Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 22-minute talk, Ven Thubten Dondrub cuts through abstractions to explain why daily meditation practice matters at all. He opens with the Buddhist bedrock: nothing protects us from suffering except caring for the mind itself, which operates continuously whether we notice it or not. The core practice, he argues, is mindfulness—a specific mental quality distinct from mere awareness—paired with alertness that recognizes whether your current state of mind is virtuous or non-virtuous. He clarifies the basic Buddhist equation: virtue naturally produces peace and happiness; non-virtue produces suffering. Dharma practice, he emphasizes, simply means anything that reduces delusions and disturbing thoughts. The practical answer he arrives at is establishing a daily meditation, which calms the mind like a polishing mirror and creates the stability needed to sustain mindfulness throughout daily life. Aimed at practitioners beginning or refining a personal practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2014 02 25 DB Daily Practice Week 8 250214 PT 1.mp3
UUID: 552a6211-a290-4afc-869b-6ec044c07431
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Daily Practice (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2014-02-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 22.1 minutes
Words: ~667
The last talk, establishing a daily practice. So to make this time. So then, just for a short time: nothing guarantees happiness and protection from suffering at all. The only thing that does is taking care of the mind. So since the mind is operating twenty four seven and forever, day after day, forever, the essence of the Dharma practice is trying to be aware as much as possible. Mindful.
Just aware, but mindful. Mindfulness is a particular mental factor and and a practice that goes with using that mental factor that is very important. And awareness, but it has a special quality. What the term — the Tibetan term for that is translated as mindfulness — is. And Sanskrit So what that means is not just ordinary awareness of knowing clearly, being really conscious of what is going on.
What the term has — to be successful, to remain out of jail and away from the cops as much as possible, you need a lot of awareness, but no mindfulness. So there’s a big difference between awareness and mindfulness. What we are trying to do, be in our life as following the Buddhist teachings with any intention is mindful. Knowing our state of mind and knowing whether that state of mind is virtuous or non virtuous. Because if it’s virtuous, there’s the the very it means there’s some peace that happens.
Right? This is the basic Buddhist equation of virtue equals happiness. Virtue is a state of when one is in a state of being virtuous, one has some basic happiness, and one is creating that virtue is the cause of happiness. Whereas non virtue is suffering, and it is creating the cause of suffering. That’s why we need to be mindful of what state of mind we’re in.
So and what goes with that mindfulness is this mental factor of alertness that tries to correct or either maintain the and encourage the virtuous state, or correct the non virtuous states. So that’s the basic Buddhist practice of Dharma. There there are many definitions word, the sense that we’re Dharma means phenomena. That’s all it means, actually, in that one level. But it means the Buddhist teachings.
It means the truth, the highest truth, the truth of phenomena. So in terms of just meaning the Buddhist teachings teachings and Buddhist practice, what is what what makes something Dharma? The answer is anything that reduces the delusions is Dharma practice. And we do with the intention to modify our disturbing thoughts. That is Dharma practice.
That’s the essential Dharma practice. And, of course, we can do that for our own temporary benefit. We can do it in order to get out of saṃsāra. We can practice this in order to eventually achieve nirvana, or we can do it to eventually achieve enlightenment. But that’s the basic practice.
That’s what we need to do as much as possible. So yeah. So what So so to be mindful, to help us to be mindful, we need to have as much as possible a calmer mind. The calmer our mind is, the clearer it is, it acts like a mirror. It reflects more But what what is also really vital is to to establish a daily practice.
Alright. Didn’t think I was talking about the topic, did you? I was all the time secretly. What we need to do is establish a daily practice which is about working with our mind as directly as possible because especially if we can establish a daily practice of doing some meditation that whatever kind of meditation you do, whether it’s it’s concentration meditation or analytic meditation, whatever kind of meditation you do, it has the effect of calming our mind and bringing our mind into a virtuous state. And that enables us to be more mindful.
And, of course, if we can, through establishing a daily practice, become a little bit more skillful, you know, over time in working with our mind, meditation, So yes.