Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching on the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, Ven Margaret McAndrew shows how setting Dharma motivation in the morning carries through your entire day. By dedicating all actions — even eating and dressing — to benefit all beings toward enlightenment, mundane acts become genuine practice. She then traces the inverse: self-cherishing, the self-centered mind that drives harmful actions, setting the Wheel in motion as karma inevitably returns. Her solution is bodhicitta in two forms: conventional bodhicitta (love and compassion for all beings) and ultimate bodhicitta (wisdom understanding emptiness), symbolized as a Dharma arrow and sword. The teaching addresses both monastic and lay practitioners, includes audience questions and verse readings, and culminates with commentary on stanzas 48–49 from the text itself.
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File metadata (for organising)
File: 27 SW 1999 05 20.mp3
UUID: 471b9867-72be-4e59-b7a3-5ea6c99b75fc
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-05-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~5,167
G: of every day and then all our activities get caught up with the Dharma motivation, even if we become a bit forgetful during the day and don’t really remember. But if we’ve set our motivation with great sincerity in the morning then there’s some sort of reflection that lasts throughout the day so that our day becomes not just engaged in wealthy activities but actually becomes Dharma practice. Because it’s motivation that really determines these things. If we’re only doing things with sorts of worldly motives, short term benefits, just doing eating, putting our clothes on and so on, just with the sort of having temporary comfort and so on. It’s a meaningless action but if we do these ordinary necessary actions every day with Dharma motivation then it becomes Dharma practice.
In particular, when we’re going to do a virtuous action we need to set our minds on a Dharma motivation. That way we get not just the short term results of whatever we’ve done, but the results of our virtuous karma. In particular, we want to set our mind on the highest goal which is attaining enlightenment for the sake of others. So we’re not just thinking of ourselves but we’re thinking of how all others are suffering. We’ve come to understand our own suffering so we’re here to learn to understand how to avoid the cause of suffering and to bring about happiness in our mind streams.
If we apply this thought that we’re doing this action for this purpose, not just to ourselves but to all the other living beings that there are, then this becomes an incredibly beneficial thought because the benefits get multiplied by the infinite number of beings. We have to understand that what we’re trying to bring about is the achievement of enlightenment, full Buddhahood, because otherwise without achieving full Buddhahood we don’t have the means to help others effectively. If we think of helping others, we also have to think about how we’re going to do it effectively and that means working to attain not just state of individual liberation but the state of full enlightenment which means that we can go on endlessly helping an infinite number of beings. This has to be the goal of Mahāyāna practice. Before I left, I finished with the part of this text, The Wheel of Sharp Weapons, that had to deal with explaining in detail the karmic results and exchanging our problems and difficulties and sufferings into advancement on the path by understanding and accepting that these problems are not caused by other beings or by God or anything like that but simply they are the result of our own harmful actions in the past.
So there’s no point in becoming upset about them but instead we resolve not to repeat these kinds of actions again. There was quite a lot of detail in those verses about what results come from which actions so that we can be clear about what actions we’re avoiding in the future. We were doing meditation as we went along on the practice of giving and taking. As we had to experience these various sufferings, we didn’t have any choice about that in the short term because we’re still using up our past karmas. So instead of being unhappy about it, we take advantage of this to practice by thinking that we’re experiencing this suffering for others and taking on their sufferings and we imaginatively relieve others of their sufferings by taking it on ourselves and think that we’re giving out all our good things and all our Dharma energy, all our understanding and so on to others and helping them on the path to enlightenment in that way.
First section of the text was concerned with that and we came to an end of that section before I left. Last week we were dealing with some stanzas that had a comparison of self-cherishing to a sword and an arrow which one has made and which wounds oneself. This understanding goes against our normal instinct which is to see ourselves cherishing as being our friend and protector and to guard it. We’ve been doing this since beginningless time and as a result we’re still suffering in saṃsāra and still experiencing one suffering after another. Because of this tendency, of this instinctive but mistaken thought, we’ve suffered over countless previous lives and during this life because we’ve acted during our countless previous lifetimes lifetimes under the force of self-cherishing all the time.
