the same kind of motivation and the same level of violence, that they would obviously be creating some group karma that they would experience at a later time. I mean, these are all kinds of different questions, aren’t they? Like a plane that crashes and kills all the people on board. Now, those people would be coming from all different parts, supposedly. What is the group karma there?
But there’s obviously some group karma for them to be involved in that plane crash. I don’t know. I really don’t know. And I think sometimes it don’t know how useful it is to actually really identify the cause. In a lot of the healing courses we’ve had and we’ve talked about karma, people have been really at pains to try and identify, now why is it that I’ve got cancer?
What is the action that I have created in the past that’s causing me to experience cancer now? And quite honestly, I mean I don’t know. Some wiser beings in me may have some idea about that. Oh, the cat wants to come in. Maybe the cat’s gonna tell us.
Oh, it’s coming right up now here. Do you want the microphone, Mr. Puss? Isn’t it amazing? Now, what did that being do to deserve to be reborn a cat?
But to have the karma to be here, where people are nice to. Yeah, look, I can’t really identify personally. I’m not that kind of wise. There are some people that can see because, as I say, an awakened being I was describing yesterday, how they have the ability to know people very well or to know beings very well and know their karma. But I get to a point that I think, well, is it really worthwhile, is it really so useful to get caught up with trying to identify what the cause is?
Like was the action, like the cause in terms of the cause or action that was created that’s having this result. And that’s what I say to people who are ill, for example, because they can get really worried about what have I done in the past? Oh gosh. But it’s not so useful because that’s happened in the past. It doesn’t really matter.
It’s almost irrelevant what was done, providing, of course, you have the recognition that you try and be aware of your actions now and in the future, and that you modify your behaviour accordingly. I’m not answering your question because I really can’t say hundred percent how this kind of group karma works, apart from this sort of small example of a group of thugs with the same level of motivation. But then their experience of the result may not be this life, may be in future lives, and then dependent upon the other kind of actions that they’ve created, both positive and negative, the result would be differing for each one of those. Say if there were a group of thugs that went around with the same kind of motivation, really harming other people in the same level of violence, etc. And that karmic imprint was placed on their mind stream.
But other conditions didn’t sort of eventuate for that karma to be ripened until the next life. And later in the present life, those thugs, some of them became quite good people and did very good acts and things like that. Then even if that karma wasn’t purified, then say the next life where the conditions are to ripen that negative karma. Because there were some people that had done good actions, then the ripening of that negative karma may not have been as bad for some than others. They might be in a group situation where they’re all on a plane and the plane goes down, but some of them might be killed, some of them might be injured, and others might survive without anything happening.
Do you know what I mean? Yes. I think in Hinduism there’s a lot of talk about universal mind. I’m not so familiar with Hinduism. To my detriment, I’m not fully aware of the other philosophical beliefs in the world, philosophical systems.
But I think they often talk about a universal consciousness. I think from a Buddhist perspective, we talk about the essence being the same, like the essence of my mind is the essence, same as the essence of your mind. As I just briefly touched on yesterday, and I don’t really want to get into too much detail about it again today, in the sense that it’s empty of this inherent existence. It’s all the same in that it lacks existence from its own side and it’s very much projection from our side. Also, in terms of our potential and in terms of the clarity of our minds, we’re all the same in that.
Remember Lama gave this analogy of like, you’ve got the ocean, right? And there are all kinds of different sources of water that end up depositing into an ocean. You’ve got the rain coming down, you’ve got the water from rivers, he said water from lakes, but I couldn’t work out how the water from the lake got into the ocean. But nevertheless, okay, subterranean. Something like that.
But you know how you’ve got different sources of water going into the ocean, yet they all make up the ocean. But that drop of water from the river or that drop of water of rain is still Do you know what I mean? It’s still a drop of water that was rain, but it’s become part of the ocean. So I guess what we’re saying is that we all have individual minds, but there’s not like a universal mind that we are I think we’ve got to be careful how we describe universal mind. If we describe universal mind as some kind of thing that we’re out there tapping into, and maybe that’s not correct.
But if we’re talking about universal mind as a collection, as a group of the essential nature of our individual minds, Maybe. It is pretty tricky. See, I think from a Buddhist perspective, we talk about what we call the dharmakaya, which is like the ultimate state of mind, which is this lack of inherent existence, this lack of existence from its own side. That’s when we say, we’re all the same, we’ve all got the same mind, when you’re talking about the dharmakaya. I’m not skilled enough in this area, I’m afraid.
I don’t know about this universal mind. When we talk about universal mind, here again, we’re talking about something existing from its own side. From a Buddhist perspective, there is nothing that exists from its own side. Everything is completely interdependent and labelled upon that interdependence. Actually, even in Buddhism, are many different schools of philosophical thought about this issue.
So they have different schools of tenets. Some schools say that it’s mind only, other schools say that mind doesn’t inherently exist either. As I say, I don’t really want to get into that whole area because I’m not skilled enough. I don’t have any really personal great experience about this stuff. I’ve heard of many teachings, but I find it still a little bit beyond me.
I don’t know. There’s lots of books around that talk about this kind of area. But again, I think we have to be careful what we mean with our labels, our definitions. Yeah. I don’t know.
Would you like to speak? Would you like to speak, mister Puss? You alright? I don’t know. I don’t think he’s got the answer either.
So he or she, I don’t notice. Normally, the ginger ones are boys, aren’t they? Yes.