Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Thubten Dondrub delivers a 96-minute teaching on mind and mental factors, the third in a six-talk series. He opens with an extended exploration of listening posture and bodhicitta motivation, then moves into core Buddhist psychology: the nature of mind as clear and knowing; the five omnipresent mental factors; and the five object-determining factors including wisdom, aspiration, mindfulness, concentration, and belief. The talk pivots to elaborate on the virtuous mental factors, especially faith—defined as intelligent appreciation of virtuous qualities and beings—and how it underlies all spiritual practice and cuts through doubt. He distinguishes three forms of faith (admiring, believing, aspiring), then covers shame and consideration for others, explaining these as essential inner restraints on harmful action. Throughout, Dondrub weaves concrete examples from contemporary society, Tibet, Mongolia, and the effects of ignorance on ethics, arguing that virtue rests on understanding the mind’s true nature rather than arbitrary cultural standards.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 M F L 2004 11 04.mp3
UUID: 93a61e66-db9e-43ef-8e53-3b5b767d6eaa
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Mind and Mental Factors (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2004-11-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 95.9 minutes
Words: ~10,965
So I’d like to welcome everyone to this is the third in a series of six talks on mental factors. I think there are a few new people here tonight. So I’m sorry, I can’t give any background or whatever. It just takes too long. So if you ask questions or I hope something makes sense.
So we’ve been already doing two talks and people have been attending other courses. So I hope something is of benefit. It’s coming. So in listening to the Buddhist teachings, it’s important to try to listen with a good motivation and or listen with a correct motivation, a positive virtuous motivation and to try to cultivate the very best motivation, which is the wish to use the Buddha’s teachings to practice them, to transform one’s mind, to become totally free of suffering so that one can develop the full potential of one’s mind to achieve enlightenment so that one is able to benefit others and to benefit them not in a short term limited way, but in a complete and lasting way by guiding them, having the ability to guide others, all others away from suffering and help and guiding them to experience their own liberation and enlightenment. And in this way we repay the kindness we receive from sentient beings, not only in this life but all our previous lives.
So this motivation is called the bodhicitta thought, the mind seeking enlightenment for the benefit of others. And we base this motivation on our practice on a strong refuge in the existence of the Buddhas and their perfect qualities and therefore a refuge and trust in the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha that contain all the methods that we can follow. And also a refuge in the great practitioners of those teachings because those beings are an inspiration to us and can guide us along the path. So for this reason, we say the prayer of refuge in bodhicitta, if you’d like to join in, is on page fifteen of our prayer book. We do the Tibetan twice and for the sake of connecting with the lineage and one time in English, is on page fourteen.
And as we say this prayer, we it’s helpful to visualize the historical Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha, directly in front of us with a body of golden transparent light as an embodiment of all the objects and qualities of refuge. And at the same time to imagine ourselves surrounded by all the different kinds of suffering sentient beings who have been so kind to us, starting with our mother of this life on our left, our father on our right, the rest of our family and friends behind us, people who upset us or antagonize us, we put them directly in front of us so that we can try to include them in our compassion and affection and concern rather than generating negative thoughts and feelings towards them. Around that central group, try to imagine all other sentient beings. So we visualize firstly before we say this prayer of refuge in bodhicitta, it’s helpful if you know the meaning of it to do the mandala offering, thinking of offering all the beautiful things of the universe to the Buddhas so that we can free our mind from attachment to these things, these limiting things, so that we can open our mind to receive the blessings of the Buddhas.
To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. Oh, sorry. There’s so many different versions of this. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly by the merits that I create by listening to the Dharma may attain the state of a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So then we can imagine the Buddha very pleased with our intentions, our motivation, and because of that comes to the crown of our head and then dissolves into light.
And then that very blissful light fills our whole body and mind generating this very blissful feeling throughout the whole body so that it becomes sense our body as being very light and supple, free of all pain. And at the same time, the mind becoming very calm, clear, the sense the mind no longer trapped just in this very limited body, but without any limits or boundaries, vast space, all encompassing, all pervading, and blessed with the inconceivable qualities of the Buddha’s enlightened mind. Then with this very positive state of mind, we can do the nine round breathing exercise for a short time to focus our mind more strongly. If you’re not familiar with that, then just simply focus on the breath. Just being aware of the sensation and nostrils, as the breath arise comes and goes.
Just focusing on that, letting go of everything else just for a short time. Okay. Thank you very much. So what we’ve been considering and will consider in these these talks are the, what are called the fifty one mental factors that are the principal kinds of states of mind that we need to understand in order to train our mind along the path to not only liberation from suffering, but the state of complete enlightenment. So there are six categories of these mental factors.
So we’ve considered two of them so far. Firstly, the five omnipresent mental factors, which are operating with all in every moment of consciousness associated with the six primary consciousnesses. So whenever one of those primary consciousnesses operating, those five object determining mental factors are working at the same time. And then there are the what are called the five object determining mental factors. So these only operate in continuum of the mental conscious, the primary mental consciousness.
They don’t work. They’re not associated with the primary sense consciousnesses. Right. Okay. It’s just they’re just associated with the primary mental consciousness, which, of course, is the most important aspect of our mind.
What is the mind for the new people here? The Buddhist understanding of mind in three seconds or a little bit longer is the mind is not the brain. It is not a product of the brain or byproduct of the brain. It is not a chemical or something like that. It is defined in Buddhism very simply as that which is clear and knowing.
Meaning the mind is this amazing phenomena that exists, but is not physical whatsoever, like space. Clear, the word clear has two meanings that the mind is nonphysical. It’s existing. It’s not like space, space exists, but it’s not physical. And but the deeper meaning of the word clear is that it’s nonobstructing and because of that, it has the ability to take on the aspect of any phenomena.
And that’s how we know, experience phenomena because our consciousness, mind, especially the mental consciousness, well, all of them do, take on the aspect of unobstructively. They have the ability to take on the aspect of things. So the main feature of what mind is, is that it is knowing. The mind is that which knows and there are infinite ways of knowing. There are many, many ways of knowing, right?
