Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching, Ven Margaret McAndrew presents a systematic exploration of Buddhist mental factors—the mind states that either free us from confusion or keep us trapped in suffering. She works through each of the six root afflictions (attachment, hatred, pride, ignorance, doubt, and afflicted views) with concrete examples, but the core teaching is a practical diagnostic: to recognize whether your mind-state is virtuous aspiration or egotistical attachment, observe whether it brings you peace or agitation. She explores the subtle trap of attachment even to blissful meditation, and traces how ignorance—misunderstanding the nature of phenomena—underlies all other delusions. The teaching closes with the three higher trainings (ethics, concentration, wisdom) for liberation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 C o S 1999 09 09.mp3
UUID: 48ba79a6-8fc7-455d-b2aa-20a9910e5550
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-09-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~4,988
So, because we have attachment to the pleasures of a cyclic existence, we, we go on having the attachment and craving that leads on to rebirth after rebirth, creating cause for rebirth after rebirth. So, we have to have renounced our attachment in order to have this. We have to renounce have renounced our attachment attachment to various objects. So non attachment is not attached to the pleasures of cyclic existence, and attachment leads to trouble in our minds because while we’re seeking after the objects of attachment, then we’re always engaging in actions of body and speech to bring about our being joined to these objects of attachment, to have these pleasures, and we get involved in negativities that way. We waste a lot of time pursuing worldly pursuits that takes us away from our Dharma practice.
So in order to to generate nonattachment, what acts what actions can we engage in? What sort of meditation? Mhmm. Anything else? That’s only one really.
They count as yeah. They they really count as one. Yes. Good. Very good.
Yes. Guess your tech shop mentions two, and I thought you might remember the other one. S. What Thursday. No.
What what what were we studying last week? Okay. So to overcome attachment, we can meditate on impermanence and the sufferings of cyclic existence. So then there’s something about yes. So these are the graduated path meditations, the teachings that help us to overcome attachment and to gain this state of non attachment.
So there’s also some mention here of approximate non attachment, which is to have renounced, attachment to some of the some particular objects such as the pleasure of food. And and that’s not because of attachment to the pleasure of being beautifully slim. But, anyway, yes. So there are some various different things there, details. So there are levels of non attachment.
So the lowest capacity being can, have attachment to the pleasures of the present life in order to concentrate on creating the causes for a happy rebirth in the future life. And then the middling capacity being has non attachment to the pleasures of cyclic existence, and the person, the being of great capacity, develops non attachment even to the nirvana of the solitary realizers. Okay. The nirvana of the solitary realizer. That’s very, very subtle.
These solitary realizers or the arhats achieved this liberation, which is a blissful peace of nirvana of the solitary realizer or or of the, individual path of individual liberation. And they are you can say that a subtle attachment to that blissful peace because, they are incapable of leaving that blissful meditation to come back into embodied existence again to work for others. They are stuck in that blissful peace. Where as a bodhisattva, because of having cultivated tremendous love and compassion and the determination to work for others, can actually reach that same level as the solitary realizer, but they won’t remain stuck in that blissful peace of nirvana. But they’ll keep on coming back into embodied existence.
You can’t say into saṃsāra because they’ve gone beyond saṃsāra. But they keep on taking rebirth so as to continue working for others. So the bodhisattva has actually given up that subtle attachment to the to this blissful peace. And that’s very, very difficult. It’s extremely difficult.
That’s why we have to start on it from the beginning. Otherwise, we’ll have to take the long road round if we manage to achieve nirvana before we develop all that love and compassion of the the bodhisattva, then we’ll have to go into this blissful peace of nirvana for before we finally wake up out of it. No. It’s not too bad at all. That’s the whole point of it.
Yes. So, you know, for most of us, we can not talking about other people, we’re talking about myself. We can get so easily distracted even by some sort of minor samsaric pleasure from our Dharma practice. So can you think of it to be in this really blissful state with no disturbances to your happiness for so long. It’s so attachment is very, very difficult to overcome.
Attachment is like they say it’s like oil in a piece of cloth, whereas other delusions could be like, for instance, getting a bit of dirt, a bit of earth or something on your clothes. They wash out, It washes out quite easily. But this example came from the days before they had Surf No More and all of these things. Even then, you know, you spill something really greasy on your clothes, it’s really difficult to get it out, even with all the best up to date washing powders and so on. And so you have to wash again and again with hottest of hot water and all these sorts of things.
So it’s very difficult to get the oil stains out. So this is the example of attachment compared to the other delusions. And in fact, the other delusions arise because we have attachment, most of them anyway, such as anger and hatred and jealousy and so on. All of these things come out of attachment. First of all, we have to have the attachment and then because we have attachment, then we get disturbed because of our attachment not being satisfied.
And then this gives rise to other forms of afflictions. So non hatred. So this is a mental factor, which is the lack of, intention to to cause harm to others. So it’s opposite to hatred. And, hatred is a very disturbed state of mind, which arises when we see others with a feeling of repulsion.
So so non hatred in other words, when we look at the at the object, which is either another person or or perhaps even an inanimate object, we have a disturbed and uncomfortable feeling at the heart. And this is a great negativity. So it’s a very destructive sort of emotion that we have to overcome. And in order to, achieve the, the state of non hatred, then we have to develop this this we have to overcome this state of mind of hatred, by developing the patience of voluntary enduring suffering. This isn’t just passive endurance, but, it’s a positive attitude.
So if we actually feel unhappy, if we feel hurt when we encounter these unpleasant objects, for instance, somebody saying unpleasant things towards us, if this hurts us, then we haven’t really got this non hatred because the real non hatred comes when we encounter these situations. And instead of hatred arising or instead of the hurt feeling arising, instead we have the rising of this feeling of non hatred, this positive feeling of non hatred. So there are four virtuous methods, involved here. Not blaming others when they blame us, not striking others when they strike us, not becoming angry, when they are angry towards us, and not criticizing others when they criticize us. And if we train in these four virtuous methods, then we can gradually develop this virtuous mental factor of non hatred.
And of course, there are times when we do have this virtuous mental factor. But at present, isn’t strong enough, so we need to cultivate it to become very strong. Then nonconfusion. So this is a type of knowledge that arises spontaneously at first or through effort. It’s a mental factor that has no confusion when engaging in a virtuous object, and it leads to the avoidance of unwholesome actions.
So there are two kinds. One can be spontaneously acquired. Some people have spontaneous qualities of birth, and these can be qualities such as skill in painting and music and so on, which may be due at a specific place of rebirth or the karmic result of skills acquired in previous lives. Any questions about that? Well, they’re not confused about that specific thing, like about painting.
You know, I’m totally confused about painting, but this person can paint. There are lots of cases, actually, if you read the case of people who, just sort of seek to pick up a paintbrush and start painting. So then there are acquired through effort, and I think this is more relevant really for us. So, there are three types of non confusion that can arise as a result of listening, thinking, and meditating. And there’s a well known say that, to try to meditate without first listening is like being a one-armed rock climber.
So, anyway yeah. Yes. So we got we have we have to study. First of all, we have to study. We have to listen to the teachings.
It’s important to receive the oral transmission. Well, then you just have to go on and take the next step. So first of all, you won’t find that. Yeah. So you have to have the Yeah.
You have to have the information. Yeah. And you have to study. If you if you if you really study these things, then that gives you an inspiration to want to meditate too. So but, basically, you want to start meditating, especially just set yourself a little bit of time each day to meditate and not try to do too much all at once.
It’s also good sometimes to do retreats, like to get sometimes to give yourself a bit of an inspiration, give yourself a bit of a bit of a start, you know, to sort of charge up the batteries for getting the machine going. Then you have to go and join some sort of group retreat or something like go and do a two week course with say with Tony Beaumont at a teaching center or like that or whatever or with Ven. Robina Courtin at Chenrezig Institute or sometimes we have, you know, little retreats with Khen Rinpoche here. So they can be very, very good ways of getting started. Anyway, joining in with people doing these things. Coming along here tonight is sort of part of it.
I should lead a bit of meditation, but we seem to be rushing through the time. I haven’t even got on to the non virtuous factors yet. I was going to whiz through these, but anyway, so non confusion. So then effort. Maybe this might be the the one that you need.
It’s a mental factor that delights in virtue, and it functions to increase the entity of virtue within oneself to initiate the creation of new virtue and to overcome laziness. So effort related to non virtuous or neutral objects is not the effort under discussion. And there are five types of effort which I won’t go through because that would take too long. It’s very interesting interesting to study these things, and this book is out of the library. So if you want to look up these things, you’ll find it in there.
It’s by Geshe it’s by Geshe Tashi Tsering, and it’s called Lorig. Geshe L o r I g. L o hyphen r I g. And so that’s seven. The eighth is suppleness, and this is one of these things that comes into meditation.
We don’t have to worry about it except when we’re doing Samatha meditation. Then there’s conscientiousness. This is number nine, and this is a mental factor that keeps the mind from engaging in non virtuous activities. It holds the mind straight and prevents it from being controlled by the afflictions. So it’s, it’s this is very important.
