Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute evening, Ven Margaret McAndrew navigates a fundamental tension in Mind Training: how to practice viewing yourself as lowest when you come from a culture built on equality and individual rights? She clarifies this cultivates wisdom, not subservience, then traces the psychological benefits of focusing on others’ good qualities—paradoxically, respecting others helps us respect ourselves. She then addresses the real challenge: when developing compassion for difficult people, how do you avoid ignoring genuine danger? Through a personal story of harm from overlooking warning signs, she shows how wisdom and compassion coexist—we protect others from genuine threats while maintaining love. The teaching covers mindfulness as early detection of destructive emotions and finding precious value in those who challenge our compassion. An extended Q&A grounds these ideals in daily life: parenting, realistic capacity to help, and the distinction between wrathful firmness and destructive anger.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 44 BM 1998 08 06.mp3
UUID: 6665b945-2c7a-486f-b79e-46bd202864b7
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-08-06
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~5,057
Self as the lowest of all and in the depths of my heart shall hold dearly others as supreme. Before we go into this that verse, did anybody have any doubts about the first verse to be cleared up? Alright. Well, you’ve probably got some doubts about this verse anyway. It’s I think this verse hits something that’s very difficult for people in our society.
It often sounds a bit strange, I think, to people who come from the background of Western society, where we place a lot of emphasis on being treated equally to other people and and demanding equal rights and all this sort of thing. And it sounds as though this verse is going contrary to that, doesn’t it? It sounds as though maybe we have to go around being subservient to other people. Did anybody think that it sounded like that? No?
I think it could easily be taken to sound that way. So that’s the test, you see. She’s got equal rights, though. You’ve got it. It seems that it would be different.
I think perhaps the bodhisattvas might even take it that way, that would wish to, where it was possible, they would actually wish from their hearts to be able to do anything they could for any sentient being, but they would also have the wisdom to realise that it isn’t always the best way to help others to run around doing things for them. But they would willingly go to endless trouble to relieve the sufferings and to bring happiness to any sentient being even for a short time and to do anything that would be helpful for them so for instance in the dedication to the Way of the Bodhisattva you have Śāntideva saying things like may I become a bridge for those that need a bridge and things like that, servants for those who need servants, relatives for those who need relatives, and all this kind of thing. Really, the bodhisattva has this just great outgoing wish in their heart to to to be able to bring about the welfare of others. And but it doesn’t mean that we have to demean ourselves or run around thinking that we’re there to do what other people want all the time.
What it means is that in our hearts, we train ourselves to see others as being more important, even one other. And this is very, very difficult. And of course, it’s something that doesn’t come naturally to us, and it’s something that that can’t be achieved just by having read the verse and having been told that it’s a good thought to have. In actual fact, if you study the seven point thought training, there is more explanation given of the reasoning behind this thought. It’s something that goes contrary to our instincts and it’s something that if we can cultivate it’s very, very powerful to overcome our pride and self-cherishing.
So it’s actually a thought that will bring great happiness and bring all good results and benefits in its train. So we have this We want to compare ourselves to others all the time. We’re always wanting to see ourselves as being the best, the most brilliant, the most admired, the cleverest, the strongest, the most competent, and so on. And so we’re always turning our focus on ourselves, and when we look at others, we want to see that we we somehow, we want to outrank them. We want to outdo them all the time.
So with this sort, we can rather than wanting to outshine others all the time, we focus on their good qualities. Also, are always wanting to judge others and put them down so as to build ourselves up. This really doesn’t work. Has the reverse effect to what we really want. The more we put others down, the more we end up feeling the same self judgment as we put on others.
Whereas, if we focus on others’ good qualities and try to see others in a positive light and to admire them for their positive qualities, then we find that actually within ourselves it helps us to see ourselves in a positive light and to have an accepting attitude and to feel comfortable with ourselves also. This is a great benefit of this attitude. Somehow it works psychologically with us, even in this life, even just psychologically speaking here and now, I’m not talking about karma, the way we look at others very much reflects on the way we feel secretly not secretly, but subconsciously within ourselves. There’s a sort of a kickback effect that when we try to build ourselves up by putting others down, we know in our hearts that we’re the same as others. Somewhere, subconsciously, we know that we’re no different to others, and when we put others down, it makes us feel down about ourselves.
When we respect others, it helps us to respect ourselves. All these good qualities, all these good results, come from focusing about others. I’ll just mention a warning there. Some of you might have had this thought also. I had a problem once that I’d been trying to put this into practice and I encountered a person who had some very good qualities and also some very bad qualities.
Because I was trying to focus on the good qualities, I ignored my instinctive feeling that he was also capable of some quite dangerous actions. I tended to just focus on his good qualities and not to, although I had an instinctive feeling that something was wrong there I didn’t listen to my instincts and as a result of this I spoke of him to others also and praised his good qualities and didn’t express any sort of need for caution. As a result of this, this person harmed somebody. I felt a bit to blame. I felt that I’d perhaps led this person to trust him by the way I’d spoken of him, and in actual fact, that I was perhaps partly to blame for the fact he was trusted and that he did this harm to somebody.
I thought then, well, you do have to use your judgment, you have to consider others. At one point, asked Tashi Tsering about this situation. Said, What if there’s a bad person who’s likely to harm others? Shouldn’t you warn your friends? Shouldn’t you warn people to be careful of him?
And his response to that was to say, don’t say that these people are bad people, but say that they are a person who has some bad qualities, and you should also be aware of their good qualities. But, of course, if you feel that they’ll be likely to be dangerous, of course you do have to take whatever steps are needed to protect others. Maybe you might have wondered whether this sort of situation might arise. The point is that we have to use our judgment and our common sense, and there are some people around who are too disturbed to be really responsible for their own actions, and they need strong control, or other people need to be protected from them. This is just the reality of life, and so it’s not saying that we shouldn’t be reasonable about these things, but we should also try to have love in our hearts for these people and to understand that they do have good qualities in there, not just to see them as being totally negative, but to see them as being people who are overwhelmed by their bad qualities but do have this inner potential for good within them.
That’s right, yes. It’s very easy to be a little bit too unrealistic about other people sometimes, because you have good intentions and you think that other people who come around a Dharma center seem to be interested in Dharma practice, you think they must be all good people. But some of these people are struggling with their troubles and their sometimes very powerful strong bad tendencies. Do have to be realistic, perhaps they need some sort of help that goes beyond just what the average person needs. Sometimes people need quite strong control, sometimes they need very firm treatment, sometimes it’s the only thing that can really help certain people.
Maybe somebody’s had some experience with that sort of thing. Yes. I heard something about how some of the I don’t know if it’s St. Vincent de Paul or some of these organizations isations that help people in the suburbs of some of the big cities, and they sometimes have people coming in hoping to be given some money because they obviously want to use it some sort of perhaps buying alcohol or something, so the people there say, We don’t give money, but we’ll give you food, and so they give these people various tinned food and so on, and then later on they go outside and find the garbage bin outside because the person didn’t want to just say no, so they accepted the help that was being given and then they just dumped it. It’s difficult sometimes to know what to do, and that’s why I always think, Oh, I wish I could be a bodhisattva quickly, because they know what’s the best thing to do, and sometimes it is very difficult to know.
I think the whole thing is that sometimes when we see bad qualities in a person, we just sort of switch off them, you know, we just reject them. I found this is a very difficult one, you know. Some people, when you’ve learned that they’ve done some sort of bad action that you feel is an action that your mind sort of turns against, then you want to just sort of switch off that person and switch them out of your compassion and not care about them and just sort of reject them. Think this is the sort of attitude that we have to overcome. It doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to take on responsibility for that person, but in the short term, just in your mind, an open mind towards them and try to feel love and compassion for them.
There are different ways we can do that. We can see how they’re really under the power of their negative mind, under the power of their strong impulses, and you can really feel compassion for somebody whose harmful impulses are so strong that they really do things that hurt other people and commit crimes and so on. You can really see that they haven’t got very much control at all. Well, that’s exactly the sort of situation I was dealing with here, and you have to consider the welfare of the others who might be harmed by him too. Well, is really hard, isn’t it?
It is really hard because we don’t have the knowledge. Sometimes in situations like this you can ask lamas to do an observation. Don’t know whether Khensur Rinpoche do that sort of observation? A mile, yes. Sometimes you can ask that can help you to have an indication of whether situation is likely, whether you should step in or I haven’t got any other suggestions there except to use your own judgment and try to come to the best conclusion.
I think if I was in that sort of situation myself and it was something that I was really very concerned about, I probably would try to get a mo (divination). Yes. So that was the second one, wasn’t it? So I think I better get moving along. So the third one, in any case, think it’s better to look at them in-depth than to rush through them.
All different translation: Examining my continuum through all actions, as soon as emotional affliction arises that endangers myself and others, for facing it I shall strictly avert it. So, this verse is stressing the importance of mindfulness, and this is a quality that we really have to bring into our thought training practice to deal with the delusions. So the term of emotional affliction or the deluded mental state, sometimes it’s translated as delusions. This is talking about mental states such as anger, jealousy, pride, clinging attachment, all these different sort of attitudes that can interrupt our Dharma practice. Lama Zopa Rinpoche once, when he was teaching on this verse, quoted a saying that we should be standing guard with a spear in our hand at the doorway of the mind.
So we don’t want to let the delusion get in and establish itself in our mind. We have to deal with it before it gets in, we have to deal with it in the early stages and if we don’t have mindfulness then the delusion can start to arise in our mind and it can become very powerful before we start to become aware of it and by that stage it’s very difficult to deal with it’s very difficult for the antidote to be effective because the emotion has really got hold of our mind so the way to deal with it is to catch it in the early stages before it becomes strong. For this reason, we have to cultivate mindfulness. Whenever we have a negative thought starting to arise, spot it right away. We have this constant attitude of watchfulness, watching the mind, watching to see what sort of state our mind’s in, whether our mind is in a virtuous or non virtuous state, and catching it when it starts to tend towards non virtue.
And if we get those early signals, we can deal with them right away, and with luck we’ll be able to stop the arising of the strong negative thought. As we practice more and more, then the arising of the delusions becomes weaker and weaker, and our antidote against them becomes stronger and stronger. Our defence becomes very strong. In that way, we have less trouble and less arising of the delusions. In fact, we become habituated to stopping the delusions rather than being habituated to these deluded mental states so that they arise very strongly, very easily whenever we encounter an object that triggers them off.
Instead, we have the positive attitudes such as patience and the other positive thoughts coming up very, very strongly in our minds whenever we meet an object that starts to trigger our delusions. If we have this practice of mindfulness and the habituation with these responses, then the positive responses become very strong. This will make things make it become easier to do these sorts of practice. So I think that’s pretty straightforward, isn’t it? Does anybody have any questions about that?
So the fourth one is, when seeing a being of wicked nature who is forced by violent wrongs and sufferings, I shall hold dear this one so hard to find as though discovering a precious treasure. So this one’s not so easy. These verses aren’t meant to be easy. They’re very idealistic, really, but they’re ideals that can be realized. It’s a question of going through the process and putting in the work so the point is that we can’t develop great love and great compassion and bodhicitta unless our love and compassion extend to all sentient beings without exception, every single one of them, even the nasty ones.
So we have to be able to include these nasty ones in our love and compassion, and we have to love them not because they’re pleasant to us not because they’re nice but in spite of their bad qualities in spite of their unpleasantness so it’s very easy to love pleasant people and cuddly pets and so on and it’s these unpleasant ones these unattractive beings maybe ones who have harmful thoughts and attitudes towards us or towards others that we know those who are dear to us who harm us or who harm those who are dear to us and who carry out various unlikable actions these are the real test of our love and if we can love these beings if we can feel compassion for them then we can really develop true Mahāyāna love and compassion towards all. So for example, when we hear about Pol Pot’s victims, then we we feel it’s very easy to feel compassion for all those people who were hurt and tortured and killed by Pol Pot and his people. But when we hear about this and feel compassion for all those millions of people, do we feel compassion for Pol Pot himself and the ones who carry out these actions?
In actual fact, they are the ones who need it most. The other ones are the victims are experiencing the results of their own negative karmas and they’re finishing their negative karmas and so it’s the Pol Pot and the others who are going to go on and to experience horrific sufferings in the future as a result of the negative karmas that they’ve created in this century. And most of all, we’re the ones who need to be able to feel this equal love and compassion towards these beings because we need it for our practice. Because this is the meaning of bodhicitta, it doesn’t mean towards some, it means towards every single being. And there are these harmful beings in the world there are these very difficult very unlovable beings and if we can practice patience and love and compassion towards them then we’ll really have true patience and compassion unshakable patience and compassion and also so these beings are the ones that help us to practice and they are also the ones that enable us to see the limits of our present love and compassion when we encounter these sorts of beings and find revulsion and anger arising in us towards them then we understand how limited our love and compassion is and so it destroys complacency about our spiritual practice and it destroys the idea that we’re doing all right in our practice and love and compassion and it destroys any pride we might have in our practice, and so it’s very beneficial for us.
For this reason, these beings are precious. Not be a good idea not to. Yes. I think when when you think of inviting these beings home, first of all, of course, have to think of whether they’re really to be trusted or not. Also, even if they simply seem like objects of compassion, you have to be realistic about the limits of your own compassion.
A good example for that might be to that story in the Mandala a few issues ago. One of Lama Zopa’s students was told by Lama Zopa to take responsibility for this poor old chap who had been rescued off the streets. He was dying, and he was rescued off the streets of Bodh Gaya, because in India, you know, often people are just left to die in whatever way, you know, everybody just leaves them lying there, and this old chap, when they took him off the streets and took him back to Root Institute, this particular chap was told to look after him. The old chap actually had a bit of a comeback. He recuperated a little bit and he ended up having take care of him for months before he finally took another bad turn and died.
He was senile, a little bit mentally incapable and needed total care and looking after, and it was just like a full time job to look after him. You see him lying there in the street and you really feel he’s an object of sympathy, but have you really got the strength within yourself to put out the patience and the constant work of just sort of cleaning up after him and cleaning up all his messes and washing his clothes and making sure he got fed and all the little day to day details you know it’s an incredibly big job even for a mother or a father who’s dying and in that sort of state it’s tremendously trying of the patience. Certainly there’s an incredible amount of work to be done. I remember one time Lama Yeshe was asked by one of his students, Yeshe. She said, Oh, I’ve got a big house with a lot of room set, and I was wondering whether it might be a good idea to invite all the people who want to meditate to come and live in my house, and we can all sort of live there together and I can take care of them and she said yes that’s a very nice thought but you have to think you know can you really all live together like that you know have you got the patience to put up with it when other people are sort of coming around and quarrelling and criticising you and so on have you got the patience to deal with it when they come to you and say oh he did this and she said that and all this other business?
So you know we have to realize that we have our limitations and just use your wisdom about what you can take on in terms of practical help. And of course, the more practical help we can give, the better. It’s very beneficial for us to do this kind of practice if we can. Well, you want them to be happy. They’re not going to be happy unless they’ve learned some discipline.
So, obviously, you know, you have to yes. I think as you say there’s no answer to Every parent has to work it out for themselves and you do the best you can. The answer is not to destroy their spirit and constrain them in their lives. No, definitely not. Tibetans are very tough with their kids, so you’d be horrified.
Well, they used to be, yes. They tend to Well, actually, when I say they’re very tough, it’s not quite like that. The approach that people in the East Indians take with their kids is that they let them get away with anything up to a certain point, and once they step over that point, then whack, you know? They just come down on them, which really wouldn’t do for Western society because, for one thing, our society is much more complex, and to train the children to take place in this society is not just a question of a few simple dos and don’ts. Certainly, among the Indians and the Tibetans, what you see is that on the one hand they seem to let the kids run wild a lot more than we would, particularly when they’re little, and yet there comes a point when they step over the line and then they just get, you know, collared.
They get smacked, yes, hard. And, well, you know, it seems to work for them. Actually, I said to my sister, who was a counselling psychologist, I said something about how they bring the kids up in the East, I said it’s not very psychological, but it seems to work. She said actually it is very psychological. But I think she was looking at it from the point of view that everybody in the situation was clear about what was allowed and what wasn’t, and that the parents were very firm about once the kids were doing what wasn’t permitted, then they were very firm about it.
But anyway, I think it’s a bit different in our society, because there are so many dos and don’ts in our society that don’t apply in a traditional society. You just kind of have to be telling the kids, do this, do that, do that all day long. But the whole point is that you do, as parents, to have have to get fun with the kids. Of course, it’s very hard not to have attachment to your children, isn’t it? I mean, they must be the most strong object.
But, I mean, the same reasoning applies to them, but of course the attachment parents have to their children, particularly mothers, to their babies, it’s extremely strong. It has a biological element. It’s strong. Of course, it has its natural function to make sure that the children get taken care of. We’re not saying that you can just go along to a few Dharma teachings and then deal with your children without any sort of attachment coming in.
But the point is that it does give you a good situation there for seeing your attachment and working with it, and trying to develop the unattached sort of attitude, like the love which doesn’t have the attachment. But of course it would be a bit unrealistic to think you are going to get over all that attachment in this lifetime because it’s not something that’s very easy. You can definitely make some progress! Just by seeing what’s going on, by looking at it, analyzing and seeing, having had the teachings and understanding what attachment is and what your love is and so on, looking at from that situation, it’s going to give you that much more understanding. Whatever they do.
If you didn’t have to detach them, but you still had the love and you said to that child, look, no matter what you do, these these things aren’t good, but I still love you. I, you know, you have my life. I don’t know that that’s really gonna help. But, of course, you wouldn’t do it like that. I mean, you know much more clear minded decisions.
The catch is we won’t be allowed to. You won’t be allowed to. Yes. I think that’s a good point. Yes.
So when when you’ve seen, like, the lamas in action, you that that have really equanimity and detachment, dealing with the kids in the monasteries, they have total love, you know they have total love and at the same time they can be so tough, they can be really fierce. I’ve seen Lama Yeshe being absolutely terrifying. People who only knew Lama Yeshe the way he showed himself to the Western students most of the time, he was just sort of this total compassion and love and good humour and so on. They wouldn’t believe that he could show this wrathful aspect, but I’ve seen him showing that, hence to some of his Western students too, when they needed it. It was all done out of love and compassion, but it was what these people needed.
And, you know, so in actual fact, it’s often because of our attachment that we can’t get tough. That’s right. Yes. But if you’ve done that once now and again, they know that you’re capable of it, it can be helpful, yes. So anyway, whole thing is that it actually says in the teachings that sometimes, particularly one one instance is parents with children, sometimes you need to show wrathful compassion.
You need to be able to show this wrathful aspect. The whole thing about it is that it’s it’s something on the surface, which doesn’t mean that if you’re angry, if you’re really angry then it’s not going to be so effective. The whole thing is to remain calm underneath but be putting on this wrathful aspect and that can be the skillful means for helping these children, for training them effectively, at times when it’s really called for. Actually, when we get angry, it kind of destroys our effectiveness. If we’re really angry with a person, they feel our anger, they know that we’re angry with them and they really feel hurt and they reject what we’re saying to them.
Whereas if you’re putting on this wrathful aspect, is very fierce but not coming from underlying anger Yes. That’s right, yes. You know, sometimes something in your mind just sort of says, alright, know, I’ve put up with enough, I’m going to put a stop to this, and that doesn’t have to mean losing your temper. It can just mean that something says this is the time to get firm and that can be very effective. When you lose your temper then you somehow you just destroy your own effectiveness.
So we’ve done four verses and we’ll leave it at there because it’s already past nine o’clock. Do you want to go on with this next week or will we just read through the verses quickly? Okay. Yes, it’ll be Thursday next week. Did I say Wednesday?
No, I said next week. Yes, but anyway, yes, I should mention that. We’re switching the time over. So, okay, then in that case we can go through the next four verses and maybe think of something else to fill out the time. Definitely for the next two months and probably continuing on.
I don’t know whether I’m even going to be continuing after that, but we’ll see. Anyway, yes, because, well, for me it was too much on doing the whole day of Wednesday, and also, Betty mentioned to me today that she was happy that it was Thursdays because it’s easier for her. She apparently would be able to come to both if it wasn’t all on the same day, and there might be other people in that situation. We have a discussion group on a graduated path text, and it follows on from the meditation session. Do you want to do a little meditation before we finish?
Maybe we can just meditate on the eight verses. I’ll just read them out and you can meditate on them. Being determined to accomplish the highest welfare for all beings who excels wish fulfilling gem, I shall constantly hold them dear. When accompanying anyone, I shall view myself as the lowest of all, and from the depths of my heart shall hold dearly others as supreme. Examining my continuum throughout all actions, as soon as an emotional affliction arises that endangers myself and others by facing it I shall strictly avert it.
When seeing a being of a wicked nature who is forced by violent wrongs and sufferings, sufferings, I shall hold dear this one so hard to find as though discovering a precious treasure.