Conceptually and perceptually and so on, many ways. And we can know correctly or incorrectly. So but our mind has the potential to know everything perfectly, unmistakenly. This is the our Buddha potential of the mind. And the mind, since it is clear and nonphysical, it is indestructible.
It is endless. It is not not something that will ever end. The energy of the of our mental consciousness goes on and on and on and on, life after life, forever. So it can either go on continuously into suffering or into a state of liberation and enlightenment. It’s our choice.
Of course, this means if the mind is endless, it’s also beginningless. It goes on and on. It also has goes back and back into beginningless time. It was never created by anything or anyone. It’s always been existing.
Not this lump of stuff, just this ongoing experience of of knowing. One moment of knowing, then another one replaced by another one. It’s not a thing. It’s just this ongoing experience arising moment by moment. So all consciousnesses, primary consciousnesses and mental factors that we’re looking at have quality of being clear and knowing.
Okay. So the five object determining factors which we were looking at last week, which are briefly aspiration or interest, aspiration or interest, right, belief, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom, these all arise in the retinue of a virtuous mental consciousness. So these are particularly important mental factors that we need to cultivate, that we need to use to develop our understanding and practice of the Dharma, particularly in meditation itself, but also these mental factors operate in our daily life as well, not just in meditation. So in the teachings it says these five object determining mental factors are not virtuous by nature, but they always come in the retinue of a virtuous mind, virtuous primary mental consciousness. Right.
So one of the object determining mental factors that we looked at last week was which is called Sherab in Tibetan. Many Tibetan people, monks and so on often have the name Sherab because it’s a very important concept Sherab because it refers to intelligence or wisdom. So wisdom, or intelligence, is this mental factor that has the ability to distinguish correctly that which is meaningful from meaningless, that which is virtuous from non virtuous, that which is beneficial from non beneficial, what is skillful, what is unskillful. So this is an extremely important mental factor that we have, absolutely necessary in following the spiritual path because ultimately we need this mental factor to be able to recognize what the Buddha taught, how the Buddha taught that what we are perceiving at which we grasp on as being true is not true. It’s actually false.
It’s just an illusion. It’s a very convincing illusion, but it’s an illusion. And this mental factor of Sherab, of wisdom has the potential to be able to recognize that, to perceive, to distinguish that this false appearance which appears true is actually false. And it has the ability to distinguish what is actually correct, the correct way oneself and all phenomena exist. So this is an incredibly important mental factor.
So there are many ways of looking at the different kinds of wisdom that we can have. But I just briefly like to remind you of one categorization of wisdom into what are called the three wisdoms. So these are and these arise, one develops them, I think sequentially, I would have to say. In Tenzin Gyatso’s wonderful little book called The Mind, which we hopefully will come one day, probably after this course finishes, but it was ordered for this course from Singapore, wasn’t it? Yeah.
So he says in here that they arise simultaneously, but I think I have to disagree with that. Maybe at some point they do. But the first kind of wisdom is the wisdom of hearing. Right. Just by hearing the Buddha’s teachings, we develop a certain level of wisdom.
We gain some, especially if we have faith, not one can think that what is being said, what the Buddha taught is complete nonsense and even evil, some people think. But if one listens with faith and understanding and so on, one can develop this wisdom of the recognizing that this is true and beneficial. And that this is conducive to happiness. Right? Because this is what real wisdom is about.
You know, many people have this kind of intelligence that they use to manipulate people to gain worldly advantage, which and gaining worldly happiness, worldly profit, which is not real happiness at all. Right? Become rich and famous, but really just being rich and famous doesn’t make you happy. Right? It just doesn’t.
Whereas wisdom, because it’s in the retinue of a positive mental factor, is something that, you know, that wisdom is something conducive to genuine happiness. Right? Because it has the ability to recognize this is conducive to happiness. This is the and these things, this way of thinking and acting and behaving and speaking and so on, this is conducive to suffering. This is the essential kind of intelligence that we need.
What’s the what’s the point of being rich or famous if you’re miserable? What is the point? What is the point at all? Because you’re only gonna make other people. You could say, well, even though I’m I’m I’m miserable, because I’m rich and famous, I can make other people happy, but you can’t if you’re miserable.
You can’t. There’s no way. You have to be happy to make other people happy. You have to have genuine peace in your mind to be able to help people have real happiness. So the most important kind of wisdom is this this mental factor that is able to recognize that this is actually conducive to real peace and happiness for self and others.
This is skillful and beneficial. So that can develop by hearing just simply by hearing the Buddha’s teachings because well, yes. And this is what tends to happen when we yes. When we meet the when we meet the Buddhist teachings, it doesn’t happen for everyone, of course. But you hear the Buddhist teachings and some and you think, ah, yes.
This is It suddenly makes sense of what one was confusedly thinking for a long time and couldn’t put into words or kind of organize it properly. And then you hear something and you think, ah, yes, that makes sense. And that you feel like actually, although you’ve never heard it before and never exactly thought of it before, somehow deep down it corresponds to something that was you felt was always there, but you couldn’t put your finger on it. Something like that I think happens a lot for many people sooner or later. It kind of did for me a bit, but I won’t I told you my enlightening experiences, so I won’t go into that anymore.
Yeah. So there’s this this wisdom that can arise from hearing the teachings. And of course, there are so many aspects of the Buddha’s teachings. You know, there are so many things that we can learn from hearing the teachings. But of course, we do have to hear them.
We have to listen. That’s why it’s so important at the beginning of the teachings to listen with an open mind, and concentrated mind, a focused mind and an unprejudiced mind. There’s the famous analogy of listening, avoiding the faults of the three faults of the pot, which is, you know, the upside down pot. If the pot is upside down, you can’t put anything in it. So you have to open your mind.
You have to, you know, be willing to listen. And if the pot has got a hole in it, it’s leaky or cracked, whatever got all the water you pour in will pour out. So you have to listen and retain what you hear. And also, there’s no point putting some nice clean thing that you want to use and drink or eat into a dirty pot because it’ll get contaminated. All right.
