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 explores what truly distinguishes a Dharma practitioner from a worldly person. Through dialogue with students, she introduces the Dromtönpa story—a man who circumambulates stupas, meditates, and recites sutras until Dromtönpa finally reveals the answer: real practice means renouncing concern for the eight worldly concerns. She then examines why attachment to external things (money, beauty, possessions) creates suffering, while karma, not circumstances, determines happiness. She illustrates with stories of beautiful glass lost in a cyclone and discusses how practitioners can appreciate beauty without enslavement to attachment. The session concludes with the three scopes framework, positioning concern for good rebirth as the foundation of Buddhist practice. For students with Buddhist background or new to these teachings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 37 3S 1998 06 25.mp3
UUID: 7d2b71b6-0261-4fe9-a52b-7a7cda43698c
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-06-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.4 minutes
Words: ~4,961
Where were we up to today, hmm? Last week, we were talking about some lamrim training points because so many of you weren’t here last week, so we didn’t follow the usual structure. I couldn’t quite remember where I’d finished off the week before and I couldn’t find my notes but I think we were up to the point of having looked at the difficulty of obtaining the precious human rebirth. I’ve taken it as if we were up to that point and gone on from there. So we’ve been looking at that topic and the idea was to come to the conclusion that we have to strive to attain the various goals that you can attain by making good use of the precious human rebirth so as not to waste the opportunity, seeing that this is a very precious opportunity that gives the possibility of achieving many great things and that if we take advantage of it then we can, if not attain these great things in this lifetime, at least get well started on the way.
In order to make use of our precious human rebirth, this leads us to the thought of having the intention of practicing Dharma. In other words, the whole tendency of the teachings on the precious human rebirth whether the precious human rebirth gives us the opportunity to put Dharma into practice and to bring about Dharma goals So if we’re going to make good use of our precious human rebirth that involves practicing Dharma and working towards achieving the things that Dharma teaches us how to achieve. So then this brings us up to the question of what is Dharma practice and what is it that distinguishes a religious person or a Dharma practitioner from a non religious person. So somebody won’t have a stab at that. Yeah.
Well, that’s sort of it. But, really, that’s what distinguishes a a a Buddhist from a non-Buddhist. But we’re looking at it here in in a broader sense. Sorry. I didn’t I didn’t catch either of you.
Come. Age before you You you mean what what should distinguish us who would like to think that we’re at least doing something about it? Yes. What yes. How how can we tell if we’re engaging in Dharma practice?
What distinguishes Dharma practice in the broadest sense from worldly practice. Well, that’s the result, not the cause. What? Now there’s just one particular point I’m trying to get at. But That’s certainly getting close to it.
That’s actually the definition of a Dharma practitioner. In Tibetan, it’s called nangpa, which means inner being, or just insider, I think is a more literal translation. And that refers to the fact that in Dharma practice you’re more concerned with what’s going on inside than with what’s going on outside. But there’s one particular point that relates to the three scopes maybe yes. Oh, yes.
Well, that all comes into it. But anyway it’s doing things balance rather than Yeah. Well, that that actually Yes. I think Okay. No problem.
Okay. I’m not going I’m not here to keep you guessing on. I just wanted to see if somebody could come up with it. The point is that the least definition of somebody who can be said to be practising Dharma or to be a religious person is that they’re concerned with their future lives. This is from the Buddhist context, of course.
A lot of people might say, Well, don’t believe in future lives, but I still consider myself a spiritual person because I try to help others and so on. That’s not actually in the technical definition, but I do think that actually helping others, giving up selfish concern for yourself is Lama Yeshe used say that somebody who does this, even if they don’t know anything about Buddhism, that person is really practicing Dharma. But technically, the explanation that comes in the graduated path is that the very least degree of concern that you can have the least degree of aspiration you can have if you’re to call yourself Dharma practitioner, is that at least you have to care about your future lives to see that working for your future lives is more important than working for the concerns of this life. A worldly person, somebody who’s aiming at the goals of this life, is technically a worldly person no matter what their external activities are. So even if they’re going along to listen to teachings or if they’re making generosity or whatever, if they’re doing this with a mind that’s just looking at the results for themselves in this lifetime from these actions then that doesn’t make the person a religious person.
