Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Sangye Khadro cuts through spiritual pretense: no mysticism, no prescribed lifestyle changes, just the core practice of focusing on the breath and observing the mind without distraction. In this 44.7-minute session, she speaks directly to why Westerners need meditation—our lives are saturated with stimulation; the mind must be trained to settle and concentrate. She covers practical setup (five to twenty minutes daily, early morning ideal), then tackles major obstacles: expectations, boredom, and laziness. Notably, she devotes significant time to relationships, warning against proselytizing or disrupting family members skeptical of your practice—arguing that kindness to skeptics matters as much as your own progress. She emphasizes internal change over external spiritual performance. The Q&A addresses meditation objects, breath significance, and finding a genuine teacher. For beginners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 Basic.mp3
UUID: c6b3bd44-1021-4d4f-a4b5-e9a73365c0a8
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Basic Buddhism (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Date: 1985 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.7 minutes
Words: ~5,272
Now further step. Okay. So so far, what we’ve been doing is just, you know, concentrating on the breathing and counting up to ten, trying to keep an eye on the rest of the mind, a bit like spying on the mind to see what’s happening, just to observe what kind of thoughts, feelings and experiences are coming up in the mind, and learning to not just follow and get involved with and get distracted by all the different things that are coming up in the mind. Just that alone can be very helpful. It can help us to be more relaxed, to be more clear, to get ourselves into a more concentrated state of mind.
Say if you want to concentrate on some project, study, writing, work, something like that, you can use this technique to get concentration. And then you can use your concentration in whatever way you want. Playing tennis, shooting arrows at a target. That kind of meditation, that kind of focusing the mind, tying the mind down, allows us to use the mind in whatever way we want with much more success and efficiency. And like I say, just to relax as well, because most of the time our mind is just sort of all over the place, especially the life of people living in the West.
There’s so many things going on, there’s so much information coming in all the time. Newspapers and radio and TV the news from all over the world is coming in. Our whole way of life is so busy. We’re so much involved with different people, different relationships, different activities, work, groups, committees, studies, sports so many different things going on in our life. We’re carrying all those things around with us all the time thinking about them, worrying about them.
In addition, we’ve got our own problems that we have to learn to cope with life, with ourselves and with other people. Those things are churning in the mind as well. Normally, the mind is really, really quite busy and hectic. I think everybody needs time away from all of that, space from all of those different things, all of those different concerns. Time to just sit, be quiet, be still, be with ourselves, and recharge our energies, give ourselves some space, give ourselves some rest and relaxation, so that then we can renew our energy and go back into whatever we’re doing, go back into our relationships and our work and our activities refreshed and reenergized.
This kind of meditation technique can allow for that. That’s what a lot of people would do. They’re not necessarily interested in attaining enlightenment or any kind of spiritual development. They just want to be more relaxed, to be more calm, to be more peaceful and in control of themselves so that they just work better, they do things better. And that’s fine, you know, that’s great to use meditation in that way.
But then there is also the possibility of doing more than that, going beyond just learning to relax, learning to feel better about yourself and about what you are doing. That’s mainly what I’ve been talking about in introducing Buddhism that Buddhism offers these various states of mind that can be attained by anybody, any human being. We’re all capable of attaining higher states of mind, higher states of awareness and being. But the key to attaining those is meditation. We cannot do anything, we cannot improve, we cannot change, we cannot go any higher unless we can learn to work with our mind.
The mind is sort of like sometimes I see it like learning to play an instrument, if you want to make beautiful music, play in an orchestra. You need an instrument, and you need to learn how to use that instrument, how to work with it so that you can produce beautiful music. So the mind, in a way, is like an instrument. If we want to do beautiful things with the mind, we have to learn what the mind is all about, how it works, and how to play it, how to tune it, and so on, produce the beautiful music, and produce the beautiful, positive states of mind that are possible. The only way to do it is by looking into the mind, learning to work with the mind.
Practice of mindfulness meditation is the first step in doing that, because we have to see what’s there in the mind. We can’t suddenly jump in and start rearranging things and changing things and doing what we want without having an understanding of what the mind is. Just some advice about meditation. If you’re interested in practicing meditation, there are some pointers as to how to go about doing it. The best thing is to practice regularly, to do, if possible, day a little bit of meditation.
It doesn’t have to be a lot. You don’t have to spend a lot of time, but even five minutes, or ten minutes, or twenty minutes a day. But the important thing is the regularity. Same with the physical discipline. If you want to become a good tennis player, a good swimmer, a good jogger, to do it regularly.
You don’t just do it once a month. It’s going to be hopeless. Your body will be out of shape each time you exercise. So the more you do it on a regular basis, the easier it is. The more your mind gets into shape and flexible, and then you can work with it much better.
Quite important to have a regular practice. With time, in the beginning it seems strange, but that’s only because we’re not familiar with it, we’re not used to it. But it can become just part of your daily life, like brushing your teeth or making a cup of coffee. It can become just normal second nature, you might say. It can be difficult sometimes.
We tend to want to do what’s easy and what’s fun and enjoyable. Meditation is sometimes fun, sometimes it’s nice, but other times it’s hard. Other times, you just don’t want to do it. You don’t want to sit down and meditate, and you really have to fight with yourself or struggle. People find that if you do overcome your laziness and reluctance to do it, just sit down and do it, even if it’s not all that fun.
We shouldn’t expect that meditation is always going to be fun, that we’re going to sit down and get high every time we try to meditate. It doesn’t work like that. There are times when we’ll feel really wonderful, and other times when we’ll feel frustrated because we can’t control the mind, because the mind is just too crazy, or we just feel like we’re not getting anywhere. But the point isn’t to sit down meditate with an expectation of getting high or achieving some wonderful state of mind. If we have expectations, we’re just setting ourselves up to be disappointed.
One of my teachers would say often, Don’t have any expectations. That advice is very important. Try to give up expectations. I think it’s just normal to have expectations, but the important thing is to recognize them and to not feed them, to not get into them, but to be open to whatever happens in meditation and be prepared for the difficulties, for the boredom. One teacher talks about boredom.
He says it’s just an unnatural part. In the beginning it’s very exciting. Anytime we take up a new project or a new activity, it’s really exciting at first, something new, something stimulating. But after a while, we’ve gotten over the initial excitement and then we go through a period of boredom where it’s just something else, like everything else. Boredom comes from the ego, and it comes from the ego wanting to be excited, wanting to be stimulated, wanting escape from itself, to escape from our problems, from our difficulties, and just looking for a charge, an easy high, you might say.
That’s just the ego. If we give in to boredom and we drop something as soon as it starts to get boring, as soon as it’s not interesting and exciting anymore, then we’re really being quite immature. We’re not going to make much progress in anything. So even if you feel bored with meditation, even if it feels like nothing’s happening anyway, what’s supposed to happen? It’s important to sort of check up.
Ask yourself, What do you expect? What is it you’re wanting to happen? What is it you’re expecting to happen? And is that realistic? Anybody who’s ever taken up a spiritual path has had to go through a lot of hard work, time and energy.
It’s totally unrealistic to expect wonderful results within a couple of days, or a couple of weeks, or a couple of months, or a couple of years, even. But the results of meditation come only through perseverance and sincere hard work and getting beyond the ego. Like many books you read about meditation or about the spiritual path, really emphasize that point of not having expectations, not being so goal oriented, not being so caught up about reaching a certain state of mind, reaching a certain goal. Know that it’s there. Know that there’s something that’s coming at the end of the path, but not be so concerned about that that you lose track of the path, that you’re ignoring what’s happening along the way.
It’s the same with any kind of journey that we make. If you’re so concerned about getting somewhere, achieving something, then you miss out on so much, because the journey is also quite wonderful, it’s also quite beautiful, even if it’s not always fun, it’s not always what you want and what you expect. Anyway, the point I was trying to make was to develop a regular practice, even when you don’t always feel like doing it. Make yourself sit down for five minutes, just so that you develop the habit, the practice, the familiarity of doing meditation. The best time to meditate, most people find, is the morning, first thing in the morning.
Because if possible, really early in the morning, that is really the best time. People who are really working hard at meditation will get up at two, three, four o’clock in the morning because everything is so quiet. The whole world is quiet. It’s like an in between state between the previous day and the next day. You’re not so likely to get into thinking about what you’re going to do that day, because it’s almost not day.
Normally when we wake up in the morning and it’s seven or eight o’clock, our first thoughts are about what we’re going to do during the day. But when you get up early like that, you don’t think like that. You’re sort of in this very still, peaceful realm in which it’s not day, it’s not At that time, it’s very, very easy to concentrate, to meditate, to get deep into your own mind and not be so distracted by thoughts about what you’re going to do, what you have to do, your relationships, your breakfast, your work, and so on. If possible, that is really the best time to meditate. And your mind is fresh and clear, because after having slept, everything settles down in the mind.
So the mind is naturally more clear and still. But if you can’t get up that early, which is understandable, then just whatever time you manage to get up, before getting involved in other things, before breakfast, before work, before whatever activities you start your day with, spend some time reflecting and meditating. Even if you have to get up a bit early, fifteen minutes earlier, it’s really the best time. But if that’s impossible, if you have very young children who wake up before you do, your job starts at six o’clock and it’s impossible for you to get up any earlier, then find another time in the day. Actually, some people find that it’s easier to meditate at night.
So you can try different times and different situations and just find what’s the best time for you. But it’s good to try to do it at the same time every day because that then it’s easier to become part of your routine. And like I said, it doesn’t have to be a long period of time. Five or ten or fifteen minutes is fine. And they say it’s actually better in the beginning to meditate for just short periods of time and stop your meditation while you’re still feeling fairly fresh and clear and enjoying it, rather than pushing yourself to meditate for a long period of time, thinking, Oh, I have to do thirty minutes, or I have to do an hour.
And it’s really too long. You’re really pushing yourself. By the time you’ve gotten to the end of the time period that you set for yourself, your body is aching and uncomfortable and restless, and your whole energy is sort of agitated, and you feel really unpleasant. So if you end your meditation in that kind of state, you’re not going to feel so enthusiastic about sitting down to meditate again. Whereas if you end your meditation while you’re feeling good, then that’s the feeling you have that will be the feeling that carries you, and then you will feel more like sitting down and meditate again.
So it’s better to have short periods in the beginning anyway, and you can gradually lengthen them as your concentration gets better, as your ability to sit still increases. It’s also important to not think that meditation is a big deal, and that now that you take up a practice of meditation, now you have to make big changes in your life, have to do things differently, you have to dress differently, you have to eat differently, you know. That isn’t really the case. That’s coming from the ego, really. It’s an ego trip to think that I mean, happens to a lot of people.
It happens to me. I went to India and I got involved with the Tibetans and I started dressing like the Tibetans and doing things like the Tibetans. It happens with people when they go to India, know, they dress like the Indians and they start picking up customs that the Indians have. And those things are just what’s the word? Superfluous.
I don’t think that’s the right word, but it’s not part of meditation anyway. A certain way of dressing or a certain way of eating or certain mannerisms are not part of meditation. They’re not part of the spiritual tradition, they’re just cultural. And it’s just a trip to think that you need to pick up on those things. Anyway, it’s not necessary.
If you happen to like Indian clothes, that’s fine, that’s great. But not to feel that that is somehow part of the practice of meditation. It’s totally unnecessary to make any changes in your lifestyle or in habits, other than the changes that happen naturally, the changes that come from a genuine understanding. Like if you start meditating and you start looking at the suffering of others and you suddenly realize that it’s not very nice to kill animals for meat, and I don’t really feel like eating meat anymore, and you decide to become vegetarian. I mean, that’s fine, you know?
But that’s completely your choice. There’s no requirement or obligation to change any of your habits, any of your customs. But if you yourself feel that you like to live in a certain way, you would like to do things differently because it would be better for you and it would be better for others, then that’s fine. But I hope you understand what I’m talking about, the difference between a an ego trip, which is changing oneself externally without changing oneself internally. The idea is to change oneself internally, to become more aware, to become more mindful, more compassionate, more considerate and sensitive towards others.
And if then those inner changes result in external changes, then fine, that’s great. But not to change the outside first, you know, because most people can see through that anyway. Most people are perceptive enough to see, you know, that you’re just putting on an act, you’re just putting on a show. And it can happen actually with some people that their friends or their family, their loved ones will not be all that happy about one taking up the practice of meditation or taking up a spiritual path. You know, they might feel somewhat threatened.
They might feel like they’re losing you somehow, you know? You’re gonna change, you’re gonna become different, they’re not gonna know you anymore, you’re gonna lose your interest in them. It’s quite natural for some people to feel that way, to feel somewhat threatened. And so we have to be quite careful about that. We have to be sensitive to that and not to do anything that would put pressure on those people to become interested in what we’re interested in, It’s just normal that if we discover something new, something exciting, we want to talk about it.
We want to share it with the people around us. But we have to be really careful and sensitive to where they’re at and only share if they’re genuinely interested and if they’re going to share our joy about it and not be threatened, not be hurt, not be upset by it. And if they are, if there is any likelihood that they would be upset, then better to keep quiet, you know, to not even talk about it and especially not to make any big changes in what we are doing, you know. And like I say, it isn’t really necessary. You can take up the practice of meditation in such a way that nobody else would know about it.
Unless, of course, you are sharing room with somebody and the person might see you sitting quietly with your eyes closed. But, like I said, there is no need to change anything externally that other people have to know. If there is any negative action on the part of someone that we live with or someone that we are close to, try to work with that somehow in a skillful way, to reassure them that you are still the same person and that you are not going to change, are not going to leave them, you are not going to separate from them, you not going to do anything that would harm your relationship with them. Is that clear? Does that make sense?
I’m talking mostly about really close relationships, like a spouse or a partner or family, relatives that you can’t just cut yourself off from. But if there’s friends that your relationship isn’t so close, there isn’t so much dependence, and if you do begin to change and grow away, that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that we have to hang on to all our relationships, because it does happen anyway. People do sort of grow apart and change such that they don’t have much in common anymore. But we can still love them, we can still be friendly with them.
Actually, they say that if there is any people who are so opposed to what you are doing that try disrupt your practice of meditation, they try to talk you out of it, or really in quite violent well, can be violent, psychologically violent ways then you should try to leave those people behind, but not unkindly. Just realize that they are holding you back. If you can see that what they are doing is holding you back and harming you in your development, then it’s better not to be with those people. You can still love accept them as they are, you can still have openness and acceptance of them, but realize that the relationship with them is just not helping you and it’s actually harming you. So you just don’t spend so much time with them.
But what I was talking about is more, you know, laying a trip on people, which is which which often happens. Like, you know, we get all excited about something like meditation or Buddhism and you want to tell everybody about it and not everyone is interested, you know? They might get really sick of you, you know, or negative. So we have to be really careful. And then, if we do that, and if we do sort of disrupt people’s lives, disrupt our relationships, then that will come back on us eventually.
Just more and more problems will come from that. You know, you might lose your friends and then feel really bad about it afterwards and realize that the whole thing was unnecessary, but then it’s too late maybe to do anything about it. I mean, I’m saying this partly because I you know, a few people here have talked to me about problems with their spouses, that they’ve become interested in meditation and Buddhism, and they like to come along here, they like to do more and more and more. And the spouse is totally uninterested and is actually getting quite upset about what’s happening, because they’re seeing their spouse, husband or wife disappearing off to Buddha house, spending a lot of time there and spending less time at home. It’s quite understandable that that is unpleasant for them and that they get upset about that.
I’m just saying, you know, we have to be very sensitive and careful about I mean, sometimes it’ll happen anyway, whether or not people get interested in meditation. Sometimes the marriage just isn’t working anymore, and it is right to leave, to separate. Kindness and compassion and consideration are very much essential parts of the spiritual path, any spiritual path, and that those should come before other things. In a way, it’s sort of selfish, to think, oh, I have to work on myself, I have to spend more time meditating.’ It’s sort of looking only for oneself, for one’s own development, it’s so important to not get into that way of acting. Do you have any other questions about meditation or how to set up a practice, how to get into a regular sort of practice?
I can think of more things to say, but if you have any questions, just interrupt me. In some way, Oh, it doesn’t have to be the breath, no. I was just teaching what is a traditional practice in Buddhism, you know, that’s been practiced for two thousand years. But it certainly isn’t the only way to develop. I mean, if you have some other object of concentration and you can do the same practice, because The main thing about the practice is just becoming more mindful and more aware of what’s happening in your mind.
So if you can do that in some other way, with some other object, then that’s fine. For sure. Just that the breathing seems to be, you know, a way that most people feel good with and feel comfortable with. And like I say, it’s very easy because, you know, it’s it’s always there. How do you breathe?
I’m just breathing. Do you breathe through your nostrils? But see, maybe maybe that maybe really? Yeah. But I wonder if it’s good to learn to breathe regularly, know, to try to make your breath regular because it seems to be it’s not only the Buddhist, the Hindu tradition, the Tao tradition, are so many traditions that use the breath and they have different ways of using the breath as well.
And it seems to be really important somehow that there is connection between the breath and our whole existence. And they say too, if we can learn to regulate our breath, we can actually have more control over our lifespan. Know? Because that’s the thing that cuts us off, you know, that separates life and death is breath, pretty much. So there does seem to be a lot of significance to the breath, more than just as an object of concentration.
Well, yeah. Yeah. There’s there’s actually a whole meditation about death, about how to how to come to terms with death and prepare ourselves for death. But, yeah, I mean, they say death is just a question of breathing out and not breathing in again. Maybe your last one.
But yes, there are so many different ways of meditating. And you might find, okay, maybe you don’t want to do the breathing meditation now, but you find something else helpful now, you could come back to it later. Because it’s very it’s a way of relaxing too. Just just yeah. Yeah.
There are different kinds of meditation. There is a need for different types of meditation, because each one is a way of dealing with a different problem or a different aspect of the mind, or a way of developing some positive thing in the mind. So each person has our own story, our own needs, our own way of working, way of going to enlightenment. So we have to come to an understanding of what our needs are and then use meditation to work with our needs. One learns more about meditation, more about oneself, more about the different techniques of meditation, then you can start to become like your own psychologist, your own doctor.
Maybe you have a problem with anger, for example, and you really want to work on that, so then you would spend some time, some months maybe practicing different methods of meditation to deal with anger. Or if you have a problem with depression or a problem with fear, whatever problems you might have, you can work with those problems with different meditation techniques. If you have a teacher, a meditation master who is quite perceptive and knows a lot about the mind, knows a lot about meditation, then you can go to the person and ask for advice and say, Well, this is happening to me now. I’m having such and such problem, or such and such difficulty, or I’d like to do such and such, and the teacher can advise you what meditation you can do. But that’s not always possible.
We don’t always have the contact with a teacher like that. To reach enlightenment, they say it is necessary to work with a teacher. But for the time being, like for most of our everyday needs, we can learn to help ourselves and diagnose what our particular problems are, what our areas of need are, and then apply meditation to work with that, to deal with that. Like one of my teachers was saying, you you are your own guru. You know what you mean.
You’ve got your own wisdom inside. If you have a problem, if you have a question, if you look inside, if you know where to look and how to look, you’ll find the answer in there. He said that because so many times we don’t have enough confidence in ourselves. We tend to think, oh, I’m hopeless, I’m stupid, I don’t know anything, I’ve made so many mistakes in my life, I can’t possibly help myself. We need to learn that confidence in our own ability to know what we need, to know what our needs are, and to follow them.
And that’s all part of becoming more aware, becoming more mature spiritually. It’s learning to rely on our own inner wisdom. If, of course, if there is the possibility of access to a teacher, to an accomplished teacher, we should make use of that too and rely on advice and the wisdom of the teacher. Not just any teacher, but they say there’s a whole thing about how to find the right teacher, how to check to see if the teacher is right. Not just any person who is advertised as a teacher, as a meditation teacher, is really going to be able to help us.
So we have to be careful about that. There are lots of false teachers around and lots of teachers that may not be false, they may be genuine teachers, but it isn’t our path. So we have to find the teacher that we feel is going to be able to help us and and work with with that person. Just trying to think of what else I could say with regard to meditation practice. Well yeah.
I guess there are some things to watch out for, like if the person practices what they preach and if the teacher says one thing but then lives another way, that’s sort of suspicious. I guess it’s partly just intuition. You can feel a kind of trust with with the person. Yeah. I guess it’s partly seeing qualities in that person that you feel that’s what I want to do.
That’s what I want to be. That’s the way I want to be. You know? And so I want to learn from that person. I want to see how I can become like that.
It pretty much boils down to that, you know? And it doesn’t mean that like I that the teacher could be genuine a real accomplished spiritual person, but you just don’t feel like that’s the way you want to be. You know what I mean? I think eventually you do find a person that you it might take years, it might take on meeting, encountering many different people until you find the one that you feel right with, that you feel you can establish relationship with. And also, it doesn’t mean you have only one teacher.
Know, you can learn from everybody, really, if you know how anybody can be a teacher. Even somebody who is a phony, you know, they can still be a teacher. And it doesn’t mean too that we have to go on a kind of mad guru hunt and think that we’ve got to go chasing around the world to find a teacher. It seems to work that when it’s right, know, when you’re in the right state of mind and when it’s right for you to find your teacher, you will. And it could happen.
Mean, the teacher that I finally decided was the one teacher that I wanted to learn from. Didn’t feel that way from the beginning. In the beginning I was very suspicious. It took me years before I got to the point where I felt that that was my teacher. I didn’t feel that way in the beginning at all.
You see, it’s partly your own development. Your mind, you yourself mature and get to the point where you’re ready and you’re open and you’re at the right point for learning from your teacher. Some quite interesting stories about historical people, relationships between the teacher and the disciple, and how they work together, and how they get around to the point where the disciple is are learning from the teacher. So much of it does have to do with your own work. You can’t just sort of sit there and expect the teacher is going do something magic and something will happen to you.
It doesn’t work like that. You really have to work on yourself. There’s one book here, probably the most famous in the Tibetan tradition, somebody called Jetsün Milarepa, and his stories.