Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute evening session, Ven Margaret McAndrew teaches the practice of exchanging self for others—the meditation on equality between oneself and all sentient beings. She begins with a practical reframing: enemies become precious teachers of patience; there is no inherent enemy, only our perspective and disturbing emotions like anger and hatred. Moving through the eight disadvantages of self-cherishing and benefits of cherishing others, she builds toward tonglen, the giving-and-taking practice. McAndrew walks through the visualization in detail: breathing in others’ suffering as black smoke that strikes and disperses self-cherishing at the heart center, meditating on emptiness, and radiating out benefits to all sentient beings across the six realms. The session includes discussion on animal ethics and sentient beings’ essential role in attaining liberation and enlightenment.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 17 B 1999 10 14.mp3
UUID: d3fd1c5e-7d62-4631-b4be-1dfaa3e85ff9
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-10-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.6 minutes
Words: ~4,466
Sweet. Anyway, we’ll have to do another well, we we did we did this woman’s we did this woman’s course and talked about all these things one time. Maybe we should do another one. Well, I think that’s that’s that’s a really big issue and there’s nobody just trying to discuss it in a few words you know it’s something that people probably need to discuss a lot and go into and read about and so on. I read a very good book, Chris.
Do you remember that one I got out of the library? We haven’t actually got it here, but I got out of the local public library. I think it was women and Buddhism or something like that. That might be worth your reading. It’s in the local I don’t I don’t think it was.
No. It might have been. I’ve forgotten now. I should have written it all down. I actually passed it on to Liz and said maybe we should order this for the library.
But, anyway, yes, I thought it was rather good in the way it explores some of these issues. So I’ll have to look it up on the computer next time we go over hills, if you can remember. Okay. So anyway, this meditation of the equality of self and others. So some of the other ways that we can think about others.
You know, for countless lives, we’ve put ourselves first and harmed others and helped our friends, but this has this hasn’t got us anywhere except endless suffering and problems. Whereas if we can equalize ourselves with others and see others as what this means equalizing means seeing the happiness of others as being as important as our own happiness. Sometimes it’s called exchanging self for others. That might be a better term to use and that sometimes confuses people so they say how can I exchange myself for others? Does that mean I have to become others?
What it means is that you simply exchange the place where you’ve always put yourself and the place where you’ve always put others. In other words, we’ve always put ourselves first and and made ourselves the most important and what we’re trying to do is to change places with that so that we actually put others first and put ourselves as less important. So essentially, this doesn’t mean that we’re not caring about ourselves or or putting ourselves down or harming you know, being being prepared to harm ourselves so as to work for others or anything like that, but it just means that we start to see that there are all these others out there who are so much in need, we’re only one person. His Holiness the Dalai Lama says it can help to actually visualize yourself on one side, you know, of in of your field of vision, sort of like have a line down the middle of your field of vision, sort of thing, and put yourself on one side, and all the other sentient beings on the other side, and think which of these you visualize yourself, you know, in front of yourself, and you visualize yourself and all these other people, and think which would be more important to help that one person or help all these others.
And in fact, the point is that if you want to help others, if you want to help yourself, then the best way to help yourself is to help others. Because our psychology is just made that way, Our essential nature is just made that way, that the more self centered we are, the more harm we do ourselves. The more we cherish others, the more benefits we gain. It’s it’s funny. It’s really odd, but that’s the way it works.
And so his holiness, the Dalai Lama says, if you’re going to be self-cherishing, then be really self-cherishing in a big way and practice cherishing others. So for all these lives that we’ve been cherishing ourselves and putting ourselves first, it’s got us nowhere except continual suffering and problems. So if we cherish others then this brings happiness and peace and also instead of hating others and harming others then the person who was our enemy becomes our teacher. So we can come to see this person as being helpful and kind to us and actually being our teacher of patience. If we have somebody who gives us difficulties, difficulties, then instead of being angry with that person, if we can see them as being the opportunity to practice patience, they’re providing us with the opportunity to practice patience and who can we practice patience with except with somebody who makes things difficult for us we can’t practice patience with people who are kind to us who help us who are nice to us who are lovable and sweet we can’t practice patience with our pets when they’re cuddly and lovable we can’t practice patience with the holy beings who are so good to us and so on.
