Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 99-minute final class of the year, Venerable Thubten Dondrub completes a systematic teaching on the fifty mental factors of Buddhist psychology. After establishing bodhicitta motivation and the context of the holiday season as an opportunity for genuine compassion practice, he works through twenty negative mental factors systematically: miserliness and its spiritual counterpart (withholding dharma knowledge), deceit, dishonesty, smugness, malice, shamelessness, and disregard for others’ opinion. He then covers mental obstacles to practice including lethargy and dullness, distraction and excitement, non-faith and laziness, negligence, forgetfulness, non-introspection, and mental wandering. The teaching concludes with four variable mental factors—sleep, regret, investigation, and analysis—which can be either virtuous or harmful depending on one’s motivation. Throughout, Venerable Dondrub emphasizes practical application: recognizing these patterns in daily life, cultivating the opposing virtues, and using mindfulness to interrupt habitual negative patterns. The talk opens with vivid personal anecdotes about his teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche, illustrating freedom from distraction and the possibility of transforming the mind. Aimed at practitioners with some familiarity with Buddhist psychology and the Discovering Buddhism curriculum.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 M F L 2004 12 04.mp3
UUID: 86f7e94a-be52-4833-824e-18dd082c63de
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Mind and Mental Factors (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2004-12-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 99.1 minutes
Words: ~10,475
Everyone to this last class on mental factors, which is also the last class for the year. So it’s important that we try and generate the best motivation for being here and listening to the Dharma. And that motivation, as you all know, is called the bodhicitta motivation wishing to use the Buddha’s teachings to transfer, practice them, to help not only subdue our disturbing thoughts, but eventually be able to completely eliminate them, cultivate all the positive potentials of our mind, and achieve our true nature as Buddhas so that not only do we become free of suffering and achieve lasting happiness, but we have all the qualities, the undying qualities necessary to be of perfect and lasting benefit to every single being without exception. So this is meant to be the holy season, the season that we’ve been brought up to think of as the time when a great being appeared in the world to bring a message of great peace. So this message has been transformed into a shopping season.
So, really, it’s kind of important to think what it’s what it’s all about is is the development of loving kindness and compassion for for ourselves, but for every every living being. So please try and remember that in the shopping season that that’s what it’s really about to think about really practicing loving kindness and compassion. As his Holiness always says, the only way to have outer world peace is to have inner peace within one’s own heart. If we don’t have that, then then world peace is impossible. So we can’t make other people have this inner peace.
We have to start with ourselves, and the more we develop, the more it can influence others step by step. And this is something really very, practical and profound and worthwhile and meaningful to do and even more necessary in this this world at the present time where so many negative things are operating, but there are also these very good things, very positive things, and there is this wonderful situation that we ourselves have met the Buddhadharma and have developed some faith in it, maybe a very profound faith in it. And so, we should really be, have this strong faith that everything that we’re doing just being here tonight is something really positive that is not only beneficial for ourselves, but indirectly can be of great it will be of great benefit, is of great benefit to all sentient beings. So to help generate the thought of bodhicitta, it’s important to try to base this on a strong refuge in the triple gem. So to help that sense of refuge, it’s helpful to visualize the Buddha or the field of refuge if you know how, to uplift one’s mind with the thought of the Buddha appearing directly in front of oneself, and at the same time to think of oneself surrounded by all the different kinds of suffering sentient beings who, all have Buddha nature, but right now are controlled by ignorance and suffering.
But all these beings have been so kind in countless ways, starting with our mother this life. We think of her 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 surrounding us. So it’s with these thoughts we say the prayer of refuge in bodhicitta. But before we do that, we can first offer up a mandala of all the things of the universe, especially thinking of the things that we ourselves are most attached to. And we offer these up to free our mind so that our mind can be open to experience the ever present blessings of of the Buddhas.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme assembly by the merits that I create by teaching the Dharma. May I be convinced of a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. Think the Buddha’s the field of refuge is very pleased with our motivation. Because of that, Buddha comes to the crown of our head, dissolves into light, and that blissful light comes down, fills our whole body and mind. Imagine our body becoming very light and supple, free of every pain and discomfort, every atom of the body experiencing a very blissful feeling.
And the mind at the same time becoming very calm, very clear, very light and spacious sense of the mind without any limits or boundaries, all encompassing, all pervasive, and pervaded by the blessings of the Buddha’s inconceivable qualities of wisdom, compassion, and so on, all of which are resonating with these potential of these qualities which we exist within our mind. So in this positive state, we can do the nine round breathing exercise for a short time or any other breathing meditation just to focus the mind a little bit more so that we can use that concentrated mind to focus on the teaching so that it makes a stronger impact in our mind right now and also creates a stronger karmic impression as well. And thank you very much. So we still have quite a lot of the mental factors to go through. So I have to just try to focus on some of them and just do others briefly.
So last week, we started talking about the we covered the six root delusions or the six main negative mental factors from which all the others arise. And then we started looking at the twenty secondary negative mental factors which derive from these, especially the principle three poisonous minds of ignorance, attachment and anger. So we got up to I think my my did we cover miserliness? JLC. We finished with JLC.
Okay. So the next one is is miserliness, which, of course, is a byproduct of attachment. I hope. Yes. Of course.
So this is defined as an over concern with the material things of life stemming from our over attachment to wealth and honor. So these are two of the, you know, two of our eight two of the eight worldly concerns. So because of those, we have this, you know, over concern with the material things of life and not wanting to let go of them, always wanting our possessions to last and increase. So due to our attachment to gain and also to honor, to respect and reputation and so on, It’s the mind, that mental factor that holds on tightly to our possessions and cannot give them away. And not only material possessions, but it can also be relating to our knowledge.
And since in this case, this miserliness is all these mental factors are particularly taught in the context of our spiritual practice, then miserliness can also be like holding on to our spiritual knowledge and not wanting to share that with others. We may know something. We may have learned something, but we don’t we don’t want others to know. We don’t want them to have that. Because in a sense, this is the real wealth.
This is the greatest wealth, is dharma knowledge. Because this brings about what we think ordinary wealth will bring. We associate that in our confusion with happiness. But the real wealth that brings real happiness is dharma, knowledge and experience. So the worst kind of miserliness is that mind that knows something about the dharma and doesn’t want to give that and share it with others.
And that this can happen to dharma practitioners as they gain more knowledge and experience. But rather than sharing that, they get attached to, I am a superior practitioner. I don’t want other people to catch up with me, which of course is a complete wrong view, attitudes and everything, but it can happen. So again, this is a very harmful mind from a spiritual point of view because without belaboring the point anymore, the the whole the whole of dharma revolves around overcoming attachment. If we can’t overcome attachment, you know, we can’t destroy ignorance.
Right? And an attachment is that mind that is constantly telling us that, you know, here is this stuff and this this is happiness is in this thing or in this person. If I have this, I will be happy. Right? And so miserliness is like an excessive kind of attachment that is really believing my possessions, my money, my this is the source of all my happiness, and therefore I can’t let it go.
So it’s a completely wrong attitude. Although directly it springs from attachment, you could also say it is, of course, with all delusions, it’s a type of ignorance. It’s a completely wrong perception, a wrong view of how things really are. It’s based on a wrong view. And remember, the first of the six perfections of the Bodhisattva, which are fundamental practices, the six perfections are what Bodhisattvas perfect, that we should be practicing in the most like the rock bottom spiritual practice.
Sorry. I mean, well, that that doesn’t sound right. As the basic practice are the six perfections, the first of which is generosity of giving, developing that mind that really wants to give and to share because that is the way to start to destroy our self-cherishing, which is, you know, one of our two main enemies, self-cherishing and self grasping. So then the next of the the negative mental factors is pretension or concealment. Maybe deceit is a better translation.
So this springs from this is a byproduct of attachment and ignorance. So it’s defined as a display of a false quality due to again, because of our attachment to wealth and honor, because of our eight worldly concerns, we try you know, we pretend that we have qualities that in fact we don’t have. We try to claim to have qualities or abilities that we don’t have. And we really try to convince people that this is how how we are. Alright.
So the whole of the Buddhadharma is about is about the truth. Experiencing and living every level of truth, every kind of non truth that we engage in is a source of suffering and confusion for ourself and others. So if if if we engage in this kind of behavior where we try to pretend that we have qualities that we don’t have, then we’re harming others. We’re deluding others, and and we’re harming ourselves. There’s no way we can really spiritually advance if we if we’re doing this kind of thing.
Alright. I think these are most of these are pretty straightforward, really. The next one is called oh, sorry. So we called the other one deceit, wasn’t it? So this one could be called dishonesty.
Yes. So this again is a byproduct of attachment and ignorance. So this is deceit is the mental factor that tries to claim, give the impression we have qualities we don’t have, whereas dishonesty is that mental factor that tries to hide our faults from others, especially so that we can gain some advantage by hiding those faults. Again, it comes from the the worldly concerns of being overattached to respect and material gain. So because of that, we want to get something.
We want respect and gain and so on. And so we in order to maintain our reputation and gain things, we lie about our or do various things to hide our faults from others. So this mental factor of dishonesty, of course, is the basis for engaging in lying, which is, one of the ten non virtuous actions. So as I think I mentioned last week, although in both these cases of deceit and dishonesty, we’re lying to others in a sense. We’re lying to others.
But in order to do that, in a sense, we’re also lying to ourselves. Because part of our mind is saying what I’m doing is okay anyway. It’s okay to do this, that this is not negative. It’s not harmful. It’s not harmful to me, whereas in fact, it is very harmful to oneself.
So if one is lying to oneself and denying the negativity that one is generating, how can one follow the path, the Buddhist path, which is about the very basis of which is the law of cause and effect. And trying to what we’re trying to do in following the Buddhist teachings is recognize the profundity more and more in our daily life of the law of cause and effect. And we can’t escape this, that this is the very way our mind works, whether we want to believe some, you know, what am I trying to say? Whether we want to believe the law of cause and effect or not, if it is true, it’s true. It works whether we believe it or not.
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, it is working. This is the way consciousness works. So this is something that we need to be trying to be more aware of in our daily life, because the more we’re aware of it and really acknowledging that truth more and more, then we will act on it. We will act in accordance with it. But if we kind of water it down all the time saying, well, maybe it’s not completely true and it’s really not that bad to do this and so on, especially if I do it, then we won’t engage in the practice strongly.
We will continue to create more and more negative karma. And from one little negative action, so many other things can happen. The next one is smugness, And this is, a byproduct of attachment. Yeah. Self satisfaction or smugness.
So it’s defined as a mental factor that that focusing on one’s good qualities or whatever good fortune one has creates a false sense of confidence, you know, because the mind, that mental factor sees these things. It exaggerates how important they are and and sort of tends to see them again as being something permanent, something lasting. So it generates a very full sense of confidence. And because of that, it it gives rise to the sense that one is superior because I have this and that. These things that that one possesses are from a spiritual point, not very significant, not very meaningful, but our our worldly mind says these things are very important, very significant, and because I have them, then I I’m I’m superior because other people don’t have them.
