Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 40-minute talk, Ven Margaret McAndrew explores how Buddhas continuously guide us through emanations and good vibrations, then unpacks the Three Jewels of Refuge—Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—emphasizing how to verify a spiritual path by observing advanced practitioners’ qualities: peace, compassion, and distinctive radiance. She outlines three levels of Buddhist motivation—lower scope (ensuring favorable future rebirths), medium Hīnayāna scope (revulsion with cyclic existence and personal liberation), and great Mahāyāna scope (compassion for all beings and Buddhahood). A key insight: only Buddhas can remain in emptiness while continuously communicating and helping others; arhats must alternate between deep meditation and action. She emphasizes grounding all practice in the lower scope’s fundamental disciplines—refuge, understanding karma and suffering—which form the foundation for all higher realizations.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 DwP 1998 02 18.mp3
UUID: 3eb53968-eff0-4fe5-a71a-5ae88fa6debc
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-02-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.1 minutes
Words: ~5,311
Holy places and maintained as precious relics. So that that’s very interesting that actually Buddha’s relics are are existing right in the present day. And but that’s not so important. What is important is that actually the Buddhas are always guiding us even though Śākyamūni Buddha passed out of that body. The mind of the Buddha, the Dharmakāya, is capable of manifesting form bodies in whatever form is needed and Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha and all the other Buddhas are constantly engaging in sending out countless emanations in different ways.
Also, of course you might feel that you’re capable of sometimes receiving energy, inspiration, good vibrations from the Buddha’s perhaps without actually seeing their physical form body, you might feel that you get this good energy from them. That also definitely is happening. They’re sending out good energy to us all the time, but they’re also emanating in form bodies that we can see, that we can relate to. We don’t have the karma at the present to see Buddha in the form that he appeared in a rather special form. He didn’t look quite like an ordinary person.
He had certain he was much more radiant, very special looking, had certain signs on his body. At the time he appeared when the historical Buddha was in this world. But we, if we’re fortunate, might have the karma to receive an emanation of the Buddha helping us in various different ways without being able to really see that it’s the Buddha. And so we should keep this in mind and for this reason we pay particular respect to teachers, our spiritual guides, who are advanced spiritually and helping us on the path because we feel that if Buddha is going to help us, the most effective way is by manifesting in the form of these spiritual guides. And so we can think that our Lamas, our Gurus could very well be emanations of Buddha.
Buddha doesn’t only emanate as spiritual guides but also in many other forms. So actually anybody or any even animal or inanimate object that we see might possibly be some sort of emanation that’s been sent to us by Buddha. So Buddhas are always able to appear to do whatever is needed to do. They understand perfectly the sentient being’s mind, sentient being’s karma. They’re always able to do whatever they can do to help.
It just depends on the sentient being’s karma being ready, and at that moment the Buddha will perceive that and manifest in whatever form will help that being. So for instance, there might be beings who are not capable of being taught of hearing the teachings. It might be no use for Buddha to appear to these beings as a teacher. They might have resistance to that, but they might be capable of a generous thought and Buddha would be able to immediately appear to that person. At very moment they become capable of a generous thought, Buddha would be there in the form of some being such as a beggar or some person in need of help and giving them the opportunity to perform an act of generosity and through these kinds of means they’re gradually developing their minds, developing our minds little step by little step until we reach the point where we’re actually able to be responsive to the teachings.
So sometimes the question is asked, if you haven’t had a precious human rebirth before, how do you ever get one? And the answer is that the Buddhas are always helping us in all these ways. And if it wasn’t for the guidance of the Buddhas, of the spiritual friends, the teachers, then we would have never got to this point. We wouldn’t have even got to the point of being able to create enough good karma to to have a precious human rebirth. So it’s really all owing to them.
So there when we come to the Dharma, so we know that Buddha attained liberation, everlasting blissful peace for himself. He he did that only with the thought of being able to help all the suffering beings. And so he was doing with this, with the sort of being able to show the path to others. He attained this insight and was aware of how to show the path to others, And he gave teachings for many years. And in actual fact, he was able to present the path.
Although it’s a very difficult thing to present the path, he was able to present the the path in a way that’s very effective for our minds. And this is actually really very remarkable because there are actually many beings who have attained liberation for themselves or who have attained the cessation of suffering, the state of everlasting, blissful peace. There are beings known as Pratyekabuddha who actually attain enlightenment for themselves. It’s the it’s not the enlightenment of a Buddha, but it’s a higher state of realization than the than the liberation of the the Arhat who’s following what’s called the Hīnayāna path, the followers of Buddha who follow the Hīnayāna path. And these Pratyekabuddha can appear at different times.