So there are different kinds of conscientiousness. It’s not quite the same as as the general English meaning of the word. It has some relationship, but, so it can have the one of the kinds is conscientiousness related to previous activity. And so this is an awareness of past non virtuous and the need to purify them. So if a person has engaged in non virtuous activities in the past and thought that was all right and then they start to realize, they start to regret those past activities that they didn’t regret before, this is good because it shows that virtue is growing.
So secondly, conscientiousness related to future activity to not commit wholesome unwholesome actions. Then the third type is conscientiousness related to present activity to avoid present unwholesome activities, and to immediately purify any that are committed. Conscientiousness of prior behavior. In other words, thinking how wonderful it would be if in the past I’d always abided in virtue and purification of non virtue. And sorry.
No. That’s the fifth one. The the fourth one is conscientiousness of concordant behavior. To maintain the mind on a virtuous activity that you’ve been doing for some time so that unwholesome actions do not arise. And the fifth one is wishing that you had previously engaged in virtuous activity.
So, yes, sometimes you can get depressed thinking that that you wish that you do done these things. So I think it’s not maybe to get depressed, but just to think that by thinking this way, you’re actually developing virtue. So it’s positive. Yes. Yes.
So, yes. Anyway, the the essential thing is to, focus on the present and the future because what’s behind us, we can’t do anything about except to purify it with the four opponent forces, and that’s something that we have to do in the present and the future. So this is where we should be mostly focusing. So the tenth one is equanimity, and this is another one of these mental factors that’s involved with Samatha meditation, calm abiding meditation. There’s another equanimity which is the kind of equanimity that we mentioned in the four immeasurables.
May we all send you beings by an equanimity free from attachment and hatred. So that’s virtuous but it’s not the mental factor that we’re talking about here. This is involved specifically with Samatha meditation. And eleventh is non harmfulness. And that is a mental factor that is acquired through removing hatred.
So its entity is compassion, and its function is not to have the wish to inflict harm upon others. And it enables us to tolerate pain caused by others. But it’s not only tolerance, but it’s also wishing the others to be free from suffering. So these are the virtuous mental factors. And then to look at the, the non virtuous mental factors, there are six of these.
And these are I’ll just make sure I’m reading Geshe Tashi Tsering’s list because that’s what I’m following. There are six root afflictions, page seventy eight of this book. So these are attachment, hatred, pride, ignorance, doubt, and afflicted views. So these are the ones that, keep us in in our problems in our problem of being under the under the suffering under the control of the suffering state of saṃsāra. That’s right.
Yes. So, three of them are listed as being the three poisons. Although the ignorance may be different here. I I I’d I’m not sure of that. I have no idea that the ignorance in the, three poisons is the ignorance of confusion, which is but I’m not sure of that, but I think that’s Nyungmong, and the ignorance here is ma rigpa.
But, anyway, I’m I’m not absolutely sure of that. But, anyway, that’s just to go through these, attachment is a mental factor that sees a contaminated object as being attractive and wishes to acquire that object. So we’ve already been through through a a non attachment. So attachment here is essentially the reverse of that. So as Geshe Tashi Tsering says, it’s like oil on cloth.
So, essentially, attachment is it functions to increase desire and to generate the the sorts of actions that result in creating the cause to more suffering. So can you be attached to Dharma practice? Mhmm. Right. Yes.
So attachment functions to increase desire, but seeking and desiring in a virtuous context is not attachment. Virtuous aspiration and faith can seem to be attachment, but we can distinguish them according to whether the mind is rendered peaceful or unpeaceful by that wish. So this is a very important point. Sometimes if you’re in doubt as to whether what you’re experiencing is attachment or virtuous aspiration, the way to check is to check within yourself by seeing the influence it is having on your life. If it’s causing you to be agitated and unhappy, then it’s attachment.
If it’s causing you to feel peaceful and balanced and stable, then it has to be virtuous. And so Would you let me do the No. Then it’s not called attachment. Then it’s virtuous aspiration and faith as Geshe Tashi Tsering says. This also relates to another definition of attachment, which is that attachment is the mind that over that exaggerates or overestimates good qualities of the object.
And so if you’re being attached to ice cream or movies, then that’s because these things have a very limited amount of good qualities and you’re overestimating You’re seeing more good qualities. In other words, you’re thinking that the ice cream or the movies can really make you happy when they really can’t. Although that’s not to say that there’s not something there which the movie or the ice cream does act as a as a suitable base, a suitable object for our experiencing the pleasure as conditions for our experiencing the pleasure, but it has very limited good qualities and it can’t continue to bring us unchanging happiness, whereas Dharma practice can. So the point is that with Dharma practice, its good qualities are unlimited because if we practice Dharma then we can achieve true cessation. And the same thing applies with things like the Three Jewels of refuge with your Dharma teacher and so on.
