Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 34-minute talk, Ven Margaret McAndrew uses the Wheel of Sharp Weapons to explore why ordinary people constantly seek distraction and how Bodhisattvas transcend this. She draws the peacock-and-crow metaphor: crows (ourselves) are poisoned by worldly pleasures and must avoid them, while peacocks—Bodhisattvas with bodhicitta—safely engage with the same circumstances without harm, even finding joy in difficulty undertaken for others. She contrasts this with Hīnayāna practitioners, who recognize worldly things as poison but lack bodhicitta to transform them. Margaret then parallels this to Jungian psychology: just as the psyche must integrate shadow aspects rather than repress them, Buddhist practice transforms delusion rather than merely avoiding it. Throughout, she emphasizes that bodhicitta—cultivated through love, compassion, and thought-training—provides the strength to engage the world safely.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 SW 1999 02 04.mp3
UUID: 39a084c3-4e81-4e51-b717-3fa8049f4e74
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-02-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 34.5 minutes
Words: ~3,584
Time in doing some sort of present, meaning meaningless activity to get diverted from the Dharma practice by any nice thing that comes along. It seems like the reason the psychological reason behind all of these kinds of distractions and diversions is because in our present state, our general everyday consciousness is not always very happy. Our general level of happiness isn’t very high. We find it very easy. We seem to vary from being moderately a bit depressed or having a bit of a tendency to be unhappy.
And this is pretty normal. You don’t find many people who go around being positively happy on an average, on an overall average. Although of course we’re all positively happy for part of the time. But we’re always looking for things to make us happier. We don’t feel that we have an overall happy state of mind.
And this is just normal. This is not exceptional. People who are exceptionally unhappy are people who perhaps have psychosis or neuroses or whatever who have psychological problems, what we would recognize in modern Western terminology of having psychological problems such as deep depression. But just talking about ordinary people, we’re still always looking for more happiness. And we’re Because these circumstances that we encounter give us a bit of pleasure, a bit of relief from our perhaps slightly despondent or slightly unhappy state of mind.
We feel that we need to be constantly distracting ourselves or keeping busy to divert ourselves from unhappiness and to help ourselves to feel happy. And this is just the state of an undeveloped being because as we develop more and more, we develop more happiness within us. And Bodhisattvas have real joy within their minds all the time. Of course, are many levels of Bodhisattva and these different levels of Bodhisattva experience different degrees of joy. But Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey in his commentary spoke about even the new bodhisattva experiencing initial level happiness.
So even the new bodhisattva is experiencing a much greater level of happiness than what we would be experiencing. In particular, feel this happiness in undertaking sufferings because the nature of bodhicitta, of wanting to work and bring about the welfare of sentient beings and do what is necessary in order to do that about to bring that about. That by its very nature brings with it the thought that by enduring these sufferings, they’re actually doing this for the sake of others and that brings joy in their minds. You might perhaps compare it to to a mother who is able to endure some sort of hardship for the welfare of her beloved children. But this is an example that’s often used.
The love of the mother for the child is a kind of a weak example of the love that Bodhisattvas have for all sentient beings. And so we know that a mother, a normal mother, would gladly undertake all sorts of hardships for the sake of their children. And they wouldn’t really see it as being a hardship. And even more so with the bodhisattvas, they find real joy in these situations. So, in this way, they’re not only different to us, but they’re different to the Śrāvaka and Pratyekabuddha practitioners who are also referred to as being among the crows.
So you know what the Śrāvaka and Pratyekabuddha are? To put it in simpler terms, anyway, practitioners on the Hīnayāna path, they they can be divided into two major categories. Do do you want to does anybody remember what the hearers are? Oh, Śrāvaka, sorry. Mhmm.
That’s right. Mhmm. Do you remember the Pratyekabuddha? Mhmm. Yes.
Yes. But it can be used that way, the Śrāvaka Yana and or the Shrivaka vehicle and the Pratyekabuddha Yana or vehicle. Yes. So they it can be divided the Hīnayāna can be divided into two vehicles, but it’s a very technical distinction and it’s not that important to really understand it but it often gets referred to. So it’s just that there are these two kinds of practitioners.
Ones that you hear about most of the hearers, the ones who followed Buddha or his lineage. And the Pratyekabuddha are those who apparently heard teachings from some Buddha in past lives but don’t receive teachings in the lifetime in which they attain their realization and they just go off and meditate in a solitary place and basically find their own path as Buddha himself did. But rather than achieving full Buddhahood because they don’t have bodhicitta, they just attain liberation, individual liberation. So, these great practitioners of the Śrāvaka and Pratyekabuddha Path, the ones who have entered the first path onwards, the first path is entered for the Hīnayāna when they achieve renunciation of saṃsāra and that point on anyway we can consider them as being great practitioners and they avoid worldly things like poison. They recognize these things as poison.
And for them it is poison because they don’t have the bodhicitta which gives the bodhisattvas the strength to be among these circumstances without being harmed by them. So these Śrāvaka and Pratyekabuddha are not tempted by worldly things. They’re not interested in worldly things. They only want to attain liberation. And so they avoid any possibility of distraction by seeking a situation where they won’t be encountering the objects as as little as possible.
They’ll be encountering objects of desire and aversion. And where these deluded mental states and particularly desire and attachment won’t be stimulated. And so they go off and meditate in these solitary places. Whereas worldly beings are also like crows. They’re also damaged by the poison but they don’t recognize the danger.
So they’re not like these Śrāvaka and Pratyekabuddha practitioners. They’re not like these great practitioners of the Hīnayāna path who recognize the danger and avoid it. But instead of that they’re falling into the danger all the time and being hurt by it. And we tend to be like that. So we’re not bodhisattvas yet.
So we need to be careful. And But also, we are training ourselves to become bodhisattvas. So we want to become able gradually to practice this way. And we should also remember that compared to us, these practitioners on the five Hīnayāna paths are great practitioners. It’s only compared to Bodhisattvas that they’re like crows.
So if you compare them to like to us, they’re absolutely wonderful. Not talking of course, about myself, not talking about everybody else because as I said before, you’re probably all Bodhisattvas or enlightened beings just sharing the aspect of being Buddha House students. Yes. Just to make you feel good and make you feel that somebody’s coming along to the to the Thursday night teachings. Otherwise, I’d feel really disappointed and down and miserable and depressed.
And then I’d have to go away and hide in a cave. So does anybody have any questions? Oh, you know, of course, what the pros do advanced and become peacocks too. Yes. In Queensland, we used to get come the Broncos colors.
Yes. We, fortunately, were wearing the same colors as the the Broncos. And around about especially around the grand final season, we’d always get a few cheers. I used to think it must be terrible for the monks and nuns in Sydney. Yeah.
Okay. So anyway, it also struck me that there’s an interesting parallel here with Jungian psychology. You know, I’m always bringing up Jungian psychology. And basically, this is because we according to Jung, Carl Jung, we have all these neuroses and psychological problems which arise because various factors during our growing up of course is to reject parts of our basic makeup that we perceive as being bad. For instance, when you might see one example could be when you put on a display of being angry.
We learn that that’s bad. And so we learn not to put on that display of anger. And so we for instance, we might repress our anger. This is it can be different things that get repressed. We repress a lot of different things.
Different people repress different facets of their psychology but generally we can say that we all have some repressions and if we have too many of them then it gives us psychological problems. And so we reject these aspects of ourselves which we perceive as bad and in fact these various aspects of our psyche do manifest in very negative ways sometimes. But what we do when we repress them is that we make the mistake of confusing the underlying energy or drive with the with its negative manifestation. Manifestation and we try to repress that basic underlying energy which is just raw energy. And this is what we also learn in Tantra really, it’s expressed in different terms but what we learn is that we have this raw energy which we are present expressing in forms of deluded energy in which we have to harness on the path to enlightenment, is or in other words transform.
So what happens when we repress this energy, reject it and repress it, we actually refuse to acknowledge a part of ourselves and we put a lot more energy into holding it down. Which is what repression means, it just means pressing it down. So we’re putting all this energy all the time into these repressions until we feel exhausted and miserable and we feel that something’s missing in our lives. We feel that some part of our being is missing, that something that should bring us joy in life isn’t functioning. And not only that, but it doesn’t really work anyway because once in a while this repressed energy will break out and because it breaks out in an uncontrolled way, because we’ve rejected it, we haven’t got it under control of what Jung would have referred to as the ego or the self, then we have it taking over and making us behave in uncontrolled or in negative ways that we don’t like to accept as being our own self anyway.
