Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 83-minute talk, Ven Thubten Dondrub guides practitioners through the foundational steps toward generating bodhicitta—the aspiration to attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. He begins by emphasizing that bodhicitta rests on three earlier renunciations: releasing obsession with this life alone, rejecting the false hope of lasting happiness within cyclic existence, and finally abandoning attachment to one’s own liberation. Dondrub then walks through Atisha’s six-cause method in detail: seeing all beings as mothers, remembering their kindness, developing the wish to repay that kindness, and cultivating great love and great compassion—wishing all sentient beings, without exception and including one’s enemies, to possess genuine happiness and freedom from suffering. Throughout, he offers concrete examples: Lama Yeshe’s “magician” teaching on perfect versus impermanent happiness, stories of wealthy people’s hidden suffering, and reflections on why even “terrible people” would stop harming others if genuinely happy. He also addresses a practical obstacle many practitioners face—using the ideal of bodhicitta to beat oneself up—insisting that these are advanced practices requiring lifetimes of effort, and that recognizing one’s current limitations is honest spiritual work, not failure. The talk includes a final emphasis on the necessity of repeated meditation and homework engagement to transform intellectual understanding into lived realization. Aimed at serious practitioners engaged in formal study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2014 04 22 DB Bodhicitta Week 4 22042014.mp3
UUID: f2b8e8e6-1e54-4692-8ba7-32a899c95c65
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Bodhicitta (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2014-04-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 83.6 minutes
Words: ~9,283
So then we can enhance that positive state of mind briefly by doing the nine round breathing exercise. And to strengthen that practice with each in breath of the the in the cycle, we can imagine breathing in a very blissful white light that brings great calmness, clarity, peacefulness into our mind, a sense that all our positive potentials are being awakened. And with each out breath cycle, we imagine breathing out whatever agitation exists in the mind right now, but also all negative thoughts and feelings, all the disturbing thoughts which are the cause of them, all negative imprints which are the result of them. All of this in the form of black smoke that completely dissipates, becomes totally nonexistent. Okay.
Thank you. So for us as ordinary people, the average ordinary sentient being, say human beings, born only thinking of this life, being basically only aware of this life. The Buddha appeared in the world to tell us that if we follow that tendency of only thinking about this life, being obsessed with this life, this actually acts as a condition to agitate, activate all our disturbing thoughts which causes our self and others in this life confusion and suffering and problems but also leads to all sorts of future difficulties. So the Buddha explained that the first major step in following the spiritual path is learning to put this life into perspective, renouncing our obsession with this life, not giving up on this life, not at all, but renouncing, letting go of our obsession with the things of this life, believing that they have some kind of ultimate value, an ultimate and lasting value and significance which they simply don’t have. And once we’ve really done that, then the next major spiritual step in the spiritual path is renouncing obsession with remaining in cyclic existence and that mind renouncing cyclic existence comes when we gain a very deep understanding, realization that taking rebirth over and over again controlled by delusion and karma is in its very nature of suffering, that we will never find real peace and happiness while our mind is controlled by delusion and karma.
So when we really get that message, when we really, really get it, when we realize it, then the mind renounces cyclic existence. And then we can renounce cyclic existence for two reasons. One is so that we can achieve nirvana for ourselves. But the other reason is along the track we’re in a position once we’ve really renounced Samsāra to dedicate our entire energy to benefiting others, realizing our intimate connection with all sentient beings and how they are suffering and helpless. And so the third major step in the spiritual path is renouncing attachment to or interest in nirvana.
Not renouncing interest in liberation, but renouncing interest in the bliss of liberation, bliss of nirvana so that we can follow the path to enlightenment. Generating bodhicitta is actually an extremely advanced, very advanced accomplishment. Hugely advanced accomplishment. So one could ask oneself why even bother to think about it? And the simple answer is that although we can’t generate until we’ve accomplished these earlier stages, we can plant the seeds for it now and that’s immensely beneficial.
And as I tried to say last week, even if we can’t generate bodhicitta now by training our mind in the bodhicitta stages, at least we can become a better person. We become more loving, more kind, more compassionate, patient, persevering, intelligent, etc. Etc. All of which are incredibly beneficial for ourselves and for others. But it’s all laying the ground to be able to generate bodhicitta in the future.
And if we can have some kind of bodhicitta motivation now, then everything we do to renounce this life, to renounce Samsāra will become so much more effective if we do it with some influence, with some touch of bodhicitta in there. These really solid bases of generating bodhicitta are renouncing this life, renouncing saṃsāra, and then having that mind of equanimity that is able to have as much as possible an equal attitude to all sentient beings, equal, open, friendly attitude rather than being just too attached to some, having aversion to some, and indifference to others. Maybe at this stage I’d just like to make the point that from reading people’s homework is that I just need to emphasize again that bodhicitta and the main components that make it up are very advanced practices and take a lot of time to be able to get proficient at and a lot of time and hard work. One mistake that we Western maybe not just Western people but Western people in general I think, but everyone can make is somehow they use the teachings to beat themselves up even more. You have this ideal of bodhicitta and you think, oh, I don’t have that.
I’m such a bad person because I have self-cherishing and I don’t love everyone and I hate some people and I don’t like other people and I get angry and blah blah blah. This is ridiculous because we’re all like that. We all have self-cherishing. We all dislike, you know. Some people here say they have no enemies.
