Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 35-minute teaching on The Wheel of Sharp Weapons, Ven Margaret McAndrew shows how everyday self-centered attitudes actually serve as sharp weapons that cut away ego. Moving through several stanzas, she identifies concrete patterns: lack of persistence in practice; grasping for pleasure and comfort; miserliness preventing generosity; pride that blocks self-awareness; neglect of the master-disciple bond. For each, she explains the karmic consequence—the attitudes that seem to get us what we want create the opposite. She illustrates with examples from traditional Nepal and Tibet, monastic hardship, and her own retreat observations. The teaching concludes with a meditation invoking Yamāntaka, the fierce manifestation of inner wisdom, to cut through these negative patterns. For practitioners with prior Buddhist training.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 30 SW 1999 06 03.mp3
UUID: ecb5f472-0cae-488f-b61a-e3b410126515
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-06-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 35.4 minutes
Words: ~3,893
There’s a few giggles there so I thought maybe No. That’s right. Yeah. That yes. That’s that refrain repeats itself again and again.
Yes, so we’re now going through the verses that have different mistaken actions in them and some of them you might recognise and others you might feel don’t apply. So anyway, if you feel that the cap fits, wear it So it’s told us that we have little stability in our practice. I think a lot of us feel that this stanza has some relevance for us. So we have a tendency to go from one thing to another whether it’s in our worldly affairs or in our Dharma practice. We tend to take up some sort of new pursuit, some new interest, some new enthusiasm, some project.
And if we don’t get results quickly, we give up, we get disappointed, we don’t put in the hard slogs, the long flogs that you need to do to get results. There’s a lot of things that we can’t achieve unless we put in a lot of effort whether we’re talking about worldly things or particularly in relation to Dharma practice, you have to be looking at the long term view in Dharma practice, whatever you take up. You can’t expect to get results from it quickly. You have to be consistent in your practice. So if we go from one thing to another, from one practice to another, one teacher to another, from study to meditation to maybe doing some sort of other sort of practice, then if we do this and give up before the results can come, then we can’t expect to get the results.
Geshe-la, like he says, this isn’t due to bad character, but it’s just due to self-cherishing, which longs for pleasure. So we just long to have a good time and to have things easy, to be comfortable and so on. So we give up too easily. So we need to conquer this self-cherishing which gets in the way of our genuine desire to gain results from our Dharma practice. So Yamāntaka is asked to dance on its head.
If you see the picture of Yamāntaka, he’s got sixteen legs so he can do a lot of trampling. So I think we’ll be going through these stanzas more quickly from now on and maybe I think try to finish this at the end of the month and start something else next time because these perhaps don’t need to be examined in as much detail as the earlier stages. We might get what was that? Oh, well, that. You know all that you went before?
Yes. Trampling, trampling. Yes. Somebody can put it to music. Well, suppose the the defendant probably did have a in Tibetan it would be in metrical stanzas of course, and I suppose they probably did have a tune and would have chanted it together.
It would have been great to have done it like that. You get the impression that it must be really zippy in Tibetan. Stanza at fifty seven now. Eight. Yes.
Okay, full. Oh, sorry you haven’t got it. Alright. Thanks. So, yes, anybody feel that this is relevant?
So it seems pretty straightforward really, but it’s something that’s very much a part of our lives so much so that we probably don’t recognize it. Because if we get angry, realize that we’ve got angry because we’re not angry all the time, but just once in a while something makes us angry. But this just wanting pleasure and comfort and so on, it’s really just something that’s always going on in our minds and we don’t even notice it unless you become very aware of what your minds are doing. This is what we need to do. We need to practice mindfulness and to actually be aware of what our minds are up to, what our minds are doing.
Actually when I was doing my retreat, it was quite useful because I sort of noticed when an interrupting thought came in, because I was trying to focus on doing the mantras, I thought, well I’m going to analyse what my interrupting thoughts are all about and sort of get an idea of what categories are the most predominant and so on. It was very interesting. I think concerns about my health were about two thirds of it. And I was a bit stunned at that because, you know, self-cherishing rears its head. I’m sure that when I was in my thirties or in my twenties, if I I wasn’t actually if I’d done it in my twenties, it would have been something very different.
