Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute evening session, Ven Margaret McAndrew moves from small-scope practices into medium-scope work—the shift from seeking good rebirths to seeking liberation itself. She emphasizes that renunciation means not abandoning possessions but loosening the mind’s grip through understanding that happiness arises from karma and mental state, not from objects. Drawing on examples of chocolate cake, wine, relationships, and movies, she shows how the same things produce different results at different times, revealing the emptiness of inherent existence. She walks through the three poisonous minds (attachment, aversion, ignorance) and three seals of saṃsāra (suffering, impermanence, non-self), explaining why direct insight into emptiness is the only cure for suffering. The classroom setting includes student participation, making it accessible to both experienced practitioners and newcomers.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 S and S 1999 09 02.mp3
UUID: 6631c927-4f3b-4c60-b703-8e8c3a615dde
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-09-02
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~5,236
Liberation from suffering a a last everlasting happiness and, the cessation of suffering. And to gain the greatest benefit, we should not just think of ourselves, but think of others, and think how others are like ourselves. If we’ve come to the Buddhist teachings because of our awareness of the unsatisfactory nature of our lives, of the constant connection with suffering of different kinds, light and subtle and heavy, then we need to also apply this thought to other beings. They’re of exactly the same nature of ourselves, and that is nature of wanting happiness and not wanting suffering. And like us, these other beings are constantly encountering sufferings that they don’t want, and they never find sufficient happiness to satisfy themselves.
And so having realized that we need to follow the path which sets out the attainment of happiness, of real happiness, then it’s not enough just to want to practice this for ourselves. And so we should understand how closely connected we are to all these other beings and see that just bringing about the happiness of one is nothing compared to bringing about the happiness of countless beings, which is something that we’d be able to accomplish if we follow the path and attain the state of Buddhahood. And so this is the goal that we set our thought on. And with this thought, we engage in the activity tonight of studying the teachings. So tonight’s topic is saṃsāra and suffering.
So we already know quite a lot about this topic. Most of us anyway, I should think. Is there anybody here who’s new to the teachings? Right. Okay.
So we’ve got some older students here who’ve been following through the series of talks that I’ve been giving, and others perhaps may not have had this sort of an introduction, so I’ll try to make it clear. If you have any problems anyway, can always ask questions and I’ll try to clarify. Also, of course, if anybody’s been attending Khensur Rinpoche’s teaching, they would have had a really wonderful teaching on this topic. They would be not really needing to come along here tonight. So I feel in a way it’s bit superfluous for me to be teaching these things.
I’d be better off to to play the tape. But, anyway, here I am. So but I’ll probably be quoting, Khensur Rinpoche’s teaching a bit. So we’ve been moving through the different topics of the graduated path up to this point, and we’re continuing to move through the different topics. And so we’ve actually finished with the first section of the graduated path.
Last week we finished the topics of the first section, which is the the path of the person of small scope. So does anybody remember what defines the person of small scope? Yes, Diane. Mhmm. Good.
Very good. Yes. Hillary had her hand up, she would have answered it if you hadn’t Yes. Okay. So it’s very good to have the teachers put on the spot in the class room for a change.
So anyway, we’re finished with that first section. And so the small scope person is focusing on attaining well, particularly on avoiding an unfortunate rebirth, a suffering rebirth, and they particularly want to attain a human rebirth so as to be able to continue to practice and continue to avoid the worst kind of suffering rebirth. When we study the small scope practices, this doesn’t mean that the practices belonging to that scope are inferior practices to the practices of the larger scopes than the medium and great scopes. But we need to, whichever scope we’re emphasizing in our practice, we need to do these practices of the small scope because these practices need to be maintained all the way through our practice, right to the very end of the path, as they’re the basic practices which form the foundation that the developments of the medium and great scope are founded on. And so it’s very important to maintain this.