So this is very important. That point is very actually the more I think about that point, it’s incredibly profound that point. Because if you listen with lots of preconceptions, you will never hear the Dharma. You’ll never hear what the Buddha taught. You’ll just hear your own thoughts, your own crazy thoughts, your own limited mixed up, our own.
So you’re me, all of us. And what we’re trying to hear is what the Buddha taught, not what we think the Buddha taught. And I so many times when, you know, I’ve had discussions with people and you people and you explain all the Buddha says this and you said, and people said, well, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. I think this is I think it’s like that.
I think it’s like that. But, you know, I don’t think that’s right. I think it’s like that, which is okay. But then who who are we? I think it’s like that.
What do we know about how things are? Then you have to check out who the Buddha was or is, what Buddha mind is, what what the credentials of the Buddha are for saying things are like that. This is what I have perceived. And then you say, no. It’s not.
I think it’s like that. I think it’s like that. What does that mean? I think it’s like that. What’s the point of thinking something is like that?
We have to know. And do we know anything properly? We have the potential, but do we have these pure valid unmistaken minds? So it’s very important to try and listen with an open mind and not not what is just comfortable and what fits, but trying to see what is really true. And what is really true may be quite confronting and quite different than what we believe or have been led to believe.
So anyway, there is a wisdom that arises from hearing the teachings and then a much deeper form of wisdom arises contemplating those teachings, really thinking about them, studying them further and really investigating them from many points of view, to see, you know, as is very important in the Gelug tradition that this center is connected with in the Gelug monasteries that existed in Tibet and have been reestablished in India. The monks spend many hours each day debating the Buddha’s teachings from many points of view. If the Buddha says this, then what follows? Consequences? What are the logical consequences?
So they try to see if there are arguments that can refute the teachings. Right? So then when one develops that clear awareness, this this makes a very strong mind and a deeper wisdom. And then the final deepest level of wisdom is the wisdom that clarity of mind, that clear knowing that arises through deep meditation, through being able to actually single pointedly concentrate on one’s understanding so that it becomes really profound and transformative, which is another of the mental factors. One of these object determining mental factors is concentration.
The ability that mental factor that has the ability to remain on a virtuous object effortlessly for however long we like. So we have that the potential of that mental factor within our consciousness, but we haven’t cultivated it. So there is a way of cultivating that, a way of training that mental factor. So this is something that we can aspire to do and train to do even by doing a little bit of meditation every day, some single point of meditation each day is really helpful. Okay.
So that’s enough for that. So now we can move on to any questions, comments? We can now move on to the next group of mental factors, which are the eleven virtuous minds, the eleven virtuous mental factors. So before going on, maybe I’ll just make this small point, which I’ve mentioned many times, some of you have heard many times before. But of course, in every spiritual tradition, there is an emphasis on morality, on what virtue and what is virtuous and what is non virtuous.
And many people, especially these days argue that religion, different religions have no validity anymore because what is virtuous and non virtuous is something completely arbitrary that changes with times and cultures. And there’s some truth to that because what one religion at one point says is good or bad, usually what is bad, what is banned and this and that. Later on they drop that and say, no, it’s okay. But in the Buddhism, although the Buddhism is may be subject to that, but the Buddha’s teachings, the actual Dharma of the Buddha is not subject to that. And there is a very clear unchanging, I believe, very clear unchanging universal basis for understanding what is virtuous and non virtuous That doesn’t change with time or place or culture ever, because it’s all connected to the nature of the mind.
The whole base, you know, here we go again. There are many ways of looking at what is the basis of Buddhism, but the basis of Buddhism is the mind. It’s all about the mind and a fundamental basic view of Buddhism coming from what the Buddha taught is that the very purest our mind is fundamentally pure. It’s confused at the moment, but its nature is fundamentally pure. And that fundamentally pure mind is in its very nature blissful, perfect in every way.
The happiness that we’re always seeking in external things in fame and fortune and other people and whatever and possessions actually exists within us or the potential of it exists within us all the time. It will and it’s it can never be destroyed. It’s always there. It’s not out out there. It’s within our mind.
And so what is virtuous is any state of mind and activity motivated by that state that is a reflection of our Buddha nature, the true nature of our mind that is also conducive to reducing the obscurations in our mind so that blissful nature of our mind can manifest. Whereas what is non virtuous, immoral, negative, bad, you know, is those those ways of thinking and speaking and behaving that are coming from our ignorance, which which obscure the mind, which suppress that pure blissful nature of our mind and therefore generate suffering. Right? And since our minds are not one, we have separate minds, but all minds have the same nature. Right?
They all have the same conventional nature. They all have the same ultimate nature. We all have the same kinds of delusions. The bunch of delusions that are operating in my mind right now are maybe different than yours. And what the delusions I have today may be different to the delusions I have tomorrow.
But the delusions are all the same. All the positive, like these mental factors, we can all recognize them because we all have them or the potential for them. And it’s not just Australians who have them. It’s it’s all human beings have these. Right?
And not just human beings, but all all all sentient beings have mind, yeah, which which is clear and knowing. Right? So there are things that are conducive to bringing out the fundamental qualities of mind. That is what is virtuous because it brings happiness, real happiness. Right?
And what really obscuring, what is negating our true nature that is negative, immoral, bad, because it’s suffering. It’s painful. It’s suffering to ourselves and it brings suffering to others now and in the future. So the mind is something, although it’s impermanent changing moment by moment, its qualities never change. Right?
It’s always clear and knowing. All minds are like that. All minds work in the same way. So what is negating the minds now for me as an Australian now is it applies throughout the whole universe at any time, past, present, and future, whether one is a human being or an animal or whatever. And no one or anything can suddenly say this way of thinking or behaving is now virtuous.
No matter who says it, it’s not. It doesn’t change. The mind works in a particular way. This is the Buddhist view. I’m I’m not expressing it very well, but I hope you get what I’m trying to say.
Yeah. Even if some Tibetan lama or whatever comes along and says, this is okay to do, it doesn’t make it true. If the Buddha said it’s not, it’s not because the Buddha’s explaining how the mind really works. And this is something that we can verify ourselves really. This is the whole point about the Buddhist teachings.
You can step by step verify them. Not not instantly, unfortunately, it’d be great if you could verify them in a week. That usually takes quite a few lifetimes to totally verify them, but one can start to see the the truth of them, the validity of them even now. Where am I? Oh, yes.
Yes. So that’s a little bit on what is virtuous and non virtuous, right? So virtue is anything that is actually conducive to real happiness. You know, you could say if you you know, I could my neighbors causing me a lot of trouble, so I just shoot him, you know, and now I’m happy. So therefore, shooting my neighbor is virtuous, but it’s not that simple because that happiness is not happiness.
It’s it’s not real peace of mind and contentment that is, you know so one one has to really understand what real happiness is. Right? And the things that are conducive to real peace of mind and contentment, they are virtuous. And in our culture, you know, getting drunk is happiness or, you know, having a few beers, you know, three, four, five, six, getting, you know, that’s happiness that most people need in this life, but this is not happiness. This is not conducive to any real peace of mind.
It’s one of the biggest problems in our society, all the effects of it. But even if someone is even quite harmlessly kind of, you know, a little bit happy, it’s not happiness. It’s not doing anything really good for your mind. It’s not even doing very anything good for your body, actually. It doesn’t lead to any insight.
When you get drunk or even tipsy and feeling nice and friendly and warm and rosy and glowy, it’s conducive to any real insight into into one’s life and existence. Some people when they get totally stoned and things think they have amazing insights and wrote the world’s greatest poetry and novel, but afterwards, know, it’s perceived as something quite different. Yeah. Because the mind, when under the effect of these things, is not operating properly. What is actually obscuring the mind?
One of the fundamental precepts that the Buddha encouraged people to follow is to give up all things that obscure your mind. Every the Buddha said, if you if you take one drop of alcohol, you are not a follower of me. One drop, he said. Sorry. And of course, our mind says, oh, but what’s the harm in it?
What’s the harm in it? Just just having a few few. But but it it actually if you really check why why do we drink, it’s because we want to dull something, and we become something else in that state, which we not have the courage to be otherwise. This is not good. It’s not helpful.
If when you get drunk, you get all the courage to scream and yell at the people you dislike, then do it when you’re not drunk and then see what the consequences are clearly, really clearly know what you’re doing, but I wouldn’t encourage people to scream and yell anyway and whatever. But most societies depend on alcohol because everyone is suffering, and this is the key. And where there’s the most suffering, you have more of this stuff. Now in Tibet, where life is so miserable because of the communist Chinese occupation, there is so much drunkenness in that country because and people’s the the the amount of cigarette smoking, which never existed in Tibet before. People smoke and drink so much in that country because their whole culture has been destroyed.
And life if you ever go there, if you ever go to communist China, it’s so grim. It’s so horrible. In Mongolia, you know, you know, the the violence there and the drunkenness in Russia, you know, after all those years of that miserable regime, the the amount of drunkenness in that country is appalling. You know, really serious stuff where people die of, you know, from of it from over, you know, drinking. It’s just appalling.
This is, you know, this is not, you know, the solution to being happy. Sorry. Now I’m getting I’m moralizing about it. To avoid that too much, but but there’s such a culture that this is okay. This is such an example of the ignorance in our world.
You know, because a bottle of champagne costs a thousand dollars, this is a good thing to have. This garbage. This is garbage. It’s utter garbage. It’s garbage.
What a waste of money. Absolute waste of money. Sorry. No. So excuse me.
So the positive virtuous minds are those which actually conduce to bringing about real peace, lasting peace in our mind, and real insight. Yeah. All of our suffering, the Buddha taught, comes from the lack of awareness, lack of awareness, real lack of understanding, real insight. Right? And what we’re trying to do if we’re trying to follow the Buddhist path is have a clearer and clearer mind, a mind that is very stable and calm and very, very clear so that it can do its job, which is to know and experience.
Right? Remember, one of the omnipresent mental factors is feeling, pleasant or unpleasant. The feeling is always there. And when there is a virtuous mental factor in the consciousness, there has to be pleasant mental feeling, pleasant feeling. Right?
When there is a nonvirtuous mental factor operating in our continuum, there is unpleasant feeling. The trouble is if the mind is really obscured, unpleasant feeling can look like pleasant feeling. I’m sorry, I always give the same boring examples, but if you remember, if you smoke fifty cigarettes a day, the fifty first can look like pleasant feeling. If you give up cigarettes and you just get a whiff of the smoke, you know it’s unpleasant feeling. This I have experience of.
That’s one I can speak from experience. But when so when our mind becomes more purified and clearer, then, you know, then that mental factor of of of intelligence starts to kick in because it’s not a fixed thing. Right? It’s something that can develop more and more and can distinguish more and more clearly, more and more subtle gradations of what is really beneficial and what is really harmful. I saw on the news a few few days ago when the the Americans and and the Iraqis were staging their attack on Fallujah, and they they interviewed one young one soldier.
He looked like he was about nineteen in the thick of this battle, and they were asking him how it was going on. You know, there’s bullets flying everywhere, and he said something to the effect like that like, I can’t remember the exact words, but basically he was saying, this is really exciting. This is really fun. So when the mind is really agitated, sort of being in a battle where people are being massacred one way one way or another, people’s lives are being destroyed, this can appear as happiness. You know, that’s how deluded our mind can get.
Also when Baghdad was being bombed during the war when it first started, when there’s like, her so many know, the whole city was practically destroyed. Again, some of the the pilots were making the comment of what a wonderful fireworks it was. Yeah. Which is a mind that is just totally denying what is actually happening. And you can say this is always pretty.
You can’t see that as pretty if, you know, people are are being blown to pieces. That’s not pretty. So, anyway, so so the first of the men positive mental factors is belief. So this is an extremely important mental factor in the spiritual path, in the spiritual in our spiritual life. Faith.
Sorry. Faith. Faith. It’s defined as a mental factor that appreciates and admires virtuous qualities and beings who possess such qualities and wishes to attain them. I’ve talked about this before, but I’d like to talk about it again because, you know, anyway, have to because this is one of the mental factors here.
But some people in the Buddhist tradition are claiming, like modern Western people are claiming that faith is not necessary, that Buddhism is not about faith at all. And there is this famous, semi famous, infamous book by Stephen Batchelor called Buddhism without beliefs, which I personally think is the most serious nonsense possible, where he’s denying that you you you don’t need any beliefs or faith to follow the Buddhist path that the Buddha taught you you know, it’s it’s just all up to you. But this is complete it’s just clever nonsense. You know, the teachings say the the teachings themselves say you have to have faith, and faith is a virtuous mental factor. Right?
One has to have some faith that the Buddha existed at all. The historical Buddha existed and that the historical Buddha said meaningful things. Right? One has to have faith that oneself can achieve things. Right?
It’s not possible. Certainly, the Buddha said, don’t believe just what I what I taught. You should check up. Of course, he said that, but why should you even bother to check up? Why bother to check up the Buddha’s teachings if you don’t have some faith in them?
Because you can’t check out the Buddha’s teachings in five seconds. You come here tonight for the first time and you don’t like what you hear and you say, oh, that was Buddhism. Thank you very much. This is what this is like one second, you know, it’s one fraction of what the Buddhadharma is about. We can’t possibly hope to even get even a simple intellectual understanding of it by hearing one talk, reading one book or ten books.
To really check up what the Buddha taught is a lifetime’s experience, many lifetimes, especially if you know if you when you start to discover all the the many amazing things that the Buddha taught, especially his teaching the the wisdom teachings of the Buddha on the nature of phenomena. This you can’t check up in five minutes. You have to put enormous amount of time and energy to do so. This is what the monks spend their whole life in the great monasteries doing, checking up exactly as the Buddha said. Takes them the whole life.
Why? Why do they spend that time? Because they have faith that it’s worth checking up. Right? You’re only gonna check up and spend time and energy on something.
You you don’t know it all. Right? But some most people here have found some benefit in the teachings. Right? But who can claim I don’t claim to understand what the Buddha taught.
A little bit, I I think I understand some parts of it. But I have some faith because I see qualities in it and benefits. And so I, you know, I have this that mind of faith that that says that this is meaningful and worthwhile and beneficial. There are many good things in this. I don’t understand it all, but it’s worthwhile putting my energy into it.
Right? You you have to start out with some faith. Right? It’s absolutely essential. And the more faith, the more one will put energy into it.
Faith arises. How does one cultivate faith? The mind that appreciates and admires the virtuous qualities of something or someone. How we acquire this faith is simply by knowing the qualities. And blind faith just assumes blindly, emotionally that there are qualities, that intelligent faith sort of puts the effort into checking out, investigating, and seeing, you know, there are valid qualities.
And and then one’s faith one has faith in these qualities. Right? And the more qualities you see, the more qualities you understand, the more qualities you discover in something, the more faith you will have. And the more you will admire these qualities and aspire to them. And of course, one of the aspects of the Buddhadharma is that by develop as one’s faith in the teachings develop, one’s faith in one’s oneself increases.
One’s one’s faith in in the fact that there are these incredibly good qualities within me. Right? There are you know, I do have these delusions, these these these negative qualities there, have to admit that. But by developing faith in the Buddhist teachings, we develop some recent understanding to know that these qualities are something superficial that can be removed and that below the surface of these negative qualities, there is always the potential of these positive qualities. And this aspect of the mind is actually much more valid than this negative side of us.
If we don’t have any faith that we have mind and and our mind has this fundamental goodness and purity and Buddha potential, where are we going to go? And and Western materialism, you know, has no faith basically in human nature. It says we are basically, you know, impure, cannot be be perfected. Right? So there’s not much very inspiring that it may be true, but I think this the Buddhist view is is is not only more positive, but it it it’s truer.
It’s got a valid basis that we can discover. So if we only hear a little bit about the Buddhist teachings, we may not have much faith because we don’t hear, we don’t see any qualities. And so many people, I mean, practically every program I’ve seen on television about Buddhism just makes me cringe, Just cringe. They’re so horrible. They’re so misleading.
All these experts presenting these TV programs about Buddhism and what Buddhism believes and this and that, and they are just so deplorable. Yeah. I wouldn’t have any faith in that Buddhism that is presented on these TV programs and in books that people read. It’s such a ridiculous presentation usually, so misleading. But when you if you have the good fortune to, for example, to meet the the lamas who explain what the Dharma is really about, then you see its quality, and then you develop faith.
To be quite honest, you know, I’ve been a Buddhist monk for twenty seven years and I met the Dharma in Australia, but I also have been to India. I’ve been to Tibet. I’ve lived with Tibetans, whatever. And sometimes certain outer aspects of it still make me cringe. Excuse me.
I shouldn’t say that would be terrible. Also, you know, when you see films of Tibetan Buddhism, they always love to show the monks dressed up in all these monks with masks of animals and things dancing around. And some people love that and find it very mystical, but I’m sure the average person thinking of seeing that, it just looks like some kind of very primitive thing. And my mind cringes when I think, oh, people look at that and think that’s what Buddhism is about. But it’s something immensely profound.
And even though that that superficial appearance of those masks and dances has quite a profound meaning. But you can look at it and think it’s devil worship. You wouldn’t see any qualities in it, and therefore you have no faith. This is terrible. This is evil.
With tantra, there are these deities we don’t have any fortunately depicted because it’s not such a good idea, but people see these depictions of these very horrific looking figures and think, this is this is evil. This is devil worship. But if you understand the meaning of these images and and and the practices associated with them, then you see that actually this is something this is very good. It’s very beautiful. It’s very profound.
It’s very wonderful. And your faith develops. So faith has to be, you know, it has to come from, you know, having a correct understanding, which goes back to, you know, the three faults of the pot. Really, you know, knowing correctly, hearing correctly. And then through that correct hearing, hopefully one gets a correct understanding.
Because even if you hear a correct understanding, it’s not sure that you will understand it. Right? We don’t necessarily understand what we hear. And we can totally mangle up in our mind because of, you know, the contaminated pot what what is being said. And therefore, we have no faith because we don’t we experience qualities.
But there is this mind that can understand and can hear and understand and perceive the qualities, and then that mind develops faith. And I think, I hope you can This is such a crucial state of mind to have. Why are you gonna put energy into coming here and listening? Why are you gonna put energy to go back home and practice Buddhism in your daily, the Dharma in your daily life if you don’t have faith? If you have only a little bit of faith, you will only do a little bit of practice.
And that little bit of practice won’t affect you very much. Therefore, you won’t see much quality and therefore you won’t have much faith. Your faith won’t increase. But if you have more, if the faith increases, one will have the energy to, do more practice. One will get more benefits.
One will develop more faith because you see how it works. And that increased faith will inspire more practice, which will inspire more good results, which will inspire more faith. So faith doesn’t get dropped away as one develops, as one becomes a great practitioner, one’s faith actually gets deeper and deeper. And this one of the wonderful benefits, one of the many, many benefits of meeting great practitioners, the great lamas, that they have the most unbelievable faith in the teachings. And it’s and it’s based if you the the Tibetan Geshe is the Gurupa tradition.
To to become a Geshe, you have to study in a monastery for something like twenty years. It takes about twenty years to become a Geshe. There are many degrees or there’s several levels of Geshe degrees. And the great ones, the Lharampa Geshe have really studied very intensively and practiced, and and they have real, very, very deep understanding of of what they’ve been studying. So their faith is amazing.
And and it’s a faith that, of course, affects their whole being, their whole life. So it gives them incredible energy to practice, to live their whole life through the Dharma. So it’s an incredibly important quality to have, But it should be an intelligent faith, not blind faith. I mean, we can start off with that, that we should use that to His Holiness always emphasizes how important it is to study the teachings, to to get a a better and better understanding of them. Right.
But you but hopefully, you’ve seen that some things are true and beneficial or as true as you can you you you have the ability to perceive right now. Right? You must have thought, oh, this is true. This works. Yeah.
But there’s that basis. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You see some quality, you investigate more. You go into it more. Mhmm. Right. Right.
Right. Yes. Yeah. But if if we don’t have some faith in what the Buddha taught about the mind, there’s no point in trying to put all a lot of energy into discovering the nature of our mind. So we have to have some faith that what the Buddha taught about the mind is true.
Right? And there is some logical reason, you know, reasoning for believing that. Right? I think I okay. So there are there are three kinds of faith and the first is admiring faith which sees the good qualities, for example, of the triple gem, and it releases the mind from jealousy and other negative attitudes, making the mind smooth and positive.
So in other situations, when we see with an ordinary mind or a negative mind, we see some other being who has equal or better qualities than ourselves. We can feel jealousy and get upset. But with this faith, we can for example, we see we develop faith in the Buddhist qualities. We’re not jealous of them. We have this faith or we meet the great teachers, the lamas and so on And we see them, these amazing qualities that they have and we develop this admiring faith in them.
And that makes our mind very smooth. There’s no jealousy and negativity. The mind is actually in a virtuous state. So faith is also very strongly connected with the whole factor of developing refuge in the triple gem itself. Your faith and refuge are very much connected.
We take refuge in the triple gem because we have faith that they they that is the way to become free of suffering. If we don’t have that faith and admiring faith, then we won’t have that refuge. So this admiring faith is also sometimes called clarifying faith. So it’s basis of all other virtuous minds and all other good qualities because if we’re admiring something virtuous and it’s making us happy, so it’s basis for all other positive activities. Then the next kind of faith is believing faith.
So this arises through gaining conviction in the the Buddha’s teachings as being valid. And so we become convinced of their truth. And, of course, as I was saying, there can be many levels of this believing faith. So the more we’ve studied the teachings and thought about them, then we can develop a strong logical basis for our faith. It’s not just blind faith, but it’s a believing faith based on logical argument.
So that becomes very, very strong. And actually I should have said this in all the other things I said about faith. One, faith is really important because it cuts through doubt. And doubt is a great obstacle to following the spiritual path. If we have really strong doubts about the truth of the teachings, then that doubt will really undermine whatever energy we have to practice.
Right? And we may be starting out practicing very well, but then we can suddenly doubt that this is true or especially we can doubt that it’s gonna work for me or that, you know, I’m good enough for it to work or something like that. So when we develop those doubts, then it just saps all our energy to practice. And if we have very critical minds, then we can have lots of doubts about what the Buddha taught because it’s so much of it isn’t different from what we have our culture talks about. So, but if we apply ourselves to the teachings and really get to understand them, then we develop this faith that cuts through all that doubt, and then we have incredible energy to practice.
Yeah. In one way of developing this faith, at least this admiring faith or some kind of believing faith, what some kind of logic we can apply is not the greatest logic, but I think it also works if you have the good fortune to meet the great Tibetan lamas and you see the amazing qualities they have. One of the big mistakes I think people tend to make when meeting these Lamas, it always struck me when Lama Yeshe was alive he was one of the first people to bring dharma to the west. He was the first Tibetan lama to ever come to Australia. And he was really a truly amazing person that even now when people read his books, he’s been dead, passed away for twenty years now, and still his books really appeal to people.
He had an amazing kind of karmic connection with people of all kinds, and he had this amazing ability to make the teachings come alive and real and inspire people that they they could really do this. And and of course, he was this incredibly compassionate being. It was just wonderful being around him. But it always struck me that so many people in those early days when Lama Yeshe was alive, they were so, what’s the word, what attracted to him and would come to his teachings, people who and so on, all sorts of people. And then he went away and then they would disappear and wouldn’t practice.
And it somehow struck me that it’s people sort of saw Lama Yeshe and I think they tend to do this with his holiness as this, they say, yes, these people have amazing qualities, but these have got nothing to do with me. That they are these truly existing, inherently existing special people. The why is that his holiness, the Dalai Lama, like he is. He is not inherently different from us. He hasn’t come from Mars.
Why is he so amazing? Because he practices the Dharma. That’s all. And he practices it properly and totally. And that’s and if you do, then you become like him.
There’s no other reason the Dalai Lama is like he is, why he attracts thousands and thousands of people. And like you stand stand next to him and you just kind of melt and go all giggly and gooey because it’s just fit feels so amazing because you can feel his incredible love and compassion. And that that doesn’t truly exist. That doesn’t inherently exist. That has been cultivated.
Alright? By practicing the Dharma, he is the embodiment of the teachings. He embodies the teachings. He’s not something separate from them, some kind of miraculous thing that has happened. That is what you become if you practice.
Right? And this is not unique. I mean, his holiness is pretty special, super special, but there are many other lamas who are incredible beings also, perhaps even one could say equally incredible. Amazing beings. And again, it’s because they practice the Dharma, not because they are they’re inherently like that.
And these beings have been practicing the Dharma and studying it so amazingly deeply. That’s also why I have faith in the teachings because they do. And they’ve studied it. They understand the teachings far more than I will ever do in this life. And they’re part of a whole lineage that has been studying and practicing these teachings for hundreds and thousands of years.
And people who study it wholeheartedly embrace it. It is their entire life. So that’s I think why one can have some faith in these teachings because see the nature of the people who practice and have faith in these teachings and their qualities, their amazing qualities. And so the final form of faith is called aspiring faith. So that’s the mental factor which arises.
You have this based on either admiring faith or believing faith or a combination of both that wishes to obtain a particular virtuous goal. You see the qualities, You as it says in the definition, you have it’s it’s a longing for something that is possible. Right? So you you aspire to to achieve this yourself. You see the amazing qualities of the Buddha and you see that these qualities arise from certain through various causes.
And you see that the causes of, you know, the methods of creating these causes, you know, makes sense. It’s logical that this can be done it can be done, for this reason and that reason. And then you aspire to become a Buddha Or you aspire to become a better person. You aspire to develop more loving kindness, more compassion, more wisdom because one can see that these qualities themselves are worthy and beneficial, and there’s a way to become more loving, compassionate, more wise, more generous and so on. Or for example, developing single pointed concentration that which is one of those object determining mental factors that is a key to gaining deep realizations when you understand what this mental factor can bring us, how beneficial it is and that it is a possibility.
It’s not just a fantasy. It’s not something made up. It’s a reality that one can achieve and there’s a way to achieve it. And there’s these amazing benefits when you achieve single point of concentration, you develop you will then develop first you have this admiring faith in it and this believing faith in it. And then you will have aspiring faith and says, I’m going to get that.
I’m going to develop that quality. Yeah. Oh, and you see people who have it or possibly have it, and then you you you aspire to have it. So this is a little bit about faith. Any comments, questions?
Disagreements? No. Okay. So then rapidly moving along, the next two I’d just like to talk a little bit about the next two mental factors, which are called in our list, because there’s so many different ways of translating it. The next one is shame and then one after that is embarrassment.
So these are also are very important mental factors to cultivate in the spiritual path. In the previous course that we were doing here, I talked a little bit at some point about the eight worldly concerns and one of the which is what these are basically arising from the negative mind of self-cherishing. And because of self-cherishing, we have these our life and energy is wasted in these eight worldly concerns. One of which is our concern about our reputation of having a good reputation. And we’re attached to that and we’re afraid of having a bad reputation and we have attachment to hearing praise and we have a fear and aversion of hearing criticism.
So these are generally negative concerns. They’re worldly concerns that are conducive to suffering and negative actions because of our attachment and aversion to these, we will do negative things. Whereas these two mental factors of shame and consideration are positive mental factors. So maybe I’ll just talk about, although it’s out of order, but just try and connect what I just said with these mental factors because they may not seem much connection. Consideration or embarrassment, which can also be translated as consideration or consideration for others, is this mental factor that holds us back from doing negative actions because we know that this will upset other people.
Right? With the worldly concern that we maybe do things not to upset people, but that’s just to gain a good reputation and avoid criticism. But that mind is a negative mind, and it’s to negative actions and thoughts. Whereas this can this mental factor holds us back from doing negative things because we know that this will upset people. So, you know, we hold back from doing virtuous actions through consideration for the feelings of others.
So in this case, we need to have that awareness of what other people think. So on one level, from the point of view, I don’t know if this is getting confusing, but from the point of view of the worldly concerns, we are overly concerned in the wrong way about what people think of us. Right? But here, this is a positive mental factor that does have to take into consideration what other people think. But this is in terms of what is morally correct.
These people know what is right and wrong. And if I do this, that they will be upset because it’s not a good thing to do. Therefore, I shouldn’t do it. I shouldn’t say this. I shouldn’t think this.
I shouldn’t do this because it will upset the feelings of others. So it’s a positive mental factor that is concerned about the well-being of others. And therefore, because of that, we hold back from doing harmful things. So if we don’t have that mind, if we don’t have the mind that is concerned about what other people think in a valid way, then we don’t have a very important restraining factor from doing negative actions. And you can see in our society now that this mental factor is sadly lacking more and more.
The people no longer care what other people think because they, oh, who it doesn’t matter what they think. I want to do this, so I’ll do it. If they if they get upset, who cares? That’s just their problem. Right?
So that is a negative state of mind. Yeah. So we have to cultivate this virtuous mental factor that is aware of the valid concerns of others and and takes note of it so as not to upset them. And and and seeing that this actually benefits us, it acts as a restraining factor on us doing what are actually negative things. So it seems more and more in our society, we we we have a situation where everyone’s kind of like a little law unto themselves and everyone’s own personal system of values, that’s all that counts.
This is what I think. This is my this is my standards so that everyone else can go jump because I I don’t care what other people think or what they value. This is me and this is what I want. So that’s it. That’s all that’s important.
So there’s no positive restraining factor there. So the self-cherishing thought can run amok. Right? One can see this really in all those countries where, like communist China and Russia where religious systems were suppressed and dropped and people didn’t have those standards. But they were repressed by that very heavy government, which maintained some kind of strange moral system.
And then when that went, you know, there was nothing. People just have gone berserk because there is not there are no restraining values at all. So you have a really horrible system left there. And Mongolia was a Buddhist country, incredible like Tibet, and then the communist took over, destroyed all that, wiped out the monasteries, wiped out everything, and then they’ve gone. And now Mongolia is a nightmare.
It has one of the worst cases of child abuse and abuse of women in the world, you know, and from what was a Buddhist country, which where that didn’t happen. And and the amount of alcoholism and crime in Mongolia is appalling because all these standards are just dropped. Nothing counts. Nothing. There’s no restraining factors.
self-cherishing is a really horrific thing. So this moral fact this mental factor of consideration or embarrassment to be feel embarrassed about doing negative things is really important. If we have no embarrassment about doing what we know are negative things, then what’s gonna stop us? So we need that mental factor. We need to cultivate it.
And the other one that is very similar is what is called shame or what could be called also self respect. So here, this is a mental factor that through our own respecting our own nature, having self respect avoids committing non virtuous actions. With embarrassment or consideration for others, we don’t do negative things because we know other people know about it, Right? So in some situations, perhaps in many situations, we could do many negative things and people won’t know. The only person who knows is oneself.
So in that situation, what is going to restrain us from doing that since no one’s going to know except me? It is the sense of our own shame, knowing that this is not good. You know, I know myself that this is not good. This is not beneficial. This is harmful.
At least it’s harming me and this is not my true nature. So I shouldn’t do it. So out of respecting oneself, one doesn’t do it because also especially in the context of following the Buddhist path, one can say, you know, I am a Buddhist. I have refuge. I’m trying to follow the Buddhist teachings.
I’ve made some actual commitments to do so. So even if no one knows whether I do these things or not, I know that this is not good to do, so I can’t do it. I’ve made that commitment to myself to avoid these negative things. Right? So we have to cultivate that mental factor, make it active in our mind and listen to it.
We have to listen to that mind because it’s there. These mental factors that I’m talking about aren’t made up. We have the potential for all these mental factors. Right? But so we have to cultivate them more and more.
We have the potential for all the negative minds too. And these we have to subdue, not repress, but de-cultivate, right? We have to remove the manure, the fertilizer from our mind that causes those things to grow. And we have to add to the fertilizer that causes these enables these positive mental factors to flourish and manifest. So these two factors are extremely important in our spiritual life.
And in cultivating this mental factor of self respect or shame, one way of trying to do that is trying to be mindful that even if other ordinary sentient beings can’t see that I or know that I’m doing or thinking this negative thing, the Buddha’s do. The omniscient Buddha’s know. The bodhisattvas know. My gurus know. So I can’t do it.
You know, that it would upset them. At one level, of course, Buddha can never be upset. A Buddha is always blissful. But at another level from our ordinary mind, it’s convenient. It’s helpful to think that the Buddhas get upset when they see people doing negative things.
They certainly don’t get happy when they see sentient beings being harmful. Right? And which also applies to me. The Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, my gurus, my teachers are not happy if I’m doing negative things. It upsets them in a sense.
I’m failing them. I’m letting them down. Therefore, I’m not going to do it. I won’t do it. So it’s really important to try and cultivate that type of practice, that awareness, that mindfulness.
This is also why it’s really important to hang around virtuous people, like minded people who are trying to do the same thing, to be aware of their standards and values rather than the very lower standards and values of worldly people following the eight worldly concerns. I think that’s all for tonight. Is there any questions? So I spent quite a lot of time talking about on these three mental factors. I won’t be able to talk in detail on all the others, but I thought these were quite important ones to talk about.
So I’m going to try and do that, just select because normally this topic when you study it takes like usually you spend three months studying this topic. And so this is just six talks. So it’s just a zap through the essential points just to get a bit of a taste on them. And hopefully, this book will arrive, which is really nice, but it has some details on some, but it doesn’t have details on others. Okay.
So we can dedicate the merit that we’ve generated tonight by listening to the to the dharma with a really good motivation and an open mind, then this is generating these positive potentials in our mind so we can dedicate them so that they are not harmed, they’re not lost, they’re not destroyed. And more than that, we can dedicate that they become a cause and condition for us to quickly achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all the kind suffering mother sentient beings. Especially if we can think so, you know, the vast number of even human beings have so little awareness that they have a mind and an amazing potential. They have no understanding that it is really their own mind that is the source of their happiness and suffering. How wonderful it would be if I could achieve enlightenment to help them understand that and work with their mind.
So we dedicate to quickly achieving enlightenment so we can help every sentient being discover their mind and its true nature. Good for sure. May the precious bodhicitta not yet born arise and grow. Thank you very much for this. Just one point five minutes left.
So I’ll just sneak this in. In cultivating embarrassment, the one about being concerned about the opinions of others and the effects on others, of course, there is the mind that doesn’t have that, that doesn’t have that consideration for others and embarrassment in others is the mind that has a very low opinion of other sentient beings. If you remember the people who’ve been doing the previous course on mind transformation and the eight verses, the first verse says, I will hold all sentient beings as absolutely precious. Right? So if you do if we are doing that, then these precious beings opinions and experiences really matter.
So I can’t go around doing things that upset these precious beings. But if you have the ordinary mind that thinks, you know, oh, who’s he? Who’s she? You know? Who do they think they are?
Then if you’re not holding them precious, then it doesn’t matter. But sentient beings are precious. So if we have that mind, that helps cultivate that mental factor. And if we cultivate that mental factor, that enables us to practice mind training that sees sentient beings as precious. So it all fits.
You see, it’s all the same thing. It’s all one amazing organic thing. Thank you very much. We can finish. Yeah.
Okay. We better take a break. Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minute break.