So there’s the various different sorts of objects that are virtuous objects, which are not to be confused with objects of attachment. For instance, if you’d be attached if you to ask whether you can be attached to meditating on the path, that’s not an object of attachment because it’s something which has infinite good qualities. Because by meditating on the path, then there’s no end to the to the happiness that can be received through that practice. Yes. Yes.
So it can be very subtle. You know, they we can have very mixed attitudes towards a lot of things. For instance, people might ask, am I attached to my children or do I love them? And the answer is probably a bit of both. And you just have to work out for yourself when sometimes you’ll be functioning under the influence of one and sometimes under the influence of the other, and you just have to become careful of discriminating.
And Attachment is very difficult to discriminate, and you have to learn to discriminate it and to enhance good aspect of it and counteract the harmful aspect of it. Start in When they start off their Dharma practice, say, how can you do it? How can you do it? And the older Dharma students can only say, well, you just have to keep on trying, and after a while you start to get the hang of it. And of course, as you start to get the hang of it a little bit, then that helps you to get to, to see where you’re going.
You get the hang of it a bit more. So it’s just something that, comes up on a on an ongoing basis. But this point of virtue not disturbing the mind is an important thing. When when our mind becomes agitated, then we know there’s something detrimental happening there. Even if there’s some virtue or even if it looks like virtue, there’s something wrong there.
There’s something egotistical getting mixed in with it. Whereas, when we find that what we’re doing is bringing greater peace and greater happiness, then then we’re then we’re on the right track there somehow. So that’s attachment. Then the next one is hatred and and aversion. Hatred.
Hatred is a harmful attitude directed towards one of three objects, a sentient being suffering in one’s own continuum, or a phenomena that is a source of suffering. So, it’s interesting that we can even have hatred against our own sufferings such as ill health or, any other sort of mental suffering or physical suffering. It’s easy to see that the suffering towards other that hatred towards other beings is harmful to us. It’s harder to see how hatred towards our own suffering is detrimental, but in actual fact, this state of hatred is always detrimental, and we need to be able to develop a state of mind that overcomes this sort of attitude. And then there’s also hatred against a source of suffering.
So this is an inanimate object which is causing us suffering, such as a thorn that gets into our foot or something like that. Yes. Yes. Well, sometimes they call that displacement, don’t they? They’re really angry with their wife or somebody or the boss or whatever.
Oh. No. I think that, anger is, definitely, involved here. Yes. It comes from that Yes.
Yes. That’s right. You have some sort of resentment against the suffering. You feel that either God’s sending it to you or that the life or life is unfair or you feel you feel there must be somebody or something else being unfair to you. I think in the you then you get this sort of resentful feeling about it.
But so if we actually look at karma, if we look at these things from the karmic viewpoint, then it does help us a lot to remain calm and peaceful in our minds about these various sufferings that we’re experiencing. So when we get angry at our suffering, it’s only making the suffering worse because we have the suffering of anger on top of the original suffering. And in actual fact, if we can overcome this aversion and hatred of our suffering, then people who’ve really made progress in doing that find that often that was the worst part of the suffering and that the actual underlying suffering isn’t so bad. It’s the the anger, the aversion, the rejection, the rejection of your present situation when you can’t help it, when you can’t do anything about it that that leads to to more suffering. And, of course, it’s not saying that we should sit there and allow ourselves to be hurt when we can get up and walk away.
That that that would simply be stupidity. But simply the fact is that in our life, do have to experience a lot of sufferings. We do what we can to remove the conditions, such as taking medicine if we’re sick or whatever, but still life being what it is and saṃsāra being what it is, we’re going to have to experience a lot of different sufferings and some of them we won’t be able to send away. And so in that case, if we can take them calmly, then this will be very positive for us. So that’s two, hatred, and then the next one is pride.
And this is a mental factor that arises from the view of the transitory collection as a real eye and mine. Does that make it all clear? The transitory collection as a real I and mine. In other words, that that our our self and other objects are truly existent. But anyway, if we so if we didn’t have that view, then we wouldn’t go and have pride.
But it also has the aspect of feeling higher than others. So the particular function of pride is to be disrespectful to others because one considers oneself superior, and it brings unhappiness to oneself. So this is a very important thing. We’re talking about negative pride here. There are, of course, some sorts of pride or what we sometimes term pride, which are positive.