And the practices that we’re particularly concerned about in the small scope were taking refuge in the Three Jewels of refuge and observing karma. So we were looking at those practices over the last few weeks. So, these practices, taking refuge in Buddhadharma and Sangha and observing karma, which means avoiding particularly the ten non virtuous actions of body, speech, and mind, and also purifying our non virtues and accumulating virtuous actions. So we haven’t really taken the message of Buddha if we’re satisfied with doing that. Even if some people may feel that that’s all they’re capable of undertaking in their present situation, they do have some understanding that they have to aspire to do more.
At least they have to be dedicating their merits towards being able to do more in the future. And because these practices alone can only lead to fortunate rebirth, but can’t bring about liberation by themselves. So it doesn’t mean that we all have to be able to practice the particular practices for leading to liberation, but we need to know we need to practice these things to some extent if we possibly can and even if not we need to be able to we need to know that there are more practices to be undertaken and we need to be creating the cause for these by praying to be able to do these things in the future and dedicating our merits that way. So it’s very important to look at the medium scope and the great scope practices. So this week we’re beginning on the medium scope.
So Buddha taught that in order to be free of suffering, totally free to achieve the true cessation of suffering, which is the the third of the four noble truths, then we need to engage in further practices in order to gain insight into the nature of existence. So this is really bringing in the fourth noble truth also. So we need to practice not only to do better for ourselves within saṃsāra, but we need to look at getting right out of saṃsāra, in other words. This is what true cessation means. Samsāra is not a place.
It’s a state of mind, each of us has our own saṃsāra. We carry it around with us wherever we go. And when we talk about getting out of saṃsāra, what we’re talking about is changing our mind, doing the practices required to eliminate from our own individual minds the the factors that cause us to be trapped in saṃsāra. So this is what the the medium scope is about. Any questions?
So so the step that we’re trying to take now with the medium scope is to see that there is no essence, no meaning to samsaric existence. So this is what’s meant by renunciation. We often hear the word renunciation and we might think that it means giving up your house, giving up your car, giving up your diamond necklace or whatever. You know, I can do without my house or without my cars, says Jane, but you can’t do without a diamond necklace. So anyway, this isn’t so easy.
So it’s not giving up these things, but it’s understanding that these things are not the source of happiness. In actual fact, we don’t have to give these things up. What we have to do is change our attitudes so that we give up clinging to them. So it’s giving up the clinging that’s difficult. For instance, there’s a story about a king who asked a great teacher I can’t remember.
It might have been well, I can’t remember anyway. But, basically, this this king in ancient India asked one of the great teachers, maybe Nāgārjuna, I’m not sure, he should somebody might be able to correct me with this how he should practice. He said, well, you know, basically I’m the king of this country. I can’t give up my responsibilities. I feel that I’ve undertaken these responsibilities to the subjects of my kingdom very seriously.
Also being king means that I have to keep up a certain position and so on. Know, I have to dress in my jewels and live in my palace and all this sort of thing. And so this great teacher said to him, just when you’re meditating, just look at this enormous diamond that you’re wearing in your bracelet and reflect on how your mind is pure and clear like the diamond. The king did this practice and he eventually attained enlightenment through that meditation. Essentially, although he still had all these riches and position status, power, all the rest of it, his mind was cut free from attachment to these things.
And, that is what renunciation really means. So the small scope realization is easier, understanding that we have to work for our future lives more than for this one. Once you accept the reality of past and future lives, and that there’s a very strong connection between our actions and our experiences in various lives and that the actions of this life will affect our future lives, then it’s just very logical to see the need to engage in the cause for creating good conditions for our future lives, which is essentially basic moral conduct, which is a sort of conduct which, in any case, with a bit of thinking we can say that is necessary for the sound functioning of society and for good relationships with others, the harmony in the family and with our friends and colleagues and so on. So the first scope or the small scope isn’t so difficult to be motivated for because we can see, as ordinary people, can see the benefits of these things fairly easily. Although, of course, we need to accept the teachings that tell us that our actions influence our future lives.