They’re not dependent on the teachings of the Buddha in the world because like Buddha they find the path for themselves but they don’t teach it to others. In actual fact there have been many beings in different religious paths who seem to have achieved very very high states of transcendental experience but they often don’t seem to be very successful in being able to convey it to others. Although they seem to have achieved these transcendental mental states themselves, there often seems to be a real blockage between the ordinary world that the ordinary person is in and the subtle state of somebody who’s achieved these transcendental levels, it just seems to be almost impossible to to interpret back. So it’s very remarkable that the Buddha was able to do this in such a clear way and to make the teachings so clear philosophically and also practically. And so we can really rely on the Dharma teachings because they do have this quality of being something that’s very very clear that we can follow step by step and attain step by step the different stages that Buddha set up for us as being the stages that have to be achieved on the path to enlightenment.
And it’s all very clearly set out in scriptures exactly what’s attained at each stage, how to go about attaining it, what qualities each stage has. It’s very interesting also to study these topics and when you study things such as for instance the the paths and stages, sa lam. Is anybody here studying paths and stages? It it you get very inspired and almost think that you’re going to you you start to really feel very strongly when you study these things that you can actually achieve it yourself. But of course, it still takes a lot of work.
It’s not as easy as just reading a book, but it does give you so much inspiration to actually read because it’s all set up so clearly and everything that you need to know is is set out there. So then the next jewel of refuge so that’s the first jewel of refuge is the Buddha. The second jewel of refuge is the Dharma, and the Dharma is the real object of refuge. The real Dharma is actually the path to be followed, not the words, not the books, not the written pages or even the spoken words, but just the what has to be practiced. But we generally use the term Dharma to refer to the words in which Buddha explained it to us.
In actual fact, the Dharma always exists because the path always exists, but unless a Buddha points it out to us, we we can’t know it. And so for us, the Dharma came into existence when when Buddha pointed it out to us. And it’s the real object of refuge because it’s the Dharma and following the path which actually brings us the goals that we want to achieve. And I’ll be talking a little bit more about this because I’ll be talking about the three scopes pretty soon. So, also, we can trust Buddha’s wisdom and compassion.
Because he has equal compassion to all, we can be sure that Buddha didn’t just teach what was needed to guide certain beings, but it wasn’t a specialized or partisan type of teaching. But it’s meant to guide all, and so we can all find what we need in his teachings. We can be sure that when we commit ourselves to this path that we can actually follow it to the end. So it’s really very, very important that when we commit ourselves to a path, we should check it out very very carefully first. We should try to be very sure and confident that it’s effective, that it’s going to produce a result.
If we commit ourselves to a path and put a lot of energy into it, and then find out after years perhaps that it doesn’t bring the result, then that’s a real tragedy, it’s a real loss because we’ve wasted that much time. So we have to be really sure checking it out. We have to try to form a firm conclusion about the validity of that path. So we have to check whether Buddhism really brings its results. Now we might think that’s a little bit difficult.
We look around and we might believe we might have been told that certain teachers of the past have are believed to have been liberated. But how can we check on that if they’re no longer around? How can we check on their qualities? We might be told that a certain being even nowadays is believed to be liberated, but they don’t go around actually saying oh I’m a liberated being and in actual fact if they do, it would be very good reason for suspecting that they were not. So it’s it always seems to be a catch twenty two situation there.
But what we and if we’re ordinary people, then it’s very hard for us to judge these things because somebody might have certain qualities and appear to us to be liberated, but we might be mistaken. It’s very difficult for us to make this judgment. But we can observe that some people do have very special qualities and we should be looking for qualities of being peaceful, free of anger and aggression, compassionate, unfailingly compassionate, equally compassionate, not just partial compassionate to someone, not others, but having compassion for all beings. And there’s a sort of a vibration of advanced spiritual practice. There’s definitely something very special, sort of, how would you say, sort of radiance.
Quite a number, if you must have noticed this, particularly with the is the normally the resident lama here, and anybody who was at the airport today to greet him would have been struck by the fact that he does have this radiance about him and it’s something he knows with a number of other lamas. I think this might not be something that’s written in the scriptures, but I think it’s something that influences us more than perhaps a lot of other cultures. It’s just the fact that you can’t deny this this radiance, this vibration about these people. It’s just really there and it makes such an impact on you. But anyway, is important to be very very careful that when we when we follow a path, we should try to look at those who who have been practicing it for a long time, but also those who are considered to have made the most progress on the path.
