Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 99-minute teaching, Venerable Thubten Dondrub presents the second-to-last session of a series on mental factors, focusing on the six root delusions that keep practitioners bound in saṃsāra. He opens with a grounding meditation on refuge and bodhicitta, then systematically covers ignorance as the primary delusion—a subtle misperception of how phenomena exist that creates the false appearance of inherent, independent existence. From ignorance arise attachment and anger, the three poisonous minds that the Buddha taught make happiness impossible regardless of external circumstances. Dondrub illustrates these with concrete examples: the flower appearing beautiful only to some observers, the precious carpet deemed worthless by a dog, the anger arising from a stuck car door when expectation clashes with reality. He then explores the remaining root delusions—pride, doubt, and wrong views in their five forms—before beginning to address twenty secondary delusions including hatred, resentment, concealment, and jealousy, for which he offers practical meditation on rejoicing in others’ good qualities. The teaching is pitched at practitioners with some familiarity with Buddhist concepts and those attempting to integrate Dharma study into daily life transformation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 M F L 2004 12 04.mp3
UUID: 874202a9-6e09-464c-99ea-dc0df2620a20
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Mind and Mental Factors (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2004-12-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 99.3 minutes
Words: ~10,793
So welcome everyone to this fifth of six talks on mental factors, and this is the second to last class for the for the year. That which has a beginning must have an end. So and then once there’s an end, there’s another beginning. So we have next year, hopefully. So oh, no.
But they’re all different translations, I think. So as I always say, it’s really important to try to listen with the right motivation, to use what we what we hear to transform our mind. Really, first thing is is listening with this with this strong intention to practice what we hear and understand to be true and beneficial. If we don’t think what we hear is true or beneficial, then of course there’s no point to practice it. But if what we hear we feel has some truth and it’s beneficial, then we have some obligation to practice it whether we like it or not.
So but especially for those who’ve taken refuge, then this is the reason for listening. We’re really wanting to use the Buddha’s understanding to put into practice in our own life. And why do we do that? The long term purpose is to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of others. That is the long term goal that we should try to hold in our mind right now, especially that continuously in our life.
So that’s the long term goal. There’s also the goal of achieving liberation for ourselves to be free of suffering completely. A more shorter term goal is to while we’re stuck in saṃsāra, to have continuous good rebirths as a human being, especially perhaps, or to so that we can meet the Dharma and continuously practice and while in right now in this life we can have the motivation to reduce our suffering in this life and also the possible confusion and suffering we cause to others and increase our own happiness in this life and for those around us. But always the main goal that we can try and generate is this bodhicitta thought, seeking enlightenment for the sake of others in order to repay the kindness that we’ve received from others. So please try and generate that thought as much as you possibly can right now and to help develop that, generate a strong sense of refuge in the triple gem of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
And to help that, we can visualize Śākyamūni Buddha, the historical Buddha appearing directly in front of us, seated on a magnificent lion throne, lotus sun and moon, all in the nature of transparent radiating light, all reflecting the amazing qualities of the triple gem. And to help generate that bodhicitta thought, we think of ourselves surrounded by the different kinds of suffering 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, antagonists in front, and then all other beings. And before we do the prayer of refuge in bodhicitta, we can offer up the the mandala, which is thinking of all the the things of the entire universe, especially the things we are most attached to. Then we offer all these up to the buddhas so that our mind can become completely free of all these obsessions. And within that spacious freedom, our mind can receive the the blessings of the Buddhas so that our mind can become the Dharma and the Dharma can become the path.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly by the merit that I create by listening to the Dharma, may I attain the state of the Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So then we can think that the Buddha is very pleased with our motivation. And because of that comes to the crown of our head, dissolves into light, and that blissful light fills our whole body and mind so that our body becomes very light and supple, free of all pain and discomfort. In fact, feeling great bliss throughout the body, And at the same time, the mind becoming very calm, very clear, very light and spacious, sense of the mind no longer having any boundaries or limitations whatsoever and pervaded by the the blessings of the Buddha’s inconceivable wisdom, compassion, and other qualities. So in that positive state, we can do the nine round breathing exercise for a short time or any other concentration exercises of following the breath just to concentrate and focus our mind more so we can apply that to listening carefully to the dharma.
Okay. Thank you very much. So we’ve still got quite a lot to cover, so I just have to keep it fairly brief. So we’ve covered the five omnipresent minds, the five object determining minds, and the eleven positive mental factors. So now we’re looking at the the six root delusions, the mental factors, which are the six root defilements or disturbing conceptions.
And of these six, there are three the three major ones, the three poisonous minds. And of these, the the the most important one is the the way they’ve been listed, I’m I’m not gonna follow that order. Is the order that is given in the textbooks, but, really, the the the most important one to consider is logical to look at first is is number three in that list, which is called ma rigpa in Tibetan, which is we translate as ignorance or lack of intrinsic awareness. So this is the the root disturbing thought, wrong wrong yes. The root disturbing thought that the Buddha says is is the source, the the very root of all suffering.
Every single suffering, physical and mental, that we ever experience, small big or small, it all originates from this mental factor of Marigpa or ignorance. And it’s a root defilement because all the other disturbing thoughts, the fifty one other well, all the other negative mental factors all arise because of this one mental factor. If that mental factor of ignorance was not connected with our mind, then these other harmful disturbing thoughts could not possibly exist, and then we wouldn’t have any suffering whatsoever. Our mind would be completely liberated. So in this presentation of this topic called Lorig of mental factors, ma rigpa, or ignorance is not dealt with in a great detail.
This is taught at much greater length in other areas of study. So here basically what we’re looking at is just simply the definitions, a simple explanation of what these mental factors are just as a basis. And then one can really look at that in much greater depth later on in one’s studies. So ignorance is not a lack of having information about something as the word implies in our language, being ignorant of not having some information. Ignorance is this mental factor.
