Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 68-minute teaching, Venerable Lobsang Namgyel guides practitioners through the advanced Tibetan Buddhist practice of tonglen, the deliberate exchange of self with others. Building on four preparatory insights—equalizing self and others, recognizing the benefits of cherishing others, acknowledging the harms of self-cherishing, and cultivating confidence that this is possible—he walks through the tonglen method in detail. The core practice involves visualizing a mirror image of yourself or others filled with suffering as black smoke around a white Buddha potential at the heart. Through visualization, you breathe in that suffering, causing an explosion that destroys all negativity and delusion, then breathe out healing white light and compassion. Namgyel offers both a formal, seated meditation version and a quick street-level approach for daily use. He illustrates with personal examples, including a scientist at a retreat whose suffering lifted through his silent tonglen practice. He addresses common obstacles—holding onto suffering rather than releasing it, difficulty working with people you dislike, the mental strength required—and provides practical scaffolding: start with your own suffering, progress to loved ones, eventually encompass those you find difficult. Throughout, he emphasizes motivation, proper visualization, and the paradox that this most counterintuitive practice—saying yes to suffering—is the fastest path to enlightenment and the capacity to benefit all beings. Aimed at practitioners willing to engage with thought transformation techniques.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 39 tong len teaching cont_.mp3
UUID: c56529f1-b408-4fc5-8a2e-626cb648580e
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: VenNamgyel Thought Transformation (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 68.3 minutes
Words: ~9,989
That I want to change this habit, I want to do things in a different way, but we need something radical in order to change the situation. So then, we’ve talked about equalising self with others. Others want happiness, don’t want suffering, the same as me. The second point was advantages of exchanging self with others, that there are so many benefits because when I take care of others, I cherish others, many benefits come back to me, so there is an advantage. Then the third one was the disadvantages of not exchanging, that if I don’t do this, if I’m self-cherishing, then there are so many disadvantages, so many harms, and those I experience in my daily life.
And then the fourth is that now am I able to exchange myself with others? Have you got to that point? Because you’re thinking, well, this is the bodhisattva’s path, this is what bodhisattvas have done, this is what makes me become a Buddha. You know, what what is the path that takes me to enlightenment, to Buddhahood? This is the the path.
This is the way that we’re going to do it. So we need to have a very strong feeling, I am able to do this, I can. Then the fifth one is taking and giving. So this is called Tonglen in Tibetan, Tonglen, T O N G L E N. I like to spell it because once somebody said to me, I really like that Tonglen practice.
See how we westernize everything? Tonglen. I said, It’s not Tonglen, it’s Tonglen. So, that Tonglen practice. And it’s called giving and taking.
But first, you need to take. This is the trick in everything, is that they say it the wrong way around, so that if you don’t get teachings on it, you don’t know what to do. So, you need to hear it in order to know what to do. So, first, you need to do what? You need to make some sort of space in the situation, isn’t it?
So, you need to take something away. And what are you taking away? And where is it going to? And then, what are you going to do with it? These are all the things that you need to know.
Okay? So in your own heart, in your own sort of chest area, you visualize that you have that Buddha potential, what I like to call the bodhicitta marshmallow. So that marshmallow, that soft, squishy center that we don’t experience very much, so that’s in there, and it’s white, and it has all the qualities that we would think of, that we would like to have. So think of all the qualities that you’d like to have if you’re a bodhisattva or a buddha. What do you associate with?
What do you think, Oh, I would have those qualities? So you’d have patience and kindness and compassion. Think of all that. So, we won’t say anything. Just ignore it.
Yep. She’s been working hard, haven’t you? In that hammock? No, I can’t. This is the dream for the next life, in the hammock.
Yeah? So, we’re talking about Tonglen, and we’re taking away something, and where is it going to? And what are you taking away? So you have this marshmallow soft center, the white Buddha potential, and inside there is all these really nice qualities, the potential of becoming enlightened. But from beginningless time, we’ve had self-cherishing, and so it’s surrounded by, all the negativities, all the negative actions that we’ve done from beginningless time, and all the delusions.
Okay? So we have to remove everything. You don’t want to leave anything behind. You want to remove the negative karma, and you want to remove the delusions. What created the negative karma and the delusions?
Okay? So now, remember point one, two, and three. What created the delusions is you have karma, the delusions arise. Even if you have no karma and then delusion arises, again, you have karma. Right?
So you want to remove negative karma and delusions. You don’t want one and not the other, and you don’t want that one and this one. Let’s just remove everything. So you think, I want to remove all negative karma, all delusions. Where did they come from?
I’ve harmed sentient beings from beginningless time. Right? So, from beginningless time, no matter which rebirth, no matter what sort of karmic appearance, what sort of form I appeared as, no matter what that was, I still did negative actions in order to survive, in order to, live, in order to be happy, depending on the realm that we were living in. So then, that means you’ve got countless negative actions, countless delusions that are in the form now of black smoke around that that marshmallow. So you could have a chocolate covered marshmallow.
Now I’m getting you getting your attention. Right? So you’ve got this dark mass around this marshmallow, this white center. Yeah? And that represents all the karma and delusion that you want to remove.
Probably the easiest way to start this meditation is with yourself, rather than with somebody else. So then you can visualize a mirror image of yourself. Okay? Right in front of you, you’ve got this mirror image, and then you’re visualizing that mirror image, yourself, with all that person’s past suffering, present suffering, projected future suffering, if we don’t remove the karma and delusions. Yeah?
And again, that’s in the form of that black smoke in the heart area. In the middle is the Buddha potential, and it’s really important to remember that Buddha potential, that what’s obscured is the Buddha potential. And so now what you’re going to do is the opposite of what you would normally do. You’re going to say, give me your suffering. Up until now, who would have said, give me your suffering?
I want more suffering. Right? I said at the beginning, who would say, give me more suffering? Now you say, give it to me. I’m a bodhisattva.
Give it to me. I want it. Right? Because you know it’s the cause to remove your suffering. This is why you need the logic behind it that you need to understand why you’re doing it.
It’s not to increase the suffering. It’s not that you’re going to compound the suffering and make even more suffering. Right? You want to actually remove all your suffering. Where did your suffering come from?
You harmed others. So now, instead of saying, give me the happiness, give me everything I want, you say, I understand where the suffering came from, and now I need to take suffering from others. The others that I’ve harmed in the past, sentient beings that I’ve done harm to, I need to take all their suffering, and I need to breathe it into my own suffering. So each time you take a breath, you’re going to breathe that black smoke that you see in the person’s heart in front of you. You breathe that down into your own self-cherishing negative karma and delusion.
And each time you breathe it in, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And there’s a storm, you know, thunder, lightning, so you can make it as as wild as you want. Each time you breathe in, bigger. Each time you breathe in, bigger, more thunder, more lightning. And what you can see in the person in front of you is their karma and delusion, their suffering, and their causes of suffering getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
Okay? Is it clear up to now? The smoke’s not getting in your eyes, is it? Smoke in the eyes. Yeah.
Yeah. We don’t need another consort. We’ve had one consort. We’re all exhausted from the first consort. So, you keep breathing it in and breathing it in.
This is a little bit different from the traditional Tibetan method, because the traditional Tibetan method is simultaneously, you’re breathing in black, and then you’ve got white going out, and it sort of goes in a circle. And for us, it’s quite difficult. You know, you need to have a good level of concentration to be able to do that. So for me, what happens, I’ve got black going in, white going out, and then I get really confused, and I got black and white, and then I think gray, and then the smoke becomes really confusing, and I don’t know what I’m doing. So, I think this other method really works in the fact that you just keep breathing in black, breathing in black, breathing in black, until it’s all gone.
Okay? So you should get to the point where you feel you’ve taken all the suffering away from the person in front of you. It’s all contained within you now, which is a really big cloud, black cloud, with thunder and lightning going on. And on that last breath, when you took the last amount of suffering and delusion, there’s an explosion. Okay?
So all that karma and delusion, all those negativities explodes, and all you’re left with is your Buddha potential, the marshmallow. Everything else is gone. So you start off with yourself, all this suffering, causes of suffering, black smoke around your Buddha potential. You visualize the other person, and in this case, we’re saying it’s ourselves, but then you you can start taking your mother or your father, brother, sister, friend, and gradually, you start encompassing more and more. And eventually, you work up to the person who doesn’t like you, who criticizes you, who judges you.
You know? Then you take all the suffering away from that person. That’s the most difficult. But in the beginning, you start with the people that you you like. You want to take their suffering away.
Okay? Gradually work up to the person you don’t like. That’s the most important person to work on. But at the moment, you start with yourself. All this suffering, all this suffering, breathe it in, breathe it in, breathe it in.
And it could take five, ten, fifteen, twenty, half an hour, doesn’t matter, but you just keep breathing it in. There’s an explosion, it all goes, and all you’re left with is your Buddha potential, your qualities, and all that’s left in the person in front of you is the same. Now there’s the space. And then from your heart, white light goes from your heart to their heart and offers them qualities. That’s why it’s important to think of the qualities that are contained within your heart.
Because now you’re offering all of that to them. So you can think about the six perfections, you know, generosity, ethics, patience, but also think kindness, love, compassion. Love is wanting others to be happy. Compassion is not wanting others to suffer, wanting to take their suffering. So Tonglen is love and compassion.
It’s taking the suffering and giving the happiness. So you’d be offering love, compassion. So whatever qualities you really connect with, all that’s being offered in the form of light. And then that goes to the person in front of you, goes to their heart, and then they fill up with light. So from their heart area, the light starts to spread out in every direction, and their whole body transforms into light.
So particularly if they have any sickness, mental sickness, emotional sickness, physical sickness, then you imagine that light transforming everything into the nature of light. So their body becomes in the nature of light. And then once they’re full of light, it’s virtually like every bone, every organ, everything is transformed into light. Then from their heart back to you, that same light comes back and offers you all those qualities, and then you fill up with that same light, accepting the qualities that you want to accept, and then your body also becomes full of light. So you actualize your potential.
Who’s it clear? Who’s not clear? Janelle. Yes. Tom and Len.
Oh, you want to do it, in a quick way? Quick way. Okay. So then the other method, this is on the cushion practicing. Because if you don’t practice on the cushion, it’s even more difficult to do it in a quick way.
Right? So you need to practice on the cushion. And you need to have the logic behind why you’re doing it. Because otherwise you just think, well, this is crazy. I’ve got enough suffering as it is.
I don’t need to breathe in any more suffering, thank you very much. So you need all the previous way of thinking in order to persuade your mind into, This is the thing to do, so that there’s not too much resistance. There’ll still be resistance, but not too much. So now, when your heart has opened up to more suffering situations, you start to see more suffering. You’re walking down the street, maybe in Mount Albert.
Is it? Mount Albert? Yeah. So maybe you’re walking down the street in Mount Albert, and you see a lady with her children, you know, and the children are being pesky, difficult. I want an ice cream, and I want chocolate, and You know how they go on.
And the mother says, You’ve already had and you’re not getting any more. They’re pulling in every direction, so they’re getting really frazzled and she’s getting really frazzled. Usually we would think, Oh, poor mother, or poor children. But now we think, Poor situation. We see the suffering in the whole situation, because the children are suffering, and the mother’s suffering.
They’re all suffering, aren’t they? And so from the three of them, say it’s a mother and two children, from the three of them, you breathe it in, you breathe it down into your self-cherishing mind, and you remember those old tripods that they used to have for the photographers? And they used to have magnesium on the top, and then they’d light it and it would go whoosh, and that was the flash photography. So now, you breathe in one breath of suffering, and there’s that flash, whoosh, all your negativities, all your suffering’s gone, and instantly, out from your heart goes happiness, and all the healing qualities, and you offer it to the people in front. So it’s just one breath in and then healing qualities out.
You can either breathe in the light sorry, breathe in the the darkness, the black, and then breathe out the light, or you offer the light from the heart. Personally, I like the feeling of offering from the heart, but it’s up to you whether you want to do it from the breath, completely from the breath, or you want to do it breathing in the negativities, and then from the heart, offering the positive qualities. But you can do it in a very quick way like that. So you just see somebody who’s suffering, you know, and then you just breathe in and then give back happiness. There was a a girl at Kopam during the Medsan Buddha retreat, and I could see that she was really struggling with the meditations and some of the concepts of the retreat.
And it’s a lot of recitation during the Medicine Buddha retreat. So you’re alone, you’re sitting there in silence and going on and on and on and on. I could see she was really having a hard time with this. It looked like she had a really bad headache. So I thought, well, the only thing I can do is Tonglen because there’s nothing else I can do.
I can’t stop the retreat and go and say, are you alright? You know, is there anything I can do for you? Do you need a pat on the shoulder? There’s nothing I can do. And so I thought, well, I’ll just breathe in the suffering and give happiness.
And she’s a scientist, which is why she was having so much problem with the whole thing. Is it scientific to keep repeating these names over and over, you know? So at lunchtime, she came up to me and she said, I was having terrible problems in that session. And I said, Yes, I know. And she said, You did something.
I didn’t tell her I did anything, and I didn’t show her I did anything, but she said, you did something. And I said, oh, no, no. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. And she said, no.
I want to know what you did. And I said, Well, it’s this method called Tonglen. And I explained it to her, and she said, I definitely felt the problem going out of me. I felt a complete change, and I became very happy. And so at the end of the retreat, she became Buddhist.
What a responsibility. Not on me. Yeah? So now she’s moved to Singapore. She was working in Kathmandu and she’s working on cancer treatments because she wanted to work in a branch of science that wouldn’t be harmful to other sentient beings because often in laboratories they use animals and she wanted to do ethical research.
And she found a job in Singapore where she can do ethical research. And so the effect on her was one of, well, maybe it’s not scientific, but I experienced it. And so I think Tonglen is the experience where you see the suffering and you think, Well, what can I do? And we often have this feeling, What can I do? You know?
I’ve got limited resources. I can’t say much. I can’t do much. We often put ourselves in that category, you know? Can’t say much, can’t do much.
But actually, you can breathe in the suffering and give back your happiness. And say it doesn’t do anything for the person that you’re doing it towards, the person in front of you who’s suffering. Say it doesn’t help them. But it does do something for you because it’s training you to give love and to give compassion. So this is the training that you can do throughout the day rather than you sit on the cushion, you say, I must work with bodhicitta, I must live with bodhicitta, and then you go out and you forget for the rest of the day.
Tonglen is something that you can incorporate in your day. It’s something that you can be doing all day. Wherever you see suffering, give it to me. Because this trains your mind into bodhicitta, into being the bodhisattva. Wherever you see suffering, let me do it.
Let me handle it. Not saying, Well, is there somebody else who can help? No. You know? There must be somebody else somewhere, not me, isn’t it?
Who can help? You know? But instead of that, you say, I can. There’s something I can do. Because now you’re developing your courage and your strength to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
And it starts with that thought, I want to be able to do that. It’s just a thought. It’s just an aspiration that you want to start. And you start doing it with your mind, and gradually, you’re able to do it more and more for beings that you see who need your help. Gary?
Protection. Angela? Oh, she’s great. She’s always got a good answer. Protection four?
And and start giving it. Well, that’s what we’ve done from beginningless time. We’ve protected ourselves from beginningless time, and look where we’ve ended up. We’re definitely not Buddhas. We’re definitely not enlightened.
Right? So that’s why you have to go back through the other things. Is there an advantage? Is there a disadvantage? In actual fact, it says there’s no disadvantage.
Even if sentient beings cut off your arms, cut off your legs, gouged out your eyes, could you stay really peaceful and calm, you know, and thinking, Take it. I give it all to you. You know? If you’re a bodhisattva, you could. Right?
You could have that attitude. Nothing’s going to disturb me. But look at us. So easily disturbed. Isn’t it?
Just the weather changes, we’re disturbed. Now, I’ve got to put these clothes on or take these clothes off and open the windows or close the windows or buy an air conditioner, it’s getting too much. So, you know, just the weather for us, or the train doesn’t turn up when we want the train to turn up because we’ve got an appointment, that can send us crazy. Or you’re in a traffic jam, they seem very popular in Auckland, So you’re in a traffic jam, and you can’t get to where you need to be in order to pick up the kids from school, or in order to have a business meeting, or to get to work on time, and you know the boss is gonna be standing there going, You’re late again. And you know you’ve tried your best, but you just didn’t leave quite early enough.
You know? So you’re a bit defensive about it. And that’s the defensiveness, isn’t it? That we feel that we’ve done something wrong but we’re trying to defend it. And from beginningless time we’ve done things wrong.
That’s why we’re suffering as human beings. We have all these suffering situations because we have harmed others. Absolutely, you know, we can find that in our mental continuum. And so, in order to change that whole situation, now you just willingly, in your mind mentally, you take it on. Right?
So it develops a mental strength. And that’s why I say, if you’re frightened, you know, if you sort of, you need to strap yourself in. Wasn’t there an old movie that said, strap yourself in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride? Right? So Tonglen is the bumpy ride.
You better strap yourself in because it really is going to be a bumpy ride. For the first time in your life, life is going to get bumpy because you want it to be. You You’re going to say, Give it to me. Is that all? Give me more.
Give me more. Come on. Give me more. You know? And in the past you’ve been saying, Don’t give it to me.
Give it to her. Give it to him. Give it to anybody else, but don’t give it to me. Completely different. That’s why it’s frightening.
That’s why you have to strap yourself in. Right? So, in the beginning, just start with yourself. Experiment with yourself. Right?
Because even that will feel a bit frightening, but it’s not too frightening because it’s just you. I’m helping myself. We’ve done that from beginningless time, so we can do this. Take in my suffering, my problems. I’ll help myself.
Once you see that actually this has a good feeling about it, instead of rejecting the suffering, I’m taking it. Instead of holding on to the happiness, I’m giving it. So, by giving happiness, what do you get back? You’ll be like Hui. Isn’t it?
Well, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But there are no other happy examples. You’re the only one. Right?
So, you can see from Hui being happy in the past, giving happiness in the past, how does he end up like this? People said, I love to massage my tummy is too big now. Too many guests inside. More information than we needed. I feel sorry for those sitting behind.
Maybe you’re just like the laughing Buddha. You know, he’s also got a big stomach, isn’t he? Too much gas inside. I don’t think there’s too much gas. Laughing gas.
Yeah, laughing gas. Laughing gas. It’s a great quality, isn’t it? Wanting to make others happy. Yeah, yeah.
When you laugh, others laugh with you. Whereas, when you cry, you cry alone, isn’t it? When you think of that happiness and that joy that you can offer to others, others experience it. And then what do you get back? Much more love, joy, happiness, coming from many others, rather than you trying to grab it for yourself.
There’s a huge difference between you trying to make yourself happy, and you’re giving happiness to many people, beings, many others, and then you’re getting so much happiness back. It feels so much better when you get it back from others than you’re trying to grab it for yourself. So, yes, I think it is a difficult practice, but I think it’s doable. I think you for sure, can do it. And especially if you start with yourself and you start experimenting with it, how does it feel?
Doesn’t it feel good to be able to do this type gradually it will encourage you to start wanting to sit on the cushion, take the suffering of others, and during Medicine Buddha retreats, we do this sort of practice. We recite mantras and things like that. We’ve had incredible changes happening to people. We’ve had people with cancer where cancer has disappeared. We’ve had MS gone.
One lady with MS, she did the retreat for two weeks, MS was gone. So, you know, it’s not that these things don’t work. For sure, it does change the karma of the situation. Where does the sickness come from? You’ve harmed others.
In order to change your sickness, you need to give to others, you know, to give something different than what you would have given before. This is the way to do it. People get colds, especially in this weather. Yeah. So changeable.
But it could also be that, you know, when you’re taking care of somebody, there’s a lot of stress involved, isn’t there? So when you get when you’re stressed, we get colds and flus because the immune system goes down. It could also be as a result of doing Tonglen. You could have taken on some suffering from her, Therefore, it could have caused some suffering in you, but you’re still here. Yeah, but that’s not the point, though, is it, for you to manifest that illness?
But you can. You can. I mean, there’s no guarantee that you won’t. Say you do get sick from it, say you think, give me the sickness, give me the suffering. So you don’t get the cancer, you don’t get the AIDS, but you get some headache, or you get some cold or flu, which would you rather have?
That person getting a bit better, and you get a mild sickness, purifying your self-cherishing karma, or would you rather say perfectly well, Tonglen doesn’t do anything for them, and the situation stays as it is? We would probably choose, don’t give me any sickness, let’s leave everything as it is, because I’m a little bit afraid of getting sick. Well sometimes sicknesses arise as a protection. Maybe the situation was beyond you. Therefore sometimes we get sick because then enables us to not do something.
Every situation is quite complicated, but I think that you have to do the level of practice that you feel comfortable to do. The the beginner’s level is just you. Just you. You have suffering. You know?
For sure, you have suffering. And you you can see what your suffering is within you. You know because you’re with yourself. Right? So you just start there, and you just think, okay.
Let’s just start with my suffering. The past suffering I know I’ve had, the present suffering I know I’ve got, and the future suffering that I’m projecting. Getting older, you know, the problems in the body, the problems with the mind. These sort of things don’t want any of that. And so just take it in, breathe it in, explode it, and then give out the happiness.
And just try that and see if it feels comfortable. But, you know, sometimes, we don’t fully understand the method, and we can do it in the wrong way. It’s really important to know what the method is doing so that we remove all that karma and delusion. It’s possible that you can if you don’t do Tonglen in the right way, you could just be breathing in all the suffering, and you don’t actually destroy it. Just give it, give it, give it.
You know? So be very careful that you blow it up. What happens if you don’t blow it up? Some people breathe it all in, and they can’t blow it up because we hold on to suffering. You know?
This is something very popular these days, that I like to suffer in some way. Give give me the suffering, and I’ll hold on to it. So, I’m happy to take it from somebody else, but now I’m going to hold onto it. You don’t want to do that either. So, I say, okay, now you need help.
So, who do you call upon? Speedy Gonzales. Speedy Gonzales. You know you know Speedy Gonzales? I don’t know why you’re laughing, Hui.
This is a serious matter. So you’ve got this little Mexican monk, Mexican monk. Mexican mouse, with possibilities of becoming a monk, with a big sombrero, right? And ariba, ariba, right? And coming in, in here, you need something small, with some dynamite.
And, you know, putting the dynamite in all that suffering, and then, you know, you’ve got the cable, and over there you’ve got the plunger thing and connecting, and lifting it up, and then pushing it down, and boom, you know? That’s That’s That’s high rates. Yeah. Just blow it up. You know?
So, if you can’t get rid of it, you’ve got to find And I find these sort of cartoon characters, we can easily visualize, because we grew up with cartoons, you know? Roadrunner, you know? Roadrunner and what’s the coyote, isn’t it? They’re always blowing each other up. Isn’t it?
A coyote who’s always putting the TNT, you know, and sort of blowing up the mountain, but the mountain falls down on him as the roadrunner goes straight past. You know, like that. So you can get it in your mind very easily, that sort of picture. So you can imagine the coyote comes and puts all the dynamite and then blows it up for you. But it’s really important to keep a lightness about it, because, as I said, it’s quite a hard practice.
And so if you have a sense of humor about it and you keep a lightness about it, and then you can’t blow it up, but you bring in a cartoon character, some somebody to help you. Blow it up. Let it all go. You don’t want to hold on to it. Yeah?
I think psychologically, it’s not healthy to be holding on to these negativities. So that’s why it’s probably good to start practicing just with yourself. You know? Because you’ve got your own suffering. You’re only visualizing a mirror image of you with your suffering.
There’s no harm in that case. And then once you feel confident, you can try with your mother or your father or your brother or your sister. Don’t take on the too hard basket. You know, say there’s many baskets, we’ve got the too hard basket. The person that you really dislike and they really dislike you, and you think in the beginning, oh, I must try this one.
It’s too difficult. You know, far too difficult. So you have to start gradually, and you build up your spiritual strength till you get to the point where you can take on even the most difficult person. The one at work who’s always judging you, always criticizing you, or the person at home is always judging and criticizing you. You know, it could be your mother.
You know? Or on on on on. You can’t do this. You don’t do this well enough. You’re no good at this, and you’re no good at that.
Sometimes mothers can be like that. Sometimes partners can be like that. Brothers and sisters can be like that, and you blame them. You think, why are they like that? Why did I create the karma to experience this?
I’ve done this. I’ve been this type of partner. I’ve been this type of parent. You take responsibility, and you think, now I’m going to destroy this karma. I’m going to completely eradicate it mean, start out very small, because like I said, we’ve got this concept, I can only help one, two, three, four, up to a maximum of ten or fifteen.
But if you have great concern, you start to go out and out and out. I mean, you might have great concern for the people who died recently in Australia. You know? This is a disaster. Not just the people, but the animals.
Countless animals have died in those fires. And then also, after that fire, you’ve got so many koalas and kangaroos who’ve got no home. They’ve got nothing to eat. This is another suffering. And the koalas get their water from the leaves.
There are no leaves. So there is for them, there’s no water. You know? So, once you start to open up to the suffering of others, you see that actually your glass is much more than full, isn’t it? You go from, Oh, poor me, my glass is only this much full, just one centimeter full.
Once you start thinking about the suffering of others, your glass becomes fuller and fuller and fuller. And you start to rejoice more and more in all the goodness that’s in your life. And the the problematic things seem smaller and smaller. They seem less and less problematic. You realize that it’s just your mind which is expanding the problem, making the problems even even worse.
The problems aren’t as big as you thought. You And so you need some sort of balancing effect. And the balancing effect is Tonglen, is as you expand your experience of the world, the universe, then you start to see there’s more and more and more and more suffering, and they all need help. And who is going to help them? Who will help?
You know, we can sit in our comfortable homes thinking, well, I’m okay. Thank goodness. I’m okay. But what about them? So, you know, I watched this, short documentary the other day on water, and over a billion people in the world are drinking dirty water.
When you switch on your tap, do you think, I’m so fortunate, or we take it for granted? Do we leave the tap running when we’re brushing our teeth? You know, simple things like this that we just always assume clean water will be there. But it’s really good to think clean water is a privilege. Good food is a privilege when you think about all the people in the world and the suffering of them.
You know, I’ve lived in India a long, long time. And when I was first living in Delhi, I’d been in India about five years at that time, and Lama Zopa Rinpoche asked me to go to Delhi and run this dharma center, and it was a big center, and it was very busy, and I was alone, just me. So we had about fifteen, twenty guests constantly coming and going. They’d arrive at three o’clock in the morning, they’d leave the next day, people arrive three o’clock in the morning, go the next day. So I wasn’t sleeping properly because you hear people arriving, and then when you hear them arriving, you wonder can they get in?
And the ones leaving, you wonder can they get out? And if they got out, did they lock the gate? Because if they didn’t, you’re gonna get up in the morning and find the whole house has vanished. So always thinking, you know, like this. And then sometimes the phone rings at three o’clock in the morning and stuff was always happening.
And then you get really tired and then you have to teach. So then I’d go down into the Gompa and I’d teach meditation and stuff like that. Then if there’s nobody to cook, I’d cook and I’d get visas for the Lamas and I’d get passports for the Lamas. All this stuff was going on. And sometimes I think, poor me, you know?
Poor me with all this going on. I’m so busy. And I think time for a reality check. And I just walked two minutes down the road to the slum. We were in a very good area, but just two minutes down the road was the slum.
And there were these tiny rooms, about two meters by two meters, with about eight to ten people living in that room. And it’s summer, forty seven, forty eight degrees. The kids would be playing on the street. They had a water pump, and they’d be under the water pump playing with the water pump and, you know, carrying on. So I’d just look at that, and I think, my life’s nothing.
My suffering’s nothing in comparison to their suffering. You know? It really helps you to balance this, you know, monster that starts to grow in you that says, What about me? What about my suffering? And then once you get that state of mind, you keep adding to it and adding to it and adding to it.
All the difficulties reinforce, I’m having a really difficult time and they’re doing it to me. The world is doing it to me. And so being in India, very quickly you can rebalance. You get so extreme, you know, because there’d be, for instance, forty seven degrees, and I think, I have to have a shower. It’s so hot.
I must have a shower. And so you go to have a shower, turn on the cold water, and it’s boiling hot. Right? It’s like the water has been in a geyser and it’s boiling. So, very difficult to have a shower, so you have to run it for a while.
So, I put all the soap, get under the shower, the water would go off. So I’m full of soap, and the water goes off. And I’m alone, you see? I haven’t got anybody working, but there’s many people in the house, so you put a towel and go to the door and open the door a little and say, hello, hello. Nobody’s there.
They’ve all gone out. They’re all probably sitting in air conditioned places. So, then with the towel, you have to go into the back garden, and there’s a concrete cover over the water thing, take the concrete cover off, which is really heavy, look down to see if there’s any water, and the water’s really down because very little water. So how do you get the bucket into the water? And how do you get the bucket out?
Now you have to find a rope. So then you have to find a rope, you have to attach it to the bucket, then you have to get the bucket in and pull the bucket out, go back to the bathroom to rinse off the soap, you know, it’s like that. It’s constantly dealing with difficult stuff, you know. When the electricity goes off, the water goes off, everything goes off. You’ve got nothing for three days, four days.
The power station blew up when I was in Delhi. The power station, they were so overloaded with people wanting to use air conditioners, the whole thing just blew up. And so twenty four hours a day, we had no power for days and days and days. And then the rain comes and then within a day you’ve got a meter of water on the road. It completely switches, but now you’ve got forty seven degrees and one hundred percent humidity, you know, and a meter of water on the road.
And so then you’ve got boats going past, you know? You’ll see kids on boards, and, you know, very creative. Suddenly you’ve little boats going past, And you think, what about me? What about me? And you look out and you start to laugh.
Because you really, this is just funny, you know? It’s just the way it is. The funniest thing happened was the bus stopped on the corner near where I was, and I was looking out the window, and some people were getting out the bus, and right there the road dipped away, and so it looked like it was a good place for the bus to stop, but it was a meter deep. And these people stepped off the bus and went straight into the water, you know, sort of up here. Things like that would happen, you know.
And you think this is crazy. It’s like, it’s just crazy. So in in New Zealand, it’s everything’s more normal, isn’t it? Yeah? Not so extreme like this.
And so when you get this, what about me? What about me? You know? Poor me. It’s harder to balance it.
And so I think Tonglen is the way of balancing it. You read the newspaper, you look at the TV, you see the suffering going on in Africa, Somalia, wherever it is, and instead of disconnecting from it and saying, well, that’s nothing to do with me, That’s just somewhere else. You connect because that’s what bodhicitta is, isn’t it? It’s a connection. But we need to reach out from our side and connect.
They want help. But, you know, we’re always thinking, what can I do? I don’t have so much money. I can give my ten dollars a month or fifty dollars a month or whatever it is, but how much is that going to solve the problem? How much more would it solve the problem if you develop bodhicitta?
How much more would it solve the problem if you became enlightened? Countless emanations, countless places that you can go simultaneously to work for the benefit of sentient beings. So then, if you don’t understand that, you need to read up on the qualities of an enlightened being to get yourself excited about becoming that enlightened being. Because when you’re that enlightened being, you have no limitations. Whoever’s got the karma to be helped, you help.
And then the difficulty is, do you have the karma to be helped? Right? The Buddhas can’t help you if you don’t have the karma and the wish to be helped. So from our side, when we need inspiration, we pray, we say, Guru Buddha. This is, the guru indivisible from the deity.
You don’t see your guru as separate from the Buddha. You see the guru the same as the Buddha. And then you get the blessings of an enlightened being. If you see your guru as an ordinary person, and that’s the danger, You know? The danger of you having Geshe-la here.
Now I’ll tell you the danger. The danger of having a Geshe living in the house is you can see him go to the bathroom, and many think, oh, he goes to the bathroom. Then you see him going to bed. You know? I’m going to sleep now.
Oh, he sleeps. You see him eating. Oh, he eats. Well, he can’t be enlightened. He eats, sleeps, goes to the bathroom just like me.
Showers just like me. Goes for a walk just like me. So what’s the difference between him and me? None. So therefore, not an enlightened being.
And they say, this is a difficulty about seeing gurus on a daily basis. You can easily lose your respect. And then you start to think, same as me. When you look at his holiness, you hardly know him. And so you think, wow.
So high. You know? Because you don’t know him. Lammas of Rinpoche, you’re not around very much, so you think so high. So the visiting lamas, it’s easier to keep respect.
But the ones that you see on a daily basis, it’s more difficult. And so you really need to try to keep your respect because then you get the blessings of having, an enlightened being around. Whether they are or not an enlightened being, you get the blessings of that. And sometimes you need those blessings for your practice to continue. We all hit walls.
You know? The practice gets difficult. And then what do you do? That’s when you need to start calling upon your Guru, whether you’ve got connection with Geshe la here or Lama Zopa or His Holiness, whoever it is. You call upon them indivisible from the deity, whether they’re Tārā, Mañjuśrī, whatever you feel they are, and then you ask them for help, and you say, you know, I’ve hit a wall now.
I find Tonglen so difficult. I find bodhicitta difficult, and I need to get over this, you know, because I want to become a bodhisattva. It’s so beneficial for others. Just me taking care of myself, how beneficial is that? It’s what I’ve always done.
Up until now, it’s all been about me taking care of myself. I really want to be a benefit to others, and if I go back to this selfish me, me, me attitude, it’s not going to do others any good, and I’m going to possibly do harm to them. So what can I do? You know? That’s when you need to pray to your guru.
Please help me. And honestly, it does help. You know, we do hit walls, and there’s a great prayer that I like very much. I think it’s in this edition of the book, calling the guru from afar, isn’t it? It’s in this gold book.
It’s a really nice prayer. There’s a short one and a long one. And it’s really, really nice to just read it and, imagine the guru coming closer to you because that’s what they want to do. They want to be of help to you. They want to benefit you.
And then, just recently, I had a really nice song called Lama Care for Me, which is, it’s a very beautiful song sung by Monique Rhodes. And, when I listen to this, you feel very moved by the words of Lama care for me. That’s what they’re here for. What else are they here for? The Gurus and the Buddhas, what are they here for?
They’re only here for us. They only want to see you become enlightened. They only want to see you benefiting others. That’s the whole purpose of all of this. And you might think, well, it’s all here for somebody else, but it’s not here for me.
I don’t think I can be the one who becomes the bodhisattva. I can’t become the Buddha. Well, is the laziness of thinking you’re not good enough. You shouldn’t think you’re not good enough. You are good enough just by the fact of being a human being.
Right? There’s a a story about a fly which was looking for lunch. You know, we look for croissants. This fly was looking for lunch. And it’s flying around Boudha Stūpa, and it lands on a piece of cow shit floating around the stupa in the middle of monsoon.
There’s lots of water, and the water’s going around the stupa, and the fly’s sitting there, and it’s eating lunch. The fly’s not thinking I’m circumambulating a stupa. The fly is just automatically going around the stupa. As a result, that fly became a human and became enlightened. So it’s whole, you know, I think it was Lama Zopa who said, If it can happen to the fly, why not you?
This is the way you need to think. If it can be be a goat, a bird, any being can become enlightened. Why not me? And yet deep down inside, we often feel, I’m not good enough. I can’t do it.
This is laziness. You know? It’s putting the practice off. You need to have a firm conviction. I can.
Of course, I can. Because I have the basis, precious human rebirth. And then look at outside. Look at what’s going on. Is there any suffering out there?
Inconceivable amount of suffering. Manifest or unmanifest, the suffering. And should you be sitting back and taking it easy and thinking, oh, well, sentient beings must have always suffered, so let them suffer? Should you do that? Does that open your heart?
Does it develop your compassion? Of course not. You know, we have to find a way of connecting with that suffering that doesn’t destroy us. And if we don’t have a method, just seeing more and more and more suffering creates more and more suffering for us. And you think it’s causeless.
There’s no reason for it. It’s causeless. It’s terrible. I don’t want to know about it. But now there is a method.
You found Dharma, and there’s a method in there to destroy all your suffering and the suffering of others. Right? And this Bodhisattva path, these six perfections, are absolutely incredible and something that you can put into your life. Generosity is not so difficult. Generosity with bodhicitta is more difficult because you have to think about it.
You need to bring the motivation into it. Morality, not so difficult. No. I don’t kill. I don’t steal.
We all we say this. I don’t kill. I don’t steal. But do you do it with bodhicitta? Then it becomes the perfection.
Something so powerful, it will take you to enlightenment. Patience. Yeah, I’m patient. You know, Anita will say, I’m patient with Bodhi. You know?
Some of the time. Right? But if you do a bodhicitta, it becomes a cause to become a bodhisattva and a buddha. Then that child becomes the cause for you to become enlightened. Isn’t it?
The only difference is the motivation. The practice is the same. So we could be doing all these practices now, but wasting the opportunity. You know, I’m not taking the maximum profit. It’s like I’ve got a hundred dollars and I just put it under the bed.
Or I could put it in the bank and get a hundred percent interest. Which would you choose? You go to the bank, you get the interest. Right? That’s what Buddha taught in order for you to get maximum benefit out of everything you do.
Put it in the bank. Get some money from it. Why not? You know? We all need happiness.
We all don’t want to experience suffering. So how do I do it? That’s what people said to Śākyamūni Buddha. How do I do it? And you’re saying, yeah.
Right. How do you do it? Which is the quickest, best way for you to stop your suffering and become happy? He didn’t think what’s the way to make you suffer more and less happiness. He was thinking more happiness, less suffering.
Right? So how to do it? Which way? So he devised this whole system in order to remove your suffering and give you happiness. And then you don’t apply it because you think, I can’t become a bodhisattva.
I can’t become a buddha. They must be talking about somebody else. Maybe Venerable Gyaltsen can. You know, she can do it or Geshe la can do it, but not me. You know?
Isn’t it? We often think, no. Not me. But now you have to have this spiritual strength, you say, yes, me. I’m going to do it.
I will take this on as my responsibility. Even if I can liberate one other sentient being from their suffering, isn’t that incredible? Just one. At least your life has become worthwhile by benefiting one. Not yourself, one other.
But say two others, three others, five others, ten others. Isn’t your life much more worthwhile? Isn’t it worth living to be like that? Then this gives you inspiration by thinking, yes. I could do that.
It is possible. And you keep building on that thought every day. It is possible. I can do it. Instead of thinking it’s impossible, and I can’t.
We need that confidence. Not pride, but confidence. Yes, I’m gonna do it. When you say you disobeyed bodhicitta, do you need that? Well, the motivation is bodhicitta.
bodhicitta is, I want to become enlightened in order to remove the suffering of others, in order to help them to remove their suffering, and in order to help them to become enlightened. So it’s a big mind. The motivation becomes very big. What often happens with us is that we do good actions, but without thinking of the motivation, then the heart may not be as open as it could be, you know, in the way of just opening up to all sentient beings. So when you motivate for all sentient beings, the action also becomes that powerful in relation to all sentient beings.
So if you say, for all sentient beings, say say we put a number on it, just to make it easy, ten billion. What you get back is ten billion because you’ve motivated for ten billion. But if you just think, I’m going to help this one person, and you don’t think of anybody else, just one, I’m going to help Bodhi. You know? You get the, the good karma of one.
And so it’s very, very clever to start thinking about all sentient beings, Even if it’s just paying lip service to it, just saying it, you’ve got to start saying it in order to go more deeply into the feeling of it because it’s not our habit. You know? We keep thinking me, me, me, me. So now you change it over to, I’m gonna do it for you. I’m gonna do it for you.
And then back comes your mind, me, me, me. I’m gonna do it for you. So it takes time. I’m cooking in order to benefit all sentient beings. If you need these sort of motivations, you have to go to Venerable Gyalten.
You know, record some of her motivations. You know? I mean, that’s why I say to her every day, she says to me, you give the motivation. I say, no. No.
I like listening to you. I listen to myself talking all day. I like to listen to her because she gives great motivations for eating. Never mind cooking. Yeah, you have Look, don’t push it off.
She is amazing. She is incredible. From my own side. She’s an emanation of Tārā. No?
Tārā has manifested looking like an ordinary sentient being with karma and delusion. But the motivation she gives, I know they’re based on Rinpoche. Rinpoche’s would be longer. That’s your only fault. Rinpoche’s would go much, much longer.
You know? I’ve been there for, I think, sometimes an hour and a half, two hours. You’re waiting for the food. The food’s there. You’re waiting to eat.
You’re so hungry. You just want to eat. And it’s going on and on and on. You think, this food must be stone cold. Absolutely stone cold.
And know, I’ve been in India where it’s rice, dal, and vegetables. You don’t want cold rice, cold dal. You get to eat it, it’s still hot. There’s some sort of miraculous effect in there that the food is still hot after all that time of dedicating. But Rinpoche has the most incredible dedications, motivations.
And if you need some inspiration, do talk to Venerable Gyaltsen because she does have very nice inspiring motivations. And I’m sure she can think of good motivations for cooking, for cleaning. There’s Rinpoche’s list, isn’t it? Is it in this book? Do you mean, like, what to think when you switch on the light There’s a whole list of what to do when you think when you’re switching on the light switch, when you’re switching it off.
This is Rinpoche’s way. Every single action becomes the cause of enlightenment, instead of just being an ordinary action. So if you want it, it’s page two zero nine. So this gives you an indication of how you start to change ordinary actions into holy actions. Completely different way of thinking.
Switching on wisdom, switching off delusions, you know. Just simple. So try and bring this into your everyday life instead of thinking, in here is the dharma work, and when I go home, it’s the drama work. You know? We go from the dharma to the drama, isn’t it?
You want to take the dharma home and reduce the drama. So you need things like this. I think it’s beneficial. And then remember at the end of the day, dedicate. You’ve done so many good things, dedicate.
So it’s not lost. At the beginning of the day, motivate. I remember many, many years ago, Geshe Sonam Rinchen at the Tibetan Library saying, and it’s stuck in my brain, If you motivate with compassion at the beginning of the day, your whole day is touched by compassion. If you motivate with wisdom, your whole day is touched by wisdom. You don’t even need to remember it.
You don’t need to even think about it. Just that’s your motivation for the day. That’s not difficult for us to do. Just you start the day with a good motivation. Short meditation, good motivation, and throughout the day, as much as possible, try and keep doing your actions in accordance with that motivation.
And then at the end of the day, recognizing all the goodness that you’ve created, dedicate it. If you like, Śāntideva’s prayer, you can read that, or any of the other dedications, it doesn’t matter. Read a dedication. May all sentient beings become enlightened. May they not suffer.
You know? This is incredible. And then whatever negativities that you find, any mistakes that you’ve made, you don’t use it as a cause for beating yourself up. You use it as a cause to stimulate you into doing purification practice. Clean up.
You know? Clean up your act. Isn’t it? If you made a big mess in the kitchen, you wouldn’t just say, Oh, well, hopefully the dog cleans it up. You go in there and clean it up.
We’ve made messes in our mind, in our life. We need to clean up. We need to do practices that will clean up. Monday night, Venerable Gyalten, thirty five Buddhas. Seven o’clock.
It’s only two Mondays, right? So if you really want to do purification practice without initiation, anybody can do this practice. It’s just reciting thirty five Buddha names and doing a few prostrations. One or two, or maybe more, until you get carpet burn. But, yeah, I mean, the number of prostrations you do is up to you.
But you read the benefits of what you get from reciting each one of these names. This is the skillful way that the Buddha has given these practices in order that you can simply purify, easily purify. You know? Not depending on any great skill of visualizations and, you know, seeing Buddhas here, there, and everywhere, and flowers and lotuses and, you know, all that. Just reciting the names.
Not difficult practice. So it’s really helpful to hear it from somebody, how you do the practice, how you organize it. Venerable Gyalten will help you. So if you’re interested, come along on the next two nights. Is it the same practice that you’re doing on the two nights?
You’re just repeating it Monday and then the following Monday, or is there a difference? So this is great. It’s such a good practice. So rich. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So we’re going to have a break. Is that alright?