You can’t just look at somebody who’s been practicing for a long time because there are no people, myself included, who’ve been practicing down for a number of years and we still get angry and irritable and cranky and have all sorts of faults and failings and we’re ignorant and all sorts of things. But of course, life after life you hope to improve. So not all you can say that you’re necessarily a good example, all you can say is that you’ve definitely improved a bit from what you were when you first started out. So definitely there’s some progress happening and does it lead to the end of the path? You just have to look at the qualities of those beings who are the spiritual guides leading practitioners and try to see if they if they shape up.
If they if they don’t shape up, really should be asking why. If you see somebody who claims to be a spiritual leader but they seem to be engaging in all sorts of wrong actions, you can really ask whether what they’re teaching at least you wouldn’t go to them for a teacher. It might be that they’re misusing a valid spiritual path, but you certainly wouldn’t go to them for a teaching. But unfortunately in this day and age and in all days and ages, there are people who who do do that and who who do take people in. So it’s something we it’s not just theoretical danger, it’s it’s a very real danger.
So the Sangha, the Ārya Sangha, the ones that have achieved the path of seeing, are the real jewel of refuge. And we we need their guidance because they’re also the ones who can guide us along the path. Having achieved these higher realizations, they can teach us, they can show us the way, they can give us meditation instruction and philosophical instruction and show us the path. So the essential thing in being shown the path is that the person who’s guiding you has gone further than you have. So somebody who’s further ahead than us can guide us up to the point that they’ve reached selves.
And if we haven’t yet reached the path of seeing, then any being who has reached the path of seeing is a valid guide for us. So Also, we have the in everyday life, we also pay respect to representations of these Three Jewels of refuge. So this is to help us remember their qualities and to keep our minds, and it’s also a way for us to create good karma because we don’t have Buddha around us, but we do have Buddha statues. We We have the Dharma texts so that we can make offerings and make prostrations and so on to the Dharma by using these representations as the objects of these practices.
And in the same way, we have the community of monks and nuns wearing robes, who are mostly ordinary individuals in their own right. But the Sangha community as a whole does contain a number of these ārya beings, and so respecting the Sangha community as a whole is a a way of respecting the Ārya Sangha as it’s represented by the the robed Sangha. So so now we’re relying assuming that we’ve checked out Buddha, we’ve checked out the Dharma teachings and come to the conclusion that the Three Jewels of refuge are actually what what they are said to be, that they are actually the valid guides, then if we take refuge in Buddha, then at the very least, we have to have thought for the next life, for future lives. We can’t take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha just for this life. There’s no way you can do that.
The reason for doing that is because in this lifetime we’re not going to see the results of our practice. The nature of karma is that it doesn’t always bring results in this lifetime. Usually, most of the results will have to be experienced in future lifetimes. In actual fact, if we take refuge in Buddha for future lifetimes and follow the path, then we’ll actually end up being a lot happier in this lifetime. We can expect to see progression in our minds which will bring us a lot more peace and joy within ourselves.
But first of all, we have to have this sort of the future lives. Whereas if we just take refuge if we just take refuge in the happiness of this life, then we’ll be taking refuge in things like money and cars and maybe drugs or whatever. Or maybe we might have some better system like relationships with our family or so on, but they’re all things that can’t be relied on, things that can perish. And so all these things are not these things are temporal and what we’re looking at is something ultimate, something lasting, something ongoing. And the very lowest of these is looking at the happiness of future lives.
And in actual fact, anybody who’s got as far as thinking about the future lives will also, if they’ve been looking at Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, also understand that there is a possibility of attaining liberation and you’ll be interested in attaining liberation. But for being at this level we’re talking about now, that’s something that seems far off. It’s not something they relate to very strongly at present. What they’re really concerned about is just the fact that they fear lower rebirth, they fear the suffering of the lower realms and they want help to attain human rebirth. They want to avoid that and they want to be sure of continuing their Dharma practice so that they can eventually, in some future life, attain liberation.
And that’s what’s called the lowest the lowest scope or the small scope. And there’s a number of different practices associated with this scope and in actual fact, practices are important to all of us. And for all of us, we have to have this lower scope motivation very strongly developed in us before we can really develop the higher scope motivations. But we should also think that it’s not enough just to take care of our future lives welfare, because we’re still in an unsatisfactory situation. We know that human life is unsatisfactory, it still has many problems and sufferings.
We know that we die, we know that we’re going to get reborn again and again and while we’re in Samsāra, this is going to continue. So we need to find liberation. So now a person who has got this motivation very very strongly, who is very strongly focused on liberation from Samsāra. So they’re no longer interested in anything to do with worldly things, they just see that as being a trap. This person will is completely disgusted with cyclic existence and that’s the medium scope.