It’s with these people who who give us a hard time, so they’re really precious in that way. And when we actually develop patience and get the benefits of it, the person who’s developed some patience and really understands the rewards of patience to that person, then this teacher of patience is incredibly precious. And so, of course, once you start to see the enemy that way, then there is no enemy because it depends on our view. It doesn’t depend on their side. From their side, they might be still wanting to harm us, but from our side if we don’t see them as the enemy then there is no enemy of course this isn’t easy but we can start to practice that way and become more and more skillful at doing this sort of practice and the thing is that to somebody who who really has cultivated love and compassion towards towards the beings who would be like an enemy to them, know, who who would harm them, who who can see those beings with love and tolerance, then this person really can’t be harmed.
Because the worst thing that can be done to them is that they might be killed by that being, but if they’re not going to be if they if they’re not going to have bad karma, if they’ve only created good karma, then they can’t be sent to the lower realms. They can only have a good rebirth. And the nobody can send us to the to the lower realms except ourselves. So the real enemy is within ourselves and it’s the disturbing emotions and so if we’re attacking the outside enemy, this is mistaking the target. We’re wasting our energy and attacking the wrong target when we need to be working on the disturbing emotions and particularly anger and hatred.
And so if we can do this and give up, clinging attachment and hatred, then through this we can purify immense negative karma and accumulate tremendous merit. So it’s really worthwhile putting any amount of effort into into achieving this and the beings who are who help us to do it are beings that we can learn to cherish. Right. So I’m talking about what’s in the book. I’m not talking about what I do.
Do as I say, not I do. Do as I say, not do as I do. But yeah. Yes. And turn the other cheek and all that.
Yes. Well, if you really love the others, if you really care for them, then you won’t be patronizing. Patronizing comes out of arrogance and self-cherishing. Well, there is. Yes.
You learn it as I mean, you make mistakes. Of course, everybody makes mistakes. When we first try to do this sort of practice, we’re probably quite insufferable sometimes. When we don’t just lose it completely and sort of go to the other extreme and get angry and so on. But, I mean, you start to see where you are doing things wrong and every time you do make a mistake, you learn a bit from it.
And when when you see that you’ve done something right, then you learn something from that too. And that is quite subtle and yes. Children must be marvelous in that sense, but there’s always somebody around who’ll, you know, prick the balloon. Yes. But Yes.
Yes. Yes. Know what you mean. Yes and no. You don’t have to become a doormat.
It’s I mean, part of our compassion towards others can be to be firm with them when they need it. Of course, particularly with children, but also with other people. Sometimes the best way that you can deal with somebody who’s giving you a hard time is to really tell them you can’t get away with doing that, you know, but not in an angry way. Yes. Yes.
Well, love yes, she could be incredible when he showed the wrathful aspect. Oh, he was just intimidated. He was just awe inspiring. That’s the only word for it. And he could do it in a flash and it it was he wasn’t caught up in it it was just an aspect that he was putting on to deal with this particular person this particular situation and he changed in a flash you know he’d he’d deal with the situation that he’d immediately without a moment intervention be right back to his smiling jolly self again which is the difference between us and an enlightened being because we have all this emotion and all these sort of chemicals churning around in our system and so on whereas for them it’s just a case of skillful action But the point another point too is if we can’t be responsible for other people’s reactions to us, we do the best we can for our side, we take care of our own karma, we look at their reactions because we might be able to learn something from it, but there are some people who will always react to us negatively no matter what we do.
