Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 40-minute commentary on the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, Ven Margaret McAndrew examines how modern distractions—wealth, leisure, travel, and endless activity—prevent spiritual progress. She opens by addressing the discouragement that derails practitioners, then explores the precious opportunity of human life and how it is squandered through worldly pursuits. A central teaching focuses on stanza 77, which examines why we readily accept hollow praise while resisting harsh criticism from those who genuinely care for us—a resistance rooted in ego-grasping. McAndrew emphasizes that real happiness comes only from transforming the mind—reducing disturbing emotions rather than chasing external circumstances. She draws on Yamāntaka, the wrathful expression of inner wisdom, to illuminate how to overcome the self-cherishing that obscures the spiritual path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 34 SW 1999 06 17.mp3
UUID: 2106a29d-2903-41c5-a940-c110b373e495
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-06-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 39.8 minutes
Words: ~3,552
If you think that way, you then you give up because you, you feel hopeless. You lose your courage. So it’s important to, to realize that you can do these things and not to take too low of yours yourself. But instead of that, take a long term view and think, I might be experiencing these difficulties now but they will pass. And it is worthwhile hanging in there and that the long term results will be something that will be definitely worthwhile if we can only hang on there.
So we should actually tell ourselves that we are not so bad, that we are capable because in fact we are all capable of doing good practice. And if we realise this, if we don’t just put ourselves down, instead if we look at our positive attributes, then we will find that we can go on and that we can do these practices. Of course, also you have to be realistic and not try to do everything all at once, but just set yourself a reasonable goal. Any questions? Okay.
So that’s pretty straightforward. Things that these are things that do distract us. So, I just mentioned the teaching on the precious human rebirth, the fortunate conditions that we have now for practicing the Dharma. And so, yes, so this is the the teaching on the good fortune that we have on being able to practice Dharma in this lifetime. This is the entry to the graduated path.
It’s the first topic that we meditate on in the graduated path. So this is something that we need to make good use of. We have this really precious opportunity and we need to not just disperse it by worldly activity. So do you think it’s wrong to engage in business? Okay.
Then yes. Carried away by worldly goals, by wanting profit, by wanting more wealth than you need for your well-being and all these things. You know? Then you spend your whole life taking these things, and you find in the end that you haven’t left yourself any time for spiritual activity. So also pleasures and things such as things like dancing, music and so on.
We like to talk about things like dancing and if you do some intensive Dharma practice, sometimes you sort of you need to lighten your mind by doing some things and taking a bit of a break. On the other hand, as you said before, you can use them as distraction. Can use them from getting down to work. So it’s a question of how you’re doing these things. So for instance, if you are doing them with the attitude that you are just giving yourself a bit of a break so you can come back to practice especially your Dharma practice, would be careful to only just do a moderate amount of this relaxation and then come back to the job again, in actual practice can actually be part of the Dharma practice.
We to take care of ourselves. Our bodies and minds are actually quite, you know, quite sensitive in a way. So we have to take care of them and make sure that we keep keep the Dharma practice. So sometimes we need to relax and have a bit of a good time. If we keep our motivation, I think we can transform our everyday activities into Dharma practice by lojong thought training.
We need to practice mindfulness that we’re not just, as already said, know, evading or distracting ourselves by using these things as an excuse. Yeah. So so so we ask Yamāntaka to help us not to give way to distraction. Okay. So this was this was written for me.
Yeah. It’s it’s just getting some more samples. It’s going on and on like this. So if you need to if you’re going to find some that apply to you, for sure. We’ll have to find something.
Yeah. Ignoring yes, so anyway all of these things are just distractions that can bring us worldly happiness but they can never bring us real happiness. Selfish beings put all their energy into getting these things and just the abstract from practice and we are failing to create the cause of future happiness and especially the real happiness and the everlasting happiness of liberation. So real happiness is found within the mind. If we’re looking at for somewhere forest somewhere else like travel, I find this hard because travel is always fun.
Not always, actually. But it’s for for quite sure. Travel can be pretty horrific at times, but then it’s always fun to talk about afterwards. I came across a book called it’s it’s kind of so always more interesting to read about the bad ones and the good ones. Real happiness anyway is only found within the mind.
It doesn’t mean giving up everything. It it doesn’t mean we have to give up all our places. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go traveling or we shouldn’t do different things that that that we enjoy. We shouldn’t have different places, but we we here sort of think of these things as being the real cause of happiness. And we have to realize that they can distract us from doing real practice.
Since we just we’re too fond of traveling and we just want to go here and there, then we’ll never take a bound to do serious studies. We’ll we won’t be able to particularly if we, as it mentions here, guru, if we have found a guru who’s given us the good profound teaching, then if we allow a lot of travel to distract us away from that, then that would be really trading in something really valuable for something meaningless. So real happiness has to be found by decreasing the deluded mind and increasing the virtuous mind. We have two kinds of mind which just doesn’t mean we have two minds, we have two kinds of thought or two kinds of mental actions. We have virtuous and deluded mental actions and we have to decrease the mistaken ones or the deluded ones which causes unhappiness.