But it’s all self-cherishing manifesting and it manifests in these different forms. I probably wouldn’t have been thinking a lot about eating in those days. I still think a lot about eating. It’s not that the thinking about eating gets less, but thinking about my physical condition gets more. Anyway, we’re attracted to pleasures and comfort and material well-being.
And we want these things and we go after them in whatever way we can, but we neglect creating the real cause for these things, to have these things, which is the practice of generosity. And instead we try to ruthlessly grab the things that we want. Well, know, maybe this doesn’t apply to everybody here, but there must have been times probably for all of us when we did just grab for what we wanted. And when we do this, then will have to experience the result. We didn’t consider others, if we did something that was detrimental to others by going for what we wanted, then we’ll have to experience the opposite the long run which is not having the things we want, being deprived of the material things that make us feel comfortable and that we take pleasure in.
So these material things are not harmful in themselves. It’s only our grasping at them that causes our problems. And we need to have at least the basic material things for our comfort and well-being in order to be able to practice Dharma well. And if we have prosperity then we can be of a lot of benefit to others. So these things are good actually.
To have material well-being is a good thing as long as we don’t focus on it to the detriment of our Dharma practice. So instead we understand the practice of generosity is the cause and we try to practice generosity and kindness to others. Yes. I think yes. I think there’s something in that because we have got so much now.
If we want something, we feel we have to get it right away, whereas in traditional societies a lot of people just accept that they’re not going to have a lot of wealth and they don’t worry about it. Even help, yes, They just take it quite calmly because for them there’s no reality in the possibility of them being able to have these things. Of course nowadays, because they see these things all around them, the people who don’t have them very much want to have them. But when I first went to Nepal and India, particularly in the more traditional areas in Nepal and in the rural districts and so on, you would meet a lot of people who were not terribly materially minded at all. They didn’t really seem to think very much about these things.
Even if they had the opportunity to earn more money, the office often wouldn’t take it. They would just prefer to keep their leisure time. They might be incredibly poor by our standards, but they just had a different way of life and they just sort of accepted the hardship that went along with it as just part of what they were used to. Stanza fifty nine. So we want to have friends.
This is a very important thing for us. We all feel that a life without good friends would not be a happy life. So if we want to create the cause, we have to practice kindness in order to have real enduring friendship. So we can see actually this is relevant even in the immediate short term carrying out of our friendships. But particularly talking about karmic causes, about creating the cause to make good friends in the future and to have good friendships.
We need to create the cause by being kind and considerate to others. And similarly, we have needs for food and clothing. And if we fulfill these by stealing and cheating to get what we want, then we’re going to be creating the cause not to have these things in the future. So actually nowadays even the unemployed can get food and clothes so we don’t actually need to we’re not likely to feel a need to go out and steal and cheat to get hold of our basic needs. But in traditional societies, actually, it could be a very big temptation to use wrong means to get these things.
If somebody was very poor, they might be literally not having enough to eat. They might be always hungry. They might be going around in rags, feeling the cold. So it would be a very big temptation. And in Tibet there were many monks who had to endure very severe conditions, even semi starvation, in order to be able to continue on with their studies and debates.
Some of them could have easily got enough to eat by going into the town and begging, going around to people and asking them to give them food or money for food but they wouldn’t do that because they didn’t want to leave the monastic situation where they were studying so intensively. So rather than interrupt their studies they would make do with what food they could get which wasn’t really enough. There’d be no question about it, but their clothes must have been pretty raggy. So they were able to do this because they understood the long term benefits of their studies and they were so dedicated to their studies and their Dharma practice so they were prepared to endure these hardships in order to perform virtuous actions. If we can understand the long term results, then we’ll always want to perform virtuous actions and not fall into the wrong way of doing things.
Any questions about this? Generosity and right actions, yes. Avoiding doing wrong actions such as the opposite to generosity which is stealing and grabbing for yourself instead we give to others. Stanza sixty. Okay, so these are things that, like in the previous stanza they’re similar, they’re things that create cause to have to experience bad conditions in the future.
They show selfish concern and they prevent us from creating the cause for good conditions. In particular they prevent us from creating good cause. miserliness holding on to our money and hoarding it, always trying to grab more and more, it prevents us from carrying out generosity which we’ve just seen is the cause for lots of good things. In fact, it’s one of the important actions of a bodhisattva. The bodhisattva on the first level mainly practices generosity.
