Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 30-minute guided meditation, Ven Sanghy Khandro teaches the Four Opponent Powers, a classical Buddhist method for purifying negative actions and mental habits. Moving through each power in sequence, she cultivates regret for harmful deeds, confession to a trusted higher being or principle (Buddha, God, or your own values), a remedy involving visualization of a compassionate Buddha and the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum, and finally a realistic resolve to change. Throughout, she emphasizes that negative patterns are not permanent, guilt need not define you, and transformation takes time. Her approach is notably inclusive, inviting practitioners of any faith tradition to adapt these practical purification techniques to their own beliefs.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2.12 Meditation 4_The Four Opponent Powers.mp3
UUID: 64216653-0621-4cfc-8f52-d2183756b819
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 30.0 minutes
Words: ~1,809
Let’s now do a meditation on the four opponent powers to see how to apply them to purify some negative actions that we’ve done. First, make yourself comfortable. Sit with your back straight. Let the rest of your body relax. And let your breathing be natural.
Let your mind settle down in the present, the here and now, putting aside any other thoughts of the past or the future or other places, anything not related to the practice that we’re doing. Really do your best to keep your mind focused on this practice. And then generate a positive motivation for doing this practice such as, I’m doing this practice to free myself from negative energy so that in my life I can be more positive, more helpful to others, and less likely to harm others. Or, you can think that you’re doing this practice to create the causes to reach enlightenment, so that you can help all beings to reach enlightenment as well. So the first power is the power of regret.
To do this, bring to mind whatever actions that you have done physically or verbally or mentally, just with your thoughts, that you can remember having done in the recent past, today, yesterday, in the last week, or further back in time from the earlier part of your life. These can include actions that were harmful to another person or other people, caused suffering to others, or actions in which you behaved dishonestly or selfishly. Or you could also think of attitudes in your mind that you may have a habit of indulging in, like anger, or pride, or jealousy, or some strong attachment or addiction that you would like to free yourself from. And change into a more positive state of mind, a more positive way of being. So just spend some time bringing to mind things you feel regret for, things you would like to change in yourself and avoid doing in the future.
As you bring these things to mind, feel a sense of regret, which involves recognizing that these ways of acting and behaving and these attitudes are harmful. Harmful to yourself and or harmful to others. And it’s because of not wanting to give harm, and instead wanting to give happiness and peace, benefit to yourself and others that you regret having done these. Also have a sense of impermanence, not thinking that you are permanently like this and cannot change, but understanding that these are things which you sometimes do, attitudes you sometimes have, but not always. And you do have other ways of behaving and other attitudes that are positive.
So you’re not permanently bad and there’s no reason to feel guilty or stuck in the past identifying with your mistakes of the past. And then the second power is the power of reliance. So here, you can bring to mind a holy being or higher power that you have trust in someone who is endowed with unconditional love, compassion, wisdom and all other positive qualities Towards whom you are able to feel, trust, respect, confidence. So, this might be the Buddha. The Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha, the Three Jewels of Refuge.
If you’re a Christian, this could be God or Jesus. If you’re a follower of another religion, then you may have other figures that you have this sense of trust and confidence in. Bring them to mind. And if you are unable to think of any such figures or beings, you could bring to mind the principles you yourself believe in and try to live your life in accordance with, but which you sometimes fall down from, go astray from. So bring those to mind.
And then in relation to these figures that you have respect in or the principles that you wish to follow, Acknowledge the mistakes that you made. Be honest, be open, be sincere. Acknowledge that you did wrong. And ask for help and guidance to be able to change yourself, to get yourself back on track, back into the way you want to be, the life you want to follow. And be able to avoid making such mistakes again in the future.
So, renew your commitment to or your wish to follow this particular spiritual path. Then, with regard to unskillful or harmful or dishonest actions that you did to others, other people or other beings, See if you can generate the sense of love where you wish them to be happy, and compassion where you wish them to not suffer. And the sense of wanting to behave towards others with love and compassion, not harming them and instead helping them as much as possible. If you find that difficult to do, you might find it helpful to just contemplate that basically you’re not very different. They are just like you and that they want happiness.
And they don’t want to suffer. They want to be treated with kindness and not with anger and violence and harmfulness. So contemplate that and see if you can respect others’ wish to be happy and to not suffer. And see if you can generate the wish to live your life in such a way that you help others and do not harm them. The third power is the power of remedy.
This involves doing something positive, constructive, beneficial to counteract the negative energy we created from our mistakes or harmful actions. So, there are various things you could do here. You could do some prayer, some meditation on love or compassion. You could read some spiritual text that helps you be in touch with more positive spiritual thoughts and attitudes. You could also do something more practical, like doing service work, volunteer work or making a donation that will bring benefit to others.
You can also go back to the people you’ve harmed and make amends, ask for forgiveness, apologize, try to make up for the harm that you gave them. But normally, within Tibetan Buddhism, at this point, you would do some practice in relation to an enlightened being. A figure that represents perfect wisdom and compassion and love. All the qualities of the Buddhas, the enlightened beings. So, let’s just try a practice like that now.
You can visualize the Buddha, or you can visualize some other figure that you have faith and devotion to, or you can visualize just some object, some symbol of perfection and purity and all positive qualities like love and compassion. For example, you might visualize a sphere of light like the sun, very bright and radiant, sending out beams of light. You can visualise this figure or image either in the space in front of you or above your head, whichever you’re more comfortable with. Try to really feel the presence. Feel that you are in the presence of a being or an object that emanates all these positive qualities.
Perfect love, compassion, wisdom, courage, and the altruistic intention to benefit you and all other beings, and help you reach enlightenment as well. So see if you can really feel you’re in that presence. Now, let’s recite a mantra. This is probably the most well known mantra of Tibetan Buddhism, the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum which is associated with compassion. Avalokiteśvara, the Buddha of Compassion.
Reciting this mantra helps us to purify our minds of negative thoughts and emotions, and to generate more positive thoughts and emotions such as compassion and love. So, you can recite this together with me out loud a few times and then silently to ourselves. And while reciting it, imagine light, pure radiant white light pouring down from this being or object that you have visualized and filling you completely, going right inside of you and filling your whole body, whole mind, and completely purifying, freeing you from all negative actions, negative karma, negative attitudes, delusions and so forth. So all negativity in your body and mind are completely purified. Om Mani Padme Hum.
Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. So really feel purified. Feel that all the negative energy from your past negative actions, thoughts and attitudes has been totally purified. Feel completely clean and clear, like crystal. Then the last, the fourth power, is the power of resolve.
So this involves making a resolution as to what you plan to do in the future with regard to your past mistakes, wrong actions. If you can make the resolution that you will never do certain actions again, and feel confident that you will be able to keep such a resolution, then you can make that promise. You can say, I will never do that particular action again. But with actions that you most probably will do again, you can’t completely stop at this point. You can resolve to not do them for a short period of time, even five minutes, even one hour.
Or you can make the promise that you will really do your best. You will really try not to do those actions again. Or at least decrease doing them, and ultimately at some point be able to stop them completely. Really try to be sincere from your heart, and make a promise as to giving up or at least cutting down on the negative actions that you did in the past. And also, with regard to emotional states of mind, emotional habits such as anger, impatience, selfishness, greed, pride and so forth.
You can make the resolution that you will really try your best to change these, to work on decreasing these and increasing the positive aspects of the mind that are opposite to these, that are the counterparts to these. Feel confident that you do have the ability to change, but at the same time don’t be unrealistic. Don’t think that, Oh, I’m never going to be this way again. Understand that it does take time to change. You can change, but it will take time.
So, be patient with yourself. Accept that it will take time to change. And finally, conclude this meditation and this session by dedicating the positive energy created by listening to and doing meditation on these points. Whatever positive energy we’ve created, may it bring benefit to others as well as ourselves, to as many people and beings as possible. May it help us be free of our unhappiness, our problems, and the mental attitudes in our mind that bring about our problems.
May it decrease our suffering and the causes of suffering, enable us to be free from these, and may it increase our happiness and peace and the causes of those the positive states of mind, such as love and compassion. And ultimately, may it bring us to enlightenment. May it enable us to attain enlightenment, the fulfilment of our highest potential, as quickly as possible.