It is a consciousness which is it isn’t it’s obscuring out the totality of our primary mental consciousness because what it does is it it distorts the actual way things exist. The mind has the ability, the pure mind, free of any kind of negative disturbing thought has the ability to accurately reflect whatever exists. That that is the nature of our mind. But what gets in the way is this mental factor of ignorance at the moment, which is there. And that that ignorance is a consciousness that knows things, but it knows them in a false way.
It misconstrues the way things actually exist. And very briefly, as I’ve said many times before that we’ll go into this topic next year when we discuss the wisdom of emptiness, The way things the way we ourselves and everything appears to us very briefly is that things appear to exist from their own side independently and and also completely extent well, not so much ourselves, but everything else, it appears to be completely separate from us. Right? But it has nothing to do with us. That it’s it exists there quite independently, and all its characteristics exist there in dependence upon their own side under their own power, inherently, truly.
Right? So ignorance does these two things. It has this mental factor does two things. It creates this false appearance. And please don’t say why it does that.
It just does. It doesn’t have any motivation. It’s just a distorted mind that creates a distorted appearance of the way things are. And so it creates that false appearance, which appears to our mind as being true. We don’t question the way things appear to our mind.
We just and of course, sometimes we do, but generally how things appear to our mind, we instantly accept them like that. And so ignorance creates that false appearance and as well, it grasps that appearance to be true. It holds on to it as being completely true. And that of course, those words sound very heavy and concrete, but the process is something very, very subtle and refined and instantaneous and habitual and instinct totally instinctive. It’s something that our mind has been doing during beginningless time.
So another another word, a term for ignorance is self grasping. Because here the term self has the implication of something that truly exists, has some essential quality from its own side. And of course, our mind grasps at that as being true. So this mental factor is is operating in our mind all the time and and is misconstruing absolutely everything or in in this very, very subtle way. So or to put it another way, ignorance is the mind, is this mental factor that is totally unaware of the true nature of oneself and phenomena, the empty void nature of one’s of self and all and all phenomena.
Things appear through ignorance to be truly independently existing. Whereas the reality is the only way oneself and all phenomena can exist is dependently depending on on causes and conditions on parts and especially most subtly, everything depends on our mind. But when we experience things, when we look at this room, we don’t we we have no awareness that this room depends on our mind. It appears as a completely independent thing, and everything about it appears from its own side. And the characteristics of everything we see seem to be really there from their own side, have nothing to do with our mind, but this is not the case.
So this is a very huge topic, which we’re not going to go into anymore, but this is what we need to check out because this is the very heart of the Buddha’s teachings. This is the great discovery of the Buddha because these false appearances, the point about them is they’re very convincing. If they were unconvincing, it would be very easy to achieve liberation, but everything appears so convincingly like that to our deluded mind. But the you but there is this there is something wrong about everything we perceive. This very subtle thing, which to be able to be aware of requires a great deal of purification of the mind, a great deal of merit and accumulation of merit to empower the mind, and then a great deal of actual correct knowledge about how things actually do exist, and how it is impossible that they could exist the way they appear, even though they appear that way.
It’s impossible that they exist that way. So that’s the main form of ignorance a Buddhist point of view, also another general kind of ignorance is just simply the ignorance of the law of cause and effect. There are many kinds of ignorances, levels of ignorance, but the two from a Dharma point of view, the two main ones are the law of the two the ignorance of the true nature of things, and in other words, the ignorance of the ultimate nature of things. And then the then there is the ignorance of the conventional nature of things, which is all connected to the law of cause and effect. So it is said in the teachings that ignorance in general, while we have this mental factor of ignorance, we can still, of course, create good karma and so on.
But that ignorance will keep us in Samsāra in this cycle of rebirths, always, you know, being reborn in this unsatisfying situation again and again and again. Whereas the ignorance of the law of cause and effect that keeps us in the lower realms. While we remain ignorant, unaware of the truth of the law of cause and effect, and therefore don’t live our life according to it, we will create negative karma which will keep us will throw us into the lower realms again and again. Any any questions on that? But just briefly for some of the newer people here, to say, just I’ve probably given this example before, but here very fortunately we have this cute little flower.
So this can appear, I don’t know how this appears to your mind because I don’t know, I’m not clairvoyant, but one could think, oh, this is a very beautiful flower. Right? And when you and when we look at that and see a beautiful flower or pretty flower or, you know, a nice cute flower or nice flower or something like that. When we when we see that beauty in something, we we believe our ignorance creates the illusion that that beauty is there. It’s there.
It it is generated from this thing. Yeah. The beauty is there, and we are just observing it accurately because it’s truly existing. The beauty truly exists. It’s true.
It’s a fact. It’s truly there because I can see it. But the point is, if if this was a truly existing, inherently exist independently existing beautiful flower from its own side as it appears, then everyone would see it that way because that’s how it actually is. But not everyone will say this is a beautiful flower. And for example, a dog wouldn’t even see a flower.
They wouldn’t perceive this as a flower. But if it was an inherently existing flower, a dog would know that it was a flower. For example, I don’t know. I think this is just glass, but you may have, on your table or in your house some oh, for example, like unbelievably expensive Persian carpet. Right?
You look at a truly beautiful, precious, rare object. The dog comes in and defecates on it because it’s not a truly existing precious object to the dog. But if it if it truly existed that way from its own side, the way it appears to us, then the dog wouldn’t do such a terrible thing Or a child. Maybe a better example, a child wouldn’t do various atrocious things on it. Well, yeah, maybe that’s getting complicated.
If you take an example of an intelligent child, a human being or it wouldn’t even have to be a child. Sorry. Yeah. Well, like, for example, you know, precious antique carpets. You know, the the best most expensive ones are very old.
So someone could think, oh, this is an old crummy carpet. Chuck that out. But actually, it’s a, you know, from another point of view, it’s a it’s a rare, precious, antique. Right? But if it inherently truly existed that way, everyone would know it.