So when we take the next step, it really means making a whole change in our values, in our perspectives, in the way we look at things. And so we’re not just looking at a better life the next time around. We’re not just hoping to avoid the kind of things that we don’t like experiencing in this life, and we’re not just having to have more of the things that we do like to have in this life, in our next life. But what we’re trying to do is to realize that all the things that we’ve been attached to, that we’re attracted to, that we cling to as being good, that we tend to see as being the meaning of this existence, we have to see that these things have no real meaning. And we also have to understand that we’re not saying that these things are wrong, we’re not denying that they’re good, and we’re not saying that we have to give up either the objects themselves or the enjoyment.
So what Buddha taught is that we have to realize that all the happiness, enjoyment, and enjoyment that we experience really comes from the mind. And also the suffering comes from the mind. So when we encounter the objects of our attachment, we see these things giving us pleasure. Lama Yeshe used to use the example of chocolate cake. And so when we see chocolate cake or Coca Cola, we used to use these examples a lot.
And we can put our own examples in there, whatever we happen to like. So in Adelaide, it might be some sort of fantastic pasta or McLaren Vale wine or something like that. So whatever it is, we have to realize enjoyment, but they’re actually acting as the object for our enjoyment. There’s the contact of our sense organs with these objects, which do have some potential in them to produce pleasure, but the real pleasure comes from our karma, from our karmic imprints to be in the situation to be able to enjoy this pleasure. And if the enjoyment was really the nature of the object itself, then this object would always produce the same effect at different times for ourselves and also for other people.
But we know that in actual fact that something that we’re going to eat today we may not want to eat tomorrow. That what we like another person doesn’t like. We might like white wine and the other person likes red wine. We might be feeling sick tomorrow so that the food that we really feel is fantastic today doesn’t please us tomorrow. Of course, food is a very gross example in a way, but if we take this same thing to other examples and we can see it applies all across the board to everything, whether it’s cultural things, for instance a movie that we really enjoy this year, go back to see it next year and we wonder why we thought it was so great.
Or if it’s relationships, you know the relationship that was absolutely blissful last year is a cause of great suffering this year and so on. Our problem is that we expect these things to give us happiness and pleasure because it gives us happiness pleasure at one particular time, we expect it to continue to do so and we cling to the object. In actual fact, it isn’t in the nature of the object to be able to give this to us because these things are really empty of self existence and the happiness really comes from our being experiencing some sort of karmic result and so it’s the good karma that really brings these things about and we can continue to enjoy these things in fact if we practice Dharma the more we cut ourselves away from objects from clinging to these objects, the more we’ll experience true enjoyment and in fact we can have more and more enjoyment and in fact one reason why some beings, some people do actually practice, you might say, external renunciation cutting themselves away from external objects and trying to live a very simple life is because they actually realise that they find more happiness by living in this way, by working with their minds and that too much involvement with outside activities can for them just be a distraction from doing the practices that they realise are just bringing greater and greater happiness.
Of course you can actually be attached to meditation practice too if you’re just being attached to the bliss of meditation and not using it to gain insight. That’s a more subtle form of attachment. What we’re doing anyway is to try to understand how we have to gain this insight into the nature of saṃsāra, in other words, the nature of our mind and the way our mind projects onto these objects, and how we need to understand the true nature of phenomena, of existence, so as to attain freedom or liberation. In order to gain this insight, we have to engage in further practices beyond these basic practices of the small scope. These practice involve meditation.
So what Buddha taught was that as long as we’re in samsaric existence, we’re going to be experiencing suffering. The reason why we’ll be experiencing suffering and when we talk about suffering, we’re not just talking about gross suffering but we’re talking about also more subtle forms of suffering and that’s what we’ll be looking at partly today. This comes from the mind being under the control of two things: afflictions and karma or you could say another term is disturbing mental states and karma or another term that’s used sometimes is delusions which can be useful in a sense to call them delusions because they are a distorted mental state, a mistaken mental state. It’s not talking about hallucinations, it’s talking about our mind seeing things in a mistaken way. While we’re under the control of these afflictions, then we’re always going to be suffering.