And they’re just very strongly focused on the practices that will bring about liberation. And this is also called the motivation of the Hīnayāna path. So you might have heard the terms Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna. Does anybody need that explained? Okay.
So anyway, I’m I’m sort of explaining it now anyway. So Hīnayāna means individual liberation and that actually means, as I said, attaining this liberation from cyclic existence, from Samsāra. And that the person will become an arhat, yes. And so this is a very great goal. It’s very worthwhile working for.
And so there’s actually two main goals of Buddhist practice, either the Hīnayāna goal or the Mahāyāna goal. What I mentioned before about the lower scope isn’t really a goal, that’s just the sort of intermediate focus. But it’s mentioned here because that is the lowest level at which you could be practicing Buddhism. It’s not really an adequate goal, but it does bring its results, even if you’re following Buddhist practice, thinking about avoiding lower rebirth, it does work. Whereas there’s nothing in Buddhist practice that’s concerned with just the happiness of this life.
It’s always focused on future lives. So then So to get back to the medium scope, or the Hīnayāna. This is the Hīnayāna motivation that leads to our which is liberation from the sufferings of cyclic existence, cutting off the deluded mental states and attaining a state of everlasting blissful peace. And then we actually have to develop this motivation. If we haven’t got it very strong, know we just have to cultivate it and keep on working on it. Very important that we should attain this disgust with cyclic existence, that we should see no essence in cyclic existence.
It’s not easy because there’s so many distractions, there’s so many attractive things in cyclic existence. We have to learn how to see these things as being delusive And it’s not the things themselves that are bad, but it’s our mind following them all the time, being distracted, being attached. Where attachment doesn’t bring happiness but only brings suffering. And when we come to really realize this, when we come to see it, and to see that the real happiness lies liberation, then we can develop this quality that’s called renunciation. That doesn’t mean giving up everything.
What it means is a shift of focus, so that instead of being focused on the gratifications of cyclic existence, which are meaningless and don’t last and have no real essence in them, we can be focused on what brings about this everlasting blissful happiness of liberation. Then the next step is combining this with the thought of compassion for all and realizing that all other sentient beings in Samsāra are in the same situation as ourselves, only most of them are actually in a worse situation, and having a determination to bring about their welfare as well as our own. Or rather, even to say that we’re really just following the path really for the sake of the other being’s welfare because we have to know the path ourselves so that we can guide others on it. And this is the Mahāyāna motivation of the great scope. And the being who is cultivating this motivation works on developing love and compassion to a very great degree and also reflects that the only way to the most effective way, the only way to really effectively help all living beings is to attain the great powers of Buddhahood.
The arhat that we spoke about as achieving the goal of the Hīnayāna path doesn’t have this power because he is only able to guide others during his or her lifetime and after that passes away into this state of blissful peace doesn’t return into a body. Actually, it’s said that they do eventually come back and become Buddhas, but that’s after many eons. So in the short term, they’re not able to or even in a quite long term view, they’re not able to help others at all, because they’re not able to communicate. Buddhas are still able to communicate. They have this very special quality that they can attain liberation and still be able to communicate.
And it’s very very special. Only Buddha’s are able to be in the state of total absorption in emptiness and also be able to act and communicate in the relative world. And no other being can do that. Other beings have to go into meditation on emptiness, then they come out of meditation on emptiness. They go around and do different activities and then they go back into meditation on emptiness again.
And it’s only after practicing that way very thoroughly for a long time and finally Buddhahood is achieved. But Buddhahood is a much higher state of realization than liberation. So the the being who has only attained liberation of an arhat has to stay in this state of of of meditation. Is it Does that make sense? It’s a very technical topic and there’s there’s an awful lot of technical explanation about it, so I’m just giving it in very brief sort of form tonight, which might leave a lot of questions unanswered in your mind, but it’s a very interesting topic to to study more.
So Yes, motivation. Yes, yes, Yes. So, on these qualities of Buddhahood, then this person develops the thought that not only do they want to help others, but they’re going to achieve Buddhahood in order to do it. So they set their mind on the goal of Buddhahood. Now when this thought becomes very, very deeply embedded in the person’s mind, so that it’s the driving force in their being, in their psyche the whole time, day and night, sleeping, waking, whether they’re consciously thinking about it or not, at that stage it becomes what’s called bodhicitta.
It’s the realization of bodhicitta. That means the mind of enlightenment, which really is to say the mind that aims at enlightenment. And That person is a Bodhisattva. So at this stage they might not have gained other higher realizations, they might not have received insight into emptiness or any of these other things, but it does come together with renunciation. It’s necessary to have renunciation in order to have bodhicitta.
