Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 95-minute talk, Ven Thubten Dondrub completes his fourth of six sessions on mind and mental factors, focusing on the eleven virtuous mental factors essential for spiritual progress. After establishing proper motivation through refuge and bodhicitta practice, he systematically covers non-attachment, non-hatred, and non-confusion as active antidotes to the three main delusions, then moves into effort or enthusiasm—described as the mental factor that delights in virtue and energises practice through recognition of meaning rather than instant gratification. He explores suppleness and diligence as factors arising from concentration, and equanimity as a subtle quality balancing the application of antidotes during meditation. He concludes by briefly introducing the six root afflictions—attachment, anger, pride, ignorance, doubt, and wrong view—emphasising that ignorance is the principal root from which all other disturbing minds and suffering arise. Throughout, he weaves practical examples drawn from daily life and retreat practice, addressing both newcomers and those with prior Dharma study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 M F L 2004 11 29.mp3
UUID: ece02c85-60a2-4b0d-a034-9264f8b12337
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Mind and Mental Factors (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2004-11-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 95.5 minutes
Words: ~10,653
So I’d like to welcome everyone to this this is the fourth, isn’t it? Fourth of six talks. Six talks? Yes. Six talks about mind and mental factors.
So in listening to the Buddhadharma, it’s important for it to have the best effect on our mind, then that effect, the strength and nature of the effect of what we hear depends on the motivation in which we listen. So it follows that we should try to cultivate the very best motivation so that it produces the best effect. And all the Buddhas say having checked this out for a long time that the very best motivation that we can possibly cultivate is this bodhicitta motivation, which is the mind seeking enlightenment in order to have all the qualities necessary to be of perfect and lasting benefit to all sentient beings, thereby repaying the kindness of all mother sentient beings. So it’s the mind that not only wishes to perfectly benefit, but has is the wish not to cause any harm to any sentient being in any way for any reason at any time. So this is the motivation that we can try and cultivate now.
And the basis of it is also having the wish to give up our attachments, our obsession with the limiting suffering, meaningless things of this life so that we can direct our mind, the energy of our mind and life to working, practicing the Dharma. And so this is the essential basis. And the basis for that of wishing to practice the Dharma, to renounce our obsessions with the things of this life, is recognizing our own suffering, our own limitations, our own confusion, our own dissatisfaction and problems and so on. So the more we can honestly recognize that, the more we can seek the real solution, And the more we want to do that, the more we see how it is necessary for everyone to find the real solution to the suffering of existence, not just some temporary escape. So to help generate the thought of bodhicitta, we base this on refuge in the triple gem, the amazing qualities of the Buddha, the Buddha’s teachings, and the great practitioners of those teachings.
So it’s helpful to think of the triple gem right now as much as possible with a mind of faith. And to help that we can visualize Śākyamūni Buddha in front of us as the very embodiment of the triple gem appearing with a body of golden transparent radiating light. Every aspect of that appearance, the embodiment of all the enlightened qualities. At the same time as we try and do that, at the same time we imagine ourselves surrounded by all the sentient beings who need our help so much, who have been so kind to us life after life, starting with our mother of this life on our left, our father on our right, the rest of our family and friends behind us, antagonists in front, and then all other sentient beings. And then if you’d like to join in, we say the prayer of refuge in bodhicitta, which is on page fifteen.
The Tibetan we do twice and then the English one time on page fourteen. But before that, the tradition is to offer a mandala requesting the teachings. We try and generate the mind that is really wanting to give up everything in order to be able to receive what is most precious, the most precious thing in the universe, which is the our our dharma understanding that can lead us to freedom from suffering and every kind of happiness. And and more than that, the ability to help everyone achieve those things. So this is why we offer the mandala to the triple gem.
This prayer is on the top of page fifteen. It has slightly different ways of chanting it. I never know which one I’m saying. It always comes out differently. I’ll try and be more consistent in the future.
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 that the Buddha is very pleased with our intentions. Because of that, the Buddha comes to the crown of our head, dissolves into light, and we imagine that blissful light filling our whole body and mind so that the body becomes very calm, very light and supple, free of all pain, sense of being pervaded by this great bliss in every pore of the body, the mind becoming very calm and clear and very light and spacious, Sense of the mind being without any kind of limitations or boundaries or restrictions of any type. All pervading, vast, and pervaded by the blessings of the Buddha’s enlightened qualities.
So in this positive state we can then do the nine round breathing exercise for a short time or focusing on the breath, the experience of just being aware of that sensation in the nostrils as the breath comes and goes. Just trying to rest the mind in that one experience and let everything else fade away. If one gets attracted to other things, distracted by them, let them go and just go back to the breath. Just do this for a short time. Okay.
Thank you very much. So last week, started looking at the eleven virtuous mental factors that operate within the primary mental consciousness. And these eleven virtuous mental factors are the ones that we really need. These are the essential ones that are necessary to be able to cultivate all the main qualities and realizations that will lead us to liberation and enlightenment. So last week, we talked about the first three, I think it was, which was faith, then shame and embarrassment and or self consideration and no, sorry, self respect and consideration for others is how we can look at them.
So now we can move on to the remainder. I’ll just go through because there’s many mental factors to cover. So we’ll just quickly cover the remaining ones in this section. So we can look at together the next three because these are what are called non attachment. Gosh.
What’s happened here? Oh, they’re in the in this this list you’ve got, they’re in a different order. Sorry. But the ones we’re gonna look at now are non attachment, non-delusion and non hatred, which is down the bottom in that list, or second to the bottom. So we’ll look at non attachment, non hatred and then non delusion.
