Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Venerable Margaret McAndrew teaches the Wheel of Sharp Weapons by addressing refuge and inner discipline. She warns against mistaking worldly gods and channeling spirits for genuine refuge in the Three Jewels, citing contemporary examples of new age movements and psychic channeling that mislead practitioners. She then contrasts temporal happiness (brief worldly pleasures) with ultimate happiness, the lasting fruit of disciplined practice, and cautions against asking protectors merely for worldly benefit. A major section explores seclusion, emphasizing that training the untrained mind matters far more than outer isolation: our minds grasp at objects of attachment—praise, past slights, future plans—and require gradual discipline to settle. She discusses Yamāntaka practice for overcoming ego-grasping and appropriate vow levels for lay and ordained practitioners. Pitched at both lay students and ordained sangha.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 33 SW 1999 06 17.mp3
UUID: 87eb6142-5928-47e0-a20a-b852bd62bfb5
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-06-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~5,443
Great happiness for ourselves alone, but, we should think of how these beings are needing our help, and we should think of how we can help them. And investigation brings the conclusion conclusion that if we’re to help them effectively, we don’t have that sort of power as an ordinary person. And the only being who has the perfect powers to help others is the fully enlightened being the Buddha. So we need to set our our aspirations on the goal of Buddhahood. And for this reason, we’re engaging in this practice tonight of studying these teachings which belong to the thought training practice, the Lojong practice for developing great love and compassion in order to bring about the welfare of others.
And so we’ve been going through this for some months now, and we’re getting towards the end and I’m actually planning to start teaching us some other topics next month. So looking at this, I don’t think we’re going to actually finish all the verses. But in any case, we’re somewhere close to the end. So I put in the newsletter that I’m going to start on some general topics next month. So I’m I’m not quite sure what I should do about finishing this, if I should get in another evening or two after we start the next news letter before I start talking on the general topics.
What what would you prefer? Would you prefer to just sort of finish this up wherever wherever we finish? Yes. No. I’m I’m trying to do that.
Yes. But I think there’s a limit to how fast it can go. I think I’m still going to end up with some that aren’t done, and I think in general, we can see you can read the you can read the the verses and get a general idea of what they’re all about. So I think that’s alright. So the anyway, the important thing is combining these thought training practices with the graduated path teachings.
So in the graduated path teachings we learn about the three scopes and we understand topics like the four noble truths, understanding the cause of suffering, understanding the meditations that bring about renunciation of Samsāra. And we need to have these sorts of basis before we can develop love, pure love and compassion for others. And then when we do get onto the thought of developing love and compassion for others, We also need to follow the graduated path meditations on developing love and compassion starting with the equilibrium meditation seeing all beings as equal and then going on to develop great love and compassion for them. And then on this basis of the graduated path teachings then we can do these thought training practices. So as we’re trying to finish up, I’ll go onto the stanzas.
So last week we finished with stanza sixty eight. So this week we’re on stanza sixty nine. Would you like to read that, Jane? Oh, just haven’t got that page. Is anybody else is anybody else missing that page?
You’ll make two of them, I So we’re going through all these stanzas now that just enable us to check our minds, to check our find some of these really belong to a different culture, some of them are still extremely relevant. Even the ones that seem to belong to a different culture, sometimes if we interpret them a little bit, we can see that we might be doing some similar things in different ways nowadays. So in stanza sixty nine, you might think that this only refers to monks and nuns. But in actual fact we need to interpret this term monastic seclusion. Anybody who’s taken refuge can oh, sorry.
Hang on. I think I’ve got the wrong stanza. Robes of Saffron. Yes. So we’re we’re we’re not all wearing robes of Saffron, but we need to interpret this as not being just for monks and nuns, but for anybody who’s taken refuge in the the Three Jewels, Buddha Dharma and Sangha, to guide us.
If we’ve taken refuge in the Three Jewels, then it it carries the commitment that we can’t also have refuge in things of this world, in worldly gods and so on. And this might sound a bit funny to some people might think that nowadays taking refuge in worldly gods is not a practice. Although actually there are some societies where people are actually still following traditional religions where they actually do rely on worldly gods and making this mistake in terms of a traditional religious path. Not only worldly gods but even lower spirits such as pretas can sometimes become objects of refuge by people who mistake them for worldly gods and people often mistake these worldly gods for ultimate refuge and they they rely on these gods. They they worship them and make prostrations to them, take refuge in them to help them not only with this life but the future lives.
And these things are mistaken because these beings can’t help us with these things. And so we need to be very, very careful. If we have a commitment to refuge in the Three Jewels, the pure valid guides, then we shouldn’t place our reliance these things. And in actual fact, we do need to be careful even in our society. We might think that it’s only relevant to people in traditional societies.
But in our society there are some new age movements that are probably very much taking refuge in worldly gods and in deceptive spirits. There’s all kinds of movements that are channeling, that are relying on clairvoyance and so on. We need to be very, very careful if we have an interest in any of these things. Need to be very, very careful. It’s not enough that they seem to be saying good or high sounding things.
You need to look at the being who is is saying these things. They might have an attachment to having followers. They might say these high sounding things because they’ve picked up the words from somewhere and they might have no no integration of the meaning at all. It’s very very easy for some sort of spirit being channeling through somebody, speaking to a clairvoyant to pretend to be some sort of transcendental being when in actual fact they could be some sort of demoted spirit even in an unhappy realm. In fact, the worldly gods are not terribly interested in having human followers.
So we can probably assume that the spirits who want to acquire human followers are in actual fact probably from the pretas realm. And there have been cases like this in Queensland. There is a case where some of the students at Chenrezig Institute at one stage became very interested in going along to a local psychic who was channeling or or doing seances and getting teachings from some spirit. And when were there, they did some investigation, and they said that the students at Chenrezig Institute should leave this strictly alone because this spirit was a a and was not a suitable teacher at all. So the teachers that were coming through sounded very nice.
They sounded very high and so on, but they were coming from somebody who had no understanding of these matters. So probably nobody here is in this situation, but we anyway, we we we can get involved in these things quite possible. And another kind of demon that’s meant here is inner demons, the ego grasping and self-cherishing. So we’ve been learning a lot about the inner demons in these previous stanzas. So now we’re up to the path where we’re asking Yamāntaka to help us.
So this means basically we’re using our inner positive energy to overcome our bad tendencies of ego grasping and self-cherishing which we have in the past made the mistake of seeing as being an essential part of ourselves. In actual fact, these are our enemies and harm us have always been harming us. So we we need to avoid giving way to these inner demons. So what we need to do is to observe our vows and our rules of conduct and understand thoroughly by studying how we should follow them and then not let our ego grasping and self-cherishing pull us in the wrong direction. We shouldn’t let them guide us into the wrong actions.
So for that reason, then we ask Yamāntaka to to trample trample them and get rid of them. Any questions about that? Okay. So the next stanza. Would you read that please?
So, here the terms pleasure happiness refer to two kinds of happiness. Does anybody have any idea what two kinds of happiness like involves? Very good. If you go to the top of the class. Yes.
Okay. So, yes. So we can have two kinds of happiness. We can have temporal happiness and we can have ultimate happiness. And often ultimate happiness seems slow coming, it seems difficult to achieve.
So we get distracted by the prospect of easy short term happiness, such as watching TV. So then we forget the ultimate happiness that we should be aiming for. But the time when we were receiving these teachings from Geshe Tashi Tsering, we must have had an Italian monk translating because I used to be quite intrigued by his Italian accent and I’ve written down here that we shouldn’t forget the hope of happiness. Although, think, by the way, he’d always put h’s on if there wasn’t one there and leave it off if if there was. It must be one of these things that that cause a lot of confusion for other languages, people in other languages who don’t have these terms.
So anyway, that was a little bit naughty of me. But anyway, in our Dharma practice, we have to be aiming for the ultimate happiness because this is the happiness that lasts. It isn’t deceptive and it doesn’t last and lasts forever. And it’s real happiness. It doesn’t go away.
And the temporal happiness only brings us a short good feeling, but then it goes away and we have to experience more suffering. And even our temporary happiness is unsatisfactory. So this standard says that even in our Dharma practice, we make offerings and pray for help to the Buddhas and protectors. And we’re while we’re always making these offerings, whether it’s to to the Buddhas or to to lower beings, trying to get happiness in the short term, it’s very easy to even forget about our long term Dharma practice and just start praying to the Buddhas to help us out with the things we want to have in this life. And this isn’t the real meaning of our Dharma practice.
And we need to rely on the Three Jewels for our long term happiness and we should remember that the real cause for our happiness making good karma. And if we rely on the Three Jewels of refuge, Buddha Dharma Sangha, to guide us in the creation of good karma, then we’ll be really taking refuge. We’ll be really following the meaning of taking refuge. Whereas if we just always make prayers to being such as the Dharma protectors. Although these are not ultimate refuges. We’re not actually taking refuge in them in an ultimate way unless we ask them for help in our practice towards ultimate happiness and ask them and then as we follow them along this path to ultimate happiness. And so it can be important to rely on these protectors and sometimes it is important to us, the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, for help because we have obstacles to our Dharma practice, have external obstacles that we need to remove. Such as, for instance, obstacles that might shorten our life so that we need to ask these protectors to remove these obstacles so that we can live a longer life and spend the time in Dharma practice. But we need to always have this understanding in mind that the real purpose of our practice is accumulating good karma, purifying bad karma and that these other things are asked for with that goal in mind.
So good karma comes mainly from avoiding harm to others and from virtuous actions that arise from good mind. So good mind is the real source of happiness and we need to cultivate good mind. Does anybody have any questions about this? Maybe of the people here might not have had much experience with asking protectors for help but it’s something that we do quite a lot actually particularly where there is a community of monks and nuns who know some of the practices and when people have problems. Here we often ask for dedications of the Guru Rinpoche or the Guru Rinpoche but there are many other practices and sometimes the lamas will specifically suggest a particular practice.
They might suggest that we should recite a certain number of the praises to the twenty one Tārā’s or it might be that we should do something like the Yamāntaka practice which is the the deity that we’re dealing with here in the Wheel of Sharp Weapons. Or there are various Dharma protectors who we pray to and make offerings to specifically, as their name suggests, specifically to protect our practice and to give us good things and to help us with the with our problems. For instance, at one stage, were having somebody was trying to set up a business to help the monks and nuns, and they were having problems with unpaid debts. You know, the people owed them money. The money wasn’t coming in.
And so if we suggested that we do practice paying to this particular protector. And so we did a lot of prayers to this particular protector to help the money to come in. Well, it did come in. So we have to give him credit. So anyway, these practices can be very helpful, but they only work because we have got the common and sometimes if we need to remove some obstacle or to bring about some good result, we have to have the karma there already.
If the karma isn’t there, then we can’t do anything. But if it’s there, sometimes something can be blocking it and the protectors can, by their actions, bring about the results of this positive karma at the time when we need it. Does this make sense? People often ask about this. Say if it all depends on our karma then why do we pray for these protectors?
Why do we ask for help to avoid you know for instance the dangers to our life or or problems to our wealth or our family difficulties or to overcome harmful spirits. There’s all sorts of things we can ask them to help us with. But if it all comes down to karma then what can they do? And the answer is that they have some sort of powers that it’s working with our karma. So we have to put our main effort into purifying our bad karma and accumulating good karma.
And if we do that well then we we don’t need to perhaps rely so much on these protectors. But when you try to practice down, particularly when you are trying to meditate and to understand emptiness, then it seems to attract a lot of obstacles. So you actually find that you do still need to rely on these protectors to remove these obstacles which start to become more apparent. A lot of these obstacles you don’t even realize you have until you try to do these really virtuous practices and then you find that you have obstacles galore. So anyway, here we’re asking Yamāntaka to help us.
So Yamāntaka isn’t actually a protector, he’s a Yidam, but he’s very, very powerful and we often ask Yamataka to remove obstacles. So we say trample trample and trample and trample them. So that was seventy, wasn’t it? Okay. So do you think this means that we all should be monks and nuns and have homes in monastic seclusion.
I think in some of these stanzas actually, probably monks are being specifically addressed. But I think this text was probably originally composed mainly to address to monks, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t interpret it. It’s not sort of speaking to everybody and saying you have to become monks and nuns, but it was probably assuming that the audience would be mainly one of monks. But that’s not to say that it’s not relevant for lay people. It’s just that you get a stanza here and there that you get the idea was specifically addressed to monks.
So anyway, here we don’t take monastic seclusion literally. It’s not meant to refer only to monasteries, but it refers to a place of seclusion or a place of retreat. And there are two kinds of places of seclusion or retreat places. And these are outer and inner. So the outer means secluding our body away from distraction such as noise for example.
If you want to meditate and there’s a lot of noise it’s very disturbing. So you don’t want to meditate right on the edge of a busy highway. You go off into the hills somewhere if you’re trying to do some intensive meditation. And the other thing that we have to separate ourselves from is the noisy mind. And that’s a lot more difficult because you can go away into the hills to a very quiet place, but you find that your noisy mind goes with you.
And sometimes it seems to get noisier the more the more there’s external sound. So that’s just a a misapprehension really. The mind isn’t any noisy when you go into a quiet place but you just notice it more. And when you go and try to do a quiet retreat and to calm your mind down a little bit and have some more concentration then you start to really see all this chatter that’s going on. And in particular sometimes when your mind doesn’t have all its usual distractions to keep it happy then it can start to get very grasping and it can grasp at all sorts of thoughts of this and that.
And this is actually quite an interesting process because it enables us to see what our mind is really on about. So our noisy mind, the distractions that our noisy mind is going on about are about our expectations and about our hopes and fears. So if you look at what our mind is thinking about, it’s always going on to either some object of attachment or some object of aversion. So whether this is things from the past or plans for the future, things that we want to have, It’s it’s always caught up with our attachment and aversion. And the example Geshe Tashi Tsering gave was expecting praise.
And he said we expect praise because we like to be praised. We like to hear nice things said about ourselves. And so then our mind goes on to this. And then because we want praise then pride and anger can follow. And so we we have pride if we do receive praise and anger if we get the opposite.
Which sometimes happens. And these things disturb the mind. So then we can sit in meditation fuming over the things that somebody said to us at some time. Sometimes it can pop up. Sometimes you haven’t thought about for years it will pop into your mind again because you didn’t give them a good answer at the time and you wish you’d given them some sort of good comeback, you know.
And then on the other hand, you can think of something pleasant that somebody said to you and sit there, you know, getting all proud about it. So these things are the noisy mind. So anyway, the point is that the most important one to have is the inner seclusion and we can aim at having this inner seclusion even if we don’t manage to have the first one, the outer seclusion. If we can manage to calm down our minds and keep serene within ourselves and not be always having these sort of grasping that object of attachment and aversion, then this is the inner seclusion. So then it mentions this venturing to town.
And in this case, it means being distracted. So even if you are in retreat somewhere up in the hills or in some remote place, you can find that in mind, it’s still always going to town. So we can’t stay in retreat for great lengths of time. We can’t become hermits unless the mind’s ready. So in general, it’s not wise for us to aim at too much external seclusion all at once.
We need to gradually train our mind in remaining calm. Geshe Tashi Tsering said there’s a big relation between the mind and the wind. So, when we if our mind, if we try to have too too much concentration, too much seclusion, then our mind can become agitated. So, when I did retreat last December or last January, then I think the last few days my mind was in town all the time. It wasn’t in the Buddha realms anyway.
So because this is because our mind’s used to running all over the place and it won’t stop that all of a sudden. It needs to be trained out of it gradually. And the reason why we have basic rules of discipline, we have different levels of vows, is the five basic lay vows and these rules of discipline are to help us to avoid the worst distractions by disciplining the body and speech then we gradually also calm the mind down. And this is the basis for having a more calm mind so that we can go on and do more concentration practice. And then mentioned telling fortunes.
So this is the sort of refers to people who use their down the knowledge and experience for worldly gain, such as doing divinations and so on so as to receive offerings and to gain a reputation. So somebody who’s learned some of these practices for the Tibetans this was something that would probably be mainly the monks. There were some late people who would do these things too. You would have to have studied some Dharma teachings. First of all, you would have to have learned to read and write which isn’t everybody’s lot in traditional society and then they would have to have received divination knowledge and so on.
They would learn, among other things, would learn to do these practices. But if you think the idea of learning all these things is just learning these practices so that you can have this kind of knowledge to do these things so as to gain worldly benefits, this is totally distorting the real meaning of Dharma practice because it’s using your Dharma knowledge just for worldly aims and so it’s distorting it completely. And it’s not bringing about the real results of Dharma practice which is bringing about happiness for the future and especially liberation. So real happiness is found within the mind. It isn’t found among worldly things.
It isn’t found among external things and we need to focus on what our mind is doing and bringing about the cause of real happiness within our mind. So this doesn’t mean we have to give up everything. It doesn’t mean we have to give up these external things, but we need to have an understanding where the real happiness comes from. So yes. So anyway, Geshe Tashi Tsering said again that pride pride is the chief cause of self-cherishing.
And he said our mind is like an elephant. So it has to be tamed. So it’s something that needs a pretty concentrated sort of effort. So we need a strong rope and a big strong tree or rock to tie the elephant to in order to tame it. So this is the example for our minds.
So that’s why we have these moral disciplines and why we need to gradually practice calming and stabilizing the mind by concentration. So then we ask Yamāntaka to help us to overcome these enemies of ego grasping and self-cherishing. Oh, yes. Observations. But Lama talk about this all the time, you know, that he’s doing it with divination.
But you know that the lamas, sorry, divination, yes. So they do these observations or readings by, there is different ways it can be done. I suppose it is a bit similar to Mo. You can get answers by either throwing dice which is what Lama Zopa Rinpoche does or another way is by doing the mala. You just pick up the mala at random and count the beads back.
The number of beads that you get tells you the answer that you’re looking for. So much of it is funny, you get some really incredible with Lama, but think Joe, I think he just uses the dice so as to look as though he’s not using his clairvoyance. You know? Because I think he just knows the answers and he’s just using the dice to because he always knows I mean, how does he know what questions to ask sometimes? I don’t know except that he just seems to because the answers are mainly basically just a yes or a no or or maybe.
And this sort of gets really a good answer. For for example, there was one lady was telling us that at one stage, she was thinking of becoming a nun. And the night before she was going to be an ordination ceremony. I was she was pregnant. And she won’t.
She didn’t know it. She didn’t know it herself. But she yeah. So, you know, that’s sort of the the highly embarrassing situation for everyone. Yes.
You always feel a bit skeptical. That’s right. Yes. It’s it’s important to have that sort of focused state of mind and to take heartfelt refuge. But there are also some people seem to even with Lamas, some Lamas do mos and other Lamas don’t do mo.
Some just seem to have an affinity for it. Geshe-la is doing mo, by the way. So he does very good mo. Anybody’s ever really needing help with some sort of question where they feel they need some sort of clairvoyant input into the answer. It’s a lot easier to ask a mo reader than to actually have an interview with the lama.
