Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Thubten Dondrub guides students through the foundational concepts of the Buddhist path to enlightenment, following the classical structure of renunciation, bodhicitta, and wisdom. In this 93-minute class, the sixth in an ongoing series, he opens with core motivation-setting practices—establishing refuge and generating bodhicitta for all sentient beings—then moves into the heart of renunciation. He teaches that true renunciation means recognizing suffering’s root cause lies in ignorance and disturbing thoughts within our own mind, not external conditions. Rather than the popular misunderstanding of renunciation as giving up happiness, he clarifies it as relinquishing suffering and its causes in exchange for the natural bliss of a freed mind. He then explores in practical detail the six main conditions that activate these delusions: karmic imprints accumulated from beginningless time, encountering desirable or aversive objects, thinking about those objects, mixing with deluded company, distraction through media and entertainment, and habitual patterns. He stresses that until one has cultivated antidotes through meditation—contemplating impermanence, the harms of delusion, and mortality—the skillful approach is to avoid triggering conditions. This talk is pitched at practitioners new to Lamrim study or serious meditators seeking to understand the mechanics of mind and saṃsāra.
File metadata (for organising)
File: DB Presenting the Path Week 6.mp3
UUID: 5d670a9b-88f8-44eb-9499-870976a0632b
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Presenting the Path (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2016 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 92.7 minutes
Words: ~9,778
It’s on. Should yeah. So welcome everyone to our sixth class on the path presenting the path to enlightenment. So So this describes the inner journey of how to of working with our mind, leading our mind away from suffering and obsession just with our self and this life and the the ordinary things of this life to really recognizing how incredibly important our mind is and how it has this amazing Buddha potential and that we can step by step free that potential of everything obscuring it, fully develop it, awaken it, and free ourselves from suffering, but then be in a position to help free all kindly suffering mother sentient beings from suffering and help them achieve and realize their own Buddha potential as well. So so that’s what the the path is about.
So from our side, we can try and have the motivation wishing to follow that path to enlightenment for the sake, not only of ourselves, but all beings. So this motivation is the bodhicitta motivation. So we can try and generate that right now as strongly as we can. It’s on the page eleven, the Roman eleven, page XXI, the the prayer that we say. And as we do this, we can visualize the Buddha in front of us if we feel that connection with the Buddha as our possible source of refuge, inspiration, and guidance.
And then at the same time, thinking of all kindly suffering mother sentient beings surrounding us, at least focusing on those that we are most connected to in this life, so our parents on either side, family, friends and helpers behind us, those who have harmed us in front, and then as much as possible trying to think of all other beings, the humans of this world, the animals, And then if you have any belief in the existence of other realms of existence as taught by the Buddha, one can try and think of all those beings as well. But whoever one is thinking of, trying to have that awareness that these beings are only kind, but only suffering, and I totally depend on them. And so to benefit them, to repay their kindness, I have I myself first have to achieve enlightenment, and that depends on following the path, and that depends on understanding the path, and that depends on listening to a presentation of the path to enlightenment, so for my own benefit, the benefit of all beings, this is what I’ll do. I’ll study this path to enlightenment. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the 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 if you find it helpful, can imagine the Buddha pleased with your motivation and because of that, the Buddha now comes towards the crown of one’s head. And when directly above our crown, the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light so that that light can then pour down into blessing your mind to be able to understand the path, blessing your mind to be able to practice it, blessing your mind to gain the the full results, all the realizations that bring about complete enlightenment. So then just briefly, we can do some do do the nine round breathing exercise just to help our mind become a little bit more calm, clear, and concentrated, so that we can use that more focused mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. Okay.
Thank you. So the the path to enlightenment can be seen from the point of view that involves developing three essential qualities, which is renunciation. That’s the first and essential one. And then on the basis of developing that, we can then develop bodhicitta, which is that determination to achieve enlightenment, and then the third essential quality is developing wisdom that is the antidote to the very root of all our suffering and all our obscurations. So these are the three essential, Three Principal Aspects that make up the path to enlightenment, and one can also see the path to enlightenment from the point of view of successively developing three levels of motivation.
So the first one is developing basic renunciation, where we turn our mind away from obsessing with this life in order to get a good rebirth. Then the second stage, on the basis of developing that that motivation, is then to develop the motivation to to get out of cyclic existence altogether, not just to get a good rebirth, but to stop taking limited rebirths completely, to become free of all suffering for oneself. And then finally, the highest level of motivation that we can develop is the bodhicitta motivation seeking to benefit all sentient beings, not just oneself but all sentient beings. That means developing the determination to become enlightened. So we are still on the first section, which is developing renunciation and particularly renouncing this life.
Oh no, we’ve got to the, yeah, we’re on the first principal path, which is renunciation, and we’ve talked about how to renounce this life by recognizing we’ve got a precious human rebirth, but we’re going to die, we could we could and therefore we’re gonna be reborn, we could have a bad rebirth, so this motivates us to take refuge, and the essence of refuge is the the teachings, the Dharma, and the very essential Dharma is the law of cause and effect. So by meditating on those things, putting them into practice, we can especially seeing how everything’s impermanent, we are going to die, our actions have long lasting effects, positive and negative. It’s thinking about those things more and more deeply that one can develop this basic renunciation. So then the next level of renunciation comes from realizing that just taking rebirth again and again doesn’t help even if we have good rebirths, we still experience suffering. So we can motivate ourselves to make the decision to get out of a cyclic existence completely.
So in the first level of renunciation, which is seeking a good rebirth, basically what we have to do in observing the law of cause and effect is we have to we’re beginning to subdue our disturbing thoughts and realizing how important it is to put effort into subduing our disturbing thoughts. But when we develop great renunciation, complete renunciation, wanting to get out of saṃsāra, we realize it’s not enough just to temporarily subdue our disturbing thoughts. We have to eliminate them completely. Because we realize, well, this is from a Buddhist point of view, that they are the actual cause of our suffering. While they exist, even to a small degree, we are going to create the causes of suffering, which will cascade down on us, lead us to bring harm to others, and so on and so forth.
So developing complete renunciation is coming to the conclusion it’s not enough just to subdue my disturbing thoughts, get control of them, I have to eliminate them, and the only way to eliminate them is to eliminate their cause, their basis, which is ignorance. And the only way to do that is to develop the antidote to ignorance, the very opposite. Ignorance is seeing things in a completely false way, but believing that false appearance is actually truth is the reality. We have to develop the wisdom, allow our mind, because it has the potential to do so, to directly perceive things as they are without any elaborations, any projections, distortions, and so on. So what motivates us to do all of this is allowing ourselves to realize more and more that we are suffering, but also to realize that we don’t have to.
Because many people, you know, we all suffer to some extent and even people who have enormous amounts of suffering in their life, that itself doesn’t motivate oneself to follow a spiritual path. It can lead to a situation where one just passively endures that suffering because one thinks there’s nothing that can be done about it, or one thinks the only solution is to commit suicide if the suffering is so bad, one commits suicide. So in developing renunciation, one has to develop the belief that something greater is possible, that one can end this suffering, but not just go into some kind of blank state, but one can replace that something with something even greater, which the Buddha says we can, which is nirvana, which is experiencing the natural bliss of our own mind. So renunciation is not about giving up some good things. It’s not about renouncing happiness, which so many people think, you know, think it is.
It is actually about renouncing suffering and particularly renouncing the causes of it in order to experience something much more wonderful. But to do that, to develop renunciation, one has to believe that that this more wonderful thing exists and is possible. If we don’t have any belief in that, then we won’t develop renunciation. Just no matter how much suffering we have, we won’t develop renunciation. Because renunciation is not simply not wanting suffering.
There’s nobody who wants suffering. Right? When we experience it, when we’re conscious of it, we don’t want it. But that not wanting suffering is not renunciation. Everyone has that.
Dogs have that. Cockroaches have that. And for us as human beings, often when we experience suffering and don’t want it, we want somebody else to do something about it. When we’re little, we want mom and dad to do something about it. When we’re grown up, we want our friends or the government to do something about it, or we want God to do something about it.
But not me. It’s not my problem. You know, I’m suffering, but someone else should stop it. So that’s not renunciation. Renunciation is realizing that my suffering is because I’ve created the cause, so I have to stop the causes.
I am going to give up the causes of my suffering. That’s renunciation. And, of course, recognizing I can do this, there is a path to do so, and it’s meaningful to do so because it doesn’t end in just nothingness, it ends in either the bliss of nirvana or even greater, beyond the bliss of nirvana, is the state of enlightenment. In the context of believing in the mind, in the continuity potential of the mind, then we can develop renunciation, and what motivates us is allowing ourselves to recognize not only suffering we’re experiencing, but the potential we have for suffering. And, you know, the strange thing is, often we don’t want to look at that.
We don’t even when we’re suffering, we don’t want to admit how much we have, or certainly how much potential we have for suffering. And unfortunately, the Buddha says we have a tremendous potential for suffering, not just the horrible sufferings of that can occur as a human being, but there’s the horrible sufferings that can occur when one is trapped in a human in an animal body, but also there’s the horrendous sufferings that one can experience trapped in the the hungry ghost realms or in hell realms. So this is what we have to think about to motivate ourselves to give up. Why we think about these horrendous sufferings is not to make ourselves miserable and terrified, but to motivate ourselves to do something meaningful, which is to give up the causes, recognizing the causes are in our mind. And what are the causes?
The direct cause of all our suffering, according to the Buddha, is the ripening of negative imprints, negative imprints within our mind. Why do those imprints exist? Because we created the cause for them. How do we create the cause? By following our disturbing thoughts.
And what are those disturbing thoughts? There’s lots of them, but there are three principal ones, and there is anger and attachment, afflicted desire and attachment. But why do they exist? Because of the main one, the main disturbing thought, the real source of all our suffering, which is ignorance. What ignorance is, is a very big and very complicated, very, very subtle topic.
There is a whole discovering Buddhism module on it, which only sort of touches in any way what ignorance really is and its antidote. But as I just I’ll just briefly repeat what I always say, I mentioned this last week very quickly. Are experiencing ourselves and everything in a particular way right now, and as ordinary beings, even quite intelligent, educated people, we I don’t think there’s even a word for it, but we just naturally grasp that what that appearance of self and phenomena is trivial, that is true, that is reality. Because it’s so it’s so concrete, it’s so vivid, so strong, we don’t doubt it. And everyone else agrees that that’s how things are.
But the Buddha says it’s not like that. Not just the Buddha, many people, some philosophers and so on, have looked into the nature of reality and argue that things aren’t what they appear, but no one has come up with the insight that the Buddha did. But very primitively, the way we experience things is as though everything exists separate from ourselves, somehow under the things exist, you know, self included, we somehow grasp that although we put food into our body, so we know our body needs food and clothing and shelter and all these kinds of things. We have this grasping that there is a me, which is not the body, even though much of the time we do identify me as our body, but at a much deeper level we are grasping there is a me that is really existing and it really doesn’t depend on the body, it doesn’t depend on the mind, it is just there. It’s just there.
It’s me, and it’s just there. And it’s existing from its own side, under its own power, not really dependent on anything else. And we experience everything else in the same way, as though that all phenomena are just really there from their own side, under their own power, not really depending on anything. And particularly, we don’t experience our self and the world as though it depends on our mind. Even though we have expressions like, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which seems to imply that that’s a Buddhist view, that we are recognizing that if something is beautiful or not, it depends on our mind.
But that expression isn’t really saying that. It’s just sort of acknowledging that there are individual differences in how we experience things, but there are things that are really beautiful and some people are able to see it and some people can’t. It just depends on the eye of the behold, this person is really beautiful, but this person can see it and acknowledges it, and this person can’t because of this and that, but they are really beautiful. But the Buddha is saying nothing is like that, Nothing is really beautiful, really ugly from its own side, under its own power. Nothing exists that way, nothing can exist that way.
Even though it looks to appear that way. And it’s this false appearance that things seem to exist out there from their own side independently. It’s only because of that that we have this wrong view, that we have disturbing thoughts of craving things which appear to be beautiful from their own side, and having fear and aversion for things that seem ugly and frightening and threatening and bad from their own side. So things can only exist depending on our mind. The Buddhist discovered that things only exist depending on causes and conditions, on parts, and particularly our mind.
As I said last week, I always have to rely on a vase of flowers. It’s really interesting to try and check. When we look at this, we know it is a flower. It seems so concretely, absurdly obvious that this is a flower. But when you think about it, how does this object make me know it’s a flower?
How does this thing make me experience it as a flower? And in fact, what the Buddha is saying is that this object from its cannot make us experience it as a flower. There’s nothing there that it can do. This thing cannot do anything to make us know that it’s a flower. Or to think it’s a beautiful flower, a desirable flower, that’s all completely coming from our mind, depending on our mind.
But the fact that it’s a flower, a beautiful flower, seems to be there, not here, it seems to be there, and because it seems to be there, we desire it. Sorry, go on. But you’re not denying it’s there. Oh, yeah. It’s there.
Yes. Yeah. It yeah. It is there. Flowers do exist.
Yeah. Everything does exist, but they don’t exist the Buddha is saying they don’t exist the way we think they do, and that’s the problem. Yeah. That is the problem. Yeah.
Everything is existing, but not the way we think. And the way we think well, it was not really thinking, but anyway, sort of thinking, is the problem. It becomes the basis for our delusions. So anything that is conventionally pleasant, there are conventionally things that are pleasant, conventionally good, beneficial, this or that, conventionally bad, ugly, dangerous, blah blah blah, conventionally they are. But on top of that, the nature of desire is when something conventionally pleasant, it exaggerates it.
How good is it? Because, you know, it makes me feel good, so it must be good. So there’s this incredible exaggeration which we project onto it. We are projecting this amazing quality onto this thing, but then it appears back as though what we’ve projected onto it is there from its side. And we do that with negative things as well, everything.
Attachment exaggerates how good something is, anger exaggerates how bad things are. But it’s all because this wrong view of ignorance. All our suffering, the Buddha said, every single one comes from that ignorance. While that’s there, there’s always the potential for attachment, anger, and then all which are the three poisonous minds, then all our other disturbing thoughts, fears and worries and and whatever. All this then.
The disturbing thoughts. There is resentment, concealment, spite, envy, avarice, dishonesty, pretension, arrogance, cruelty, non shame, inconsideration, dullness, excitement, non faith, laziness, negligence, forgetfulness, non introspection and distraction. These are the main disturbing thoughts and they’re all byproducts of the three poisonous minds. They’re all recipes, you know, you’ve got these three basic ingredients of ignorance, attachment and anger, and there’s all these different recipes where you take two spoonfuls of ignorance, one spoonful of desire, and three of attachment I mean, anger, and you end up with a new disturbing thought. So all of these disturbing thoughts are just different degrees of some are more about attachment, some are more about anger and so on.
But they’re all by products of those three poisonous minds. And we follow those, engage in negative actions, actions, negating the natural purity and bliss of the mind. Can I do my little thing? Some of you have heard this before, but, you know, if you check — the Buddha says our Buddha nature is referring to many things. The fact that we have every mind has the full range of every good quality, and those good qualities, when manifesting, are the experience of happiness and joy and well-being.
But also the mind, in its nature, is blissful. Our mind is always like that to some extent. But when the mind is completely free, when the disturbing thoughts aren’t active, and actually when they’re not there at all, when there’s just pure consciousness, undefiled consciousness, that consciousness is pure bliss, nirvana. Yeah. Not the absence of suffering, but something, you know, this incredible bliss.
And my little demonstration that one can have faith that this is true is that if you meditate where we focus our mind on one object and we try and keep our mind on object, and we’re not able to do this very well, but we try. And by doing that, putting our mind on a virtuous or neutral object, we don’t feed all this agitation. And because we don’t feed that agitation, because the energy of our mind is going on this one neutral object such as the breath, or a virtuous object such as visualizing the Buddha, all this negative energy and agitation and confusion and so on, calms down. And when that happens, what is the experience? Is that a more pleasant experience than when you sat down?
Worse, more painful, or just the same? I mean, when it works. Sometimes we’re not able to calm this down, but when there’s some calming down, what is the experience? Now you have to say, it’s good, right? It’s pleasant.
It’s not more painful. That is painful. That is suffering. That is peace, contentment, happiness, well-being, something we want. Right?
And how that pleasant experience, how has that arrived? It has arrived not because of injecting ourselves with something or even adding something to our mind, it’s when a whole lot of unnecessary stuff has fallen away, when the garbage has stopped. In other words, even now, even though we have disturbing thoughts, when they calm down, the experience is pleasant. Something of the true nature of the mind is being experienced. Imagine if you experience your mind, not only when the disturbing thoughts had calmed down, but the disturbing thoughts didn’t exist at all, even in a potential That’s bliss, that’s nirvana, that’s the potential of our mind.
That’s the happiness we’re always looking for out there. The potential of it is always within us. So anything negating that is, you know, what we call non virtuous. It’s bad. It’s not what any sentient being wants anytime, anywhere, anywhere in the universe at any time.
It’s not, you know, some made up morality. It is just simply describing what the how the mind works. There are things that harm the mind, harm its potential, or, you know, you can’t harm the potential, but obscure that potential, negate it. This is what we call non virtue or negative karma and so on, or bad, not so good. And there are things that are virtue and and good and meritorious.
These are because they are coming from they are natural reflections of our our our the true nature of our mind. So we need to realize more and more that all our suffering, the eight sufferings, the six sufferings, the three sufferings, are all the result of following those disturbing thoughts. Those disturbing thoughts themselves, as soon as they arise in the mind, do that. They are painful. Anger is painful.
Pride is painful. Jealousy is painful. Desire is painful. Attachment is painful. All of these minds, deceitfulness is painful.
Yeah. All of the disturbing thoughts are painful, are suffering, so they can only have the effect of more suffering. Okay. In a nutshell, that’s what I’m put it taught, so we should check that. Because we tend to believe again and again that all our suffering comes from out there.
But the Buddha said they’re just conditions, they’re not the real cause, main cause. The main cause, the substantial cause, lies within our own mind. So did everyone collect the handout? Anyway, there’s a little handout to collect in the break time or afterwards. Afterwards.
I just briefly want to go through this. I think it’s very helpful to also understand that Ignorance has always existed, our mind has always existed, our Buddha nature has always existed, but our Buddha nature has always been obscured by ignorance and the disturbing thoughts. Ignorance is always there and because of that there is always the potential of the disturbing thoughts. But unlike some modern psychology that suggests that we have certain people, disturb people, all sorts of negative thoughts bubbling up away, are suppressed, but those thoughts are always there below the consciousness. One shouldn’t think that’s the case with our disturbing thoughts from the Buddhist point of view.
Anger isn’t always present, attachment isn’t always present, etcetera, etcetera. The potential for them is always present, but the active thought isn’t always there. But there are various conditions that activate those disturbing thoughts. So it’s really important to have some idea of what those conditions are that activate our disturbing thoughts so we can avoid them. Because in the path to becoming free of suffering, we have to eliminate our disturbing thoughts.
That means mainly ignorance. But before we eliminate ignorance, we have to subdue our disturbing thoughts. But before we can really subdue them, really, really subdue them, not suppress them, but pacify them, calm them down, in many cases, as a beginner, the skillful thing is to avoid conditions. Until we’re able to, through the power of our own mind, subdue our own disturbing thoughts, in many cases it’s more important, it’s more wise, more skillful to avoid the conditions. And so you have to know what those conditions are.
So the first condition, in a sense, it’s not really a condition, is that we should understand that in our mind now we have karmic, not the karmic, we have the seeds, the potencies of all the disturbing thoughts. Because every time disturbing thought is active, every time we get angry or have some desire attachment arise, pride, jealousy, blah blah blah, an imprint of that delusion is created. A potency. Not a karmic imprint, that’s different. This is an imprint of the delusions.
There’s two kinds of imprints, potencies. One is the imprint or potency or potential of the delusion. So every time we get angry, create an imprint of anger, a potency to get angry in the future. So we’ve got all those built up from infinite past lives, these potencies of anger and attachment and desire and jealousy and so on. So that’s the main problem.
So then what activates those potencies? The main thing I can’t say the main thing, but one of the most frequent things, obvious things, that activates those potencies is meeting the object. When you meet the object of desire, desire explodes. When you meet the object of anger, anger explodes. You meet the object of your jealousy and explodes.
And of course, the specific object is very much dependent on our own karmic history. What some people find desirable, people find horrible or indifferent to. What makes one person angry doesn’t bother another person at all. But we all have objects, human and otherwise, if we meet that object, our desire manifests, becomes active, or our anger becomes active, or our jealousy or whatever. And we may not meet these objects for a long period of time and think, oh, I don’t have any anger.
I don’t have any jealousy. I don’t have any of this. And then one day, bingo, meet the object and the mind goes bananas. So the skilful thing is, but the most difficult of all, is trying to avoid the object. If you know that this particular object makes me very angry or very jealous or very proud or very attached, then if I if I’m trying to avoid this delusion because I understand it’s the cause of suffering, I need to avoid it.
In case of objects of anger, we have great willingness to avoid the object of anger, but in case of objects of attachment, we have no wish to avoid the objects of attachment. Why? Because we’re attached to them. So it’s very, very tricky. But that’s what we need to try and do.
I feel like if we avoid the subject, how we practice it? That is practicing the Dharma. What? By practicing the Dharma? By what?
Did you say? Avoiding the object. Consciously avoiding the object, understanding that this causes me this this I shouldn’t have said that. Yeah. This is a condition to for my mind to get disturbed and create negative karma, then that is practicing Dharma.
And it’s just recognizing simply that I don’t have the power at the moment to subdue the delusions. Yeah? That comes later. If one is constantly surrounded by the objects that activate one’s delusions, it it it’s practically, you know, you can’t subdue them. Well, it’s extremely difficult.
Know, very special people can do it. But, you know, for us as average people, when one is in the midst of those things, it’s extremely difficult to subdue it. It’s when one is away from the object that one can work with the mind to that’s what meditation is all about. When you’re away from all the problems, you work on your mind. You think about how attachment is harmful, anger is harmful, etcetera, etcetera.
And you put these imprints in your mind, these that undermine that tendency to react in these deluded ways. So then when the object is there, having trained the mind, it’s possible that the delusion won’t arise or it won’t arise so strongly and it’s easy to calm it down even if the object is there. But if we haven’t done that, once the object’s there, you know, we’re lost. Right? Especially if there’s two of two of the same object or three or four.
And they’re particularly good examples of the object, if you know what I mean. Objects that really make a lot of desire, a lot of anger, lot of jealousy or something. It’s very difficult. So it is skillful to avoid the object. Object.
Sometimes that’s not possible. Yes, of course. It’s not. Why we have to And so that is the path. That is why we have to learn to subdue the mind, the delusions.
But yeah. Yeah. Because we’re in saṃsāra anyway. That’s the nature of saṃsāra. We’re constantly meeting things that will activate our delusions.
While we remain in saṃsāra, that’s it. While we’re in saṃsāra, the delusions will be activated. We’ve created the cause for that. That’s the Yeah. Get that.
Yeah? So but within that situation, firstly, as much as possible, we try and avoid the object, but always the underlining intention should be to learn to control the mind, control the delusions, not suppress them, but really skillfully, compassionately subdue the disturbing thoughts. So another condition that sets off our disturbing thoughts is even when the object isn’t there, if we think about it, the delusion arises. If you think about the person you dislike, you get angry. If you think about the person that you have, you know, is very attractive, desire arises or you feel jealousy or pride or whatever.
And sometimes the way our deluded mind works, the way with fantasies, the delusion can be even stronger by when, you know, just thinking about the object than rather than being present in front of the object. Because our our fantasies can make the enemy worse than the actual enemy is, and our fantasies can make the object of desire even more beautiful and sexy than the person actually is. Alright? Check up, as they say. So this is why we have to practice mindfulness, to really be aware of what is going on in our mind and really try to let go of those thoughts which are in the often referred to as unrealistic thinking.
Because the sad thing is we create these fantasies fantasies in our mind but we get caught in those fantasies and while they’re going on, we tend to believe that that is reality. Reality. It’s unrealistic thinking. But it makes the delusions real. The real delusions arise.
The objects are fantasies, but the delusion towards that fantasy is real and it’s affecting us. Well, the object is a fantasy but the delusion is real and the effect on our mind is real, it’s harming us. Something like that I said. Yes. I said it better the first time.
And then another condition is the people we mix with, the society that we live in. So if we mix with very deluded people who have no awareness of the harm of their delusions and so on, then our delusions will tend to arise and because everyone else has those same delusions and there’s that collective idea that there’s nothing wrong with those delusions, we won’t even notice them and be able to deal, you know, see no need to deal with them. Whereas This is why it is good to be in dharma centers with dharma friends and because in such a situation one tends to be more aware of one’s own mind and the negative aspects of one’s mind. That’s why it’s good to hang around, if you can, holy people, people who have really got subdued minds, such as great Lamas and so on, who without them saying anything one can become so much more aware of one’s own mind and what’s going on. Whereas when one is with ordinary people, people with disturbed minds, we can think we are fine.
So another factor which is very similar, another condition that activates our disturbing thoughts is distraction. But it’s really all the things that, yeah, all the things that we allow ourselves to be distracted by. And in our culture, there’s millions of these things. There’s there’s television and movies and mobile phones and what is it called? Something box?
Xbox. Xbox. Yes. Xbox and Y box and everything box and all of these things and millions of magazines and newspapers and the Internet and music and blah blah blah. None of these things in themselves saying they’re evil or anything, but we can be so easily distracted by all these things and many of those distractions are all about attachment or anger and so on.
Make us angry. Even just reading political news is a great vehicle to get angry. Reading about politicians, know, the ones you dislike, they say something, you get very angry because they go against one’s political opinions and blah blah blah. And it’s very easy to fall into those things, you know, making somehow we all feel it’s good to make fun of politicians that we don’t like. But is just activating our disturbing thoughts and feelings of superiority and somehow it’s okay to make fun and hurt people who we disagree with and whatever.
Not so so good if we’re trying to, you know, follow the the Dharma path, but it’s very difficult to develop equanimity with politicians. Anyway, but this is what we we need to to have. One can disagree with the policies, but try to have equanimity and compassion towards the people who hold them. But the more we mindlessly get caught up in all of those distractions, it can activate all sorts of disturbing thoughts. Another factor, another condition, just simply in a sense, this is like a summary of all the others or a combination of all the others, is just simply we are habituated to following our disturbing thoughts.
Much of the time, especially if we haven’t met the Dharma, which emphasizes looking at the mind, we don’t really look at our mind. We’re not aware of what is going on in our mind. We just simply identify whatever thoughts pop up into our mind, we identify them, they take over our mind. But we were not really conscious of what is happening in our mind. And so the disturbing thoughts arise where we’re not even conscious that they are negative, they take over the mind, we identify with them, we follow them, completely caught up in them.
And we’ve been doing that life after life, so the habit is extremely strong. So that is a very powerful condition to activate the disturbing thoughts, especially when any of those other conditions are present, you know, the object, the thinking, the people we’re mixing with, the different things we’re involved in, bingo, the habit is there before you just instinctively. So we should really try to be aware of these things so that we can avoid these things as much as possible and try and cultivate an opposite sort of behavior. But as as sorry, that lady said, it’s not it’s not always possible to avoid the object, that’s why we have to learn to develop the antidotes. So there are specific antidotes to each delusion, but a general way of developing antidotes for all the delusions is contemplating the harm of that delusion.
Again and again. And one needs to do that, I mean this is a very simple point, but people often don’t seem to get this point, is that to cultivate the antidote to the delusions, we have to do this when we’re in a positive state of mind, a peaceful state of mind, when the delusion itself isn’t active. It’s not possible to cultivate if one doesn’t have the antidote, because the antidote doesn’t truly exist from its own side, one has to create the causes for the antidote to exist in our mind. So if we don’t cultivate it, it won’t be there. The imprint of anger, for example, is there from beginningless time.
We don’t have to cultivate that. We’ve already done that mindlessly for many lives. But we haven’t usually cultivated the antidote to anger, which is patience. And the point is, and this applies also to all the other delusions and their antidotes, when we’re angry, you can’t cultivate the antidote. You can apply the antidote if you’ve previously cultivated the antidote, but if you’ve never cultivated the antidote, when one is actually angry, you can’t suddenly cultivate the antidote.
We have to cultivate patience when we’re not angry. And the trouble is, when we’re not angry, we think, oh, it’s permanent. I don’t need to cultivate antidote for anger because I’m not angry. But this is what we need to do. And this is what, at the very beginning of the path to enlightenment, this is why we need to meditate on the precious human rebirth, because it’s telling us right now with the precious human rebirth, we’ve got the greatest freedom to do these things.
Because although we have the delusions, we have the potential for all the delusions, the very nature of having precious human rebirth is that we’re not overwhelmed by anger all the time, or we’re not overwhelmed by attachment or jealousy. Maybe sometimes for a short period, but not most of the time. So we have the freedom, the space in our mind to do something about it, and that is to cultivate the antidotes by meditating on them, the harm of them. By cultivating, could that also mean like, regards to anger, being more more patient in your everyday life? Does that make sense?
Yes, but you can only be mindfully more patient in your daily life if you’ve thought about the harm of anger a lot, which is cultivating it. Once you’ve cultivated it, that’s what you try and do. You try to be mindful. Mindfulness will arise it’s there all the time, that when the potential for anger is there, because one is mindful, then one is mindful of the harm of this anger that is starting to arise. And hopefully that mindfulness of the negative side of the anger is so strong that the energy is the same, get angry, be angry, angry is good.
That is over overwhelmed by realizing how harmful this situation is. But we have to cultivate that. Not just read or hear someone say anger is bad, or you read it, But we have to imprint this in our mind really deeply by meditating on it again and again and again. And also trying to practice it again and again because one can try and practice not being angry with certain people or situations, and then you fail. But you have to try again and again and again.
You have to be patient with being patient or persevering with being patient. Yeah. And also recognize that anger isn’t good. Do you know what mean? So Yes.
That’s what I was saying. Yeah. But some people enjoy getting angry because they think it’s an opportunity to say what they really mean without realizing that they’re hurting somebody. Yes. Well, that’s all the things you have to realize.
That’s what I’m saying. One has to cultivate a deep understanding of how harmful anger or attachment or pride and jealousy are from every perspective. But not just now. Well, that’s helpful, but in following the path, one has to realize the incredible long term harm to oneself. Of course, brings suffering in this life, but it’s going to create so much more suffering, so many more obstacles in the future.
Obstacles in the future. So that’s one way of cultivating the antidotes, is thinking about, you know, studying all the the the harm of each particular disturbing thought, but also Anyway, we have a new policy, don’t we? We’re gonna have tea and discussion at the same time, so I’ve got maybe fifteen minutes more. Is that right? Anyway, be patient.
I’m just gonna talk for a little bit longer. Where am I? Yeah. So yeah. So there are this thinking about the specific harms of each disturbing thought, another way to of cultivating the antidotes to the delusions is is recognizing that the object of one’s delusion is impermanent.
Especially this is very helpful with objects of desire and attachment, but it can work for all the delusions, is to try to be more and more aware that whatever makes you angry, jealous, proud, afraid, or attached is impermanent. It doesn’t last, it changes moment by moment. It has no fixed nature. So why be so attached or so angry or whatever? Because it’s not going to last.
But again, one really has to meditate on impermanence to have some strong feeling, understanding of impermanence. And the more you know, if you’ve just got a very abstract intellectual understanding, that’s not gonna have much power. But if one has meditated enough to get some deep feeling for experience, how how everything is really changing moment by moment, clearly, there’s no way I can make something stay the way it is, then that awareness, that mindfulness can really reduce one’s disturbing thoughts. Especially combined with, again, having meditated on one’s own mortality, that I could die this is particularly good for anger, but again, for all the delusions, I do not want to die in the middle of being angry. Because that’s one of the worst ways to die, to be really angry.
But also one doesn’t want to die in the midst of a lot of strong attachment, because actually at the time of death, in general, that’s the greatest obstacle, having an attachment. Because one can’t let go, one can’t die peacefully because of so much attachment. So we need to remember that, to be mindful of that. But the only way to be mindful is having thought about it, and not just once or twice or three times, but a lot. And try to think about it or meditate on it strongly with as much concentration as possible.
Because I can do my thing again. Right? So, for example, right now, you are listening. This is my this is Dharma teaching and this is your mind or my mind as well, and this Dharma teaching touches the mind and then is forgotten. And then so you hear it again or you meditate on it again and it stays in the mind and then it falls out, is forgotten.
Yeah? But if you keep meditating and meditating and listening to the Dharma and meditating and meditating and meditating and meditating and meditating, eventually it’s stuck in your mind. You can’t get it out. And in this analogy, the teaching or what you’ve meditated on is somehow isolated from the rest. But actually, it’s more like, oh, I don’t have wish I had something.
But like when you drop something into water, like some milk into water, it’s not just it just doesn’t go in one bit of the water, it spreads out throughout the whole thing. So what you meditate on affects your whole mind. In other words, whole what you meditate on, when it goes deep into your mind, it affects how you experience everything, how you experience yourself, others, completely. So that’s what we need to do. Just one thing I wanted to talk about briefly, if I can, a little bit.
I always talk about causes and conditions. Right? So in both the situation of karmic imprints and imprints of the delusions, have the situation of the cause, the imprint, and the condition. So in the case of a karmic seed, whether it’s a positive one or a negative one, in order for it to ripen, you have to have the conditions. If the conditions aren’t there, karmic seed won’t ripen.
If the conditions are there, but there is no karmic seed, the result won’t happen. You have to have both. You have to have the imprint and the conditions. So same with the delusions. There is the potential for the delusion, but if the conditions aren’t there, the delusion won’t arise.
So but I want to say more than that, but I think I’ve gone blank. What else was I trying to explain? No. It’s gone. Do you have any questions about causes and conditions?
So I was just thinking, so when you say causes, that’s in relation to karma and conditions is in relation to the delusions. Does that make sense? Say that again? So when you’re talking about, like, when you say things arise due to causes and conditions, the causes is the calmer side of it and the conditions is the delusion side of it. Am I interpreting that correctly?
Well, can be the case. Yeah. Yeah. But as I was just talking, you have a delusion, which is a cause for something to happen. And then you have the imprint of the delusion, but then there are the conditions such as meeting the object or thinking about the object or being with friends, society that has that same delusion.
So when those two things come together, the delusion manifests. Right? But also, you have a delusion such as anger and then for anger to arise, need the conditions, one of which is maybe like an enemy. Why do you have an enemy is because, well, that is a condition, right? And why do you have that?
Why do you meet the enemy? Well, you’ve met the enemy because you’ve created the cause. By engaging you’ve created some negative karma in the past. You’ve harmed a sentient being in the past, and the karmic result is you have an enemy and you meet the enemy. So that becomes the condition for then you have the imprint of anger and get angry when you meet the enemy.
Because of your anger towards the enemy, you harm that enemy and that creates a negative karmic imprint. That negative karmic imprint will ripen as the condition for meeting another enemy. Right? And because you meet that enemy, that acts as a condition for the imprint of the delusion to arise. That’s saṃsāra.
So I don’t quite understand what you mean, but when you say from its own side, can you explain that to me a little bit? Alright. Good question. Maybe someone else can explain it better from its own side. Because it’s often used, and I’ve just, you know, that term.
What color is that flower? Purpley pink. Purpley pink. I’ll agree with that. Do we have a proper name for that?
Purpley pink? What? Purpley pink. Pinky purple. Lavender.
I think that’s just hot pink. No. Let’s just call it purple. When so when you look at that flower, this purple flower, the purple of the flower seems to be there. The purple flower seems to be there.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s all over that flower. Yes. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. I’m not trying to be too tricky. No. No.
Yeah. Yeah. But the purple seems to be what am I trying to say? The purple of this flower, color of this flower seems to exist there from its own side. The fact that you know it’s purple is because it seems as though from the that there’s something here from the side of the flower, not from your side, but from the side of the flower is telling you it is purple or telling you what colour it is.
And similarly, this object seems from its side, not your side, but from its side, it seems to be telling you that it is a flower. I want to see these. That it is a flower. Yeah. Does that make some sense?
Well, he tells the flower’s telling me that it’s a flower. No. From its side. I’m trying to explain the meaning from its side. Yeah.
So I’m looking at but it’s like my perception of it then, isn’t it? But then it is a flower. So the flower it’s not gonna be an elephant. No. No.
There will never be an elephant. No. We’re not talking about that. No. Now you would jump in.
No. No. You asked me about what from its side Yeah. Means. Right.
Yeah. So I’m trying to say what it means is that the from its side is emphasizing that what we experience doesn’t seem to be coming from us. It’s coming from the object, from its side, not our side. There is something here, everything here this table, everything on this table has a very specific name and experience to us. You know, this is a vase of flowers and this is a glass case and this is a jar of no, no, it’s a glass of water and this is a jar of water and this is a book and this is glasses.
Right. But it seems as though their existence as these things is dependent not on something coming from us, but from the side of the object. That the quality, the distinguishing feature that is there is not dependent on us, it’s there from its side. Therefore the beauty, everything about and the happiness we associate with nice nice smelling flower is is there from its side. Yeah.
Completely. Yeah. But we have to have been taught that. That’s yeah. Yeah.
That’s now you’re mixing two things, which is the danger with But but you’re saying that Wait. Wait. Wait. I’m trying to clarify something. Sorry.
In order to destroy ignorance with wisdom that knows and sees experienced things as they are, we have to be able to identify the false appearance we have. We have to be able to clearly identify the false appearance. We have the false appearance, but we don’t know it’s a false appearance. Right? Yes?
You agree? Yeah. Right. Okay. So we have to be able to identify that false appearance as a false appearance.
And until we can really do that, we will as you say, we have to learn things, but when we experience things, we don’t experience them as though they depend on learning about them. We experience them as though they are like that from their own side, under their own power. But then, having identified the false appearance as a false appearance, we have to understand although things appear that way, they can’t exist that way. They just can’t. They can’t exist that way.
Yeah. Long as they appear that way Yeah. They cannot cannot appear. They can’t exist that way. Yes.
They cannot exist that way. Yeah. They can appear that way, but they can’t exist that way. Because this is a carnation. We conventionally, this particular object of the billions of objects on our planet, this object we call a carnation.
Yeah. But this object has no ability from its side to make us, you know, see it as a carnation. That come we label it a carnation. Yeah. Like And when we label it one, it appears as one.
Yeah. But, you know, even if we can’t agree even on the proper color, it’s a bit is it pinkly purple, purply pink, or is it fuchsia? Fuchsia? I thought fuchsia was a flower. No, is a color too.
Oh, okay. Or a lavender, you know. So it’s not really clear. So but but when we have the right name, something, you know, something becomes very definite about something, you know, about something when we have the right name. But the trouble is, something depends on the name.
We label things. For it to be a flower, we label it a flower. But having labeled it as a flower, we then believe it’s a flower from its own side. We shouldn’t be attached to them. Yeah.
Does that mean you have to go out and earn lots of money or get the attachments or understand them firsthand, so to speak? I’m not quite sure of your question. It’s very hard to understand or to see the false appearance of certain things. Of everything, actually. Yeah.
Yeah. Until Great. Until, like, trying to understand how you don’t get much happiness or enjoyment from these things. Right. And you don’t understand how far of a difference that is or that it’s not Yes.
Yes. Then then? So don’t we have to go out and experience them and understand that this object is not exactly what I perceive it to be? Like, how can we say it’s not when we have an when we don’t even experience it? But you have experienced it.
That’s why you’re attached to it. But it I think I know what you’re saying, but oh, dear. A lot of these things are outcome dependent in a future, like, a lot further down the track. In understanding emptiness, In meditation, on emptiness, you don’t take an object that you have strong attachment for to try and see that that isn’t the way because you’re too attached to this thing. You you you just take some simple object And you don’t take something that makes you angry.
All the examples in the philosophical texts about understanding emptiness is about just very neutral things. But having developed that understanding on the basis of just like a table or a chair or a tree or something, not something that makes you ballistically attached or angry. By developing an insight into the empty nature of things, you can then apply it to things that make you angry and attached and so on. Alright? Is that is that sort of answering what you were talking about?
But of course, you know, once we’ve started to hear teachings on emptiness and think about and maybe have some even if we don’t understand it very much, have some feeling that, oh, maybe this is, you know, really interesting and true and blah blah blah, Then with things that do make us angry and jealous and attached, we can try and think about, you know, that they don’t exist that way. It’s all coming from my mind. It’s true we can try and do that, but good to do, but when it comes to actually formally meditating on these things to get a deep experience, you should try and make meditation as easy as possible. You don’t start with the hardest object. Right?
So for example, in developing equanimity, one tries to reduce this, you know, friend enemy stranger meditation, you don’t start with when you try to overcome aversion to the enemy and develop equanimity, you don’t start by meditating on someone you have a strong aversion to, because that’s just too difficult. You think of someone you have a slight problem with, who annoys you a little bit, and then you think, oh, well, actually they’re okay. They just want to be happy and and you can generate it’s much easier to generate a genuine positive feeling to that person, but if you start trying to generate a genuine feeling of love and affection for someone you loathe, it’s just too difficult. Right? You start with some so again, with trying to get a deep understanding of experience or understanding of emptiness, you don’t take people who drive you nuts nuts one way, either through anger or desire.
You just take a table. A boring table, not Not a desirable table. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, there was a whole lot of stuff I wanted to say.
There’s no time. Any questions? It’s not really a question, but would it be possible at all to get in, say, a hand out of what the delusions are and what their cause of the incidents would be? It doesn’t need to be vastly detailed, just to kind of face it. All the delusions and the I could do a little bit.
I could try. Yeah. I’ve got quite a comprehensive list at home on my toilet door. Of delusions. Comprehensive of delusions.
Of delusions. But have you got the oh, you got the remedies, do you? Yeah. Your remedies. I don’t know.
I’ll I’ll have them to you. You can look at them. They’re not my remedies. It’s just something that I printed off. Right.
Okay. That work? Good. But I’m deleted. Okay.
I think yes. It’s tea break discussion time, combination of tea break and no. Just discussion with beverage. Any any final questions? Okay.
Alright. Thank you very much. That’s it. So we can dedicate the merit of this time. Page Roman eleven, XXI.
Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of the 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. Okay, thank you very much. So we have two more classes left.
So and then the retreat, which is on the Sunday, the Tenth. Tenth. Yep. Tenth of April. Right.
Okay. Thank you very much. So we can for those who feel comfortable to do so, we finish with three prostrations.