Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Ven Margaret McAndrew teaches stanza 25 of the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, exploring how grudges and bad intentions toward others create karmic consequences of enmity and isolation. She begins with essential groundwork: building realistic confidence in gradual practice and learning to recognize small signs of progress. She then examines how grudges operate subtly—how we rationalize them and await chances to retaliate through gossip, sly remarks, or public reputation damage. The core practice is tonglen, a visualization method of taking on others’ sufferings while sending them your good karma and realizations. She teaches how to synchronize it with breath, use self-cherishing as fuel for transformation, and incorporate meditation on emptiness. For practitioners ready to examine and work directly with hidden resentments.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 SW 1999 03 25.mp3
UUID: a8fa16b0-00a2-4642-8cf8-ff299b89c052
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-03-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~5,310
Wheel of Sharp Weapons. And, this is in order to be able to follow the path and to be able to, develop love and compassion and, the thought of attaining enlightenment for the sake of all. And so we have to do this with the, the motivation that’s associated with this Mahāyāna practice of, bodhicitta and thinking of the suffering of beings, of all beings who are caught up in saṃsāra like ourselves. First of all, having understood our own suffering, we want to, put an end to that so we understand that this applies to others. Whatever suffering we’re experiencing ourselves, we can understand that other beings experience the same kind of suffering and worse.
And that as we’re just one being and that other beings are countless, then it’s not sufficient to just look for our own release from suffering, but we should think of being able to bring this about for others as well. And at present, we don’t have the power to help others. We don’t have the means. We have to acquire those means. And in order to acquire the best means for helping others, we need to attain Buddhahood.
So we need to set our sights right now on the thought that whatever our daily practice might be, we’re doing it with this motivation of, eventually achieving full enlightenment so as to be able to, bring about the welfare of others. And especially tonight here, we’re doing this practice with this motivation. Can you all hear me alright? Good. So this, practice that we’re learning about tonight, the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, you know, already it belongs to the category of thought training practices, which in Tibetan is called Lojong.
So all of these thought training practices are very practical. And this one that we’re doing tonight is very practical. So, the purpose of doing this kind of practice is that, if we’re able to put this kind of, training into practice then we can be happier in our daily lives and also overcome obstacles on the path to enlightenment. So it’s not just a question of overcoming the obstacles but it’s really a question of using the problems which could otherwise be an obstacle to us to become our helpful condition instead. So in this way it’s very, very practical because whatever difficult circumstances we might be encountering, we don’t have to feel unhappy about these difficulties.
We don’t have to feel that it’s something that’s going to block our practice or delay our achievement of enlightenment. So, although some of these situations may not be the things we would have chosen to encounter, still we can feel happy to be encountering these situations if we have no choice and they can enhance our practice. So, sometimes our problems can actually turn out to be good fortune. They can bring us situations to practice things that we wouldn’t have an opportunity to practice if everything went smoothly. And so in this way, they can actually make our path to enlightenment become very fast.
And so the words lojong mean mind transformation, and they’re very practical for this purpose. And also, they enable us to be happy whatever difficult circumstances, whatever suffering situations one we might encounter still. We can learn how to be happy in our minds all the time. So this is something that’s really very beneficial for us and it’s something that would like to experience. So we have the means in our hand through these practices.
It doesn’t have to depend on external circumstances. We can become, to some extent, independent of circumstances and we only have to have a good grounding in this mind training and then we can be sure that our practice will be going ahead and that even if we don’t accomplish everything that we want to accomplish in this lifetime, we’re certainly going to be putting in the groundwork. That means we’re going to experience the circumstances that we need to have in future lifetimes. So sometimes when we receive these teachings on thought transformation, whether it’s this teaching on the Wheel of Sharp Weapons or whether it’s something like the Eight Verses of Thought Training or some of the other practices that we can learn about, they’re very inspiring and we become enthusiastic. And so we think then we know how to use the thought training practice and we think that whatever problems come along we’ll be dealing with them beautifully from now on.
And then we go along and everything goes alright for a while and then we encounter a problem that’s a real bummer. It’s just too much for us and it gets us down. And this happens. So we have to really be prepared for this sort of thing to happen and we shouldn’t think that the practice isn’t working or that we’re not good enough, that we’re not good enough practitioners. This is the thought that we really have to work against.