So that means that we have to reduce our disturbing emotions. And we have to develop the mind that’s developed mind, that’s the mind which is contented and which finds its happiness in Dharma practice. Travelling for a place and so on is lots of fun, but it doesn’t bring contentment. The more we do it, the more we want, the more dissatisfied. More we get of it, the more dissatisfied we are and the more we want more and more of this particular kind of stimulus or enjoyment.
It doesn’t lead to happiness and contentment at all whereas Dharma practice is the opposite and it leads to real happiness and contentment within us. Any questions? Maybe not everybody is a traveler like me. He always says that she’s a a traveler in the mind, not in the outer world, not in the the outer world. So there was such a big problem to mind.
So I think in a way it can be a developing experience, particularly like a particular stages of your life that on the other hand there are millions of people who have never traveled anywhere and yet have very good heart. So it’s not it’s not essential. I I have to get that into my mind somehow. So anyway, Stanza seventy five. Alright.
So here we are. We’re all miserly and all sponging off others. You have some money but you need somebody else to do it. This is probably particularly rampant in extended families, but it’s going on in many ways around. I don’t know whether it applies to anybody here, but you do see it happening.
Some people just sort of sponge off their relatives all the time and their friends and so on for material help. Not only that but for people to do things for them, for energy like helping them with their work around their house, with their family and so on. And yet when the time comes for them to do the same sort of thing in return, then they are always too busy doing something else. They have always got some good reason for not doing their share of it. For instance, if you are in a communal household or at a Dharma Centre or somewhere, you always find that one hundred percent of the work gets done by about sixty percent of the people and the other forty percent sort of don’t seem to do any of it.
And there always seem to be a certain certain element of people who were who just kind of bludge. There’s no other word for it. So no. It doesn’t only happen to have tendencies. Yeah.
I mean, the once you guys, it’ll be the. If you go, it’s better to go get it anyway, like, definitely have it right away or if somebody has it. Yes. But, anyway, yes, clinging onto these things, this kind of thing is something that really harms the the death time, clinging onto our material possessions because we do then find it hard to let go. At this time it causes suffering.
So it’s actually quite harmful. But anyway, generally in society, we all help each other in different ways and it’s quite alright to be part of that process. Sometimes you help others, sometimes they help you. It’s alright to ask others for help, but we should check how much we take and what our attitude is and whether we’re doing it in a self centered way or whether we’re doing it with consideration for others. And I think perhaps in our society often sponging on others for energy is more frequent than sponging on them for actual material things, although I suppose that happens too.
For instance, I knew somebody who had a house near the a very nice beach in Queensland, and he found that his relatives would just come and stay with him, and they’d never want to leave. So it became very difficult for him because he first of all, he’d welcome his relatives, and then they’d be there for a week and for two weeks and three weeks. And then it seemed like they’d never want to go home. Finally, you have to tell them that that was time for them to leave So, yeah, so that’s an example of that kind of thing. You know, we’ve all had experiences.
I think if we if we have a house of our own I know when when I was renting a house with somebody I’ve had people who just sort of came and stayed for a long time, and they’re sort of expecting a meal to be cooked and so on. And possibly, I’ve done the same thing myself to other people. So I can’t say I’m still free. I think we need to really check the just think about the other person and perhaps ask them, you know, say, do you think that this is becoming a problem for you or whatever? And, you know, you see some people, their grandmothers and their their children and grandchildren, they’re still relying on poor old grand to to do everything for them, it can become a real burden for the grandmother.
Yes. I always think about this myself because I’m often a guest of other people, and I don’t have the, like, the I I don’t really have the facilities to return hospitality. So I often think, you know, I just take advantage of people. It can be it can be quite tricky. So, anyway, stanza seventy six.
Okay. Okay. So I can see it’s all doing that. Okay. So, anyway, maybe this was not perhaps so relevant in this particular group of people, but it certainly goes on in our society.
And there’s a lot of people who are claiming to have psychic powers. You know, you know, some them do have psychic powers that exaggerate them. So in Tibet, it could have been something that would have attracted a lot of interest for some people who are meditating because in a society where people are very hard up, then this might offer us an opportunity for getting material gain if they can have some psychic powers and monks, for instance, who are meditating who might be very hard at, if they can get a reputation of having psychic powers might gain more offerings from people. So this kind of thing can be a factor in their thinking. And the fact is that even to gain worldly psychic powers, there’s different levels of psychic powers, there’s what’s called the supreme and mundane siddhis.
And mundane siddhis are things like walking on water and being able to see the future. Super mundane or supreme are on the stages on the path to liberation and enlightenment such as realization of emptiness. So the mundane siddhis are what are called mundane because they are shared with other beings, including those who are not on the Dharma path. Even again these sorts of towers involve intense certainly involve intense concentration. Still, he had to work very hard at it.
And so even to get these worldly things might be more effort than some people want to put in. So they might exaggerate the results of their meditation in order to gain some sort of worldly benefit. And this is the kind of thing that’s being referred to in that stanza. So the next lines probably more relevant in our century. At the end of the twentieth century, we run here and there in pursuit of great haste.
I think this one applies very, very much to a lot of us. And we have so many options in these times that it’s very easy to think that if we are not contented with our present situation, if it’s not satisfying us, then we can try something else and that can make us happy. We might try something better and then we not continuing to do so we try something else and we try something else and maybe we try one thing after another or maybe we try a dozen different things at the same time. And we end up being so busy that we have no time for the really meaningful things. So there’s always so many things that seem important for us to do.
We get involved in so many things that we don’t have time to find to really cultivate the cause for happiness. This just makes me think of my mother’s generation. People of my age would remember that our mothers were always they had to do a tremendous amount of the household work that isn’t done nowadays. Things like having to boil clothes in the copper and having to boil the sheets in the copper and having to black lead the stove and rattle the fireplaces and all these kinds of things. And yet I can remember my mum having more time to spare for just sitting around and knitting and talking than anybody seems to have nowadays.
Of course, I suppose when you go to the other side, you’ve got all the unemployed people who don’t have much to do to occupy their time. But it seems like anybody who wants to get involved in in things in this time can find endless things to do. So they don’t have much time for just sitting around. And even though we we have all these labor saving devices and machines, machines, they seem to save time yet this is making us busier. So we need to make room in our life for the really important things, not the things that we’re told are important, but the things that really matter.
And we we need to make time for going within ourselves and cultivating the cause of real happiness. So then we ask Yamāntaka. Seventy six, wasn’t it? So we’re up to seventy seven, so I’ll have to read that one. Someone gives us advice from the depths of our heart, which is for our own good that is harsh to our ears. And with anger, we treat him as if he is our foe.
Yet when someone without any true feeling for us feeling for us deceitfully tells us what we like to hear, without any taste or discernment, we are kind in return. Trample him, trample him, dance on the head of this treacherous concept that self is concerned. Tear out the heart of this self centered butcher. This thought is our chance to gain final relief. And so this is a very important stanza and it’s one that’s not so easy to put into practice.
And we always like to hear compliments or we like to be told to do the things that we like to do. And we dislike criticism and we dislike being told that we should behave differently. But for our own practice, actually the criticism or the good advice might be the best thing for us, the best thing for our happiness. And it doesn’t incite pride if we find that we have our faults pointed out then this isn’t going to cause us to be proud whereas if we receive compliments then it can make us proud. So we tend to feel hurt if somebody criticizes or points out something that we’re doing wrong and we don’t like this.
But it’s this feeling hurt that really just comes from ego that prevents us from taking well meant good advice. Also sometimes of course we get a lot of criticism that comes from a negative sort of attitude and of course this is hard to take, it tends to make us defensive. But sometimes somebody might really have our well-being at heart, but it might be somebody who really loves us and cares for us and they want to tell us something for our own good sincerely wanting to help us. And in that case particularly, we should, if it’s a person whose opinion we have respect for, we should try to take it well because they are doing it with perhaps with some insight as to what is good for us. And they can give us some insight that is helpful for us.
So we need to try to overcome this sort of resistance to this sort of advice. Evolved beings are very different to us and that they love to hear good advice, and they love to to hear their thoughts pointed out. And they they don’t like compliments. So this is Lama, as I’ve been told, he he’s always So because of self-cherishing, we only like to hear nice things and this So we need to check up. And in particular, it makes it easy for people to lead us into doing things that would be harmful to us, such as going out drinking and gambling and doing things go and have a bet once in a while for an old chap who always used to make a profit on his TAB there.
He’s something who had that sort of karma. So it that to me was an interesting kind of example. He just somehow he he had that yeah. But, of course, until you know what time you’ve got and yeah. Yeah.
A lot of that I believe they So so anyway, we we won’t need to get on the gambling as a a topic. I hope that’s So we’re going get on to the the to on to with we don’t always have to be handing out the good advice. We do hand out good advice to others, but we don’t like to receive it ourselves. To do it in a pleasant way and try to be tactful and diplomatic and not to hurt their feelings, but to try to present the criticism or the advice in a way that is least hurtful to their feelings. Helpful to their feelings.
Okay. Any further comments? Okay. Well, we could finish the I think there’s only one stanza. There’s not much we’re always tending to get distracted from our Dharma practice.
There are many things that can distract us from our Dharma practice. Many deluded mental states. Many external distractions. In order to practice Dharma effectively we need to keep up on the path and to find the real true happiness. We need to look inside ourselves not at external things.
We need to put our own energy into following the path of reducing and finally doing away with our deluded tendencies, our disturbing emotions. And we need to, in particular, be mindful of actions arising from our disturbing emotions. Actions that are detrimental to others or that distract us away from our concentration on Dharma practice. And so we need to rely on the guidance of the Three Jewels of refuge and follow their advice. And we ask Yamāntaka, the manifestation of our own inner wisdom in the wrathful form, powerful so as to overcome obstacles to help us with our process of overcoming our chief enemies, the ego grasping and self-cherishing.
And we can dedicate our merits now with the dedication on page five.