Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 40.7-minute commentary on The Wheel of Sharp Weapons, Ven. Sangye Khadro explores why ordinary practitioners are diverted by worldly pleasures: their baseline happiness is too low. She introduces the teaching through a striking metaphor—bodhisattvas are like peacocks who safely digest poisonous plants (worldly desires) and grow more radiant, whereas ordinary beings are like crows damaged by the same poison but blind to the danger. The key is bodhicitta: the commitment to benefit all sentient beings generates inner joy that protects bodhisattvas from contamination. She draws unexpected parallels to Jungian psychology on integrating repressed energies, shows how this Sūtra teaching echoes Tantric transformation, and illustrates realized happiness through figures like Lama Yeshe. For practitioners with some Buddhist training.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 The wheel of sharp weapons.mp3
UUID: 1b655b85-947c-4f52-b196-476688757f71
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons 42 – 154 (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Date: 1999 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.7 minutes
Words: ~3,571
Time in doing some sort of pleasant meaning meaningless activity to, get diverted from our Dharma practice by any nice thing that comes along. It seems like the reason, the psychological reason behind all of these kinds of distractions and diversions is because in our present state our general everyday consciousness is not always very happy. Our general level of happiness isn’t very high. We find it very easy. We seem to vary from being moderately contented being perhaps, I mean as human beings, the range of ordinary human beings seem to range from being reasonably contented to being perhaps a bit depressed or having a bit of a tendency to be unhappy and this is pretty normal.
You don’t find many people who go around being positively happy on an average, on an overall average although of course we are all positively happy for part of the time. But we are always looking for things to make us happier. We don’t feel that we have an overall happy state of mind and this is just normal. Is not exceptional. People who are exceptionally unhappy are people who perhaps have psychosis or neuroses or whatever who have psychological problems what we would recognize in modern western terminology as having psychological problems such as deep depression but just talking about ordinary people we’re still always looking for more happiness and because these circumstances that we encounter give us a bit of a bit of relief from our perhaps slightly despondent or slightly unhappy state of mind, we feel that we need to be constantly distracting ourselves or keeping busy to divert ourselves from unhappiness and to help ourselves to feel happy.
This is just the state of an undeveloped being because as we develop more and more we develop more happiness within us and Bodhisattvas have real joy within their minds all the time and of course there are many levels of Bodhisattva and these different levels of Bodhisattvas experience different degrees of joy but Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey in his commentary spoke about even the new Bodhisattva experiencing initial level happiness. So even the new bodhisattva is experiencing a much greater level of happiness than what we will be experiencing and in particular they feel this happiness in undertaking sufferings because the nature of bodhicitta of wanting to work and bring about the welfare of sentient beings and do what is necessary in order to do that as they are to bring that about. That by its very nature brings with it the thought that by enduring these sufferings they’re actually doing this for the sake of others and that brings joy in their mind. You might perhaps compare it a mother who is able to endure some sort of hardship for the welfare of her beloved children. This is an example that’s often used.
The love of the mother for the child is a kind of a weak example of the love that bodhisattvas have for all sentient beings. And so we know that a mother, a normal mother, would gladly undertake all sorts of hardships for the sake of their children and they wouldn’t really see it as being a hardship and even more so with the Bodhisattvas they find real joy in these situations. So in this way they’re not only different to us, but they’re different to the Śrāvaka and Pratyekabuddha practitioners who are also referred to as being among the crows. So you know what the Shravakas and Pratyekabuddha are? To put it in simpler terms, anyway practitioners on the Hīnayāna path, they they can be divided into two major categories.
Do do you want to does anybody remember what the hearers are? Oh, Śrāvaka. Sorry. Mhmm. That’s right.
Mhmm. If you remember the Pratyekabuddha? Mhmm. Yes. Yes.
But it can be used that way. The Śrāvaka Yana and or the Śrāvaka vehicle and the Pratyekabuddha Yana or vehicle. Yes, so Hīnayāna can be divided into two vehicles but it’s a very technical distinction and it’s not that important to really understand it but it often gets referred to. So it’s just that there are two there’s these two kinds of practitioners the the ones that you hear about most of the hearers the ones who followed Buddha or his lineage and the Pratyekabuddha are those who apparently heard teachings from some Buddha in past lives but don’t receive teachings in the lifetime in which they attain their realization and they just go off and meditate in a solitary place and basically find their own path as as Buddha himself did. But rather than achieving full Buddhahood because they don’t have bodhicitta, they just attain liberation individual liberation.
So these great practitioners of the Śrāvaka and Pratyekabuddha path, the ones who have entered the first path onwards. The first path is entered for the Hīnayāna practitioners when they achieve renunciation, renunciation of saṃsāra and from that point on anyway we can consider them as being great practitioners and they avoid worldly things like poison. They recognize these things as poison and for them it is poison because they don’t have the bodhicitta which gives the bodhisattva the strength to be among these without being harmed by them. So these Shravakas and Pratyekabuddha are not tempted by worldly things, they are not interested in worldly things, they only want to attain liberation and so they avoid any possibility of distraction by seeking a situation where they won’t be encountering the objects as little as possible they’ll be encountering objects of desire and aversion and where these deluded mental states and particularly desire and attachment won’t be stimulated. And so they go off and meditate in these solitary places.
Where as worldly beings are also like crows, they’re also damaged by the poison but they don’t recognize the danger so they’re not like these Śrāvaka and Pratyekabuddha practitioners, they’re not like these great practitioners of the Hīnayāna path who recognize the danger and avoid it but instead of that they constantly fall into the danger all the time and being hurt by it and we tend to be like that so we’re not Bodhisattvas yet. So we need to be careful. But also we are training ourselves to become Bodhisattvas so we want to become able gradually to practice this way. And we should also remember that compared to us these practitioners on the five Hīnayāna paths are great hearers. It’s only compared to Bodhisattvas that they’re like crows.
So if you compare them to us, they’re absolutely wonderful. Not talking of course talking about myself, talking about everybody else because as I said before, you’re probably all bodhisattvas or enlightened beings just sharing the aspect of being Buddha House students. Yes. Just let me feel good and make me feel that somebody’s coming along to the to the first day night teachings. Otherwise, I’d feel really disappointed and down and miserable and depressed.
And then I’d have to go away and hide in a cave. So does anybody have any questions? Oh, you know, of course, I want the pros to advance and become peacocks too. Yes. But yes.
In Queensland, we used to get come on the broncos. Yes. We fortunately, we’re wearing the same colors as the the company. And around about especially around the grand final season, we’d always get a few cheers. I used to think it must be terrible for the monks and nuns in Sydney.
Okay. So anyway, it also struck me that there’s an interesting parallel here with Jungian psychology. You know, I’m always bringing up Jungian psychology. And basically this is because we according to Jung Carl Jung we have all these neuroses and psychological problems which arise because various factors during our growing up of course is to reject parts of our basic makeup that we perceive as being bad. For instance when you might see one example could be when you put on a display of being angry we learn that that’s bad and so we learn not to put on that display of anger and so we for instance we might repress our anger.
This is the it can be different things that get repressed. We repress a lot of different things different people repress different facets of their psychology but generally can say that we all have some repressions and if we have too many of them then it gives us psychological problems. And so we reject the aspect of ourselves which we perceive as bad and in fact these various aspects of our psyche do manifest in very negative ways sometimes but what we do when we repress them is that we make the mistake of confusing the underlying energy or drive with with its negative manifestation and we try to repress that basic underlying energy which is just energy and this is what we also learn in Tantra really it’s expressed in different terms but what we learn is that we have this raw energy which we are present expressing in forms of deluded energy in which we have to harness on the path to enlightenment which is or in other words transform. So what happens when we repress this energy, reject it and repress it, we actually refuse to acknowledge a part of ourselves and we put a lot more energy into holding it down which is what repression means, it just means pressing it down.
So we’re putting all this energy all the time into these repressions until we feel exhausted and miserable and we feel that something’s missing in our lives, feel that some part of our being is missing, something that should bring us joy in life isn’t functioning and not only that but it doesn’t really work anyway because once in a while this repressed energy will break out and because it breaks out in an uncontrolled way because we’ve rejected it and we haven’t got it under control of what Jung would have referred to as the ego or the self then we have it taking over and making us behave in uncontrolled or in negative ways that we don’t like to accept as being our own self anyway. We have all these sayings. We say oh yeah, I wasn’t myself when I did that or not really like that that wasn’t really me I don’t know what came over me it’s because where we have a feeling that it wasn’t ourselves but something else but in actual fact this energy really is a part of ourselves but we haven’t accepted it as part of our persona, our sense of personal identity, psyche or self and we haven’t accepted it and so we have these problems arising because of that situation and Jung showed or explained that it’s necessary to to go through a process of integrating these energies and in the process of integrating, we’re often very afraid of these energies because of negative manifestation we don’t like to even make a step towards integrating them because we feel that that means that we will become an angry person, a violent person or a sexually uncontrolled person or whatever form our repressions might have taken, but in actual fact we find as we do integrate these energies that we are able to use them appropriately, that they don’t take control of us in the way that they used to, that they don’t manifest in that negative way, that we instead of that have access to them when it’s appropriate, that we’re able to express these energies when it’s appropriate and that they don’t trouble us at inappropriate times because they’ve been harnessed into the integrated psyche.
And Jung also saw the effectiveness in this process of working with symbolism. Symbolism seems to get to the root of our psyche in a way that intellectual understanding doesn’t. But also of course Jung also saw the need need of working with the intellect. Saw that we need to integrate the conscious self with the psyche. In other words, we need we have all these things happening in the subconscious.
What in Western psychological terms would be called subconscious and if we’re to integrate them, we have to bring them into consciousness and understand them and symbolism is the language through which the contents of the subconscious can be explained to the conscious. So we also find that in tantra, we work with symbols, with symbolism, and in this text, the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, we’re not using a lot of symbolism. It’s pretty straightforward, but there is this symbol that’s going through the whole thought training, in Yamāntaka, of Yamāntaka with the the wheel of weapons of good actions and hurling it at the real enemy which is self-cherishing. And so there’s a connection in this teaching with Tantra. Although it’s not a Tantric teaching, it has this aspect of showing a way of transforming delusions on the path.
So in the Sūtra teachings you can’t say, you can’t say in Sūtra teachings that you can transform delusions on the path. This is a tantric teaching and in Sūtra the most you can say is that you can take the delusions as helpers. In tantric teachings, you could actually say that you transform them in the path. And so the tantric teaching on transformation is very profound and it’s easily misunderstood and it’s easily it easily leads to misuse because people can take this meaning that they can do anything they like and that they can follow desire and attachment as much as they like and so on. In actual fact, to follow the Tantric teachings requires much greater self discipline than the Sūtra path.
And Sūtra path teaches avoiding the objects of delusion like the the crows. So only bodhisattvas have this strength. So this is basically a sūtra teaching, but it does have some connection with tantra and it illustrates that connection with Tantra by bringing in the the figure of Yamāntaka. So bodhisattvas have this strength because of their bodhicitta to to be among these and this is actually a Sūtra teaching. The Mahāyāna teachings although they the Mahāyāna Sūtra teachings although they don’t teach transformation of delusions on the path.
They do teach that the Bodhisattva can go out among the world, can engage in worldly activities among ordinary beings for the sake of of others. The bodhicitta protects them and also they’re in a joy, the happiness they have at working for others and undergoing these difficulties because of the work they’re doing for the sake of others also keeps them safe from falling into the dangers that are presented by these external circumstances. Whereas if we don’t have that because to the Bodhisattva, they don’t need to go around looking for happiness. They don’t need to go around looking for enjoyment.
They’re happy, their minds are full of enjoyment without having to look for external circumstances for this. And they can enjoy these things safely. They can go enjoy, you know, food and pleasures and music and beautiful things. All of these things it’s not going to distract them because although they can enjoy these things they don’t feel they need to enjoy these things for happiness. They know that the real enjoyment, the real happiness is within themselves.
If you ever met Lama Yeshe, you would have seen you would have said that you’ve never met anybody who seemed to enjoy life the way Lama Yeshe did or Khensur Rinpoche, you know, you’ve probably all met Khensur Rinpoche. You can see how he enjoys himself when he laughs. You just know that that laughs really coming from a real state of happiness within and it just carries that infectious quality to other people because he has that inner happiness. So that’s about it for tonight. Well, of course, I have to say to him well, but you don’t wanna hear them.
The end of that oh. The end of that story, I might as well tell you it’s a good one. When we got on the they’re probably more in it too. You can help me to sort it out. When we finally got to the Pathankot station, if you’ve ever traveled in India, know that you often get to stations where there’s crowds of people trying to push onto the train and they try to get in through the doors and the windows and everything and they’re all carrying these enormous trunks and bedrolls and things.
Apparently, don’t do that as much now anymore but they this was about fifteen years ago they used to. Pathankot station was crowded with all these Indians. And when I looked there, I I said to Celia, the other nun, I said, oh, it’s going to be really difficult to push out through this crush. We’re all trying to push in at the same time. They don’t wait for you to get out because he’ll start pushing in right away so everybody’s trying to push out against the crowd.
And so that yeah. Because they’re just desperate to get a seat or just get a place on the train. And so I said the easiest way would be for you to go out first, and I’ll pass our stuff out through the window to you and then I’ll slip out. And so we did that and then when I tried to get out, it was absolutely impossible. You couldn’t get through the door, totally impossible.
So I said, well, there’s nothing for it, but I’ll have to jump out through the window. But all these people were passing all these enormous trunks and bedrolls and huge things in through the window and all trying to push into the window. So I said there’s no way I can get my feet out. I said the only way I can get through is to dive out head first, so you’ll have to catch me. So fortunately she was a big strong girl, She was a physiotherapist.
So we did that. So of course, I took a dive and the moment I took the dive, somebody flung a huge enormous metal tin trunk down on my foot and pinned me to the window. And so I had all these people on the outside pushing in and all the soldiers and so on. And Celia was pulling me and all the soldiers from inside were trying to push me out. And I thought I thought I was going to lose a leg.
And I was afraid that the train would start off, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. He was serious sort of holding holding me in your death and pulling. And finally, my shoe came off, and then my foot popped out, and they they told you, sir, the shoe onto the platform, and we got away. Yes. I we’ve made a good photograph.
Yes. Well, it might have been just a case of you gotta do what you gotta do. Something. Say something. I’m really desperate to try anything.
So would you like to do a meditation? So we just think of our motivation that we’re engaging in this practice to cultivate the thought of the bodhicitta. So we can understand that this world is like a jungle full of poisonous plants. While we’re in cyclic existence, we mistake these poisonous plants for being nourishing. But in actual fact, they’re dangerous and always leading us into stronger and stronger delusions.
Stronger and stronger delusions and the creation of negative karma which create the cause of suffering for us in the future and which lead us to cycle birth after birth in saṃsāra. So the example of the Bodhisattva is like the peacocks who can digest these poisonous plants and whose beauty is enhanced by these plants. So they don’t need to go seeking other plants that are safer to eat. In fact, they can benefit from eating these plants which are poisonous to the to the beings who are like crows like us. And the reason they’re able to engage in these these activities in worldly situations without being contaminated by worldly mental states is because of their having cultivated and generated in the mind streams the attitude of bodhicitta Only wanting to bring about the welfare of all sentient beings and having great joy and happiness in working for that purpose.
And so we need to recognize our limitations and avoid the dangers of these situations that stimulate our worldly attitudes of desire and hatred which would distract us from our Dharma practice. But we should also aspire to become like these great bodhisattvas. We should cultivate admiration for their great qualities and train ourselves to be able to practice as they do and particularly train ourselves in love and compassion And in the thought training practices of converting difficult circumstances into circumstances helping us on the path. So then we we can dedicate our merits. Does anybody have any questions that you want to ask first?
Dedication says on page five. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient beings to enlightened realms with these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more.