Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 33-minute session, Ven Margaret McAndrew works through three stanzas of the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, exploring how self-cherishing shapes everyday life. She begins with our attachment to plans, moves to how authority figures lead effectively without anger, then examines the gap between the ethical standards we profess and how we actually behave—especially when substances cloud judgment. Throughout, she emphasizes building on good qualities rather than dwelling on faults. Notably, she contrasts Western competitive culture—which trains people to feel like failures unless exceptional—with traditional societies where people accepted their role without that pressure and seemed more at ease with themselves. For practitioners with some Dharma background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 32 SW 1999 06 10.mp3
UUID: 3bc08f24-437c-4920-8d78-457c93175ee3
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-06-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 33.4 minutes
Words: ~3,905
Well, you do have to make plans but you always have to keep in mind Okay, so you need to make plans but you have to keep in mind that our plans are just based on worldly assumptions and there’s always a possibility that uncertainty or something getting in the way. So you make plans and sometimes they work out but sometimes they don’t. The thing is you have to not get hung up on them. Of course this is difficult but if you change your mind according to these downward practices then it does help a lot. You place less reliance just on your routines and even when things go wrong you start to actually feel a lot stronger and more stable in yourself.
People say you realize that the real source of happiness lies elsewhere. Those with great training in the Dharma. Who have developed Dharma a lot, really put a lot of energy into their work. They really have a lot of enthusiasm for their good projects. But they also can easily switch to something else if one thing starts going off course. So actually, you know, when we do get too hung up on our plans and projects and when they don’t work out, it makes us unhappy.
This is just an indication that we’re on the wrong track somewhere. We had a lot of personal investment in that and it comes from the self-cherishing. If you understand where it’s coming from, when you’ve started doing that and you realise that it’s just your old self-cherishing playing up again, you just, this is another opportunity to squash the self-cherishing and eventually your self-cherishing is going to get weaker Yes, yes you have to develop this inner wisdom. But I mean self-cherishing isn’t going to go away in one instant. It’s going to take a long time and it goes away very gradually.
That’s very important. Yes, that will help a lot. If you can be honest with yourself. So, me, what’s your name? James, right.
Okay, Good. Mhmm. You like to read the next one? Sixty six. Stanza sixty six..
So anyway, we might actually we might not think that this applies to us because we might not think we’ve gained lots of status and ranks of prestige. But in actual fact, you might be a position in authority yourself in some way, for instance, as a teacher. You have authority over all those little subordinates in the class theoretically. Yes. So or as parents, so you have children who are children who are supposed to do what they’re told.
So in any case, you may not always be obeyed by your students or by your children but you do have a lot of authority over you do have a position of superiority over these children. Also at work we might have people who are subordinate to us at work. So if we find that we’re not being listened to at work or in these particular situations or by our children, then this is the fault of self-cherishing. And we actually need to have an altruistic attitude, a kind heart. And in actual fact, if we can approach it like this, we’ll find that people will be much more ready to listen to us and to do what we say.
What do you think? That’s right, don’t have to be wishy washy. The thing is to remain calm within yourself. And if you have a positive good hearted attitude then actually even if you have to criticize other people and tell them where they’ve gone wrong. If you really do it without anger, which is hard sometimes, so we’re not saying these things are easy.
But if you can cultivate this ability to say things without anger, then you’ll find that other people actually will take it a lot better. Because then they’ll understand that it’s not personal attack and they’ll recognize your good intentions. And yes, we don’t necessarily have to let others trample on us. Actually if you really get rid of self-cherishing then a lot of things that we nowadays regard as being trampled on are things that wouldn’t bother us at all anyway, so what would it matter? But also there are times when you do really need to take care of yourself and you can be quite firm about that.
But if you have good heart, good heart doesn’t mean letting other people always do what they want. Sometimes the things that other people want to do are wrong. So a good heart means having concern and consideration for other people and doing whatever is appropriate. Yes, that’s right. You can say, you know, it’s his problem.
I don’t have to buy into it. Yes. Yes, that’s true too. So he might have something to tell you and you can sort of eliminate the exaggeration that comes from his way of his aggression, his bad way of putting it. But there might be a grain of truth in there.
And the reason why that was because they’re always comparing themselves to their teachers and thinking of their teachers’ great qualities. So, stanza sixty seven, your turn.. Right. Well actually the Tibetans, well the Lhasa Apsos, yeah, they come from Tibet. The Indians don’t like dogs, they’re not really fond of them at all.
But Tibetans love them of course. You can’t separate Tibetans from dogs. They’re very, very delightful little dogs. Sometimes they can be a bit, yappy. They’re very much family dogs, know, they’re very protective of their own family.
So, Stanza sixty seven relates, actually not only relates to religious views to the ethical standards that we’re taught in religion but it can even relate to other ethical and philosophical views. We tend to have a personal code of conduct but we don’t always stick to it and a lot of people might profess to hold very high ethical views but then they go and engage in actions that go counter to their higher ideals. And we need to be on the watch for this. So we might be holding altruistic views on the one hand and on the other hand we might go and exploit others and take advantage of them, take advantage of their weakness. And if we examine into it, then this is confused and contradictory behaviour.
And if we do this sort of thing, we’re not applying our principles. And I think a lot of people tend to think very highly of themselves because they have such a high set of standards and they don’t check how their actions are different from the principles that they hold. They tend to just pride themselves on their principles and tend to not examine their actions. So this is a danger that you can fall into. And another danger that Geshe-la pointed out is that we often do this kind of, fall into this sort of mistake through damaging the clarity of our mind by taking alcohol and drugs.
And this leads to us doing things that we wouldn’t do when we’re in a state of being clear minded. So these things remove our ability to discriminate good and bad. So then we end up following our bad impulses. And so we’re always advised to avoid making our mind murky with substances. Well the whole thing really.
Yes. We have these good principles, good moral standards and yet for various reasons we can act, we act in ways which are not according with our principles. And there can be different factors that lead us to do this. One of the most prevalent is substance abuse. Or not necessarily even sort of substance abuse in the sense of addiction, but just taking too much of it so that we get muddled and do silly stupid things.
Inconsiderate things towards others. So, it’s easy to fall into this. And that’s why in Buddhism we’re advised actually to avoid these kinds of substances. We’re looking for happiness not by dulling our minds but by having deeper clarity, deeper wisdom. Although in the short term sometimes These things can make us feel better They dull our minds and stop us from making progress which would bring us in the long term much greater happiness.
So, our view, our attitudes about life, our principles and our ethical philosophy and so on are a matter of the mind. Behaviour is a matter of the body and speech. And we need to make them go together If we hold high principles and if we have good ethical views then we need to watch to make sure that our behaviour of body and speech accords with these ethical views that we hold So in this way, we need to practice mindfulness. We need to watch our actions. This is the first thing that we get taught when we come to practice Dharma.
The need for watching our actions of body, speech and mind. It’s not enough just to practice a little bit of mindfulness while we’re sitting on the meditation cushion. We need to maintain mindfulness in our daily life and the object of our mindfulness has to be whether our mind, our body and speech are following virtuous conduct. So our body and speech follow our mind generally, but we can hold wrong views with one part of our mind while another part of our mind is telling us well it’s alright to let go and do certain things that are alright. So we have to be watching out for this sneaky state of mind that lets our body and speech go in the wrong direction.
And for this we have to be on the watch all the time. We have to watch for our negative thoughts coming up. And if we do this, and if particularly we watch what we’re doing with our body and speech then our body and speech won’t be going off in the wrong direction and then this will make a positive mind stronger and by having more positive minds, stronger positive minds, by developing our good qualities, we’ll have more and more positive actions and more and more good karma. And this again will make our positive mental state stronger and stronger and more and more good action so it gets better and better. And so I think when we start to practice Dharma, a lot of students when they start to practice Dharma and start to actually look at their minds, start to see their bad qualities and then they become depressed and they think that they were the world’s worst person.
In actual fact this person is actually quite a good decent person. So they’re not so bad really. So we need to be aware of our good qualities as well. And we actually, I think get a lot further by building on our good qualities than by just focusing on our bad qualities all the time and trying to eliminate them. We need to be aware of our good qualities and build on them and this is very very important.