Because we’ve been under the grip of this self-cherishing and not practicing cherishing others, then we’ve done wrong actions. We’ve created negative karmas and we’ve had to experience the results such as lower rebirth in the suffering realms and even when we were able to achieve rebirth in the human realms through creating good karmas, we still had a lot of bad karmic results to experience even in the human realms. So we would have frequent suffering even in the human realms. As we know about from this lifetime, we’ve all experienced a lot of different sufferings in our course through life. So, in the Dharma teachings, we learn that the difference between a Dharma activity and worldly actions mainly has to do with the Well, maybe somebody might like to have a go at saying what the difference is between Dharma actions and worldly actions.
Yes, that’s true too. There’s also an even more basic discrimination. Yes, actually that is it, yes. So what kind of actions end up with a heavier result? Okay.
Well, it’s just plain old ordinary words such as good actions or right actions, wholesome actions you could say, are the actions that bring a result of happiness and non virtuous or bad or wrong actions are the ones that bring a result of unhappiness. The way we discriminate them has mainly to do with the effect they have on others. Good actions are actions that are helpful to others, all of which are Dharma actions in themselves such as meditating and studying Dharma teachings and so on. Negative actions are the ones that are harmful to sentient beings. That does include ourselves but normally we particularly don’t care about what happens to others so we’re more inclined to do actions towards others.
Generally, look at what we do to others and see how we perform all these negative actions towards other beings and learn to discriminate between actions which are harmful to others and actions which are helpful or which are positive and avoid the negative ones. That’s the most basic level of Dharma practice. If we’re practicing Dharma, we have to learn what is the cause of happiness and what’s the cause of suffering and then we avoid the cause of suffering and we bring about the cause. And we’re not concerned just with worldly happiness, but we’re concerned with going beyond that to everlasting happiness. Dharma activities, good actions, actions, if they’re just done in an ordinary context, will lead to worldly happiness for a short time when we experience the result. But if we’re following the teachings of Buddha and understanding that we need to go beyond that, then we can actually use these Dharma actions, these positive actions as energy to promote us along the path to liberation.
In order to do that, we have to have some understanding of where we’re going and, in particular, we have to be motivated that way. So we have to actually set our goal and then the actions are dedicated for that goal. We have to motivate at the beginning of our virtuous actions, at the beginning of the day and at the end of our virtuous actions and particularly at the end of the day, we dedicate the merits that we’ve created during the day for the goals that we want to achieve. In that way, the actions become actually energy that’s pushing us along to that goal. So they don’t just bring that fleeting result but they lead to progress on the path which will bring us greater happiness.
If we want to attain everlasting happiness, have to attain the state of liberation. This is really what Dharma practice is all about. It’s about finding happiness. There are different levels of happiness we can find. First of all, we can find just worldly happiness through just the most basic practice of following right creating the right sort of karma and avoiding the wrong sorts, just observing karma.
If we want to go beyond that, then we have to follow the practices for attaining liberation. Also, we follow the Mahāyāna teachings, we’re concerned with attaining Buddhahood. Anyway, Dharma teachings are all about happiness and it’s, of course, all sentient beings are concerned with happiness. This is the basic statement of the Buddhist philosophy that the rest of it builds on which is that all living beings want happiness and want to avoid suffering. The Dharma teachings show us the reliable and true way to attain happiness and all other ways are deceptive.
So any way which teaches the attainment of any sort of true happiness is Dharma to the extent that it is correct in teaching this true path and worldly ways such as thinking that we can just go out and grab what we want and find happiness. These things are totally deceptive and we’ll never find happiness that way. So any good action is by definition Dharma, even if the person’s never heard of Buddha. But if they’re engaging in good actions, helping others, following moral conduct and so forth, then that person is following Dharma. Because Dharma is not just the words, but the Dharma is the path and it’s the correct understanding.
Understanding. What Buddha taught is how to practice virtue perfectly and how to carry the practice of virtue through to liberation. So there are some practices that we have to do in order to attain liberation. Does anybody remember what those practices are? Yep, three somethings.
That’s right, yes. Those are called the three higher trainings. Or there might be some other terms depending on what the term the translator uses, but one term that’s often used is the three higher trainings. Hilary says, ethics or moral conduct, concentration and wisdom. When we’re talking about wisdom here, it specifically refers to a particular kind of wisdom which is the wisdom understanding emptiness or selflessness.
There are other kinds of wisdoms. For instance, if we understand how to avoid wrong actions and follow virtuous actions, that’s a form of wisdom. But we’re here talking about this particular wisdom of the ultimate truth which is emptiness of inherent existence. So we’ll be talking about that a little bit more. But as long as we’re in Samsāra, we’ll be subject to suffering because we haven’t accomplished liberation by practicing these three higher trainings.
As we’ve been seeing in the previous verses, the previous stanzas that we’ve been through, we’re experiencing this Wheel of Sharp Weapons all the time. The Wheel of Sharp Weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done. But we also learned that as well as the blades of the Wheel of Sharp Weapons of our karma, we also have the dharma weapons. In relation to these stanzas that we’ve just been done through where we were talking about, we’ve just done It was explained in terms of the sword and the arrow which harm ourselves, but we also have a Dharma sword and arrow to defend ourselves with. The significance of this is explained in the Mahāyāna teachings as representing the two levels of bodhicitta.
So in this text, the sword and the arrow are the analogy for these two levels of bodhicitta. So the arrow is the conventional level of bodhicitta which is thought with great love and compassion thinking of helping all other beings and of working to attain enlightenment so as to be able to accomplish that. So this is the conventional level of bodhicitta. And the absolute level is the sword. So a arrow can be very, very deadly if it strikes the right target.
And so this conventional bodhicitta is the opposite to self-cherishing and as we cultivate bodhicitta more and more, then the self-cherishing is eliminated. But there’s also the sword which can actually cut off the head of the enemy or which can be compared perhaps to an axe that cuts off the root of the tree. So this is the understanding of emptiness which cuts off self grasping, which is the underlying element without which self-cherishing couldn’t exist. And so, we have these two, the arrow and the sword, the conventional bodhicitta and the wisdom understanding emptiness. So, does anybody understand this term of ultimate bodhicitta?
And, how it differs from the ultimate bodhicitta, sorry, from the wisdom understanding emptiness, of an arhat. Okay. That was a bit of a trick question, really. Because really the wisdom of understanding emptiness is the same except that if it’s conventional bodhicitta, it’s in the consciousness, in the mind stream of a bodhisattva. Of course, the bodhisattva does have to take it further because they’re going all the way to enlightenment.
But there are some bodhisattvas who haven’t yet gone as far as the Arahant has in their understanding of emptiness. Actually, any bodhisattva who has attained the third path has this ultimate bodhicitta because they have realized emptiness directly. There are also Hīnayāna beings from the third path onwards who have realized emptiness directly. But for them it’s not Ultimate bodhicitta, it’s just the wisdom realizing emptiness. In a sense it’s just a term.
But because it’s strongly associated with bodhicitta and because the bodhicitta is really something that becomes totally integrated with that bodhisattvas mind stream, then the term here is sometimes used, ultimate bodhicitta, and we talk about these two levels of bodhicitta, which we have to attain. But you have to understand that the actual wisdom, the understanding is the same for the Hīnayāna practitioner. The studies that have to be done, the tenets that have to be understood and so on are the same for the whether you’re a Hīnayāna practitioner or a Mahāyāna practitioner. We’ll be talking a little bit about the two levels of bodhicitta in the stanzas that are coming up. So these two weapons anyway have to be aimed at the enemy which is self-cherishing.
