Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 9.8-minute evening session, Ven Margaret McAndrew briefly explains the Three Higher Trainings and their role in both Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna paths, then leads a guided meditation on the Six Sufferings that pervade cyclic existence: uncertainty about future rebirths; never being satisfied, constantly chasing pleasure; repeated death and loss; repeated conception and birth with embodied suffering; circling endlessly between high and low, always at risk of falling; and the aloneness we face in life’s crises. McAndrew emphasizes these sufferings are intrinsic to samsaric existence, not temporary hardships, and that genuine release comes only through working toward liberation. The session concludes with merit dedication prayers for enlightenment and the welfare of all beings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 GPK 1998 03 04.mp3
UUID: 019c413e-6936-46cc-ae00-5364a5e43519
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-03-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 9.8 minutes
Words: ~700
All of the karma and deluded mental attitudes can be totally eradicated, so the person is no longer subject to karma and delusion. They can be liberated. They achieve liberation. And that practice has to be carried out whether the goal is liberation or enlightenment. If the goal is enlightenment, it has to be taken a step further.
So that’s just explaining it in brief. So any questions? So it’s concentration, wisdom and moral conduct. The higher training in moral conduct, or just conduct, concentration and wisdom. So I’m not going to go into a lot of detail in the medium scope, because actually these things get talked about again in the higher scope.
And when we’re talking about the six paramitas, we actually describe these practices in more detail, and just from the Mahāyāna point of view, but it’s really very similar. The concentration and these three higher trainings really are very similar, whether they’re being practiced in Mahāyāna or Hīnayāna context, but the motivation is different. And the extent to which they take you is different. So, it’s getting a bit late now. Do you want to do some meditation, or we just finish off?
Okay, well we’ll do a short meditation. So, we can just remember that we’re enmeshed in suffering. So we can meditate on the six sufferings, and these are the six sufferings that pervade the whole of samsaric existence, including the higher realms. So we should think, first of all, where while we remain in cyclic existence, we’re caught up with the suffering of uncertainty. It’s uncertain where we’re going to go from life to life.
And it’s uncertain what we’re going to experience in this life. The only thing that’s that is certain is the changeableness of the whole situation. Another suffering is a suffering of never being satisfied, of being greedy for more and more of the things that give us pleasure. Always always chasing after one thing after another. There’s the suffering of abandoning our body again and again, going through death again and again, going through the various sufferings, going through the fears and apprehensions and the physical sufferings, and losing the things that were dear to us, life after life.
The fourth suffering is being conceived and born again and again, Going through all the discomforts and pains and unhappiness of conception of being in the womb, of being born again and again into lives where we’re going to be subject to the sufferings of embodied life. The fifth suffering is that of continually circling in saṃsāra. The fact that we go from high to low, low to high, but we always are in danger of falling back to low again. And the sixth one is our aloneness. The fact that in all the crises of our life, our friends or relatives can’t help us.
We have to experience aloneness, go through all these things alone, born alone, dying alone, experiencing aloneness in many different lives. So all these sufferings are not just things that we have to experience for a little while and then finish with. They’re things that are in the nature of cyclic existence. We’re going to have to experience them again and again while we remain in cyclic existence. So it’s really worthwhile.
The only thing that has any real release to it is working to escape from the bondage to cyclic existence, working to attain the state of everlasting happiness, liberation. So we should cultivate this thought very strongly, and this is the thought of renunciation. Right. Thank you. So then we can dedicate our merits for liberation and particularly for enlightenment for the welfare of all.
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 heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more. And then page ten. In the land encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and good, all powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin Gyatso.
Please remain until cyclic existence has ended. Right. Thanks.