Yeah. But because it’s it it really is that. If it really is that from its own side, the way things appear, then everyone would know that. Does that make sense? Yeah.
You have some doubts, but that’s okay. You no. No. Just the the guy behind. Sorry?
Sorry? I can’t I I can’t hear you. No. Probably a large meaty bone. Yeah.
It’s not to say things aren’t beautiful, but they’re not truly from their own side. Of course, conventionally, there are things that are beautiful and ugly and and this and that, that we believe they’re really like that, and it’s got nothing to do with us. It’s how we see it. But just the beauty is a is a fairly easy idea, and the ugliness is a fairly easy thing to see that. But behind that is even just the the mere existence of things we believe to truly exist, and they don’t.
They just don’t, the Buddha said. No. No. Nothing. Sorry?
That’s what? No. No. No. Nothing is nothing is inherently existing.
Even the Buddha doesn’t inherently exist, but does exist. Things do exist, but they don’t inherently exist. For example, all these these these negative mental factors, ignorance itself. If ignorance truly existed, ignorance does exist, but it doesn’t truly exist inherently from its own side. Because if it did, it would mean it was independent.
Therefore, it wouldn’t depend on court. It it there’s there was no way you could remove it. It would be permanent, and it would always control our mind. Therefore, there would be no liberation and no enlightenment. But because it doesn’t truly exist from its own side, it’s possible to eliminate it, to change it.
This also Buddhahood doesn’t truly exist, but that doesn’t mean you can eliminate Buddhahood, but I can’t explain that straight away. That gets very complicated. But you can see if something is independent, nothing affects it. If something is completely independent, that means absolutely nothing affects it. Because if something affects something, it’s not independent.
If something is effectable, is English? You know what I mean anyway. You know? If something can be affected, it means it’s not totally independent. And if something is independent, it would be permanent.
It wouldn’t change at all. But our mind and even our disturbing thoughts are changing moment by moment. Okay. Anyway, this is taking too long. So because of ignorance that creates that illusion of independence and inherent true existence, we have all the other disturbing thoughts, particularly we have attachment.
Because of ignorance, there is attachment. Ignorance creates the illusion. It’s very convincing illusion that things are really like that. They’re really out there separate in dependence upon me, and they’re really good, and they’re really bad. They’re really beautiful.
They’re really ugly. This is real happiness. This is real suffering and so on. Because of that, because ignorance is doing that, what ignorance creates how when ignorance creates the illusion of truly existing beautiful things, truly existing happiness, etcetera, then that is the precondition for this mental factor of attachment, afflicted desire and attachment to arise. Because desire wants happiness.
We want happiness naturally. That’s intrinsic within the mind that afflicted desire believes this thing out there externally is happiness and something permanent. And and so once that, You know? It’s out there, so I have to possess it. And if I possess it, then I possess happiness.
I possess beauty. I possess security and comfort, all the things that the sense of I needs to feel secure and loved and etcetera, etcetera. So afflicted desire wants the object, and then when it contacts the object in some way or another, then attachment develops, which has become is the the mind of depending on that thing, believing its happiness, beautiful, and it’s permanent. So we become obsessed with it, dependent on it, and fearful of being separated from it. So the nature of afflicted desire and attachment is that afflicted desire.
We can have we can use the word desire to say, I desire to be a better person. I desire to be more loving, compassionate. I desire to practice the Dharma. I desire to achieve liberation. I desire to achieve enlightenment.
That desire is not afflicted desire. That is not a disturbing thought. That is a virtuous mind that wants to do meaningful virtuous things. The object the mental mental factor of attachment, the afflicted desire attachment always has as its object something that is a contaminated phenomena in, you know, some worldly deluded object produced by delusion and karma. And attachment has so that’s one aspect of what attachment afflicted desire is.
And what it does is it exaggerates the beauty, the desirability, the happiness factor of that object. Conventionally, is some one could say some something attractive, beautiful, pleasant about an object, but afflicted desire and attachment completely exaggerates that. Why? Because of me, because it makes me happy. If it makes someone else happy, it’s not it’s not very significant, but because especially if it’s someone I don’t like.
But if it’s if it makes me happy or it makes my family, my group happy and secure and better and more powerful, then we exaggerate how important that is. Because always because of ignorance, the sense of I is dominant in our mind and the sense of I, we’re always striving to make stronger and more real and more secure and more vivid and so on. So afflicted desire attachment has the qualities of being attracted to something that is contaminated. It then it exaggerates the pleasant aspect. It also believes that object to be permanent.
That’s why it’s so desirable because this is real. It’s permanent happiness. It’s this thing is permanently is gonna be permanently beautiful. It will never change. This is what this is what our attachment, afflicted desire attachment does.
So attachment is concerned with contaminated phenomena, overexaggerates their attractiveness, grasps that the permanence of them, and then takes a very strong interest in them. And then attachment doesn’t want to separate from that thing. There’s a lot that can be said about attachment and I’ve said it before. Probably there’s still more to say, but I won’t go into it anymore tonight. But that’s just a basic because this course is meant to be just an introduction to the different mental factors.
But that is the basic nature of afflicted desire attachment. Again, attachment in our language can have nice connotations. We just have to remember that we have to use the English language to translate Dharma concepts, and we don’t have a spiritual language in English. English is a language of the senses. It’s not a language of the mind.
So in in Sanskrit, the word for attachment is what? I’ve forgotten now. I should know this back to front. It’s come on. Someone should know.
Oh, anyway, in Tibetan, it’s dö chak. So that has a very specific meaning. Whereas we could say, you know, sometimes attachment has a connotation of having this warm association with someone or something, but it doesn’t mean that at all in the Buddhist context. Dö chak is not that. It is this disturbing thought.