So basically what these three virtuous mental factors are, are the very opposite to the three main non virtuous mental factors, which are coming in the next category that we’re going to look at, which are the six root delusions or the six poisonous minds. So these three virtuous mental factors of non attachment, non hatred and non confusion or non ignorance are not merely the lack of or the opposite of attachment, hatred and ignorance. They’re not some kind of passive state, but they are the active antidotes to these negative minds, These are mental factors that are active antidotes. So in some ways to really understand, to appreciate these virtuous mental factors, one has to understand the other what they’re the opposite to, which is attachment, hatred and ignorance, but that comes later in the text. But most of you have been studying this and have heard me talk ad nauseam about attachment, hatred and ignorance.
But I’ll have to talk about it again tonight if we get time because it’s part of the course. So just to so basically non attachment is the mental factor that is not attached to the pleasures, the apparent pleasures of cyclic existence. And how we generate this mental factor of non attachment is basically by going through studying the Buddhist teachings and especially in our tradition, are called the Lam Rim meditations or the meditations on a graduated path. Lam Rim is Tibetan. Lam means path.
Rim means graduated. So these are the graduated stages of mental training that we can engage in that lead our mind away from believing that what we’re experiencing is true and is pure and is happiness. And those beliefs actually are the basis of our suffering. So these meditations lead us away from our conviction that that is the case and we start to realize the opposite and are able to train our mind in love, compassion, giving up, overcoming self-cherishing, being able to cherish others, develop wisdom and so on. So all of these meditations really help us develop this mental factor of non attachment.
And we need this mental factor to actually oppose the delusion, the mental factor of attachment, which believes that particular objects and things and people and so on are the cause of our happiness. Alright. So this mental factor, it is the remedy for attachment and afflicted desire. So there can be many types of there can be sort of non attachment. One can develop a mental factor of non attachment that is not attached to a particular thing or a state or situation or one can accumulate many, many types of non attachment until one develops total non attachment to anything in saṃsāra, in cyclic existence.
So I think there could be some debate about this, but I think in general it seems that non attachment, this mental factor of non attachment is more or less synonymous with what we call renunciation. Well, they certainly go together. If one has this mental factor of non attachment to all the things of cyclic or even if you have the non attachment to the happiness of this life, then you have renounced the happiness of this life. If you have non attachment to all of cyclic existence, what appears to be the pleasures of cyclic existence, then one has renounced cyclic existence. So maybe the Gelugpa Geshe’s would sort of nitpick about this and say there’s some difference between non attachment and renunciation.
And there may be, but I’m not quite sure what the difference is. I don’t know if any of you have heard from any Geshe, Lama, I’m very happy to be enlightened on this point. Or from your own personal reflections you can see any difference between them. Okay. But anyway it’s worth trying to consider whether there is a difference between the mind of renunciation and non attachment.
But personally I can’t see much difference at all. They seem pretty much the same, which begs the question, why do they use the different terminologies? And I really don’t know that either. But maybe one difference is that as I was saying, you can have non attachment to a particular theme. One may have non attachment to meat pies, but one can be very attached to soy burgers or something like that.
Whereas renunciation tends to imply one has developed a mind that isn’t attracted doesn’t have attachment to anything in this life. That’s the basic kind of attachment. And one can appreciate things, right? One can appreciate and enjoy the things of this life, but one isn’t attached to them. One doesn’t have this afflicted desire for them.
One doesn’t have this neurotic obsession with them. That mind is renunciation. So maybe the difference between non attachment and renunciation is that renunciation occurs when one develops all these accumulates the non attachment to all the bits and pieces, right? When you’ve got the jigsaw together of non attachments, then you have renunciation. Does that make any sense?
I can’t say that that’s correct. This is just maybe my feeble explanation there. So I do try and make some difference between my personal interpretations, which I try to avoid as much as I can, and what I’ve heard is the traditional thing, traditional explanation. Sometimes they do get mixed up, must confess. So that’s a little bit about non attachment.
But really, I’ll leave it there because I’ll talk we’ll get to the three poisoned minds and talk about attachment. When I remind everyone about what attachment is, I mean this is the thing that we really have to give up. This is the main thing to give up in this life, today, this week, this month, this year, this life. That’s the main thing to work on. Ultimately we’re trying to do many things.
One could say the main thing to achieve is wisdom, but one will never develop this wisdom until we have, while we have attachment. Right? That will always get in the way with everything. And in our daily life, well here I’m getting onto attachment. But every day moment by moment it’s attachment that is the main basis, The direct cause of our problem.
That’s not strictly true. What am I trying to say? The most accessible reason why that we can work with which is the basis for our problems in this life day by day. Underlying everything is ignorance of course, but then comes attachment. So this means that the mind of non attachment is essential.
This is the mind that we’re trying to achieve. Which is not some cold mind of indifference, right? That doesn’t care about anything, that doesn’t enjoy anything. This mind actually enables us to be able to enjoy and appreciate things completely because attachment doesn’t, believe it or not. We think attachment makes us happy, but it doesn’t.
More about that later. So then the next in this group of three is non hatred. So again, this is not just a lack of hatred, but it is a mental factor that opposes the mind, the mental factor of anger and the mental factors of anger and hatred. It is an active mental factor. So it is a mental factor that is a lack of intention.
That mental factor has no intention to cause harm to others. So in commentaries on this mental factor, it talks about the it always makes this point that this mental factor is what restrains us from getting angry. And there are nine general things that make us angry. Right? These are you’d be happy to know what these are.
Children. These things are mainly seeing people who have harmed us in the past are harming us now or in the future. Seeing people as enemies. We know there’s someone that we have labeled an enemy because they have harmed us in the past, they are harming us now or we think they will harm us in the future. So we see these people as enemies.
Maybe this is a very strong term or as an antagonist or something like that. But traditionally it’s called enemy. That’s the word that’s translated. So that’s the first group of three. So then And and then also we we can label someone as an enemy because they have harmed our family and friends in the past, are harming them now, or we think they will in the future.
And then finally, we develop anger and hatred because we see people, we label people as enemies because these people, what we label someone, or we get angry with someone seeing them as an enemy or antagonist because in the past they helped someone that we saw as an enemy. They helped another one of our enemies. So they become an enemy or they’re helping someone is helping someone I see helping my enemy now. So they become my enemy and I get angry with them. Or I think this person in the future, you know, I project that this person is probably going to help someone I don’t like in the future.
So I don’t like them. I really have aversion to them. I develop anger. So this is the sort of nine groups of people, types of people that act as the basis for us getting angry. Of course, we can get angry with anything.
We can get angry with rocks and trees and the weather and all sorts of things. But in terms of people, it is those views towards people and those perceptions and thoughts that bring generate our anger. So non hatred is this mental factor that opposes that, those ways of thinking. And in the teachings it says there are four virtuous methods which we can train our minds in to develop this mental factor of non hatred. So the first of these is when someone blames us for something, we shouldn’t blame them back.
Right? We should train our mind not to blame someone if they blame us for something. Secondly, if someone strikes us, we shouldn’t strike them. In other words, if someone hurts us in some way, we shouldn’t hurt them back. So we have to train our mind to do that.
When someone is angry with us, we have to train our mind not to become angry at that person in return. And then when someone criticizes us, we have to train the mind not to criticize them in return. So if we do this training and we don’t generate anger and hatred, then we’re developing the patience of voluntarily enduring suffering. So it seems to me, although I’ve looked at a number of commentaries on this mental factor, and they all avoid this issue again, but it seems to me that this mental factor of non hatred is virtually the same as, if not exactly the same as patience, which I’ve talked about quite a deal in the past. Patience is normally said to be the antidote to the mental factor that we can cultivate to that opposes anger and hatred.
So it seems to me that patience and non hatred are pretty much synonymous. Or maybe you could say that if one cultivates non hatred then you will be patient. Or if you develop patience then you will also the mental factor of non hatred will arise as well. So it’s not perfectly clear to me if there is a difference between hatred, non hatred and patience, but it seems to me that they are the same. And in the list of eleven virtuous mental factors, patience isn’t there.
And it’s a very important mental factor. So I would tend to think it is the same as non hatred. Because if someone insults you, it criticizes you or gets angry with you and you don’t get angry back, which is what we’ve been told to do, that is being that the way you don’t get angry back at someone who is angry with you is by practicing patience. Well, then see, actually if you think about it, you have to practice patience because anger is arising, You’re aware that someone said something or done something to you that is starting to make you angry. And then patience is the mental factor that is not suppressing that anger, but is subduing it, undermining it because it’s another way of thinking, right?
So if you had the mental factor of non hatred, you wouldn’t require patience because you wouldn’t get angry in the first place. So maybe non hatred is a stronger mental factor than patience. And if you’ve been practicing patience for a long time, then you may have started out in this life getting angry quite easily. And then one meets the Dharma and discovers that getting angry is not good. We always know that, but then we find out there are many reasons, even more reasons than we ever thought of why anger is bad and we shouldn’t cultivate and we should do the opposite.
So we try practicing patience and maybe after some time, years, we get quite good at that. And then because of practicing patience, then we will develop this mental factor of non hatred where we just don’t get angry. There’s this mental factor that arises that doesn’t want to cause harm even if we are harmed in any way physically, mentally, verbally? What do you think? Some maybe it’s like that.
I wish I was a Geshe. Okay. So then the next one is non confusion or non ignorance. So it says the explanation of what this mental factor is. It is a mental factor that has no confusion when engaging in a virtuous object, and it leads to the avoidance of unwholesome actions.
So in a sense there is no doubt, there is no confusion that what one is doing is good to do. It is virtuous. It is meaningful. That this is something a Dharma action that I should do. For example, we develop the mental factor of having no confusion about practicing patience, that this is something worthwhile, there’s no confusion that anger is completely harmful.
We can develop the mental factor of non confusion about the fact that attachment is extremely harmful to us. Something, things like that. Or we study some other aspect of the Buddha’s teachings and we develop the mind of non confusion about it. And this mental factor would arise through the power of familiarity of thinking, hearing teachings and studying them and meditating on them. This is what we’re trying to achieve.
Like when we practice the Lam Rim meditations again and again, if we reflect on impermanence again and again. And think about the kindness of mother sentient beings and all these different types of topics, we reflect on them again and again. And at first, there may be a lot of confusion and misunderstanding in our mind about the real meaning and purpose of all this, that by reflecting again and again in various ways, hearing more teachings, reading about it, one can develop this mental factor of non confusion that’s very clear about that. There’s no doubt about it. So there’s the mind that is engaging in that thing, that activity and there’s no confusion that this is what I should be doing and I’m doing it correctly.
And I know why I’m doing it, what the benefit is ultimately. So one can see if one develops that mental factor and especially the more strongly one develops that mental factor, that will give us a lot of energy to practice because we are very clean, clear as Lama used to say, clean, clear about what we’re doing. We’re not doubtful and hesitant, right? So it’s just completely clean, clear. So again, this is an important mental factor to develop.
And it says here that if this mental factor can either arise spontaneously at birth or through effort in this life. Why the rise is spontaneously at birth of course is because we worked at it in a previous life. So if we work at it in this life through effort, then in our next life it will arise spontaneously at birth. So if you’re a thinking person, if you’ve been paying attention to the class, and we talked about one of the object determining factors is wisdom or intelligence or sherab. And you could think that non confusion and wisdom are the same thing.
But they’re not. There is a difference between non confusion and wisdom. Non confusion or non ignorance is a mental factor that opposes ignorance and wisdom opposes ignorance too. It is the antidote to wisdom, to ignorance. But there is a difference between non confusion, this mental factor of non confusion and sherab or intelligence or wisdom.
This is because the virtuous mental factor of non confusion simply has the ability to not become confused with respect to a particular object and not and and to not engage in an in an unwholesome action. Okay. That’s what non confusion does. Whereas knowledge or wisdom or intelligence or sherab, this has the function of being able to distinguish between correct and incorrect through its own power. Sharab or intelligence knows what is to be practiced and what is to be abandoned and it eliminates doubt.
