Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 43-minute session, Ven Sanghy Khandro explores three stanzas of The Wheel of Sharp Weapons, examining how karmic consequences of harmful actions return as specific hardships: mental anguish from gossip, material deprivation from theft and stinginess, and loss of freedom from dominating others. She guides practitioners into Tonglen practice to deepen compassion. She introduces the Nyung Nay purification practice and explores genuine generosity—giving not from excess but in ways that cost us something real. Discussing loss of freedom, she connects both historical oppression and modern job-market constraints to karmic causation. She weaves in the three aspects of the path and emphasizes how Western practitioners can use observed suffering as a catalyst for deepening practice. For those familiar with Lamrim teachings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 The wheel of sharp weapons.mp3
UUID: 34bced44-bfa3-4418-aeff-8fd039357894
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: 43.2 minutes
Words: ~4,267
So anyway with this thought of avoiding the cause of mental anguish then we have to resolve that we won’t commit these kinds of actions anymore, that we won’t do the kinds of actions if we can avoid it causing mental anguish to others and particularly intentionally upsetting others. Somebody is upset by what we do but we would not want it to be that way then that’s different. Sometimes people are just going to be upset because they want us to do something and with our own good judgment we decide not to do that. That’s different. We’re not doing it deliberately to upset the other person, we’re not doing it out of carelessness towards their mental state but when we do wrong things, particularly when we do negative actions that cause problems to others then we’re creating this kind of karma and we resolve not to do these sort of actions again and we also add to that the thought that when we do experience these kinds of problems we think of all the others who are suffering in this way and this enhances our feelings of compassion and love for others.
It enhances our understanding of others. We realize that we’re not the only one who’s suffering. We don’t become self centered about it but in a way it helps us to feel an understanding of how others are also suffering. It gives us more understanding of others mental states as well. So in this way it can be very helpful to us to experience these sufferings sometimes because then it gives us insight into others, increases our compassion and then we do this practice of taking on the mental suffering of others and we can give out our happiness to others.
So that’s stanza eleven. And then stanza twelve, how about you, Jen? Okay. So when I read this, I thought that probably in our society most of us might not have had to experience too much of this kind of karma. In fact perhaps most of us have a problem with the opposite but when we do perhaps experience this kind of karma from time to time we can remember the karmic cause and practice this way and even if we don’t actually experience these kinds of suffering very much we often have an opportunity to think about these karmic results when we see television, when we see the news or when we see the current affairs programmes on television or read current affairs papers and magazines.
We have a lot of opportunity to understand these kinds of sufferings through seeing these kinds of programs and realizing how many people in the world are suffering this way. Also animals. And think to have some sort of imaginative idea of the terrible suffering that’s been experiencing that’s being experienced by so many beings and this can give us an idea of not wanting to receive these kinds of effects ourselves in the future and so we again resolve not to engage in these sorts of actions. Although we’re not experiencing these karmic effects now that’s not to say that we don’t already have these karmic seeds on our mind stream from past lives or even from this life and so we have to try to avoid these actions of these non virtuous actions such as stealing, robbing, cheating, taking by force for instance situations where you have an opportunity of abusing your power, miserliness, stinginess when we engage in these sorts of activities then we’re really creating these causes to experience hunger or material hardship in the future. First, so if we want to have an opportunity to experience these things and at the same time purify these karmic seeds that we’re sure to have then come and do the Nyung Nay at Wesak which will be in the not the present newsletter but the one after that.
I think it’s in June this year. I suppose so. I’m not really sure. We we haven’t really laid out plans for that yet. I think it’d be easy to have it here, but may not.
But anyway, yes, I think this would be a fantastic opportunity for when you do this practice you really feel hunger and thirst and you really go through it. But maybe because of Sunday being the day for other activities of Buddha House, we might have to find another location. Anyway, this is a practice which is specifically designed to enable us to work off these karmic seeds and at the same time a very powerful purification and to develop our positive attitudes of compassion and loving kindness towards others. So So what do you think? Yeah.
Well, certainly it depends on the mental attitude. Yes. But also, of course, here, I this is one situation where we can probably have an opportunity to measure our mental attitude by our material doings. In other words, you can’t fool yourself that you’re that you have a generous mind when you’re not giving anything. Also, of course, can’t be stupid and give away all our our needs, what we need for ourselves to be to have our reasonable needs taken care of.
Yes. I think mother Teresa had a good thing to say about this. She said something like, don’t just give out of your abundance, but give until it hurts. And so if it’s not hurting, then you’re probably not giving it up. Yes.
Yes. Yes. That’s silly. Yes. Yes.
Yes. But they might by being annoyed. Yes. Yes. Yes.
A really important point and we all have something to give and what we have to give might be more valuable to the person than money. But still here we’re talking about material things and the material giving specifically in this verse. Seems to be particularly focusing on material things which result in poverty and hardship and hunger and so on if we don’t give them. Particularly, I think if we see an opportunity and don’t to relieve somebody’s hunger directly, particularly if we actually encounter this person, encounter somebody who’s hungry or see a very direct opportunity to help and we don’t do it, then then we’re being perhaps stingy or we can check up anyway whether we are it gives us the opportunity. And I think often we get the impulse ourselves like for instance sometimes we see an appeal on television and we have a really strong impulse, oh that’s something I should give to and it might be something overseas, might be something in our own neighbourhood, but we sort of get a feeling, oh yes, that’s something that I could care about and then that gives, I think that’s kind of something that’s prompting us.
We’ll sort of have a feeling, an intuitive feeling of how much we can give. And I saw a videotape by Leon Byfield once who which was seemed quite good at it. Do any of you know of him? He he was more active in Queensland, but he had an organization. I forget the name of it now.
But he said that often that we tend to bargain with ourselves, you know, and we tend to first of all think, oh yes, I’ll give them fifty dollars and then you start bargaining and saying, Maybe twenty dollars would be enough and that kind of thing. You know? So this is, you know, where we can sort of look at it. So maybe our original original impulse was a bit too generous, but we could sort of see where this niggardliness is coming in when we see how we bargain with ourselves. And he he was kind of making the point in a new age way that what you give out is coming back to you.
So from the downward point of view sometimes it does work in that way but sometimes you have to wait but in any case you are going to get it back eventually and multiply it. I think really it works even in this lifetime if you really have the right motivation and if you’re kind of open hearted about it. Yes. Yes. Yes.
That’s right. Yes. Exactly. Yes. So we look at it that way.
You can also look at the fact that we’re not hungry this now, so we must have done the right thing, but we want to keep on doing it. Yes. Yes. So you’ve really yes. Yes.
That’s right. Yes. Yes. So you’ve really experienced it. So for you, it’s really strong.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So for a lot of us, we don’t really know what it’s like to be really hungry. Thanks, Elena.
That’s really helpful. So that’s the that’s that stanza. Also of course we can experience these conditions of hunger and thirst in our next life not only as human beings but as animals or as pretas. So we can really rejoice that we have the opportunity now to do these practices and to avoid that kind of result. And then stanza thirteen.
So who’s going to read stanza thirteen? You look as if you’re okay to do it. Mark, you got gotta I haven’t got a paper. Alright. Yes.
You must know all this. Right. So I don’t know whether this one rings a note with anybody, does it? Does anybody No. So here again, in this particular society perhaps we don’t have to experience the worst of this kind of experience because we don’t have slavery or serfdom or extreme social divisions in this society and this is a result of our good karma too.
But we might have to do with a sort of, you could say modified form of this karmic result in the sense that a lot of people might have to drudge away at work that they don’t like or they might have to work for people who are very hard to work for who look down on them and who don’t appreciate their work and so on. And these kinds of hardships are a result of having been having taken advantage of people in other lifetimes and having done these kinds of activities. So having regarded people of lower status of ourselves or people who are economically reliant on us in the sense of employers or whatever as being simply there for our own purposes, using them as cogs, just using them as work units and not regarding them as human beings with their own rights and own needs and so on disregarding the human element. We all have to I think we’ve all probably most of us unless we’ve been very very fortunate in this life have had experience of being treated in this way and we know that it’s not very nice and it feels demeaning and particularly if you don’t have thought training to stand by you then you can end up getting very very angry and perhaps feeling a bit revolutionary and so on.
Yes? It must be particularly in the present where our job availability is very limited. When I was young and going to work you could always get another job if you didn’t like the job you were in, but I think nowadays this kind of karma is coming in very strongly and nowadays there are lot of people who feel that they have no choice where they work, if they find a job they have to take it, if they don’t like it they have to hack it and that’s that. It’s really a lot of mental suffering for a lot of people and I think it’s a very sad thing about our present social situation that people do feel this way. Sometimes they don’t even have a very great choice about the kind of job they have to take.
People just have to take whatever they can get and it might be something that they really don’t want to do and that they really feel very dreary about doing. It must just seem sometimes when you’re stuck in a job like this that you’re just looking forward to a long dreary life of doing things you don’t like and if you’re still young then that in particular, even if you’re older, it can seem really dreary to be stuck in that job for a year or two. If you’re very young and you can’t sort of see what’s going to happen to you in the future, you don’t know things might get better but you can’t see, you think maybe this is going, my whole life is going to be like this. It must just seem really dreadful. Yes.
Yes. Yes. I feel sorry for some of these kids now who at school and they really have to stay at school or college or whatever until they’re in their 20s nowadays because there’s no jobs for them before that and a lot of these kids really aren’t educationally minded. They’d be probably better off working and maybe doing part time study or something to enhance their education but they have to stay stuck in full time study just because really there’s not much else for them to do and everybody’s kind of pushing them into it. That’s really dreary and it’s dreary for the teachers too.
Sorry. When was young, the university ones were privileged and you thought they were having a good time and getting involved in all sorts of political activities and so on and it’s not like that anymore. So at least we don’t have these extreme divisions and at least we have this opportunity of most of us probably will get jobs eventually even if it’s not the job we want and we’ll be able to have a bit of money in our leisure time. So we’re pretty fortunate actually in this country and things are a lot worse in some countries like India and so on. And if you talk about being stuck in the staff and family, well I think it’s much more so over there.
On the other hand, perhaps they don’t think about it so much because they take it for granted. I mean, you know, because there are no choices. Sometimes when you can see possibilities but can’t actually achieve them yourself, it makes it that much worse. So anyway yes. I was going to tell the story of I knew quite a few years ago about a chap who was working in a restaurant as a cook and his boss his employers, the married couple who employed him used to give him a really hard time and they didn’t seem to appreciate his talents according to his story.
One day he got so frustrated with the lady that he tipped a big bowl of batter over her head and then walked out the door and left that job and took another job. If he around, if he’s still doing that sort of work now I think he probably just has to put up with it. Yes. I I was wondering whether he could have been charged with assault and battery. Actually, that wasn’t my joke.
Somebody else came up with this one too. But anyway, yeah. But, anyway, yes, certainly, I don’t know what his coming result would be either. Pretty. So many people nowadays they don’t even have the choice of walking out.
Just have to stay in the job. This is the Wheel of Sharp Weapons. If we’re in that situation we can think that it’s because we’ve mistreated others that we’ve made other people miserable on the job and we have considered them and so on. Anyway, in order to develop renunciation, we have to get over this idea that things can be perfect in saṃsāra. Actually this is just the fault of saṃsāra that we’re in these situations and we can use this thought not only to develop the thought that we’ve done these particular wrong karmas but we can use it to develop renunciation.
So those of you who have been coming along and studying the graduated path you know that renunciation is one of the three aspects of the path. Does anybody want to tell me what the other two are? Yes, very good. Right. There are three very big understandings that we have to gain and as you know it’s not just an intellectual understanding, it’s something which we have to understand from the depths of our being in order to say that we actually have that realization.
So we start off understanding it intellectually and then we have to deepen and deepen that through meditation. Renunciation, the thought which is in other words the thought of understanding thoroughly there is no happiness to be attained in saṃsāra. There is no real happiness to be attained anywhere in saṃsāra. Whether we are in the upper realms, whether we are in the lower realms, are going to be encountering continual suffering and there will be no real satisfaction even when we do encounter saṃsāra good, pleasure, limited happiness. It’s only limited, it’s never fully satisfactory and it doesn’t last.
So when we realize this thoroughly from the depths of our being then we’ll want to get out of saṃsāra and we can reflect on this thought. The problem is that we really in our hearts have this misleading idea which is very false and misleading that somehow if we do the right thing or if we’re lucky then everything’s going to be wonderful in saṃsāra and it’s not going to be. So in actual fact we can be a lot happier in saṃsāra if we learn to get in touch with our own inner strength, with our own inner source of happiness. But this is because it’s actually leading us away from saṃsāra. It’s leading us away from the cause of our suffering.
But if we think that by manipulating the external situation and by waiting for things to get better then suddenly everything is going to be wonderful. It’s never going to be like that. Even if it does seem very wonderful for a little time, if you really analyze deeply you’ll see that it’s not so wonderful after all and certainly we can guarantee on the dotted line that it’s not going to last. That just when everything seems at its best that something’s going to come along and spoil it because this is the nature of saṃsāra and it’s always going to be like that so we have to develop this strong renunciation and that will motivate us to do the work to get out of saṃsāra and then we add to that bodhicitta which is doing the work to attain enlightenment for the welfare of all sentient beings. And then of course we add to that the understanding of emptiness which is the actual thing that enables us to achieve those goals aligned with those powerful motivations.
We’re going to encounter all these. Sometimes we’ll be happier in our minds through doing our practice, but we’re still going to experience situations that will be difficult and that will just have to be endured, but we can be happier enduring them through having this understanding, having this thought training practice and the more you start to see the results of that, the more you start to see it working and start to realize that you are starting to feel a bit more patience, bit more mental calm, a bit more ability to deal with situations that would have thrown you off course before, the more then you start to appreciate where your Dharma practice is taking you and the more you start to have energy, inspiration carry on with it. So the whole lesson about this is that we don’t have to be made unhappy. If we have this Dharma practice then we can be happy. It can be true Dharma happiness which can start off small, can just start off by being a little bit more peace of mind, a little bit more contentment.
We won’t start off being ecstatic, you know. We can’t expect to be always blissed out, but we can start to see the good in the situation and we can start to feel positive and to feel to act to be more cheerful, you know, we can start to have this sort of positive attitude and in this particular instance relating to this verse when we have to suffer due to our lack of freedom, can see that our lack of freedom, lack of choice in this situation is due to having enslaved others or due to having put limitations on others through our own selfish purposes and we take take on their suffering as it teaches us in all these verses. Take on their suffering. First of all we understand our karmic cause and determine not to do this in future and we only that but we determine to instead of that to serve others and to do good to others and in this instance we think of serving others not necessarily as menials or servants but by dedicating our life and practice to attaining enlightenment for their benefit. And in actual fact the Bodhisattva would gladly serve others in the most menial capacity just in order to relieve their sufferings and to bring them happiness.
So if we think this way then we can do this work that we have to do more cheerfully, more happily and we can see it as being something that’s really beneficial that can help us to in the long term benefit others and to prepare ourselves to be able to do this. Then of course we add on the thought of taking on the suffering others are having to suffer in this way, the Tonglen practice. So that’s stanza thirteen and I think that’s enough for this week. So it’s five minutes past nine. Do you want to do you have any more questions?
So the next verse is about foul language. Yes. I thought I was going to get up to the foul language, but I didn’t quite make it. Okay then. So will we finish up now, or do you want to do a little meditation?
That would be nice. Okay. So we just collect our thoughts for a moment. Maybe put the attention on the breathing just to bring the mind into focus. So now thinking of the suffering of others, thinking of the sufferings that we endure ourselves.
Particular we can think of the mental anguish that we’ve experienced ourselves sometimes. Perhaps at the moment we have worries, problems, mental sufferings, We might perhaps feel some sort of depression or anxiety. Certainly we’ve experienced these things in the past and we can remember them. This is the Wheel of Sharp Weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done. It’s the karmic result of having disturbed others minds.
Perhaps particularly our Guru if we’ve had Gurus in the past, our parents, our dharma friends or other sentient beings. So we resolve that we won’t engage in these kinds of bad karmas in the future. We’ll accept this karmic result as using up our previous bad karmas. Not only that, we think of others who are suffering in this way and we think of taking on their suffering and giving out happiness to them. Also, if we experience hunger or thirst.
This is the karmic result, the Wheel of Sharp Weapons from having taken what belonged to others, taken what they needed from them, stolen, plundered and robbed people. So we resolve not to do these things in future. Instead, we try to help others particularly to help them with their material needs, to save them from their hunger and thirst. And we do the practice of giving and taking imagining that we take on their suffering of hunger and thirst, experience it ourselves for their sake and give them the cause for having good things. When we lack freedom, when we have to endure being under the control of others in situations that we don’t like, that we find unpleasant.
This is the Wheel of Sharp Weapons returning from having done these things to others, having put others in this situation. Having looked upon others only as those who were there to serve our own selfish needs. So we resolve not to do this in future. Instead we put ourselves to the service of others in particular by following the Mahāyāna path for the welfare of others. And then we take on mentally this kind of suffering, enduring it ourselves and thinking that by doing that we’re taking it from these others, relieving them and giving them happiness.
So we can conclude this session by thinking that we have only been practicing this in an imaginative form but by dedicating the merit to all sentient beings we do that. And merits that way until we go to the the prayers on page five. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to that enlightened realm through 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.
And then his holiness, the Dalai Lama’s long life prayer. Also, we’re praying for the long life of all holy teachers. In the land encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and good. All Tenzin Gyatso. Please remain until cyclic existence is ended.