There’s a story about that, actually. Do you know the story about the oh, it’s about a Tibetan man, anyways. Something about Dromtönpa, who’s one of the great Tibetan gurus of the path, used to see this man walking around the stupa all the time. So he used to say to him, walking around the stupa is very good, but it wouldn’t be better to practice Dharma. And then he thought, walking around the stupa is a Dharma action, what does he mean?
So then he thought about it a bit and he thought, Oh, I should practice meditation. So he went and practiced meditation for a while and then Dromtönpa came along and said, What are you doing? He said, Oh, you know, I’m meditating. I’m doing some practice or other. And Dromtönpa said, Oh, it’s good to do this sort of practice reciting mantras or whatever meditating but wouldn’t it be better to practice Dharma and so the man thought oh what should I do maybe I should be reciting Sutras so he went off and recited Sutras and Dromtönpa came along again and said It’s very good to recite sutras, but wouldn’t it be better to practice Dharma?
And this chap was getting a bit sick of it by this stage, so he said, What do you mean by practicing Dharma? I’ve been trying all these different things. What do you mean by Dharma practice? And Dromtönpa said, renounced concern for the eight worldly dharmas. So, that’s the, the the whole essence that distinguishes the Dharma practice from non Dharma practice.
And the worldly person spends their life focused on the results they’re going to get in this lifetime. And they’re striving all the time after worldly pleasures and satisfaction. Whereas the dharma practitioner contemplates the fact that after this life there are future lives and they see that just looking after this life is unsatisfactory. The more they think about it, the more they see that it’s important to work for the future lives and it comes to seem more important to work for the future lives than to work for this life. So their focus gets shifted onto future lives.
Because they just start to see that focusing on this life is very, very unsatisfactory. So you might think what’s wrong with this you know what’s wrong with wanting to get the things that people this life people want to get in this life for instance some of the goals people might be trying to get is money not wealth or maybe just financial security. We want things like health, good relationships, a certain degree of pleasure and relaxation and so on. You might say what’s wrong with trying to get these things? Does anybody have that thought?
Yes. Okay. That’s a good thought. I think that really comes into it. We’re talking here about taking care of our future lives, but really, if we’re practicing Dharma, it also enables us to live much more in the moment, to be happy the moment, rather than placing our expectations of happiness always in the future when we get something.
And then when we get that something, we want something else, or else we don’t get the things so we’re disappointed. The nature of saṃsāra and of worldly things is that they don’t give the satisfaction that we look for. The whole point is that it’s not the things themselves. There’s nothing wrong with money, there’s nothing wrong with having money, and nothing wrong with enjoying money and the same thing with relationships with the sorts of pleasures that don’t harm other people. All of these things health of course you know is very good.
All of these things are good things to have in themselves. The whole point is the attitude of our mind. So it comes back to the inner experience, not the external things, but the inner state of mind. And it’s having attachment to these things, being attached to the thought of having them, whether they’re things that we have now that we’re attached to holding onto or are there things that we hope to have that we’re pursuing. It’s this attitude of attachment, clinging, grasping, craving that creates the problems, and it’s not the things themselves.
If we can enjoy these things virtuously, then there’s no problem and if we can manage to keep our mind in the dharma then we don’t have to renounce everything, give everything up, we can continue to have the normal things that are considered to be the needs of this life but we don’t place too much importance on them. Some of these things we need to have anyway to be able to continue our Dharma practice so the whole point is to change the focus of the mind. If we’re earning our living just with the thought of the worldly benefits of our wage or salary or whatever and our position in society that comes as a result of this job then that becomes worldly activity whereas if we’re thinking of using our life for Dharma practice and seeing that we need this work in order to support ourselves to maintain ourselves in healthy form in this lifestyle to be able to use our life for the practice of Dharma then it becomes a Dharma activity and of course if we’re thinking that we might be able to help others through our work then whether through the work itself or through what we earn from the work, then it’s something that’s even better.
It becomes quite meaningful. It’s not the way it looks from the outside that matters, it’s the way we approach these different things in our life and the inner attitude that we have towards them. So of course it’s not so easy really, is it? Because clinging and grasping is very strong in us. We’re always clinging to this one thing after another.
But if we can try to reduce this attitude, then it it will be a big help to us. Yes, it would be. Yes. You’d have to be careful not to express Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Might be possible to cut attachment that way sometimes by giving away things that we feel that we’re attached to if we can do without them. On the other hand, then sometimes you just think, oh, I wish I hadn’t. Yes.