I’m I’m really not sure about that. They find it difficult to find someone they dislike. I don’t mean to be rude to these people, but I think you’re fooling yourselves. Well, maybe you are bodhisattvas and there’s no reason for you to come to this class. But we all dislike people.
There are all people who annoy us and dislike. You know, we dislike. Even for a short time, we may forgive them. You know, even the people will be, you know well, anyway. Yeah.
Even your husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, you can you can can’t stand sometimes. Yeah. Not the ones you divorce, the ones you continue to live with sometimes really can’t stand. Know? We have and, you know, people and not people we necessarily want to hate and rip their heads off, but people we dislike.
Yeah. We do this. Yeah. Unless you’re exceptional people, we dislike it. And to just to deny that is really not helpful.
Yeah. And to deny, you know so we have all these things. So and yes, the all the aim is to get rid of them, but it we have to accept it takes time. It takes a lot. This is not a good advertisement, but it’s just being honest.
It takes a very long time, and it takes a lot of hard work. So that could again be, oh, that’s very depressing and disappointing, But the point is there’s no other choice because the longer we remain with all these negative things, the more we will suffer. That, you know, it’s it’s there’s no choice but to give them up in a sense. There’s no choice when we start to realize how horrible our delusions are for ourselves, let alone have people having to live with us or be around us. But we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for these things.
Those states are negative but we aren’t. We’re okay. And we’re no worse than anyone else. Right? Am I making some sense?
Yeah. Really, because some of the things people are saying, you know, I can’t do this, blah blah blah blah. This is not the way to see it. Know, I get upset with people and I don’t like people when they say nasty things to it. No one does.
Ordinary person does. And even bodhisattvas lose it a bit sometimes. There’s levels of bodhisattvas. There’s super duper bodhisattvas, which is a very special Sanskrit technical term you would never have heard before. And there’s just kind of beginning bodhisattvas have just generated bodhicitta and everything and they certainly manifest getting annoyed with people and things.
Even His Holiness says he gets annoyed with people. So he may just be saying that but I think also for him to say that is an indication that, yes, you know, people at a a a a, you know, at an advanced level can still make mistakes and be imperfect. You know? It’s there’s a huge you know? So that’s I think very important to put things in perspective.
And bodhicitta is like an incredible, you know, even just to be able to love, you know, develop genuine love or compassion for people or to be patient. Patient is is this is a huge accomplishment. And to, you know yeah. So we can do these things sometimes and then we and then we, you know, we can’t. And we all have our limitations which we need to recognize that, you know, I can be patient with this person up to this point, but with this person, this this drives me nuts.
And ultimately, of course, we shouldn’t be driven nuts by other people, but we are, You know? And so we have to, you know, recognize that but not sort of then, you know, but then we, you know, we have to try and work to change it, but we have to accept it’s not gonna happen overnight. Right? Because the imprints are so strong. Beginningless.
Samsāra is beginningless, but it’s not endless. Atisha’s method of generating bodhicitta has six causes which leads to the one effect of actually generating this uncontrived determination to do everything necessary to achieve enlightenment. So the first of the causes in Bodhisattva’s method is to be able to see all sentient beings as mothers. So there are two aspects of that. Firstly is developing this understanding, faith, belief, logical inference that every sentient being quite literally has been one’s mother.
But that’s not the actual first cause of generating the bodhicitta. On the basis of that, on the basis of believing every sentient being has been one’s mother, you then practice mindfulness that when you look at someone, you think of someone, human, nonhuman, friend, enemy, stranger, rather than put them, you know, as think of them as human or animal or friend, enemy, stranger, we train to replace that habitual worldly thinking with this is my mother or at least this has been my mother. But as I said, once once someone’s your mother, they they’re your mother forever. So this person, this being is my mother. You know?
So the reason to do that lies with the second cause, which is remembering how incredibly kind beings are when they are mothers. And we take the example of our own mother and then realize all the good things, wonderful things that my mother did for me as expressions of her love and concern for me, every single sentient being without exception has done. And when they weren’t doing that, they were kind as my father. When they weren’t being kind as my father, they were being kind as my brother, sister, relatives, friends, teachers, doctors, nurses. Every sentient being has saved my life in one way or another.
Every sentient being has actually sacrificed their life for me. So that’s the second cause. This leads to the third cause which is like one of the key things really. Trains in those first two causes to get to this third point which is developing the wish to repay the kindness of sentient beings. And the more we feel how kind sentient beings are and how much I depend on that kindness.
It’s not just like pieces of chocolate kindness which you can live without a piece of chocolate but it’s very nice for someone to give you a box chocolates or a piece of chocolates. That’s nice. But there are so many forms of kindness that we absolutely have to get. And we get it. We we we get that kindness again and again and again, and especially a mother’s kindness.
Of course, sometimes we don’t get that, unfortunately, but most of the time, the person who is our mother gives us unconditional love. She loves us just because we are her child. The mums in the audience shouldn’t think, Aren’t I so wonderful? That’s a big mistake. You’re supposed to think about your mother and others, not you as a mother.
Oh, isn’t that great? I’m such a wonderful person. I’ve done all these things. Yeah. So then we think about how to repay what is going to repay even the kindness of the mother of this life, let alone all sentient all all mother sentient beings.
What is going to repay it? What can I say or do that that will repay the kindness of my of my mother? So our mothers, you know, actually anything we do makes them happy practically. Just saying I love you or giving her a hanky on Mother’s Day. Don’t know if people still do that.
Our mothers think that’s wonderful. But from our side, if we think about it, that really doesn’t repay the kindness of our mother. And as I mentioned last week with my friend who always used to think about if she had a million dollars, even if we could give our mother a million dollars, it wouldn’t repay her kindness. Even if we gave her a hundred million dollars or a billion dollars, it wouldn’t repay her kindness. Because even if we were able to give her all of those things, it wouldn’t stop our mother getting old, it wouldn’t stop our mother getting sick, It wouldn’t stop our mother dying.
It wouldn’t stop our mother suffering. It might modify those things for a short time, but it wouldn’t stop them. So what would repay her kindness? What would repay the kindness of all mother sentient beings? Right?
What would what would really you could think, now I have repaid that kindness, Especially if we think that the mother of this life has been our mother many times. And the answer is, well, to think so this leads to the next cause, which is the answer that the more we really think about what will repay the kindness of mothers, then the two next causes of bodhicitta will arise, which is the development of loving kindness and compassion, and especially great love and great compassion. Because we will think how wonderful it would be if my mother could have happiness. That the best way, the best gift I could give my mother to repay her kindness would be to to give her happiness. And and what happiness is is being referred to?
It’s not worldly happiness because that can be represented by giving your mother a box of chocolates, a hanky, a million dollars, a billion dollars. That just represents worldly happiness. But worldly happiness is actually not real happiness. It’s what is called the suffering of change. Because the happiness that we what we call happiness is, as ordinary people, all the experiences that we label as happiness are called from a higher perspective, the suffering of change, simply because the easiest way to see it is because all of those experiences that we label happiness simply don’t last.
Everything that we can think of as bringing happiness such as getting married, having children. Sorry. I’m just a monk saying all these uncool things. Falling in love, becoming a movie star, getting a, you know, whatever, winning the lottery, all all of the becoming president of wherever, all of these things bring some some some pleasure, some nice experience, some you know, some something, some entertainment, but it doesn’t last. It just doesn’t last, and it can’t last because all of these things arise depending on impermanent on many things, and so they’re impermanent.
Everything that arises depending on causes and conditions is if you check, if you investigate, impermanent. It changes, decays, fades away. So that’s not satisfying. It’s entertaining. It’s pleasure.
It’s a a very superficial kind of happiness. But what we want, I could do my my Lama Yeshe magician story, but I haven’t done it this time. But maybe it takes too long and I never do it very well. It’s always oh, very quickly. Can’t help myself.
Once upon once upon a time, Lama Yeshe said, actually, I should say that I I was yeah. This is the most it’s it’s such a simple thing, but this is one of the underlying things to really understand and appreciate what Buddhism is all about. So once at Chenrezig Institute many years ago, Lama Yeshe said to a huge bunch of people, of which I was one of them, Imagine I’m a magician. Yeah? A great magician, and I can give you anything you want.
And I will give it to you instantly, free of charge, without any strings attached. Right? So you just have to tell me what you want, anything you want, the the most, you know, the the most important thing you want in life, and I’ll give it to you instantly. Okay? So what do you really, really, really, really want?
Because I’ll give it to you now free. Don’t have to call out. Okay? So, of course, the answer is you want happiness. Whatever you whatever you think of, whether it’s a thing or some kind of relationship or a combination, it it represents happiness.
Yeah. So to make things easier for you, I’ll ask you, what what kind of happiness do you want? Because I’ve well, what I’ve got three kinds of happiness I can give you. Yeah? And they’re all free, and I can give them to you immediately.
No strings attached. So this bit, I can’t do like Lama Yeshe because he was a really good actor and everything. And, anyway, I’ve got First Kind of Happiness is really fantastic. It’s better than anything you ever experienced or could imagine. But to be honest, it does have some flaws.
Some occasional things go wrong, but it is really quite terrific, and it’s free. So you can have that. Second happiness I’ve got is even better than the first one I mentioned. It’s just really unbelievable. But, again, it is not, you know, it has some tiny, tiny flaws.
Not as many as the previous one, but it’s got some. Yeah. Some slight hitches every now and again will occur in this kind of happiness. And then the third happiness I’ve got is perfect. It is perfect happiness.
There’s not the slightest thing wrong with it in any way at any time ever. It is absolutely perfect happiness. I can give it to you now free with no strings attached. Right? Okay.
So you just have to tell me which one you want. So anyone for grade three happiness? Grade two? Grade one? Yes?
Grade one? Yes. Right. Some clever people when I’ve done this say they they don’t want perfect happiness because it would be worrying. So these clever people are stupid because by definition, perfect happiness isn’t worrying.
That doesn’t even rank as third degree happiness. Now this is perfect. It’s absolutely wonderful all the time. Everything you’ve ever wanted or can even imagine. It’s more than you can even imagine.
Right? So you’re gonna get that right right now. But to make sure you’re completely satisfied, I can tell you that you can how well, how long do you want it for? Now. Okay?
So you can have it for the rest of tonight, or you could have it for the the rest of this week, this month, this year, this life, next life if you believe in future lives. You can have it for ten year ten lives, a hundred, a million, a billion lives, or and and no no change in price. All free, you know, or you can have it forever. Again, same, free. No no no higher purchase or hidden costs.
Completely free right now forever. Perfect happiness forever. Which do you which one do you want? Who’s four just tonight? One week?
Forever? Who wants perfect happiness forever? Right. Right. And that’s secretly deep down what every sentient being actually wants, is perfect happiness forever because it is not possible not to want it.
Why would you want imperfect happiness or perfect happiness for a short time? Because imperfect happiness is not yeah. It’s unsatisfying. So it’s a type of suffering. And imagine if you had perfect happiness and then it stopped.
That would be worse than having it for a short time because you’d be forever grasping it and miserable. And His Holiness the Dalai Lama often says that this wish for perfect lasting happiness is a reflection of our Buddha nature. Because we have that pure perfect mind, we want you know, it’s just naturally there. No one wants suffering. How how could you want suffering?
Even masochists think, you know, being made to to pain will make them happy. So everyone wants happiness. We just don’t know what it is. That’s the trouble. Or how what what it’s what brings it about.
So nothing in the external world brings that. The the happiness in the external world just lasts for a short time. So it’s not what we really want at all. It’s not perfect lasting happiness. It’s not perfect, and it’s not lasting.
Another way of looking at why what we think of as happiness is a subtle type of suffering, the suffering of change, is that well, following from what I was saying, is we as ordinary people have such limited experiences of happiness. We don’t have much to compare it with. What we we have no idea of the potential of our mind, what our mind can actually experience. So we think, oh, this is happiness and this is happiness. But we have no idea of what we can actually experience.
So just relatively what we experience, we can call happiness. There is a more deeper reason, but I won’t go into that one tonight. By thinking about wanting to repay the kindness of others, we can generate this wish that how wonderful or the best way to repay the kindness of our mothers would be for them to be able to experience perfect happiness. What Lama Tsongkhapa calls peerless, everlasting happiness, which is enlightenment. Yeah.
So we think how how wonderful that would be. So that thought wishing others happiness is the thought of love. Love is that mental factor, wanting happiness, wanting oneself, others to have genuine happiness. Not the illusion of happiness, not superficial temporary happiness, but the real thing. And the basic way that mind of love is cultivated and arises within our in our hearts, within our minds is in in one sense very simple.
How love is cultivated and is developed is, you know, you know, if sorry. In just ordinary simple things like if we wanted to drink some water this an example? Oh, anyway, put it in a very abstract way. The reason we want something is because, you know, I want this is because I don’t have it. If we’ve got something, we won’t we don’t want it because we’ve already got it.
Right? So the reason one develops the thought wanting others to have happiness, which is the thought of love, comes from simply recognizing that this person isn’t happy. That’s what love is. It’s recognizing this person doesn’t have real happiness. They are not actually happy at all.
And when one actually sees that, feels that, you will want that person to unless you hate them. But we’ve cultivated equanimity, remember? And then you start to see that this person actually doesn’t have happiness. They are actually bereft of it. I don’t know, for some reason this is what the the word the lamas use, this word bereft, and I quite like it.
It’s it has quite some power to it rather than saying they just don’t have it. But you see that this person is completely bereft of happiness. Because we think, you know, we look at other people and we think they look okay, they look healthy, they’ve got nice clothes on, they’ve got a nice, you know, probably got an okay job, probably plenty to eat, go on holidays, nice job, family, friends, blah blah blah blah blah. They are happy. And from an ordinary perspective, you know, they oh, they’ve got a car, they’ve got a house, blah blah blah blah blah, so they’re happy.
Or they’re smiling, so they’re happy. But that is just worldly happiness. It’s just, at the very best, it’s the suffering of change. So someone who develops real love realizes that that that’s nothing. That’s not happiness.
And then, you know, with with some kind of shock, you realize this person who I care about isn’t actually happy. They may even think they are. They may even say they are. But from a deeper level, they are not happy. They don’t have real happiness.
And even more, what at a deeper level, a deeper level of of of love is not just the thought, oh, I want this person to be happy. I want you to be happy. But realizing that happiness has causes, and you realize this person who I care about is actually not creating the causes for happiness. So they won’t be happy. They’re not only they’re not happy, but they they are not creating the actual causes for happiness, so they’re not ever gonna become happy.
So you want them to create the causes. You really, really want this person or people or all sentient beings to create the causes of happiness. Because if they don’t, they’re not going to be happy. You know, there are many people in the world who are really nice people and their life goes well, but in a sense, all of us are running on our good karma. We created good karma to be born human.
We did good actions in the past, virtuous actions to have possessions and resources and to have a certain amount of depending on how much good karma we created in the past, we’ve created the cause to have a certain amount of success, good health, friends, blah blah blah in this life. And we think it’s all due to what we’re doing now, but it’s not. It’s what we did in the past. So we’re running, we use up day by day our good karma. So there are people who have nice lives and do, you know, are nice people, but they’re not actually doing much at all, if anything, to create the cause for any success and happiness in the future.
And then you realize that, and you think, oh my gosh, these people I care about aren’t happy. They’re not creating the causes for happiness. And maybe, in fact, they’re creating the causes for suffering. So this is what love is. There is this yeah.
Like I said, the the very basic form is wanting others to have genuine happiness. A deeper level is wanting them to have create the causes of it. And, also, there’s that the love which is immeasurable, you know, like the four immeasurable thoughts that is not just restricted to some people but to all beings equally. In fact, from a Buddhist point of view, real love, once you generate are able to generate it to one being, if it if it’s the real thing, you you automatically will feel it to all beings. Right?
Wanting them all equally to have genuine happiness. And then great love great love oh, where’s great? Sorry, where’s my clock? What’s over there? It’s alright.
So great love is not only the thought wanting sentient all sentient beings to create the causes of genuine happiness, but it’s the thought that I will help them. Not just, you know, it’s the mind that is is is willing to engage in what’s necessary to help sentient beings create the causes of happiness. Because we can’t actually give anyone happiness, We can only help them create the causes, guide them. That’s why I teach it, you know, the the guru the the Buddha came on into this earth to teach us what are the causes of happiness. And then his great disciples, the great lamas, come and teach us.
This is the this is the act this is what happiness really is. This is what its causes are. This and if you wanna be happy, you you have to create those causes. Right? And if you if we don’t, the result won’t occur.
That’s it. So great love is that mind wanting every sentient being without exception, you know, friends, enemies, strangers, humans, animals, predators, hell beings, the whole lot, all of them to have this peerless everlasting happiness, to create wanting them to create the causes and one and and oneself committing to helping them do that no matter how much time it takes, how difficult it is. So if you’ve if you’ve been looking at that prayer of the four immeasurable thoughts, the version I I gave you is the full form of it where you have may sent know, how wonderful it would be if all sentient beings had happiness and its causes. So that’s the first step. Then deeper, then it goes, I I what is it?
I also have happiness in these causes. I myself will cause them to create those causes. And then you make the request to the Guru deity which can refer to the Buddha to help you because by ourselves we can’t do it. Need the help, the blessings of the Gurus and the Buddhas to guide us in the path so that we can be in a position to help all sentient beings create the causes of suffering, of happiness. There is that in the Four Immeasurable Prayer, each line of the Four Immeasurable starts off about how wonderful it would be.
But it’s also worth meditating on rather than just blindly saying that and believing it is to reflect, would it be wonderful? Would it be wonderful if all sentient beings had happiness and its causes? Because you’re saying, you know, how we we have to ask ourselves, would it be wonderful if all humans, animals, hell beings, blah blah blah, had happiness and its causes? And especially for us as humans living with humans, we have to ask ourselves honestly in order to lead out and train our mind, would it be wonderful, Well, would it be wonderful if all nice people, if all our friends and all friends and nice people had happiness? Yes.
Of course. That’s obvious. Would it be nice, wonderful if all strangers had happiness? Oh, yeah, probably. Yeah, why not?
But then we have to ask ourselves, would it be wonderful if all my enemies and all the horrible people in the world, mass murderers, drug traffickers, you know, pedophiles, and all these people had happiness in its Now there is the crunch. So A bodhisattva does want that. He wants everyone to have happiness in its causes and knowing, you know, not excluding anyone for any reason. And, of course, we we are if we are honest, we don’t have that thought yet. We don’t we we do think there are people who shouldn’t be happy because they’re terrible people and they do terrible thing or because they do terrible things.
And so they should suffer. They should be punished. Blah blah blah. So it’s very normal. But a bodhisattva doesn’t think like that.
And the Buddha certainly didn’t because he wouldn’t have come here and taught us if he thought we should suffer from our negative karma. We’ve all created negative actions which is gonna bring suffering. The Buddha taught us how to avoid those suffering results because the Buddha has great compassion and great love. He wants everyone to be happy no matter what they’ve done, what they’re doing, will do. Yeah.
So why would it be wonderful if all sentient beings, all terrible people had happiness? Well, why do terrible people do terrible things? It’s because they’re not happy. No one who is genuinely happy does terrible, you know, consciously do terrible things. So if terrible people, evil people, conventionally evil people, were genuinely happy, they wouldn’t hurt people.
They wouldn’t do these terrible things. So in one sense, it would be best rather than all the nice people becoming happy first, it would be best logical that all the most horrible people in the world got happy first because if they got happy first, everything would be okay. If all the drug traffickers, you know, all the people dealing in arms, all the, you know, corrupt people, you know, who do, you know, yeah, unbelievable horrible things in this world. I mean, the stories in the paper, just the past few days of what’s going on, it’s just mind boggling what people do. But if they were okay, the the you know, so many other people would just automatically be okay.
I mean, least temporarily, you know, in a superficial sense, but anyway, it’s a start. So we have to try and think like that to counteract this mind that wants some, you know, denies some people happiness. But, of course, you know, we’re not gonna be, you know, totally loving to everyone straight away, but it’s a matter of training the mind and thinking what a wonderful ideal, how wonderful if I could really think and feel that way. Oh, that was a little bit on great love. This leads to So in the logic of the six causes, the first three go one after the other.
Then the next two, the fourth and fifth causes, which is love and compassion, they don’t have a a they don’t necessarily go love and then compassion. They can go compassion and then love. Because these two mental factors of love and compassion always go together. They’re different because love is the mind wanting sentient beings happiness. Compassion is the mind wanting sentient beings to be free of suffering.
So if you if you want someone to be happy, you don’t want them to suffer. If don’t want someone to suffer, you basically want them to be happy. So these two things do go together, but they are different states of mind. And so depending on different people’s personalities, some people develop compassion first or great compassion first and then great love. Others develop great love and then great compassion.
So anyway, I mentioned great love first. So that leads on. So the more we train in that mind, the more we will also develop, you know, be able to train in the next cause of great compassion, wanting beings to be free of suffering. And again, even to develop that basic mind of compassion, have to be aware that suffering just doesn’t refer to ordinary, obvious physical and mental pain and the situations that lead to that. Because for most people the objects of suffering are people who are poor, who are sick, who are downtrodden because they are experiencing obvious physical or mental pain and difficulties.
But when we open our mind to the realities more and more, we can start to see that actually every sentient being is suffering. It’s not just the poor people, rich people suffer. It’s not just sick people who suffer, healthy people suffer. It’s not just, sorry, conventionally ugly people who suffer. It’s it’s beautiful people suffer.
And it’s it’s not just the victim that suffers, it’s the victimizer who suffers. It’s not just what the the lower classes that suffer, the upper classes suffer. Everyone suffers in some form or other. So there’s obvious suffering, but then there’s the subtle suffering of change, which is happiness. So even happy people, successful people, rich people, powerful people, beautiful people are suffering.
There’s the obvious suffering of being poor. There’s a more subtle suffering, maybe not so subtle, but less obvious suffering of being rich. I’m not quite sure what it is. With being rich, there’s a lot of worry of losing your your wealth, of the worry of protecting it. Yeah.
The fear of losing it, of of being harmed because of one’s wealth, being attacked in order to get it, Of as I’ve sort of slightly joked before, you know, if if if you’re a very poor person and someone likes you, you know, or seems to like you, you can probably be be sure that they do like you if you’re poor. But if you’re rich and someone likes you or seems to like you, do they like you because you’re you or because you’re rich? Yeah. That’s the suffering, I think. My teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
I I was told this story many times before. When I was with Rinpoche, he’s a ten oh, stop. Stop. Stop the time. Those were the poor days when but now now Rinpoche has become more and more famous.
He knows all sorts of movie stars and all sorts of extremely rich people who take them take him to their houses and show them their huge houses and giant heated swimming pools and blah blah blah blah blah. And Rinpoche once made the point that, you know, he he visits these people and they show him around and show him all these beautiful things and all the good things and blah blah blah blah blah. And he says after some time, they tell these people who are very rich and famous, tell them their problems. Always that comes. So just because one is rich doesn’t mean one isn’t suffering.
And just being rich can be a form of suffering. Being poor can be suffering. Being rich, you can be sorry. Being ugly can bring suffering, but being being beautiful can be suffering, you know, because one gets attached to it. Yeah.
You’re attached to your beauty, and then there’s a fear of losing it. If you’re ugly, you don’t have to worry about losing your ugliness. Yeah? In fact, if you lose your ugly, if you that means you become beautiful, so that’s good. But to lose your beauty, you and of course we identify with our appearance and things, so that’s horrible.
Sorry. I’m gonna tell my stories all again. You know, some people have heard them fifteen million times, but we have a center in Spain, in France called Kālacakra Center in Paris. At one point there was a lady who was the director who was before that a model. She never became a famous model, but she knew many famous models in France.
And she said the woman who mentored her was some super famous model whose face appeared on all the famous women’s fashion magazines. And then and then she got too old, like she became thirty or something to ever appear on these magazines again. And she said she would this friend of mine, this the director, would go and visit her. And she said she lived in this house, in this apartment in Paris, where she had a sofa where she would sit. And in front of her was this huge mirror that she would look at so she could see herself in the mirror.
And behind on the wall behind her, on behind the sofa, were all the framed pictures of her when she was the super famous model in Vogue magazine. So she would look at herself when she was and as she was now, suffering. Yeah. Because it had gone, you know, the being the the super beautiful well, you know, what the label I mean, she was probably still very beautiful, but, you know, when she was very young, famous, blah blah blah, so she would compare all day long. Yeah.
Very sad. Yeah. So everyone suffers. Yeah. Of course, the victim suffers, but the victimizer is suffering to actually cause harm to others.
They’re creating the cause to have far, far greater suffering than the victim in the future. There’s millions of ways we as human beings suffer. And there’s the subtle suffering of just having a body and mind controlled by delusion karma. Everyone is suffering. No matter how rich they are, beautiful, happy they are, no matter how much they tell you they’re happy and that how much they think they’re happy, everyone is suffering.
It’s not happy it’s not satisfied, doesn’t feel complete. Yeah. There’s just different forms of it and changing and changing and changing. And people creating the causes of suffering. The people who seem to be the most happy, who are beautiful and powerful and rich, in many cases, these are the people who are creating more causes of suffering than the so called suffering people, the obvious suffering people.
Compassion arises by being aware of that, feeling that, and not wanting those beings to have that suffering. Thinking how wonderful it would be if they didn’t have that, and especially how wonderful if they stopped creating the causes for it. Yeah. Because while people create the causes, they’re going to suffer. And then there’s the, you know, even more powerful compassion that thinks that I will help them stop creating the causes.
And I will do everything necessary to help them create the causes, stop creating the causes. And then there’s great compassion that that thought extends to everyone without exception, human, nonhuman, friend, stranger, and especially the enemies. The which meant, you know, personal enemies, all the terrible people in the world. How wonderful if they, especially they, stop creating the causes of suffering. Question?
Yes, of course. But I am talking about bodhicitta. We have assumed when you renounce this life that is developing love and compassion for yourself. Is the first major step in being really loving and compassionate towards yourself because you’re you’re renouncing, you’re deciding I am going to stop creating the causes of suffering because being attached to this life leads me to develop attachment, to strengthen my attachments and when I’m not successful with my attachments I get angry and I get proud when I’m successful with my attachments and jealous when I’m not. Yeah?
And so I create a whole lot of negative karma. So developing compassion, I I try to let go of that. And I start creating the causes of a good life by engaging in virtue which is going to bring me happiness, means I’m starting to really love myself. And I did say in an earlier talk that in order to develop love and compassion for yourself, you first have to develop to yourself. But here I’m talking about the actual causes of generating bodhicitta, which is not about developing, you you’ve already done that.
And this is just increasing it because developing compassion and love for others are the most virtuous minds which are going to bring you know, the I, me, the greatest happiness. When I’m loving others and having compassion for them, I am immediately creating the cause for myself to have happiness and freedom from suffering. Right? Right. And I did say that love was wanting oneself and all sentient beings to have happiness.
Compassion is the mind wanting self and others, But it’s usually emphasized on others. But of course, to be able to love others I did say this last week, think that in order to develop bodhicitta, you have to renounce this life because if you haven’t renounced this life and renounced saṃsāra, you’re telling yourself it’s possible to be happy and avoid suffering in saṃsāra. Therefore, it’s okay for other people to be in saṃsāra. But if you realize saṃsāra sucks, your own saṃsāra is awful, it’s absolutely the pits, then you realize, all these other people I care about, they’re in saṃsāra. That means that they are having a you know, they’re in this terrible situation.
I don’t want them to be. So the more we know our own situation, the more we know the situation of others. So the more we want real happiness, yeah, and the more we realize that what we want is this perfect laugh lasting happiness that Lama Yeshe, the great magician, tried to point out, the more we realize that that’s what everyone wants, but they don’t even know it, and they’re not doing anything about about it. You know? That natural wish for love, you know, for perfect happiness gets twisted into self-cherishing.
The easy happy now. Oh, here it is. You know, easy now. We’re at sorry. I will stop.
Tea time or coffee time, whatever time, whatever brings you happiness. So someone forgot to ring the bell. So we’re over. So unfortunately, there’s no time to do the meditation. Not my fault this time, you know.
But there’s five minutes, so are there some questions? Final questions? Anything? Everything is completely yes? Well, is just another way of saying how do you cultivate equanimity?
What are the main points, which you are? How do cultivate equanimity? No, that’s too advanced. Yes. Impermanence realizing that those those categories aren’t aren’t fixed.
Yeah. It’s due to our self-cherishing. Yep. Yep. Those are the main things.
At a deeper level a way to cultivate equanimity, I didn’t explain because is through understanding emptiness that those labels don’t know, there’s not an inherently existing friend, enemy, stranger, but these are merely labeled by the mind. So it’s only because we label something in a particular way that it appears back as that. We label something but then because of our in this case because of our self-cherishing we label people friend, enemy, stranger but then due to our ignorance you know that appears back as though that’s a real enemy not something that we’ve decided determined. I mean, we have we may have valid reasons for thinking someone is friend, enemy, or stranger, but due to our ignorance, those labels that we’ve put on people appear back as though that they are really, from their own side, a friend, an enemy, a stranger. So the more we can understand that this is really depending on our mind, then that really helps to break down those categories.
For people who have studied this a little bit, it’s really helpful to reflect about how someone can only appear as an enemy if we label them. Of course label doesn’t mean call them you’re my enemy but labeling means about our conceptualizing mind conceives of that person in a particular way which by using words is like enemy or harmer or bad person blah blah blah. And and we do that instinctively. We we don’t do that necessarily in any conscious logical way. Most of the time, this is something that we just do due to beginningless imprints, our self-cherishing, bong, we conceive of that person in that way.
And then only because of that can they appear that way. From their side, nothing can force us to experience itself in a particular way. It all depends on our mind because if things, you know, from their side could force us to experience them in a particular way, then everyone would experience the same things, the same people in the same way. But who we see as enemy none of you see enemies, but me, I do. You know, enemy is a very heavy term, but, know, this is another thing.
There’s just it’s just a word here meaning someone one momentarily dislikes. No. I’ve lost my point. Yeah. If if this was a truly existing enemy that didn’t depend on my mind labeling them that way, then everyone would see that person as an enemy.
But they don’t. Some people like that person. That’s that that person who is my enemy is someone’s best friend. Yes, yes. Yes, when one guy kicks a goal, he’s a hero to some people and terrible to others, right?
Yeah. But if they were something from their own side, everyone would experience them in the same way. But it depends on our mind. They’re not really like that from their side because if they were also it would follow that the Buddhas would see this person as an enemy because they really are a bad person. But Buddhas don’t see that at all.
Anyway, again, just to conclude, something I say many, many, many, many, many times, and I will say many, many, many times again, but with all of the teachings, bodhicitta actually is not difficult to understand. All the points of bodhicitta I don’t think they’re not intellectually difficult to understand. They may for some people difficult to accept, you know, all sentient beings as one’s mother. Anyway, much of the Buddhist teachings I think are easily easy to understand and you can hear it and think, oh, yeah, that’s true. You know, I agree with that blah blah blah blah blah.
But peep so many people, so much of the time, think that once they’ve heard something one time and understood it, that’s it. I hear people who literally say, Oh, I’ve done bodhicitta. Don’t have to do it again. You know, I’ve done the course, done it. You know, we could do this course a million times and we haven’t done bodhicitta.
We need to hear it a million times to change our mind, but actually that wasn’t the point I was trying to make. On top of apart from hearing things a million times, we have to meditate on them a billion times. Even though we know it, you know, in one sense intellectually, superficially. We know it, we understand it, we’ve got it, but we it hasn’t we don’t have the realization of it. It hasn’t transformed our mind.
It’s not a spontaneous lived experience. Yeah. And that’s what we’re trying to get. A realization is where one lives something. You know?
One doesn’t just crank it up as a thought. It’s something that you you live, you experience as part as an authentic part of of of one’s life. And so we have to meditate on these things which intellectually understand. Firstly, we have to meditate on them to get a correct intellectual understanding of them, but we have to continue No, think what’s happening is that the Zoom link is pressing on the Yes, I know because I’ve put it on the wrong way because I couldn’t be bothered. Yeah, think that I’ve been concerned about.
Oh, but you can hear it. Well, it’s a lot of static. I’m I’m about the Oh. I might have got two words more to say. No, I forgot what I was gonna say.
Okay, listen listen to bodhicitta. We have to meditate on. Yes, yes again and again. Yeah that was it. And even when we get the realization we need to keep meditating because one can lose realizations.
In theory what just generally speaking one can say what distinguishes a realization is that it’s something that lasts whereas like one can get little moments which may last like moments or minutes or days or weeks but then they fade away. But a realization is something that is lasting but again that’s also relative. It’s only at a very very high level of spiritual accomplishment that realizations are really like absolutely embedded in the consciousness and I should know what level that is but I don’t but it’s you know way up there. But at a more ordinary level to gain a realization it does mean it’s something more or less permanent but it’s not completely permanent so if one doesn’t refresh it that it can be lost. But of course, to refresh to gain a realization takes lots of time and energy, but once one’s gained it to keep it going only takes a little bit of effort, but it still requires that.
So we really do need to meditate on these things more and more and not be satisfied thinking I’ve really got this. I don’t have to hear about this anymore. I don’t have to meditate on it. All of this is meant to be meditate on all this life, lifetimes. Okay.
Thank you very much. I hope the homework is clear what’s to be done. Yes. Okay. Yeah.
So tomorrow night for those interested, I’m giving a little talk, just a one off talk on the Gelugpa tradition. So we follow the Gelugpa tradition of Lama Tsongkhapa here. So I’m just giving a little talk about sort of a bit of a history and some of the features of the Gelugpa tradition because of Lama Tsongkhapa because I think it’s useful for people if one’s following Buddhism through a Gelugpa center it’s kind of useful to know something about the Gelugpa center, who Lama Tsongkhapa was, the main monasteries and some of the practices etc etc. So if you’re interested that’s tomorrow night. If you’re not interested that’s okay.
So how to dedicate the merit? So it’s on page eleven. Through the merits of these virtuous actions may I quickly attain the state of a guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious body not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline but increase forevermore.
Also just to remind you that there is the retreat on the last Sunday of course. Please I really encourage people to come to that to meditate together on bodhicitta to bring some vegetarian food to share with everyone. There’s something else. And everyone’s able to download the the the m p three if they want? Sort of.
Yeah. Sort of. Okay. The other thing just sorry to conclude. That’s what I was trying to say.
Is some people aren’t doing the homework. I can’t make you do the homework, but the whole point of this course is to do homework. It’s really an integral part of the course and the better you do that, there’s no passing or failing of it. It’s just the the more you engage with the homework, the more you’ll get out of it really. And it’s also helpful for me to know what people are understanding by what I’m saying because what I intend and what people understand sometimes is quite different.
Also people you know yeah so that’s also very helpful when people write comments about how they’re going and good and bad. It’s very helpful for me, but also good for you, I think. But to do the homework, the meditations, also to write what some people, yeah, often don’t put anything. Not even for those people who do the homework, people don’t there’s the part about what did you find helpful or interesting and what you found difficult. Some people don’t write anything ever about that.
There must be something you find interesting. Just write something. This bit was okay. This bit I didn’t understand. And to remind you, when I ask about the difficulties, I’m not asking people about how they find it difficult to practice because like I said it’s all difficult to practice.
It’s more like difficult to understand or emotionally accept. I’m interested in to know what you find difficult to accept this bit or either from I don’t understand it or I don’t like that, I don’t accept that. Is rubbish. That’s very helpful. Really please try and do the homework.
It’s very simple. You’re not passing or failing. You’re not being judged in any way. It’s beneficial for you. It’s helpful for me.
Thank you very much.