And if you’re following Mahāyāna practice and cultivating both of them together, then they’re actually received together. They come simultaneously, because you can’t renounce the suffering of others. You can’t have this thought of dedicating yourself to overcoming the suffering of others unless you’ve had the thought of overcoming your own suffering. If you haven’t realized the nature of your own suffering, then you can’t realize it for others because obviously you have to have an experience or realization of it for yourself in order to comprehend what it is to others. So any questions about this?
Oh, I’m sorry, it doesn’t look like we’ll have very much time for meditation. It’s not really a meditation night, but if you want to do a little bit, we can do a little bit. Maybe, yes. It’s because it’s just about time to finish and if you want to do a little small one, I’ve almost finished the three scopes, and then we can just do a quick contemplation maybe on that. So I just want to sort of emphasize that the practices that we do in the lower scope are really important to both of the other scopes.
So when we’re starting off as ordinary practitioners, we really need to put most of our energy into the lower scope practices and I’ll be talking a little bit about what these are and not today, but it includes the particularly the after having taken refuge, meditating on how to follow karma, how to avoid negative karmas and avoid the cause for lower rebirth and also how to create and how to intensify good karma and how to purify the negative karma that’s created. So this is the basic practice of the lower scope person and this brings about upper rebirth. And then there are practices involving meditation that bring about an understanding and eventually direct insight into emptiness and this is what brings about liberation which purifies the mind of the deluded mental states and its subjection to karma. And this is the practice of the intermediate scope. And then the as I mentioned before, combining that with the bodhicitta and continuing the meditation on emptiness past the point of liberation to the point where it’s where it becomes where it doesn’t just liberate the mind from the deluded mental states and karma, but even from even more subtle obscurations, brings about Buddhahood.
And so that’s combined with the practice of what’s called the six perfections. And so the Bodhisattva practices these six perfections and and attains Buddhahood. And to to get a good grounding, need to really start off by just getting these lower scope practices in particular very soundly established in our lives. And without these lower scope practices, the observing of karma things like the faith in the refuge, understanding of suffering, all of these things are associated with the lower scope. These are the things that just give us the basis for a really sound practice, the foundation that we build for the higher levels of practice, even if we don’t build on the higher levels of practice at the moment, but just do these lower scope practices, it means that we’re using our life really well and that we’re getting good meaning out of it.
So maybe if anybody wants to hurry off now, could go now, and anybody who wants to stay and meditate for a little bit, we can sit and meditate. So don’t be shy to get up and go if you want to go. So just focusing the mind, calming the mind for a moment. So we can think we’ve contemplated on how fortunate we are to have this human rebirth, but it would be a shame to waste it by following worldly activities. It would be a terrible loss.
So in order to make our human life meaningful, we have to do something that brings a lasting meaning. So and particularly when we consider the fact that when we lose this precious human rebirth, if we haven’t used it well, we could fall back to the lower realms of suffering and experience the all the different sufferings that can be experienced in those realms, and we could be there for a long time. It could be many, many lives before we manage to become human beings again. Thinking about it in this way, we really feel very strongly that we must make good use of this life now, put it to advantage. The way to do this, having checked out the qualities of the Three Jewels of refuge, we understand that they have the power to guide us.
And so the way to make good use of our life is to follow their guidance. So we can see, we can rely on Buddha, because Buddha, having been an ordinary human being like ourselves, attained the whole path, purified his mind totally of all obscurations, and has the great qualities of omniscience, of perfect compassion, and great powers to help us. Also, we can rely on the Dharma, the teaching of Buddha, which is the real refuge. Because we understand that Buddha’s omniscient mind sees the path correctly and has the perfect understanding to guide us as we need to be shown the way. Also, we can see that the Ārya Sangha who have progressed on the path and attained realization, direct insight into emptiness, also have the power to guide us on the way.
They’ve realized Dharma in their mind streams. And we feel confident also that we ourselves have the potential to achieve the result refuge and ourselves, become the embodiment of the Three Jewels of refuge, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And so we should should feel a firm resolve to trust in the guidance of the Three Jewels of refuge and, put their advice into practice by, following the practices of the three scopes. So now we can dedicate our merits in the same way that we motivated at the beginning for enlightenment. Page five.
May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to that enlightened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakening, the heart that has not arisen, arise and grow. And may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more. And then on page ten, long life prayer for his holiness to Dalai Lama. And we can think while we’re making this prayer that we’re praying actually for all spiritual teachers who are sharing the true path and particularly for our own teachers, whoever they might be.
In the land encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and good. All powerful Tenzin Gyatso, Tenzin Gyatso, so please remain until cyclic existence is ended.