Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute evening teaching, Ven Margaret McAndrew frames her instruction through the four noble truths, beginning with why human rebirth is precious for practice—we have enough suffering to motivate liberation while avoiding the conditions of the lower realms or the subtle suffering of the gods. From there she explores delusion and karma as causes of saṃsāra and the three higher trainings. The session’s core focus is mental factors: first the six non-virtuous ones, then an extended, practical teaching on eleven virtuous mental factors, with particular depth on non-hatred and how to cultivate it, plus non-confusion. Throughout, she interweaves audience questions, pitched at a mixed group of regulars and newer practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 70 VMF 1998 11 26.mp3
UUID: fb2694c2-f8a2-44d0-a698-3c36efb2beff
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-11-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~5,307
You might have more courage to ask questions and interrupt me if you if you’re sitting up the front. Or you might be too. So, in general, I’ve been going through the four noble truths, and we went through the first noble truth, which was the truth of suffering. And then we started on the second noble truth which is the truth of the source of suffering or the cause of suffering. And I talked about that one night and there were two main causes of suffering.
Does anybody remember what they are? In very general terms, two main things. Uh-huh. Right. Okay.
So we’ve got this situation with delusions and karma, which keeps us cycling in Samsāra. And while we’re in Samsāra, we’ll always have to encounter suffering because that is the nature of Samsāra. I didn’t go through the six realms, I don’t think, but generally when we’re in Samsāra, whether we’re in the higher realms, the upper realms, whether we’re in the lower realms, we’re going to experience suffering. And, of course, there’s less suffering in the higher realms, but they’re not totally free from suffering. There are different kinds of suffering.
The what we call the world that gods experience. They’re only the more subtle forms of suffering that are they don’t experience gross suffering. So by our standards, they have a really good life, but still their life comes to an end. And they get cast again into a lesser form of rebirth and would have to experience more gross suffering. So really we’re fortunate to be human beings because although we have to experience a certain amount of gross suffering in the human realm, we’re able to, by this means, to understand our situation and to really develop the motivation to be free of it.
Whereas those gods, even though the Buddhas go to them and teach them and they they have quite a lot of admiration for the Buddhas and other great beings, but they can’t really understand this suffering situation. They’re not motivated and once the teaching’s over, it just sort of goes in one ear and out the other and they just go off and have a good time and don’t really put it into practice. So that’s why we’re fortunate to be human beings. And also we don’t have the gross, the extremely gross suffering of the three lower realms and we don’t have the other disadvantages that the three lower realms have. So, we’re in a situation where we’re able to practice.
So, this is a good situation here and we need to take advantage of this situation and work. And order to do this, have to meditate on suffering. So here we’re dealing in terms of the graduated path, we’re dealing with medium scope motivation. We’re concerned with getting out of suffering. And we have to meditate on various kinds of suffering which are general samsaric sufferings or sufferings of the upper realms of saṃsāra.
So when we’re in the small scope section, we were particularly concerned with the suffering of the lower realms and had to motivate ourselves to avoid that by taking refuge, observing karma. So we’re still following those practices, but we add to that the thought of the whole of Samsāra being like a prison or being like a burning house, whatever part of it you’re in, whether it’s the part you’re in is on fire or not, you’re still trapped in it. So you’re still really in the same situation as the people who are in the burning part. You’re in the same danger and you have to take steps to get out of it as quickly as possible. And so we have to really cultivate this distaste, this disgust of saṃsāra so as to do the practices for attaining liberation, for attaining true cessation of the cause of Samsāra which is the deluded mental states and karma.
So we’ve got two kinds of karma, good and bad karma. So it’s the bad karma that causes our suffering in general, but both good and bad karma leads to suffering in Samsāra. So we eventually have to reach a state where we go beyond karma, where we totally eradicate all karmic imprints. But in the meantime, we’re very concerned with accumulating positive karma because that’s going to help us on the path. And in actual fact, positive karma is taking us in the right direction.
It’s lightening our deluded mental states. It’s lessening the it’s making less heavy and less potent that causes the continued cycling in Samsāra so that eventually we’ll be able to break through them. But in addition to that we need wisdom. I think I’ve talked about that. We need the three higher trainings.
Conduct concentration and wisdom. So conduct is essentially observing karma, keeping your vows and so on. Concentration is developing śamatha, calm abiding, and wisdom is meditating on emptiness. And you need to bring those together to order to gain direct insight into emptiness, which is what cuts at the root of saṃsāra. And through continuing to meditate on emptiness, we attain true cessation of all these delusions can be brought about.
So that’s basically what comes in the third and fourth noble truth really, but just to run through it quickly to give you the big picture. So any questions? Well, you’re not alone there. Yes. Well, this would be a good question to turn over to one of our brilliant regular students who’ve been attending for some time and should have some sort of answer to this.
Well, what about the girls who want to step in where angels fear to tread and all that? Mhmm. Right. Does that make does that help? That that yeah.
Very much. There’s actually two objects. The ego is a term that doesn’t come into Buddhist philosophy. Sometimes it’s used in translations, usually not. Usually, we talk about self, but the word ego is quite a useful word there.
You just have to carefully see what you mean by it. So according to the Buddhist teachings, we do exist. We do have a self, a conventional self, but we don’t have an inherently existing self, which is sometimes referred to perhaps casually or in a general sort of way as ego. I think the ego term is quite good actually if you understand exactly how it’s being used to distinguish from the self which is the conventional self. So it’s this idea of something we have which, as Hilary said, we have an idea something which is independent and exists from its own side and so on.
And it’s a very strong idea. We have it instinctive. All and we all because we have this idea of this so then we have grasping. We have self grasping. We grasp at this this self as being something that needs to be maintained and continued.
We always feel that it’s vulnerable. We feel that it’s susceptible to being destroyed or harmed and so on. And and so we put a lot of energy. And so then self-cherishing comes into it, and we put a lot of energy into maintaining the well-being of this self, getting the things that we think are good for it, and harming others who we see as threatening our our self in various different ways, whether it’s physical or psychological or social or whatever. So we then we have anger and greed and pride and all of these other things coming up.
If we didn’t have this basic mistaken view about self or ego, then we wouldn’t have all these other problems. But it’s difficult to get at, so we have to start off sometimes where we’re at now, which is just dealing with our anger and with our self-cherishing and our greed and all of these things. And then gradually, we can start to actually understand the the inherent self that we’re trying to refute and to to meditate on that. That’s right. So that’s one good example of how things are dependent dependent arising.
But don’t get the idea that the atoms themselves or even well, know that nowadays that atoms are not indivisible. So even when you get down to those little things and of course Einstein pointed out that e equals mc squared or cubed or whatever, we know that you can get down to some sort of basic physical energy. But you shouldn’t think that even that basic physical energy or that even basic mental energy has true existence. None of these things have independent inherent existence. Nothing.
Even emptiness doesn’t have inherent existence. You might think that there isn’t that the ultimate truth of emptiness of all phenomena is something which is truly existent. But even emptiness doesn’t have true existence. Even emptiness is dependent. It’s dependent arising.
So there’s nothing at all that has any true existence. But it’s difficult to understand this. So I think we won’t go on with that now at this point but it’s something that we do have to study and try to understand as best we can. So they talk about the four noble truths anyway, and then I got on to talking about the six non-virtuous mental factors. And I went through the six non virtuous mental factors.
And then, although it wasn’t really on the topic of the four noble truths, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the eleven virtuous mental factors. So for those of you who were last here last week, we went through four of the virtuous mental factors last week. And so I’ll go on from there with the other eleven. So I’ll just mention those four. So, basically, we’ve been through faith, moral shame, consideration, and non attachment.
Maybe I should just mention very quickly what they are. So with blind faith, not talking about blind faith, but it’s something that we develop gradually through knowledge and understanding, having confidence in the teachings and in the qualities of the Three Jewels of refuge. And we also need to have faith in ourselves and our own potential because we can’t just wait for the Three Jewels to save us, but we have to do the work ourselves and we have to have belief in our own potential, which all sentient beings have to attain the various stages of path. And then moral shame is an important quality that protects us from non virtue through self restraint and the emphasis here is on inner self respect, on an inner dislike of non virtue. The next one is consideration and it’s similar to moral shame in that it protects us from non virtue.
It avoids committing it helps it causes or enables us to avoid committing non virtue. Here it’s through consideration for others and for the consideration of the opinion of others. And this is important too. Sometimes our inner restraints aren’t strong enough so we need to associate ourselves with worthy people so that we’ll also be supported by this other thought of not wanting to earn the right opinion of the other people around us. We should when it’s a matter of virtue and non virtue, it’s very good to be worried about the opinion of others.
We shouldn’t worry too much when we know we’re doing the right thing, when we’re sure we’re doing right, then we shouldn’t worry too much about the opinion of the world in general. But we should take good respect of the opinion of people who we consider to be good Dharma people who we know to be seriously practicing Dharma, particularly those who we think have more knowledge and who are perhaps better practitioners than we are more virtuous than ourselves and we can take them for a guide. If they think that we’re not doing the right thing, then we should at least think very seriously about it because there might be some good reason in what they say. Yes. It’s from this point of wanting to remain on the virtuous path, having having made a decision that of the value of virtue and wanting to be helped, supported on that path.
Yes. I think that’s true. If you yes. You you do get feedback and that can help you to know whether you, you know, whether you whether you practice as being fruitful. But say take the example that you’re thinking of coming and attending a teaching at Buddha House and then your friends say to you, oh, you know, how about coming out tonight raging?
And you say, oh, well, you know, I I was going to go to something at Buddha House. They said, oh, gee, that one bothered with that, you know, it’s best to go out raging and relax a bit and have a good time. You you don’t wanna get too uptight. So they’ve been, you know, you’re you’re in danger of being influenced by these people. So it’s not that they’re bad people or anything, but here they’re making a mistake and you need to sort of recognize so so it’s better to to be aware, you know, and to understand what sort of public opinion is worth listening to and or what opinion of others is worth listening to and and what isn’t.
And, for instance, if you, if you are doing something that’s not so good and somebody points it out to you, that can be helpful. We don’t often like it, but it’s still helpful. Yes. Yes. Of course, if people sometimes people speak with anger or irritation from their own side too and that’s their own delusion speaking.
So you don’t have to get caught up in that. But, basically, if somebody points something out to us and tries to be pleasant about it, then it’s it’s good if we can at least, you know, give them half an ear and see if there’s something in what they’re saying. The Christians apparently judge somebody’s spiritual progress in the Christian monasteries. They judge somebody’s spiritual progress by how willing they are to listen to advice or to take correction. And I think there’s a lot in that.
And I have to admit myself, I hate being told when I’m not doing so well. But I can see that it is a mental factor that would definitely be helpful for your practice if you could take this sort of thing without being too upset by it. And you can see that high beings like Lama Zopa, you know, they, they never get upset if somebody tells them, whether it’s their whether it’s their guru or even just an ordinary person. They, always take it very respectfully. Yes.
Well, you know, Lama Zopa Rinpoche sees teachings everywhere. Not that, you know, not that you should go off telling off holy beings like Lama Zopa Rinpoche, but some people are but, you know, some people have sort of been quite rude to him, and he just takes it very, very nicely and never never gets upset. Right. Yes. But I don’t know what this necessarily means that we have to listen to that I don’t know if it necessarily means only when when others tell us, but it also means just from our own side, we don’t do something because we know.
I think it’s not this particular moral factor of consideration has mainly to do with the fact that we don’t do something because we know that the people around us, know, the Dharma practitioners around us and so on, would not think that this was a good thing, or perhaps that it would be something that might cause distress to others. So for instance, you know, you wouldn’t harm insects or whatever because you know that that would cause some suffering. So and the fourth one is non attachment. And this is non attachment to the pleasures of cyclic existence. So it means having this attitude that the pleasant pleasures of cyclic existence are are not are not something interesting, not something to be gone after.
So we have to meditate on the the the topics of impermanence and the sufferings of cyclic existence. See, the whole of cyclic existence is being in the nature of suffering, and we see the pleasures of cyclic existence as being like honey on the blade of a knife. And if you realize the pleasures and happiness of cyclic existence are really nothing, they’re really very very limited compared to the real happiness of of attaining liberation. Yes. So we’re into non hatred.
And non hatred is a mental factor. You know, we were talking about mental factors, primary minds and mental factors, and how the primary mind is influenced by the mental factor and the whole so that the primary mind can the mind a mind or a consciousness consists what we’re talking about is a particular instance of mind or mentality consists of a primary mind and that has a number of sort of subsidiary mental factors which are simultaneous with it, which arise in association with it. So you’ve got that whole bunch. And some of the mental factors are neutral and some of them are virtuous and some are non virtuous. So you can have a whole bunch of mental factors, but you can’t have both virtuous and non virtuous ones at the same time.
So if you’ve got virtuous mental factors arising they completely drive out the non virtuous ones for whatever period of continue to be maintained. And they also influence the main mind and all the other mental factors that are associated with the main mind. And then that also creates karmic tendencies and the actions done out of these virtues also, or in the case of non virtue also, you would have actions being performed which then create create karma through the action of the main mind under the influence of these mental factors. So this is very these are very, very important. So non hatred is a mental factor which is the lack of intention to cause harm to others.
And it’s the opposite to hatred. So hatred is a disturbed mind that arises when we see others with repulsion. And non hatred is something which opposes understand that when we’re talking about these virtues like non hatred and non attachment, these are positive virtues. They’re not just negative lack of non virtue. We’re talking about positive virtues here that create virtuous imprints on the mind, that create virtuous karma, that are positive antidotes to the non virtuous factors which are opposite to them.
It sounds because of the name, it sometimes sounds a bit negative as if it’s just, you know, the lack of this other thing, but it’s not. It’s talking about something which positively overcomes and creates a good karma on our mind stream. So these are very very powerful. So the object object it mentions not causing harm to others. The object can also be inanimate objects.
So we can have these sort of feelings of hatred sometimes towards inanimate things. For instance, perhaps political systems. So or something that we think is ugly. So we get this disturbing uncomfortable feeling at our heart. That’s anger.
It’s related to none, to hatred. It’s not precise the same. The definition of anger is generally the the wish to harm the object. So here it’s what’s the disturbed mind that arises when we see others with repulsion. So I guess that in some cases, it probably probably comes before anger that first of you would have the hate for it arising, and then you would have the the wish to harm arising, which is anger.
So, anyway, it’s this feeling of anger and unhappiness. It’s a very disturbed feeling in our hearts. So Geshe Tekchog says it can be directed towards ordinary objects such as doors, sores and thorns and rocks. So you can say, I hate these rocks. I feel that way sometimes when I’ve been bush walking for about three hours and my feet start hurting.
So then there are four so the so we can so we see people as enemies who’ve harmed us because they’ve harmed us or because they’ve harmed because they’re harming us in the present or because they’ll harm us in the future. And Geshe Tekchok says there’s nine ways that we can develop anger towards somebody. So I think he’s talking about the past, present and future and and because we can see somebody as an enemy because he’s helped, he’s helping or will help my enemies. Or because he’s harmed our friend or he has harmed, he’s having or will harm our friend. So basically, we hate other people either because we see them as harming us or we see them as harming our friend or because they help one of our other enemies.
And if you take that into the past, present and future then you’ve got nine ways. So that’s just sort of covering all eventualities, not leaving anything out. But there are four methods. This is important. Four methods by which we can train our minds in non hatred.
So these are to not blame others when they blame us, to not strike others when they strike us, to not become angry at someone who is angry with us, and to not criticize someone who criticizes us. So, these are things that we can train in. And, actually, you’ve been studying the teachings on Lojong thought training or Lojong teachings, you’ll recognize some of these ideas as being very much related to certain points of the thought training practice. For instance, in the the eight verses, it goes something like I’d better look it up, I suppose, that I don’t misquote it. But something like when I see others yes.
Something like that. Yes. When others out of jealousy treat you badly with abuse, insult and the like, I shall accept their hard words and offer other the other the victory. And there’s a lot of other similar ideas expressed in those eight verses. So, of course, this goes against our natural instincts, which is to retaliate, do what is done to you, hit back and whatever.
And we do this when we’re little with our brothers and sisters and friends, and we just tend to keep on doing it in more subtle ways as we grow older. And it’s it’s it’s very hard to actually train ourselves out of it. Even even if we manage sometimes to swallow our angry words or whatever, we still go away thinking about and wishing that we could say something to hurt the other person. So what we’re really doing is having to train our thoughts. It’s not so much about just stopping the action, but it’s about training the thought that wants to do that.
So we have to engage in that training and of course it’s not something that comes easily and it involves reversing our habitual patterning. So as we’ve sort of learned before, we have to gradually reverse our patterning and by training ourselves in a positive way, gradually it becomes easier and easier until eventually patience will arise naturally. Whereas now anger and revenge and the thought of retaliation arise very, very easily and naturally and we don’t have to put any work into developing them because we’ve been cultivating them over our past lifetimes. If we start now to practice patience and to practice non hatred and not wanting to retaliate, then eventually this will arise spontaneously as now anger and do. So it’ll be nice when it becomes easy, but right.
To start off with, we have to put in the hard work. So the best thing is to remember that when we do retaliate, we’re really just harming ourselves. This is the first thing to always remember because our self-cherishing is always very strong so we can use our self-cherishing to help us. And if we remember that when we retaliate against others, when we strike back, when we give back cruel, harmful words or whatever, we’re just harming ourselves and the other person is just acting as the agent of our karma. So it’s really our karma that’s brought this situation upon us.
If we retaliate, then we’re only creating more karma to come back at us again and we’re creating we’re we’re just strengthening our negative karmic links with this other person to get drawn again in the future into uncomfortable situations with them and just creating more and more of this sort of tangled coming situation for the future that’s going to lead us into more and more suffering. We’re just, you know, putting more and more bars on the prison. It’s easier then if we bring ourselves cherishing into it to be motivated to practice. I found this was really good because when I was young I used to go along to church and Sunday school and the ministers and the Sunday school teachers used to tell us all these really good teachings about how we shouldn’t get angry and how we should turn the other cheek and how Jesus wanted us to always be patient and loving and so on. All these things are very, very good and I’d get all inspired and then I’d go home and immediately I’d start doing all these things that Jesus didn’t want me to do.
And, basically, what I thought when I when I met the Buddhist teachings was how wonderful to be actively told how to how to train yourself. So the thing is that we have to put these things into action and meditate on them in advance because if we wait until we meet the situation then for sure we’re going if we haven’t prepared ourselves, for sure we’re just going to react instinctively. So we have to meditate and be prepared so that when a situation arises, we’ve already got the groundwork in there. So then non-confusion. Yes.
I’ll just another point there. Geshe Tekchok says that when we learn to not to react in way. He says it’s wonderful if we simply experience the harm. This is wonderful because it’s developing the patience of voluntary enduring suffering. And somebody might think, well, you know, does that mean that you have to stand around and let yourself get, you know, knocked unconscious, knocked and beaten for pulp or whatever?
And and, of course, it doesn’t mean that. We can always run away or protect ourselves, do something to protect ourselves, but we don’t have to turn around and beat the other person to a pulp or whatever. So it doesn’t mean that we have to passively put up with whatever people want to do with us. In fact, we do need to take some sort of firm action with that person to protect ourselves. We might need to go and report them to the police or whatever for the protection of others, even for their own protection of themselves to save them from creating negative karmas.
But what we’re concerned with here is the the mental attitude within ourselves of not wanting to retaliate. What we’re trying to do is to cultivate that attitude that we don’t do whatever we do with an attitude of just wanting revenge and wanting to cause harm. Yeah. You do. That’s right.
Yes. Yes. That’s right. Yes. It’s it’s easy to fall into that one when you first start practicing Dharma and later on you start to feel your way more into a more positive application of the teachings, into a more skillful application.
Yes. That’s true. Yes. Yes. That’s true.
But just but you are developing your own wisdom all the time, aren’t you? And even if that particular situation’s gone by and you didn’t handle that one right, you’ve got a little bit more knowledge. Yes. There are some people you can only deal with, certainly some people, the nicer you are to them, the more submissive you are, the more outrageous they become. The only way it’s quite surprised me sometimes.
Used to be somehow I grew up always handling trying to handle people by being nice. And I eventually encountered some people in life that just didn’t work with and it quite surprised me that sometimes when I got to the point where the worm turned and even sometimes I would be sort of reacting with anger but it still seemed to have quite a good effect on that person that they they would behave better in future. But it’s better if you don’t get angry because you tend to overreact and behave very unskillfully when you’re angry. Whereas if you can stay calm and assert yourself and draw the lines and not let them push you around, but without getting angry, often that kind of person will be much more respectful. And I found that there’s some people There’s one person in particular who lived sort in the same place as I was living, so I used to encounter her quite a lot and we would have all these confrontations.
And sometimes, you know, she would totally steamroll me, but other times I would have the presence of mind to sort of be able to sort of come back and say you’re being totally unreasonable. And if I was able to come back quick enough with good enough reasons, then she would sort of totally it was quite amazing how she would sort of be pacified. Whereas, you know, which never ceased to astonish me because I always expected that she was going to get even angrier when I did that, but somehow it was her psychology that if she stood up to her, she’d back right down. But you had to somehow do it, you had to sort of quick with your reasons as well, which isn’t always so easy. But you do get more and more skillful dealing with these kinds of people as you go on.
But, so the next one is non confusion, number six. And non confusion this one’s very confusing. I find it that way. I shouldn’t say that, but it’s a type of knowledge that arises either spontaneously at birth or through effort. It’s a mental it’s a mental factor that has no confusion when engaging in a virtuous object.
It leads to an avoidance of unwholesome actions. Do you want me to repeat that? Non confusion is a type of knowledge that arises either spontaneously at birth or through effort. It is a mental factor. This seems to be the actual definition.
It’s a mental factor that has no confusion when engaging in a virtuous object. It leads to the avoidance of unwholesome actions. So now what I found confusing is that Geshe Tekchok then goes on to explain the difference between knowledge and or Sherab in Tibetan or Prajñā. Prajñā. Yes.
In Sanskrit. Yes. Yeshe is Jñāna. Sherab is Prajñā. So we’re talking here about Sherab and knowledge associated with non confusion.
So the difference between non confusion and knowledge. And he says the virtuous mental factor of non confusion simply has the ability to not become confused with respect to a particular object. Alright. That seems fair enough. And to not engage in unwholesome action.
Whereas knowledge through its own power is able to distinguish between correct and incorrect. It knows what is to be practiced and what is to be abandoned. So he goes on to say that you can regard knowledge as being including non confusion, but non confusion doesn’t include knowledge. So it’s kind of like a kind of knowledge, but it doesn’t cover the whole of knowledge.