First of all, we have to have confidence in the Dharma teachings. But sometimes we can have confidence in the Dharma teachings in an impersonal sort of way, which is really the same as not having confidence in them at all. Because the Dharma teachings are all about ourselves and our practice and our potential. And if we don’t have confidence in our own potential, if we feel that we’re hopeless or that we’re not good enough, that we can’t do the things that other people do, then we’re really failing to get the point of the Dharma teachings and what they’re all about. So the Dharma teachings are for us and they’re for our practice and they’ll work for us.
And we can’t expect them to work all at once because this isn’t in accordance with what the Dharma teaches us about our own psychology. But if we can keep on using it and keep on keeping up consistently with the practice with the understanding that we might not be finding it easy in the short term, but if we’re consistent then we’ll see results in the long term, then it will definitely work for us. And we definitely shouldn’t think that we’re not good enough because everybody who’s become an advanced Dharma practitioner who’s able to do the basic practices with these now, all of these people had to start off where we are. They all start off with real difficulties. And if we look at somebody like Khen Rinpoche and see how joyful he is and how little things don’t seem to bother him, he must have started off as someone like ourselves who was, really sometimes weighed down by problems and really felt, discouraged.
And, he must have done the practice and, got to where he is now. And if we look at the the story of Buddha’s previous lives before he became Buddha, he went through many lifetimes where he had to endure a lot of different hardships and difficulties. And the, the first story that we have about his previous lives, whether you regard it as being an apocryphal story or whether you take it literally, it doesn’t matter. The point is that the message is there and the message is that the earliest story of we have have his early life is that he was a being suffering in the hell states because of his negative karma. And while he was suffering in the hell states, he gave rise to a sort of loving-kindness for his companion who was suffering torture with him in the hell states of having to pull a heavy cart uphill over burning ground while being belted around by an animal headed guard, which is a much worse situation than any of us are experiencing now.
And so we’ve got conducive situations in general. And these beings had these difficulties and they overcame them through using these kinds of practices which have particularly to do with consideration for others and developing loving-kindness. And if we’re able to practice this, then we have to expect that our minds are a bit stiff and tough at the moment And they’re a bit like a a, you know, an old shoe that’s sort of been left out in the rain and gone hard and all this kind of thing. So we have to do things that are going to make it become soft and workable. And, eventually, it’s going to happen.
And we don’t want to look and see whether we’re being able to always feel on top of the big problems. But we just keep up our practice and see if it’s working for the lesser problems. We should see that it is starting to have some effect on us, that we’re starting to cope with some of the little things that might have thrown us off course before. And if we check and see that it’s working with the little things, that gives us more confidence and we’ll keep on trying with the really big ones. And we still have to recognize that it can be a struggle.
But also that through keeping on trying and keeping up with the struggle, then we can develop a lot through this struggle. And maybe we won’t see the benefits right away, but we’ll be able to look back later and see where we’ve gained the benefits. Does anybody want to say anything? I think you have to allow yourself at least a couple of years of, you know, of reasonably consistent practice. It’s the same with anything, you know, to look back, when you’re too close to what you really can’t see.
But if you look back and, see what you’ve been doing, then, you’ll see, something happening. Of course, sometimes you get feedback from other people too, and that can be encouraging. You might not know there’s a change yourself, until other people point it out to you that they’re noticing. So, this is something that, yeah, you start to look back and, you can really see that, sometimes sometimes just something happens, somebody does something, says something to you and maybe you just think, oh, I don’t really need to react to that. There’s no reason why I have to get annoyed.
You know, why should I bother getting annoyed? And that’s a sign of progress if you can see that that sort of thing really got under your skin, some time ago. And little things like that just show what’s, happening. Or maybe you start to get annoyed and then just some sort of thought out of the Dharma teachings comes into your mind and you immediately think, oh, yes, it’s so true. And then, you know, that’s really a sign that the the teachings are starting to work for you.
Yes. Well, seems to be the facts of life that if you really think you’re going well and that you really start to think you’re on top of it, then you start to, hit a really big one. And of course sometimes our difficult patches can go on for quite a long time too. I’m not just talking about something that might last for a day or two or a half an hour, but sometimes you can go through bad patches where, it may not even be anything obvious from the outside, but just, within yourself. You seem to go through a difficult patch and, things are it’s just hard to face life or whatever.
But these things to be expected too and you just keep on with it. And then you sort of come out of it and you look back and you can really see that perhaps at the time you thought that it was all negative, but having got through it, you can see that you’ve actually made a step forward. Yes. That’s another point too. Yes.
Yes. Yes. I think that’s true as well. Yes. Yes.
But some of our stuff is quite deep. If, as the Dharma teachings tell us that it doesn’t just come from this life, but from, if the really big things in our life come from, before this and the reason why, we might, have some very strong, sort of, traumas or whatever to deal with in this life, probably, have their roots, in things that have happened again and again to us before. So a lot of these things do take quite a lot of time to reverse. But still the process is underway, and, we should start to see things happening. Yes.
That’s right. Sometimes it can be just too discouraging if you try to do too much all at once. Yes. So, yes. So I think actually, you know, everybody really can work this out for themselves in a way we have our own wisdom.
Sometimes you feel that there’s time to just roll up your sleeves and tackle the big ones. And other times, as you say, you feel it’s better to just concentrate on the little things. So, anyway, if we keep on enhancing our ability to work by practicing on these little things, then we’ll start to understand how to make it work for the bigger ones too. So we’ll get into training. So it doesn’t mean that in the time for the time being that we give up on the big ones, but we just keep on trying, but we have to recognize that there be times when it won’t be easy.
And it’s important to understand the graduated path teachings of the underlying meaning behind all of these things, the underlying cause and effect, and how all our problems and sufferings are brought about by self-cherishing. So if these thought training teachings are particularly aimed at overcoming self-cherishing. So if we understand from studying the graduated path teachings on about how self-cherishing does cause our sufferings, then we really have more confidence in these thought training teachings and how they’re going to work for us. And that gives us more motivation to put them into practice with real energy. And then we can understand that if we can overcome self-cherishing and instead of that replace that with cherishing others, then to whatever extent we’re able to do that, then to that extent we’re going to be experiencing real happiness.
And this might be a kind of happiness that we haven’t even experienced yet up to this point Because we’re getting into an area that’s new to us, that’s really outside the area of experience of samsaric beings in general. And this kind of dharma happiness that we’re working towards is something that’s really special. So to get on with the verses, the stanzas, We’re up to stanza twenty five. Maybe you’d like to read that, Helen. Oh, sorry.
Oh, well then, help you out later? Would you like to move it? Oh, sorry. Yes. Yes.
I had a few thoughts while I was studying that one. In actual fact, the word there grudges, isn’t apparently a good translation. It should be bad intentions. So I wasn’t able to get into the library to look up grudge and see what the strict definition of it was because there was a meeting happening in the library. But I think it generally has the idea of holding anger and it often has a suggestion of having a readiness to return a wrong and to retaliate.
So it’s not all that different about intentions, but here it’s actually holding an intention that you’ll return harm when you get the chance. You’ll do some sort of harm in return to the person. Get back at them. Yes. And we seem to find it very easy.
A lot of us, it seems to be a common thing that we naturally feel this way. And you can see even kitties say things like, oh, you know, I’ll get back at you about that. I’ll pay you back. I’ll show you. So, this is because we’ve been behaving this way in our past lifetimes.
So sometimes if we have the chance, then we’ll retaliate right away. And if we’re in a situation where we have no power to retaliate openly or if we’re concerned about our reputation if we were to do that, we might put it aside for the moment, but we still hold this grudge and we still hold the thought of making the person hurt, feel some sort of hurt for this thing that they’ve done to us. And we think of sly methods. So this can be easy enough to do if we’re around the person frequently. So particularly with our family members or our colleagues at work or with people that we have daily contact, then it’s really only a question of waiting until the the opportunity comes and then we can sort of suddenly stick in the knife and say something hurtful perhaps in the guise of making a joke or of teasing them, then we can say something that’s really painful.
Or we might be even slier than that and we might decide to get back at them by perhaps damaging them with others by saying things behind their backs to other people so that perhaps they’re they suffer at work that by spreading a bad reputation about their competency or something like that. So there’s lots of different things that we can do if we have this kind of negative intention. And it can be very very damaging to other people. And Yeah. So whether we know it or not, I think we tend to do it.
It’s more subtle. Yes. Yes. It’s it’s interesting to look at that. Yes.
As you said. If we’re holding it. Yes. So, yes, I’m not quite sure. I suppose it depends on the individual because if you actually hurt somebody physically, then that’s, stronger.
But I think if you hold bad intentions, that’s very, very serious. Just holding the bad intention itself, is negative without even acting on it. Even if you’re just waiting for the opportunity, it’s one of the ten non virtues of body, speech and mind. And of course, as you say, we can get very angry but then get over it quickly sometimes. And particularly if we regret having been angry then that, reduces the intensity.
Whereas if we, habituate ourselves to a particular bad intention, then that’s, going to make make it very, strong. That’s one of the things. That might be why the psychologists tell people to punch a pillow. You think that’s not much use? I thought it might be useful in some cases where the person really needs to find an outlet.
Yes. Better than beating a person. Of course, what we’re about with these thought training teachings is not to need to beat a pillow. So when people ask about that, I sort of always tend to take the viewpoint that it really probably depends on the individual person and that, you know, perhaps it might be useful in some cases, but the idea is to always get beyond try to get beyond that. So we can hold onto these things and, be really negative just holding onto this negative energy.
And then if you’re holding onto that too, then somehow it happens that when you do encounter the opportunity, then without thinking, you just sort of do it because you’ve been holding that gradually all the time and sometimes you weren’t even aware that you were holding it. It’s been sort of subtle. So I think one of the worst things with this kind of energy is that quite often you don’t really admit to yourself what’s going on in your mind. It can be so subtle that you don’t really acknowledge that you’re that kind of you don’t like to think of yourself as being that kind of person. We don’t often quite often, we don’t like to think of ourselves as being the kind of person that goes around holding grudges and wanting to retaliate.
And so we either justify ourselves or, in some way, we, hold the grudge, subconsciously. It’s just in the back of our minds. And then when the person comes along, we take the opportunity to put them down or do something unpleasant, but we don’t recognize that it’s because we’ve been holding this grudge all the time. So we don’t face the facts about what we’re doing. Generally, think most people are too decent to want to see themselves as being vengeful.
They don’t want to see themselves as being this way. But still, I think probably there wouldn’t be very many of us who haven’t acted this way occasionally. Mostly, I think mostly, we’re we’re probably too nice to do this kind of thing very often, but But still, you know, it can happen. And so in a way, it can be hard if we’re overcoming the sort of anger that really is overt and that makes us want to hit somebody or to do something drastic. So we have to deal with this sort of grudge holding or holding of bad intention.
And so in the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, we’re taught how to deal with this. So those of you who’ve been to the previous talks will remember steps in the process that first of all we remember the karmic result that comes to us. So that gives us the incentive to really want to stop doing these kinds of things so as not to experience these results again. So here we’re actually using our self-cherishing in a sense to to help us by remembering karmic cause and effect. So we don’t want to have to experience people turning against us as enemies.
We we all know that this is a a painful experience when people that we would like to be our friends or who we regard as being our friends and dear ones turn against us and become our enemies. And we don’t it’s not from any wish on our side to change the relationship, then this is an unpleasant, painful situation that we hope to avoid in future. And the cause of it is this holding of bad intentions. So we make up our mind to avoid this kind of thing in future, to watch what’s going on in our minds, to watch for negative thoughts, negative emotional states towards others, and overcome them by remember remembering the karmic results and trying to replace these thoughts with positive thoughts towards others, with the thought of being helpful towards others, of being pleasant and kind. And we can remember that if we’re experiencing these kinds of results in the present, it’s the ripening of our negative karma.
And it gives us an understanding of the kind of sufferings that are being experienced by other beings. So we’re not alone in this suffering. Many, many beings have created this kind of karma and are experiencing this kind of result. And even those beings who aren’t experiencing this kind of result in the present, many of them have this kind of karma on their mind stream and will have to experience this kind of result in the future. So we can do this practice thinking that we’re going to have to experience this result now because of our bad karmas ourselves so we can turn it to good account by thinking that we’re doing the practice of taking on the similar sufferings of others.
And so in that way, experiencing it ourselves, we do the practice giving and taking and imagine that by having this suffering we are taking it off others. This really creates a very positive imprint on our minds and creates the cause in the future to be able to help others positively and to accumulate causes that will help us on the path to enlightenment. Does anybody have anything to say? It’s yes. Oh, that’s right.
Yes. So we definitely Insurance. Insurance. It’s a bank account for the future. Yes.
So in the present, we get the benefit of finding it easier to deal with our problems. And in the future, we’re getting the benefit of the meritorious karma that comes from this practice, which is, of course, what we need. We we really need these strong accumulations of positive karma. This idea of karma is really it’s very much related to the habituation of our mind stream in the in the practices that we want to bring about. So by doing this kind of practice, develop loving-kindness towards others and compassion, particularly compassion because we’re thinking of relieving them of suffering.
And, that brings about good karmic results in the terms of good conditions. And also it helps with our practice. Yes. So, it helps with all these good things. So, do this practice in the form of of giving and taking that’s explained in the Great Scope section of the Graduated Path.
So if you remember that we do it by visualizing the others’ sufferings and negative karma in the form of black smoke and pollution. And we imagine that we relieve them of it so that their bodies become clear and free of that. And we put it onto the lump of self-cherishing which is in the center of our chest and we blow up that lump of self-cherishing and then our self we feel very light and we feel freed of that hard, heavy lump in the middle of our chest. We can visualize it as a dark spot if you like. And then that’s gone.
So we feel that our bodies become very clear and transparent like an empty glass bottle. And then you can meditate on emptiness at that point. And then the you want to carry it a step further, you can actually imagine that arising out of that meditation on emptiness, a very brief meditation on emptiness. You don’t really get into thinking about emptiness, but just briefly for a few seconds have that thought of emptiness of true existence and then arise out of that in the form of an enlightened being such as Buddha Śākyamūni or if you have a meditational deity that you’ve been initiated into, then you can think of that meditation of deity. Take that form and send out all the good things, all the Dharma understanding, good karma, realizations on the path, happiness, realizations to the beings.
And then the the beings, can feel that they actually attain different stages of the path and what they need in order to attain enlightenment such as human rebirths. So you’re sending out all your good stuff to them, all your merits, all your good conditions. Then so when you have a bit of practice with that, you can actually combine it with one round of breath in and out. So taking on the suffering with your in breath and sending out, then blowing up the self-cherishing, meditating on emptiness, arising as Buddha, and sending out the good stuff. By the way, these yogis, when they breathe, they don’t breathe as fast as we do, so they have more time to do it.
But even an ordinary person, when you’re meditating and your breathing is calm and relaxed and you concentrate it, with a bit of practice you can get into doing it all in one round. But you can spend a bit of time on each particular suffering and spend, you know, a period of time on each breath that you take. You take on these sufferings and then you send out all the good things but then you have to do it all again over and over again. You can’t just think that you’ve done it once and it’s all gone. I think you spend a little bit bit of time at the start of the breath concentrating on the black smoke coming in, then as you start to feel that your lungs getting full, this is the way I do it, and then you sort of feel that it all goes on to the self-cherishing and it blows up.
I mean, you start off the thing that goes on with self-cherishing, but you place more focus on the sufferings relieving them, and then you sort of blow up that self-cherishing or just disperse it. You know? And yes. So in order to while we’re full of that self-cherishing, we can’t give away the good things, so we have to blow that up first. And Then it’s helpful to do that contemplation on emptiness just briefly and then arise as the form of Buddha.
Then, of course, you’ve got all the power of Buddha to send illuminations and all sorts of, you know, rays of light and so on, which you can’t really do as an ordinary person. So if you visualize yourself as Buddha, then you can send out these rays of light. So it comes in through the the black smoke comes in through your right nostril down to your chest. And then, again, from your heart center, you can visualize coming up from your heart center. This source of white light at your heart center is Buddha coming up through your left nostril and going out towards the beings.
There’s a connection with our nadis. That’s why we visualize the nostrils. So you have to get into visualizing the nadis, but it’s still helping to clear the nadis by visualizing in this way, just coming up through the nostril, going in and out through the nostrils and down to the heart center. So I’ll do a little bit of meditation on that, thinking of this suffering, whether we’re experiencing that in the present or not, we can imagine this suffering and taking it off the other beings. And we can do it in the form of that Tonglen practice, giving and taking.
So first of all, we remember the karmic cause of this practice which is bearing ill will towards others and the thought of harming them out of resentment for what they’ve done towards us, things that have angered us. And then we make a firm determination that in future we’ll avoid this kind of action, this kind of grudge holding, and instead we’ll counteract that sort of action and make an effort to have good thoughts towards others and positive actions towards others. And then with that understanding, we engage in this practice of giving and taking, taking on this suffering of having those around us turn against us as enemies. And sending out, all our good karma and karmic results of good conditions to others. The next stanza, stanza twenty six.
Has anybody got girl? Okay, Betty. So, if we have gout or something similar, then we, we know now what we must have done in previous lifetimes. But, if we haven’t got Gout at the moment it doesn’t mean that we haven’t done these things. In fact, we could all have these kinds of causes to be experienced in the future.
So these kinds of illnesses are a result of breaches of morality in general and the the worst kinds of these breaches of morality are the ones that are created in relation to the the Three Jewels of refuge. So does anybody here want to tell us what the three are? Mhmm. Right. Good.
So it could be in relation to the whole of the Three Jewels of refuge or to any one of the three. So, for example, having taken something that belonged to the Sangha community or perhaps offerings specifically to the Buddha. So if we’ve made use of stolen property such as as that, then we could be experiencing this kind of result. And the this in this particular instance of taking things