So in actual fact, this is our real enemy and this is the big enemy. I said before that the self grasping is actually the underlying enemy. So we’ve got these two enemies really, but it’s the self-cherishing that does us the most harm because it leads us into wrong actions. So these teachings are aimed at destroying self-cherishing and they’re from the Mahāyāna viewpoint because in the Hīnayāna teachings there’s not so much emphasis on self-cherishing as being the enemy but the delusions, especially ignorance, are seen as being the delusions in general and especially ignorance which is the underlying problem. So the ignorance of the true nature of the self is the underlying problem for all our other delusions.
Our self grasping arises because of this ignorance and because of self grasping then also we have self-cherishing and so forth. self-cherishing, if you’re aiming at individual liberation, is not necessarily totally harmful if you have the wisdom to understand that greatest happiness is liberation. Then your self-cherishing can actually be an incentive along the path, provided that you can overcome the grosser levels of self-cherishing which are just grabbing at your own individual sort of short term worldly happiness and not caring about others. So a more subtle self-cherishing can be alright on the Hīnayāna path, but when we’re following the Mahāyāna path we have to totally overcome self-cherishing because it’s so important to cultivate this attitude of cherishing others and there’s no room for the two of them together, I mean cherishing others more than oneself. So in actual fact, we have to begin by a certain level of self-cherishing in that we have to recognize that we have the same needs, the same necessities as other beings.
We need to be able to respect ourselves, to love ourselves and so on. But that’s different to self-cherishing in the sense that it’s meant here, which is simply a self-centered, very mean sort of attitude. So the teachings that were given in the Mahāyāna context are aimed at destroying this self-cherishing. In the Hīnayāna teachings perhaps we emphasize more the overcoming of the delusions is especially ignorance. So self-cherishing is behind all the other delusions that prevent us from reaching individual liberation as well as from cherishing others.
So we have to eventually cut the root of self grasping. For the Mahāyāna practitioner, for the arhat, as you probably know already, they have to remove the gross delusions which are the obstruction to liberation. And as Hilary was saying before, the has to go on further than that and remove also the subtle obscurations. Yes. Would be very nice, wouldn’t it?
In fact, that’s why we have to start working on cultivating love and compassion right from the start and attacking our self-cherishing because otherwise it would be impossible not to just take the path of becoming an arhat once we get to the stage where it’s feasible. We have to have tremendously strong bodhicitta before we get to that stage otherwise we get sidetracked for eons. So we shouldn’t think that our arhats don’t have love and compassion. They do have a lot of love and compassion but they don’t have enough to stop them from entering nirvana. It really needs tremendous love and compassion to become a bodhisattva.
As we’re cultivating bodhicitta, we have to start attacking self-cherishing right away. So the two levels of bodhicitta are the opponent to self-cherishing because where we have bodhicitta there’s no room for self-cherishing at all when we generate the mind cherishing others, which is the basis for bodhicitta, this is sort of crowding out the space for self-cherishing. It’s worthwhile remembering at this point that if we want to be really happy then the greatest happiness is to give up self-cherishing. The lamas always tell us that if we want to be self-cherishing then it’s best to be self-cherishing in a big way by practicing cherishing others because this is a really, really happy mind. Bodhisattvas who have this state of mind, even if they haven’t yet realized emptiness, once emptiness is realized directly, then that person doesn’t really have suffering because they understand the emptiness of all their bodily pains, of all the different emotions and so on.
There’s really nothing but bliss because they’ve gained this understanding that no longer labels these different experiences as being pain and suffering. That they see through this delusion that’s labeling these things in that way. But a Bodhisattva who is at a lower level, who has achieved bodhicitta but hasn’t yet achieved this insight into emptiness, still is always totally happy because they have this happiness of just having this great great love and compassion for others which brings so much happiness in the mind that there’s just no space for self-cherishing which is really what is causing our unhappiness. In fact, even for ordinary people who are a long way from being bodhisattvas, it’s just a practical matter of psychology that the more you practice caring for others and give up self-centeredness, the more you feel happy, the more mental stability you have and the more you can seem to be able to remain calm and serene when you have problems and to get more joy and happiness out of the good times. It just seems to be a basic feature of our psychology and in fact all these Dharma teachings are doing are working with the basic material of our psychology.
So it’s not telling us anything weird and wonderful. It’s not some sort of magic. It’s not something that we have to believe that goes against what we can observe to be true. But in actual fact, the more you practice these teachings, the more you realize that they are just grounded on very practical facts and that we can begin to see it working even in this life now as we go along. We’re not saying if you do this then you have to expect pie in the sky when you die.
In fact, by practicing these things now, start to see these things working and it gives you more confidence that as you go on from life to life and continue to develop then you will naturally be getting these results in a greater and greater way. Under the power of the conventional bodhicitta, we just squeeze out the self-cherishing and the self centeredness. Under the power of the ultimate bodhicitta, then as this becomes realized, then we can cut the root of self grasping. Practitioner who is on the Mahāyāna path goes on to more subtle levels than the arhat does. The bodhisattva has to go on to more subtle levels.
Every last trace of self-cherishing will be eliminated in order to become a Buddha. In order to practice Dharma successfully at any level, we have to be able to recognize self-cherishing as being the enemy and be motivated to get rid of this sort of worldly concern. It can start off on quite a gross level just realizing that we have to stop the actions that we’ve been doing that harm others such as killing, stealing, injuring others and so on. Then it goes on to different levels of Mahāyāna practice where we actually make our practice revolve around the thought of helping others. So if we don’t recognize self-cherishing as the enemy, even if we listen to many teachings and we can spell out Dharma talks very eloquently, then we’ll never do any real practice.
So we have to be able to identify self-cherishing and be really convinced of the harm. Is that a message? We have to be convinced of the harm that it’s doing us. Otherwise, we just don’t have the motivation to really make our practice attack our self-cherishing. Unless we’re actually attacking our self-cherishing and our self grasping, we’re not really getting to the root of what Dharma practice is all about.
In order to do this, we have to study and do analytic meditation and we have to, by doing this we bring about this conviction of what we’re doing and we have to maintain mindfulness because it’s so easy to do your meditation and then just go out and forget about it by getting caught up in daily activities and distractions. If we can maintain this mindfulness then these daily activities also can become our Dharma practice. It’s easy to say this, it’s not so easy to do it. But that’s anyway what we need to do.
So we’re told they have a very harmonious relationship. They always cooperate with each other. Basically, in a sense, ego grasping is more basic than self-cherishing. Because we have ego grasping then self-cherishing arises. So if we can cut ego grasping then we will cut off self-cherishing.
But it’s difficult to attain the direct insight into emptiness which will enable us to cut ego grasping. In the meantime, we’re working on reversing self-cherishing. self-cherishing is Yes. So first of all, we have this idea of the truly existent, independently existent, self existent, existing from its own side self or ego which is to be distinguished from the conventional self which is just merely labeled on the aggregates, on the body and mind, on the combination of body and mind, we think that there’s something extra there which is existing from its own side independently. Then we grasp at that.
That’s underlying problem. It’s just this wrong conception. And then because we have this wrong conception then we grasp at this self identity and that’s the next step. And then because we’re grasping at this self identity then we feel that it is vulnerable and we cherish it and want to protect it and that’s the self-cherishing. Then we start feeling that we want take care of ourselves and blow the others.
So this is where self-cherishing comes in and it leads to all these other problems. They’re all very much related. This is a logical sequence but it’s not a time sequence because there’s no time when we didn’t have all of these things. It’s beginningless but it’s kind of going on all the time and they’re all strengthening each other. In particular, because we have self-cherishing, this tends to lead us into doing harmful actions towards others.
We become very self centered and don’t consider others and this makes us do wrong actions. Then we have to experience all different karmic results. This tends to reinforce our self-cherishing because when we’re unhappy then, for instance, if we’re experiencing poverty, then we might think that we should steal so as to get what we want. If we’re experiencing various different kinds of desire and various different kinds of unhappiness and so on. We might think that if we follow our desires then we’ll be happier so we grab what we want and don’t care about others or we hurt others because we see them as hurting us.
Somebody, for instance, hits us we immediately hit them back or something like that. It’s all very much related to this basic self-cherishing, not understanding what’s really going on. Getting onto the text, I wasn’t meant to spend that much time on all this but we’re on stanzas forty eight and forty nine. Would you like to read, stanza forty eight? Actually, yeah, hang on, just had something else to add.
So, anyway, we’re concerned with self we’ll be going on with this bit about self-cherishing in stanza forty nine. So we have to do stanza forty eight first because we didn’t get around to that last week. So could you read that please, Diana? Forty eight? Yes.
While I’m finding the place. Sorry? Yeah, yeah.
Recruiting. Yes, yes. Right. So here it sounds as though it’s really getting down on family life. But the fact is that family life inevitably brings various problems.
If we’re looking for happiness in family life, then you’re not really looking in the right place for it if you’re looking for ultimate happiness. It’s just the nature of things. So you might think it’s a bit much to be told that we all have to be monks and nuns. In actual fact, it’s not necessary for everybody to become monks and nuns in this lifetime or if everybody tried to do that then we’d all starve anyway because there’d been nobody to support the monks and nuns. So it’s obviously not necessarily saying that we all have to sort of give up our family life.
Of course, if we already are involved in a family situation then it wouldn’t be practical. But it wouldn’t be suitable to give up your family responsibilities. The point is that the life of a monk and nun does give the opportunity to do more intensive practice of studying and meditation. For some people that’s not actually what they need to do at this stage. For some people they’re better off to practice their Dharma in the family context.
It gives so many opportunities for practicing patience, for practicing virtue, for practicing loving kindness and so on. If you are at the point where and also for Bodhisattvas who have done a lot of studying meditation perhaps in past lifetimes, then living as a householder can sometimes be the field in which they choose to carry out their activities, and particularly Bodhisattvas on the first ground. As you know, Bodhisattva who has reached the path of seeing, so it’s quite a high level of Bodhisattva. An ārya bodhisattva then enters the ten grounds. And on the first ground, the perfection that is most practiced is the perfection of generosity.
Particularly bodhisattvas at that level often choose rebirth as householders, particularly wealthy, influential people, kings, rulers and so on, in order to have a lot of scope for the practice of generosity. So it can be also a Bodhisattvas practice to live in this situation. But for some of us who just feel that we find it very difficult to practice anyway, so to take robes and to surround yourself with the most conducive conditions can be a good practice to do and it does give you more time, less distractions for the practice of study and meditation and also the existence of the Sangha tradition from generation to generation is very important for the transferal of the tradition from teachers to students. There are teachers and students who are not monks and nuns, But in general, it has been a special responsibility of the monasteries to carry out this transferal. So I would think that this text in particular is probably aimed at monks.
It was probably written for monks and that’s why it’s emphasizing this point particularly. And there are texts which are written for laypeople also. The outstanding one is Nāgārjuna’s Letter to a King, which is a very good text to study, particularly for lay people, because it explains the way for a lay person to practice Dharma. Can’t read my own writing. Oh, yes.
In the teaching that he gave, Geshe Namdak, basically, something he was telling us is that there are When we’re talking about family life here, don’t necessarily have to think that we’ve got away from all the problems of family life by becoming ordained because monks and nuns often find that they’ve got away from their big family, but they have to be aware of the small family. So the big family here refers to the relatives, the blood relatives and so on. The small family is your dharma comrades and you can become very, very attached to your friends in the dharma community and this can lead to the same sorts of emotional problems and so on that you find in the outside family, in the ordinary family, in what’s normally considered to be the family. Also, Geshe Namdak was also saying that family life is good for the practice of bodhicitta and virtue. You don’t have to take this too literally but you can look for the underlying meaning which is that giving up attachment and practicing virtue is the thing that we have to do and not just getting caught up in attachment and family complications.
Anybody can do this, whether they’re at home or in a monastery. Any questions, comments or objections? So then, stanza forty nine. So I’m sorry. Don’t know your name.
Cedar. Right. Would you like to read stanza forty nine?