And these these afflictions does anybody remember what the afflictions are? Yes. Mhmm. Right. That would these would be some of them, yes.
But yes, basically there are three three main categories. All of these things belong to the afflictive emotions. I’ll be going through them in more detail next week. Well, generally, we refer to it as being under under the influence of the three major poisonous minds of aversion, attachment and ignorance. That’s mainly referring to confusion.
Sometimes it’s translated as confusion. There’s another kind of ignorance which is being unable to see reality and that’s more subtle. In fact, when we can see reality correctly, when we can overcome that subtle ignorance, we’ll also be free of these poisonous mental states. But, essentially, it’s these three poisonous mental states that cause our problems and suffering. In actual fact there are some people who have gained direct insight into the meaning of reality but they still have the appearance of true existence when they come out of their meditation.
But they’re actually not falling under the control of these disturbing emotions anymore because they’re basically no longer subject to their power but they still have to practice to completely remove the tendencies of these disturbing emotions, the imprints of them. Basically, most of us as ordinary people were working to overcome our we have to start really with where we’re at which is the gross level of being under the control of disturbing emotions so we first of all have to start off with basically just trying to control the negative actions of our body speech and mind trying to avoid negative actions of our body speech and mind and to create positive actions and at the very least we can try to avoid committing non virtuous actions of body and speech and by doing that we create the basis to have a calmer mind a more peaceful state of mind which makes it easier for us then to engage in meditative practice so then we can go on and take further steps. So, anyway, basically, we’re we’re under the control of afflictions and karma, and our karma is what brings us the suffering, but the the karma is created under the control of these disturbing emotions and as long as we have these disturbing emotions then we’ll be creating under their influence we create various negative actions and we’ll continue to have have to experience karma particularly negative karmas so we also have good karmas of course and our good karmas are created under the influence of positive mental states.
We don’t want to think we’re just totally negative. We have also a number of positive mental states and it’s because we have these that we’re capable of developing them to become greater and to become perfected but while we’re still caught up within the bounds of saṃsāra our positive mental states are still under the influence of the subtle level of ignorance which is the lack of understanding of emptiness or the view of inherent existence. While we have this view of inherent existence, we can’t get beyond saṃsāra and even our good actions, virtuous actions, which are not totally deluded, which are valid in the sense that they’re performed under the influence of a valid understanding of karma. They’re valid to that extent but they’re still mistaken in the sense that they’re performed with a perception of inherent existence. We have to begin by purifying our negative karmas and accumulating these positive karmas and we also have to direct these positive karmas towards liberation on the Mahāyāna path towards enlightenment because otherwise these actions if they’re just performed without any particular motivation just bring about some sort of good karmic result which would be rebirth in the upper realms for instance it’s explained that we can be reborn in the realms of the gods where we have a lot of enjoyments and this is a fantastic sort of lifestyle but that’s not what really we want to aim for because it’s just used up it’s just like going on a holiday you spend all your money and then you have to come back and go back to the same worrying old job again so in fact they say that the gods use up all this good karma and then they probably fall back to the animal realm because they haven’t created while they’re in that realm they haven’t been engaging in spiritual practice and they’ve used up all their upper realm karma so whether you take these things literally or not, the message for us is that we will if we don’t direct our good actions, then they’ll only bring us worldly happiness which passes and doesn’t bring any lasting result.
As long as we’re also, even in these realms of pleasure, there’s still certain kinds of suffering. So as long as we’re in samsaric existence under the control of afflictions and karma, we’ll always have incomplete happiness and we’ll have to experience various kinds of suffering again and again. And so it’s important to understand that there’s no security while we’re in saṃsāra the only thing that can be guaranteed in saṃsāra is that it’s going to change So this is the nature of saṃsāra. Samsāra existence has what is called three seals or three characteristics. These three seals does anybody know what they are?
Some of the Theravadins would be able to tell us. Anybody been to a Theravadin meditation course? This is one of the teachings that’s particularly stressed in the Theravadin tradition. These characteristics of saṃsāra are suffering, impermanence and non self. Yes.
Non self. Or sometimes I said selflessness, but that term is a bit confusing in English. It means non self, so not unselfishness but non self, in other words lack of self identity or true self existence or true existence. Samsaric existence has these three characteristics. Suffering, we’ll be talking about some more.
Impermanence also. There’s two kinds of impermanence. Marshall, can you remember? What they are? Two kinds of impermanence?
Jane? No? I bet we know. Yes, you do know. Well, two levels you might say.
Gross and subtle. Yes, Very good. Yes. Yes. And the atoms are just whizzing around all the time, you know, and the mind is doing a similar thing.
It’s changing from moment to moment, although you can’t actually see the actual subtle impermanence. But by looking at the gross impermanence, you can deduce the subtle impermanence. Getting lines on your face. Yes. Yes.
That’s right. So it’s really neither positive or negative. In fact, it’s just the way things are. If we didn’t have this gross impermanence, then we wouldn’t be able to become enlightened if we didn’t have this subtle impermanence. Nothing would change.
In fact, wouldn’t operate. There’s logics that demonstrate when you study the more advanced sort of teachings like Madhyamaka Philosophy and so on. It’s explained how in fact the operation of everything depends on subtle impermanence, is pretty obvious when you think of it. On the other hand, we tend to cling to things as being lasting. Though logically it’s very easy to see that things are not lasting, we still cling to things and hope that they’ll last, although there’s absolutely no basis in reality for that hope.
It’s this clinging that leads to so many emotional problems unhappiness and essentially it’s this clinging that’s really the cause of saṃsāra and giving up clinging is what we have to do in order to liberate ourselves So it’s our ignorance grasping a true true true existence, the third of those three seals, that keeps us in bondage because it’s because we have this perception of true existence, which isn’t there at all. It’s a false perception. But we see true existence in these different objects that we cling to and that then we if we could see the lack of true existence, the selflessness of these objects, then then we wouldn’t cling to them. So it’s this clinging that keeps us in bondage, and what we have to do is to overcome that. So I’m starting at the end here and going backwards.
So this clinging to true existence is keeping us in bondage, so that’s the cause of suffering. And what keeps us also suffering is the afflictive emotions or the delusions and karma. So beyond because of our being under the influence of this subtle view of true existence, then we cling to these different objects, and this gives rise to the afflictive emotions of, first of all, of so that’s basically one level of ignorance the subtle level of ignorance then we have attachment to these objects we see them as being the cause of our happiness and we cling to them and then when our happiness is disturbed we also experience various different levels of aversion or various different forms of aversion such as anger, hatred towards others or towards situations that we see as disturbing our happiness. We can even get angry with ourselves. We can experience anxiety and fear and various different levels of boredom.
All of these things are aversion and they arise because of our attachment. We also create negativity out of our attachment. This leads to the extremes of greed and possessiveness and clinging attachment that can lead to such things as stealing and cheating, sexual misconduct, creating various kinds of problems for other people under the influence of our attachment. As a result of these things then we create negative karmas, negative actions which are going to bring us suffering so we have to work to overcome the basic cause of suffering these afflictive emotions and they can only be completely eradicated through developing this direct insight into emptiness to talking about emptiness is the term that’s used in the Madhyamaka philosophy. In the lower schools, the term that’s used is non self, which is a less subtle explanation.
We’ll probably be talking more I’ll probably be using the term non self. So these afflictive emotions can only be completely eradicated through direct insight into emptiness or into non self depending on which school you’re studying which has to be gained through study and through advanced meditative practice. So through study we understand the topic of emptiness as an intellectual study and emptiness is not something that can be asserted as an object. We can’t explain what emptiness is, we can only explain what it isn’t. It’s a negation, it’s a non affirming negation.
That means it’s negation that doesn’t assert affirm anything. All it does is negate. It doesn’t establish anything. There are some kinds of negations which are affirming negations. The example is a place with no mountains is a negation that affirms a plane.
Emptiness or selflessness is a non affirming negation. It only negates. What it negates is true existence. This is not negating existence, it’s not negating conventional existence, it’s important to understand this. I’m not going to go into in a lot of detail today because it comes up in a couple of weeks, but things do exist.
They exist conventionally but they don’t exist in the way that the view of true existence sees them as being existing. And this applies both to external phenomena and to our self, our body and mind. So The afflictive emotions can be completely eradicated only through this direct insight into emptiness, which has to be attained, first of all, through study and then through these advanced meditative practices, the understanding is converted into direct insight. It’s this direct insight that really liberates. This isn’t easy.
It involves a lot of practice. It involves having to accumulate a vast amount of merit and we have to be able to really dedicate ourselves to this practice in order to gain these insights. We have to have strong motivation to do this sort of work. The person who undertakes the practice of the medium scope has to be really strongly motivated. And so in order to undertake this practice and to carry it through, the greatest obstacle is our mistaken attachment to samsaric happiness, to seeing samsaric pleasures as being really good and as being perfect and really a true cause of true happiness.
What we have to do is begin by taking a look at what saṃsāra really is like, because we fall into these mistaken attitudes about samsaric good and samsaric pleasures by not looking deeply. This isn’t really difficult, it just requires that we have to stop looking at things as superficially as we have been doing and study and meditate on the real nature of saṃsāra, the suffering nature of saṃsāra. So I’m working backwards here. What we’re looking at now is the practice that we have to do. First of all, we have to think of undertaking this practice.
If we’re going to attain liberation, in other words, we first of all have to want to attain liberation, have to motivate ourselves. In order to do that, we have to understand the shortcomings of saṃsāra. This is something that we have to think about. Our first topic in this medium scope is just looking at the shortcomings of saṃsāra, convincing ourselves that samsaric happiness isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, or what we’ve been cracking it up to ourselves to be. Also of course, in this society, it’s not just from within ourselves but it’s very much reinforced by the external society every time we turn on television and see all those advertisements or whatever.
The topic we’re looking at is the suffering nature of saṃsāra and the idea isn’t to feel depressed and to feel that everything is terrible and to make ourselves miserable. Instead, what we have to do is understand our situation clearly because this is the reality of our situation, it’s the truth that we’re looking for, rather than the deception and mistaken view that we have been under. This is positive and wholesome because we need to understand our situation clearly so that we can go about changing it. What we’re looking at here is the first two noble truths, suffering the source or origin of suffering, so that we can understand that our situation is suffering and also what is causing this suffering so that we can understand then how to bring it about bring about this change in our situation which will bring about real happiness so it’s an extremely positive step to be moving toward bringing about real happiness, genuine happiness, and everlasting, uncontaminated, undiluted, unchanging. We can bring about happiness which doesn’t even have the slightest moment of suffering around happiness and it will be a happiness which will also make us extremely beneficial to others.
This is something that is really worthwhile bringing about. We’ve already had a look at the cause, which is the disturbing emotions, but I’m going to go into those in detail next week. This week we’re going to look at our suffering state itself. This is something that we need to look at and meditate because, on the whole, we prefer not to think about suffering. We’d rather avoid it.
Some of us started our Dharma practice by going to what we call the Kopan courses, these meditation courses that would be held by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa for a month at Kopan in Nepal. So during that month we would have very intensive teachings.