Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Venerable Margaret McAndrew uses the rope-and-snake metaphor to explain how we project a false, permanent self onto what is actually the conventional, changing self. She shows how this fundamental misunderstanding generates the six root delusions—ignorance, anger, attachment, pride, doubt, and false views—which keep us in saṃsāra. Walking through the Four Noble Truths, she distinguishes the gross obstacles to individual liberation (the goal of the Hīnayāna path) from the subtle obscurations that additionally block full Buddhahood (the Mahāyāna path). She then outlines the Three Higher Trainings—ethical conduct, concentration, and direct wisdom of emptiness—as the antidote, explaining how emptiness practice cuts through these layers of delusion to reach the root of saṃsāra. Calibrated for practitioners drawn to philosophical engagement with Dharma teachings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 42 LR 41 1998 07 16.mp3
UUID: bc95fb5b-64f1-478e-983e-3d4d824b36b6
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-07-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~5,331
These are very damaging to us because we create so much bad karma under the influence of these. And in fact, anger and hatred is a very just the mental state of anger and hatred by itself is a very harmful mental state. And then pride. Again, we we often get the question people saying, isn’t pride a good thing? Isn’t it good to have, you know, to have self some pride in yourself?
And this kind of thing, doesn’t it keep you from doesn’t it help you to live a good life and to avoid doing bad things or letting yourself go and so on? So of course, the answer to that is that that’s talking about a different kind of pride. What we’re talking about here is harmful pride, which puts yourself first and doesn’t see other people as being important, but sees yourself as being the most important. The the Tibetan word is nga rgyal, which has quite an interesting translation. It means something like I the king or, you know, or the ruler or something.
Know? Rgyal means something like ruler. So sort of seeing yourself as being being most important. So it’s really referring to a sort of arrogant pride. And so when I’m when you’re talking about the positive aspect of pride, think the term self respect is a good way to refer to that, and that is something that’s very positive.
I think there’s a slight misunderstanding there. The relative self or the conventional self is all there is. We tend to project on the basis of that conventional self, which is labeled on what’s called the five aggregates, the body and the mind. On top of that, we project some sort of permanent, everlasting, concrete, unchanging self, which we see as being truly existent, which doesn’t exist. In relation I asked her, should I be proud of Yes.
We do have this self image, and that’s part of the problem. For instance, you know, we we have the feeling that we’ll always be the same, and then we get really surprised when we find ourselves changing. This is part of it. And we we also have this idea of ourselves being the person who we are in this life, and it’s very hard to imagine that we were somebody quite different, maybe of the opposite sex or an animal or something in our past life. We can’t really feel that that’s me.
And, of course, it isn’t because we’re changing all the time. But there is this continuity, and that we have a feeling that there ought to be some sort of continuation of who we are. We can’t accept that we’re just constantly changing. Well, he would have been a a female in past lives. Not since he became recognized as the Dalai Lama.
He’s been male in all of those lives, but he’s been everything like all of us. You know, the first story we have about Buddha, he was a hell being in the stories of Buddha’s previous lives before he became Buddha. Because he’s a direct descendant of the Buddha, the original Buddha. Is that what you’re saying? No.
I’m saying that all sentient beings, including enlightened beings, have had all sorts of different lives before they became enlightened. Yes. Oh, that’s a major topic, so I think we’re getting hard to think now, are we? But, yes, the whole point is that, yes They can change. Okay.
Not only you can change, but we’ve all changed. In fact, you know, in in past life research, which is very interesting, there’s been a number of examples of people who claim to have changed sex in past lives, and some of these past lives have been checked up on. I I know I saw fascinating TV programme quite a few years ago now. It was when I was living in Melbourne, must have been about ten years ago. It looked into several people and took them back through hypnosis into past lives.
Actually, under hypnotic suggestion, they were told to remember their past lives when they came out of hypnosis. And then several of them who had good stories that looked as though they would be researchable were checked up on. And one of these people actually was a businesswoman. I’ve often mentioned this one before. Excuse me if you’ve heard it before, but she remembered having been a doctor in Edinburgh, and they took her back to Edinburgh.
And first of all, they just dumped her on the dock somewhere and said, find your way back to where you used to be in your past life. And, of course, they had the cameras there and everything, but at first, had no idea where she was because she’d never been hum around the dock areas. But she wandered off into the town. She eventually found herself in some part of the town she recognized, and she then she soon found her way to the Edinburgh Medical College where she used to work and showed them around everything, showed the rooms where she used to be, showed parts of the building that had changed, and where the men’s loos used to be when she was a man and had to go to the and they actually found this person that she claimed to be actually existed. They found documentary records of this person.
So that was a very convincing example. But anyway, the point is that we we have quite apart from this, we just have this idea of something solid and concrete, which doesn’t exist. And it’s why we’re clinging to that that we cling to our sense of identity of being a particular person, having particular characteristics, and so on. And the conventional self is simply who we are right now at this moment, and that’s something that does exist. It it exists in an illusory way, like a dream or a mirage, all all these examples that we learn in the the scriptures.
And or it’s like the the example of the the striped rope and the snake. Do you know that one? We we example is of somebody who sees a striped rope in a bad light and immediately thinks it’s a snake. And when they look at it a little bit more closer, they see that it’s only a striped They’ve been projecting the idea of a snake onto it. So while they think it’s a snake, they’re frightened.
Once they understand that it’s not a snake, and that it’s just a striped rope, then they won’t be frightened. So we’re like that, you know, we imagine that there’s this concrete, truly existing self, and we’re projecting it onto what really is there, which is the conventional self. And while we while we’re projecting that, then we have all sorts of emotional reactions. As soon as we understand what the conventional self is, then there’ll be no basis for clinging and grasping. So we won’t then we won’t have anger and attachment, and we won’t have this ignorance of the self of what the self is.
And so this is how we cut off the root of saṃsāra. And, of course, this leads to meditation. It’s not just something we couldn’t understand intellectually. It also has to lead to meditative experience. So it’s very profound.
But anyway, yeah, the point is that we can cut off the root of saṃsāra. We can stop this process. And it’s when we can understand how we’re seeing the self wrongly that we can cut off our afflictive emotions and cut off the root of saṃsāra and attain liberation. So so anyway, this is talking about the four noble truths. And I’ve got a little bit out of order because I’ve been talking about the fourth noble truth before I got about talking about the first noble truth.
But You say this? You go to Pride. Pride. Oh, sorry. Thank you.
So, yes, so we’re past Pride. So the fifth one is doubting what is true. This doesn’t have to do with ordinary questions, but just with dharma topics, particularly things to do with karma and with the topic of emptiness, which is what I’ve just been talking about. And the sixth one is false views, which particularly refers to views which are contradictory to Buddhist views. And and so actually, when you come to doubt, there are three kinds of doubts.
Some doubts there’s this doubt which tends away from the truth. There’s doubt which is equally balanced between the two, and there is doubt which is tending towards the truth. So doubt which is tending towards the truth is helpful, because most of us have this kind of doubt. When we hear the Dharma teachings, we’re bound to have this kind of doubt in regard to some of the topics. And if we keep on investigating our doubts and trying to understand better, then our doubts will eventually be resolved, they’ll come to a deeper understanding.
So this is not something to be concerned about as long as we can continue trying to deepen our understanding. Then false views particularly refers to clinging to views, which contradict you to dharma understanding and which would then prevent us from accepting dharma understanding. So because of these So these are called the six root delusions or the six primary delusions, and there are also twenty secondary ones. And also, in fact, I think there are eighty four thousand, but fortunately, we don’t have to study the eighty four thousand, but it’s important to understand the six primary ones and the twenty secondary ones. I’m not going to go into the twenty secondary ones either tonight, but you might want to read about them, look them up.
So I think they’re explained in here actually in liberation. So, anyway, these topics relate to the four noble truths. The person who’s looking at the intermediate scope is very interested in looking at the four noble truths. So our previous so up to now we’ve been looking at suffering and the cause of suffering. So in our previous weeks we were looking at suffering, when we were on the lower scope, the smaller scope, we were looking at the suffering of the lower realms, and then we looked at the general sufferings of saṃsāra.
And so that’s the first noble truth. Then we’ve just been looking at the second noble truth, which is the cause of suffering. And this is the deluded mental states or kleshas. And so these two noble truths, which is the six that we’ve just been talking about, there’s twenty six of these actually, twenty-six obstacles to achieving cessation of saṃsāra, and that’s the six that I just mentioned, and the twenty secondary ones, which are really subdivisions of the primary ones. These also relate to primary minds and mental mental factors.
If you’re studying Lorig, it’s very interesting to study the primary minds and the various mental factors. So then we’ve got the third noble truth. So anyway, those first two noble truths, the truth of suffering and the truth of the cause of suffering, are deluded. And they’re afflictive states. And then we’ve got the other two, which are uncontaminated.
And well, maybe somebody knows what the other two are. It can’t solve number three, and number four is having to do. Right. Okay. So that’s the general explanation.
So it’s called the noble truth of cessation. Thanks, Helen. And the the noble truth of the the path to cessation the truth of cessation of suffering and the path to cessation of suffering. So the truth of cessation is that nirvana is peace and unending pure happiness. So in other words, there is this state which is attainable, which is everlasting happiness, which is other than saṃsāra.
It’s not another place. It’s not somewhere we go to. It’s not like heaven. We can’t sort of go we can’t just sort of be born there. And it’s not like somewhere that we can go to in a spaceship.
If it was, we’d all be supporting the space program. But you can go to the moon or Mars or Sirius or whatever, and you’ll still be in saṃsāra. So then we’ve got this state, But on the other hand, we can achieve it and still be right here in this body. It’s something that we can achieve within ourselves. And this is a state that’s attained by removing these afflictive mental states, and by cutting off the root of saṃsāra.
And so anyway, I won’t be going perhaps so much into the practices of that, but through doing the practices correctly then we can achieve this. And then there are the path, of course, which is the way to achieve this. And that is by removing these twenty six obstacles, which are the obstacles to attaining nirvana, which is the goal of the Hīnayāna path. And the person who attains this is an Arhat. And beyond this, there are also various subtle obstructions which prevent attaining Buddhahood.
So if we’re following the Mahāyāna path, which really comes into the greater scope, then we have to also remove these subtle obscurations. So the the obscurations to the obstacles to liberation are what I’ve been talking about now, the ignorance, anger, attachment, pride, doubt, and false views, and the twenty secondary ones. And then one of the twenty secondary ones is laziness. It might be interesting to know. There’s a few others.
That’s the one that I always remember. I think that procrastination that comes under the category of one of the subdivisions of laziness. So they consist of the so then the obscurations to Buddhahood consist of the instinct of clinging to the illusion of independent self existence. So what it means is that through meditating on emptiness, by achieving direct insight into emptiness and continuing to meditate on this, the practitioner removes these gross obstacles to liberation, these gross mental states, gross deluded mental states, and completely rid themselves of their anger and attachment and ignorance and so on of this grosser level and can achieve liberation. Now if the person is a bodhisattva, wanting to go on to achieve full Buddhahood, then that person has to also deal with these instincts, with these subtle obscurations, subtle ignorance.
And this is compared to the smell of garlic which remains in the container after the garlic’s gone. If you have a pot or something that you’ve been storing garlic in for a long time, then you can take away the garlic. And even after the garlic’s been gone for a while, you’ll still be able to smell it. And it’ll take quite a lot of washing and scrubbing and soaking before you get the smell out. So you can compare the removing the gross mental states, the gross mental obstacles to just taking out the garlic.
And then and then the getting the subtle obscurations away is compared to the more subtle work that has to be done to get rid of the smell. So these they’re they’re very subtle. This person is is at a very high level. They no longer have any anger or any of these other disturbing emotions. They have a very peaceful mind, total bliss, happiness, joy, but they don’t have the full omniscience of Buddhahood.
So what they have to do is alternate, as they did before, while they were dealing with the gross obscurations. You have to alternate between meditative equipoise on emptiness and and the post meditative period. And during the post meditative period, the person just sees the conventional level of existence. They don’t see the emptiness. During the meditative equipoise on emptiness, they see only emptiness.
They don’t see conventionalities. So after they’ve got rid of all the gross obscurations, they still have this alternating practice. They have to alternate between meditative equipoise in which they’re dealing with the more subtle layer of obscuration, and the post meditative period in which they have an appearance of true existence. Conventionalities still appear to them, and these conventionalities have an appearance of true existence. They know that they’re not true existence.
They don’t believe in this appearance. It’s like the person who’s seen the striped rope and knows it’s not a snake, And they might still think it looks like a snake. There’s still this appearance of it looking like a snake. They know it isn’t, but it still appears that way to them. And so they have to keep on working and accumulating merit in the post meditative period until they finally achieve the state of full enlightenment.
And in the state of full enlightenment, there’s no gap between the meditative equipoise and the post meditative period. The fully enlightened being can remain in meditative equipoise on emptiness, and at the same time be going around engaging in activities. They they can be aware of emptiness and the conventional appearance at the same time. There’s no gap between what they see and and the reality of the object, which there is for everybody else. So it’s it’s a very subtle state.
And this also brings full omniscience and all sorts of powers. Buddhists have all sorts of psychic powers to be engaging in their practice. So so the person who I don’t know if I’m going to get on to the twelve links tonight. There’s I think there’s a bit more than I can talk about in in in fifteen minutes ten minutes. But anyway, is the up to what we’ve been talking about up till now is the confrontation of the person of the less mental capacity on medium scope.
And I think all you people are people of sharp mental capacity, of great capacity. So I think that whatever else you might say about Western education, it trains us to use our intellects. And Lama Yeshe used to say that he could communicate the Dharma teachings to us Westerners. He said he wouldn’t have been able to communicate these teachings to the Nepalese peasants who were living around, although these people had great religious feeling and they had great devotion. But he wouldn’t have been able to talk to them in the same way he talked to us because they they weren’t educated.
Whereas because we had this education, we were able to to understand these these philosophical teachings. At least at a certain level, we were able to get our minds around them. So this is something that’s at least one benefit we’ve got from our Western education. Sometimes we’re too intellectualized, sometimes it’s very hard for us to get past that. It’s a barrier in some ways, but it also gives us some advantages.
So when it comes to these particular teachings, such as looking at the wheel of dependent arising and so on, then it’s something that we should try to tackle. Of course, you know, you’ll find that some people find it easier than others. Some people find it doesn’t really appeal to them. They don’t really want to have to think about these things as much. Perhaps some people feel more drawn towards the experiential type meditative teachings and so on.
Other people love these kinds of teachings, and and it’s the sort of approach they want to make to the Dharma teaching. So everybody has a different sort of liking for different areas of the teachings. And everybody approaches the teachings more through one particular aspect than others. But we all need to at least make some effort to understand the intellectual side of the teachings and to try to train our intellect on them to some degree, because it’s going to help us in the future to understand, to have better understanding. And so as I’m not going to get into the twelve links tonight, I’ll just go a bit through the three higher trainings, which is the practice of somebody who is ambitious to realize the practice of the intermediate scope, or the practice of the Hīnayāna path.
So up to now, we’ve been talking about the intermediate scope or the medium scope. That relates to the goal of the medium scope relates to the goal of the Hīnayāna path. It’s the same goal. But when we’re talking about this medium scope, that’s because we’re looking at it from the viewpoint of the Mahāyāna teachings. And with the Mahāyāna teachings, we’re taking the three scopes together.
It’s called the common path of the three scopes. That’s because it’s like somebody who sets out to go somewhere. I don’t know Adelaide geography very well, for instance, if you wanted to go somewhere like Melbourne, you’d have to go to where do you go through on the way to Melbourne? You’d have to go through one of the outer suburbs of Adelaide first. Just here.
Here, okay. Up to Lake Road, yes. Yes, okay. So you’re setting up Glen Osmond Road. Okay, so what would be one of the major outlying suburbs that you’d go to on the way?
Mount Barker. Okay, so Mount Barker’s on the road to Melbourne. Okay, so you’d have to get to Mount Barker first, that’s like the small scope, and somebody might stop there. They might be just going to Mount Barker, so they stop there. At least they don’t want to go on for the time being.
They’re going to stay in Mount Barker. One day, they might decide to move on to somewhere else. So then after that, I think you have to go through Murray Bridge, don’t you, to get to Melbourne? So let’s say that Bordertown. Yeah.
Okay. Bordertown. Okay. So the destination is Melbourne anyway for us, because we’re going all the way to enlightenment. But we still have to get we still have to get to Mount Barker first, and then we have to get to Bordertown in order to get to Melbourne.
We don’t stop at either of those places. We keep on going. So the person who’s heading for individual liberation is just satisfied at getting to border town. So they stop there. That’s as far as they want to go.
That’s a nice place. They really like it there. So they just stay there and stay there. Oh, well. Must be a good place.
I don’t know. He left it. He told you about the place. Well, I I’ve never been there except one sort of train, so I don’t know. In the middle of the night, so all I saw was the bridge over the river.
That’s Murray Bridge. Oh, that’s Murray Bridge. Sorry. Yes. I bought a town before Murray Bridge.
Okay then. So But it doesn’t matter. Alright. Okay. Right.
Murray Bridge the town. Yeah. I’m right. Sorry. Murray Bridge is over the border.
I mean, Murray Bridge is before the border, and Bordertown’s over the border. Okay. It’s just on this side of border. Right. Anyway not enlightening.
No. So anyway, we have to keep on going to Melbourne. I don’t know whether Melbourne’s a good a good analogy for enlightenment, but anyway, it will do. It’s not like Paris or whatever. I don’t think Paris is very much.
Okay. Sydney. Okay. Okay. But anyway, you get the idea.
So the practice that’s explained to us for achieving full enlightenment is the six perfections of a bodhisattva, so I won’t be talking about them tonight. But in order to achieve our hardship liberation, it’s explained in terms of the three higher trainings. So Is it wisdom? What’s the first one? No.
That’s the six perfections. Something wisdom and concentration. Okay. You’re going backwards. Okay.
No. Oh, gee. That’s concerned with the three scopes. It’s not quite the same thing. Okay.
Well, I’ll tell you now. I did mention it once before, but maybe you weren’t here that night. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Okay, so there’s three trainings, which are the practice that has to be done by somebody who’s aiming for individual liberation, who wants to become an Arhat. So these are three trainings that you do on the medium scope, if you’re not also going on to the if you’re not practicing the great scope.
And these are, I mean, basically do the same things on the great scope, but they’re called something different. So these are higher conduct, higher concentration, and higher wisdom. Or the higher conduct higher training of conduct, the higher training of of moral conduct, Yes. So the higher training of concentration and the higher training of wisdom. But what does that actually mean by higher?
Well, what it means is that they lead to liberation. So they’re on the path to liberation. Individual enlightenment. This person is aiming at individual liberation. Prātimokṣa, it’s called.
We talk about the Prātimokṣa When we take the five lay precepts get to the thirty six vows of a novice or the vows of a bhikṣu or a bhiksuni or whatever, that’s referred to as Prātimokṣa. That is because those vows are taken, they’re given to be taken with the thought of attaining individual liberation. Of course, you can take them with Mahāyāna motivation, but they come from the individual liberation category of the teachings. So those would come into this category of higher conduct. The basic conduct is explained.
We already went through that in terms of avoiding the ten non virtuous actions and so forth. And basically, it’s similar to what’s practiced by the person of the small scope who wants to avoid lower rebirth. But to become a higher trainer, you just have to keep on refining your moral conduct, aiming at more and more pure moral conduct. So basically, it’s the same, you just set your sights higher and raise it. Maybe you’d be interested in taking more sets of vows, you know, maybe this level, a person who’s practicing on this level, they’re not required to become a monk, but perhaps more of them, you’d find a higher proportion of monks on this level of practice, because the person who’s more interested just in avoiding lower rebirth, that doesn’t really come in becoming a monk doesn’t really come into that level of motivation, or none.
So basically, it’s just following a similar general understanding of conduct, but trying to become more and more pure. And then the next level, the next thing is concentration. So the person has to have that training in conduct, in morality, and this gives them the stability and the peace of mind that’s necessary in order to develop concentration. You won’t have much hope of developing single pointed concentration if your mind’s all over the place. And while you’re full of non virtues, you can’t expect to have a calm mind.
You can’t expect to achieve calm abiding. So concentration is the practice of developing calm abiding. It’s not explained in detail in the teachings here, because we find it explained in the great scope teachings under the six perfections. I talked about this when I was talking about the six perfections, some of you might have been here then. So it’s just the same, exactly the same practice, whether you’re doing whether you’re following the Hīnayāna path or whether you’re following the Mahāyāna path.
The practice of calm abiding is the same. And the practice of wisdom is the same, the wisdom of emptiness. What makes it different is that the bodhisattva keeps on carrying it on beyond the point of attaining the removal of the obscurations to of the obstacles to liberation, but which I already talked about. The Arhat is satisfied with removing the obstacles to liberation, and they achieve nirvana. The bodhisattva keeps on working.
So the the higher training of wisdom is the training in the wisdom of emptiness, the emptiness of true existence, which I already talked about before when that topic came up about the the eye, the conventional I, and the emptiness of true existence. So by training yourself in that, first of all, understanding it intellectually, and then applying it, having developed single pointed concentration, having developed calm abiding in meditation, then the the meditator applies their ability to concentrate to understanding to deeper understanding of emptiness. Emptiness. They start off generally, the person starts off to train in calm abiding by something like meditating on a visualization of Buddha. And when they’ve become able to gain calm abiding on that on that object, then they apply that in meditative equipoise on emptiness.
And eventually, they attain direct insight into emptiness, at which stage they start to remove these gross obstacles to liberation. And they keep on doing that until they’ve got rid of all the gross obstacles, which are what keep us in saṃsāra. So they’re liberated. Yes. No.
You have to have calm abiding first. Oh, so we have to have calmed our minds with training in morality. Yes. Oh, yeah. Training in morality.
Yes. First of all, have to have training in morality, which comes which just stabilizes us, makes it easier for our minds to be calm and peaceful. Obviously, if you’re gonna go around stealing and lying and doing all these things, you know, drinking alcohol, you know, it’s not conducive towards calming calm abiding. All these things either make our mind agitated or they make make our mind dull. Both of those two things are big obstacles to calm abiding.
So we have to gain calm abiding, and at the same time, we’d be increasing our understanding of the Dharma teachings, so that person then is able to apply their calm abiding to their understanding of emptiness, and they deepen it and deepen it until they achieve the breakthrough to direct insight. That’s a very important realization. This might be getting back to what I think was David who mentioned renunciation. Oh, sorry. It was you.
So so we were talking about renunciation, we were talking about renunciation, bodhicitta, and emptiness. These are the three that the three great realizations that we have to achieve in order to progress on the path, you know, to really get to the higher states. So, basically, we have to realize emptiness in order to get rid of these obstacles to liberation, and somebody who’s on the Hīnayāna path is satisfied with that. They reach a state of great happiness, great peace of mind. They’re free of the compulsion of delusion and karma.
They’ve cut through the root of saṃsāra. They’ve removed all those afflictive emotions which make you get born again and again. They’ve removed the imprints of karma through this meditation on emptiness, and so they they’re satisfied with that. They don’t take rebirth again, but they just once they die, they just remain without coming back. It’s explained in the teachings that the Buddhas will eventually wake them out of their meditation and bring them back, but this will be eons down the track.
So for all practical purposes, you can say that they’re that they’re not that they’re not taking rebirth again. So they remain in this state of their mind, their consciousness remains in this state of blissful meditation after they’ve passed out of their body in which they achieve that state. Then the bodhisattva, the person who’s following the path to Buddhahood, has to keep on dealing with these subtle obscurations until they achieve Buddhahood. And that’s explained differently. That’s explained in terms of the practice of a bodhisattva, so I won’t go into that.
But it’s basically similar practice, it’s just that they have to keep on taking rebirth after rebirth voluntarily until they achieve enlightenment. So any questions? That Now it’s not that there’s two selves, the absolute self and the relative self. It’s just that the the relative self has both, you know, positive and harmful aspects. And