So these are signs of my superiority. And with it, you know, with this mind of smugness or self satisfaction and that sense of superiority, what goes with that mental factor is the the mind that finds faults with others and and and criticizes. So, of course, this is very strongly related to pride, the mental factor of pride as well. And the problem with this mental factor is why it’s particularly harmful, a negative one is that what we’re trying to understand is that saṃsāra is suffering. Yeah.
And while we’re telling ourselves that I have all these wonderful things and that’s terrific and now I’m a great success and now everything’s going to be fine and this is going to last, then we’re actually denying the truth of what the Buddha is trying to tell us. The truth that the Buddha saw that all of this is illusion, It’s impermanent. It’s unsatisfactory. Sooner or later, it leads to frustrations and pain, fear and worry and confusion. But this smugness says, no.
You know? I’ve got it all, and and I’m terrific because I have these I’ve made it. I’ve made it. And I have a swimming pool. You know?
Now I have a swimming pool, a heated swimming pool. So this is a very significant thing to have. You know? And other people around me don’t have this. So I’m a very significant person.
So that mind is a great obstacle to following the spiritual path. It’s okay. It is not an obstacle to have a swimming pool. You can follow the spiritual path with a swimming pool. Even inside the swimming pool, you can follow the spiritual path.
But the mind thinking that such a thing is really something really very important and significant. Therefore, oneself is significant, you know, more important than people who don’t have swimming pools. That is a big obstacle to the spiritual path. So then the next one is is malice. So, of course, this is a byproduct of anger.
And this this particular mental factor as what it’s referring to from the Buddhist tradition is I don’t know what, you know, because malice in English basically means it’s really it’s a really, what? Malice is referring to a mind that really wants to hurt, a very hurtful mind. So it’s definitely meaning that. But specifically Oh, no. No.
Sorry. That’s right. I get confused with another one. Somewhere there’s another one. Okay.
So here, one definition says this is a mental factor that has the function of treating others abusively. It is a total lack of feeling or consideration for others. So it’s a mind devoid of compassion or kindness that wishes to belittle or disregard others and actually physically harm others. So this mental factor is even stronger than hatred. Then the next one is called non shame.
So in mental factor, the positive mental factors, had the mental factor of shame or self respect. So this is the mental factor that is the very opposite to that. So it is the mental factor that is unconcerned about the consequences of one’s actions on oneself. So it’s the mind that enable it’s this negative mind that enables us to do negative things even though we know we will suffer from them. But the delusion is so strong, we will do it anyway.
This is how self-cherishing works. So this mental factor is a byproduct of all three of the root poisons of ignorance, attachment, and anger. So this of this mental factor of non shame or lack of non self respect acts as a basis for all, you know, all the other disturbing thoughts to to to become active. Because if we’re not concerned about even to ourselves of our actions, then we will be willing to do anything. So if this mental factor takes over our consciousness, then, you know, and we have no concern even what will happen to us, then as a result, then we’ll do anything.
We’ll engage, all the disturbing thoughts can arise and we can happily follow them. So particularly from a Dharma point of view, this is a mental factor that is not concerned about the karmic consequences, especially of future lives. So this is something as baby Buddhists, which we all are beginning Buddhists, is again in relation to developing a real respect and understanding of the law of cause and effect, we have to develop this understanding that our actions of body, speech and mind not only have an effect in this life, but they definitely have effects in future lives. And the effects are far greater in our future lives than the effects in this life. And from one single positive action in this life or one single negative action in this life, there can be huge consequences.
Right? Just from one moment of doing something really good or something really quite negative, that our whole life can be changed by it. But what the Buddha said that this effect is nothing compared to the karmic effect that it ripens in our future existence. Because one literally, you know, the Buddha teaches that this teaching, you know, this is where it says that being a one moment of negativity, a thought of negativity in the mind generates this karmic potential that can ripen, be the throwing karma that creates an entire lifetime of suffering. A whole lifetime.
So it could be a life if it’s a life it can be a lifetime of suffering as a human being, you know, a hundred years of suffering. Yeah. Even as a human being, you know, there’s so much suffering we can experience, unimaginable suffering. If we’re born an animal, we can have a lifetime of animal suffering, but at least an animal, most animals don’t live that many years. But the trouble is once one falls into the lower realms, one tends the karma to it’s much easier for that same kind of karma to ripen.
So one is born in those kind of realms again and again. And then there are the lower realms which last much longer, which of course is very difficult for us to believe in their existence. We don’t want to believe them because of the is this just too horrible. The descriptions are just too horrible to to believe. But this is what the Buddha taught.
So if we have this mental factor, you know, this is the one that says, oh, it doesn’t count. You know, this action won’t have this effect, or I don’t care if it does, which basically means it’s the mental factor we that is also not believing that. Because if one really believed it, deeply believed it, one one wouldn’t do things that one absolutely was absolutely convinced would bring, you know, tremendous suffering to oneself. But I suppose also on the other hand, if you think about it, someone who commits suicide has this mental factor operating because they do something that they know is gonna be harmful to them, but they do it anyway. Somehow the mind gets so confused that certain things on somehow doing this harmful thing, taking one’s own life is gonna be a good thing to do.
So then the next mental factor is again the opposite to this other positive mental factor that we looked at, the positive mental factor of consideration for others or embarrassment. So this is inconsideration or non embarrassment. So this is the mental factor that is willing to engage in actions, even if one knows that these actions are harmful to others or are are are not liked by others, are looked looked down upon by others and so on, especially, you know, one’s one’s Dharma friends and and teachers and so on. But still because of the delusions, one this one wants to do it. One is willing to engage in these negative actions.
Again, this is a byproduct of all three of the disturbing root poisons of attachment, ignorance, and hatred or anger. Sorry. So it says in the teachings, you know, that it in order to follow the spiritual life, it’s so important to be around other people who are trying to engage in the spiritual life to act as one’s conscience. Right? And as some kind of model of what because if we if we if we around negative people, people, very worldly people who don’t have our our beliefs, we’re going to be influenced by that.
We won’t have this same shame, you know, self respect or this embarrassment or consideration for others because these people don’t think doing such a thing is negative. So there’s nothing restricting there’s less holding us back from doing that. But if we’re around people and we know these people think that lying and stealing and criticizing others and gossiping and being angry and attached, they think that these are wrong. And you know, if one has some basic respect for other sentient beings, these sentient beings, then one will have some embarrassment about engaging in those things. Something will hold us back, our consideration for their opinion, because we already respect them.
Remember before yes, in the last course we did the mind training course and the eight verses where it says, the very first verse says about holding all sentient beings as precious. So if we really are trying to do that, then of course, the opinions of sentient beings, if we think sentient beings are precious, then their values and opinions are also something we hold precious. And so if we’re doing that, then we will be able to cultivate the positive mental factor of consideration for others. But if we’re not doing that, then it’s easy for this negative mental factor of lack of consideration to be very active. Oh, so anyway, I think I’ve got so it’s very important to be around Dharma people, to be especially around really good practitioners and teachers and so on and around one’s gurus.
And also it’s very helpful they say in the teachings like, for example, Śāntideva says in the Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life that one way to hold back from doing negative actions is to try to remember even if no one else is around, doesn’t know, can’t see that the Buddhas are, the Buddhas, the omniscient Buddhas are always that that consciousness is omnipresent and always totally aware. Alright. So if we could remember that and believe that this would give us some way to have this sense of embarrassment that I shouldn’t do this because this is this is completely against what my gurus and the buddhas and bodhisattvas want me to to do. It’s completely the opposite. This is not pleasing to the Buddhas and the Gurus and the Bodhisattvas.
So if we can cultivate that mind, it helps to overcome this negative mental factor. Then the the next one is called what what is it called? Lethargy, obscuration, gloominess, dullness, or torpor. A great combination of words. So lethargy.
So this is spiritual lethargy or mental lethargy. So the interesting thing about this is that it is a mental factor. It’s a it’s it’s a state of mind. Right? It’s a consciousness that when when it’s operating in our consciousness, it it means our mind itself, the the it affects the whole of our primary mental consciousness so that it cannot function properly and the mind becomes very dull and listless.
There’s no any, you know, mental energy there. And not only that, it also affects our body so that our also our body feels very heavy and weak and so on. And so these two things sort of go together, you know, because the body feels very heavy and and tired. Then the mind also feels very dull and listless and the two things and this is particularly and talking about this is not just talking about ordinary physical exhaustion. This is something that happens in the body because of a mental factor.
It’s not because you work hard and therefore you feel tired and then the mind gets tired. That’s not a negative state to be in. This is a negative mental factor that affects the body and the mind, particularly in relation to doing virtuous things such as you come into the room all bright and perky, and then you hear the dharma and then suddenly the mind becomes very heavy and the whole body feels like. Yeah. And then you walk out of the room, and suddenly you feel fine again.
Yeah. So this mental factor, I think, is, of course, associated with where are we? This is all comes from ignorance. Yes. It’s a byproduct of ignorance.
So because the body and mind are really dull and listless and one feels uncomfortable and so on, then of course, this also acts as a condition for many of the other negative states of mind to take over the other negative mental factors to take over the mind and there’s no energy to counteract them. One of the positive mental factors is developing when we do negative things is develop regret. But what we can also call it, what tends to happen is we feel guilt. Yeah. And that guilt about negative things itself is a negative mind.
And that guilt is somehow I think connected also with this mind of dullness because when the mind is feeling guilty, the mind becomes very heavy and dull and also the body itself and there’s no energy to do anything about the negative. You’ve done we’ve done something we feel bad because we’ve done or said something or thought something bad. And then, you know, we feel this kind of guilt, but we don’t do anything about it because the mind itself becomes very heavy and the body becomes very heavy. Whereas with regret, which is the virtuous state of mind, that that mind gives some energy to to change, to do something positive. So one can see in people like the great lamas who have been practice very purely, very intensively, been doing so for a long time, then they have a tremendous energy, the physical and mental energy all the time, especially if one generates bodhicitta, then you have this amazing energy in your body and mind to work for others because it gives joy.
Right? It gives real joy. Whereas this mental factor of dullness is there’s no joy in the body or mind. And it’s just this kind of heavy unpleasant feeling that acts as a precondition to do more negative stuff that brings more suffering. Whereas the bodhisattva who had who has this, know, the bodhisattva proceeds from joy to joy.
Yeah. And then the next sorry. The last teaching is on all the negative states of mind. It’s kind of a bad choice. No.
I didn’t meant to work out that way. So the next one is called distraction or excitement. So this is a mental factor that generates restlessness in the mind. It’s a byproduct of attachment. And so this mental factor is talked of particularly in terms of practicing meditation, where of course, key one of the key factors in developing meditation is the ability to having placed your mind on a virtuous object, then we have to be able to keep our mind on that object, know, continuously with awareness, maintaining the mind on that object, because this is the only way to bring real transformation, experience into our mind.
So this mental factor is one of the main obstacles to that. It is this mind based on attachment that gets distracted, excited by something else. Anything than the object we’re meditating on, it gets excited, distracted by other things, objects of attachment. So generally, when one is meditating, there there is this obstacle called excitement where the mind can one wander to many things. It can also wander to other virtuous objects.
You may be meditating on, I don’t know, visualizing the Buddha, but then your mind wanders to thinking about something other virtuous thing. So this is also an obstacle to meditation. But it’s not this particular mental factor of excitement because in this mental factor, due to attachment, the what the mind wanders to what are basically non virtuous objects, non meaningful thoughts and objects and so on. And just before the break, maybe one more. Or maybe I should just say that this mind is a particularly important mental factor to be aware of because if we notice that our mind has wandered, just in meditation, but in our ordinary life, when we know our mind has wandered to something that is not meaningful and non virtuous, which tends to do it a lot, We we need to try to be more and more aware of that and have the courage and the determination and strength to let go of that.
Right? And to bring it back to something that is really more meaningful, more virtuous. So that’s the big struggle in our daily life. That is the big struggle, I think, Because our self-cherishing tells me, you know, that this, you know, this is okay and it’s enjoyable. It’s quite innocent and okay.
And if I don’t think about this and get engaged in that, you know, my life will be totally boring. Right? So it’s very sneaky. You know, our mind can be get attached and distracted to very from an ordinary worldly point of view, very innocent things. But, you know, our life can be squandered being attached to all these apparently innocent little things that really have not much significance.
Because it is possible, you know, it is possible to have a mind that isn’t distracted or interested in any kind of ordinary thing at all. Not at all. I think being with lamas over Rinpoche for many years, you know, I I don’t think I ever saw Rinpoche genuinely kind of distracted by anything meaningless in all that time. I I you know, I I’ve told this story quite a few times because but it’s just a small thing. But when I was with Rinpoche in London one night, some of the students were very excited and wanted to take Rinpoche sightseeing.
So they took him in a car sightseeing and to all the famous sights of London. Well, I can’t remember we saw that many actually, but it’s a fairly short trip. But at one point, the students were they were all from London, lived there for years. They were more excited about the whole thing than anyone. And I think they were pointing to the Tower of London or it might have been Parliament House, one of those, and saying, look Rinpoche, there it is over there.
And Rinpoche just looked ahead and said, I’ve seen it in the postcard. He just didn’t look, which is very interesting because usually, look, Rinpoche and also any lama, if they’re not interested in things like that, out of kindness to the sentient beings, they display all fascinating and this is wonderful, oh, terrific. But for I don’t know what it was, but that night Rinpoche just really was very pointed. He was sitting in the front of the car and he just didn’t turn. He said, I’ve seen it in a postcard.
And also in all the years I was with well, I was only three years with Rinpoche, but I was with Rinpoche day and night. And Rinpoche didn’t do ordinary things, you know, like just relax. Or maybe, yeah, a little bit Rinpoche relaxes, but what Rinpoche’s way of relaxing is not like our way of relaxing. I mean, Rinpoche is always studying and reading Dharma and meditating and doing mantras and and helping people. He just doesn’t lie around.
I mean, it’s true. I mean and even if he looks like he’s lying around, you you know he’s not lying around the way other people do. Doesn’t. And people often, because Rinpoche also has some health problems and people are constantly trying to get Rinpoche to relax, have a break. So then sometimes he agrees to have a holiday, but the holiday is usually more busy because Rinpoche fills it with all sorts of things to do, poojas and stuff and practices and incredible number of things that you know?
And, of course, this is not because he’s some kind of workaholic and some some kind of neurotic. It’s it’s not that at all. Yeah. Yeah. And, of course, Rinpoche is very joyful.
His mind doesn’t get distracted by our meaningless things. It’s always on the dharma and benefiting sentient beings, and Rinpoche is definitely a happy person. So it can be done. It really can be done. Although I must have to I must admit, one once when we were in London no.
In in Melbourne in nineteen eighty I can’t remember. I think nineteen eighty three, I think it was. First year I was yeah. We stayed at this anyway, we’d been out somewhere. Maybe Rinpoche had been teaching.
It was early afternoon. I don’t know where we’d been. We came back to this house where Rinpoche was staying. And Rinpoche turned on the television set to watch something. But, you know and and I went to make a cup of tea.
And when I was in the kitchen, I heard Rinpoche yell. He said, Neil he he never called me by my my ordination. He said, Neil, come, come, come quick. So I rushed into the thing, and but I was too late because Rinpoche had been watching some tap dancing, which he’d never seen. Oh, this was fantastic.
I want to learn this. I must have said that it seemed the last three seconds to be able to identify to Rinpoche what it was. So that was Rinpoche’s great distraction and things. But really no one works so hard. I mean, Rinpoche has no sense of having to to relax.
I mean, this this word just doesn’t make sense in Rinpoche’s mind to relax from what he’s doing because he’s doing what is most joyful and most beneficial. So why would you relax from it? You know? How how can you relax from that? Yeah.
And as I’ve said many times, Rinpoche doesn’t go to bed. He doesn’t lie down. He sits even if he does sleep, Rinpoche sits up in the full meditation posture all the time. So our next negative mental factor is non faith. So this is of course the opposite to the virtuous mental factor that we looked at earlier a couple of weeks ago of faith.
So this is said to be the mental factor which leads us away from virtue. It’s our lack of interest in virtue often based on laziness. So here non faith is a mental factor that it doesn’t mean simply not believing in something that one perhaps doesn’t know about. This is an active state of mind that causes us not to believe or not to respect that which is worthy of confidence and belief, such as the law of cause and effect. So it functions to act as the basis for laziness, laziness in the sense of spiritual laziness.
And of also, it acts to cause whatever faith we we do have in virtuous things to decrease. It’s a mental factor that makes us disbelieve, disrespect, and have no desire for that which is positive. K. And this is a byproduct of ignorance. And then associated with that, the the next mental factor is is laziness, spirit or spiritual sloth or lay spiritual laziness, which in Tibetan is called lei lo.
Lei lo, which sounds like those, lilo, you know, those sorts of things. That’s how I always remember it. So one definition I which I like says, it is an unwilling mind associated with ignorance relying on the pleasures of drowsiness, lying down, and not getting up. So its function is to obstruct and hinder oneself in applying oneself to positive things. So it’s a mental factor that is attracted to what is relatively easy and generally non virtuous.
So and so it’s a mental factor that that is kind of attached to something that offers temporary happiness. And because of that doesn’t want to do something wholesome because that, you know, requires some effort. Or even if it does, you know, has some willingness to engage is not is kind of faint hearted. So this mental factor has the function of degenerating our wholesome tendencies. So obviously this is a mental factor that we should definitely avoid.
What we need to cultivate is one of the other perfections, which is called enthusiasm, which we talked about, which is one of the virtuous minds of finding joy in what is meaningful, what is virtuous. Whereas this is the mental factor that is more or less the opposite to that and or at least a great obstacle to it. So again, if we think about one way to try to counteract that mine is is to to analyze what is preventing me doing these virtuous things. Why am I so lazy? Why am I stuck?
And then it’s because I’m attached to some momentary momentary thing going on, which I feel is is is happiness and making me comfortable and secure and whatever. So then we have to, you know, meditate that what this attachment to this thing, this situation is impermanent. At least at least it’s impermanent. It’s not going to last. It’s not going to it’s not producing the real result result that I want.
And and it’s also illusory. It’s not this this this pleasure, this happiness is not real happiness. I mean, I’m just saying those words don’t have much power. We have it’s not good enough just to say the words to ourselves. You know, there has to be some experience behind that.
We have to give ourselves the chance to really have some experience of the impermanence of things and the the illusory nature of the happiness, the pleasures that we experience. Right? We have to medit try and meditate on that more and more, allow ourselves to to experience the meaning of those words more and more. Somehow when we maybe this doesn’t always happen with everyone, but often when we first meet the dharma, then we develop some real enthusiasm for it because we see, you know, it’s it’s if we if we when we meet it in a positive way, of course, then it’s such a revelation and and something quite radical and and and it’s a real contrast to the state of mind we’ve been in, and then we have some real enthusiasm to change. Right?
Some energy to change. So and so this is something we need somehow to preserve that enthusiasm, that fresh mind, like as there’s that famous Zen master who talked to me who lived in America, one of the first great Zen masters to come to America who wrote this book called what what what he called? Zen mind, beginner’s mind, to always keep that beginner’s mind alive, that fresh beginner’s mind, which has this enthusiasm, which sort of recognizes how valuable the dharma is. It’s not just some little addition to one’s life, a little like condiment to one’s life. It is the dharma is one’s life, or it can be, it should be the whole of one’s life.
Next one. There’s so many of them. The next negative state of mind is, is nonconscientiousness or negligence. So this is a byproduct of all of the three disturbing thoughts, the three poisonous minds. And basically, it’s it’s the mind, the mental factor that doesn’t guard our actions to see whether they’re virtuous or non virtuous.
So in other words, it’s a mental factor that is the opposite to mindfulness. Because mindfulness is that mind, that state of that mental factor that is always checking what’s going on in our mind, seeing whether something is positive or negative and so on. So this negligence is that mental factor that doesn’t do that, that is completely unconcerned about those things. And it’s also aggravated by that mental factor of laziness. So it it it also means it’s that mental factor that doesn’t protect our mind from the delusions.
So if you remember those who did the last Discovering Buddhism course in the eight verses of mind training, the third verse says talks about how we should be always I better check what it says. Do you remember that it says that When I examine my mind in all actions and as soon as the negative state occurs, since it endangers myself and others, may I firmly face and avert it. Right? Remember that? To always so this is the mind that doesn’t want to do that.
This is this negligence or lack of conscientiousness that just can’t be bothered to face, you know, one may know what’s going on, but one can’t be bothered also because of the mental factor of laziness to apply the antidote. We know, hopefully we’re starting to learn what are the antidotes to our disturbing thoughts. At least one antidote is to do breathing and to stop the continuity of the thought as much as possible. Ideally, we can try and apply the actual antidotes, the opposite states of mind, whereas this is the mental factor that can’t be bothered doing that. It’s not really concerned.
If you remember, often repeat Lama Zopa Rinpoche said one of the most important things. One of his gurus was a very simple monk who just said one sentence to which he found incredibly important. So he took this monk as one of his gurus, including all these very famous lamas who are his gurus. There was this one very simple monk who said one thing to Rinpoche, thought was unbelievably profound, which was it all depends on making the decision. It all comes down to deciding the one’s really going to do it.
So again, with this third verse, from the mind training, the mind training, the eight verses of mind training, it all comes down to facing and averting the disturbing thoughts, really making the decision this time I’m going to do it. Because if we really act very decisively and powerfully, then we can really cut the continuity of our disturbing thoughts, the habit. We have this habit of following these disturbing thoughts. Alright? And then all these other mental factors, our self-cherishing and our laziness that says it’s okay, you know, and all these things and our unconsciousness and all these things can’t be bothered applying the antidote or just is very faint hearted in doing so.
So what we need to get to is the point where we can really, even with a little disturbing thought or behavior, we can say, right, I’m chopping it really. And that can make an incredible difference in our consciousness. Next, of the negative mental factors is forgetfulness. So this is a mental factor that actually actively prevents us from remembering things that we knew. Here again, it’s not talking about just ordinary forgetfulness where we forget our auntie so and so’s name or something like that.
This is in terms of forgetting Dharma. So it’s a mental factor that actually causes us to maybe we we have we have thinking about where some virtuous thing or doing some virtuous practice meditating or whatever. And and we’re caught up in that. And then this mental factor actually causes the mind to to to lose that that object. And not only that, induces the the mind to be distracted to something negative, meaningless.
So it acts as the basis of one of the other mental factors we talked about just a few minutes ago, which was distraction. So because of forgetfulness, then the mind can get completely distracted. And then the next one is called nonintrospection. So this is fairly similar to to the mental factor of negligence that we just talked about just a couple of minutes ago. So it’s a mental factor that causes our mind to enter a state of careless indifference.
It has the function to cause our intelligence to decline and the negative actions of our body, speech, and mind to increase. So it’s similar to the mental factor of negligence, but the difference is that negligence is associated with more grosser aspects of things, whereas this mind of non introspection is more arises in relation to more subtle actions and and not preventing one from doing those those subtle negativities. Oh. And then the last of we’re up to the last of the is that right? Yeah.
The last of the the nonvirtuous minds is wandering. So this is similar to the mental factor that we talked about, distraction, but the difference is that with distraction or excitement, what do we call it? Excitement or distraction? In Tibetan it’s called Gyopa. Maybe you I don’t have numbers.
There it’s associated with attachment, Whereas here wandering is the mental factor that loses and that’s particularly related to when one is training the mind in meditation and the mind wanders from the object that it can wander from the object because of ignorance, attachment or anger. Whereas this excitement, it only occurs the mind moves away from the object because of attachment. So with this one mental wandering, it’s because of any of the disturbing thoughts. So this is one of the gross obstacles to developing concentration when we try to meditate. Because I often try to say when we when one is, for example, trying to do just simple breathing meditation, but it applies to anything.
The point is to hold the mind on the breath, experiencing that simple experience of that arises of that sensation in the nostrils as the breath comes and goes. But what happens, you know, our mind can stay on that for a few seconds and then mental wandering takes place and you hear an external sound and the mind wanders to that. And and you can do you can wander for it to the external sound because either you’re annoyed by it or you’re interested in it. So you can so it it can be because of anger that, oh, you know, the sudden noise has distracted me or, oh, this this is an interesting sound. I like that one.
So, know, so it can be because of over attachment. Or you could even say it’s because of ignorance, but because one doesn’t really know at all not to let to get involved in the sound. And then the mind can also wander to to pains in the body. Yeah. So, and also especially all our thoughts and our thoughts can be as we’re trying to do the breathing, we can have virtuous thoughts, negative thoughts, neutral thoughts, but our mind can wander from the breath to any of those thoughts.
So this is mental wandering, right? Where the mind just gets blown all over the place by whatever comes along is that, you know, habit just whatever object is there, the mind goes after it. Whereas, distraction or excitement is is is because just of attachment. Okay. So they’re the twenty main negative mental factors.
And then finally, there are what are called the four variable mental factors. So these are mental factors that are variable in the sense that they can become virtuous mental factors or they can become negative mental factors depending what other mental factors they get associated with. So these four are firstly, sleep. Right? So this is interesting to think that sleep, we would sort of think, what is sleep?
It’s kind of like an activity or non activity or something that is actually according to the Abhidharma, it, it is a mental factor. It is an actual mental factor. So every night we generate this mental factor of sleep, which is sometimes defined. I love this definition. It’s concentrating on darkness.
So that’s what our mind does. This is what this mental factor does every night and sometimes during the day that it loses all interest in all this other stuff, you know, and then it just concentrates on darkness. And because of that, all our sense consciousnesses, the five sense consciousnesses shut down and just the mental consciousness controlled by this mental factor of sleep is operating. And it’s just one pointedly focused on darkness. Interesting.
So from a dharma point of view, sleep can be virtuous, non virtuous or indifferent. So if one sleeps for the purpose of resting the body and mind in order to engage in the dharma vigorously straight away, as soon as the alarm goes, then this sleep is virtuous. But if it’s just done out of attachment to the pleasure of this life, then it’s non virtuous. As Śāntideva, the great bodhisattva says in the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, this is no time to sleep, you form. Now that we have now that we have this precious human rebirth, we’ve escaped the lower realms temporarily, and we have this amazing precious human rebirth, which is unfortunately decaying moment by moment, dying aging and dying moment by moment.
This is no time to sleep. One third of our precious life goes in concentrating on darkness. When we could be doing amazing things. But when develop one develops enthusiasm and so on and overcomes laziness and all these and sloth, mental sloth, then the need for sleep gets less and less. As I said, Lama Zopa Rinpoche doesn’t go to I mean, from my worldly point of view, it does appear that Rinpoche does go to sleep, but he never I can’t say that he actually does really sleep in an ordinary way, that you know from a very ordinary point of view, he does seem to go to sleep from time to time, but I can definitely say even from my very worldly point of view, Rinpoche never allows himself to go to sleep.
He does he tries from a world from an ordinary point of view, he does everything to try to keep awake all the time. So he doesn’t lie down and, you know, keep keeps awake and just keeps doing things more and more. As as I mentioned, when I was with Rinpoche, especially when I was with the periods when Rinpoche used to stay in Dharmasala, which was one of his used to be his one of his main homes, but he’s hardly ever there now, don’t think, for some reason. But I I used to finish doing things with Rinpoche about at least no no earlier than one o’clock in the morning. Sometimes it would be two, some sometimes a bit later.
Now it’s even much later with Rinpoche. And then I would be able to go to bed, and I had to get up at four to make him a cup of tea, which I had to bring into his room. And I don’t think he ever drank it, but he just made me get up at four o’clock. And he would always be there sitting there meditating. It was amazing.
Sometimes when I left Rinpoche, he would look, and I’m sorry, to my mind, just totally exhausted. You know, his skin would get very dark, and he’d get these black under his eyes. And then, like, two, three hours later, I’d come back, and he would be sitting there just kind of kind of radiant. Amazing. Just amazing.
So so Rinpoche definitely practices this of of not trying to give in to concentrating on darkness for the pleasure of the attachment to this life that it affords. And Rinpoche’s been doing this since he was a little boy. He was famous even when he was a little kid when he lived at Freda Bedi School for Young Lamas. I just love that name, Freda Bedi School for Young Lamas. So it sounds like the young ladies, girls, you know, Presbyterian College or something.
It was a Frida Bedi School for Tulkus. When all the other tulkus used to jump into bed, he used to light his little he used to say these little candle stubs and light them and sit out. And all the other tulkus would throw their pillows at him and make him go to bed or try and make him go to bed. So that’s sleep. And then another variable mental factor is regret.
So if we regret something negative, of course, that’s something that that is a virtuous state of mind. If we do say something, you know, do something negative with our body or speech or we have a negative thought, and then we regret that, then that is a positive mental factor. It’s actually an extremely important mental factor. It’s one of the four opponent powers needed to purify negativity. And that that that’s the main mental fact.
The main opponent power to purify negative karma is developing sincere regret. And try and and it’s important to try and generate that regret as quickly as possible, to generate as quickly as possible, as sincerely as possible and as strongly as possible, because then that instantly or like reduces the potency of that negative imprint. Whereas if one does a virtuous action, like you give something to someone and then you regret it, then that that is a negative mental factor because you’re regretting doing something virtuous. And that itself, that regret is just as the regret for something negative reduces the harmful potency that will ripen as suffering in the future. When we regret something virtuous, that also reduces the positive potency of that karmic imprint that will ripen as happiness.
So it says in the teachings, it’s also important to know the time, the right time to experience regret. So the right time to experience regret is immediately after doing the action. When the result comes, the suffering result comes, it’s too late to feel regret that will just make your mind more depressed. Right? The result is coming.
So once the result is coming, you can’t really purify it. The result is there. So there’s no point regretting it as in a sense as it’s happening. So then the last two of these variable mental factors are mental factors that are associated with particularly with meditation. And these are the mental factors of investigation, which is the mental factor that analyzes objects of meditation in a rough way without going into detail.
And so if one is investigating, if the mind is investigating something virtuous, then of course, this is a virtuous becomes a virtuous mental factor. But if this mental factor is investigating, going into the, in analyzing something that is harmful, then this becomes negative. Here analyzing something harmful in the sense that one is taking interest in it, analyzing it because one is interested in it. Of course, if one is analyzing one’s own attachment in order to become free of attachment, this would be positive. Yeah.
Makes sense. And then finally, the last of the the variable mental factors, which is the last of all of the fifty mental factors is analysis, which is a a much more precise investigation into a particular object. So again, if what one is investigating or analyzing is something positive and you’re doing it with positive reason, then this becomes virtuous. If one is analyzing something that is non dharma and you’re doing this with a because of attachment or anger or ignorance or something, then this mental factor becomes harmful, becomes negative. So that is fifty mental factors in a nutshell, just a brief introduction.
A lot more could be said about the details of them, but this was just to give an idea, at least to let you know the mental factors, the categories and as a basis of thinking about them to be trying to be to use this mental factor of mindfulness, which is so important to really check what is going on in one’s mind. Right? So having some, a little bit of information about these mental factors helps one identify with them. Then as the old song says, can accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Don’t know if you remember that old song.
Sorry, I’m not supposed to quote things like that, but my mind is full of still things. Any questions, comments? Sorry? I don’t remember. It was very old.
It’s way back. It goes way back. I saw it on on television as a kid, I think. Okay. Just to remind those people who did the last course, Lojong, if you didn’t get a copy of this book, Venerable Tenzin has offered these free to everyone who did the last course.
So please take one if you didn’t get a copy last week or you know someone who did the course that you could give it to is not here tonight. And also if you didn’t get the those people who did the Mañjuśrī Tantric workshop, wow. There’s also this picture of vajradhara kindly offered by Venerable Tenzin. So that’s the people who did that workshop. If you didn’t get a copy, please take one.
What did happen to to this? So the center did order the this copy of this book from from the center from Singapore, which which was produced. So one day it will arrive, and then you will be able to get a copy for a small donation because they basically are free, but the center is paying for transport costs and things like that. So if you’d look So this is a very nice book on this topic with other extra material by Venerable Tenzin Gyatso,, who some of you may know, maybe not. Some of you know, who used to teach here years ago.
So that would be good to get. Okay. Thank you very, very much for coming tonight, for coming to this series of talks. Thank you also for those people who have been coming regularly to the classes. It’s very kind of you to come, give me a chance to put some Dharma in my own mind again, to imprint it in my own mind.
And I hope some of it benefited you. And it’s really important to be mindful of it and try to practice it as much as possible. Right? Because it’s the best thing to do, the very best thing to do for ourself and others, for ourselves now, for the people around us. Even if they don’t think it is, it is.
Unfortunately, not everyone appreciates the Buddhadharma because people misunderstand it and so on. But if you investigate a little bit, it’s just about being kind and generous and friendly and open and wise and intelligent and helpful. I mean, who could complain? Anyway, so please especially remember it in this festive season where everyone gets so stressed out in this holy period. So, yes, please.
And I hope to see you next year. