Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute talk, Ven Sangye Khadro explores verses 42–154 of the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, an ancient thought-training text by the Indian yogi Dharmarakshita. Using the vivid analogy of peacocks and crows, she explains how bodhisattvas engage with situations that would harm ordinary practitioners—peacocks thrive on plants that poison crows. The key distinction rests on self-cherishing: bodhisattvas have overcome it and cannot be damaged by desire objects, while those caught in self-concern must protect themselves through restraint and careful circumstance. She examines what attachment truly means, exaggerating an object’s good qualities; why it harms us; and how to enjoy pleasant conditions without grasping. Stories of Milarepa and Thai forest yogis illustrate these principles. For sincere practitioners learning to understand their own capacity.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 The wheel of sharp weapons.mp3
UUID: 03679360-4fc0-47c8-a1fc-8d5e3c8431f2
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: 46.5 minutes
Words: ~5,739
And so we’re going now through this text, The Wheel of Sharp Weapons, which was composed originally by the Indian Yogi named Dharmarakshita who was one of Atisha’s Gurus. So those of you who’ve been coming for a while will know who Atisha is. Atisha was the great Indian pundit and yogi who brought the teachings to Tibet. He was not the original teacher of Dharma in Tibet but he was the one who was most influential establishing the teachings there firmly without confusion on his own basis showing how the practice of Sūtra and Tantra could be taught as a combined path and Atisha had very high regard for this text which belongs to the category of thought training or in Tibetan Lojong and so he had a great regard for this text because it was so effective and he taught it to the Tibetans and so if it could be transferred from India to the very different culture of Tibet and be effective for the Tibetans then there’s no reason why it can’t also be effective for us in our culture which is also very different from both of those. So it’s dealing with the universal situation, universal problems and the universal fundamental nature of our minds.
So we’re going to be able to benefit much from this teaching. And the purpose of studying this teaching is to be able to put the methods that it teaches into practice for subduing the negative mind. So it gives us some very helpful techniques, some very powerful techniques and we need these because the negative mind is not easy to subdue. It’s something that’s very strong with us. This is not something to feel bad about it’s just part of our present situation.
It’s the situation of all samsaric beings except perhaps some of those who are well on the way to not being samsaric beings anymore but the good news of the Dharma is that these negativities are not part of our minds ultimate nature. We do have this potential for totally clearing away the negativities and totally realizing the ultimate nature of the mind which is clear and free from being one with these deluded mental states and when we’re able to realize that then we’re going to attain a state of great clarity, great wisdom, bliss and serenity and peace and which will be a state of mind which we can use very effectively for whatever we want to do and what we want to do in the Mahāyāna teachings particularly is to benefit others And also when we benefit others, if we are at present more concerned with our own happiness this is just natural too as samsaric beings and we can overcome this and one thought that helps us to overcome it is the thought that the real way to find happiness for ourselves is to drop our self-cherishing and think about others. It’s one of these funny psychological facts that the more we follow self-cherishing the more unhappy we’ll be and the more we abandon self-cherishing and cherish others the more we also bring about our own happiness.
So it’s in actual fact something that we can’t get away from that we have practice this giving up of self-cherishing. So last week we got up to the verse about the peacock. So we finished at stanza three last week, I think, or we went a little bit further on than that actually. Stanza five or six. So anyway, we can start at we might have only read through some of those we didn’t really get to explain them.
So we can start with stanza four. So following the text here we already looked at the analogy that bodhisattvas are like a peacock. Does anybody remember without looking at your notes why bodhisattvas are like peacocks? Literally. Yes.
Okay. So that’s the analogy. So that’s why peacocks that’s what peacocks do. That’s That’s the quality of peacocks that makes dharma actually to compare them to bodhisattvas or compare bodhisattvas to them. So what is it that bodhisattvas do?
Mhmm. Mhmm. So can you narrow it down to what actually is the poison? It doesn’t specifically say self-cherishing but the delusions in general. In fact the Bodhisattva is supposed to have largely got rid of self-cherishing at this stage but they are still perhaps subject to certain desires and attachments and aversions which could be a problem for them.