Can’t see much point in having horrible looking things around you. I used to admire her Inta McKim’s house, actually. Had an doesn’t any of you here ever visit Inta McKim’s house? The Langri Tangpa Centre in Brisbane? She died last year, yes.
But she was very fond of beautiful things. So she had quite a few beautiful things in her house, but she said that she always used to just were just a few she didn’t want to have a lot of possessions but she just wanted to have a few beautiful things that would inspire her and to make the surroundings beautiful and she said she had some things like beautiful old Chinese vases and things like that that she just collected carefully over the years and apart from that her house was quite simple anyway yes everybody sort of has to work out for themselves what it means to be working with with avoiding attachment. And for some people, might mean cutting your hair off and going to meditate in a cave like Milarepa. But for most of us, it does it doesn’t. So mainly, what we have to do is just look at the situation we’ve got now.
For most of us, the situation we’re in now is the situation we’re meant to be in at the moment, and it’s just a question of working with that and making use of it in the best way. So problem is that, first of all, we’re attached to these things. It gives us a big problem with attachment. It increases our attachment. It also causes us to spend a lot of time and energy on these things.
While we’re spending all this time and energy on pursuing these worldly goals, we don’t have time and energy left for the Dharma practice. Also, the whole point is that when we’re pursuing worldly goals, they just don’t bring the result that we’re looking for in them. We’re looking for happiness, of course, but these worldly things can’t bring real lasting happiness because it’s just not in the nature of these things. The only thing that can bring us real lasting happiness is within our own minds. And if we’re always looking at external things, external objects, external conditions, then we’re going to experience dissatisfaction and various different problems because of the uncertain nature of saṃsāra, the changing nature of saṃsāra.
There’s nothing that can be relied on in the way of external objects, and these the cause of happiness is not in these things. If it was in these things, then the more we had of them, the better it would be. But if we set our mind on something, generally the more we get of it, the less it brings satisfaction. Then also if we have our minds too set on worldly goals we might be drawn into creating negative karmas in order to get what we want And this is not only failing to bring real happiness, but it’s creating the cause of suffering because it’s actually doing the opposite to what really brings happiness. If we’re following worldly goals, then we’re not really working in accordance with the natural laws of what brings about happiness and what brings about suffering we’re seeing the happiness coming from the object the happiness doesn’t come from the object at all if we understand the natural laws of the way things work the way happiness and suffering works we understand that it comes from karma, from good karma.
And if we have happiness, talking about samsaric happiness, of course, not talking about transcendental happiness, but just talking about ordinary worldly happiness this doesn’t come from pursuing an object and getting the object but it comes from good karma that we’ve created formerly and the object is involved but that’s the condition not the actual cause of our happiness the happiness has to really come from the karma and then when we encounter the various objects that give us pleasure then that coming together of the object and the karma produces an experience of pleasure or happiness and in the same way the objects of our suffering the cause isn’t really in the object but in our negative karma connecting with that particular object so that when our sense organs connect with these particular objects and we experience some kind of suffering or other and we’re always going to be connecting with various different objects we can’t avoid objects of suffering and we can’t always stay with the objects of happiness so we’re going to have to work with the and any even if we do our minds change so what we have to do is work with the real cause of happiness and suffering and that means understanding karma and working for our future lives in particular because it’s a fact of karma that you don’t usually see the results in this lifetime.
There are some instances, for instance, sometimes people who have life threatening illnesses are advised to do practices such as perhaps certain long life practices and also things like saving the lives of animals and in this way they can create the karma to extend their life. These things can sometimes work but in general most of our karma isn’t going to be experienced. The karmas that we create in this life aren’t going to be experienced in this lifetime we can’t look for that but we can look for them to be experienced in future lifetimes and that’s something that’s definitely going to come about so if we start to work in accordance with karma now we can start to create the causes to have lots of happiness in the future and to avoid these kinds of sufferings. This is taking a fairly long term view, but in fact the more good energy we build up in this lifetime, the more we can start to experience some results even in this lifetime. And this will be something that you’ll first of all just start to experience more peace and less disturbance in your mind when you encounter the various different objects of attachment and aversion if you just train the mind not to see these things being so important but just train the mind to have an equal attitude towards these things and that brings more happiness more peace of mind less of the agitated state of mind that’s always grasping at immediate satisfaction, immediate happiness or even just soon in this lifetime but just can sit back and take things as they come a bit more this will bring about a great change in our state of mind generally I’m sure a lot of you have experienced this already so I’m not telling you anything that you don’t know already we might be still reaping various negative karmas in the sense of having to encounter problems and so on, but as we accumulate more good karma, then we’ve got more cause of happiness coming up all the time.
I really don’t know. It seems like with your Dharma practice it seems to go in sort of fits and starts it seems like you can go through a period where you seem to be really struggling with everything and then you sort of hit a nice plateau where everything seems smooth and serene and you think oh lovely, you know I’ve sort of dealt with all those problems and it goes along like this for quite a while and then you might expect that you’ll have some more struggles coming up again in the future but each time you go through one of these sort of struggle sessions you sort of learn something from it so the whole point is not to get attached to those sort of smooth plateaus but I do notice in my own experience that the sort of smooth plateaus seem to be coming more and more of the time, and less of the ups and downs. Also, general level of happiness seems to have increased, but not in vast quantities, but just a gradual creeping process. On the other hand, perhaps that’s just because I’m experiencing one of these plateaus at the moment and I might be heading for a real downer.
People are being nice to me and sometimes I think, it’s so easy now because everybody’s being nice to me but if people were to start being unpleasant to me like I used to experience then I probably would be just as downcast as I used to be so in that sense, I’m just sort of wrapped in good karma in the sense that I’m experiencing good circumstances. Yes. Well, I’m not saying she wasn’t attached to them, but her attitude was that she couldn’t live without beautiful things around her. And it was something that, you know, she was like an offering to the she could think of the gurus and something that inspired her that made her feel happy so it’s good to have beautiful things around and to have an altar where you put beautiful things and so on and this way you’re actually transforming attachment if you get too attached to the beautiful things and try to just accumulate more and more then that’s just going to lead to more dissatisfaction and more attachment so you sort of have to watch out for that collector, the magpie mentality. But to have a beautiful it’s good for the mind to have Oh, Lama used to emphasise how important it is to have a clean, tidy place to live and to meditate because that’s good for the mind and I think particularly if you’re a lay person it’s good to carry it a step further and think that it’s alright to have a few things around that you think are beautiful it’s not so hard in this day and age so it’s a question of not being able to have things you know this day and age most people need to have their own house and their own car and a sort of decent wardrobe of clothes and so on It’s, it’s not that’s not the problem.
Chop it in half this way how I cope. You know? Then what would I do with these puffs that I’m not a good seller, but it took me a long time to to try and, you know, get perfect to fix this fit this box. But, actually, it was quite good to do it to him. Because now he’s staying on it.
And I’ve been to buy another altar, but it’s it’s like he’s saying, okay. You don’t know how attached you get to these things even if it’s you’ve done the thing. It’s probably good to be able to give it away because, you know, everything was just so special. You know, everything was the right size and everything was made Really good exercise to manage that. Yes.
That’s a bit like a suggestion when when the Arabs Yeah. Yeah. Give things away. Yeah. Well, you realize how attached, you know, you get to these things, and I wonder how far you go.
You know, you go really overboard, you know, making the most beautiful, which is wonderful to do. I really enjoyed it, but Hold on. That’s great, yes. I know a couple who live near Chenrezig Institute and the lady at one stage had been very attached to collecting glass. She had a marvelous glass collection while they were living in Darwin at the time of Cyclone Tracy.
They not only lost all their glass their whole house, they were lucky to escape with their lives, had the most horrific experience, but she said it was the best thing that ever happened to them because then they just sort of considered their situation afterwards and they said, we’re lucky we’re still alive and healthy and we’ve got each other and the rest of it doesn’t matter and they just sort of started off afresh which was pretty amazing for a middle aged couple I thought and they eventually came to Queensland and now they come to Chenrezig Institute regularly. So Anyway, I’m not quite sure where I’ve got to. But that doesn’t doesn’t matter. I won’t be attached to to being in the right place. So but, anyway, the the whole point is that it’s not these external things that are the problem, but it’s just trying to not be too focused on the things this life.
And if we’re focused on the things of this life, then we don’t meet the definition of a Dharma practitioner. So the reason why we have to be more focused on our future lives, as is explained in the Graduated Path teachings, we already went through the lower suffering realms a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about the precious human rebirth, so I won’t go into detail about the lower suffering realms again. No, no, that’s not the way to look at it. The whole way is that it tells us in the teachings, Some people find it a bit hard to accept these explanations about the lower suffering realms, but at least we can look at the animal realms and we can see that the animal realms definitely exist. It’s not so hard to imagine that it wouldn’t be such a big step down to be reborn as a cat or a dog or something like that, let alone other kinds of animals.
The point is that there are all these lower suffering realms and we don’t want to go there. We don’t want to get reborn in this sort of situation. Even if we’re born in the human realm, we don’t want to have a particularly suffering kind of human life. We have to think about how we’re going to avoid these things. But, in fact, we’ve already got many karmas that could take us to these kinds of realms, to these kinds of rebirths, and that can bring about a lot of suffering in our future lives.
So we have to take action about this and that’s why we have to look at our present situation and why we need to practice Dharma this is the lowest level of thought for practicing Dharma so of course some of you are starting to think doesn’t Dharma practice mean that we have to work for liberation to get out of saṃsāra Eventually. Okay. So, of course, because you’ve all had the Dharma teachings, you know that we’re trying to attain liberation and enlightenment. We’re not just working for a better rebirth. So, of course, this person this is getting into the three scopes now.
So this is talking about the person of small scope. And this person, of course, knows that liberation has to be attained, that Samsāra is assuming that they know something about the Buddhist teachings at all. They do understand that there is a need to get out of saṃsāra, but at this particular stage they’re not very focused on that. They’re focused on the idea that they could get reborn in the lower suffering realms and they’re desperate to do something to avoid that. They’re very eager to make sure of their their good rebirth next time around.
Excuse me. And to be able to keep on achieving fortunate rebirths, not to fall back to the lower suffering realms. So, this is what is considered to be the lowest or the smallest aspiration that counts as religious practice, and if the person is focused on things of this life, then that doesn’t count as religious practice at all. So why is this? What’s the difference here?
Both of these people are considering their own welfare, they’re both looking for happiness. What’s the difference between somebody who perhaps makes generosity with the sort of the welfare of this life, getting some sort of reward for themselves in this life and somebody who makes generosity with the thought of receiving a future rebirth why is one not considered to be a dharma level of thought and the other is. So what what you’re saying is that the well, not necessarily at this level. The person could be still thinking of their own individual liberation when they make this act of generosity. They might be doing it more with the sort of accumulating merit for themselves than with the sort of helping the other person.
That’s a possibility here. But it could still count as a religious action if they’re thinking of their future lives. Yes, that’s it. It’s based on a correct knowledge of karma. Oh dear, I forgot to get the lollies.
Was planning to have some Jaffas the other night, didn’t have those either, because we went to the pictures and we were saying that you have to drop out Jaffas and roll them down the aisle. Sue and Hillary were going to do that, but then they thought it wouldn’t be respectful when we were watching a film about his holiness. So, anyway, the whole point is that Buddha taught us to attain liberation and enlightenment, not just better rebirth, but still it’s considered to be within the scope of Dharma motivation, to be concerned for better rebirth. And that is because if you’re concerned with your future lives, then that’s actually in accordance with that means working with karma. It’s in accordance with with the teachings.
To focus on future lives and understanding that you have to work skillfully with karma in order to achieve that, then you’re actually doing something that’s going to be effective, whereas if you’re pursuing worldly goals then you’re not even using effective methods, assuming that the underlying thing you’re trying to attain is happiness. Whatever worldly goals you’re pursuing, your real goal is to attain happiness, and if you try to attain happiness through worldly methods, then you’re not understanding the right way to bring about happiness. Yes. Yes, that’s right. What it means is that if you’re working for a happiness of this life, then that tends to just lead to focusing on externals, whereas if you’re looking for happiness in your future life, it means looking at the mind and working with karma.
So that’s going to bring results because you’ll be creating the cause for happiness and avoiding causes for suffering, whereas if you’re focused on worldly goals, you’re more likely to get involved in creating more cause for suffering if you get too caught up in worldly goals, if if you become too much caught up in attachment.