Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 77-minute teaching from the DB Presenting the Path 2016 series, Ven Thubten Dondrub explores the mental foundations for generating Bodhicitta — the aspiration to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. He begins by establishing equanimity as the essential prerequisite, examining how the everyday practice of dividing people into friends, enemies, and strangers blocks our good qualities and leads to harmful actions. Drawing on Asaṇga’s classical approach, he walks through the specific method of cultivating Bodhicitta by first understanding our connections to all beings, then consciously reflecting on how every person has cared for us as our mother across past lives. He addresses both the gross level of self-centered attachment and progressively subtler mental divisions. Aimed at students already familiar with basic Buddhist path teaching and ready to work with conceptual frameworks.
File metadata (for organising)
File: DB Presenting The Path Week 7.mp3
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Presenting the Path (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~304
And both of these methods of cultivating this determination to achieve enlightenment for for others is based on first developing the mind of equanimity. So the more and this seems a very natural process. We all do this So the main way to yeah. So by by following the system of categorizing people as friend and stranger, So this process of seeing friend enemy in a stranger blocks, you know, all our the development of all our good qualities, the original topic, why do we have friends and strangers is if you check the person we label friend. And, yeah, everyone was a stranger at some point, and then we meet someone.
So there are two kinds of self judging. The one I just described is the the gross the very gross one, which is completely negative. It leads us to engage in all sorts of negative actions, So just very briefly oh, there’s not enough time anyway. Just very briefly, Asaṇga’s method of generating Bodhicitta on the basis of cultivating So on the basis of understanding So everyone so, of course, sometimes So it’s really good to remember all those things, all all the different ways our mother took care of us, but not just to Next course of bodhicitta, I quote, is seeing the benefits There’s a couple of handouts for each person.