But they know how to deal with that. They are able to deal with that so that’s why they’re compared to being like a peacock because the peacocks actually prefer the poisonous plants because they make the feathers more beautiful and in the same way the bodhisattvas actually prefer to go out there into a worldly situation and to be as David said engage with people even though this puts them into situations where they’re going to encounter objects which could stimulate delusion but they have this capacity to be able to confront these situations and to actually enhance their practice by them. That’s the really important point that they not only can not be harmed by these delusions, by these situations which can be the condition for delusions. Of course the delusions are within us but there are certain external conditions which can be the cause for these delusions manifesting and the Bodhisattva is not only harmed by these but actually is able to transform them in the path and because they’ve overcome self-cherishing they have that capacity so that’s why they’re compared to the peacock while the Hīnayāna practitioner, no matter how great, doesn’t have that capacity so the Hīnayāna practitioner always has to be very very careful to protect themselves, to protect their practice to avoid circumstances where these delusions could be arising.
And so they’re advised to go away to secrete themselves in a monastery or go off to a cave and stay solitary where they won’t be meeting various different circumstances that could cause them to have problems with the arising of emotional states that would be a distraction to their practice. So any questions about that? Does anybody think that sounds awful? Yes. Well, it does sound a bit that way too.
But then on the other hand if you read some of the biographies of the great Hīnayāna masters that is exactly how they think. And I found it very informative to read some of these biographies of the great say the forest yogis and so on from Thailand and to see exactly how they are exactly following these teachings. These are all teachings of Buddha. These teachings to go away and in meditation in seclusion to protect yourself from the power of these disturbing circumstances are exactly what Buddha taught and these practitioners are doing exactly that and through doing that they achieve their goal. They have very high respect for these teachings, they follow them very meticulously and to be a bodhisattva is a very very special teaching and we should think as beginning practitioners that we don’t even have the qualities of these great Hīnayāna practitioners let alone the qualities of a Bodhisattva and we should have great respect and great regard for those Hīnayāna practitioners and when it comes to our actual everyday practice to our capacity we probably should take more example from them than from the Bodhisattvas except in the sense that we’re trying to cultivate the capacity to be able to practice like that in the long run.
Actually an example went off to practice in a cave and people said to him why do you do that when your Guru Marpa was a married man? He had several wives and a lot of children and was quite well-to-do and lived in a family situation and ran a sort of supervised the running of the calm and so on. Was a very great scholar, a very great yogi, had great realizations tremendously great realizations. Of course he didn’t get them easily. He went through tremendous trials and had to travel to India and undergo all sorts of hardships and then as if that wasn’t enough, his guru Tilopa put him through more hardships.
Was it Tilopa? No, Naropa. Tilopa who taught Naropa. Sorry, I’m getting confused. So Milarepa said he quoted some sort of Tibetan proverb which was something like the hare shouldn’t try to imitate the leap of the lion. So basically you have to look at your own capacity and basically he was saying that the great beings like Marpa have the capacity to do this, but he, Milarepa, didn’t feel that he himself had that capacity even though he was able to attain enlightenment in that lifetime he had some obstacles which meant that he had to meditate in solitude and in actual fact before if you know Milarepa’s story before he went off before he received the teachings from Marpa and went off to meditate he had many wrongdoings and killed a lot of people through black magic and so on so obviously for him being in contact with the circumstances for delusion caused him to give rise to a lot of deluded activities and then Marpa put him through a lot of trials to purify those negativities and then sent him off to meditate in the very remote areas.
The interesting story about Milarepa’s life is that when he gained his realizations even though he always remained in these very remote places in accordance with Marpa’s instructions, he was still tremendously influential because people who were really looking for an enlightened Guru would go to whatever lengths were necessary to seek one out. And so in a sense this has always been the case that enlightened energy somehow finds a way to manifest. But I’m getting off the topic here a bit. But at any rate, yes, so these bodhisattva qualities are very special and we have to do a lot of training in order to be able to actually engage in them ourselves. Of course that’s not to say that we should all go off and live in caves because that advice also isn’t for everybody.
Some of us are still could say so stuck in worldly existence that we need the worldly comforts and so on. And also in this day and age it’s really not so easy to go off and meditate in a cave just doesn’t really seem to be a feasible proposition for many people anymore although there are certainly some who are still doing it and as some of you probably know there’s just been a book published recently which is very fascinating about how somebody how a woman went off to meditate in a cave. But she did make the point that it’s very hard nowadays to find suitable caves and even when she did find a cave it was wet whereas the Tibetans told her that in Tibet the caves are dry and everything is much more suitable for the purpose of meditation. Also the people were very supportive. It’s becoming really impossible to find an isolated place now.
Even if you were to go off and find an isolated place in the forest here in Australia you’d soon have people riding around on trail bikes. Yes. Oh, better stop breathing. Not so hard anyway. I don’t know what’s wrong.
Is is the volume up too hard? Don’t think there’s any sound coming out of it now. That might be a bit better. That’s yeah. I think that’s better.
So you can all hear me alright, can you? Mhmm. These bodhisattvas are able to engage in these kinds of practices and handle these problems because they have such strong love and compassion and because they have given up self-cherishing whereas even these great beings on the Hīnayāna path have to avoid situations. So then to go on to verse four. So we’re going on with more explanation of this analogy.
Refers to the bodhisattvas as the brave ones and we went through this a bit last week about how brave ones is a translation of the Tibetan term for Bodhisattva or part of it. They’re called brave ones because they have this ability to go out there. It’s like a battlefield and the bodhisattvas have the ability to go out there and engage in direct combat where as the crows need to avoid the dangers. In this case it explains that the danger symbolized by the poisonous plants is objects of desire. So the analogy with crows is that they can’t eat these poisonous plants or they would probably die.
Unlike the peacocks they don’t have that ability to digest them and use them to make themselves more beautiful but they have to put up with remaining black and avoid these dangerous situations. The bodhisattvas have a great strength of mind and they are able to accept suffering gladly. They have this capacity in actual fact to say they accept suffering gladly in a sense they’re happy to accept suffering so in a way they don’t feel so unhappy so it’s not such a suffering for them because of their great love for others. Their minds won’t be disturbed. They won’t be agitated and made mentally unhappy by whatever occurs and so they have this capacity to take on suffering situations for the welfare of others because of their great compassion.
So this gives them this courage, this capacity to go out there and be the brave ones. Jesus is certainly an example of how a bodhisattva might be acting. Well, they have to come and get teachings on the Wheel of Sharp Weapons. Yes. So we’re really lucky to have these teachings.
We’re especially fortunate. Well, it doesn’t particularly say at which point it mainly seems to refer to the crows as the Hīnayāna practitioners but also it refers to anybody who doesn’t have this love and compassion, this great love and compassion. I think we can regard ourselves as being temporary crows with the capacity to become peacocks because we’ve encountered the Mahāyāna teachings. So we have this capacity to develop that to work on love and compassion, but we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that because we’ve had a few Mahāyāna teachings and done a little bit of meditation on love and compassion that we have the capacity to go out there and run into all sorts of dangers and temptations and so on. We need to protect ourselves.
We need to be careful, but we can train ourselves. So this practice is really this teaching is really a beginning teaching on how to start to train ourselves in this kind of practice at a level that we can engage in at our present development. So we have to learn how to handle these things. The bodhisattvas can handle desire but because we have greed it refers to the crows being greedy because they’re greedy they can’t handle these poisons whereas the bodhisattvas are not attached, they’re not greedy and so they are able to make use of these situations in a way that actually has a positive outcome for themselves. So when we encounter objects of attachment we have greed and attachment arising.
We want more. We have greed, we have craving, we have a wish to be more and more with that thing whatever it is. We all have a whole range of different things that arouse desire in us to some degree or other. Some things arouse very strong desire in us and these things we find very hard to work with because the greed becomes so strong because of our habitual conditioning for pleasure. We have this need for pleasure for the happiness of worldly things for the kind of worldly happiness that comes from encountering these worldly desire objects.
We desire something and then when we get it we feel good it makes us feel good. Generally it seems that ordinary beings aren’t really feeling all that good a lot of the time. So it depends on the degree to which we have this sort of problem. For instance some people are just so unhappy that they’ll turn to really gross forms of attachment like drugs that really anybody can see are not going to help but just because they at least feel want to achieve that short term pleasure that comes from taking the drugs. Don’t have the strength of mind to resist that whereas somebody whose life is on a fairly even keel isn’t going to fall for some sort of gross or extremely dangerous desire object such as drugs, but we can still fall into more subtle attachments and we do all the time.
In fact, we might accept that for the present we’ll allow ourselves some of the subtle ones because they’re not doing us so much harm while we work on some of the grosser ones. It can be quite skillful to just work on the worst delusions. You can’t work on them all wholesale at the same time, that’s perhaps a bit too much. We have to try to identify the ones that are doing us the most harm and to try to throw those out the window. So it’s liable to cause greed.
So it’s not the pleasure and the enjoyment that we get from these things that’s the problem. Bodhisattvas have great enjoyment. They can enjoy all these pleasure objects and they’re not going to be hurt by it. They’re not going to be harmed by it. So whereas we are going to feel attachment to that object because the bodhisattvas understand where the happiness really comes from.
They understand that it comes from their karma and not really from the object itself and that the object is just the condition and they’ll just accept these pleasures as they come, they’ll enjoy them and then they just let them go and then if some sort of suffering situation comes along then the Bodhisattva will also accept that suffering situation as being a result of their karma, his or her karma and they’ll accept that suffering situation. They won’t get upset, they won’t be agitated by it and they’ll just experience it and let it go and so they’ll be happy in their minds. Negative coming, yes. So of course the circumstances, the desire objects and the objects of our aversion do have a connection with the way we feel. We know that.
They have a conditional relationship. We encounter these situations. They act as object on which we project our attachment and aversion and they stimulate that. So there’s this connection between the object and the latency in our mind and then when that latency of karma is ready to ripen it immediately pops up as soon as it encounters a suitable object and we tend to encounter all sorts of objects during our daily life from day to day and week to week so all kinds of different experiences can ripen for us but then we make the mistake of thinking that these objects themselves are the cause and we have attachment so it might be a good idea to talk about what attachment really means. And what yes?
No. No. That’s not to say that there aren’t some objects that we can have an attraction towards or that we can be drawn towards but we don’t call that attachment if it’s a positive object. So that’s what I’m just about to talk about. Anyway, the definition of attachment is exaggerating the good qualities of the object.
The state of mind that exaggerates the good qualities of the object and the definition of aversion is the state of mind that exaggerates the bad qualities of the object. Basically we come across something that has some good qualities of its own. For instance the roses, know generally it’s accepted, it’s generally agreed on by human beings that roses are an attractive object. We can feel attracted towards them. They have good qualities of beauty, visual and olfactory attractiveness.
So that’s fine, know, so we can enjoy roses. Generally, gather this being an object of enjoyment. Of course, some people might you might come across the odd person who says, I hate roses for one reason or other. They don’t like the smell or but that’s pretty unusual. The general human experience is that roses are attractive and pleasurable and we can enjoy seeing them and smelling them and that’s alright.
There’s nothing harmful in that but then we get stuck on them and we think oh life is no good unless I can have roses around me and we go to all sorts of lengths to have roses and we really feel miserable unless we have a garden full of roses outside our house. That’s fine if we can manage to have a house with a rose garden but sometimes life just doesn’t work that way and we might be made miserable by having to do without roses. This is just an example you can put your own example chocolate or whatever you know alcohol or partners or friends or whatever. People because it is impossible to exaggerate the good qualities of the Dharma because Dharma’s good qualities are infinite. Yes.
That that is the real Dharma, but the external Dharma is what help us to find the internal the path within us. Doctor. That’s a subtle topic but there is the conventional reality. Generally when we talk about projections we’re talking about false projections. If you’re talking about all it depends on which level you’re using projection.
Projection is a word we use that comes from the Western psychology. Basically, think David is talking about projection in the sense of all conventional phenomena being projections and there is an ultimate reality which is non conceptual. In that sense you could talk about this as being a positive projection but I’m talking about projection in the sense of projecting falsely. We project emotional attitudes. There is a conventional reality of the environment, the people and so on but onto that we project all sorts of emotional attitudes which are distorted and deluding deluded.
So it is good to have a pleasant environment. It’s a result of our karma. But for instance, sometimes you have a choice. Sometimes you don’t have to stay in a bad environment sometimes if you feel that a particular environment is not good for your Dharma practice you can take steps you don’t always have to say oh that’s my karma I have to stay here and put up with it. It could well be that if you check the situation that you can take steps to go somewhere else where it’s more conducive.
So we have quite a lot of particularly in the human realm and this is one of the reasons why the human realm is so beneficial for our Dharma practice. In general we have certain choices. The degree of choice that each one of us has is different and also it varies in our own life from one period to another but still quite often we have choices and we don’t always have to feel that we’re stuck in a given situation. From that point of view we don’t have to feel that because things are pleasurable that they’re bad. In fact natural surroundings peaceful attractive surroundings are conducive for our Dharma practice unless we’re very advanced then we can use unpleasant surroundings such as for instance working in the slums to help know something like that.
Everybody who has that sort of situation knows themselves if that’s what they’re meant to do. Otherwise it can be better for us to get away into peaceful situation where we have more chance of observing our mind without being so bombarded with stress that we don’t have much chance to work with our minds. So it’s good to find a peaceful situation if that’s in our possibility in our present circumstances. Some people find that their work situation is so stressful that they can’t really get a grip on their lives while they’re in that stressful situation. Now some people might conclude that they just have to hack it for the time being until their karma changes but other people might conclude that they can do something about it like changing.
So you know everybody really has to check their own situation out. We don’t have to say that because we’re taught that everything that comes to us is a result of karma that that means that we’re helpless. Quite often there’s quite a bit that we can do. At least we always have the possibility of using whatever situation we’re in in our Dharma practice but we don’t always have to stay with that situation. There’s a famous verse in the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, Śāntideva says if we have a problem, it goes something like, I forget exactly the words, but if you have a problem and you can solve it then there’s no need to feel unhappy.
There’s nothing you can do about it then there’s no point in feeling unhappy. So we can use that situation to work with. So that’s what training teaches us. It teaches us how to work with our situation, but it doesn’t say that we always have to accept unpleasant situations and only just use them to work with by staying in them. It means that when we come with into situations where we can’t change or can’t see a way of changing them then we at least have this method of working through the thought training and of course very often we do find that we have situations where we have to accept the problem whether it’s sickness or some sort external situation with other people or whatever even the hot weather but there’s always something that we can do with our minds.
First of all we check the external situation. If somebody’s giving us a hard time do we have to stay there and listen to them or can we just walk away? It’s silly to stay there and listen if we can walk away but if we can’t walk away, for instance, if it’s our boss and he’s telling us off and we want to keep that job, we might have to stay there, but we can work with it. We can find ways to transform that situation. Well, it’s just practical.
It’s common sense. If you’re in a bad situation look at it and see if you’re really stuck in it or if there’s something practical you can do. And if there’s something you can do that’s not going to be more effort than it’s worth then you do it. Otherwise, if you decide that for the time being you’ve got to live with this situation, then you apply the thought training. And we don’t have to go looking for situations to apply thought training.
Life will do that for us. Know common sense if you’re sick and you can apply thought training to being sick but if it can be cured by medicine then it makes sense to take the medicine. But if you find that you’re sick and the medicine doesn’t work then you think how wonderful I had this opportunity to engage in the thought training. So we’re up to so that’s stanza four and stanza five explains the reason over the page why the so anyway, the point is that the problem isn’t the pleasure itself, it’s not the object that gives us pleasure. The problem is not with the object.
The objects are just neutral. The problem isn’t with the pleasure itself. Experiencing pleasure is just the result of a previous good karma and it’s fine to experience pleasure but it’s the craving and attachment to this pleasure and projecting it onto the object, seeing the object as being the cause of the pleasure whereas it’s simply just the condition. So we need to understand that pretty thoroughly and that will help us a lot. The reason why our craving attachment is a problem for us is explained in stanza five and that is because of our self-cherishing.
Because while we’re under the control of self-cherishing then we’re easily harmed by these delusions. So we don’t have the armor or the protection or the skillful means to deal with these delusions because we’re still in that phase of being self-cherishing beings of having this weakness in our continuum whereas the bodhisattvas have got rid of that self-cherishing they’ve got this powerful protection which enables them to cope with these delusions, with these circumstances and the delusions which are brought up by them and to take these in the path. We don’t have that so it would harm us, it damage us and so we have to find means to deal with these problems and to deal with self-cherishing which is the thing that’s causing us the harm which is really causing us the harm which is making us vulnerable to the harm which is caused to us by these delusions of ignorance, aversion and attachment. So that’s stanza five So stanza six So Yes, basically the bodhisattva has overcome self-cherishing and can use these delusions actually in his or her practice. So an example of this is that when we talk about the Bodhisattva using delusion in their practice, the Bodhisattva can actually use desire to actually destroy desire.
They actually use their desire to overcome that delusion. An example of this is that for the Hīnayāna practitioner to be receiving a lot of respect and admiration would be a very threatening situation. The Hīnayāna practitioner who begins to develop good qualities and to be respected by others for instance to be regarded as a great teacher would start to see that as a very threatening situation because it would be inclined to cause them to develop pride and they’re more terrified of pride than of tigers and poisonous snakes in the jungle. And so for instance if they live in Thailand then they would go off to live in the jungle because they see the tigers and the poisonous snakes and so on as being something that helps their practice. These frightening experiences that they encounter in the jungle and the difficulties that they have to encounter such as finding it difficult to find food and so on.
They see these things as actually things that can help them because they’re going to help them to avoid such attitudes as attachment and desire and so they prefer to go off to the jungle and this will stimulate practice and cause them to be motivated in their meditation. I read a book about a great Thai yogi and it was quite fascinating. He and his disciples used to meditate in the jungle just sitting on low platforms of bamboo with tigers prowling around and roaring in the darkness around them and they found this was very helpful for their meditation practice because they would get so frightened that the only way they could overcome their fear would be to enter deeply into meditation so that they forgot about their external circumstances and so they would just sit there and would just have to get into that deep meditation otherwise they would just give way to sheer terror. So it was helpful for their practice and that is the so is an incredible kind of practice, you can’t imagine it. Yes, well apparently they didn’t.
And so they survived and they actually achieved great meditational advances. It can be quite surprising actually. Some of these stories they do recognize great practitioners. It’s said that tigers and other animals recognise bodhicitta. Even with these great Thai practitioners, these great Hīnayāna practitioners, they seem to recognise their great qualities sometimes, but certainly his disciples were very afraid of being eaten.
If they cared enough about staying with their teacher and becoming liberated, then they would have to stay there with the Tigers. They had to have a lot of courage. Yes, well you could say that perhaps these great practitioners, advanced practitioners anyway, simply didn’t have the karma to be eaten by tigers, but they didn’t know that themselves and maybe the tigers weren’t interested in him because they didn’t have the karma to be eaten by that particular tiger but the practitioner there trying to concentrate on his meditation would certainly not know what his karma was whether he had some sort of karma from way back to be eaten. So he was just taking his chance and he would basically be thinking that if he was eaten by a tiger then he was doing it in the interest of his Dharma practice and he would certainly be reborn in a good life through taking that risk for his Dharma practice. Yes.
That’s right. Yes. Yes. Also, they’re cats that I’ve been reading about cats. Cats will pounce on anything that moves.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, yes.
They they like the vibes. Yes. There are many stories of that. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. It can be quite fascinating to get through the power of the mind even by people who are not motivated by Dharma motivation. I I read a book once which was absolutely fascinating book. I don’t know whether anybody’s ever come across it.
It’s called Lightning Bird. No? It’s a it’s a surprising that the book isn’t better known because it’s actually by a very well known author. Forget his name, but he wrote a book called Super Nature which was very well known. Lyle Watson, yes.
And he’s written a couple of books but in actual fact this book is much better than Super Nature. It was written I think probably after Super Nature. He developed his qualities as a writer much more. It was the biography of somebody who was actually one of his friends. No, sorry, I don’t think he might have met this person.
Anyway, this man had the most fascinating life. He came from England as a young adventurer to Africa and took off into the bush and learned to live self sufficiently and he eventually developed an incredible rapport with snakes. He eventually became a scientist and became quite