When we have Dirchak, when we have afflicted desire attachment in our mind, our mind is agitated. It does it’s not a source of happiness even though we think it is. We think if we follow our desires and attachment, we will be happy. Of course, that’s why we’re deluded. Part of our delusion is that we believe these actually these negative factors are something good.
But this is one of the poisonous minds, one of the three poisonous minds. Firstly, there is ignorance, then there is attachment. And then as I was saying last week, because there is attachment, there’s, there’s always some attachment in our life we have to admit. We’re always involved in that to some extent. And because of that, that have that access the condition for the arrival of the next of the six root delusions, which is anger, which is khong khro in Tibetan, something like that.
Excuse my terrible pronunciation. So one definition of anger is it is a vindictive attitude towards sentient beings, towards frustration, and towards that which gives rise to one’s frustrations. Another definition says it is a generation of agitation with respect to any object of cognition, whether it’s animate or inanimate. So going back to that first definition, anger can arise to sentient beings. It can arise to our own inner frustrations.
Yeah. Or it can arise towards any other thing that causes our frustrations like a traffic jam, you know, someone cutting in front of us in on the street or someone bumping into us or we trip over a rock and we get angry with, you know, we get frustrated and we, you know, there’s the cause of it that made me up, you know, have this uncomfortable experience, this unpleasant thing. So we get angry at that. In other words, we can get angry at anything. Mostly we get angry with sentient beings, and that creates the worst karma.
But always if you check why that anger arises is because there’s some kind of attachment there, attachment that is holding on to some kind of, thing that I want that I’ve got and I want it to be like that. It may even be an idea. One has an attachment to some idea of what should how things should be or should happen and and something doesn’t fit with that. So one gets upset. Right?
You know, we have attachment to possessions. So if someone threatens our possessions, we get angry with them. But even, you know, I always give this example, like you if you’re in a hurry and you’re trying to open your car door or, you know, open the house door and you can’t get the key in or something, we get angry. You know? Why?
Because I mean, just a little bit a little bit of frustration there because we have an attachment that I this should happen now. I’m in a hurry, so the door has to open immediately because I want it to, because it has to, because I am in a hurry. Right? So the whole world has to cooperate with my needs. Why?
Because that’s why the world exists to benefit me. Right? And now this door, this stupid bloody door is not opening. Right? So we get angry.
But if there was no attachment to the door opening instantly according to our expectations and demands, we wouldn’t be angry. We would just take the time to open it. But as soon as a tiny bit of attachment is there to anything, then we have a condition for anger when it doesn’t work the way we want. And then so these are the three poisonous minds. These these are the worst ones, and everything all the other mental afflictions arise from that.
The Buddha said that no matter what you have in life, what possessions you have, what fame, fortune, good health, reputation, friends, family, and all these things, no matter what you have, you will not have happiness if you even have a tiny bit of any of these disturbing thoughts of ignorance, attachment, or anger in the mind. It is impossible. Right? And this is the big mistake that most people make, most sentient beings make all the time that we think we can be happy and free of suffering while we have these disturbing thoughts. I mean, most of us don’t even recognize, most people in the world don’t even recognize that they have these disturbing thoughts.
But they think that without changing the mind, if I get a bigger house, a better boyfriend, girlfriend, a better job, you know, power, more this, more that, then my suffering will go away, and I will be really happy. This, the Buddha said, is impossible. And if you think about it, and if you look at your own your own mind honestly, how can you be happy when there is the potential for anger and attachment? And when there is ignorance, a state of mind where we don’t even really know who we are. Right?
Who we really are, we don’t know. We just simply do not know. We can write about a book about who we are. We could all start writing probably extremely boring books about who we are. But it it doesn’t touch who we are, how we actually exist.
We just don’t know. So how can one be happy and be free of suffering? This is the key thing. As I keep saying, you know, you just have to stand in the shop queue, at the supermarket queue, and look at the TV guides and other magazines there, which are full front page block about the latest, most beautiful, famous, rich person who’s unhappy because of something. But these are the people, you know, who have the beauty, the riches, the power, the fame that we think that if we even have a little bit of it, we will be happy.
Everything will be wonderful. Alright? It’s simply not true when we have these disturbing thoughts. And the point is having all this stuff that we want won’t reduce these disturbing thoughts. Actually, it is actually the condition for most of those disturbing thoughts to increase.
You get more possessions. Therefore, you have more attachment. You get more dependent on them. Right? You actually get more dependent.
Yes. Check it out. I weekly really? I mean, of course, one one can change one’s mind, but this is what tends to happen. One gets more the more you get, the more dependent on it you you are.
And then, of course, there’s the potential to get really upset and angry when all these possessions are are attached. I mean, they’re attached. Are attacked, threatened in some way. So so then just rapidly, any questions, comments, disagreements? Yes.
No, that’s anger. That’s how I should have explained what anger is. We get to anger is does the very opposite to attachment. Exaggerates the the the unpleasant quality of something. Right?
Also seeing that as as tending to see that as permanent, and therefore it’s the mind that can’t bear that. Right? So it gets really agitated. And the more agitation, the more there is within anger, a wish to cause harm in some way. So then there is a pride.
So this is an inflated mind that feels that oneself or one’s qualities are unique and special and better than anyone else. So again, is very disturbing thought that because we already have this wrong view of self and then pride comes along and even exaggerates more, you know, certain qualities that we may think we have and and and and believe these qualities are somehow very special and very important. So there are many kinds of pride, but there there is a pride of feeling superior to those who are lesser than, you know, conventionally have lesser qualities than oneself, even feeling pride between equals. Know, there are people who are basically the same as ourselves, but still we think, oh, I’m better than them. And then there is like excessive pride where there are people with superior qualities to ourselves, but we still think, oh, I’m better than that person anyway.
Right? And there are various other kinds of pride, but not much time to go into those. So pride from a Dharma point of view is is a very harmful mind, a very in following a very so what can I say? It’s a great obstacle to following the spiritual path because with pride, it’s very difficult to learn new things because we tend to think, oh, I don’t need to know that, or I already understand that. I’ve already heard that.
So in studying the Dharma, this is a great obstacle if we really think, oh, I don’t need to hear this anymore. I don’t need to read this because I’ve heard it. I’ve read it. I now I know it. So this is a big obstacle thinking that we really know the full extent of something.
And also pride is a great obstacle to developing compassion. That while we have pride, you know, when and we’re looking down on others, then then there can’t be any real compassion when we when we are seeing ourselves separate and superior to others. Because compassion is all about feeling equality and empathy. Right? But if we think we are somehow inherently better, there’s no basis to feel real compassion.
Right? It’s just some kind of condescending pity or something. Right. And of course, that pride is just reinforcing the wrong view of self that we have or the wrong view of things, giving in intrinsic value to things that aren’t really very valuable at all. We can be proud because we own, you know, we possess some kind of, you know, t-shirt with, you know, the crocodile on it, you know, and my friends don’t have that one with a crocodile on it.
So I’m so proud that I have this. It makes me a better person because I have a t-shirt that costs three times as what everyone else has got, you know, or I live in this area of town, which is where all the the better people live. Yeah. These things. You know?
So these are completely false value judgments that have no no real meaning from from the perspective of realized beings of Buddhas. We we are all basically have the same nature, but pride creates these false distinctions. So then the fifth of the root delusions is doubt. So this again is not talking about ordinary doubt, whether I’m not sure whether I should paint the house pink or blue. This is not we’re not talking about that kind of doubt.
This is a mind that is in two minds about what is actually true and meaningful and beneficial. So particularly when we have doubts about the Buddha’s teachings that we really, you know, in two minds about them, then this is a great obstacle to following the spiritual path. So doubt is a wavering indecisive state of mind tending towards an incorrect conclusion about meaningful things and that which is true. So there are three kinds of doubt. There is the worst kind is the doubt.
So all doubt is sort of tending to believe that what is true or meaningful is not true or meaningful. But within that, there is the worst kind of doubt is the doubt that is going very strongly towards believing that this is not true. The Buddha said that everything is impermanent and well, I think that’s probably rubbish. Right? I’m not completely sure, but I think that’s rubbish.
Or the Buddha said that there are future lives. So I don’t believe that. That’s well, maybe it could be a little bit true, but I don’t really, really believe that at all. So this is the worst kind of doubt that it’s tending towards disagreeing, but especially going very strongly towards disagreeing. A better kind of doubt, but still harmful is what is kind of like an equal doubt that keeps wavering, but it’s still tending towards the wrong view, the wrong conclusion that it’s sort of not completely sure.
And then there is the doubt that is tending towards the positive, that maybe this actually is true. Right? So especially for those people here who’ve who’ve taken refuge in the Buddhist teachings, having checked up and then taken refuge. Of course, when we do this, we don’t understand. We haven’t heard all the Buddha’s teachings, let alone have understood them.
So when we come across new aspects of the teachings, we we can give rise to doubts about all whether this is true or not or whether the Buddha taught it and and so on. But if we have refuge, we don’t have to blindly believe it because the Buddha himself said don’t don’t believe what I said just because I said it. It’s really important to check up. But if we’ve taken refuge, we’ve we’ve we’ve hopefully got this belief that the Buddha is enlightened and and is perceiving and only perceives what is true and therefore only teaches what is true. So we can have doubts, but we should try to cultivate the mind that realizes, well, I’m not really sure about that, but it’s probably true because the Buddha taught us.
Right? But if we’re really listening to the mind that says it’s probably wrong, then this is really not particularly a very good refuge at all. Right? We don’t have to blindly believe it, but we shouldn’t believe our own negative mind that just doesn’t want to believe things because it doesn’t fit in with what we are familiar with or because we find it difficult to understand. Right?
There are some very amazing things taught, explained in the Buddhadharma, which is way beyond our ordinary line of experience and familiarity. But we should I I think it’s important, especially if we have refuge or even if we haven’t taken refuge, but we’re we’re developing an interest in the Buddhadharma. We shouldn’t just reject it because it’s not comfortable with our views. But doubt is a really harmful, you know, that mind doubting what is true is a great obstacle to the spiritual path because it saps our energy. If we keep doubting something, of course, we won’t won’t put energy into it.
We won’t practice it. We won’t if we doubt the law of cause and effect, then, you know, it it it we won’t observe it in our daily life. If we doubt our own Buddha nature and so on, then then again, we we won’t have that energy to practice the Dharma. So the less doubt we have, the more enthusiasm we will have for practicing the Dharma day by day, moment by moment. And then finally so the last of the the six root delusions is a mental factor called wrong views.
So these all arise from the fundamental wrong view generated by ignorance, the mental factor of ignorance. So within this this this sixth mental factor of wrong views, there are five kinds of five major kinds of wrong views. So the first of these as it’s put in your list that you have is called the transient view or the view of the transitory collection. It’s very complicated expression. So this is referring to the view of our five aggregates, body and mind.
The five aggregates, there’s the form aggregate, then there is the four aggregates of the mind which is feelings, discriminations, discriminations, compositional factors, and the six primary consciousnesses. These are the five aggregates. So the view of the trans and so the transitory collection is another way of talking about the five aggregates. So it’s we have five aggregates or collection and they’re transitory or impermanent. Right?
So there is this mental factor which looks at the perceives these five aggregates and it singles out certain aspects of our aggregates and identifies them with the conventional eye, which we imagine exists as something permanent and substantial. So this wrong view, the view of the transitory collection is this mental factor that perceives one or a collection of, you know, one or two of the five aggregates singles that out and imagines that that is me. That is the I. Looking at yourself from the viewpoint of this I, you regard what you identify with as being your concrete ego identity. Thus, you view everything as truly existing in terms of me and mine.
So here the word mine doesn’t refer to normally when we talk about, we could say this is my cup. It’s mine. So their mind is referring to the cup, but here mine is referring to the mind that is conceiving that like the the transitory view of the collection can think that this body is me me, and therefore this cut is mine. So it’s the met this mental factor that is conceiving the body as me and and something that can have things, that possesses things. So there’s that wrong view.
No. No. You can jump around. As I as I often as I always say, I’ve only got about three examples to explain everything in the Dharma. But for example, when you have a shower, you know, you think I am having a shower.
Right? When you have a shower, you’re having a shower and you think I’m having a shower. And in order to think that, actually, there’s water pouring on your body from this device somewhere in a little cubicle. Water is pouring on the body and in a continuous stream, and then you think I am having a shower. But, actually, what is having a shower is your body.
What is directly having a shower is the body. And there is a strong sense that I I am having a shower. Of course, you are. That gets very complicated. But but this is an example where actually we are identifying me with our body.
We also do this if someone says, oh, you’re so beautiful. You’re so handsome. And then you think inside, yes. I am. We we don’t say your body isn’t this.
We say you. So not only, you know, we do it with ourselves, we identify our own body as me. We identify other people’s bodies as them. Sometimes, not all the time. But it’s good good experiment to have a shower and just check who is who what is actually happening.
Or like if if you shave in the morning for the men, I don’t know if any of or if you’re putting on your makeup, you know, whatever whichever one of these you do, you have shaving on or put your makeup on in the morning and you look in the mirror, you’re really thinking, oh, you know, you’re doing it. You know, there’s me, you know, and so I I I have got a little bit missing there. I need to touch this bit up. Right? This is my face.
This is me there. Oh, I’m looking a bit, you know, something this morning. I don’t know if you can you can sort of experiment with just kind of like a little bit staring. So you I don’t know how to do it exactly, but and when you’re looking at yourself in the mirror, which is not yourself, but just your body, it’s not even your body. It’s just a reflection in a in a in a in some glass.
But if you stare, you can just kind of actually try and just look that there’s this image, which is not you. There’s just a face there. It’s not me. You can experiment. There’s a kind of a different sense thing when you you’re just looking.
There’s a body there in front of you. No. Simply no. Yes. Well, it’s a very complicated issue, which we really don’t have time to get into next year, February.
But roughly very simply, we have a body and mind and the person that we actually are is something dependent on both the body and mind. But it’s not something that is separate from the body and mind. It’s something merely dependent. It’s not like dependent on on this table. This cup is on the table.
Right? So it’s not like the person I is something like this cup that depends on the table. For example, the eye is not dependent on the body and mind as a separate thing, but it somehow needs. Yeah. It’s very difficult to explain.
The eye is what is merely labeled by the mind on the body and mind, but it’s not something separate. It’s not the same as the body and mind, but it’s not something separate. It is what is merely labeled by the mind on the body and mind. So if one can really understand that, one achieves liberation. It’s very easy to say the words.
Even I can say the words. So the the key thing is to actually deeply experience the meaning of those words, what that actually means. That destroys ignorance, that mental factor of ignorance. But what we do is we believe there is an inherently existing I that is not the body and not the mind. The ignorance is grasping that there is a person that really exists independently of the body and mind.
But what these wrong views do is that they grasp temporarily that of, you know, one moment we identify I am my body. I am my mind. I am this. I am that. Okay.
So one of these wrong views arising from mental factors is this what is called the view of the transitory collection. So then the next one is in that list that you have is called extreme view. So this is this wrong view that grasps the self as either permanently existing or nonexistent. Either permanently existing or nonexistent in the sense that it will become nonexistent. So for example, those who believe at at death, there’s nothing.
So this is the the extreme view of nonexistence. And then there is the extreme view that everything is is permanent and unchanging, that I am permanent and unchanging. So Buddhism is often said to be the middle way view. So the Buddha taught that the way things exist is free of those two extremes that this mental factor believes in that the things are not permanent nor are they nonexistent. Certainly the I, the the person that validly exists is is is not something permanently existing nor is it something that is becomes nonexistent.
And then if we’ll we’ll skip the next one for the moment and go to the so the next one here no. So the next one in this list that you have is called wrong view. Right? Actually, it should better be called perverse view. Or wrong view, maybe it’s okay.
Sometimes translated as perverse view. So this is the the a mental factor that that does not accept the truth of the law of cause and effect, four noble truths, rebirth, and and and so on. So from the Buddhist point of view, if one doesn’t accept these views as true, the law of cause and effect, rebirth, and so on, then there’s no real basis for following the path to liberation and enlightenment. And these these are the fundamental things that is the whole basis of the Buddhist teachings that there is rebirth because rebirth is completely intimately associated with connected with the very nature of mind, which is the whole basis of the Buddhist teachings to them. If we understand what mind is according to the Buddhist view, then it’s something that goes on and on and on.
It’s something it is impossible for mind. Mind is impermanent. It’s not a fixed thing, but it arises moment by moment, changing moment by moment. One moment of consciousness giving rise to another moment of consciousness and that that that process never stops. Mind is not something because it’s not physical.
It cannot be destroyed. So if what if we get some understanding that it follows that there is rebirth. And it’s because there is rebirth, we have to be concerned about what we do with our mind in this life because what we do with our mind in this life produces effects in this life, but even far greater effects good and bad in future lives that just goes on and on and on. So if we have this wrong view, this fundamental wrong view that rejects the teachings on karma and rebirth, then we have no real basis. There’s nothing there on which we can really follow a valid path to liberation, let alone enlightenment.
So it’s a very harmful view. And then the next one, we’ll skip the next one and go to the last one, which is called holding ethics and ritual as supreme, something like that. So this is a wrong view that believes that certain kinds of morality or disciplines by following these one will achieve liberation from suffering. But the point is this, the morality or the discipline that one believes to be beneficial is actually false. So in the Buddhist tradition, the Tibetan lamas give the examples that I think I’ve mentioned here before, but they still exist in India to some extent.
The belief that for example, you know, there are all these sadhus who spend their life standing on one leg or have one arm in the air. And the reason they do that is they believe that if you undergo that, it’s both it’s both a practice of morality, a certain kind of morality, and it’s also a kind of it’s a very strong discipline. You have to be very disciplined to spend your life standing on one leg or having one arm in the air. But why they do it is of course they believe that if you do that, you will achieve liberation from suffering. That when you die, then all your suffering will go.
And there’s another belief which is taught in the Buddhist texts of wrong views, which is still in practice. I saw a book of pictures illustrating this practice where they believe that if you surround yourself with fires and and that they also you put a fire on your head, and then you just endure that incredible suffering, then you will achieve liberation. And the most extreme of those views is I haven’t seen pictures of this and I hope it’s still not practiced in India, but a view that in ancient times, some Sadhus used to train this. I don’t know what they did to train, but the ultimate aim was that you would stick this large trident in the ground with three prongs, and then you would jump from a great height. And if you were able to get the central prong to go through your you know, crown chakra, and then you would achieve liberation.
So from a Buddhist point of view, these don’t work. There’s also another view. So don’t, you know, don’t try them. They don’t they don’t work. There was another practice.
I still don’t I don’t know if this is still done in India also where people would like this Sadhus, their whole life would act like dogs. That would walk around on legs and only eat food thrown to them on the ground in the belief that if they did that, they would wear out all their karma to be born a dog in the future. Right? But this from a Buddhist point of view doesn’t work. This is not the way to become free of suffering.
These are just ignorant beliefs. They may require incredible discipline and morality, but it’s all misguided. It it has no valid basis of understanding how things actually work. So, unfortunately, it’s a wrong view. Because those things don’t eliminate ignorance from the consciousness.
They don’t eliminate that mental factor of ignorance. And the Buddha said, discovered that the only thing that’s gonna free us from suffering is eliminating that that wrong view, that ignorance that is constantly very subtly creating this false illusion of how I exist, how all phenomena exist. And then final wrong view is called conceiving wrong views as superior. So this is a wrong view that believes that the first wrong view we talked about, the view of the transitory collection, the view holding to an extreme, holding the two extreme wrong views of permanence and nonexistence, And the one I just talked about wrong morality. There’s the wrong view that believes that these things are superior.
These are the superior views to hold. These are the best views that will bring about, you know, the greatest result. But since those those views are wrong, believing those views to be superior is also a basis for suffering and confusion. Okay. So that’s a little bit about the six principal disturbing thoughts, Six root delusions.
So now what we can start looking at the twenty secondary delusions. All of these arise from the three main delusions of ignorance, attachment, and anger. So the first of these secondary delusions is in in Tibetan called khro ba. Which is hatred. So hatred, of course, is a much stronger form of anger.
When anger really develops, it transforms into anger into hatred. So anger is the root delusion that if we didn’t have that, we wouldn’t have hatred. So hatred is just an extreme form of anger. So it is defined as a a vindictive intention to hurt, to harm. It is a mental factor that due to an increase of anger is a thoroughly malicious state of mind wishing to cause immediate harm.
So with anger, something can upset us, and there may be some kind of wish to harm, but not necessarily immediately and not necessarily very strongly, but with hatred because the anger has increased so much that that the sense of I cannot bear this. This is too too terrible. This is too much suffering. I cannot bear that. Then hatred is this mind that sees the only way to stop it is to, you know, to immediately cause harm to what we believe is the source of of our unhappiness.
So of course, the mind of hatred causes us to engage in the worst actions of like, it’s a very negative state of mind, but also because it’s so strong, it causes us to say really terrible things and also to do physically and to act in very harmful ways. So through hatred, we call it create some of the worst negative karma possible. So it’s harmful for ourselves, harmful for others, and especially in following the Mahāyāna path where we’re trying to be of great benefit to others, then this mind is really important to overcome. So it’s interesting to in in the teachings, says that hatred has nine objects. That is people harming me in the past, present, and future.
So anyone you know, we get you know, we hate people who have harmed us in the past, present, and future, or we can. Also, we can hate people who’ve harmed our family and friends either in the past, in the present, or will do so in the future. We, you know, we hate this person because they think we think, oh, this person is going to harm my family or friends in the future. And we also hate people who help our enemies. People who help the people we dislike, we can hate them for doing that.
So we can hate people who’ve helped out out people we dislike in the past. We can hate people who are helping people we dislike in the present and in the future. That’s the way our mind can work. K. So hatred, unfortunately, is a pretty straightforward mental factor.
The next one is resentment or grudge holding, resentment. So this is the mind that stubbornly holds a grudge and seeks revenge. It doesn’t let know, one becomes obsessed with some past harm or imagined harm. Because the thing is, you know, may just imagine someone has harmed us. It may not actually have happened, but we imagine that or we believe it’s actually happened or we believe that person is the cause of our our suffering and problem.
And then we we get obsessed with that. We don’t want to let go of it, and and we want to pay them back. So this acts so this mental factor is based on anger and hatred, but also it reinforces them because the mind dwells on, you know, this person caused this harm, you know, and I want to pay them back. So by following that thought, we also get angry and hate arising as well. So the next one in the list is is I think concealment.
Yes? Concealment, chab pa. So this is this is a byproduct of the root disturbing thought of ignorance. The others, the first ones we mentioned were products of anger. So this mental factor of concealment derives from ignorance.
So it’s a mental factor. It’s a kind of a devious mind, a devious attitude of attempting to hide from others the fact that you have committed a specific negative action. So we know we’ve done something wrong. So the mental factor of concealment tries to hide that from others. Not just our actions, but also negative qualities.
We have a negative quality. We know it’s a negative quality, but we want to hide it from others. Want So of course, as a spiritual someone following the spiritual path, we’re trying to get rid of our negative qualities. So if we listen to that mental factor, we don’t we’re not going to if we’re hiding our negative qualities from others, well, to some extent, we’re also not acknowledging part of our mind is acknowledging that is negative, but in another sense, it’s kind of not what even wanting to admit to ourselves that it is. So we hide it.
So if the more we do this, you know, we’re not opening ourselves to being able to change, to develop. And it says that this mental factor acts as an obstacle to developing regret. And regret is this virtuous mind of regret is very important in purifying our mind. So concealment that mental factor sort of opposes that state of mind from arising. So the next one is called has many translations in English.
So what have we called it here? Spite. Spite. But spite, think, is the same as resentment, isn’t it? No?
No. In English? Spite? No. No. It’s not.
Anyway, what what it says here, it also could be translated as abusiveness. So it’s again a byproduct of anger. And Sorry. So, yeah, it it’s the mental factor that motivates one to utter, to speak harsh words in reply to unpleasant words said by others. So if someone points out our faults, then this is the mental factor that without any regret, know, wants to, you know, reply with with harsh words.
Next one is jealousy or envy. So, again, this is a product, a byproduct of anger. And it’s the mental factor which is unable to bear the good qualities of others because oneself is overly attached to to gain and honor and so forth. So it’s a mind that can’t spare to see or hear about the good qualities of others. The antidote, of course, is to train the mind in rejoicing in the good qualities or of others, good qualities, whatever one is jealous of, to rejoice that they have that, to be happy.
This is especially important in following the spiritual path, especially the Mahāyāna where we want everyone to become a Buddha to have no bad things happen to them whatsoever and only to have every wonderful thing including the ultimate achievement of enlightenment. So to be jealous of someone who has something is is totally contradictory to developing that that wish. Right? It’s completely contrary where so we should be happy that people have good qualities even if those good qualities and possessions and their fame and fortune and their knowledge and everything else is more than our own because in theory, that’s what we would like them to have. We want as someone trying to be a bodhisattva, we want everyone to have perfect happiness.
So how can we be jealous? We should be happy. We should be happy. And the point is jealousy makes jealousy makes our mind miserable. Right?
Someone else has something, some quality or possession, and that is making them happy, and that makes us miserable. Our mind makes us miserable because of that, which is just absurd. And then the point the point is a point is that our jealousy will not enable us to get that quality from that person or that that possession from Our jealousy is just simply making us miserable. Whereas if we rejoice, the fact that other people have good things or good qualities can make us happy even if we don’t have those qualities or possession. So which is the wiser thing to do.
And this is not technically coming from any tradition. This is something I made up. This is a great meditation I made up myself about overcoming jealousy because I think I find it quite helpful to reflect on the fact that if if you look at the mind of jealousy, it’s it’s you see someone who’s better looking at than you or cleverer than you or has more money than you or this or that, then you can meditate better than you or this or that or can prostrate longer than you or, you know, has some, you know, Dharma quality that one doesn’t have. But so jealousy underlying that jealousy is is this completely irrational mind that wants to say that I my qualities are the best in the world, should be the best in the world. No one should be better than me.
But if you then think about it, if I if I was the best looking person in the world, everyone else would be uglier than me, and that would be really depressing. You know, I have to look at these all really ugly people all the time. Right? Much uglier than me because jealousy would like everyone to be much worse than me. Then because then I’d feel really good.
So but then you’d have to look at all these incredibly ugly people, especially if I was as I am the best looking person in the world, people would be really ugly. Right? Or if I was the funniest person in the world, then then people I’d have to put up with the most unbelievably boring people. Right? If I was the most entertaining, person in the world, or if I was the most intelligent person in the world, then everyone else would be so, like, primitive.
I’d be miserable if I actually was the best of everything in the world. You just think about it in relation to yourself, not just me. It might help. Oh, I think we better finish. We’ve got a lot more to do.
No. We’ll no. It’s probably okay. We’ll finish next week. So as the pop song says, rejoice, rejoice, you have no choice.
And as the Buddha said to one Indian king, this is one of the easiest ways to create merit because someone does something virtuous. And if you rejoice in it, one also creates merit. They work really hard doing something. If someone does a hundred thousand prostrations, you just sit in your chair watching television and rejoice, and you get some merit. Of course, one also has to bear in mind that there is negative rejoicing where if we if we are happy when people do bad things, then this is also creating bad karma, negative karma.
We have to be very careful about that. Any questions? Okay. Thank you very much. So we can dedicate the merit from this time.
Mhmm. This may the positive imprints generated become a cause for us to quickly achieve full state of enlightenment that only perfectly and spontaneously and joyfully and continuously benefits all the kind suffering mother sentient beings. May the precious body mind not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore. K.
Thank you very much. Just just before we finish, how many people were at the the the the great mantra workshop a couple of weeks ago? Could you you put up your hands up? One two three four six. K.
This is an offering for oh, this is a picture of vajradhara. So to end all confusion, this is kindly offered by Venerable Chodron from Perth. So please collect there. And, also, could the peep for those people who did the the mind training course, the last Dharma Bytes course of transforming problems, this is also I think if you remember, I referred to this little booklet of the eight verses by his holiness. So again, Venerable Chodron has kindly made copies free for those people who did the course.
So please help yourself to those if you would like a copy if if you did that course. Thanks very much. So we can finish with three maybe I think we’re gonna stop here for the time being. We’ll take a short break, and then we’ll talk about the the last of the six poisonous minds, root delusions, which is wrong views, which which are related to the the principal wrong view of ignorance. Okay.
Thank you very much. We should take a ten minute break.