And in fact our bad qualities and good qualities seem to be related. There seems to be a very strong connection between what our own individual bad tendencies are and our own individual good potentials. So for example, a person might have a tendency to be very emotional and to get upset very easily by what other people think of them or by what they see around them and so on. They have a lot of attachment to other people and they get very upset when their, attachments go wrong. For example, they’re very attached to being with people and they want to always be with people that they like and so on.
And they get very upset by their relationships. But this kind of person can also find it very easy to be sympathetic and helpful to others They find it easy to relate to other people’s needs and to transform that attachment into a positive warm relationship to others Another example might be that somebody finds it very easy to put on this sort of devious charm and to get what they like by turning on the charm really thick and sort of manipulating others Now that’s a negative thing, but it can be easily turned into some sort of positive energy because they have this ability to tune into other people and what other people want. It can be very easy for them to make other people feel good, to use their charm in a positive way to consider other people and to make other people You know, to give other people something that makes them feel good and to give a bit of a lift rather than always using this charm for their own ends to use it for other people’s well-being. So whatever our particular weaknesses are, rather than feeling bad about that, we should look for some way that we can use this in a positive direction.
So you can always see it if you examine it, if you realise that your good potential really is there. So, we’re told in the teachings to purify our negative actions with the four opponent forces. So I won’t go through the four opponent forces again because those of you who have been here before know what they are and if you haven’t you’ll gradually learn about them. But we have to purify our negative karmas and we have to strengthen our good actions by rejoicing. So this came into the seven limbs that we did beginning of the session.
We had taking refuge, we had the confession of our negative karmas. So we had prostrations and at the beginning we had confession and First of all we have prostrations and offerings, those are the first two. Then we have confessing your negative actions and rejoicing in your positive actions. And it’s very important to remember that rejoicing in, rejoicing in our positive actions, because it not only increases the good results that we get through our actions, the good karma, but it develops the good qualities themselves. And we have to recognize that the thing that’s underlying all our bad qualities is this self-cherishing.
So we have to get rid of the self-cherishing and we ask Yamāntaka to help us with that. So then again we have the trample him, trample him. So, James, would you oh, sorry. Jane, isn’t it? You’re next.
You’re after number one. Would you read the next one? Okay. There might be something in that, yes. So anyway, sometimes there is provocation, sometimes there is something that we still have to try to check on the way we react to that.
So a natural fact, I think I was getting onto the commentary from that stanza when I was going on and on about how we sometimes criticise ourselves in a negative way. So Western psychology anyway would agree with the viewpoint here that when we particularly dislike and criticize a certain kind of fault in others, it’s our own hidden failings that are behind it. The ones that we don’t want to acknowledge even to ourselves. So we do need to check inside not outside. We don’t have to be upset if we find that we’re not perfect Because if we start checking within ourselves, we’re not going to find that we’re perfect If we were perfect we wouldn’t need to be doing these things But we won’t be perfect until we’re Buddhas.
So we have to start this process of eliminating the bad qualities and developing our good qualities. And in order to do that, we have to look at recognise them clearly and acknowledge them. And that was where I got ahead of myself and started saying that some people sort of get too depressed when they start seeing their bad qualities. When they start seeing these things. Perhaps after that point, we can be very very good at not practicing our bad qualities until you start practicing Dharma.
Then if you’re really sincerely practicing Dharma, then you are going to start seeing your bad qualities and can come as a bit of a shock. So in actual fact that’s a good thing. The thing is to not let it depress you, to actually realize that this is just a positive process. And as I already mentioned, we need to focus on our good qualities too and we need to have a balanced view about these things. So that’s stanza sixty eight.
Well, think I’m sure His this must be from way back because I’m sure His Holiness nowadays has a very good clear view of Western psychology and these particular tendencies which are so strong in our society. I think I’m quite convinced that they are particularly strong in our society, that our society produces and one aspect of it is the Judeo Christian thing, but I think nowadays it’s not only the Judeo Christian thing, I think our competitive society has a lot to do with that. We’re all sort of trained to compete with each other like mad, you know. I’m not saying that all competition is bad, I’m just saying it’s got completely out of control in our society and our whole society seems to be based on this competition, comparing yourself and trying to show that you’re better than other people and you can never win because no matter how good you are there’s always somebody ahead of you and Whereas if you’re a failure then you if you’re at the bottom of the heap then you might be a perfectly good person But you have to feel that you’re a failure because you’re not some sort of wonderful success in life and This is stupid You know, because there’s always going to be more losers than winners in that sort of society.
And in a way it’s good because in a way it’s a society that gives you opportunity. Anybody, no matter who their father is, might be able to be successful. But on the other hand, it’s a society that brands ninety eight percent of the people as failures. And I used to think that in India people just do what their father did and what their grandfather did and they’d still be running the same little shop or doing the same sort of thing. I suppose it’s changing nowadays but traditionally all that was expected of them was that they would carry on the tradition and do exactly what their forebears did and nobody expected more of them so provided somebody sort of came up to scratch in that regard, and nearly everybody did, then they had no reason to feel at odds with themselves.
They had no reason to feel like they were afraid of them, might even be a very poor person or a low caste person. But it seemed to me that when I was in India that even some people who were very hard up, very low caste, desperately poor, you wouldn’t want to have their life for anything. But at the same time they seemed to have a sort of sense of assurance about themselves, of who they were They seemed to feel comfortable with themselves in a way that you don’t see in our society And I used to think why is this? And I just came to this conclusion It was because they were doing what their grandfather did and nobody expected anything else of them Nobody was blaming them for being poor or hard up. They might be incredibly oppressed.
There’s lot of oppression going on in India, but nobody was sort of labelling them a failure because that was their lot in life, know, to be in that position. And so they had this sort of sense of being at ease with themselves. Oh, there’s a lot of things wrong there, yes. Oh, it’s exaggerated, Yeah. Yeah.
Yes. Yes. It’s ten times worse in India than The Buddha was against the caste system and certainly we don’t want it over here. But somehow our society, by bringing in some good things, it’s brought in a lot of bad things as well. So this is what puzzled me because I did feel that Australia was a better society and that this caste system in India was all wrong and so on.
And yet I met these people who were desperately poor and yet they would seem to have something that we don’t have here. And I think what is it? Well that’s true too because it’s really changing. Now they do have the television and they are, it’s really changing. In Nepal, for instance, the people there had a really beautiful society in some ways.
Even though they were very poor, they had a beautiful society. But you could see it wasn’t going to hold together once they became aware of what what could be had and the fact that some people in this society now have these things and others don’t. Now some people have motorbikes and television and Yes, that’s right. Once other people have television and you know they have, television, you’re not going to be happy sitting around just smoking a cigarette and talking to your friends, you know. You’re going to want television too.
And in Nepal when I first went there, most people seemed to be quite happy to just sit around smoking a cigarette or a bidi and talking to their friends and they didn’t really want to do anything else. But now want to have television and they want to have nice clothes and they want a better house. You know, it’s quite understandable that I do want all these things. The point is that it’s brought in more dissatisfaction. And the thing is that these things are not wrong in themselves.
And it’s good that our society can provide these things. But we have to realise that if we are going to be really happy, then we have to stop clinging and grasping at all of these things. For instance in television, since I’ve had a television set in my room and I’ve been getting really attached to it. Especially I feel upset if I can’t watch it. I’ve been watching this thing, it’s really got me in, you know.
And yeah, well it’s on Monday nights. Oh that thing? Yes. It’s pretty weird, yes, but I started watching it. Can’t work out what it’s all about.
But the more I watch it, the more I want to try to work it out. So anyway, yes. So I think it’s time we stopped here anyway. But the point is that we have to realise that real happiness only can be found by not following worldly values, but by having spiritual values and following them. And then you can have the worldly things, but not placing too much importance on them.
So what sensor was that? Sixty eight. I think we’ll have to stop there. We didn’t do sixty nine did we? No, won’t do that.
That will be for next week. And it’s probably a bit late to meditate. Okay, so we’ll finish there and do you have any more questions? Okay, we’ll just call it a halt and that’s it.