Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 101-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub concludes a five-week Lamrim course by synthesising the graduated path to enlightenment. He frames the full journey: beginning with renunciation of cyclic existence, progressing through bodhicitta (the mind committed to achieving enlightenment for all beings), and culminating in the development of wisdom that destroys ignorance. A substantial section explores Śāntideva’s method for cultivating bodhicitta through equalising self with others, examining one’s self-cherishing as the primary obstacle, and practising Tonglen—the meditation technique of taking others’ suffering and giving one’s happiness. He addresses why this works (counteracting self-focused thinking rather than literally transferring suffering), emphasises the role of the six perfections as the foundation for wisdom, and explains the five Mahāyāna paths from accumulation to enlightenment. The closing segment introduces tantric practice as the rapid vehicle for enlightenment, stressing that it rests entirely on stable Lamrim realisation and a trustworthy guru relationship. Pitched at practitioners who have engaged with the full five-week course.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Presenting the path final.mp3
UUID: 8c85974f-1ca2-49e6-ad06-6967bea9006d
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Presenting the Path (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2018 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 101.1 minutes
Words: ~11,465
So I would encourage everyone if they can to come to the retreat it’s the way to, because we do some med finally have the time to meditate on some of the topics that we’ve covered. This is not possible to meditate on all the topics, but we can select some of the more important ones to meditate on. So it’s a really good thing to do. Some people may feel like the what’s the word? That it’s quite confronting to spend a whole day meditating on the Dharma, but it’s actually quite painless and could even be quite enjoyable.
And most people who’ve done these little retreats, one day retreats, have found them what’s the word, okay, enjoyable, good, beneficial, yeah. No one has run away screaming yet from them, everyone’s been able to do them, so and we encourage people to bring along a plate of vegetarian food to share with everyone, so this is also a nice thing to do. So it’s also very helpful if you’re planning to come to let the office know whether you’ll be attending or not. So that’s yeah. Okay.
So our topic is the path to enlightenment. So in studying this topic, it’s good to have a motivation that fits with the purpose of the teaching. So as much as possible we can try and generate the bodhicitta motivation. Anyway, is the best motivation to have for anything and everything we do, especially when we’re listening to and meditating on and trying to practice the Dharma, the very best motivation, the most meaningful, all encompassing, all powerful, most virtuous, most beneficial motivation is bodhicitta, that determination to achieve enlightenment, understanding that only in that state, only as a Buddha is one’s mind able to be of perfect lasting benefit to all sentient beings. And so this is the best way to be able to repay the kindness of mother sentient beings.
So bodhicitta arises from having some faith in one’s own Buddha nature and also especially developing that deeper and deeper awareness, understanding and feeling of one’s connection with all sentient beings, how immensely kind they have been, especially as one’s mother many, many times. But also realising that all these kind beings, as they are being kind, as they are helping me day by day, life after life, in ordinary and spiritual ways, all these beings are suffering and the vast majority are experiencing right now far greater suffering than ourselves with far less ability to do anything about their suffering in a meaningful way. So as it says in the teachings, if we the child don’t help our mother, who is going to do it? So we can generate that mind that no matter what I must use this and all my future lives to free my mind of all negativities and obscurations, awaken all my positive potentials completely, to achieve enlightenment for the sake of mother sentient beings. And so to do that I have to follow the path to enlightenment and to do that successfully I have to understand the path and so this is why for the sake of all beings I will study the path to enlightenment.
So if you’d like to join in the traditional prayer, then as we’re saying this, we visualise the Buddha in front of us as the source of all these teachings that show the path to enlightenment, and at the same time we try and think of all sentient beings surrounding us, starting with our parents on either side, family, friends and helpers behind us, harmers in front and been as much as possible all other beings. So we think of them as only kind, only suffering, and this helps us to motivate ourselves to work on our mind continuously, no matter what the difficulties, until enlightenment is achieved. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I crave through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So thinking the Buddha is pleased with our motivation to benefit others, We imagine that the Buddha now comes to the crown of our head, dissolves into blissful golden light, so that that light can then pour down into us, blessing our mind to be able to understand the teachings on the path to enlightenment, blessing our mind to be able to put them into practice correctly, and blessing our mind to be able to eventually gain the unmistaken, undeclining, transformative realizations that lead us to enlightenment.
So then briefly doing 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 subtle level of mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So to realize the full potential of our mind to become a Buddha, we have to develop that determination to achieve enlightenment, have to generate that bodhicitta mind, that bodhicitta thought motivation.
And that develops, and that’s based on developing great love and great compassion for all sentient beings, and that great love and great compassion for all sentient beings depends on developing real love and real compassion for ourselves. So this is why before we can really generate authentic bodhicitta, the spontaneous bodhicitta, we have to be able to develop the mind that is determined to get out of or be free of cyclic existence, because that’s when we’ve really developed genuine love and compassion for ourselves, we just don’t want to suffer anymore and we’re determined to stop creating and not only just stop creating the causes of suffering but to completely eliminate the possibility of any causes for suffering arising in our mind. So we have to develop that mind of renouncing cyclic existence and for that to happen, firstly, we have to develop the very first step in the whole spiritual path, progress, process, which is to develop the basic renunciation of our attachment, our obsessions with the things of this life. There are the various meditations that we need to do to achieve those things. So we’ve gone through most of those, right, and they all build on each other.
So we really need to start out with the first thing first and then move step by step. So last week I was talking about how one generates bodhicitta. There are the two essential methods that come from the two great Indian bodhisattvas, Asaṇga and Śāntideva. So both of these methods involve gradually overcoming both our gross and subtle self-cherishing, which is the greatest obstacle to practicing the Dharma, especially achieving enlightenment, and replacing that with a mind that is cherishing others more and more until one is actually able to develop the mind that cherishes others more than self. In Śāntideva’s method, which His Holiness Dalai Lama says is a more powerful method of generating bodhicitta than Asaṇga’s method, although both are relied on to really generate bodhicitta.
One uses a combined method. So the essential features of Śāntideva’s method is firstly developing that mind on the basis of developing equanimity, where one trains to see all others as basically the same, basically deserving of happiness and so on, rather than seeing them as friend, enemy or stranger. So we try and see them as basically equal, equally deserving of happiness, equally deserving not to suffer, right? So on the basis of that one develops the mind of equalising self with others because due to our self-cherishing, even if we’re able to develop equanimity, we still create this big barrier between our self and others that the self-cherishing always creates the illusion that I am so important, you know, I am the centre of the universe, that everything exists for me really. When we investigate we tend to fall into that way of thinking.
