Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 16-minute teaching, Venerable Lobsang Namgyel guides practitioners through the foundational reasoning of tonglen meditation, a method for transforming the mind away from self-cherishing and toward genuine compassion. He walks through four key points: recognising that all beings equally want happiness and wish to avoid suffering; understanding the concrete advantages of valuing others—that wealth comes from generosity, health from avoiding harm; seeing the disadvantages of self-cherishing, which pulls us through negative karma like a cow with a ring in its nose; and strengthening conviction that cherishing others is the foundation of all good qualities and genuine happiness. The teaching concludes with visualisation and dedication of merit to all sentient beings. Suitable for practitioners with some familiarity with Buddhist teachings on compassion and bodhicitta.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 37 tong len meditation.mp3
UUID: f54026e5-5e98-4d7c-8c88-1d82acf5020b
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: VenNamgyel Thought Transformation (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 15.9 minutes
Words: ~719
So, thinking, we’ve been studying and contemplating and now meditating on particularly Tonglen, this method of how to transform the mind into the mind that wants to give happiness, wants to take away suffering. The motivation that we say we have, for our life, but how do we actualize it? And so we have this method that’s been taught from Śākyamūni Buddha’s time, and then was taken into Tibet and was actually kept secret because it was said to be so difficult. But now in this time, we need a method that is going to strongly counteract the delusions, particularly this delusion of being independent, separate, alone, not needing anybody else, being able to provide everything for yourself. So you open your heart up and you look at the situation of others, and you think about how they’re the same, not different from you.
The same in wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer, whether it’s an enemy, a friend, a person you don’t know, all the same. So just take a couple of minutes and think about that, how every sentient being, every living being wants happiness and doesn’t want suffering the same as me, the same as us. Then once you’ve equalized yourself with others, then the second point is that there are advantages to exchanging yourself with others. So you think about all the advantages you have right now, all the good things that you would like to have, and what causes them. So we know that having wealth comes from generosity.
This is cherishing others. We know that long life and good health comes from not harming others’ bodies. So take a few minutes. Think about any happiness or any advantage that you want in this life. Where does it come from?
Then the next point is the disadvantages of not exchanging. Where does all the suffering come from? Hurting others, trying to get what we want, but in the process harming or hurting. So all the problems and all the suffering comes from that mind of wanting to cherish itself, wanting to benefit itself, but now we understand that by following that mind we’re like a cow with a ring through our nose and we’re just being pulled along by negative karma and delusion. We see the disadvantage of harming others because we can investigate it in our own lives.
The result of negative karma is suffering suffering of body speech and mind and having difficult conditions around us And that brings us to the fourth point, the ability to exchange self with others. Others. Cherishing myself is the doorway to all downfalls, while cherishing others is the foundation of all good qualities. I seek your blessings to take as my essential practice the yoga of exchanging self for others. So now we think about the attitude of Bodhisattvas, cherishing others as their practice, and with that attitude, they continuously create positive karma and they become a source of happiness for themselves as well as for others, and every Buddha has attained enlightenment based on the practice of bodhicitta cherishing others and abandoning self-cherishing and even the worldly pleasures that human beings want come from benefiting others, from cherishing others.
So now you strengthen your determination to exchange the view of cherishing yourself for that of cherishing others, and you think I must do this. This is what makes my life worthwhile to cherish others rather than cherishing myself, and automatically from cherishing others, there’s going to be so much happiness, so much benefit, and I’m not creating the cause of further suffering. Now we just spend a few minutes thinking there are so many advantages to cherishing others, so many disadvantages cherishing myself. So from now on I’m going to practice cherishing others as much as I can. Then you can visualize yourself surrounded by sentient beings as far as the eye can see sitting peacefully, quietly, just like you, wanting happiness just like you.
And so you offer all the benefit from this morning, from the teachings and the meditation you offer to all sentient beings. May they have all the causes of happiness and none of the causes of suffering, and may this happen right now. And then we can use the specific dedication by Śāntideva on page two forty six.