It’s one of the six perfections, it’s the first of the six perfections. And that’s because it’s such an important practice in overcoming the self-cherishing, overcoming the ego. So while we’re practicing generosity, we’re actually cutting away at self centeredness and we’re practicing being beneficial to others. It’s a very powerful way to accumulate the merit to be able to go on to support our practice of other forms of positive action. Also if we flatter others to get what we want and if we’re always complaining and so on, these are things that come from self-cherishing.
They’re just self centered attitudes which are not considerate of others, which are just focusing inwards on the ego, on ourselves and they’re adverse to the practice of Tonglen, to the practice of loving and cherishing others and they prevent us from creating positive cause, accumulating positive actions. Stanza sixty one. Okay, so this is similar again. If we’re filled with pride and think that our own actions are faultless, then we can’t see our mistakes and develop through identifying them. If we’re always telling other people how good we are and so on, if we’ve done some little thing to help somebody else, then a spiritual person who’s helped somebody else doesn’t feel that they’ve done something wonderful that the other person should be grateful for and that the other person should give them some sort of return benefit for.
Instead they feel glad that they’ve had the chance to do something to accumulate this merit. They don’t dwell on it. They don’t keep on reminding the person. So to keep on reminding others and to have expectation of returns for the good actions we’ve done for them is a sign of our lack of spiritual advancement. It’s a sign of being still stuck in this self-cherishing attitude.
We need to recognize that this is actually harming us. It’s our self-cherishing harming us and to chuck it out, to trample it, to get Yamāntaka to get rid of it. So the good actions we do are not something to hold over the other person for a return. And also we shouldn’t have pride in our good actions, we shouldn’t think that we’re wonderful because we do good actions, because we help others, because we give money to charitable concerns and so on. This is really helping ourselves.
It’s not something that we should think of something very wonderful and that others should admire us for. We should think that it’s something that’s helping us in our spiritual practice So we feel very glad if we’ve had an opportunity to do these things and we don’t want others to admire us for it. Just feel that it’s very beneficial for us to be able to do these things and we actually should feel grateful to the person who’s given us this opportunity. We should recognize that this person has given us an opportunity to accumulate some very powerful cause for happiness in the future, for progress along the path. So it’s not a cause for pride.
It might be actually that there’s somebody who’s always taking advantages of others’ kindness and generosity and not pulling their weight and so on. That’s different. It might be necessary to correct that person for their own good and that’s different. So that can be okay, that might be a skillful action. But from your own side you’re not just looking for a return, you’re not just looking for some benefit back again in the immediate short term from the good actions you do to others.
Does that make sense? It’s easy to say this, it’s not always so easy to catch yourself, You can catch yourself feeling that way. Know, I always remember her birthday but she never remembers mine and that sort of thing. Yes. Well, always help them when they get behind and yet when I ask them to help me with one little thing they won’t do it.
You especially get these things around the Dharma Centre. There really do seem to be some people that really do just not pull their weight and there really seems to be some reality in the situation sometimes. So, you know, if you let it upset you, which is very easy, which can very easily happen, then we’re letting ourselves fall into this attitude that’s being described here. Okay. Jennifer.
What is it? Sixty two, is it? Oh, sorry. Well, So some of these stanzas might not be as relevant for our own particular situation as others. We do have connection with various masters, some of us more than others perhaps, but we do have the opportunity here to meet Khensur Rinpoche.
This is particularly talking about having created the master disciple relationship. When the master disciple relationship is created, then both take on great responsibilities and the disciple needs to follow the master’s advice and to respect him or her. The master takes on a tremendous responsibility for the disciples because the master has to guide them with loving care and concern on the path to enlightenment. They have to be guided skillfully and with great love and commitment on the side of the Master. We might not have disciples yet, we might not even have a personal master yet, but still these things may come about in the future.
That’s a good thought, yes. We also need to have good role models for our Dharma friends and for other people who are trying to practice Dharma and perhaps just starting off here. That’s right. So in a sense you’re acting as a Dharma friend. That’s true, we need to have consideration for others.
We have the opportunity to teach others, even some little thing, then in a sense we’re acting as a Dharma teacher and we need to do it with respect and do it with care for the person, not acting in an arrogant or thoughtless way. Stanza sixty three. So I don’t know that all of us have spiritual friends that speak, spread far and wide, but anyway, we might have promised to do glorious deeds if we’ve taken the Bodhisattva vow, that’s a possibility. And in actual fact, yes, this might be we might think that this isn’t relevant for us yet, but in actual fact, if we continue to follow the path then one day we’ll have followers and we’ll be doing great things and so on. We’ll have to be aware of the fact that outward spiritual reputation doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s going on inside.
So it’s very important to view what we’re doing carefully, to be aware, to be mindful of what’s going on in our own mind. We don’t want to be concerned with whether we’ve got a wonderful reputation in the outside world but only with what we can see going on in our own hearts. And if we recognize these bad attitudes, these repulsive thoughts, then we need to apply the remedy and not to let ourselves become proud of what we might have achieved in the external world. We might have done something marvelous like becoming a leader or something, having helped set up organizations, build things and so on. But if nothing’s going on in our minds, in our hearts, if we’re not progressing in our hearts, this is really a waste of our lives.
I don’t think this applies to anybody here, but we do have to practice mindfulness and when we observe these very self centered and bad attitudes arising, put them down right away, get rid of them. But when it mentions demons and ghosts, actually they say that some of these demons and ghosts actually can recognize the thoughts, the attitudes of the person and if they recognize the person as having loving and kind thoughts towards them, they won’t hurt that person. Where as if you have anger and hatred in your mind stream then you can be harmed by these beings. There’s many stories about that. For instance, Lama Zopa has told us this story about a monk at Boudha Stūpa.
This only happened a few years ago. The monks, they built a new monastery near Boudha Stūpa and the monks from the old monastery had to move out so they had to move all their stuff out. Nearly all the monks sew away all their old rubbish and just took their good things along to the new monastery. But there was one monk who was considered to be a little bit funny and he packed up all his old rubbish and he had loads and loads of stuff and as I said, there wasn’t one interesting thing among it all. Was just a lot of old junk and he insisted on taking it all to the monastery and everybody thought he was a bit queer.
One day all the other monks had gone off to a some some sort of I don’t know what it was, some big puja or something. This one monk was left behind at the monastery to take care of things and while he was there alone, some people came to him because one of the lay people who lived in the area was experiencing some sort of attack that was caused by spirits, by Nagas in actual fact, and so they needed to find monks who could come and recite certain prayers. And when they came along to the monastery, there was only this one monk there and they knew that he had a reputation for being a bit stupid and spacy. And so they thought, well, know, he’ll have to do it because there’s nobody else. So they said to him, you know the Naga prayer?
Can you come along and recite the Naga prayer? He said, Alright, I’ll come along. When he came along to this person’s room, who was having fits or something, he just sat there and he didn’t even recite any prayers, just pulled his robe over his head and went into meditation and the Naga harm just sort of went away right away. At that point they then recognized that he actually had although he had this strange exterior, he actually had this very pure love in his heart and that just by meditating, without even reciting these special prayers and formulas and so on, he was actually able to ask the Nagas to stop harming this person and he got the results right away. So this shows the power of pure love and that even spirits are able to recognize it.
Okay, so I think we’ll finish there. Do you want to do a little meditation? since beginningless time, we’ve been following self-cherishing, ego grasping and selfish concern, these two things. Where they’ve got us is stuck the swamp of saṃsāra, experiencing suffering again and again, experiencing every conceivable suffering, and many sufferings that we can’t conceive of at this moment, again and again. So these are our real enemies.
And our ego grasping and selfish concern have been hurting us by weighing us down with this sack of the five poisons: attachment and aversion, pride, jealousy. So, because we have these things, we’ve been experiencing all these harmful actions as a result of our bad karma. Ignorance, attachment or longing desire, hatred or aversion, pride and jealousy. They’ve been harming us over all our previous lives, causing us to do bad actions, actions which hurt others and then having to experience the results of these actions in continual suffering.
We have to recognise all these various harmful tendencies. We have to practise mindfulness. We have to gain insight into the actions of our consciousness, into the actions of our mind, our thoughts. When we recognize these harmful tendencies, we have to oppose them right away. This is symbolized by asking Yamāntaka, the manifestation of our inner wisdom, to batter and trample and cut off these negative thoughts.
So we can conclude this meditation by dedicating our merits for the attainment of enlightenment quickly so as to be able to help others.