Quite often you can say if you are thinking of having an interview with the Lama, well, it can be good to have an interview with Lama too sometimes, but there might be times when you hesitate to bother him with his problems, but it’s not a big thing to ask him and to request him to answer the question. As long as you express the question clearly so that the answer can come out in a straightforward way. So you need to sort of think about what it is that you’re asking and express the question clearly and then you can just request through a text and by phone, you know, and if it’s some sort of question where you need some sort of help in this way such as in the case that Diana mentioned, she wasn’t sure whether it was the best thing to do to treat or not. Sometimes it’s a question that you can’t just decide on the basis of logic because you don’t know enough. So it can be helpful to get some help in this way.
Or you can do what Diana did or you can do what I often do which is throw the mo. But it depends on, you know, you still have to sort of ask for help and take refuge and set your motivation and do it in a concentrated mental state. Any more questions? No. Although you might probably get better results when you do know the Mo, but, you can ask without without knowing it.
Oh, yes. The five basic lay precepts or vows. Okay. Who wants to answer that one? May you maybe somebody else because you we all know you know it.
So I’ll try somebody who yes? Yes? And were you putting your hand up? Yeah. I thought you were.
Right. Yes. Okay. So avoiding all of the things. Yes.
Avoiding killing sickly, taking human life, avoiding stealing, avoiding lying, avoiding sexual misconduct, avoiding lying, avoiding intoxicants. Right. Well, the fifth one is so you can keep the other four. Yes. I think read the whole scene.
Okay. So I thought this might possibly upset some people who feel that it’s putting down having families and children. So I hope nobody’s feeling upset about this. So yeah, so anyway, you shouldn’t think that it means that there’s something wrong with having families. The point is that he’s talking to probably talking to monks.
And the thing is that there are different levels of vows. There are the vows for the virtuous laymen and women which we just happen to speak about. So we can make a commitment of whatever sort of of practice we are doing, whatever kind of lifestyle we are following, we can find an appropriate level of vows to help us with our life that course of life to help us to follow virtue. But whatever course of practice we choose, it’s important to choose the right one. For instance, if you’ve chosen to be a monk and nun but you’re not suited to the life, you’re going to be happy.
So it’s better to be a lay person than to be miserable trying to force yourself to follow the life of a monk and nun when it doesn’t suit you. But we need to make a commitment to a particular course of practice that’s right for ourselves and then to practice according to that way. And monks and nuns have a special opportunity for doing practice. So in a way we have a very fortunate opportunity and you can think that you have a very special sort of good fortune in that respect. But if you do have that sort of good fortune, then you need to be focused on the goal of everlasting happiness.
Because if you start thinking of the temporal things, might start thinking that you’re missing out on some things and then you become unhappy and discontented. And then whenever you face difficulties in your practice, you’ll feel like giving up. So it’s important if you’re trying to live as a monk or a nun not to be distracted by what you might perceive as being the short term pleasures and rewards of worldly life. And of course those people who have chosen family life and so on often find that they wish that they were monks and nuns and not having to be worried by all these distractions and worries and responsibilities. So it’s very easy to say the grass on the other side is always greener.
So we need to be focused on what we’re doing and to be prepared to override the short term difficulties, whatever walk of life we’re in, and to persist with our practice as a long term goal. Not letting ourselves be swayed by all the ups and downs, the difficulties that we face, but understanding that the long term rewards are going to be worth it. And in fact, they’re going to be extremely rewarding. And whereas if we were to just follow these short term pleasures, give up and take the easy way. If we’re changeable and go from one thing to another, then our practice will go nowhere and we’re only going to allow our ego grasping and self-cherishing to get strong.
And we’ll be missing out on these long term rewards. Also, Geshe Tashi Tsering had an interesting comment to make there. He said that giving up too easily and being changeable and unstable in your practice tends to come from having too low a view of your own capability. So I think this is very true. Thinking that, so if if you tend to think that this, oh, I’m good for nothing or I’m useless.
I’m a weak person. I’m not capable of doing all these things. Other people can do these kinds of practices, but I can’t do it because I’m not.