Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Margaret McAndrew teaches from “The Wheel of Sharp Weapons” in this 34-minute session, grounding her commentary in self-cherishing as the root of anger and attachment. She illustrates with Atisha’s bad-tempered cook—a deliberate practice obstacle kept for cultivating patience—and explains how shifting from self-cherishing to cherishing others reduces suffering functionally, though eradicating the root requires realizing emptiness. Moving to meditation practice, she addresses why progress stalls despite earnest effort: karmic obstacles from past wrong views require clearing through preliminary practices (ngöndro)—prostrations, mandala offerings, purification—before gains manifest. She concludes with practical guidance on subduing an untamed mind, comparing it to training a wayward child: build gradually rather than forcing, to avoid aversion and rebellion.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 22 SW 1999 04 22.mp3
UUID: 5852d017-a243-46ad-8b17-09965fa2a5b1
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-04-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 34.8 minutes
Words: ~4,122
And it will become easier and easier as we go on. So what we can expect if we have a big problem with some particular problems, things such as anger or attachment and the like, then if we work on it steadily now, in our future life we might be one of these people who doesn’t seem to have such a major problem with it. And other people might be wondering why it’s so easy for us. So this is something that can come. If this is the case, then in our future lives we might be getting so good with our practice that it becomes harder and harder to find situations that really challenge us and then we’ll be looking for difficult circumstances to practice in, like a teacher who is crooked.
You know that story, I think I’ve mentioned it before. Well, you know who a teacher was, Atisha, the great Indian teacher who went to Tibet to help establish the Dharma firmly in Tibet. And he was very much admired and loved by everybody and that people had tremendous respect and veneration for him with all the lamas and great people, respect with his disciples and so on. And he used to have a very bad tempered cook who used to abuse him and be quite rude in. And people used to he brought this cook with him from India and people used to say to him, Why do you keep this fellow?
And he’d say, Oh, he’s my teacher of patience because nobody else speaks unpleasantly to me, if I didn’t have him with me how would I ever manage to practice patience? I don’t know that, sorry? Oh, I didn’t tell that story. Somebody else must have. Yeah.
Similar. Yes. Attachment and anger look like opposites but they are closely related because our anger actually comes out of our attachment. We have expectations and we attached to results which are going to be pleasurable for us. We’re attached to good feelings, certain feelings and we become attached to the objects which we see as being cause of these pleasurable experiences.
And so we grasp at these objects, sense objects which bring about enjoyment. And so, if our expectation of pleasure or enjoyment is interfered with in various ways, then we experience frustration and then there’s the arising of anger. So basically if we look at where our anger comes from, our resentment, our hatred and so on, we can see that it always comes from having some sort of expectation and having some sort of attachment to these good feelings and pleasurable experiences. And that our anger comes comes to us because of having this expectation. So all of this arises out of self-cherishing.
So what we have to do is to identify how this self-cherishing is the cause of the problem. We need to be able to actually be clear about self-cherishing and to be able to see how self-cherishing is really the cause of all our sufferings and is the enemy. And we have to be able to discriminate this negative self-cherishing from taking care of ourselves. We do need to take care of ourselves. It’s quite right and proper to take care of ourselves and we need to do that.
But and we need to make allowance for our needs. We even need to relax and have enjoyment sometimes and this kind of thing. But what we have to do is identify the attachment and identify the self centered, self-cherishing attitude which is harmful and to get rid of these things. So the way to ultimately get rid of them is by realizing emptiness. And in the long term this is what we have to do and by realizing emptiness we can get rid of all our problems, all our disturbing emotions and self-cherishing and the underlying self grasping at our truly existent self.
But this is something that we can do in the long term. Even before we get to that point where we can actually eradicate these disturbing emotions. But if we can learn to put ourselves cherishing aside and to cherish others instead of cherishing ourselves, then this can release us from all sorts of problems, all our problems with anger and attachment. This can’t actually uproot these problems so that the root will still be there. But in a functional way, if we’ve cultivated this cherishing of others and gained this sort of reversal of attitude of cherishing others instead of ourselves, then we won’t It’ll get rid of our problems in our life.
And so we won’t be experiencing these disturbing emotions. We won’t be experiencing the problems that come from anger and attachment. So we’ll still have to real eradicate the root of these problems, seed of these problems, but they won’t be manifesting in our life if we can manage to do this. And so this is something that we can work on and gradually cultivate these positive attitudes of love and cherishing others and compassion. The thought of kindness to others and replacing this replacing this instead of self-cherishing in our hearts.
And so Then, when we This really is a very happy state of mind. So it’s a state of mind that doesn’t even have to be only the higher beings who have realized emptiness. But even ordinary people who’ve managed to cultivate some of this love and compassion and cherishing of others find that as much as they can overcome the self-cherishing, there’s that much more happiness in their lives. There’s more room for happiness. The a heart which is involved with cherishing others is a heart that’s got lots of space in it for happiness.
Whereas self-cherishing is a very tight, very sort of restrictive, very cramping sort of a feeling which is very narrow and focused in on itself and doesn’t leave any room for happiness. It only allows space for being unhappy. And so, this is a lot of people’s experience and of course, for people who are beginning to practice these things, have times cherishing others become strong, and times when self-cherishing will arise again. And so they have the opportunity to observe how happiness comes when when can let go of that self-cherishing and then when self-cherishing makes a comeback, then it leads you back into these unhappy states of mind again. So, the more we can cultivate cherishing others, the more we can really be peaceful and happy.
And this is funny, but actually the Lama, especially His Holiness, I’ve heard him, the Lama often says in his talks that if you want to be really selfish, then the best way is to cherish others. To do it in big way, not in a small way, by cherishing others because that way you will find the greatest happiness for yourself. Because when we just cherish ourselves and only think about our own happiness and The mark of that self-cherishing is that doesn’t care about the well-being of others but just seeks the person’s own happiness and considers that other people’s happiness is unimportant and can be pushed aside as long as the person gets what they want. This never leads to happiness. It can only lead to unhappiness for the person as well as causing them to do harm to others.
Whereas cherishing others just automatically makes the person feel happy in their own minds, in their own hearts. And that by itself seems to make it so much easier for them to actually bring benefit to others. So, without even trying, then they find that they’re benefiting others. So, self-cherishing leads us into all our states of discontentment and stress and worries. And when we get into these states of mind, we can recognize that they come about because of this underlying self-cherishing.
So we can resolve to get rid of self-cherishing, to keep up the practice. We can’t just throw it out the window, unfortunately. So what we have to do is just keep on working away at it and we can make a resolve to do that practice to make a steady effort to get rid of self-cherishing so that we don’t have to experience these results in the future so that we can find that our attachment and anger will be very easy to eradicate, that our meditations on working on them will be very effective in the future. We’ll do the Tonglen practice taking on the suffering of others and particularly the suffering of having a lot of disturbance from attachment and anger and finding it very difficult to to deal with these and to subdue them in our lives. So what?
Stanza forty. Oh, sorry. Oh, yes. Right. Alright.
So, this is particularly relating to trying to gain success in meditation. So we might have been doing some intensive meditation practice and trying to gain realizations such as bodhicitta or realizations of meditations on Tantric deities. But in spite of doing intensive practice, the person might feel they’re not gaining much progress, that they’re not getting the results that they should be getting for the amount of effort that’s being put in and for their apparent capabilities and so on. And so they don’t feel that they’re gaining the benefits of this meditation. So, if this should be the case, then instead of thinking that the meditation techniques don’t work, or that there’s something wrong with the practice, then we should recognize the causes of problem which is having followed wrong views in past lives.
And so, if we’ve been following wrong views and we’ve been creating imprints that would make it very difficult for us to gain the results when we start doing the correct practice and trying to follow the correct path and gain realizations, gain the deeper insights. So, we might have, for instance, held the wrong view that there’s no past or future lives. These are some of the wrong views that are disturbing to us. We might have held that there is no such thing as karma. There’s no cause and effect.
And if we thought that way, then it would have followed that meditation practices were stupid. So we might have perhaps held the view that it’s better to have a good time and that people were were spending a lot of time meditating during these practices were stupid. So, wouldn’t see If we held that point of view, we wouldn’t see any point to overcome the ego. So, if we were holding these views in the past, then the imprint of these views could be making it harder to gain results in meditation practice. Or perhaps it might have had something to do with some sort of view.
I’m not sure I’m just deducing these things myself because the commentary didn’t actually go into so much detail in these things. But for instance, if you’ve been holding in past life some sort of wrong view about a truly existent self, if you’ve been following some sort of philosophical viewpoint about a truly existent self, then it could be an obstacle perhaps to understanding the emptiness of the self, even though you might be now following the philosophical viewpoints about non-truly existent self. Perhaps it would be some kind of imprint from having held firmly to these wrong views in the past that might be forming an obstacle to gaining a clear realization in this lifetime. So, sometimes when meditators have obstacles, they can’t achieve the result that they’re trying to attain, even though it looks like they’ve been doing good practice. And so they start to ask why it is that they’re having these obstacles and they might go to a Lama for advice and the Lama might check and find that there’s some particular karmic obstacles there and the Lama might suggest some sort of specific practices.
So for some things that could be suggested are things like going on pilgrimages to certain holy sites or doing a large number of prostrations. And these would be directed towards clearing some sort of specific karmic obstacles. So there are stories like this. For instance, Milarepa had to build houses for years to overcome the obstacles to his practice that came from his having done black magic. And in that case it was something from that life rather than from his previous lifetimes.
But Marpa could see that Milarepa had accumulated so much negative karma that although he had tremendous potential as a practitioner, he also had he would be unable to make any progress until he was able to purify these karmic obstacles. So, the first thing Marpa did was to put him all these tasks to do so as to get that obstacle out of the way. The story went on that moreover, with well, with so much devotion that he actually attained after having cleared these Karmic obstacles. He actually attained enlightenment very quickly. So, in general, we might not know specifically what Karmic obstacles we have, but we probably all have many different obstacles to overcome.
And so, when you start out on Tantric practice, the normal thing is that tantric practice in the beginning stages of tantric practice, the first thing that you do is do the preliminary practices or the ngöndro. So that doesn’t mean that the first thing you have to do is to do all the preliminary practices before you do anything else, but you recognize that you do need to put the effort into doing these preliminary practices. So in some traditions actually they do seem to do these preliminary practices before they do anything else. And it seems that in some traditions, perhaps in the Kagyu tradition, they seem to perhaps receive initiations but not be given the teachings on the Tantric practices, but instead the Lama will send them off to do the preliminary practices or the ngöndro which include things like prostrations, mandala offerings, Vajrasattva, Tsatsas, all sorts of things. And when they’ve done those, then they come back and then the Lama will give them the teachings.
So it seems like almost it’s very literally a preliminary and that you won’t receive the teachings and be able to do the actual practices until you ‘ve actually done these ngöndros. Our lamas don’t seem to do it that way, but still it’s something that we need to do is to do these preliminaries and the lamas do give you teachings on them and will sometimes tell you which ones you should be doing and which ones to do first and so on. So these are something that can take quite a bit of time and effort, they’re extremely useful, extremely helpful. We need to do them because they clear the obstacles and smooth the way forward. Previous bad karmas are a problem for us not only because they are going to bring us bad results, but also because of the fact that they create a sort of blockage for our gaining understanding and gaining realizations, gaining progress in the Dharma. And so this is why we need to do intensive purification practice.
And doing purification practice is one of the most important things if you’re not a highly advanced person, if you’re still in the early stages of your practice, then doing lots of purification is really probably one of the most beneficial things that you can spend time on. So So it’s good to do get these things out of the way with purification, but also we’re going to experience some these obstacles. In fact, sometimes when we do these purification practices very strongly, it sometimes causes some of these obstacles to rise up because sometimes the ripening result can be experienced in a small way in the short term. So you actually have to experience have to expect that you might experience more obstacles after you start doing intensive purification than before. This is just one of the things that seems to happen.
So when we’re dealing with these obstacles anyway, we shouldn’t let ourselves be depressed, but feel that we’re actually getting closer to the goal just by dealing with these things because they were lying in wait for us anyway. So by dealing with them we’re actually getting them out of the way and even if it looks like they’re holding us back and we’re not getting anywhere, we’re actually getting somewhere just by the fact that we’re clearing them out of the way. So it’s like if you try to get somewhere and you come to a high wall across the path where you’re trying to go, and it might take you quite a long time to work out how you’re going to get over the wall and you know to climb over it or get a ladder or something. But when you get to the other side you might feel that you’ve spent all this time and gone to all this effort and you’re really no further on than you were before. But in actual fact you are because now you’re on the other side of the wall and it might not look like you’re any closer, but really there’s a big difference in your situation.
So if you can look at it this way, it really helps you to feel more encouragement about where you’re going. So when we experience these kinds of problems, we need to remember the karmic cause. Remember that this problem is caused by a negative karma of having adhered to wrong views. So we need to understand correct views and hold for the correct views. And make a resolve not to let ourselves be drawn into following wrong views in the future.
And we can do the Tonglen practice of taking on the suffering of those beings who are experiencing this kind of problem. And if we’re experiencing this kind of problem ourselves we can think that by enduring it that we’re actually relieving the others of this problem. If we’re not actually experiencing this kind of problem at the present then we can think anyway we’re taking it on and relieving the others of it by taking it on in our imagination. And we send out our good karma, the fruits of all our effort and our understanding and realisations and good results in our meditation. So then stanza forty-one..
So, In a similar way to the last stanza, the object of our practice is to tame our mind. And so here again we’re having obstacles to the attainment that we want to achieve. And whether it’s whether we’re engaging in intense meditation or whether our practice of Dharma is practicing avoiding the ten non virtuous actions, the object is to clean our minds and to make our minds more suitable in the path. So we want to be not disturbed by delusions, but have a mind that’s easy to direct in the path so that we can use it as a suitable So it can go along the path, So that it doesn’t go off all over the place. Following distraction and so on.
So we find that our mind is not at all pliable or at all easily controlled. But it tends to be very wild and undisciplined. Even though we might be actually following virtue, following right actions. And we want our mind to be suitable for that. But often we find we experience that it’s anything but.
And the more we try to direct it in the path of virtue, sometimes it just seems that the more it seems to go wild and goes running after the objects of delusion such as attachment and anger. So there’s like a an aspect of ourselves that’s trying to go on the path that really is directing a mind in the direction of virtue. But another aspect of the mind is always just running wild. So the mind is not at all suitable really for the practice. So this makes it very difficult for us.
And that our mind just doesn’t seem to go where we want it to go. And it seems to become very very rough and very very difficult. And won’t be tamed and subdued at all. This Has anybody had this experience? Yes, not just scattered, but also disturbing emotions and all sorts of things I think.
So just, you you want your mind to go one way and it goes tearing off somewhere else and gets terribly caught up in some sort of emotional or destructive state. So this anyway is We can understand why that is. It’s the Wheel of Sharp Weapons again. And it’s the result of having followed self-cherishing and pursuing fame and worldly happiness. And thinking that these things were a worthy goal and not following spiritual pursuits or not aiming at liberation and the end of worldly worldly attachments.
So the teachings say we’re told that we need to treat our minds like a naughty child. So when a child is very naughty, very un subdued and difficult to control, then a wise parent doesn’t try to make it perfect all at once, but trains it little bit by little bit, and doesn’t expect too much all at once. And that way they gradually get results, and gradually the child becomes a good child. So we have to be like that with our minds, and we have to recognize that our minds are full of roughness and wildness at the moment and need to be brought under control gradually by skillful means. If we try to force our minds too much into the path, they’re going to react and rebel.
So our minds can be naturally rebellious and want to go off into their old ways. So we have to make it nice for them. If we force them to do too much all at once, they won’t enjoy it. Whereas if we practice a little bit of virtue, little bit of meditation and we’re sort of easy on ourselves, then we can find that our Dialy practice is enjoyable and we’ll be drawn back to it more and more. If we try to force ourselves into doing fantastic things, then we’ll it’ll be too hard for us and then we’ll be put off it.
And our minds won’t want to go back and for instance if we try to meditate for hours and hours I’m not talking about when we’re in a retreat or with a group of people, but when we’re just at home on our own. If we set ourselves too high an unattainable goal, we’ll just it’ll seem difficult and then we’ll start to feel, oh I don’t want to do this. And we’ll have more and more aversion to doing it. We won’t want to do even five minutes. So that isn’t skillful.
So we just have to do a little bit and gradually train ourselves to to feel more and more comfortable doing greater lengths of time of practice and doing more practice and not expecting too much all at once. So this is the skillful way to do it. So, we can just remember the karmic cause of this problem, when we have this problem, that it’s That this inability to turn our mind away from worldly compulsions is because we followed these worldly things in the past and not set our mind on Dharma. And so we resolve that we’ll make a steady effort in the future to keep up our practice, to direct our mind towards virtue, towards liberation. That we’ll practice understanding the hollowness of worldly goals and ambitions.
And so we we do the Tonglen practice and take on the sufferings of others who are experiencing these kinds of difficulties. And we give them out, give out to them all our good things, our understandings, good karma, our good results of practice. The suffering of finding it very difficult to subdue our minds in the path of virtue. Dedicate our merits for enlightenment. The prayer on prayers 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. And then on page ten, His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s prayer: In the land encircled by Snow Mountains, you are the source of all happiness and good. All powerful Chenrezig, tending to all, please remain until samsaric existence has ended.
And so, I’ve got a flat battery.