You know, even when we meditate and noises arise we think, oh, everything should be quiet because I’m meditating. Don’t people realise I’m meditating for their benefit? How dare they? That kind of thought can actually arise because of self-cherishing. Or when a car zooms in front of you, how dare they?
How can they do that to me? Or someone takes my car park, that’s for me. I was intending to go there. That self-cherishing thought, very, you know, the all important I arises in all sorts of embarrassing situations. What’s embarrassing to recognise what I mean is it’s embarrassing to recognise that one thinks like that.
So we need to develop this mind that equalises ourself with others, that you know, really trying to develop that mind that is able to feel that oneself and any other sentient being is essentially the same. There’s no real difference, not just between myself and any other human being, but between any other sentient being. Right? I mean, our bodies are different but the mind is the same And we all have this fundamental wish to be happy and not to suffer. So even a cockroach has that.
So their body is much smaller and not as attractive as ours and their mind is functioning at a very low level at the moment, but they still have Buddha nature. And they’ve been my mother. The mind that is trapped in that body was in a body that gave birth to me at some time, in some life or many perhaps past lives. So we try to see that essential different a similarity, sorry, between ourselves and others. And then the more we do that, the more we can start to be aware of our own self-cherishing and how it is the sort, you know, the fundamental, our greatest enemy or our, sorry, second greatest enemy after our ignorance.
But because of ignorance we have self-cherishing. We have this easy happy now mentality where we want everything in our life to be easy and quick so that I have happiness right now. But the self-cherishing thought, because it’s an obscuring mind, has a very kind of limited idea of what happiness is. That self-cherishing thought is not really trying to achieve, well in a sense it’s trying to achieve perfect happiness, but the idea of perfect happiness gets distorted into just the illusion of happiness, that anything that distracts me from my suffering, that blocks it out temporarily, appears to this disturbed mind to be happiness, to be the real thing, this is what I want, especially if it’s quick and easy to achieve. That’s the mindset that we are trapped in.
So there’s the gross self-cherishing mind which I’ve just been describing which is a huge obstacle to even being happy in this life and certainly it’s a huge obstacle to being able to even start doing any sort of Dharma practice. And then there is this yeah, so this is what we have to recognise and understand more and more how harmful it is because if we let ourselves do that, that will help us to not follow the self-cherishing thought. Even though it’s telling us again and again, do this because it’s quick, it’s easy. And we’ve conditioned ourselves to follow that mind so much. So we have to think about all the faults of the self-cherishing over and over and over again, and not just think about them but to recall times when we can recognise that, yes, I did that due to self-cherishing.
My teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who some of you may have met on the weekend, once made the point that one of the best things, best meditations one can do is to keep a diary of one’s self-cherishing and all the suffering results of it and just read that over and over. Just while I mention Rinpoche’s name, those who attended Rinpoche’s talk, some of which was quite difficult to understand because of Rinpoche’s speech difficulty because of his stroke. It was very interesting that Rinpoche’s whole speech was devoted to how important it is, vital, the most important thing in life is to follow practice the Lamrim teachings. It was all about that. This, which is what this course is, you know, the Lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment.
This is the heart, the very heart of the Buddha’s teachings. And Rinpoche was saying how important it is to follow that. We are so lucky to be able to study these teachings and practise them. So the more we see our similarity between self and others, we will want to give up our self-cherishing and that’s done by seeing how harmful it is to our self and others. And also then we need to follow that by recognising more and more how actually cherishing others is the most beneficial thing for ourselves.
Following the self-cherishing thought actually is the most harmful thing we can do for ourselves, whereas cherishing others is the most beneficial thing we can do for ourselves, and it’s also, of course, beneficial for others. So I hope people thought about that during the week because that was the homework, to think about the benefits of how self-cherishing, that cherishing others in fact really does benefit oneself the most. Because the fundamental, you know, one of the fundamental arguments of the Buddhist teachings is that the source of all our suffering is our own disturbing thoughts, the source, the real source of happiness are our own virtuous states of mind and the most virtuous states of mind are developing loving kindness, compassion and all the virtuous minds, but particularly love and compassion. So in order to cherish others, we have to cultivate those minds of love and compassion. So when they are active in our own mind stream, those virtuous minds are the source of real happiness in the moment and they’re creating the causes of future happiness.
So the object is others, but the greatest benefit comes to ourselves. But when we follow self-cherishing, the object is ourself but it’s a wrong view of self and it doesn’t it just causes us harm because we try to cherish ourselves by following afflicted desire. But when one follows afflicted desire, it also brings with it aversion and all the other delusions. Because the way the mind works is that once a negative state of mind arises of anger or desire or whatever, all the other negative ways of thinking tend to come along with it to kind of reinforce it. And fortunately, similarly, when a particular kind of virtuous mind arises such as love and compassion, all the other virtuous minds tend to operate with it as well, to support it.
So the more we see the benefits of cherishing others, then the more we will practise that in various ways. So then this, the more we do that, the more we reduce our self-cherishing and we cherish others seeing the incredible benefits, then the more we do this, the more we will really want to perfect that, be able to really free not only ourselves but others from suffering and lead them to peerless everlasting happiness. We would develop that mind that wants to exchange oneself with others, ourselves in the place of others. So this leads to the fourth essential feature of Śāntideva’s method of generating bodhicitta, which is called, the fourth feature of Śāntideva’s method is exchanging oneself with others and one way to train the mind to do this is a meditation technique which in Tibetan is called Tonglen. So some of you are already familiar with this but some may not be so I’ll just go through this briefly.
So Tonglen means giving and taking. So it’s a meditation technique where one imagines that one takes on the suffering of others, their suffering and the causes of suffering, not just share it or sympathise with it, but one imagines that one actually takes away from other people their suffering and the causes of their suffering and one actually completely gives away one’s own happiness and causes of one’s happiness. So some people when they hear about this get very worried and frightened and think, oh, maybe if I do this practice I will actually get diseases from other people or actually take on their suffering And the point is you can’t do this, this will not happen. One won’t catch another person’s disease from doing this practice, one won’t take on the suffering of others by doing this practice. So then the doubt could arise that if doing this practice doesn’t actually affect other people, it doesn’t really take on their take away their suffering, what is the point of doing it?