So non confusion has no power to distinguish between correct and incorrect objects. So it’s not fully developed as intelligence. Intelligence is the mental factor that establishes that this through its own power, this is the very nature of that mental factor to distinguish that this is something virtuous, this is non virtuous, this is meaningful and so on. And having established that, then this mental factor of non confusion says, right, now I should go for this. Now this is I don’t have to hesitate.
I don’t I’m completely clean, clear about that. But that mental factor of non confusion isn’t able to establish that from its own side from the beginning. It relies on wisdom or intelligence to do that. So wisdom checks, you know intelligence is able to distinguish from its own side through its own qualities, its own innate nature. This is good, this is bad.
And then the mental fact of non confusion is able to then maintain that. Not getting doubtful, but this is good, this is bad. So of course these two mental factors will go together. If you remember, in the teachings it says in the explanation of how our mind works, especially when we’re looking at the primary mental consciousness, when one virtuous mental factor arises in that primary mental consciousness, then it will tend to bring along in its train with it like as an entourage all the other mental factors or at least some of them sorry, all some of the other positive mental factors. So I think you never have a situation where you have the primary mind and only one other virtuous mental factor associated with it.
You will always have several in that primary mental consciousness. You will have several virtuous mental factors operating and supporting each other, reinforcing each other. As well as the five omnipresent factors and so on, which are always there. Okay. Any questions, comments so far?
Okay. So moving along. The next one, the next mental factor in our list is Tsöndru, which is translated as effort. Here we have the translation effort or enthusiasm, joyous effort, something like that. Or energy.
It’s even sometimes translated as energy. What else? Enthusiasm, effort. Yes. So this is a very important mental factor.
And it is defined as the mental factor that delights in virtue. So we have spontaneously arising in our mental continuum, at least in mind, the non virtuous mental factor of laziness, right? That does not delight in virtue, that finds it difficult. That doesn’t want to engage in things. Why don’t we do virtuous things?
It’s because our self-cherishing tells us that this this is difficult and and it’s not really, it doesn’t doesn’t pay dividends. It doesn’t give this instant satisfaction that I want. Right? So we have spiritual laziness in relation to doing these virtuous things like coming to teachings or when we’re here really putting our full effort into it cause we may be feeling sleepy and tired, which I completely appreciate that you must be working hard all day. But is that mind that just, you know, just drifts away.
Because to listen and to listen to the dharma especially, and especially when you have to listen to someone like me mumbling and going all over the place requires effort and energy. It requires real effort. It’s hard work. So the self-cherishing thought doesn’t like that. It doesn’t like hard work.
And especially if the hard work is not going to produce instant satisfaction, right? Instant satisfaction is what we want, right? This is why all the great lamas try to crack as many jokes in a dharma talk as possible to keep the audience awake and going. But I can’t do that. So if we don’t see, if our mind doesn’t see some instant or some benefits for something, then we don’t want to engage in it.
Whereas there is this mental factor of enthusiasm, Tsöndru, that really sees, that delights in doing good things like meditating, listening to the teachings, reading Dharma books, and practicing generosity and practicing kindness and compassion and all these things. Even if they’re difficult at one level, they require time and energy and may be exhausting physically and mentally at one level. At another level this mental factor enjoys doing it because it is the mental factor that knows that this is good. And even if there isn’t this instant satisfaction from it, there will be definite benefits in the future because this mental factor will of course go along with non confusion and wisdom that it knows doing this. There is this wisdom that says, has recognized that this is virtuous.
Meaning conducive to happiness now and in genuine happiness now in the future. There will be the mental factor of non confusion that is clean, clear that that is so. Yeah. And then we can cultivate even more than that, this mental factor of enthusiasm that enjoys that, really enjoys that, doing this thing. Yeah.
So for example, you all had to get here tonight. You didn’t spontaneously arrive here, don’t think. Born from a lotus, but you all got here from somewhere else where it would have been easy to stay, but you took the effort to there was some ordinary like there was the obvious ordinary effort there, but then there was the spiritual effort. And if you enjoyed coming here, just the mere fact you can it may be kind of exhausting driving here, but you could then turn home or walk back home or something. But if you have a little bit of this mental factor, you’ll keep coming because you know that this is worthwhile.
And then again sitting here, it gets hot, it gets cold, it gets stuffy, it gets this and that, All these things you get tired and exhausted and hungry and thirsty. But there can still be some enthusiasm because also and of course listening to the Dharma, some of it is very heavy to why there aren’t thousands of people here apart from you know, because of me, apart from that. Why there aren’t thousands of people here is because the Buddhadharma is very hard to hear. It’s very hard. It’s really very threatening to our ego to what is easy and comfortable and everything that we’ve been doing.
At one level, one way of looking at it and listening to it and so on. It is very hard, You know? But then if you have those mental factors of wisdom and non confusion, you realize this is true and there’s no confusion about that. Then you recognize this is very limiting and it is joyful. It is joyful to start giving up the causes of suffering.
It is joyful to learn something that is really worthwhile to yourself and others even if we can’t practice it very well now. Even if it’s only something that we can aspire to, then hopefully one is getting some joy there, some happiness. Right? Just to repeat something that Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, As dharma practitioners what we’re trying to do is not to have happiness in this life. Not just meaning, we’re not trying to increase our worldly happiness.
What we’re trying to do is make our life meaningful. That’s the most important thing to do is to make our life meaningful. Right? Many people have happiness, you know, because they have big cars and big houses and lots of clothes and lots of foods and delicious food and expensive food and rare food and blah blah blah. And, you know, things hanging on the wall, beautiful things hanging on the wall, but no one else can afford.
And some happiness arises from that. But one’s life can be completely empty of meaning. We’re surrounded by all those things. Completely empty of meaning. So there’s no real happiness.
There’s just pleasure, distraction. Right? And pleasure and distraction and fame and power. This is not happiness. Whereas having a meaning, one can be the lowest person in the world.
The most despised person in the world. The poorest, dirtiest, most despicable from a social point of view, but one can be having a meaningful life. And then you are happy. Know? Milarepa who was a Buddha and had no clothes, he actually turned green at one point in his spiritual career because he was only eating nettles.
So he turned green. He was this appallingly skinny green naked man with no money, no reputation, despised by everyone from a worldly point of view. And then people discovered, well, inside that appallingly skinny green body was a Buddha’s mind. And then sort of people, you know, chased after him, drowned him and gifts and things like that, which he was totally uninterested in. But he had a meaningful life.
That’s the most important thing. Even if you’re not a Buddha, know, by practicing the Dharma, you know you’re doing it. That meaning is satisfying. Having a meaningful life, meaningful life is satisfying. Being satisfied means you’re not dissatisfied.
That is you’re not suffering. Not having the worst kind of suffering which is the mental suffering. One may still have the suffering of the body. But the worst kind of suffering is the dissatisfaction of the mind and the lack of meaning. So even if we’re still ordinary, we’re imperfect, we have problems and difficulties in this and that.
But we’re getting some meaning from the dharma, we see that this is meaningful for ourselves and others, then this can bring joy into our mind, into our life. And it will give us, the more we have that joy, Why it’s called effort or energy is because then because it’s joyful to do, we will want to do it. We will get the energy to do it. This is why when one actually generates actual bodhicitta, the wish to achieve enlightenment, someone who has bodhicitta has unbelievable energy to practice. Why we all fall asleep at night, is the right mental factor that we’ll discuss later on, is because we just run out of any kind of energy.
We’ve lost enthusiasm, happiness. We just can’t take it anymore so the mind goes blah. Yeah. But someone who has bodhicitta, such people don’t sleep or almost don’t sleep. Because everything they’re doing is joyful, is meaningful.
Because they’re doing the most, they know they are doing the absolutely most meaningful thing. Which is alleviating their own and others suffering. Right? So that is very joyful and that gives one energy to do all sorts of good stuff all the time. And because you do that, then you get the benefits and that gives you more enthusiasm.
For us because we don’t have we don’t enjoy virtue so much, we don’t do it so we don’t get the benefits. So we don’t have the enthusiasm. So it’s a downward spiral or a kind of a static spiral. Static spiral, is that possible? Static swirl.
We can have a static swirl or a downward spiral. We can have a little enthusiasm, but we don’t do much. So we don’t get much benefit. So we just sort of stay around. We paddle around just a little bit.
But if we start working on our enthusiasm, this is good, then we get the benefits that gives us more energy. And so there’s the onwards spiral that’s possible. Am I making sense at all? Thank you very much. Otherwise, I’ve just wasted your time and mine.
So this is an incredibly important mental factor to cultivate. And it comes we have to give the Dharma a chance. If we expect results immediately from our practice, then we can become very disappointed, right? Or we get some result and then we somehow expect demand that this will continue without any efforts, any more application. But this is not the case until we’re very highly realized because we still have delusions that eat away at our understanding and results and so on.
So we have to put effort. But if we give it a chance, then we will get some results. And even if we don’t get results, often very great results in this life, again the main thing is to develop this understanding, logical understanding that the dharma is true and beneficial. That the results will come sooner or later. If we had developed faith in karma, right?
That of the law of cause and effect. If we do something meaningful, it will produce, it has to produce a result. Everything has an effect. Right? And the main effect doesn’t come until later, generally speaking.
So if we develop that kind of wisdom, that faith and non confusion, these two mental factors, then this is a basis for having some enthusiasm. Knowing that whatever I do, even if the result doesn’t come now, it’s meaningful. And I can get some pleasure, some joy, satisfaction from knowing that what I’m doing is meaningful. This is really important to think about and cultivate. Enthusiasm, you haven’t realized it, is this mental factor is one of the six perfections of the Bodhisattva, right?
First you have generate, practice generosity. This leads to morality or an increase of morality. An increase of morality leads to an increasing ability to develop patience an increase in developing patience leads to an increasing ability to develop enthusiasm. The more enthusiasm, the more joy we find in practicing the Dharma. This leads to the ability to really meditate well until we achieve single pointed concentration.
And when we’ve developed concentration, this is the basis for achieving the final perfection of wisdom. The wisdom that destroys ignorance. So enthusiasm is really an important mental factor. And also just, then I’ll finish. Just to link this to that other mental factor of non attachment.
If we have this kind of little worldly mind that wants instant satisfaction then it’s difficult to cultivate enthusiasm. But if we understand that what we’re attached to isn’t productive of real happiness, and we develop this mind of, this virtuous mind of non attachment, Yeah. That can enjoy things but doesn’t demand this incredible something immediately from things. This mind that can renounce this instant gratification understanding that our practice will lead to something greater in the future. If we put all those mental factors together, we can cultivate Tsöndru enthusiasm.
So all those mental factors are necessary non attachment, Some some some non confusion. They all fit together and then one can have enthusiasm. Okay. We can take a break. Virtuous mental factors.
The next one is there it says suppleness. So maybe I always think afterwards having printed it all out. But a bit of translation is suppleness. Supple, not subtle. Supple.
Suppleness. So this is, I don’t want to spend too much time on, but it’s an interesting mental factor because this is a mental factor that arises as a result of practicing developing concentration. This is one of the mental factors that I mentioned before that in developing single point of concentration, there are nine stages. So this mental factor arises towards the very end of these nine stages of developing single pointed concentration. And when this mental factor arises, what it does, it is a consciousness.
This is the interesting thing. It is a consciousness that a virtuous consciousness, a virtuous state of mind, a virtuous mental factor that affects both body and the mind. That when that mental factor is operative, one’s actual body is also very, very subtle. Not subtle, very supple. Like going back to enthusiasm and its opposite of laziness spiritual sloth and torpor.
When we can all get into the state of mind when we don’t want to do virtuous things and so on. And you find when the mind is down like that and negative, the body is also very very heavy. It’s very difficult to do things. And when you’re not enjoying doing something, the body itself becomes extremely sluggish and heavy. And one can particularly notice this in relation to, this is true in kind of ordinary things here, but here we’re especially considering like doing virtuous things and the mind itself when there’s no enthusiasm, sorry not the mind itself, when there’s no enthusiasm there, when there’s no joy in doing virtuous things, the body itself can feel like a dead weight that makes it even more, you know, therefore the mind says, Oh, I’m giving up because this is just sheer slug, slug, sludge, no what, sheer drudgery or something.
Slug. Slug. Slug. That’s the word. Yeah.
So I don’t know what happens to my mind when I try and do this. But when there is this mental factor of suppleness, this virtuous mind, the body itself, it becomes very, very flexible. And so there’s a lot of energy in the body to do things like to sit and meditate. The body is no longer stiff and there’s no pain. The body is really, it’s just kind of, I’ve never experienced this day.
I just read about it. And because the body itself is very light and flexible, of course also the mind itself is very supple. If you think about it, if you can check this mind that sometimes when we’re introduced, I mean this can also apply to ordinary things, but especially when we’re introduced, when we’re listening to the dharma and some new concept comes up or it can be something that’s very easy to understand but very challenging to what we believe or doing, or it can be something difficult to understand. And one can discover very easily this mind that goes stiff like rock, you know, about it. Really hard and inflexible.
Yeah. I don’t want to know this cause it’s too difficult to understand or it’s too difficult to do. So you know the mind goes rigid. Close minded. Right?
Whereas if this virtuous mental factor is it produces a supple mind that is very open and flexible to new ideas and approaches and even something intellectually challenging, the mind finds it, you know, it can work with it. So this is this wonderful mental factor that arises through developing single pointed concentration. So this is one of the many benefits of having a high level, the high degree of concentration that not only is the mind able to stay on that object easily and therefore absorb deeply the meaning of it and gain great experience. But it’s done very easily. The mind is very subtle, very flexible about the whole situation.
And so that makes it very easy to learn more, to experience more, even difficult things. Because the mind and body are both subtle. So that suppleness of the body is the result of a mental factor. It’s not, excuse me, from doing yoga and things like that. I’m not saying yoga isn’t good, but one can develop yeah, one can have great suppleness of body through physical exercise, but then when the mind is confronted with something spiritually challenging, both the body and mind can seize up.
And that is because of the lack of this mental factor. Whereas when we have this mental factor, both the body and mind are cooperating completely. But this is not an easy, like most of the other mental factors are something that we can easily access. This suppleness, this mental factor of suppleness is something that only arises when one has developed Samādhi, single pointed concentration or just before it happens just. Also there are various kinds of it, but you start developing that just before you develop Samādhi.
Yeah. Don’t, Samādhi single point of concentration is unfortunately not developed overnight. It’s something that has to be done in very strict retreat and very strict, not because being strict on the bone. You have to have a very quiet place with no noise. And one has to be all alone and with no distractions and totally focused on meditating.
And this is not an easy thing to do. Just to find a place like that this stage is very difficult. And one has to have purified the mind and accumulated merit even before you start about such a retreat because it won’t work if purification and merit hasn’t been done, the merit making hasn’t been done beforehand. But this is something that we can aspire to do either later in this life or accumulate the merit in this life so that we can do it in a future life. The proverbial going into a cave.
But it doesn’t have to be a cave. It could be a caravan. It could be a luxury condominium. But one has to have non attachment. And what that that that you also guess, that mental factor of non attachment is necessary for success of achieving Samādhi.
Because if you’re attached, you know, to things, there’s no way to achieve it. Because that’s one of the main obstacles to meditation. So rapidly moving along. The next mental factor is, here it says diligence. Or maybe conscientiousness, it’s also translated as conscientiousness.
So this is the mental factor that wishes to remain in the present state of virtue and not to be separated from that in the future. So having in relation to meeting the dharma, we meet the dharma, we begin to see its truth and value and benefit and so on. And we understand the basic things that we should be doing in our life, especially observing the law of cause and effect. This is the fundamental basis of the Dharma and the fundamental moral system. So conscientiousness is that mental factor that recognizes that and wants to maintain that level of practice and understanding and so on, never to be separated from it.
So again, one can see that this is if we want to really progress or even maintain a level of practice, and if we want to develop it, we have to have this mental factor of conscientiousness, that conscientiousness that really wants to remain in a state of virtue. You know, remain with the Dharma and develop the qualities associated with it, and always, and to never be separated from that. Right? And so it’s that mental factor that will do all the things necessary to, such as coming to teachings and studying and this and that, giving up distractions and things or trying to give these things up and so on. So this is an important mental factor.
So it says that this mental factor of conscientiousness maintains the mind within the three roots of virtue, which are non attachment, non hatred and non confusion. Those three mental factors we looked at earlier. So basically it’s a mental factor that is really helpful in preventing us engaging in non virtue because we want to engage in virtue. In the teachings it explains that there are four gateways for creating negative actions which are the source of suffering. And the first of these is the lack of conscientiousness.
So we need this mental factor to hold us back from engaging in non virtue. The second factor is not knowing what is non virtue, What is conducive to suffering. The third is having excessive afflictions. Because if we have really strong delusions and we allow we all have delusions, we all have the potential for delusions. But if we allow our delusions to become very, very strong, then they will take over our mind.
We will have no control over them. All of us can, we can get angry. Probably almost every day we probably get upset, a little bit angry, annoyed, resentful of something every day. But it’s hopefully manageable. But if we don’t try to manage it and it builds up, we reach a point where we have no control over our anger.
Then we have excessive afflictions and then we’re really creating lots of negative karma that way. And then a final factor is lacking respect for the law of cause and effect and the teachings. But it all starts with this mental factor of conscientiousness. If we have that mental factor, then we will that mental factor will help us to know what causes suffering. That mental factor of conscientiousness will help us modify our afflictions, not allow them to become excessive.
Our conscientiousness will not allow us to lose our respect for the teachings and the practices and our commitments and vows and so on. So then the next mental factor is called equanimity. So this equanimity is not the mental factor. Most of you are familiar with what are called the four measurable thoughts of love, compassion, joy and equanimity. In the bodhicitta course, we were talking about the basis of developing bodhicitta is firstly developing that equanimity, which is the mind that doesn’t classify people as friend enemy and stranger, but has this equal feeling towards all.
So this mental factor of equanimity is not that, is not that equanimity, right? This again is a very particular, a very special kind of mind, which again only arises in the training towards achieving single point of concentration, Towards the in developing single pointed concentration, when one first cultivates concentration, are the gross obstacles. And as one develops more and more concentration, the ability to hold the mind on an object, one overcomes the gross obstacles and the obstacles become more and more subtle, Right? So one of the last obstacles to achieving concentration is how to explain this? In developing concentration, there are the different obstacles, the different distractions.
So each distraction has its antidote that we have to apply. For example, when we’re doing the nine round breathing or just being aware of the breath, then our mind can wander to an external sound. So we have to use mindfulness to be aware and to recognize, oh, my mind’s got distracted and we have to bring the mind back. Right? Or the mind becomes very dull and sleepy and we have to recognize that and we have to then apply an antidote of trying to make the mind bright and light again.
Because if we don’t, if the mind’s out there on the street following the truck, it was right down the end of Bunbury by the time the session finished and so on. So one has to apply the antidote. That’s a key feature of developing concentration, right? But at one point, applying the antidote can be an obstacle in itself because there’s the obstacle and here’s the antidote. And the whole idea is to apply the antidote long enough that the obstacle, the distraction goes away.
But if you apply the you can get to a point, it’s a very subtle situation where the obstacle is here, you’ve learned the antidote, and you apply it so that the obstacle has finished. The distraction is gone. So then there’s no longer a need to apply the antidote, but the mind keeps applying it. Right? When there’s no need any longer.
So that applying the antidote when there’s no longer any need itself becomes an obstacle, becomes a distraction because it’s not needed. Right? So equanimity is the mental factor that recognizes that situation and lets go of over applying the antidote. Over application. That was a long explanation.
So it’s a particular subtle virtuous mental factor. Why it’s listed there as one of the eleven virtuous factors one could ask? But maybe the answer is, what this list is telling us is that concentration is an incredibly important mental quality to develop in our spiritual life sooner or later. And therefore this mental factor of suppleness and equanimity which are part of the process of achieving concentration are really, really important. Alright.
And so the final virtuous mental factor is called non harmfulness. Or here it’s called non cruelty. And and and it’s explained that this is a mental factor acquired through removing hatred. The entity of non harmfulness or its quality is compassion. Its function is to not have the wish to inflict harm upon others and it enables us to tolerate pain caused by others.
It is not simply tolerance of harm, but also a wish for all sentient beings to be free from suffering. So non harmfulness is a different mental factor than compassion. Even though non harmfulness has the quality, it has the entity of compassion, But there is a difference. And because compassion is simply wishing all beings to be free from suffering. That is the fundamental definition of compassion in Buddhism.
It is the wish for it also means not just others but oneself and others to be free of suffering and the causes of suffering, right? And all the different kinds of suffering, not just all what we obvious physical pain, but even the most subtle kinds of dissatisfaction. So this is what is compassion. Whereas non harmfulness has that aspect. It has that quality of compassion.
But also non harmfulness is distinguished because it is this mental factor that has the ability to tolerate the burden of that compassion. Right? So for example, we can have the compassion which doesn’t want others to suffer. Right? But we don’t necessarily do much about it because our self-cherishing says that this is difficult and painful.
If I kind of get engaged in trying to stop the suffering, I don’t want this person to suffer. But in order to stop that suffering, I’m going to get caught up in a lot of troubles and difficulties. So we don’t. So we still have compassion. It doesn’t mean we don’t have compassion because compassion is fundamental compassion is not wanting to others to suffer.
So in itself is a wonderful virtuous mind because we can have unfortunately the very opposite which is the mind that wants other people to suffer. Yeah. We want, so that is a terrible state of mind to have. That we want another person, another being to suffer. That we don’t care about their suffering.
We actually can even want another person to suffer. Whereas compassion, just having the mind that doesn’t want someone to suffer is something great. But we may not do anything about it. So non harmfulness is this even stronger state of mind that has this quality of compassion, not wanting another to suffer, but is willing to accept the burden, the difficulty involved in achieving that. Okay.
So that’s it. That’s the eleven virtuous mental factors. That it’s important to know, and not only to know, but seeing their benefits, it’s important to try to cultivate them as much as possible. If we think about them we can see what what things am I thinking, saying, doing in my life that are like feeding grounds, that are nurturing the opposites or acting as obstacles for those virtuous states of mind. So if we let go of those things more and more, we’re creating the condition for these virtuous mental factors to be able to begin to manifest because the potential for them is there in our mind.
Always. Right? The very nature of our mind is pure and perfect. We have this Buddha potential. Right?
It’s always there. So we have the potential of all good things. Because of ignorance, we have the potential for all negative things, for every harmful non virtuous state of mind to arise. But fortunately ignorance can be eventually eliminated and then the potential for any kind of negative mind will be totally eliminated. On the other hand, the very nature of our mind is pure, so we have the potential for all good qualities.
So that fundamental purity of mind, unlike ignorance, cannot be removed because it’s the very nature of our mind. Ignorance is there, but it’s not an integral part of our mind. So all these eleven virtuous mental factors are a reflection of our Buddha potential, our Buddha nature. So but why aren’t they manifest? Because through confusion and ignorance and so on, we are allowing their antidotes to to to to And sometimes we’re either unconsciously or consciously cultivating the antidotes.
Whereas if we let go of those things, then that potential for these positive states of mind can start to manifest. And then we need to cultivate them by thinking about all the different things we can think and say and do that in our lives that will enable these mental factors to arise more frequently, more strongly, more consistently, more purely. That’s what it’s all about. Okay. Any questions, comments?
Okay. Just briefly, I don’t think I’ll get into it now, but the next topic within the fifty one mental factors are the six root afflictions. So these are attachment, anger, pride, ignorance, and doubt, and wrong views. Afflictive doubt, and afflictive views or wrong views. So these are the six root afflictions.
They’re the root afflictions because from those roots grow all the other disturbing minds, of which there are, as you can see on the next page, twenty secondary afflictions. Twenty main secondary afflictions. There are probably many, many others, but these are the main ones. So they all of those twenty secondary afflictions have as their root one of these six mental factors. And of these six mental factors, three are the main ones.
The three main ones, of course, are attachment, anger and ignorance. These are what are traditionally called the three poisonous minds. And of those three, out of those six, the three principal ones are attachment, anger and ignorance. And of those three root afflictions, the essential root affliction is ignorance. Right?
That is the key. That is the single root from which all negative minds arise. Because of ignorance arises attachment. And because of attachment there is anger. And because of anger and because of that combination, that that disastrous combination, one can have afflictive views and doubt and pride.
And because of those six, then all the other secondary delusions manifest. And we act on them with body, speech and mind, through body, speech and mind, create karma of body, speech and mind. And this generates positive I mean these harmful these negative imprints or seeds or potentials in our consciousness that ripen either sometime later in this life, but mainly in our future lives as suffering and the conditions for suffering. So this is what we’ll look at next week. But it is important just to make this point, many of you have heard this before, but there’s a few newer people who haven’t heard this at least from me.
So I don’t know if you’ve heard it from others. We have this principle delusion of ignorance. It’s always been there. This is the interesting thing according to that. The Buddha, the first teaching the Buddha gave was the teaching on the four noble truths that there is suffering.
Ordinary existence is unsatisfying and suffering. The second truth is that there is a cause of that suffering. And that principle cause, the root cause of every kind of suffering, physical and mental, is ignorance. This mental factor that creates a false appearance of who we are, of how everything exists. And that same mental factor of ignorance grasps that that false appearance is actually true.
It never doubts it. And because of that, that mental factor of ignorance Attachment exists. Attachment could not exist without ignorance, without this wrong view of how I and phenomena exist. Because ignorance creates the appearance, for example, that this my mind creates the appearance that this is truly beautiful from its own side. Inherently, independently beautiful.
Utterly, utterly, desirably beautiful. Yeah? And because of that, if there wasn’t that mind, there couldn’t be attachment. But because there is this ignorance that projects inherently existing qualities and existence on things, then because ignorance creates the illusion that this is inherently beautiful, then I have a afflicted desire attachment for it. It’s really out there.
It’s got nothing to do with my mind. It’s really beautiful from its own side. So attachment says because it’s inherently beautiful and that means it’s happy. It’s happiness. Right?
Beauty is happiness. Beauty isn’t unhappiness. Beauty is happiness. Right? So it’s inherently happiness there.
So if I have this is inherent happiness. So obviously if I have it, I will be happy. Alright. So this is desire once this inherent happiness which is out there. Yeah.
So if I had, you know, now I have happiness. Desire causes me to to draws my mind to it and then I grasp it. Right? This is attachment. So once I grasp it, because this is happiness, now I I am happy.
Right? Now I am happy because I have this happiness. Right? Then you can’t let go of it, right? Because this is happiness.
So if I let go of it, I’m going to be unhappy. You don’t agree? Sorry? You don’t understand that you don’t understand? Well, maybe wait till next week.
Takes a while. Sorry, because now I’m running out of time. Always start things and run out of time. Okay. Anyway, so we get attached because I can’t let go.
And then I become dependent on it. Right? I existed without it before. I was okay. Maybe I wasn’t as okay as I wanted to be but I was alive and okay.
Now I can’t live without it. I’ve got attached. I’ve got dependent. I’m obsessing with it. Right?
And so here I am attached. This thing, well this could symbolize many things. I hope you realize that of course. We usually don’t fall in love with a cup. But anyway, don’t get totally obsessed with a cup.
You possibly can. Because our mind can do anything. But then someone is looking at my cup. Someone wants my cup. So what happens?
I get angry. Right? Because someone wants my cup. They cannot have my cup. How do I protect my cup which is my happiness?
I get angry to push them away. That gives me lots of energy to push them away. Right? So first there is ignorance, then there is attachment, and then there is anger. And then there’s everything else.
Every kind of confused mental state and suffering. You can’t have attachment and anger without a wrong understanding Because also a wrong understanding of oneself. Firstly, there’s a wrong understanding of this, but also a wrong understanding of me that I actually need stuff out there, that I cannot live and be happy without all this stuff. This is what our ignorance is telling us. And that’s not true.
Anyway, it’s a long story, but I just wanted to repeat that point. So first there is ignorance, then there is attachment, and then there is anger. Anger cannot exist without attachment. We’re always behind anger. There’s always some kind of attachment and that attachment is there because I’m holding onto a wrong view of who I am and a wrong view of everything else.
Anyway, long story. Next week, more on that. Thank you very much for your kind attention. We can dedicate the merit. Yes.
Yes. And so this is on Page sixteen, Dedication if you’d like to join, page seventeen. Halfway halfway down, more or less halfway down. And then on page sixteen, halfway down the second prayer, no the third one, biggest print may the precious bodymind. So we can do these.
May the precious bodymind not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore. Okay. Thank you very much. One of the factors in developing enthusiasm is taking a break.