And that’s because of some sort of karma we’ve created towards them in the past. But we can’t necessarily change that situation in the present where they are going to be negative towards us and there’s probably no skillful way that we can stop that negativity because we find that as you become more skillful there will be a lot of situations where you don’t where you stop contributing your own negativity then the other person stops putting their bit of negativity into and you find that the situation becomes a lot easier. You find that many many times that will happen but there’ll always be times when it doesn’t happen where you can’t affect the other person’s negativity. Even Lama Yeshe had some people who would be very very negative in their reaction to him. You think how is it that these people can react to Lama Yeshe like that?
How can they be so unseeing? But there are some people like that. And Lama Yeshe himself used to say nothing to do when the heart is like stoned. He just said that, you know, nothing to do. What to do?
And he would not waste his energy trying to overcome somebody’s resistance who wasn’t ready for it. If you think it’s coming from self-cherishing, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Of course, if if people feel that you’re really genuinely concerned about them, then they don’t necessarily they might be satisfied with that. Often people are trying to stir you up to anger but what they’re really looking for is just to have their concerns validated. Sometimes, for instance, you might apologize and say look, you know, I can see that I really caused you a problem there. I’m sorry and that might be might solve the situation.
Whereas, you know, if they’re really nasty to you and you come back with anger, that’s just going to create more anger. And that’s not necessarily being self effacing, it just depends on the situation. On the other hand, sometimes the best thing you can do is to just go away. You don’t have to stick around and listen to what they’re saying on another situation maybe maybe what they’re really looking for is to sort of thresh things out to and maybe sometimes you have to do that too, particularly with, you know, people that you’re closely involved with emotionally sometimes you have to sort of find out what’s really bothering them and there’s a result I mean every situation is essentially different and this is why we tend to be unskillful if we are dealing with things in a stereotype sort of way and as you develop more you tend to be a bit more open to the other person and less stereotyped and see more possibilities. Part of our problem with our disturbing emotions is that they tend to only give us one way of reacting, you know, either favorably to the person or with with anger.
Whereas perhaps there could be half a dozen different possible approaches to the situation and you start to I suppose a good psychologist could also help with some of these techniques too. But you do start to see more ways of dealing with any given situation. And this is where holy beings are sort of particularly skillful that they always have an individual approach to each individual sentient being and that’s why they say that part of Buddha’s skillful, you know, sort of stock of skillful means is that they understand the karma and this the psychological needs of each and every individual being and can deal with the individuals according to their individual needs. So I will do a little bit of meditation on that anyway, just a short meditation of just reflecting on the equality of of self and others, of how we all have the same nature. There’s no particular reason to feel that our own welfare is more important than the welfare of others.
And so then we have to look at how we’re overcoming our self-cherishing by which is the big obstacle to cherishing others. And so the next meditation is to meditate on the the disadvantages of self-cherishing. When we’re talking about self-cherishing, self-cherishing is very different to positive self love. I’ve actually got a little article by Lama Zopa Rinpoche on loving yourself which Helen Manos got or George Benos got off the internet.
So I almost brought it in tonight, pity I didn’t. But it’s interesting because Lama Zopa Rinpoche is talking about this issue of loving yourself and how important it is to love yourself and so on. But I think for us as Westerners often this is particularly important because our society tends to make us have a low regard for ourselves. And actually cherishing others doesn’t doesn’t interfere with your self love or your self regard, but it does interfere with your self-cherishing, which is this sort of self centered attitude. So if you don’t understand this immediately, I think if you just think about it and keep on checking, eventually start to see it more clearly.
It’s about putting yourself higher than others. Putting your own happiness before others. Yes. All that sort of thing. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Venous. Yes.
Yes. Yes. But I think that’s the sort of thing that you would note. Yes. Because yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. It’s yes. And it’s sort of a self centered attitude that’s always sort of focused in on yourself.
That’s the problem. It creates all the it creates all that problems with looking at everything from the point of view of what its effect is on our selves rather than and it becomes very tense and anxious and in fact putting ourselves down comes from this ego grasping of this self centered attitude. It’s a form of self centeredness of selfish concern. I think what was expression I’m learning? Yes.
She used to use. He used a very vivid expression. Oh, yes. He he used to say, your you people are too self sensitive. He used to say, it’s this being self sensitive is what’s creating your problems.
So it that’s quite a different thing to loving yourself or having regard for yourself or I think basically self acceptance. Self acceptance is very, very important. Might be a question of what what your trying tells them might be alright to and that’d be perfectly right, but that doesn’t it simply might be important for them to work it out for themselves. Know? No matter how stupid it seems to you, it might be something that’s really important for them to, yeah, to to do it in their own time.
Yeah. Anyway, yes, lots of different possibilities. Yeah. It’s easy to talk to it to other people. But when you’re caught up in your own problems, of course, everybody else can be giving you good advice and you just can’t see it.
So, anyway, yes. The disadvantages of cherishing our self. I was supposed to get through three or four different things tonight. Yes. Okay.
So, page one hundred and fifteen. Yes, anyway, we have to meditate on these things. Maybe I’ll just read them out of the book and you can meditate on them as I read them. They’re pretty straightforward. Probably mentioned some of them already.
So there’s eight different points mentioned here. So the self-cherishing conception. First of all, the first disadvantage is that it’s kept me locked in the prison of saṃsāra for numberless lives since beginningless time, compelling me to bear the sufferings of the six realms as much as possible. Secondly, it’s kept me in ignorance, continuously obsessed by countless problems. Thirdly, it’s prevented all opportunities of reaching enlightenment.
Fourthly, it’s stopped me from receiving any other realizations. Fifthly, has prevented the understanding and practice of Dharma. Sixthly has not even allowed the enjoyment of temporal happiness. Seventh, will continually destroy me in the future as it has done in the past. And eighth, it changes helpful living beings and inanimate objects into enemies which destroy me.
And there’s a quotation from Śāntideva. How much suffering and fear, how many harmful things are in existence. If all arise from clinging to the I, what should I do with this great demon? And so following that meditation, we have contemplating the good qualities of cherishing others. And so there are many benefits, in fact infinite benefits, from cherishing others.
It brings all the good qualities. So wanting to cherish others is based on good reasons. It brings us all sorts of benefits which we can never gain through self centeredness. Self centeredness brings us endless problems and cherishing others only brings peace and happiness and all these good qualities, beginning from our precious human rebirth and right up to enlightenment. Not only that, but we should cherish sentient beings because we depend on them for all these good things that they that we’ve achieved such as the precious human rebirth and for attaining so in order to attain the precious human rebirth, as I already mentioned, we need the karma of following moral conduct and also we need to have observed generosity in order to have good conditions.
So we have to have at least this basic training in morality and generosity. And also, in order to achieve liberation, we depend on the sentient beings in order to complete the three trainings of moral conduct, concentration and wisdom. The trainings of concentration and wisdom are based on the first training of moral conduct, which has sentient beings as its object. And so we depend on sentient beings for the attainment of liberation and for the attainment of enlightenment. That totally depends on sentient beings.
In order to become enlightened, first have to become a Bodhisattva. In order to become a Bodhisattva, you have to develop universal love and compassion and the object of your universal love and compassion is all sentient beings. And so with this practice of of cherishing sentient beings, all these good qualities are achieved. They’re still animals. You still have to be careful not to step on the ants and Well, they weren’t they creating much good karma, were they?
They were just totally ignorant. You can’t avoid bad karma, and the only way that you can practice morality is through knowledge. Oysters stuck on a rock, not creating much negative karma but, you know, That’s right. In Bali, it was a religious ritual. You had to have a you had to have a cock fight before you could have a barong dance to concentrate the ground.
Yeah. I mean, I think people are a bit hypocritical or a bit over emotional or something when they get fussed about a cockfight or something when, you know, they don’t make any fuss or about hundreds of sheep going to the abattoir. I heard that the thing that what they do to hens is really awful. They turn they sort of put them upside down on a conveyor belt and they just sort of go on this end of this conveyor belt one after the other sort of to be to be slaughtered. And that’s not what I’m saying.
Oh yes, that’s that’s appalling to read about it. Oh, well, look. I’ve I’ve spent hours and hours of my time in my childhood studying the and their interactions, and they need plenty of space to run around to be happy. It’s obvious. Yes.
Yes. I think anybody who’s working for chook liberation is real is really doing something worthwhile. You know? Whereas I think I mean, I’m I’m not for cockfights, mind you, but I think people put in tremendous amount of energy into things that don’t, you know well, problem with cockfights is that they put a spur or a metal spur on them so they kill each other. But still, you know, it’s all over in a second and they’re well cared for up until that moment and so on.
So it’s Yes. Yes. I mean, the whole concept is pretty gruesome to me, but I I think it’s a I think it’s trivial compared to to to what we do. we do to thousands wholesale every day. And yes.
And then people, the tourists and some go over to Nepal and make a tremendous fuss about the Durga Puja and all the buffalo sacrifice in the street and so on. If these people could go into an abattoir and see what happens in and there, but why? You know, why should they make a fuss about people following a particular religious custom that requires them to do this? It’s a mistaken religious custom but still, you know, our people have no right to be superior about it at all. When we when our people, when we do this kind of thing just totally out of self-cherishing and greed.
Not even for a higher purpose, you know, a higher purpose even a mistaken one. Okay then. So we’re yes. So I don’t think we’re going to have time to do a tonglen tonight, but the next one is the benefit of cherishing others more than yourself which we’ve just talked about. So maybe we’ll just do a little meditation on that, thinking of how all good things, all benefits, particularly the great attainments of liberation and enlightenment come about, particularly enlightenment which of course brings the greatest possible happiness to its possessor as well as enabling that person to bring welfare to all sentient beings.
So this is the great benefit of cherishing others more than oneself. So then to complete the practices, the next step would be to go on and do the practice of giving and taking which most of you are are already familiar with and this is the imaginary practice of visualizing that you’re taking away the sufferings from other sentient beings and taking it on yourself, but you put that suffering onto your self-cherishing. So you visualize the self-cherishing as being like a black lump at the heart center in the middle of your chest and then the suffering of others is imagined in the form of black smoke and pollution and the meditation is combined with the breathing. You imagine that you breathe in this black smoke and it comes down and hits this self-cherishing and blows it up like a bomb and completely disperses it so that it’s all completely gone. And then the just for a moment, then you you briefly you meditate on emptiness, on the emptiness of self existence of of all these phenomena.
And then, out of the emptiness, you can actually arise visualizing yourself as a Buddha and think that you’re giving out all your your good things. So we’ve taken off all the bad things from the sentient beings so that’s their negative karmas and also their sufferings and their problems and the obstacles and hindrances to their practice and so on. And then we send out all our good things which is our good karma, our realizations, our happiness and all our possessions and so on. We send all these out to all the suffering sentient beings and that can be made into quite an elaborate meditation so you can go through all the different realms and send the sentient beings what they need in each realm, realm by realm, sending the sentient beings in the hot hells, cooling nectar and cooling breezes and so on, and send the the beings in the cold, the hell’s warmth and then you send the hungry ghosts food and clothing and so on and right up to the human realms and even the god realms need certain subtle things to make their happiness complete and so on and finally you think that all of these sentient beings through receiving these merits and so on achieve human bodies and then they achieve the different stages of the path and achieve enlightenment.
So you have to think that you’ve enlightened these sentient beings. So I won’t go into a lot of detail and actually lead that meditation tonight. So maybe we can do it next week or maybe you’ll read the book and do it at home. And this is the practice to really train yourself very thoroughly in the practice of giving up self-cherishing and cherishing others it’s very strong practice it was originally a secret practice it was only taught to those it was only known to those who were considered to be suitable recipients for this practice. Nowadays, it’s taught generally as part of the graduated path teachings.