We we have all these sayings. We say, oh, you know, I wasn’t myself when I did that or I’m not really like that. That wasn’t really me. I don’t know what came over me. It’s because where we have a feeling that it wasn’t ourselves but something else.
That in actual fact this energy really is a part of ourselves but we haven’t accepted it as part of our our persona, our sense well, our sense of personal identity, our our psyche or self. And we haven’t accepted it. And so we have these arising because of that situation. And Jung showed or explained that it’s necessary to integrate, to go through a process of integrating these energies. In the process of integrating, we’re often very afraid of these energies because of the negative manifestation.
We don’t like to even make a step towards integrating them because we feel that that means that we will become an angry person, a violent person, or you might have had a sexually uncontrolled person or whatever form our repressions might have taken. But in actual fact, we find as we do integrate these energies that we are able to use them appropriately, that they don’t take control of us in the way that they used to, that they don’t manifest in that negative way, that we instead of that have access to them when it’s appropriate, that we’re able to express these energies when it’s appropriate and that they don’t trouble us at inappropriate times because they’ve been harnessed into the integrated psyche. And Jung also saw the effectiveness in this process of working with symbolism. Symbolism seems to get to the root of our psyche in a way that intellectual understanding doesn’t. But also, of course, Jung also saw the need of working with the intellect.
Saw that we need to integrate the conscious self with the psyche. In other words, we need We have all these things happening in the subconscious, in western psychological terms would be called subconscious. And if we’re to integrate them, have to bring them into consciousness and understand them. And symbolism is the language through which the contents of the subconscious can be explained to the conscious. So we also find that in Tantric, we work with symbols, with symbolism.
And in this text, Wheel of Sharp Weapons, we’re not using a lot of symbolism. It’s pretty straightforward. But there is this symbol that’s going through the whole thought training, in Yamāntaka, of Yamāntaka with the wheel of weapons of good actions and hurling it at the the the real enemy which is self-cherishing. And so there’s a connection in this teaching with Tantra. Although it’s not a Tantra teaching, it has this aspect of showing a way of transforming delusions in the path.
So in in the Sūtra teachings, you can’t say in Sūtra teachings that you can transform delusions in the path. This is a tantric teaching. And in Sūtra, the most you can say is that you can take the delusions as helpers. In tantric teachings, you can actually say that you transform them in the path. And so the tantric teaching on transformation is very profound and it’s easily misunderstood.
And it’s easily it easily leads to misuse because people can take to this to mean that they can do anything they like and that they can follow desire and attachment as much as they like and so on. In actual fact, to follow the Tantric teachings requires much greater self discipline than the Sūtra path. And the Sūtra path teaches avoiding the objects of delusion like the the crows. So only Bodhisattvas have this strength. So this is basically a Sūtra teaching that it does have some connection with Tantra and it also illustrates that connection with Tantra by bringing in the figure of Yamāntaka.
So Bodhisattvas have the strength because of their bodhicitta to to be among these. And this is actually a Sūtra teaching. The Mahāyāna teachings, although they the Mahāyāna Sūtra teachings, although they don’t teach transformation of delusions in the path, they do teach that the Bodhisattva can go out among the world world, can engage in worldly activities among ordinary beings for the sake of helping others because of having bodhicitta. This is a a sūtra understanding. And it’s because of the strength of their bodhicitta that they’re able to do this.
Their great love and compassion protects them and also their inner joy, the happiness they have at working for others, that undergoing these difficulties because of the work they’re doing for the sake of others, also keeps them safe from falling into the dangers that are presented by these external circumstances. Whereas, if we don’t have that, unlike the Bodhisattvas, they don’t need to go around looking for happiness. They don’t need to go around looking for enjoyment. They’re they’re happy. Their minds are full of enjoyment without having to look for external circumstances for this.
And they can enjoy these things safely. They can go enjoy, you know, food and pleasures and music and beautiful things. All of these things, it’s not going to distract them because although they can enjoy these things, they don’t feel they need to enjoy these things happiness. They know that the real enjoyment, the real happiness is within themselves. If you ever met Lama Yeshe, you would have seen, you would have said that you’d never met anybody who seemed to enjoy life the way Lama Yeshe did.
Or Khensur Rinpoche, you know, you’ve probably all met Khensur Rinpoche. You can see how he enjoys himself when he laughs. You just know that that laugh’s really coming from a real state of happiness within and it just carries that infectious quality to other people because he has that inner happiness. So that’s about it for tonight. Well, of course, I haven’t prayed he was if you don’t want to hear them.
The end of that oh. The end of that story, might as well tell you it’s a good one. When we finally got to the Badrinath station, if you’ve ever traveled in India, know that you often get the stations where there’s crowds of people trying to push onto the train and they try to get in through the doors and the windows and everything, and they’re all carrying these enormous trunks and bedrolls and things. Apparently they don’t do that as much now anymore, but they this was about fifteen years ago they used to.
the station was crowded with all these Indians, and when I looked there, I I said to Cecilia, the other nun nurse, I said, oh, it’s going to be really difficult to push out through this bus. We’re all trying to push in at the same time. They don’t wait for you to get out, because they’ll start pushing in right away, so everybody’s trying to push out against the crowd. And so that yeah. Because they’re just desperate to get a seat or at least get a place on the train.
And so I said, the easiest way would be for you to go out first and I’ll pass stuff out through the window to you and then I’ll slip up. And so we did that, and then when I tried to get out, it was absolutely impossible. You couldn’t get through the door, totally impossible. So I said, well, there’s nothing for it, but I’ll have to jump out through the window. But all these people were passing all these enormous trunks and bedrolls and huge things in through the window and all trying to push into the window.
So I said, there’s no way I can get my feet out. I said, the only way I can get through is to dive out head first, so you’ll have to catch me. So fortunately, you’re a big, strong girl. She was a physiotherapist. We did that.
So of course, I took a dive and the moment I took the dive, somebody plunked a huge, enormous metal tin trunk down on my foot and pinned me to the window. And so we had all these people on the outside pushing in and all the soldiers and so on. And Celia was pulling me and all the soldiers from inside were trying to push me out. And I thought I thought I was going to lose a leg. And I was afraid that the train would start off, and I didn’t know what was going to happen.
He was sort of holding holding me in mid air and pulling. And finally my shoe came off, and then my foot popped out, and they pulled me through, shoe onto the platform and we got away. Yes. Would’ve made a good photograph. Yes.
Oh, it might have been just a case of you gotta do what you gotta do. Say something else. I’m really desperate to try anything. So would you like to do a meditation? So we just think of our motivation that we’re engaging in this practice to cultivate the thought of bodhicitta.
So we can understand that this world is like a jungle full of poisonous plants. While we’re in cyclic existence, we mistake these poisonous plants for being nourishing. But in actual fact, they’re dangerous and always, leading us into, stronger and stronger delusions and the creation of negative karma which create the cause of suffering for us in the future and which lead us to cycle birth after birth in saṃsāra. So the example of the Bodhisattva is like the peacocks who can digest these poisonous plants and whose beauty is enhanced by these plants. So they don’t need to go seeking other plants that are safer to eat.
In fact, they can benefit from eating these plants which are poisonous to the the beings who are like crows like us. And the reason they’re able to engage in these, these activities in worldly situations without being contaminated by worldly mental states is because of their having cultivated and, generated in their mind streams the, attitude of bodhicitta only wanting to bring about the welfare of all sentient beings and having great joy and happiness in working for that purpose. And so we need to recognize our limitations and avoid the dangers of these situations that stimulate our worldly attitudes of situations that stimulate our worldly attitudes of desire and hatred which would distract us from our Dharma practice. But we should also aspire to become like these great bodhisattvas. We should cultivate admiration for their great qualities And train ourselves to be able to practice as they do.
And particularly train ourselves in love and compassion. In compassion and in the thought training practices of converting difficult circumstances into circumstances helping us on the path. So then we can dedicate our merits. Does anybody have any questions that you want to ask first? Dedication page on page five.
May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to that enlightened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow. And may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more.