Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 87-minute teaching, Ven Thubten Dondrub explores the nature and potential of the mind as understood in Tibetan Buddhist psychology, moving far beyond abstract philosophy into concrete examination of how we actually know things. He opens by establishing the right motivation for practice—moving from self-interest through concern for future lives, to bodhicitta, the commitment to free all beings from suffering. He then shifts into direct investigation: what does each sense consciousness actually perceive? Your eye sees only shapes and colours, never a clock—your mind labels it. Your ear hears sounds, meaningful or not. Your nose, tongue, and body consciousness each know only their specific objects. From this foundation, he unpacks Buddhist psychology’s framework of primary minds and mental factors, explaining how the six sense consciousnesses work with fifty-one secondary mental factors to construct our entire experience of reality. The core teaching focuses on the six root afflictions—ignorance, attachment, anger, pride, doubt, and wrong views—showing how ignorance creates a false appearance of independent, inherent existence, which then fuels attachment and anger in an endless loop. He demonstrates that every negative mental state brings suffering feeling, while virtuous mental factors, being reflections of our Buddha nature, necessarily bring peaceful feeling. The session concludes with extended group discussion on sentient beings, karma and genetics, and animals’ demonstrated consciousness, grounded throughout in practical examples that challenge how we ordinarily perceive and relate to the world.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2015 07 07 DB Mind & its Potential Week 4 070715.mp3
UUID: 1b17bf66-c242-41dd-9773-a2257d557c71
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Mind and its Potential (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2015-07-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 87.5 minutes
Words: ~8,971
Welcome everyone to our nice to see you all again, even though some of you are so far away, so far away. So the lamas of the Kadam or the Tibetan tradition, I think they all emphasise how important it is that when we listen to the Buddhist teachings, we should try and listen with the right motivation. So the purpose of the Buddhist teachings is to help us to understand our mind and to recognise those negative aspects of our mind that bring suffering to our self and others, so that we can overcome those negative states of mind and recognise those positive states of mind that bring happiness and benefit to ourself and others and therefore cultivate those positive states of mind. So this is the basic purpose of the Buddha’s teachings and one can have the motivation for practising in this way, firstly simply for one’s own benefit, thinking of just this life, but in fact if we understand, we really start to understand the nature of our mind as being something formless and therefore that our mind goes on beyond this life, then it becomes obvious that we have to take care of our mind, not just for the benefit of this life but for future future lives.
And the more we understand the teachings, we can develop the motivation not just to have good rebirths, but actually to get out of that cycle of taking rebirths and free the mind completely from all limitations and be totally free of all suffering. But the greatest motivation that we can develop, especially as we understand and develop more faith in the Buddha’s teachings, is the bodhicitta motivation, which recognises that just as I want to be free of suffering and wish only happiness, it’s true for every sentient being without exception. And that bodhicitta motivation arises from recognising how oneself is intimately connected with every sentient being. There’s not one sentient being that we aren’t very, very, very closely connected to because we’ve received kindness in every possible way from every sentient being many, many, many times in the beginning of the saṃsāra and particularly we’ve received the kindness of the mother and father from every sentient being many times. bodhicitta also arises from recognising how all these beings who have been so kind to me, who I’m so dependent on, are suffering in saṃsāra and that most of them are experiencing at this very moment far more suffering than myself, with far less ability at the moment to make sense of their suffering, to be able to effectively deal with it, transform it and eliminate it.
So they’re quite helpless, and in their helpless situation, trying to be happy and free of suffering, most sentient beings much of the time are in reality creating the cause for more suffering, more saṃsāra. So thinking along these lines and also recognising our own Buddha nature, our own Buddha potential, and recognising right now that we have what is called the precious human rebirth, which gives us the optimum chance to free our mind. We can generate this thought that no matter what, I must use this life and all future lives to free my mind of every limitation, awaken all my positive qualities in order to achieve the enlightened state, which is the perfect state to repay the kindness, to properly repay the kindness of all sentient beings by helping them to be free of all causes of suffering, helping them to awaken all causes for fearless, everlasting happiness. So this is the motivation that we can try and generate right now because it’s the very best motivation. It’s the most powerful, the most optimistic, the most virtuous, the most embracing, amazing state of mind that one can possibly generate.
So even aspiring in that direction is incredibly beneficial and helps to, in some ways at least subdue all the agitation in our mind. So that makes it possible for us to hear the teachings properly, to be able to practice them properly, so that at some point we’ll hopefully in this life we’ll be able to gain or start gaining the realisations that lead us away from suffering towards good old, fearless, everlasting happiness. So as we try and cultivate this motivation, there’s the traditional prayer that we can say to help do this, which was composed by the great Indian master, Lama Atisha, And as we say this prayer, to make it more powerful, we try and visualise Śākyamūni Buddha or think of the Buddha present directly in front of us as the embodiment of the Three Jewels of refuge, reminding us of our Buddha potential, inspiring us to realise it, and at the same time trying to think of all sentient beings surrounding us, particularly those that we’re most connected to in this life. So our mother on our left, father on our right, family, friends and helpers behind us, enemies in front, and then as much as possible opening our hearts and minds to an awareness and concern for all other living beings, all other sentient beings.
So this prayer is on, in case you’ve forgotten, it’s on page ten. 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 then we can imagine the Buddha being very pleased with our motivation and showing this by now approaching the crown of our head and then when directly above our crown we can imagine the Buddha then dissolving into blissful golden light so that that light can then pour down into us, blessing our mind. So then briefly doing the nine round breathing exercise just to allow our mind to become that much more calmer, clearer, concentrated so that we can use that level of mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight.
Okay. Thank you. So in in teaching a subject like the the the Dharma, the Buddhist teachings, there’s inevitably a whole lot of jargon, terminology, so some people in the homework mentioned about this. So I did try to point out that actually if you go to page seven of your student material, there is a link to an online glossary. There’s probably more than, but there’s others you can check, but there is that particular one, which is the FPMT glossary, so it’s quite reliable.
So if you go online to that, you can discover the meaning of many of the terms that are used. Tonight I’d just like to talk a little bit more about some different aspects of the mind. So just one moment. Yes. So I did mention briefly that there are, just as we talk about the body in a sense being one thing, which in fact is made up of many things, many aspects, the skin and blood and bones and teeth and all sorts of flesh and whatever.
So all of these different things make up what we call the body, but all of these things that make up the body are physical in nature. So what we label as the mind, as appearing to be one thing, is made up of many, many aspects, many different kinds of consciousness, all of which have the nature of being clear and knowing. So what we label as the mind can be labeled, one way of looking at that is that the mind is what is labeled on the six consciousnesses. So there are the five sense consciousnesses and then there is the mental consciousness. And the mental consciousness is the most important, vital aspect of the mind, the most profound aspect of the mind because it’s that which, just in a gross way of explaining, because that’s the only way I can do it, sort of puts one of its functions is to put all the information coming from the five sense consciousnesses together, but it’s also our mental consciousness that thinks about all of these things that our sense consciousnesses experience and perceive.
And it is the mental consciousness that has these three layers, the gross, the subtle and the very subtle mental consciousness. So I’d just like to talk a little bit about the five sense consciousnesses and what experience or know. So I’ll give you a handout about this, but I won’t give it to you now because you’ll just look at that and ignore me. So there is the eye consciousness, okay? So what the eye consciousness perceives, and remember, so there are two ways, one can divide the ways of knowing in many ways.
The one way of dividing how we know things is into two major categories, which is perceiving things and conceiving things. So perceiving is where there is a direct connection between the consciousness and the object, whereas with conception, that is something indirect. There is this layer between the direct experience of the object. There is all these layers of concepts and generic images and so on that get in the way. So our mental consciousness has the potential to directly perceive things, but at the moment our mental consciousness mostly knows things indirectly via concepts.
So anyway, the five sense consciousnesses, which is related to the eye, the nose, the ear, tongue and body consciousness, these five sense consciousnesses directly perceive their object. They don’t conceive them, they don’t think about them, they don’t have concepts through which they experience something, they directly know it. So what our eye consciousness knows is only two things. Its field of awareness, what it is able to know is limited to two categories and that is shapes and colours. That’s all our eye consciousness actually knows, perceives, experiences.
So if you would like some more information, the shapes it perceives are long, short, round, square, even, uneven, high and low. These are the shapes that our eye consciousness distinguishes. It perceives these. And it also perceives colours. So it perceives the primary colours and also the secondary colours.
But this is the only thing our eye consciousness knows. So many people here who’ve heard me rave about the mind before, and sometimes also about some other things, I make this point. Sorry if I bore you, all those people who know this, but can you all see this clock I am holding up here? Anyone can’t see it? Cannot see it?
You know it, aren’t you? I’m getting it. Yeah? Everyone? Everyone agrees, so you all agree you can see this clock, yeah, but actually you can’t.
You cannot see this clock. No one here can see this clock. You cannot see a clock. It’s impossible to see a clock. All you can see is shapes and colour.
Black. And I know black is technically not a colour, but anyway, yeah, that’s all you can actually see. But on the basis of what your eye consciousness experiences, your mental consciousness labels this particular shape and colour as a clock. It has a concept of a clock and this particular shape and colour and everything, and, like, touch it, you can feel it. Yeah.
That fits it fits that concept. And so the mind labels that object a clock. And that’s what the mind experiences, what it knows. That is very, very interesting to think about. Very, very interesting to think about.
That we don’t actually see a clock. It really does start to show how everything depends on our mind, how we conceive things. And a clock cut, this thing cannot appear as a clock from its own side. It has no power to do that. No object has.
It all depends on our mind labelling it. So then there is the eye consciousness, and actually our eye consciousness is really, when you think about it, when you check, is probably the most, of all the five sense consciousnesses, the most important one. So much of our knowing is our experience is based on what we see, And we judge things on how they appear, the shapes and colours, and our mental consciousness labels them this and that. But it’s all based on just seeing these shapes and colours. But then also, probably second most important is our ear consciousness.
And of course, the only thing our ear consciousness knows, is able to know, so our ear consciousness doesn’t experience and know shapes and colours. The only thing it knows are sounds. And there are two main kinds of sounds. If you check some of the different Buddhist texts, they categorise them slightly differently, but I’m just putting it in a simple way, and the way I was taught many years ago, that the two main kinds of sounds that the ear consciousness distinguishes or experiences are meaningful sounds. You hear a sound and you know, oh, that has a meaning.
That is a meaningful sound, particularly human speech. One is able to perceive directly that that has a meaning. And the other, of course, is meaningless sound the sense of it’s just basically noises, natural sounds, such as the wind in the trees or the sound of a river running along or lightning or something like that. Of course, the mental consciousness can label that that sound is lightning and therefore that means blah blah blah, but that sound itself doesn’t have a direct meaning, whereas there are other sounds coming from human voice that one distinguishes, oh, that is meaningful. Even if someone’s speaking in a different language, you know that that, I can’t understand the meaning, but the ear consciousness understands that that something meaningful is being said.
It distinguishes that. And of course, it’s our mental consciousness that distinguishes, oh, this is English, Chinese, Japanese or whatever. It’s not our ear consciousness that knows that, it’s our mental consciousness that knows that. Yes? Well, maybe they’re not the best terms, but there is a much more complicated explanation.
Well, not necessarily very complicated, which I could dig up if you anyway. There’s intention behind the meaning. What I’m trying to say is that the ear consciousness is able to distinguish, how do you put it, There is meaning behind that. Of course, the actual meaning is distinguished by the mental consciousness. But the ear consciousness is able to distinguish, you know, that’s just a noise and this is something else, different.
That’s the basic point. Because actually every night I say, now we’re going to what is it? What do I say? A million times? To do the nine round breathing and to allow the mind to be calmer and clear so we can use that mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings.
But of course, when I say mind, I’m talking about the mental consciousness that’s being calmed down. It’s not exactly the mental consciousness that listens to the teachings. Firstly, it’s your ear consciousness that listens to it, but it’s the mental consciousness that does work out what’s being said and thinks about all of that. So it’s kind of fair enough to say what I’m saying. Because if our mental consciousness isn’t calm and clear and is agitated, then the ear consciousness won’t be able to effectively listen anyway.
Right. Okay, then there’s the nose consciousness. Of course, what the nose consciousness distinguishes and the only thing it is able to experience is different smells. And again, in Buddhist system of studies, they distinguish the two kinds of smells that the nose consciousness experiences, and that is basically pleasant smells and unpleasant smells. So that’s all the nose consciousness knows, but again, the mental consciousness will say, you know, that particular pleasant smell is a rose.
It’s the smell of a rose, and that unpleasant smell is the smell of rotting eggs or something like that. So then there’s the tongue consciousness and that what it knows tastes. That’s the only thing it knows experiences, and what it distinguishes and what it knows is the taste of sweet. So you can’t taste an apple. We think we’re tasting an apple.
Oh, this is a delicious apple, but we can’t actually taste an apple, strictly speaking. All one can taste is sweet, sour, bitter, astringent, hot, in the sense of chilli hot, and salty. This is what our taste consciousness knows. But then again, you bite into an apple and you get that sweet taste which may be mixed with a little bit of astringency or something, and the mental consciousness says, That’s an apple, and that’s a delicious apple. I want more of that.
And of course, with all of those experiences, there is the feeling that goes with it. So when the eye consciousness sees particular shapes and colours, there is also a feeling that goes with that. When the ear consciousness hears something pleasant, unpleasant, there is also pleasant, unpleasant feeling or a neutral feeling. So with all of the consciousnesses, there is a feeling, and then on top of that, there is the mental consciousness that distinguishes this as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, and experiences the mental feeling as well. So the body consciousness perceives two categories of phenomena.
One category is are the four elements of earth, water, fire and wind, and then the other category of phenomena that the body consciousness perceives are what are said to be the seven derivatives of these elements. The body consciousness experiences soft and rough, light and heavy, cold, hunger and thirst. Sorry? It experiences soft. You’ll get a list of all of this.
Soft, rough, light, heavy, cold, hunger and thirst. So it’s the job of the mental consciousness to put all of that together distinguish these things as good, bad, this or that. I like this, I don’t like that. I want this experience to continue. I don’t want this to continue and so on, so many things.
So that’s one thing. So then just very briefly, because it is a huge subject, what the mind is and how it works. So in Buddhist psychology, there is a subject, or Buddhist psychology is Tibetan is called Lorig, which translates as ways of knowing. So in this category of study, it talks about dividing the mind into what are called the primary minds, the six primary minds, and then the mental factors. So the six primary consciousnesses or primary minds refer to the primary eye consciousness, the primary ear consciousness, the primary nose consciousness, the primary body consciousness.
I’ve left one out, haven’t I? Tongue. The primary tongue consciousness and the primary mental consciousness. And then there are all these many, many mental factors of which they normally talk about fifty one mental factors or fifty one secondary minds. There are the primary minds and then there are the secondary minds.
So just in a very, very simple way, the primary mind, whether it’s the eye consciousness, the ear consciousness, nose, body, tongue, mental consciousness, it knows its object in a very general way. That’s all that the primary consciousness does. It just simply knows its object, its respective object in a very, very general way. For example, the eye consciousness distinguishes that this is blue, the color blue, so that’s it. Right?
Just in a very, very general way, experiencing knowing blue, blue colour. But the primary minds are always associated with these other mental factors. You never just have the primary mind functioning by itself. It always comes with, it’s like a train and the carriages, so the train engine is the primary mind and it brings with it various mental factors, and those mental factors have the function of making this general experience, this very general knowing, something very precise and accurate and fills in all the details. So a very rough analogy is that, for example, with your eye consciousness, if you look at this painting here, your primary eye consciousness just sees the totality of that painting, and then these other mental factors come along and fill in all the details and distinguish, for example, all the different greens, the shades of green and blue and the different colours, and the shapes of the different Buddhas and the clothes they’re wearing, all the different shapes there and so on.
So something like that. So it’s also important to understand that, well, the mental factors are divided into a number of categories. So there are what are called the five omnipresent mental factors, which operate with every primary mind. You have these five omnipresent, always present mental factors. Just very quickly, you’ll get a list of these.
I can’t explain them all, this is a whole huge subject in itself, but just to give a little idea. So with every moment of consciousness, whatever consciousness it is, whether it’s your eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, mental consciousness, there are these five mental factors always present, which is feeling, discrimination, intention, contact and attention. So intention means your mind is drawn to that object. So there’s always this factor drawing your mind to its object. And attention is that factor that sort of stays with the object.
And there’s always a feeling, pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feeling. And there are also what are called the five object determining factors. I won’t go into those, we’ll just leave those. And then very importantly, there are what are said to be the eleven virtuous mental factors. There are the six root afflictions and then there are twenty two, twenty one, what is it, twenty, twenty secondary afflictions or delusions.
And there are what are called the four variable mental factors, meaning in some situations these four variable mental factors, sometimes they can be virtuous, sometimes they can be non virtuous. It varies depending on the motivation. So an example of one of these variable mental factors is sleep. Sleep is a mental factor. It’s a way of knowing things.
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it like that. But what does sleep know? All it knows is darkness. That’s what it knows. That is what sleep is.
It is the mind, the mental consciousness, focusing on darkness. And that can be a virtuous state of mind, or a neutral state of mind, or a non virtuous state of mind. So if you go to bed at night with a virtuous mode of consciously thinking. And this is what we Buddhists, I don’t know how many of you here are Buddhists, but anyway, in the Buddhist tradition, what one is encouraged to do at night is to consciously generate the right motivation for sleeping, such as thinking, well I’m going to go to sleep to rest my body and mind so that I can wake up bright and early and direct my energies towards benefiting all sentient beings, giving up the self-cherishing thought, cherishing others. So if one does that, if one consciously thinks that honestly, then because of that virtuous motivation, one’s sleep is transformed into something virtuous.
But if one goes to sleep with just the worldly thought of attachment to sleep, this is a non virtuous state of mind according to Buddha. That’s why my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, hardly ever sleeps or goes to sleep. I don’t think he’s consciously laid down for forty years or more, fifty, since he was a little boy. He does go to sleep, but he never, like us, goes to bed to go to sleep. He only sleeps when he can’t keep awake any longer.
So he sleeps sitting up all the time. Sometimes he falls over because one important thing to understand about how the mind works is that the mind can only be in one state, in knowing one thing at a time, in one moment. Of course, moments change very, very quickly, but in one moment the mind is focusing on one thing and so as it’s experiencing knowing that, remember there is that omnipresent mental factor of feeling. So in that one moment there is a feeling arising. So that feeling can only be it can only be a pleasant feeling, a neutral feeling, or an unpleasant feeling.
It can’t be a mixture. It has to be only one of them in that one moment, which also means that in any moment the mind can only be in a virtuous state, a neutral state or a non virtuous state. It can’t be two or three. It can only be one. So there is always either associated with the primary mind, particularly the mental consciousness, there can either be a virtuous state of mind or a non virtuous one.
I mean, it also can be the neutral one, but we don’t have to worry about those because they’re not worrying. They’re just, you know, not a problem. They’re not a problem. The problem the presence of the negative thought mental factors, and the problem is the lack of the virtuous ones. And what tends to happen, so in any moment of knowing, there is either a virtuous mental factor present or a non virtuous one, and therefore a pleasant feeling because with the virtuous mental factors there has to be a pleasant feeling.
This is Buddhist psychology. Virtuous mental factors by definition are always pleasant feeling, bring you experience pleasant feeling, because the virtuous mental factors are nominated that way, are designated that way, because they are a reflection of the true nature of our mind, our Buddha potential. And I don’t know if you checked in your homework with your mind, the nature of our mind is blissful. So if one of these virtuous mental factors pops out as a reflection of that Buddha nature, it is pleasant feeling. It can’t be anything else.
Whereas the non virtuous mental factors being a reflection of a byproduct of the obscurations in our mind, they bring this suffering feeling. So the moment a negative mental factor arises with our primary mind, then that brings unpleasant feeling. That one. And also what’s interesting is that once one of the virtuous mental factors arises, it tends to bring with it many of the other positive mental factors. They interact.
So for example, if one practises patience, generates that virtuous mind of patience, it will tend to bring with it other virtuous minds of then being able to be a little bit more kind and compassionate and loving and sensitive and blah blah blah. Whereas if we let our mind get taken over or affected, polluted by one of the negative mental factors, then a whole lot of the other mental factors come in with it and sort of reinforce it. So there’s not time to go into all of these positive and negative mental factors, but just very briefly, I’d like to mention the six root afflictions, because these are important to know. So the very first one is ignorance, because this is what the Buddha identified as the very root source of all our suffering. It’s because of this mental factor of ignorance that we have all the other negative states of mind.
This is why we are suffering in saṃsāra, because of ignorance. It’s only because of ignorance that we have all the other disturbing thoughts. Ignorance is a way of knowing, but it’s a false way of knowing. It creates the appearance of ourself and everything in a particular way, which is described as the appearance of inherent existence or true existence. Gives the illusion, ignorance forces the mind to generate this illusion that oneself somehow exists from its own side, under its own power, almost as an independent phenomena, and it creates the illusion that everything is like that.
The whole world is out there, separate from us, somehow existing. Each phenomena somehow seems to exist, such as this clock, because we say, I see a clock, as though that clock exists from its own side under its own power, that actually this clock can only exist because our mind labels a shape and colour clock. But this thing doesn’t appear that way. It appears as though it’s really there by itself under its own power, not needing our mind to label it something. It appears as though it’s telling us, I’m a clock.
But it’s not. It has no ability to do that whatsoever. But because of that illusion, that very, very convincing illusion, we have all these other disturbing thoughts, and there are five other main disturbing thoughts or mental factors, secondary minds. So the next one, the next most important, biggest problem after ignorance is good old or bad old, I should say, bad old attachment. So the Tibetan term for attachment is dö chak, which actually has Tibetans make up words by putting two syllables together.
So Dö chak has the connotation of both desire and attachment. So these are a little bit different, these two factors, but they always go together. So desire afflicted us, are we talking about afflicted desire? Very briefly, what afflicted desire does as a product of ignorance is Its object is something actually ordinary and it’s a conventionally pleasant object, but what desire does is it exaggerates how pleasant that object is, because why? Because that object appears to be making me happy.
And so desire exaggerates. It projects onto something conventionally pleasant, something much more beautiful, wonderful, amazing. Of course, unfortunately, best example of this is when you fall in love and someone appears so beautiful, then you fall out of love and they don’t look half as beautiful. Well, not just so beautiful, but they seem so wonderful, you know, that this person is just magical, just so amazing in every possible way, yeah, when you love them, when you like them, especially when you love them. And then that stops for some reason, and then all of that beauty and amazement just gone.
But while the attachment is there, it creates that illusion. A part of that is it appears permanent. It appears that this person, object, situation is always going to be like that. Never change. Never, never, never, never change.
Always. Yeah. And that’s why we want it. We want to have be with that person or have that thing or we want that situation to stay forever because it’s perfect and of course it represents happiness. So that’s basically what desire is, and then because of that hallucination, we get attached.
As I always say, here’s this beautiful thing, permanent happiness, here it is. So you crave it and you desire it and you get it. So how can you let go of it because it’s permanent happiness? So you’re stuck with it and then you’re frightened to let go of it because if you let go of it, there goes your happiness. So one gets totally dependent and stuck on this thing, person, situation, whatever, and you can’t see anything else.
Attachment is very powerful. It can go on for much more than six. It’s beginningless. I once had a debate with a Geshe in Spain, translated by a very nice young Nepalese monk who agreed with me, so we tried to debate with Geshe about the difference between love and attachment and how you could have maybe both at the same, you know, together, and he said, Absolutely no, no way. Wouldn’t admit it for a second.
It’s just interesting hearing real opposites and nature in the outward thinking about that kind of commitment to somebody that we make those commitments. No. No. We were just This is a huge topic. Very mhmm.
All I can say at the moment is actually the Buddhadharma, the Dharma is very radical in its approach. Oh, I don’t know what I can say. In some ways it’s true, I suppose, for ordinary society to function, it does depend to some extent on attachment. For ordinary society to function. An ordinary society, if it’s functioning well, can be okay, can be quite nice, but it’s still saṃsāra.
Even the best relationships and happy families and societies, etcetera, it still involves suffering and growing old, sick and dying. And in the meantime, all sorts of other problems and conflicts and difficulties. And, you know, this yeah. So the Buddha says if you want to get rid of all suffering, you have to get rid of its cause, which is ignorance. Yeah.
And what perpetuates ignorance are delusions are the result of ignorance, but also by following our delusions, they reinforce the ignorance. The two things feed each other. So the more we follow attachment, so when ignorance is gone, every kind of attachment will go. All attachment will end. You can’t have a little bit of attachment left over and vice versa.
While we have some attachment, we will never get rid of ignorance. And if we don’t get rid of ignorance, we will continue to suffer and cause others suffering. So there’s this long term project of getting rid of ignorance and part of that process is reducing our attachments. But as my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, says, If you check any relationship, the problems in a relationship between any two people, whatever kind of relationship it is, or not just two people or more than two people, the problems that arise in any relationship are not because of attachment. I mean, not because of love, they’re because of attachment.
It’s not the love between people that causes problems, it’s the attachment. It’s very worth thinking about that and checking up. Because attachment, as I’ve often said in bored people, I’m sorry, is if you check, you know, love, the Buddhist idea of love, it is the mind wanting, well, wants oneself to be happy, but it’s the mind wanting others to be happy, and other beings to be happy. And that means not having worldly happiness, but genuine happiness, genuine peace, contentment, lasting well-being. So real love is about the other, whereas attachment, when you say, I love you, I love you, is about me because I love you because you make me happy, and that’s why I love you because you’re making me happy.
So I love you in order to make me continue to be happy. So attachment, although it looks like it’s about the other, is about oneself. And so when the other doesn’t continue to do the things that make me happy and make me love you, there’s a problem. Because I love you because you look like this, so that you can’t change the way you look. And I love you because you say these things, so you can’t say anything else.
And I love you because you do these things so you can’t stop doing those and do other things. Yeah. So that’s not about the other person, it’s about me. It’s about you behave the way I want you to, and I will then love you. Who needs that?
I don’t. Yeah, so because of ignorance, we have attachment, and because of attachment, we also then have the third of the six root delusions, which is anger, which can lead to, of course, hatred. So if you check, behind every moment of anger is some kind of attachment. Because when our attachments and desires are threatened, frustrated, we get angry. Now our attachment can be to a person, it can be to an idea, it can be to a thing, it can be to a situation and even, you know, attachment to getting something done at a particular time.
So if it doesn’t happen in that time, one gets angry, one gets upset, or it’s not done the way I wanted to or I expected it to. Yeah? One gets angry. So all anger has its root attachment, and all attachment has its root ignorance. So these are what are called the three poisonous minds.
These three mental factors constantly poison our mind. They destroy, you know, our mind can be like that and then they arise, and that poisons our mind. It pollutes our mind. It destroys whatever happiness we have because as soon as those poisonous minds come, they bring suffering and happiness cannot exist while they exist. Peace of mind cannot exist the moment any of those mental factors arise.
But also, when’s the bill gonna go? Soon. Anyway, just quickly, the other three of the six root afflictions are pride. There’s various kinds of pride, but pride inflates our view of ourself. We already have a wrong view of ourself, but then pride inflates that as well.
We believe ourselves to be superior to people we’re not superior to, equal to people we’re not equal to. There’s also like a false, what is it, inverted pride where you think, Oh, I’m so terrible. I’m so terrible. Like yourself, maybe? Maybe.
Something like that. And then there’s the pride of of like a false pride of, what is it about, developing this pride that you can do negative things. You may be a good thief, so you’re very proud that you’re very good at stealing things or you’re very good at lying or very good at cheating people. So you feel this incredible pride in these things. And then there is what is called afflictive doubt.
So there’s ordinary doubt where you think, Oh, is this a clock or not? So that is not a negative mental factor, but there is a negative mental factor called doubt where one has doubts about things which are actually meaningful and virtuous. So there are three kinds of doubt. The worst is where there is something which is true, but you doubt it’s true and your doubt leans towards the fact that it’s probably not true. Then there is a sort of middle doubt, like halfway you’re not really sure if it’s true or not, right or wrong.
And then there’s the doubt that is not really sure, and you think it may be right, but you’re still not sure. So if we’re going to have spiritual doubts, we should try and at least have that third category where we think, Oh, it probably is right, but I’m not sure. Especially for those who’ve taken refuge and then they come across some teaching of Dharma and think, Oh, I didn’t know this was in Buddhism. I don’t like this. I don’t believe that.
Well, one should think, Well, if this is the Buddha’s teachings, it should be right. It couldn’t be wrong. So even though I find it very hard to believe, maybe it’s right. Because that opens the mind, it creates some space in the mind to investigate and come to the conclusion, yes, this is true. Whereas if one holds to that doubt that says, oh, it must be wrong.
It must be wrong. I don’t know why, but I don’t believe it, therefore it must be wrong. So that is a really negative state of mind because it blocks us from getting to know what is true. Then the final of the six root afflictions are called wrong views, of which there are various ones, but we won’t go into those. But there’s all sorts of wrong views that we hold onto.
But the three main ones to remember are ignorance, attachment, anger. These are the ones that really cause us so much trouble. And then all the other, the twenty other negative mental factors are some kind of combination of those three main afflictions in some kind of varying proportions. So you have things like resentment and spite and envy and avarice and dishonesty and pretension and arrogance and laziness. There is that mental factor, that negative mental factor of spiritual laziness.
We may have lots of energy to go shopping, but no energy to meditate or study. But if someone says, Let’s go shopping, or Let’s go to a party, or let’s do this, suddenly we’re wide awake. So that mental factor of spiritual laziness really makes it very difficult to practise. Any questions? Is it possible to love without attachment?
Yes. Yes. That’s the aim. That that is the aim. Yeah.
But according to the Buddhist understanding, once you’re able to genuinely love, you would love everyone, not just one person. Heading. Questions? Yeah. No.
Was just wondering if I should bring it down again. Oh, have you already rung it? No. I haven’t. I was going to.
I was going to. Right. Huck. There’s a time. Alright.
Okay. In the break time, please, if you can collect your marked homework, there’s some new homework to get. And there’s also a list of all the mental factors that I was talking about. Maybe you could hand them out. And also the Christine, do you wanna hand that one out?
The sense consciousnesses. Okay, thank you. So after the break we’ll have discussion time. Okay. So any great questions from the from the group discussions I can try and talk about?
We were trying to discuss where do you draw the line with what’s a sentient being. Was discussing where do you draw the line with what is classed as a sentient being. Yeah. Didn’t we discuss that last week, or where was it discussed?
We missed six realms. Sorry? There’s six realms of beings. No. But I was talking about it.
Where was it? I don’t know. Thursday night. It Thursday night, was it? Yeah.
Because I’m like, Is a microbe in your sandwich a sentence? To be honest, I don’t know, but as I said, on Thursday night Sorry? That’s what you say? Well, Lama Yeshe once said that the bacteria that turn milk into yogurt are not sentient beings, right? So that’s one thing.
But it seems that sentient beings can be extremely small. Extremely, extremely small because in the teachings it mentions there are many, many sentient beings that live within our bodies, not just when you’ve got worms, but we all have sentient beings living in our bodies, on our bodies. And His Holiness, as I’ve mentioned, also once said that if it can fit through a sieve, it’s not a sentient being. If it’s small enough to fit through a sieve, it’s not a sentient being. But, of course, it depends on how thick the sieve is.
If I gave you straining, you might let some. Yeah. Yeah. What are the sentient beings living in our body? What’s the name of them?
Oh, don’t know. Fred and Mary. No, I’m sorry. No, I don’t know. Sorry.
I don’t know, I don’t know. Well, probably, I mean, they’re in the animal realm, yeah, animal realm, yeah. So they’re very tiny, like microbic things. Yeah. So it is very tricky.
But plants are not sentient beings. I don’t know why people want plants to be sentient beings, because if they are, it means we’re creating much more negative karma than we already are. But they’re not. But in the teachings it does say that particularly in the ocean there are things that look like plants which aren’t plants, but in fact sentient beings. Yeah.
Possibly referring to things like coral, yeah, and other things as well. Sponges. Sponges, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So it is kind of yeah, it’s not something that’s ever been set out precisely in any Buddhist teachings, actually, exactly what constitute.
Anything else? We were trying to discuss some how genetics are influenced by karma. Mhmm. People wouldn’t know, you know, how they afflicted off birth. Right.
How it’s become like your family in your family. Could you speak a bit louder? I’m trying not to. If in your family there’s a particular disease that is passed out through the generations Yeah. Right.
Genetically. Genetically. Yeah. How is that a karmic How is it a karmic imprint? Well, as I was just trying to say to Pauline, the Buddhist view is that we have karmic imprints, but for those karmic imprints to ripen, there has to be the conditions, right?
And because of the conditions, then one can experience a certain thing, good or bad. So if one’s created the cause, you know, the mind has created the cause to experience a certain result, then for that karmic imprint that was going to bring that result to ripen, it has to meet the conditions and until it meets the conditions, it can’t ripen and bring the result. Somehow, how this can be, I can’t explain this in any detail because the teachings are just giving us a general idea of how things work. If this particular sperm unites with this particular ovum, then genetically it’s going to produce a human being who may be, for example, very good looking and very intelligent or the opposite because of the genetics. And so someone who has created the cause and because if you’re very good looking and intelligent, generally speaking in this world, you can use your good looks and intelligence to have, know, you’re usually gonna be okay, more or less.
Whereas if you’re not very intelligent and not so good looking, there’s more suffering, generally speaking. Sorry, is that sounding politically incorrect? You know what I mean? No, it’s okay. Just generally.
Yeah, yeah. So if one’s created the cause, then a consciousness that is going to meet that genetic situation will take rebirth there. Yeah. Something like that. So how would three generations of the same family be affected by the same But remember, karma is cosmic.
But the same family, you know, when you think about my great grandmother so on was so and so, and you think, Oh, how fantastic. But from a Buddhist point of view, that doesn’t mean very much because your great great granny is just the the what? The previous continuum of your of your body, not your mind. You know, when your great great granny was alive and doing whatever she was doing that made her famous or fantastic, oneself might have been a pig or something, having no connection with great granny at all. Do you know what I’m saying?
No. No, yes and no, yes and no. So there was no connection. So of course a family in the sense of the bodies, can of course, they will perpetuate a genetic something, but the minds that take rebirth in those bodies could come from anywhere. Right?
Yeah? Yes, yes, clearer. Yeah? So in a sense, minds are coming to that particular family because they have the karmic imprint to get that genetic Yeah, or that genetic boost and therefore what can potentially go with that. But it’s also a little bit like what we’ve seen in the world in recent times.
There have been countries in the world which have been going on quite peacefully, such as Yugoslavia, okay, then all of a sudden, because things are slowly rising behind the scenes, there’s this huge mess and all these Yugoslavia breaks up into separate states and they all start killing each other because of all sorts of ethnic tensions and religious tensions and who knows what. And so what was a very peaceful situation and a good place to get reborn for your good karma to ripen, suddenly everyone’s killing each other, and because there’s that violence there, someone who’s created the cause to be born in a violent environment will be born there. Yeah. And more people who created that cause will be born there. And so and and because they’ve created and if you if you study the things about karma, you know, you get reborn in environment, a violent environment because you’ve engaged in very negative actions yourself.
One of the karmic results of that is you also have the tendency to be violent. So a violent situation is created, Who’s going to be reborn there are people who are possibly not always, not all of them, because there’s many karmic things going on, but people who would tend to be violent and therefore perpetuate the whole horror of this. Yeah. And vice versa, you know, peace can be established, it’s all going very well, so peaceful people who’ve created the cause to be born in a peaceful, pleasant environment and therefore have because they’ve engaged in virtuous actions and have the tendency to be virtuous people will be born there and it will create an ongoing peaceful place, sort of. Do you think those countries that have that violence going on, they seem to be predominantly carnivorous, so they’re eating I think everyone’s being, you know, eating I think most of the world is predominantly carnivorous.
And is that would you be able to clarify the implications of that? Where is this here in in the question? What are the implications except in the animals have one? What are that implications referring to? Do think that’s that kind of No, no, what I was sort of hinting at was that if animals have consciousness, then it means that we’ve been animals.
That’s one implication. But we have the potential to become animals again. And that animal has been a human and has the potential to become a human again. So that’s very interesting to think about, about how our relationships with animals should be. And especially there are some really heart wrenching stories about animals that have appeared, and more and more scientists are accepting that animals do have intelligence and feelings and this and that, you know?
There are some incredible stories of animals and their human qualities, which is their sentient qualities of, yeah, I saw a programme about a man who’d worked in laboratories where they injected infected gorillas with, I think it was HIV, to work out what happens, wonderful thing to do, and then because at some point this man was so horrified he gave up his work and then many years later he went back and in that place he visited it and there was one of these gorillas who had been infected and who’d been taught some sign language and this gorilla remembered this man and used the nickname he’d invented for him and they filmed it. It’s just unbelievable. Unbelievable. What about those lions? Oh, yeah.
Who remember? Yeah. The guys. Yeah. Yeah.
Many, many, many things. He’s getting late. I could tell you my female gorilla story, but that takes too long. You can read it you can read it at National Geographic. Oh.
Oh, very quickly. Oh, you’ve heard me this anyway. I’ll tell it in Many, many, many years, when I first became a monk, I read this National Geographic article about a woman in America who taught a female gorilla sign language and this gorilla developed a sign language of it was several hundred words, which is like the equivalent of the intelligence of I think a six, seven year old child or something. And this gorilla, from the words she was taught, she invented her own swear language because when she got upset with this woman, she would swear at her in her own slight. Some of these words, I can’t remember examples of her swear words.
One of the great things was there was also a male gorilla she was very fond of, The female gorilla was very fond of the male gorilla. But the male gorilla was much dumber than her, so it took him much, much longer to learn some of the words. But the woman, when the male gorilla learnt a particular word, the reward was he was allowed to go into the female gorilla’s cage, and the female gorilla liked that. So one day, it explained that the woman was standing facing the male gorilla who was in a cage and the female gorilla was in the cage behind her, and so she was trying to teach this male gorilla this particular sign, and at one point the woman turned around and the female gorilla was trying to explain the same thing to him. But the best part of this article, which I often get quite misty, but I’ve said it so many times, I won’t tonight, when I read it, think about it and whatever, is one time the woman asked the female gorilla, Who are you?
Or What are you? And this female gorilla signed to her saying, I am a very fine female gorilla. That’s pretty amazing. Yeah. Oh, we tried to investigate that article, didn’t we?
I was able to find it there. Somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. A very fine female gorilla.
Yeah. So how can you say that’s not a sentient being? Yeah. How how can you, you know, argue that away as that that’s, you know I’m trying to really hard to think that, you know, I feel I’ve worked hard to become a human being that I struggle with the thought of that I might become an animal again. Hopefully not.
Maybe that’s Very easy. It’s very easy to create the causes. Very easy. That’s what the teachings are saying. It’s very easy.
It’s very difficult to be a human being. Okay. Thanks for your interest and we’re way over time now. Sorry. You didn’t oh, way over.
Sorry. Was gonna end and finish early. So very quickly, we have to dedicate. Put these positive. Okay.
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 Bodhimind, not yet born, arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore.