Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 80-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub explores the nature and potential of mind from a Mahāyāna Buddhist perspective, opening with a foundational question: what explains existence—a creator God, materialism, or mind itself? He presents the Buddhist definition of mind as “that which is clear and knowing,” argues it cannot be a product of the brain, and addresses the philosophical problem of causation by showing that mind must be beginningless, with each moment arising from the previous one. This leads to a striking conclusion: if mind is formless and continuous, we have had infinite past lives, making every sentient being our former mother. Dondrub then contrasts two paths forward—achieving nirvana, a state of personal liberation but solipsistic bliss where one cannot benefit others, versus pursuing enlightenment, where the mind awakens to omniscience pervaded by compassion and the capacity to help all beings perfectly. He supports the Buddhist view with examples including Ian Stevenson’s research on children who remember past lives and his own witness account of recognizing a Tibetan lama reincarnated as a Spanish boy. The teaching includes discussion groups, practical meditation guidance on tracing mind’s continuity, and questions from participants about personality, death, and the relationship between brain and consciousness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2015 06 23 DB Mind & its Potential Week 2 230615.mp3
UUID: f8dc2c2a-9c2e-4d0a-bc07-458fe8dc5c10
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Mind and its Potential (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2015-06-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 80.0 minutes
Words: ~8,669
You don’t wanna don’t here. What do want? It’s it’s just beginner stuff. Oh, it’s great. Now you make me uncomfortable.
So just before we start, just to remind you that can you please put your homework that I’m sure you’ve all done in the blue folder. Next to that is this week’s homework and next to that is some discussion questions, because we’ll have discussion groups tonight. So the list of discussion groups has been posted up by Judy, our SBC, and they are located the list is just on the notice board just out here. Year and on the notice board. Right.
So just just check what group you’re in. And after the break, we will go into into those discussion groups. You’ll have to find a a location for maybe group one and two. Well, no. We better do that now.
Group one can be in here. Group two in the at the lounge. There’s usually two groups in here. Yeah. Okay.
Group three is also in here, and group four In the office. In the office, but there’s six people. You have to take a couple of chairs. There’s four there. So there should be six people in each group.
Okay, welcome everyone to our second class on Mind and Its Potential. So this is taught from Mahāyāna perspective. And According to the Buddhist teachings, we do have a mind. Our mind has this amazing potential to bring incredible benefit and happiness to ourselves, but that is the pure mind has that potential, the true nature of our mind. But the obscured mind, which unfortunately we’re experiencing now, that potential, that mind has great potential to bring great suffering to ourselves and harm to others.
So the whole point of Buddhist practice is to take care of our mind, cultivating our mind, protecting our mind from the disturbing thoughts that are the cause of suffering and cultivating the positive potentials of our mind, which are the real source of genuine peace, contentment and happiness and well-being. And so the basic motivation for doing this is so that we can achieve a good rebirth. But in working for a good rebirth, of course this life will have less suffering and more peace and contentment. But the basic motivation for using the Buddhist, from a Buddhist point of view, basic motivation for using the Buddhist teaching should be to help us achieve a good rebirth. A greater, deeper motivation is to practice the teachings and work with our mind so that we can eventually free our mind of all limitations and the causes of suffering and become totally free of cyclic existence, the need to take suffering rebirths over and over again.
But the most profound, wonderful motivation we can have, the most meaningful motivation we can have for working with our mind is not just to benefit ourself in this life, future lives, or to benefit ourselves by becoming free of saṃsāra and achieving the state of nirvana, but we can work with our mind in order to achieve the full potential of our mind, the enlightened state, because it is that enlightened mind that cannot harm any being in any way at any time, and only benefit others and only benefit them in a perfect, lasting way. So by achieving enlightenment, we can reach a stage where we can repay the kindness of sentient beings, which we have received in every possible way, life after life from every sentient being. And all these beings are suffering in saṃsāra and most of them, most human beings are experiencing more suffering than ourselves. Certainly the beings trapped in the other realms, or most of the other realms, the beings in those realms are experiencing far, far greater suffering than ourselves. So if we think about these things more and more, we can generate that bodhicitta motivation for working with our mind, the thought developing that thought that no matter what, I must achieve enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.
So that’s the motivation we can have for trying to, to have for studying this course, this subject of mind and its potential. So as we try and generate that motivation, we can reinforce it by saying the traditional prayer of refuge in bodhicitta, which is on page ten. So if you feel comfortable to join in, please do so. And traditionally as one recites this prayer to make it more effective, one thinks of the Buddha in front of oneself, having a hollow body of golden light seated on a lion throne, lotus, sun and moon. So we think of the Buddha as the embodiment of the Three Jewels of refuge, also the embodiment of all our perfect teachers of the past, present and future.
We can think of the Buddha appearing in front of us to remind us of our Buddha nature and appearing there to inspire us to achieve, to realize our Buddha potential. But also as we think of the Buddha in front of us, can try and visualize, imagine all sentient beings surrounding us. So the tradition is to think of your mother on your left, doesn’t matter whether she’s alive or not, we think of our mother on our left, our father on our right, and although psychologically we would like to put our family and friends and helpers in front, the idea is to put them behind us, to reduce our attachment to them, and the people we don’t want to think about, the people who don’t like us or we don’t like, who may have even harmed us, those people we would like to think far away from us, we are encouraged to imagine them directly in front of us, not to generate negative thoughts towards them, but to try and force ourselves to realize that these beings are really in essence no different than my mother, father, family, friends and so on. They have Buddha nature. They have been immensely kind to me in past lives and they are suffering.
So really they deserve my compassion, not my aversion or indifference. So this is what we can try and do as we say this prayer. Or if you don’t want to say the prayer, then at least try and generate a good motivation for being here and learning about the mind. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings.
So that we can think the Buddha is pleased with our motivation and shows this by now coming towards the crown of our head. And then we imagine that when the Buddha is directly above our crown, the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light so that that light can then pour down into us, blessing our mind. So then just for a short time we can enhance that positive state of mind by briefly doing the nine round breathing exercise just to let the mind become that much calmer, clearer, more concentrated so that we can use that more subtle level of mind to listen to and think about the Buddhist teachings tonight. Okay. Thank you.
Right. So there are basically three explanations of what’s going on, why things exist. There is the explanation given by the various theistic groups, the religions that exist in the world that posit that there is a creator who has created everything and those theistic religions and systems also argue that there is a soul or an Ātman. Then there is the materialist view that says there is no creator, there is no future lives, there is just this life, there is just physical matter. So this is becoming the dominant view around the world.
Certainly in the Western world it’s become the dominant view in many ways. And then there is the Buddhist view that there is mind, that there is mind, which is defined as you may, hope you remember, the very simple but profound definition of the mind as it’s given in the Mahāyāna tradition, is that which is clear and knowing. So the mind is not something physical or a product of physical matter such as the brain, but it is this formless arising or giving rise to experience and knowing and with that in every moment of giving rise to experience, of giving rise to knowing something, there is a feeling associated with it, either a pleasant, neutral or unpleasant feeling. So the Buddhist view of the mind is that it is not the brain and it is not a byproduct of the brain. But of course, unfortunately this is extremely difficult to prove.
But it’s also, I would say, very difficult to disprove that the mind doesn’t exist, as the Buddha posits it. It’s difficult to prove, but it’s also difficult to disprove. So if the materialist view is true, I find it’s a pretty depressing view of life, that there’s only this life and that really nothing has much meaning whatsoever. And yeah, let’s not say too much about the theistic views because that could be interpreted in the wrong way. So anyway, if mind exists, we don’t really need to talk about a soul because what is posited as the soul in theistic religions or the Ātman, my knowledge it’s described a lot, not that I’ve studied the theistic religions, but it seems to perform many of the functions of what mind does, but without the philosophical faults that comes with believing that there is this inherently existing essential thing called the soul that goes on and on forever.
So, yes, it’s very difficult to prove that the mind exists, but to say that the mind is, I don’t think many scientists say the mind is exactly the brain because that’s just too simplistic, but they say that the mind is a byproduct of the brain. But to say that, that that’s all the mind is, that it is a byproduct of the brain, I think I may be wrong and you can debate, don’t debate too much with me, but you can think about this yourself, but it seems to me that that is like saying that for example, if you watch a TV programme or a movie on a laptop, that it’s the laptop that is producing the movie. But it’s not. You need the laptop and all what’s there, which I have no idea what’s in there that makes those images appear on the screen. But of course this machine creates those images, but it can only create those images because another process occurred whereby a TV programme or a film was made, which was then electronically delivered and transmitted into this thing or can be reproduced by this.
But this machine didn’t make the movie. Right? It just regenerates that image. So just because when we’re experiencing something, our brain is doing something, what that brain is doing is not the same as what we’re experiencing. It’s something else.
And because some machines are showing the brain is being active in a particular way and a particular part of the brain is functioning at that point, which indicates a certain thing is happening. Yes, it’s indicating that, but that is not the whole picture. This is the point. Buddhism, as I said last week, doesn’t deny anything that science can say about how the brain works. That this part of the brain affects this kind of thing and this part of the brain affects this and when this is happening in the brain, it indicates thus and thus.
Buddhism doesn’t deny any of that, but it says that’s just part of the picture. And it’s only the gross mind that depends on the brain. His Holiness many times says that for someone who has worked with their mind through meditation and achieved a certain degree of facility in meditation, the more one is able to go deeply into the mind, even if we’re talking just about the gross level of the mind, the more subtle levels of the gross level of mind are less and less dependent on our brain, the nervous system and this body. But the subtle mind and especially the very subtle mind don’t depend on this body at all. Anyway, that’s the Buddha’s view.
I’m not gonna say any more about it because it’s very difficult. It would be great to have some experts just spending a whole course on just trying to get someone like Alan Wallace to come and talk to us about his understanding of mine, but it is a very difficult thing to prove. But another way of looking at that is that if mind exists, then it is beginningless and endless. It means because it’s non physical. So if mind exists the way the Buddha taught, then there are past lives and there are people who can remember past lives.
So this suggests that the Buddhist view of the mind is true, and of course many people who claim to remember past lives are not necessarily genuine. They may be deluded, they may be lying, but if you scrap all of those people who are maybe lying or deluded, there have been many, many investigations of people, especially young children, who remember past lives. And these are people not necessarily who are Buddhist or brought up into a culture believing in past lives. But there are people all over the world who have small children have that experience of remembering. There’s not many of them, but there are significant numbers and scientific studies have been done of that to try and verify in various cases the validity of these memories.
And there is, I always remember, can never remember the exact title of the book, but there’s a book called something like twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation written by a, what is his name? I can never remember it. We should get this book for the library. It was printed a very long time ago. I have read it.
An English scientist. I say Ian Stevenson. Stevenson, isn’t it? Doctor who? Professor Ian Stevenson.
Ian Stevenson. Yeah. So he studied checked up the various young children. He recorded stories that they talked about of remembering a past life. And these kids gave many, many details.
And so then he checked whether these people did exist and he found many examples of where what these children recalled was completely accurate. A person with that name and living in that place and so on and so on did exist. In many cases, he took these children back to these places and they could recognise things and discover things that, you know, yeah, there’s many stories like that, many, many. And of course, then there’s experiences of Tibetan lamas and I won’t go into it because I’ve repeated, actually there’s many people here who may not have heard me talk about these things, but was Lama Zopa — this is Lama Zopa Rinpoche here. I was his attendant.
I had the good fortune, good karma to be Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s attendant for three years, so I had many interesting experiences during that time. And at the end of that time, and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s main teacher was Lama Yeshe who founded this centre and this worldwide organisation, the FPMT. He died in nineteen eighty four and reincarnated in Spain one year later to a Spanish couple who were his disciples, And this boy was officially recognised by his holiness, the Dalai Lama, but recognised by Lama Zopa Rinpoche before that. And I was with Lama Zopa Rinpoche when he recognised this little boy when he was seventeen months old, a little Spanish boy born in a little village in the south of Spain. And when he was seventeen months old, he was brought to Dharamsala in India and officially recognised in front of hundreds of people, including about twenty international photographers and news reporters behaving like total barbarians.
Because this actually, if you may not remember it, but it made world news in all the newspapers, Time Magazine, about the first time a westerner had been recognised as the incarnation of a Tibetan lama. And so I was there at that, and for some of you who may know, there is a ceremony which is done when llamas are recognised, but also there is a ceremony where one requests the long life of the Lama and during this ceremony various symbolic objects are offered to the Lama, one of which is a symbol of the universe and the Lama takes this and hands it to their attendant. Then a statue of the Buddha is given to the person and they place it to their forehead and give it to the attendant. And then a text symbolic of the Buddha’s speech is offered to the Lama who puts it to their forehead, gives it to the attendant. And also then a stupa such as like these, which is symbolic of the Buddha’s mind is offered to the Lama, he puts it to his head, gives it to the attendant.
So this ceremony was conducted unrehearsed in front of this small boy. It’s actually, you can watch it now on YouTube. You will see me when I was only, yeah, much younger and thinner than now standing right next to you know, just there, and the little boy was sitting here, this little Lama, and without there was no rehearsal ever. He was just brought into this room of several hundred people, put on the throne, the ceremony started, all these hundreds of people well, not hundreds, but maybe a hundred people lined up and started presenting him these things, including these four ritual things. And without any encouragement, rehearsal, hinting, suggesting nothing, he did it perfectly.
He took the mandala. He did not put it to his head because you don’t put it to your head. This was a seventeen month old Spanish boy. Yeah. He couldn’t even speak.
You know, he couldn’t talk. Yeah. And he gave it to me. And then he took the stupa and put it to his head and gave it to me. And of three things, seventeen months old.
You try and teach a seventeen month old boy to do that in front of three hundred people with cameras flashing and smashing all over the place. Yeah. That’s not just a fluke. Yeah. This is somebody who has some imprints from past lives.
And he did many things with all his ex student, this little boy, because there were many students of his previous life there. As I often mention, when Lama Yeshe was alive, he liked staying in Dharamsala a lot and there were two jeeps in Dharamsala because Dharamsala is a very hilly place. One was an old battered jeep, which was to do the shopping. And there was a nicer one, which was kept for Lama when he went various places. And every time that Lama came Lama Yeshe came back to Dharmasala, he would take whoever would well, this particular monk, who was an Australian monk called Max Redlich, who was the director of Tuśita Retreat Centre at the time.
Every time Lama came back from travelling around, he would take Max by the hand and go to the jeep and walk around the jeep and check if there was any damage. So when this little two year old Spanish boy was at Tuśita, he saw Max, took him by the hand, took him to where his jeep was, walked him around, and pointed to a scratch on the thing and glared at Max. How does that happen? How does a scientist explain that? Many stories among Tibetans of these things.
Many, many, many, many. Unbelievably many. But it’s happening all the time. As I often mention, when I was first a monk living at Chenrezig Institute, the local village, is now Eudlo, good old Eudlo with a population of about ten, had a post office. One day the post office lady, because I used to collect the post regularly from one of my many duties, apart from milking goats, cooking breakfast, all the things I used to do in my early days as a monk, was to collect the mail.
So the post lady said one day that her little grandson would talk about his past life. Yeah. And the point about when apparently when a lot of kids do this, they don’t sort of talk about it like a story, but it’s like they become that person, like remembering it. They become, you know, very interesting. I should mention this one, but in one of the twenty cases suggestive of reincarnation, one of the most convincing one for me was a young boy who remembered his past life where he was a man who was quite, how can you say, or he was married with children, he liked chasing, he was Indian, but he liked chasing after other ladies.
He had quite a string of other ladies, mistresses. So as a small boy of about five, he would tell his father of this life that he should get a mistress and then he would explain why in a lot of detail, the benefits. How would a little five year old boy know the benefits? And talking from a very experienced point of view, this little boy was. Anyway, yeah.
So anyway, difficult to prove, you know, because no matter how much information you give examples, if people don’t wanna prove believe something, they just simply won’t. And and scientific materialists don’t want to know about mind because it doesn’t fit in their paradigm at all. Not at all. Anyway, I shouldn’t insult scientific materialists. Okay, so it’s difficult to prove that mine exists, but this is the Buddhist view and there is many indications that it does exist.
So let’s assume that it does exist, but then the question arises, where does it come from, what creates it? So this is very interesting. So the Buddhist view is that, and this fits with the teachings on the law of cause and effect, that the nature of the cause determines the nature of the effect. So from Buddhist point of view, Buddhists argue that it is completely impossible for physical matter to create mind, because mind is not physical at all. It has none of the characteristics of physical matter.
The physical matter simply cannot create mind. Physical matter doesn’t know, it doesn’t experience. So how can it that which doesn’t know, which doesn’t experience, which doesn’t have feeling create something which does? Which is the very nature of knowing, experiencing and feeling. So therefore our parents, of course they create our body and the nervous system and the brain of our body, but they don’t create our mind.
Our mind doesn’t come from our parents’ mind. That’s just simply impossible. So the Buddhist view is the only thing that can create mind is something which has the same characteristics and the only thing which has the same characteristics as mind is mind. So then one could argue that maybe our parents’ minds create our mind. But there’s many problems with that.
Does our mind come from our mother’s mind, our father’s mind, a bit of both? But then if you think in any of those examples, it doesn’t make sense because the mind is not something physical, so you can’t sort of take a part of that mind and for it to become a separate entity. You can’t chop off a bit of your mother’s mind to make our own mind. And the Buddhists argue that if that was the case, if somehow that was possible, it would have to follow that if our mind came from our mother’s mind or our father’s mind, we should know everything our mother knows or what our father knows, or we would have exactly the same characteristics of our mother or father. And of course, we do tend as children of our parents to have some kind of characteristics similar to our parents, but not always, but that similarity can be explained just by influence.
But we’re not exactly the same, and we don’t know the things our mother and father know. We don’t experience the same things. But if our mind was part of our parents’ mind, came from our parents’ mind, that would tend to be the case. And therefore it also follows that our mind couldn’t come from the mind of the creator, that our mind is somehow part of the creator’s mind because if it was, we would have to have the same knowledge, the same experience of that creator mind. But again, if it’s mine, it can’t split up, break away in form or other.
It’s just not possible. So the Buddhist view is the reason our mind exists today is because it is the result, it is the continuum from yesterday’s mind. The only reason our mind exists today is because our mind existed yesterday. And yesterday’s mind existed depending on the day before. This week’s mind exists because of last week’s mind.
This month’s mind exists because it’s the continuum of last month’s mind. This year’s mind exists because it’s the continuum of last year’s mind and this life’s mind exists because it is a continuum coming from the mind immediately before this life. So one has a moment of consciousness and that moment of consciousness exists depending on a previous moment of consciousness. And that depends on the previous moment of consciousness, which depends on the previous moment of consciousness, which depends on the previous moment of consciousness, and the previous and the previous and the previous going back and back without beginning, without beginning. There is no beginning to our mind at all.
And what we tend to think is, but it must have a beginning because I can’t imagine beginninglessness. It must have started sometime. But if you say that, then you have to again ask what started it? Who started it? And then you have to say a mother, one of my previous mothers started my mind, my father started my mind, both or a creator started my mind and you have the same problems.
So the Buddhist view is that our mind is a discrete entity. My mind is not your mind, it is a separate discrete entity and it exists because of a previous moment going back and back and back without any beginning. But that means we’ve had an awful lot of previous lives. An infinite number of previous lives. And for most of our lives, just like with this one, we’ve had a mother.
So we’ve had infinite previous mothers. That’s one of the implications, what follows logically from the Buddhist view of our mind being clear and knowing. If this phenomena exists, if this clear phenomena, clear and knowing phenomena exists, it means it’s beginningless and that means we’ve had an infinite number of mothers. And who are these infinite number of mothers? Every sentient being.
Every sentient being has been our mother. If mind exists, every sentient being has been our mother and every sentient being has been our mother many, many times. And every sentient being has been our father many times and so on. Every sentient being has been our brother many times, biggest brother, little brother, second brother, third brother, many many times. Everyone has been our sister, the oldest sister, younger sister, middle sister, times.
That’s what follows if if mind is that which is clear and knowing. But it also follows that our mind, being formless, is something that is never going to cease. It just goes on and on. So the gross mind of this life ceases because it does arise, it’s functioning depending on this body, this particular body, this particular nervous system, this particular brain. So that gross mind ceases but then it doesn’t mean everything about a mind ceases.
There is that very, very subtle mind which is beginningless. That continues, that continues and it gives rise to another gross mind in another life. So that process goes on and on and on without end. This is saṃsāra. If if we don’t do anything about it, saṃsāra goes on.
Birth and death and rebirth and death and rebirth and death over and over again. So we have this possibility of remaining in saṃsāra, having a mind control, okay. Sorry, any questions so far? I’ll just take a short break from what I was trying to say. Yeah.
Can I ask a question? Mhmm. It’s not gonna be so difficult, but but just Can you try and speak a little bit louder so people can hear? Knows that he has reincarnation? How does he how does Lama’s apparent know he’s an incarnated Lama?
That’s a good question. You’d have to ask him. But one Australian monk, being an Australian monk, asked Lama Zopa this question many, many, many years ago and and Lama Zopa replied with two words. He said, after some time after a pause, he looked at this monk and said, because of the sudden, how do you know you’re this, you know, the incarnation of the current Dalai Lama? And Lama Zopa Rinpoche looked at him for a little while and said, mental experience.
Meaning he could remember. These days, he doesn’t say that. He says he doesn’t remember anything. But he was also recognized by some some lamas as the incarnation. He passed the test.
Yes. I think, yeah, the mind becomes much more obscure, you know, this for some young people, you know, the mind is less is more clear at that time and those memories, maybe for some reason there’s some very strong imprint and they remember them for some time. In all of those studies that were made by Stevenson, I think these children forgot after some time. But there was a period where they had some of these very vivid memories. So one of the important implications also of the mind existing and being formless and knowing is that our mind does go on forever, it will never cease.
So from a Buddhist point of view, well our mind itself, the mind itself is naturally pure and free of defilement, just like water, but water itself, pure water by definition is pure. There is that possibility that water can be completely pure. Just hydrogen and oxygen. Right? That nice little combination of hydrogen and oxygen, and you have water.
But that water can then be polluted. You can get very muddy, disgusting water. But that’s not the true nature of water. The true nature of water is just water. The true nature of mind is that it is able to know everything perfectly, clearly, unmistakenly, and when it does it, the only way you can know things perfectly and unmistakenly is with the qualities of love and compassion and so on.
There’s no way a pure mind knows anything with hatred or with fear, anxiety, jealousy, doubt, etcetera. Right? Impossible. So the nature of our mind is pure and blissful, but our mind is obscured. It is obscured by this basic mental factor called ignorance, whereby we do not experience, we do not know ourselves accurately.
Ignorance creates a false appearance of false experience of who we are and of how everything exists. Because of that fundamental ignorance that’s obscuring our mind, we have all these other disturbing thoughts, particularly afflicted desire, attachment, anger, pride and jealousy. And those obscure our mind, bring suffering, we act on them, generate karmic imprints, which those karmic imprints ripen, or the negative ones ripen to bring suffering, and bring all sorts of different kinds of rebirths. That whole experience is saṃsāra. saṃsāra is our mind controlled by delusion and karma.
That is what saṃsāra is basically. More accurately, it’s the five aggregates under the control of delusion and karma, but more specifically, it’s our mind under the control of delusion and karma. So the interesting thing is that also really irritates people is that our mind is beginningless, it’s never been created, it’s always existed and that mind has always been pure. It’s always existed in that pure state, but that pure mind has always been obscured. Those obscurations, that ignorance that forces us to experience ourself and everything in a false way, that ignorance has always existed with the mind.
It’s always obscured the mind. It never started. That also is beginningless. Nothing came along and put this ignorance into us. Nothing came along and created, started delusion.
It’s always been there, always. So we have two choices really. Our mind is always going to go on giving rise to experience. This body will grow old and die and even if it doesn’t, well mine’s growing old, but even if you’ve got a body that hasn’t, you know, under the category of being old yet, is very subject to all sorts of attacks and slings of outrageous fortune that can damage it and kill it and one can die at any time. But the mind associated with it, that just keeps going or the very subtle mind that is existing with this thing just keeps going on and on and on.
So there are two ways it can go on and on. One is it go on in the state of saṃsāra, of suffering. If we don’t do anything about our mind, the samsaric mind is self perpetuating. That is we will take rebirth over and over and over again, and most of those rebirths will be pretty miserable. There are some good rebirths, but they’re few and far between.
And even in the good rebirths, like what we have now, you know, we have bad experiences, you know, then some good ones, but bad ones come. And even as we’re experiencing the good ones, we’re growing old. All right, so this just goes on and on and on forever if we do nothing about it. But the other thing is that we can work with our mind and follow the path away from suffering. So that’s what the Buddha’s teachings are about.
The Buddha came to this earth to say that we have a mind, and the nature of our mind is absolutely wonderful. We have this Buddha, Buddha quality, this Buddha potential, and yet, but our mind, that Buddha potential is obscured. And if we don’t do anything about those obscurations, our mind will continue in this very samsaric way of some occasional happiness and then suffering over and over and over and over over and over again. And as we’re experiencing this suffering, we harm others, bring suffering to others and have very little benefit. But the other possibility is to work with our mind and free our mind of these obscurations.
So if we get rid of the gross obscurations of our mind, we can achieve nirvana. We can be liberated from saṃsāra and experience a state of eternal bliss. Which sounds pretty good. But the only drawback about nirvana from a Mahāyāna point of view is that in that state of nirvana, we personally experience this ongoing, eternal, perfect bliss. And in that state, we don’t harm anyone in any way.
It’s impossible, but in that state we can’t benefit anyone because we are just absorbed in this state of bliss. We are unaware of anything else other than the bliss of our mind, the bliss of our own mind. But that’s one possibility that we can go for to achieve nirvana, our own individual liberation, our own indivisible blissful liberation. The other possibility is to follow the path to enlightenment, to renounce nirvana and keep practising to remove the very subtle obscurations from our mind that prevent the mind experiencing complete omniscience, total awareness, undeceiving, total perfect awareness. And it is that mind, you know, that can be of brings perfect benefit to ourselves, enables us to be of perfect benefit to others.
So yes? If you have achieved nirvana, so you have personal liberation, absorbing this, but you’ve removed all the observations of your mind. So are we would you then be completely unaware of the suffering of other beings? Yes. You’re completely unaware of anything other than How can that be a removal of all the obscurations then?
Because It’s the removal of the obscurations of ignorance and the delusions, but it’s not the removal of all the obscurations. Remember, there are two levels of obscurations. They’re the obscurations to liberation and the obscurations to omniscience. So first one has to get rid of the obscurations to liberation and that frees the mind of saṃsāra. But the mind still has these subtle obscurations.
I wish you’d note that away. Oh. Yes, it’s okay. I just said it’s okay. It’s very okay for oneself.
But as the Mahāyāna teachings say, it only benefits one person, one being, is oneself. But in that state, one isn’t able to be a great benefit to others or any benefit to others. Hypothetically, and this is a question of ontology, what would happen if the Mahāyāna goal of achieving enlightenment for all sentient beings, so there’s no reason to keep coming back and we don’t achieve enlightenment. What would then happen to this sense saṃsāra that we experience now? Would it just kind of fall away?
Which saṃsāra? Well, the reality that we’re experiencing, yeah. Well, would come to an end. When you achieve nirvana, this reality will come to an end. Even when we die, very limited reality will come to an end.
Don’t worry. I think it’s very difficult for us to comprehend or maybe not for me to comprehend these things. I don’t think we have to worry about that too much. But there’s still the enlightened mind existing. Right.
I don’t wanna say too much more tonight. I’m trying to not bombard you with lots of I’m trying to break it up in over the week over the weeks. Any more questions? Oh. Well, yeah, quickly.
Yeah. I was gonna say, if someone has achieved nirvana, are they if they were to die in that state, would they continue saṃsāra or would they sort of be No. If you achieve nirvana, you’re out of saṃsāra. That’s what it means. It’s the very opposite that you could say.
Yeah. Is the state, Yeah. That’s where I’m coming with. How is nirvana and enlightenment? How do they differ then if you’re out of saṃsāra?
When you’re out of saṃsāra and out of saṃsāra in nirvana, there is no suffering whatsoever. One experiences the state of, this is my understanding, my very limited understanding of it, an Arhat is experiencing a state of mind, a meditative state, a meditative absorption that is completely free of all suffering and where the natural bliss of the mind is being experienced, but that’s all. You have no awareness of any external environment whatsoever. You’re unaware of other sentient beings. Someone who’s an Arhat alive as a human being who’s purified their mind, as a living Arhat, an Arhat can go around being nice to people and teaching the Dharma and etcetera, etcetera, and can benefit.
But when that Arhat’s body dies and they go into the state of the non abiding, what is it called, the without remainder, nirvana without remainder, which means when you no longer have this contaminated body, it’s gone, then the mind totally absorbs into this meditative state of bliss. Whereas someone who is following the Mahāyāna path doesn’t do that, they renounce that experience, they let go of that and they free their mind of these subtle obscurations so that when enlightenment is achieved, that mind doesn’t absorb, do this kind of self absorption into bliss. It, you know, that’s why it was talked about enlightenment is awakening. Your mind awakens, in a sense your mind opens up to a total awareness of everything all the time. You know?
Sorry, it’s just like with our eyesight now, because we’re in this room, our eyesight can only see, you know, ten metres on either side. But when you, when you, you know, walk out into some space, your eyesight extends far, far greater. There’s nothing limiting it. Even with eyesight, you know, because it’s physically there’s some limitations, but you know, but so awakening is like where there’s absolutely nothing limiting, not just your eyesight, your consciousness which has this ability to this potential to directly perceive things. So in that enlightened state, that potential is active, so your mental consciousness is utterly unrestricted.
There’s nothing blocking it in any way at any time. So you, you know, enlightened mind, your enlightened mind is knowing everything twenty fourseven and it’s not boring and it’s not confusing and it’s not tiring, because everything is absolutely vivid and precise and unmistaken. Sounds great. Good. Yeah.
It does. That’s the potential of our mind. Yeah. And the mind, you know, we can maintain a certain awareness of certain things in our life now. Sometimes we just can’t cope.
We just get tired. We just have to go to sleep. Or sometimes there’s just too much going on in our mind. We just can’t cope with it and we black out or have a nervous breakdown or something. Yeah.
But with an enlightened being, there’s none of that because there’s none of this false ego. There’s no mistaken perceptions that produce fear and worry and agitation and tiredness, you know, mental tiredness. There’s none of that. There’s just this unbounded mind operating all the time. Yeah?
And it’s blissed. It’s blissing out about everything. Everything is experienced as utterly blissful. Right? Utterly blissful.
And that mind is pervaded by great compassion because that’s a quality of mind, a natural quality of mind. So this blissful, omniscient awareness is constantly pervaded by great compassion and which is of course mixed with knowing exactly how to benefit any being in any moment and nothing limiting that mind from doing that. That is terrific. That’s us. That’s our true nature.
Can you believe that? Well you should. You should. Think about it. Tea break.
Might as well just to finish. It’s gonna hit the pause button. So any great questions come up that we can share? So what can I ask a question? Sure.
Sure. Happened with the personality of the person? What happens at death Yes. Finished. Is finished.
So it’s Finished. It comes with a different personality when it’s Yeah, because you may not even come back as a human being. Okay. So you may have a fantastic personality as a human being, but if you come back as a dog, you’re not gonna have that, you know, personality. Although some dogs have fantastic personalities, but you know.
And when moving the kid. Yeah. Is the personality attached to the brain or to the mind? What do you think? What do you think?
I think sometimes our lives are dislike. It depends on our mind. Any other comments on that? I think from a Buddhist point of view, we would say that the personality is definitely, that’s your mind. Your personality characteristics of liking this or liking that, being a half empty cup person or a full cup person or a optimistic person or whatever.
All these are expressions of your mind and also reflect sort of karmic imprints from past lives, of instincts and habits from past lives coming through. And of course, you know, those personality characteristics depend on the functioning of your brain for sure but it’s really, all of these things are a reflection of one’s mind. Someone’s very compassionate, someone is very jealous and someone is very this or that. So these are all mental qualities aspects of the mind. Is that how you’d say, like, say someone who grew up in the worst possible conditions can still be a beautiful person because it’s their karmic inquiry?
Yes. Yes. Yes. And vice versa. People can be brought up with wonderful parents and all sorts of, you know, good conditions and they, you know, they have very, you know, conventionally nasty personalities.
Where does the subconscious fit into? Buddhism itself doesn’t talk about the subconscious as such, but I would say personally, this is just a feature of the gross mind. This is an aspect of the gross mind which Western, I suppose Western science has identified and I think that’s a fair enough kind of understanding, but it’s not something that’s particularly talked about in a Buddhist context. The subconscious, right? Right.
But it’s also possible that what is sometimes referred to as the subconscious or things coming from the subconscious may be explained from the Buddhist point of view, from the point of view of karmic imprints possibly, but not not always, but in some cases that would would be the Buddhist view I I would imagine. Could they be correlated in a way? Because I recall reading his holiness speaking about the different levels of Buddha’s mind and how different experiences that we have can correlate in a way. So like in terms of awakening experience, level of the gross mind, and then dreaming, that’s accessing the subtle mind, and then deep sleep is the kind of very subtle mind. And then fainting, for example, as well, going from the gross level of mind to Well I think these are analogies because deep sleep isn’t experienced by the very subtle mind.
Not at all. That’s your gross mind doing that. Experiencing thoughts. Yeah. Many people latch onto the very subtle mind because the reason I mention it is because I think it’s very helpful to know about this tantric view of the mind because it makes clearer the fact that there is a certain level of the mind that is definitely dependent on the brain, but the very subtlest level of mind, that doesn’t depend on this body at all.
This is what has existed during beginningless time and will never cease. It is that very, very subtle mind, the primordial mind of clear light, the mind of clear light. That is what is going to transform into the omniscient mind of a Buddha. This gross mind isn’t going to do that. But this very subtle mind is not something that we can access at all.
It’s only through the practice of Tantra that you can access the very subtle mind and only the most advanced tantric practitioners can do so. So in some ways it’s best to forget about the very subtle mind at this level. Yeah, it’s not something, you know, even an Arhat isn’t experiencing the very subtle level of their mind. That can only be done through tantric practice. At the highest level of tantric practice and by the highest level of practitioners of the highest level.
We don’t have time to do this, but there is a list of meditation topics to think about and you may not have much to think about them but don’t worry, just try and reflect on these points as much as you can and maybe it will just raise some questions that you can ask in the class. But there’s one meditation that you could try to do which I haven’t listed. I was hoping we could do it now but there’s no time. But it’s a simple meditation to get a sense of the continuity of our mind. So one way you could do this is to take the example of being here at this centre.
So some people here have been coming in this group, have been coming to Buddha House for a few years now, some for a few months, and some of you maybe this is the first, this course means the first time you’ve been here. So then you just sort of think, you just try and trace your mind back to what led you here. But why am I here apart from catching a bus or driving here? I don’t mean that. I mean more like the motivation, what kind of events in your life brought you here and you think I’m here because someone suggested this and that and you just kind of take your mind back and back and back and back and back as far as you can to see how all these things are linked and just to get a sense of the continuity of your mind.
You may be able to take your mind back quite early into this life. But I may be mistaken about this, but I have understood that once someone achieves Samādhi, when they’ve developed single pointed concentration and they’re able to hold their mind effortlessly on one object for hours on end. If you do this meditation, not of how you came to Buddha house, but that general idea of tracing your mind, you know, thinking of some particular thing and what brought me to that thing or why am I interested in Buddhism, you know? What’s start, you know, now I’m interested in Buddhism. I may not completely believe in it, but the mere fact that you’re here shows you have some interest in it.
So, you know, what you think what brought what before that? You because one is now interested in the point that you’re actually here. So what brought me here? What motivated me here? And what was before that?
Before that? Before that? So if you do that kind of thing, that’s how you develop clairvoyance. Once once you’ve got Samādhi, you trace something back, back, back. Yeah.
Because yeah. And then you can go back and back, and eventually, you can go back to when you were born and when you were in the in the womb and then before. That’s how you develop Samādhi clairvoyance. Just tracing one of these past because I know there are other. Yeah.
Sorry. Well, yeah, the how you can remember past lives. Sorry. Thank you for that clarity, yes. But I think once you do that you can then project, you can develop the ability to also know other people’s minds through the same method.
Anyway, worth trying. But it just gets a sense, you start to get a sense of the continuity of one’s mind. That one moment of mind leads to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next. That’s going on, that’s always been going on. And it will never cease.
So basically we have the choice that our mind can go on like that, always agitated and confused and limited and suffering, or it can go on like that. Clean, clear my dear, as Lama Yeshe would say, clean, clear my dear. Blissful, totally clear, totally aware, and totally beneficial. Thank you very much. So we can dedicate, we’ve put some positive imprints into our mind so we can sort of seal those in our minds so they’re not lost and dispersed, watered down by dedicating that positive energy and dedicating it in the best possible way to achieving enlightenment by dedicating it to enlightenment that covers everything else, getting out of saṃsāra, having a good rebirth, having good things happen in this life.
So the dedication, if you’d like to join in, is page ten. Due to 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 bodhicitta, not yet born arise and grow, may that born have no decline but increase forevermore. Stop. Alright.