And, we just have to be careful that we’re, looking here at the, the negative aspect of pride, which is arrogant and, which is self centered and egotistical. So there’s different kinds of pride such as thinking I’m superior to others and thinking even among my peers I’m special. And is true. Well, that’s pretension, full blown pride. No.
That that’s actually thinking that you’ve gained high realizations such as a stream enterer or once-returner or an arhat. Yes. And there’s anyway, yeah, yes, there’s many different kinds of pride, but it it leads us into all sorts of, wrongdoings and harming others because we have because we lack respect for others, it leads us into putting others down and, treating them badly. So there’s a lot to be said about pride, but I haven’t got much time to go through all these. Then there’s, ignorance.
Ignorance. And this is a mental factor that is unaware of the nature of phenomena. So there’s a lot of There’s technical stuff here, but it’s, essentially, seeing objects in the wrong way, and, it serves as the basis for the remaining afflictions. So it has to do with this view of the transitory phenomena. As, as we mentioned before, the transitory collection as a real I and mine.
It’s related to that. So it’s being unaware of the real nature of phenomena, and it’s the underlying cause of all our other afflictions. It’s seeing something there which is concrete and truly existent to be something that we can grasp at, that’s something that we can hold on to when there’s nothing there that’s truly existent, nothing there that we can grasp at or hold on to. And so this leads to confusion. It leads to grasping, ego grasping, and to attachment to ego satisfaction, and that leads to attachment and all of these different forms of self-cherishing and so on which lead to our other delusions such as anger and pride and all of the others.
So you could go on studying that for years and years. So it also leads to the sixth one, which is afflicted views. Oh, sorry. Fifth one, doubt. So doubt here is called deluded doubt.
So it’s not the doubt of everyday life, but particular doubts, to do with things such as selflessness, cause and effect, refuge in the Three Jewels, the four noble truths, and so on. So it’s thinking maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. While this doubt is present, it interferes with engaging in virtuous actions. So, for instance, doubt about the real nature of phenomena. And generally, it’s said that the the most important one that we’re concerned with is concerned with karma and past and future lives.
Because that’s the the doubt that is the one that most interferes with our Dharma practice. And then there is afflicted views. So as far as doubt goes too, there are different levels of doubts. But in general, it’s a mental factor that it’s wavering between two points. Doubt can either tend towards the right conclusion or it can be equally balanced or it can tend towards the wrong conclusion.
And if it tends towards the right conclusion then that’s that’s something that can eventually lead to actually to conviction. Whereas doubt that leads towards the wrong conclusion is quite harmful for us. So, we have to overcome our doubts, and they have to be overcome through examining and, and learning and, through gradually, gaining conviction. Then there’s afflicted views. So, again, we’ve got the view of the transitory collection as real, I, and mine.
And there are also other afflicted views. So if you’re holding to extremes, I won’t go into all of these. They’re quite technical. But the the, the third one is the the fourth one, sorry, is the view of wrong morality and conduct as supreme. That’s thinking with certain wrong behaviors of virtuous or good, such as performing sacrifices, thinking that animal sacrifices, for example, is is, right conduct, to attain liberation.
This is, an ex example of wrong morality. The person thinks it’s morality, but in actual fact, it’s, wrong action. So, wrong views, largely concerned either with the with the difference between right and wrong actions or with views of the ultimate truth, mistaken views about the ultimate truth, such as asserting that there is falling to the extremes of asserting that there is truly existent self or asserting that that that there is no no self that that denying the the existence of self totally or denying existence such as nihilism. So that would be denying even the conventional level of self and existence. So, anyway, we should finish there.
And, to conclude, we have to be able to overcome these six root afflictions and, the antidote to these. I won’t have time to go into detail about that tonight, but the way that it’s explained in the context of the small scope or for the Hīnayāna practitioner what practice they have to engage in as the three higher trainings in order to remove the disturbing emotions, in particular as well as attachment, by overcoming the underlying ignorance of the nature of the existence of the self and phenomena in order to attain liberation. In fact, the person who is aiming at individual liberation focuses mainly on overcoming wrong view of the self. They’re not so concerned with the phenomena. So this person has to attain liberation liberation by engaging these three higher trainings, which are the higher training of, yes, ethics or conduct, concentration concentration and wisdom.
So, just in brief, the, conduct has to do with avoiding non virtuous actions and also, with keeping vows, and that’s the basis. Through that practice the person becomes calm in their mind, they become mentally stable and then they’re able to engage in the practice of concentration, which is the practice of Samatha or calm abiding. And this practice of calm abiding brings fantastic.