Then it’s really stupid. But it’s not because the purpose of it is not to be of immediate benefit to others by taking on their suffering and giving them happiness. The immediate real purpose of the meditation is to counteract our self-cherishing thought, right? And remember one thing that Lama Zopa Rinpoche once said is that one way of thinking brings every kind of happiness and one way of thinking brings every kind of suffering. So particularly the self-cherishing way of thinking brings all our suffering and the cherishing others way of thinking brings every kind of happiness.
But every negative way of thinking, one essential way to reduce it and undermine it and eventually eliminate it is to train the mind to think in the very opposite way, really. And basically this is what meditation is. I’ve said many times in many classes that the Tibetan term for what we call meditation is gong and the word gong literally means habituation or familiarity. So what it means is meditation is a method whereby one tries to familiarise the mind with what is meaningful and virtuous and at the same time to de habituate the mind with what is non virtuous and not meaningful and true. Because unfortunately for all of us, our minds are habituated with what is not true, what is meaningless and what is not very virtuous.
And our mind is not very familiar, not very habituated with what is true and meaningful and virtuous. So we have to change that, that’s what meditation is. And so Tonglen is a technique to try to undermine the self-cherishing way of thinking and to cultivate the mind of cherishing others more than self and putting oneself in the place of others, actually exchanging ourselves with others. And to do it, it requires quite one can go through the motions of doing it because the technique itself is quite simple, but to actually do it so that it, you know, it really touches the heart, your mind, is quite difficult I think, you know, to really imagine you’re taking on the suffering of others. Because ultimately the aim of the meditation is you imagine taking on all of the suffering of all sentient beings, which that’s a lot of suffering to take on.
So, but you start off in a simple way. But, So it takes a lot of courage to really do it, but also what it takes is some real love and compassion for others, but it’s also a method of cultivating and increasing our love and compassion, because by imagining taking on the suffering of others so they don’t Of course the mindset underlying that is, if I take on their suffering, of course they won’t suffer. I don’t want them to suffer, so I will take the suffering and its causes onto myself. So of course, this is a really compassionate way of thinking. So it, by trying to do this, it builds up our courage and compassion, because courage and compassion really go together.
You have to be courageous to be compassionate and if you start developing compassion it makes us more courageous. And also by imagining giving one’s happiness to others, wanting them to be happy, you know, I want them to be happy so I’ll give my happiness to them, I’ll give my causes of happiness to them. So we can’t actually do it but it’s a really great vehicle to think because it is the very opposite to the self-cherishing way of thinking and it’s a way of practicing loving kindness because love is wanting others to be happy, to be genuinely happy, not have the illusion of happiness but to have real happiness and causes. So I will give them my happiness and my causes of happiness. So it’s a way of cultivating love, compassion and also counteracting the self-cherishing thought.
So the way it’s done basically is as we breathe in, focus on the suffering of yeah, slow down, again. As I said, the aim is you to imagine taking on all the suffering of all sentient beings, but in my opinion to start off that way is just ridiculous because it becomes meaningless because there’s no way we can imagine all of the suffering of all sentient beings. So we start with just one person, yeah, and you think of the suffering of one person and try and feel that as unbearable that this person is suffering, and so I will take that suffering on so they don’t have to experience. And I will take the causes of their suffering onto me by myself suffering, they don’t suffer. And I will suffer because it’s okay, not because I deserve to suffer or I’m a bad person, but I have the courage, the ability to do so.
One has that kind of self confidence, not arrogance but that just self confidence that I can do this. And my suggestion is that the best person to start with to take on is yourself. And particularly try to think that right now I have self-cherishing, yeah, and if I don’t give up my self-cherishing now or reduce it, however long I would live, will be tormented by my self-cherishing, I will engage because of my self-cherishing, I will continue whatever negative habits I have, bad habits I have, I will continue to engage in negative actions which will bring suffering in this life but create the causes of suffering in future lives. So you feel all of that suffering, you imagine yourself, you know, some years in the future not having given up the self-cherishing thought and therefore being the victim, you could say, of one’s own self-cherishing. So you take pity on that future self in this life and you think of all the problems and suffering and misery you’ll go through by not having given up your own self-cherishing.
Yeah. And so you think of all that suffering and you take that on to yourself, onto you now. You put it on you, so the method is you imagine taking on that suffering as you breathe in, you take it on in the form of this kind of thick, black, really ugly, disgusting like smoke, and you breathe it in and it’s horrible and painful and you imagine it destroys your self-cherishing, it suffocates it, shatters it. One can imagine the self-cherishing as sort of like ice over your heart or like some kind of solid rock, you know, your heart, your mind has turned into a solid rock because of self-cherishing. And then it’s just suffocated and destroyed by all that suffering because the self-cherishing thought doesn’t want to know about suffering.
We don’t want to know about our own suffering, we don’t want to know the self-cherishing thought does not want to know about our own suffering, let alone other people’s suffering. But here we’re forcing ourselves to recognize our own situation. So then as you breathe out, you imagine breathing out all your happiness and good qualities and dharma understanding and merits, etc, etc, in the form of this blissful white light that you breathe into that future me. Not future in next life, but just a few years down the track in this life. You don’t have to worry about what you look like, it’s more you’re focusing on, you know, your state of mind at that time.
And so you imagine that future me becoming happier and happier, more and more liberated, free of self-cherishing, free of all negativities, all one’s good quality is awakening. One can even imagine oneself becoming a Buddha. So one can start with oneself for some time and then one can, you know, adding other individuals, people close to you who have been really, really kind and you think of their suffering. And even if they don’t appear to be having any obvious suffering in this life, We can understand that everyone is suffering because everyone has delusions, everyone has self-cherishing, everyone has problems and difficulties, fears and worries, whether it’s obvious or not. Everyone’s growing old, is going to die, so we can take on all that suffering from that person in the form of this kind of thick disgusting kind of smoke or liquid.
You breathe it in, imagine it suffocates the self-cherishing thought and then your mind, the true nature of your mind is liberated and from that pure state, that joyful state of that liberated mind, that clean clear mind, then one breathes out those good qualities in the formless blissful white light into the other person or firstly oneself and then to others. So one thing that is extremely important in doing this meditation, otherwise it could be quite dangerous, harmful in some ways, Extremely important is to have some understanding and acceptance that although I have self-cherishing, I am not my self-cherishing. We all have negative qualities, thoughts and feelings, habits, but we are not those thoughts and feelings and habits. We have them, but they are not me, that they are not my true nature. Because if we think that myself, you know, the self-cherishing is me, this is my true nature, this is me, then trying to destroy the self-cherishing is like trying to destroy me and punish me.
But it’s not that, it’s the very opposite. It’s designed to free my true nature so that I don’t suffer. That’s really, really important to understand and experience when one’s doing the practice. We’re not trying to, you know, punish ourselves in any way, quite the opposite. But what we’re recognising is that our own self-cherishing is punishing ourselves, following that is punishing ourselves, is giving us a hard time all the time, even if it’s not obvious.
Because by following the self-cherishing we are engaging with our disturbing thoughts which lead us to engage and create negative actions and even if there is not much obvious suffering in this life, we’re creating the causes of a lot of suffering to be experienced in our future lives and also to perpetuate our self-cherishing into our future lives. So now, while we have the precious human rebirth, we have the ability to undergo some difficulties. We can train our mind step by step to be able to face more and more difficulties without being upset by them, overcome by them. In Śāntideva’s amazing book called The Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, one of the wonderful things he says in there is something like, well I’ll just paraphrase because I can’t remember the exact verses, but it goes along the lines of: For a worldly person who’s controlled by delusion and karma and self-cherishing and everything, who’s always trying to be happy, the work of worldly life never ends. It just never ends because we never get satisfaction from following the worldly life, it’s impossible.
It just, and it goes on forever and there’s never, it never ends and there’s never any good result. Whereas practicing the Dharma is it is definitely difficult. It’s not easy to practice the Dharma to change the mind. Anyone who says it is, is lying. Is not easy and it’s difficult and it involves a certain degree of suffering.
But that suffering, those difficulties come to an end and it comes to an end with liberation and enlightenment. Think about that. What we’re doing now, will never end. If we just keep on like we are, it will just go on and on and on, it will never stop and it will never bring any good result. It’s just hard work all the time trying to be happy because the method we’re using doesn’t work.
It kind of looks like it does to some extent, but it doesn’t. This is what the Buddha is telling us, it just doesn’t work. And yet we follow it again and again and again. If I just try again, if I do it just a slightly different way, if only I have, you know, this relationship didn’t work so I’ll try that one or that one or this one, I’ll go to I didn’t like living here so I’ll go there and I’ll go there and I don’t like this job so I’ll do this job and that job and blah blah blah, everything else, you know. My hair colour is not good so I’ll change it to this colour and this colour and I’ll chop it all off and you know, grow it now and everything is endless, know, oh it’s not, this doesn’t look good here, it should be there, no it doesn’t look good, oh and it doesn’t match that anymore so I have to get the whole thing replaced.
It’s endless, endless, no happiness. Whereas the work of, dharma work comes to an end with complete satisfaction. Now I’ve lost the point of why I said all of that but I hope you remember why I said it all. Yes, know, but I don’t, I was trying to make a point of Dharma practices, yeah, it is difficult. Oh, so this is difficult, I think.
Tonglen is difficult but it’s worth doing. It brings a result, whereas ordinary life is difficult but it doesn’t bring any satisfaction. I think essentially that’s what I was trying to say but there may have been a more subtle point that I’ve forgotten. Right, okay, so that’s basically the practice of Tonglen. So the more one does that as meditation and sees the benefit of it, of changing one’s mind, moving one’s mind, making one’s mind more, one’s heart, more aware of the suffering of others and wanting to take that on and develop, you know, and wanting others to be happy and wanting, you know, yeah, and so on.
The more one realises that just doing it at the level of imagination, just imagining this is not enough. Know, this mind, this really powerful mind will start to arise thinking I have got to do something, you know, I’ve got to help others to be free of suffering. Not just think, you know, sit in a cushion and, oh, wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was happy? I’ve got to do something about it and what can I do? As I am, I can’t do much.
I have to change, I have to change my mind. How do I change, what do I have to do to liberate others and not just liberate them but enlighten them, you know? I have to stop harming them, for a start. So I have to get rid of all my disturbing thoughts. So how do I do that?
Well, I have to develop the wisdom that counteracts the ignorance which is the basis of all disturbing thoughts. The wisdom that I have to develop, the wisdom that counteracts the ignorance which is the basis of all my disturbing thoughts. But also I need to be able to benefit others, I need to be generous and kind and patient and persevering and courageous and wise, loving and compassionate, etc, etc. In other words, I have to develop all my positive qualities and not just so that they’re there all the time, not just sometimes. To benefit others one can’t just be patient.
Sometimes with some people we have to be patient all the time with everyone and kind and generous all the time to everyone. Right? And wise all the time. I can’t afford to make mistakes in benefiting others and enlightening them. In other words, I have to awaken all my good qualities so that they’re functioning a hundred percent all the time, which means, in other words, I have to become a Buddha.
Only a Buddha has that mind. So I’ll become a Buddha. If that’s what it means, that’s what it takes, I’ll become a Buddha. So that’s the thought of bodhicitta. I mean, of course, when it becomes genuine, anyone can say, I want to become a Buddha.
But that’s because we have no idea how difficult it is. Or, know, and we haven’t even started trying to. So real bodhicitta is when the mind knows all the difficulties and what is involved, but I don’t care, I will do it no matter how long it takes, how painful it is, how frustrating, how much people, you know, don’t appreciate all this, etcetera, etcetera. It doesn’t matter. I’ll do it because I have to.
It’s only thing to do. So then as I mentioned last week, having generated bodhicitta, so maybe just go back, also I mentioned this last week that, so by doing, hearing these teachings and meditating on them, especially when we meditate on them strongly, then a superficial kind of bodhicitta can arise, which is what Lama Zopa Rinpoche calls effortful bodhicitta. It’s not able to sustain itself for very long. But of course the more we familiarise our mind with it, that kind of effortful bodhicitta can arise more frequently, more strongly, more and for longer periods of time. But by and eventually by doing these practices over and over again, habituating ourselves with them, eventually we can generate the actual bodhicitta which is this spontaneous or uncontrived bodhicitta which is operative in our mind all the time.
So what and especially to help us generate that mind of bodhicitta, one needs to engage in what are called the six perfections or the six paramita of generosity, generosity, morality, patience, perseverance, concentration, and those lead to so these are said to be the method aspect of the Buddha’s teachings, which are really on the one could also equate with the method aspect is really about developing the heart, the good heart, and then there is the other aspect of the teachings which is the wisdom aspect. So Śāntideva in his amazing book, The Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, at the very beginning of chapter nine which is about developing wisdom, the antidote to ignorance, The first verse of that says something along the lines that everything the Buddha taught up to this point, because he was in the previous chapters, he was talking about how you develop the first five perfections of generosity, morality, patience, perseverance and concentration. Śāntideva says, all of those things the Buddha taught in order to be able to develop wisdom. Because that wisdom, that is the heart of the Buddha’s teachings ultimately, because it is that wisdom that will destroy ignorance which will free us from all suffering, it will free us from cyclic existence.
So just to go back a little bit, the Buddha says we have a mind, you know, which is not the brain and not a product of the brain, but we have this amazing mind which is formless, it’s beginningless and endless, it’s indestructible and its unique function is to give rise to all experience, all knowing, all feeling. That is thou mind and that mind is pure and perfect in its nature. It has this Buddha quality, this Buddha nature, Buddha potential, but that is obscured and there are two levels of obscuration preventing our Buddha nature manifesting. So the first level, the grossest level of obscurations which are called the obstacles to liberation, so those are the obstacles to, well those obstacles create the samsaric experience of taking rebirth over and over again in the six realms of cyclic existence. So those gross obscurations are ignorance and all the disturbing thoughts that arise from ignorance and also the negative imprints that come from following our disturbing thoughts.
Right? So these are the obstacles to liberation. So when one develops wisdom completely, that wisdom totally eliminates ignorance and because it eliminates ignorance it also eliminates all our disturbing thoughts and all our negative karmic imprints in such a way that they can never arise ever again, even for a moment. So then one is free of cyclic existence, free of all suffering, but the mind is still obscured, there is this subtle level of obscuration and that’s called the obscurations to omniscience. Alright, and those, that subtle level of obscurations to omniscience is said to be the subtle, even though ignorance has been eliminated, still there’s somehow the subtle imprint of ignorance existing with the mind.
And the Tibetan lamas give this, and many of you have heard this a few times already, give this analogy that if you have a bowl where you crush garlic in, right, if you remove all the garlic from the bowl and then you wash that bowl many, many times until it’s completely clean, Even still, even then there is this smell, there’s no garlic, conventionally speaking, there’s no garlic there in the bowl at all, not the slightest trace, but the bowl still smells of the garlic. So a little bit like that, when the obscurations to liberation are gone, it’s like the garlic’s gone, but still there’s this very subtle smell of the garlic, there are still these subtle imprints of ignorance and the delusions there. So these are said to be the obscurations to omniscience. So what removes those is wisdom, but a very special kind of wisdom because it’s the wisdom that is empowered by bodhicitta. So someone following, you know, like in the Theravāda tradition, the Theravāda tradition emphasises only getting out of cyclic existence.
So someone following that path doesn’t develop bodhicitta, so their wisdom is as powerful enough to eliminate ignorance and free them from saṃsāra, but that’s all. So those beings, the arhats, still have these subtle obscurations to omniscience because they haven’t developed bodhicitta. But by developing bodhicitta then that empowers that wisdom, makes it more powerful so that gradually the bodhisattva is able to eliminate these subtle obscurations to omniscience and then enlightenment is achieved. So that is why wisdom, which is called the ultimate bodhicitta, it’s the ultimate mind of there’s the conventional bodhicitta, which is the wish to achieve enlightenment, and then there’s the ultimate bodhicitta, which is the wisdom that will lead us to enlightenment. So ultimate bodhicitta is that wisdom that is combined with the conventional bodhicitta.
A bodhisattva, having generated bodhicitta, engages in the six perfections, especially to be able to develop this wisdom and strengthen this wisdom with bodhicitta so that one becomes not only free of cyclic existence but free of the subtle obscurations and is able to achieve enlightenment. So this is what we need to do. Might take quite a while, but it’s the best thing to do. So just very briefly, how much more time have I got? Start fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes, fifteen, right, just very quickly. Right, so by following the path to enlightenment, the practices that help us renounce this life, doing the practices that help us renounce cyclic existence and then training the mind in the conventional bodhicitta and wisdom. When the mind of spontaneous bodhicitta actually arises for the first time, this is when one actually enters the actual path to enlightenment. All of what I’ve been talking about for the past five weeks is just the preparation to entering the actual path. All of this, what we’re on now is like a, what do you call it, like a side road to the highway.
So the actual path to enlightenment starts when one generates spontaneous bodhicitta. So then one becomes a bodhisattva. So on the path to enlightenment there are said to be what are called five paths. There is the path of accumulation, which is where the bodhisattva puts effort into accumulating merit because that’s what is necessary for all the realisations to come. Then there’s the path of goodness gracious me.
There’s the path of preparation. And then, so this is preparing the mind to be able to develop the wisdom that will destroy ignorance. And then, and these two paths can last for an extremely long time, many, many, many lifetimes. I won’t tell you how many because we’ll all get depressed. And then at one point, one day as a Bodhisattva who’s completed the path of accumulation and the path of preparation, we will sit down on our cushion somewhere and meditate on emptiness and we will directly perceive the empty nature of ourself directly.
And that is said to be the path of insight. And that path lasts only a very short time, just the time of the meditation. And when one achieves that, then one becomes an Ārya Bodhisattva, an Ārya Bodhisattva. Not an ordinary Bodhisattva. An ordinary Bodhisattva, by the way, is extraordinary, right?
Has generated spontaneous bodhicitta. But on the path of insight one now becomes like a really exceptional being because one’s directly perceived emptiness, which means one is starting to destroy ignorance, one’s starting to really eliminate it. One hasn’t eliminated it yet, but one is starting to. So on the path of insight one becomes what is said to be a first level bodhisattva, because there are ten levels of ārya bodhisattvas or there are what are called the ten bhūmis. So bhūmi is a Sanskrit word that just basically means a level or stage.
So on the path of insight one becomes a first level Ārya Bodhisattva. And as a first level Ārya Bodhisattva, just for your information and to encourage you to become a first level bodhisattva, As a first level bodhisattva you will be able, like if you’re sitting on your cushion in your meditation room or in your cave somewhere, as you’re doing that you will be able to manifest one hundred other bodies which you can send out anywhere you want into the universe to benefit sentient beings. And they can be of any shape or color or they can look like human beings or they can be dogs or trees or any emanation that benefits others. Do you mean imagine? No, no, you actually no, you create them with your mind.
You create these other bodies, these emanation bodies. And it gets better because each of those emanation bodies is able to create a hundred emanation bodies. So as an Ārya Bodhisattva you can create ten thousand other bodies to help others, to benefit others. And so, you know, after the path insight, there is the path of meditation. There is the, you know, is the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth level Bodhisattva’s practice, the path of meditation.
And at the very end of the seventh level, the seventh level of Bodhisattva, at that level, at the beginning of the eighth level, this is when the Bodhisattva has completely eliminated ignorance. They have become completely free of cyclic existence. So then on the eighth, ninth and tenth, anyway it doesn’t matter, so on the eighth, ninth and tenth levels the Ārya Bodhisattvas eliminate the obstacles to omniscience. So on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh they get rid of the obstacles to liberation. Yeah?
The obstacles to liberation. So then on the eighth, ninth and tenth one gets rid of the obstacles to omniscience. And then at the end of the tenth level, when one enters the path of no more learning, which is another term for Buddhahood. There’s nothing more to learn, you know everything, everything’s been completed. So these are the five Mahāyāna Paths.
So in developing wisdom we really need to practice the six perfections of generosity, morality, patience, perseverance, concentration. These are the foundations. At the same time we have to study the wisdom teachings of the Buddha about, so that we can identify the wrong view we have of how things exist, because right now everything is appearing to us in a false way, but it seems completely true and real to us, but it’s actually false. So we need to be able to understand how this appearance is false by understanding how things actually do exist, how they do, how they can appear. And then especially as I mentioned last week, what is the key thing?
So just an intellectual understanding of those wisdom teachings is not going to, you know, suddenly free, destroy our ignorance. What we have to do is to use that intellectual understanding in meditation to be able to identify what is called the object to be refuted, which is the wrong view of self that we have right now, that is always existing. Just to make this There’s a whole DB module on this which takes five or six weeks, I’m trying to condense this in three minutes. We have many, many wrong views and so on, but when we’re referring to ignorance, there are intellectual wrong views, but these are not the cause of saṃsāra. Our intellectual wrong views can lead us to engage in negative actions that bring suffering, that they’re not the actual root cause of suffering.
The root cause of suffering is what is called the innate, it’s an innate ignorance. It’s not, it’s existed, it’s always existed simultaneously with the existence of our mind. It never started, it’s always been there, this innate wrong view that we have. It’s not an intellectually acquired wrong view. You know, think a very gross example of an intellectually acquired wrong view from the Buddhist point of view is that there’s no future lives.
That’s an intellectually acquired view, that wrong view can lead us to engage in negative actions because we don’t believe there’s any suffering results in the future. But that is not the root cause of cyclic existence. The root cause of cyclic existence is this instinctive, innate grasping at a truly existing self that every sentient being has all the time. And also because of that, we have this wrong view that everything else, all phenomena, so there’s the wrong view of self and there’s the wrong view of phenomena, that all phenomena truly exist from their own side. So we have to be able to identify the object to be refuted, which in the first instance is the wrong view of self we have.
We have to be able to identify, really recognise, oh this is how, not just intellectually, but try to grab, hold on to a time when we could I don’t know how to put it, probably. Anyway, we have to identify in the moment how we are holding this view of I. So that is very difficult to do. But once one does that, then being able to develop wisdom, the wisdom that will destroy ignorance becomes very quick and easy. That is the key thing to do.
But to be able to do that, one has to have a very calm, clear, subtle mind. That is why we need to develop concentration, that’s why we need perseverance, patience, pure morality and practicing generosity. But also apart from that, to be able to develop this wisdom, we need to purify our mind and we have to accumulate merit and we also need to rely on a qualified spiritual master. You can’t just go off by yourself and read a few books and achieve this. One has to rely on a qualified spiritual master to teach one, to guide one and especially to be able to achieve the blessings of the Guru, which are the blessings of the Buddha because the Guru is the channel for the Buddhas.
And the blessings of the Guru is really what it’s referring to is it’s when one’s mind is blessed, what is really happening is, I’ve never had this by the way, but this is my understanding of what the blessings are, is that one’s mind is inspired. And when the mind is inspired, I think we’ve all had been inspired by very ordinary, you know, in comparison to practising dharma and so on, what we’ve been inspired by are very limited things. But when one is inspired by the Guru and what the Guru represents, When the mind is inspired, the mind is in a sense lifted up out of its ordinary state. It becomes momentarily, and hopefully more than momentarily, but for some time in that state the mind becomes calm and clear and very still and so one’s natural wisdom, one’s Sherab, one’s intelligence can function and really experience things as they are. In that state realisations can come very easily, especially if one’s put the groundwork in.
If you haven’t done the groundwork first, the realization won’t come. But if one’s put effort into studying the teachings, purifying the mind, accumulating merit and developing devotion to the triple gem and the Guru, then at some point then this inspiration can come. And that really transforms everything. And that can come in all sorts of strange situations like there’s many stories in the Zen tradition but also in the Tibetan tradition like you know of the master hitting the disciple with his shoe or something and in that moment the disciple gains realizations. So all sorts of things can set it off, but, you know, yeah.
So the easiest way, According to Je Tsongkhapa, the founder of our tradition, the easiest way to develop the realisation of, or firstly the intellectual understanding of wisdom, of the true nature of things that leads to wisdom, is to understand dependent arising. That everything that exists depends on causes and conditions, on parts and the labelling mind. Because the way things, the false, the way things are appearing to us now, which is false, if that appearance was true, but it’s not true, but if it was true, it would mean that things did not depend on anything. Right? But the more we understand that things actually do depend on things, they could, that they do depend on causes and conditions, they do depend on parts, and they do depend on our mind, is the most important part, then the more we start to understand that, the more we start to understand, we start to become aware that things are not appearing that way to me right now.
For example, you know, when you look at this flower, this is a flower, I’ve done this before, but, you know, you look at this flower, when we just, in the emotional moment, when we experience things, which is what we do all the time in the emotion, we don’t go around being philosophers in our daily life analysing things. This just appears as one thing, but actually and it doesn’t particularly depend on causes and conditions, it just seems to be there. Or even for example, everyone in this room must have made a sandwich at some time, right? So we make our own sandwich and then the sandwich is there and when you look at it, it’s a sandwich. It looks like a truly existing sandwich.
You made it, but then it seems to be just there from its own side. Of course we know we made it due to causes and conditions but when you look at it or if you buy a sandwich in a shop, it just seems to be there. And of course we know a flower has parts, of course we know it has parts, but we don’t experience it as though it depends on them. And most of all, when we experience this object and everything else, it doesn’t appear that it depends on my mind. It just is there from its own side, under its own power, with its own qualities, and that is completely false.
You know, this is a flower, is this a flower? It’s obviously a flower to all of us. But this object, this object has absolutely no ability from its side to make us know it’s a flower. You check up. How does this thing make us know it’s a flower?
It can’t. It has no ability to do it, but it seems as though it’s telling me I’m a flower, I’m a little white flower, I’m a little white chrysanthemum, I think. Chrysanthemum? Yeah. But it has no ability to do that, but it seems as though it’s from its own side, meaning it doesn’t depend on me at all for it to be a little white chrysanthemum flower.
And things appear to be good and bad and beautiful, ugly and taste good and taste bad from their own side, but it all depends on our mind. But it doesn’t appear that way and that is the problem. That’s where the suffering comes. Especially when we get into good and bad, beautiful and ugly. So the more we check up and see things arise and they can only exist depending on causes and conditions, parts in our mind, that helps us to start to doubt what we’re grasping at is real.
But we are so habituated, that’s why we have to purify our mind and accumulate merit so that that you know, at one level you can read this stuff and think, oh yes, this is obvious, that’s true, but then you look at something and it just looks rock hard solid concrete really there from its own side. That’s why we have to purify our mind and accumulate merit so that the, you know, some inner experience, not just an intellectual conceptual understanding is there, but some real experience starts to take place. Oh, you’ve rung the bell haven’t you? I have. A long time ago.
Thank you. Anyway, that was a brief introduction to the path to enlightenment, which we all have the potential for in our mind, every single one of us, and we have the best conditions to start following it right now. So please be mindful of that. Okay, so if people would like to take a break or just get a cup of tea or something, coffee and Sorry? Yes, okay.
Which is? Could you speak up just a little bit louder please? Sure. I’ll just read out the section, which is, there are two ways of entering a Sorry, what page is this? This is page forty four.
Virtue and Yep, virtue and reality. Forty four. Mhmm. That’s the last paragraph on that on that Mhmm. Page.
And it says there are two ways of entering the Mahāyāna path. Either The main way of entering the Mahāyāna path of course is following that from the very beginning, the Mahāyāna teachings, generating bodhicitta and so on. But according to the Mahāyāna teachings, someone who follows the non Mahāyāna path, the path of the individual vehicle, they become an Arhat. So and they remain in that state, sort of absorbed in the bliss of their own mind for an enormously long period of time. But according to the Mahāyāna teachings, and I’ve never actually received any explanation myself on how this exactly happens, but according to the tradition at some point the Buddhas are able to sort of awaken in a sense the arhats from this absorption and explain to them that you’ve still got a long way to go baby, as they say.
And so they then arise out of that absorption into the bliss of nirvana and follow the Mahāyāna path. But that means it’s much, much slower process. Solitary realizers, does that sound like a member or something? There are two kinds of arhats. There are what are called solitary realizers and hearer arhats.
So the hearer arhats are those such as the direct disciples of the Buddha who hear the teachings directly from a Buddha and practice and in that life and achieve enlightenment, oh sorry, nirvana and become an arhat usually in that life or no, not necessarily in that life, but they hear the teachings from a Buddha and practice and whereas a solitary realiser is someone who achieves arhatship at a time when the Buddhas haven’t appeared. I mean they’ve received teachings from a Buddha but they go off into very isolated places and after many life I don’t really understand this, I don’t worry about it too much, it’s very obscure, but at periods when the Buddhas haven’t appeared for enormous long periods of time, these solitary realisers become arhats and there are also two kinds of solitary realisers. I can’t remember both. One was called the rhinoceros like solitary realiser and there’s another kind but I’ve forgotten what other kind but I’m not yeah. Question, any down to earth questions?
Yes. The deities, all of the deities, you know, they use the term deity for the tantric beings, so all of these deities such as Avalokiteśvara and Mañjuśrī and Tārā and so on, these are all Buddhas, they are all enlightened beings, But sometimes, it does get slightly complicated because sometimes they are presented as bodhis. Avalokiteśvara and Mañjuśrī and also Maitreya are sometimes presented as bodhisattvas and sometimes as Buddhas. But in reality they are Buddhas who sometimes for mysterious reasons unknown to ordinary beings like ourselves appear as bodhisattvas. What I just wanted to say in five minutes, I’ve got three minutes now, is the general practising of the Mahāyāna, the sūtra practising of the Mahāyāna by practising the six perfections and achieving enlightenment that way, this is said to, even in the Mahāyāna tradition itself, is said to take an enormously long time, just an inconceivable number of lifetimes to be able to achieve enlightenment.
So the Buddha taught another method to achieve enlightenment, one shouldn’t say another method, well it’s a different technique at least of achieving enlightenment very quickly and that was taught in secret way to those great bodhisattvas who had incredible courage to practice intensively and had unbearable compassion for the suffering of others. So this is the Tantric Path which is the quick way to achieve enlightenment. So it is said that, you know, for exceptional people you can practice even as one can achieve enlightenment through tantra in three years, three months and three days. I mean very very few beings have done that. But it’s also said that even without meditating on the tantric techniques, keep the samayas or vows of tantra purely for sixteen lifetimes you will achieve enlightenment.
Which is very quick, of course, because the Sūtra path takes millions and millions and millions of lifetimes to achieve enlightenment. So the way Dharma was practiced in Tibet, because Tibet preserved all the levels of Buddha’s teachings, and the way the Dharma is practiced in the Gelugpa tradition and we’re encouraged to is to practise, it has as our basis the Lamrim, to study the Lamrim teachings and meditate on those because they generate the basic realisations and also at a very down to earth, ordinary level of practise, the lam rim, directly or indirectly, by practicing that, this is the antidote, it contains the antidotes to our delusions and basic problems in life, in this life, but it is the basis of being able to generate bodhicitta and enter the actual Mahāyāna path and achieve enlightenment. So the way the Gelugpa tradition, the Lama Tsongkhapa set out the practices for his followers is to study the Lamrim, get an understanding of the Lamrim, practice it, try to get some of the basic realisations of the lam rim and then to be able to take tantric initiations and then prepare the mind this way. So there are four levels of tantra.
The basic level is called Kriyā Tantra, then there is the second level which is called Caryā Tantra, then there is Yoga Tantra and then there’s what is called Maha Anuttara Yoga Tantra. But these days from my own personal experience of how things are happening, the second and third levels of tantra don’t seem to be practiced very much at all these days and the two main types of deity practice that one is encouraged to do are the practices associated with Kriyā Tantra. So for example, like the Medicine Buddha is a Kriyā Tantra practice and Mañjuśrī is depicted up there, is a Kriyā tantra practice and over here we have one thousand arm Chenrezig and then four arm Chenrezig and so these are Kriyā Tantra deities, and like Tārā, green Tārā, white Tārā, are Kriyā Tantra deities. So one is encouraged to receive initiations into their practice sorry, okay, yeah, into those practices first and to gain some familiarity with that practice and then there’s somehow the second and third levels get ignored and then one is able to take empowerments into highest yoga tantra. And the unique feature of highest yoga tantra is that these are a complete practice whereby one can achieve enlightenment completely even in one lifetime.
Right. So even though we are not really qualified to practice Tantra, we are encouraged in the Tibetan tradition to take initiations once one has got some basic foundation and so on, because the argument is if initiations and empowerments were only given to qualified people, tantra would have died out a long, long time ago. So we are given these in order to keep the tradition going and even though we’re not really qualified in general, because there can be exceptions of course, but even if in general we’re not really qualified to take these initiations and do the practices properly, we’re putting incredibly positive imprints in our mind which in the future will and we have the imprints so that in the future when the conditions are there we will be able to practice properly and gain the realisations. So for those people who are really interested, feel a strong connection with Tibetan Buddhism and and really want to practice, then it’s really good to when you feel comfortable that you can keep the basic commitments, to take and especially when you connect with You know, one of the things that I think many people don’t really appreciate is that and understand properly is that when you take an initiation, you receive it from a particular lama teacher, and it’s really, really important that you feel a strong connection with that person, that you can trust that this person is really an accomplished practitioner, they’re not just some ordinary person.
That is really important. Or even if they are and you accept that they are some highly realised being but you don’t feel any connection to them, then it’s not so, in my personal opinion, it’s not so beneficial to receive initiations from them. It’s really important, and especially when you take highest yoga tantra which have these incredibly strong karmic commitments to keep, it’s incredibly important that you feel a close connection, devotion to the Lama who is giving it. Because of course when you take a like when you receive ordinary ordinary, I shouldn’t say ordinary, but sūtra teachings, there is no commitment to take the teacher one of your Gurus, where you try and see the Guru, the teacher, as a Buddha, but when you take a tantric initiation or a tantric empowerment, and there’s a difference between an initiation and an empowerment, you have to take that person as one of your Gurus, meaning you have to accept that this person is a Buddha, because the initiation doesn’t work at all unless you have that view or try to have that view. That’s fundamental, because when an initiation or and an empowerment occurs, one’s supposed to be seeing the person giving the initiation or the empowerment as the deity, you know, because all initiations and empowerments introducing you to the practice of a particular deity which represents a particular quality.
So you’re supposed to be believing you’re receiving that from that deity. So once you do that, that’s it. You have made a lifelong, the strongest commitment you can possibly make in all of history and the universe that that person is a Buddha. I have accepted that. I don’t have to take the initiation, the Lama isn’t saying I’m a Buddha or you have to take this initiation from me.
We make the decision and once we make the decision, we have to accept that for the rest of my life I have this vital obligation to see this person as a Buddha. That karma is incredibly powerful. All karma’s pretty heavy, but that one is about as heavy as you can get. It is the heaviest really when accept a teacher as the good as the teacher with a big T, as a Buddha. So one of the many wonderful things Lama Zopa Rinpoche has said which is stuck in my tiny little mind, is that Rinpoche once said that what makes tantra wonderful is the three principles of the path, that is renunciation, wisdom, bodhicitta.
In other words, tantra doesn’t really work unless one understands and has some realisation of what we’ve been talking about, the graduated path to enlightenment. It’s the foundation of being able to practise tantra. Tantra without understanding and experience of the graduated path to enlightenment is just nonsense. It’s actually very dangerous for oneself if one doesn’t have a good motivation, some understanding of emptiness, the wisdom of emptiness and some renunciation. And, yeah, a friend of mine, a monk friend of mine who did a long retreat, who’s a very good meditator, I think, some very strong imprints from past lives.
I don’t seem to have any of those at all. Anyway, when he was doing this retreat and he was saying he became really aware during that retreat that from his own side, from his own experience, that the more he wanted to practise Tantra, the more he realised he had to know the path to enlightenment. And the more he knew the path to enlightenment, the more it was the real basis for practising Tantra. These two things go together. This is why Lama Zopa Rinpoche emphasizes, he manifests as getting a little upset when people talk about there is the Theravāda and then there’s Mahāyāna and there’s Tantra.
And he says this is rubbish because Tantra is Mahāyāna. It’s not something separate from the Mahāyāna, it is the very essence of Mahāyāna. Mahāyāna is about achieving enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings and Tantra is about achieving enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings as quickly as possible, to stop the suffering of sentient beings as quickly as possible. It’s not something separate or different from Mahāyāna at all, It’s just a very particular technique within Mahāyāna to achieve enlightenment quickly. And the basis is the Lamrim, the graduated stages of the path to enlightenment of leading the mind through renouncing this life, renouncing saṃsāra, generating bodhicitta and through developing the three qualities of renunciation, wisdom and bodhicitta.
Practising tantra at our basic level can help us gain tantric realisations. And Lamrim realisations can help us practise tantra. Thank you very much for your patience, perseverance, concentration and wisdom. So we can dedicate the merit of this time. So please be confident that you have generated skies of merit by doing this course, because the course itself, the content, is the Buddhadharma, and hopefully one had a good motivation for doing it and one persevered in doing the course, and now one is happy that one has completed the course.
Not regretful that one wasted one’s time doing the course, but one is happy not happy that one’s it’s finished and glad that’s finished, but happy that one completed it, yes? That this was the good thing to do. So that makes a complete throwing karma, hopefully, so we can dedicate that it throws us into enlightenment. Dedication on page eleven, Roman eleven. Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, 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. May the precious Bodhimind, not yet born, arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore.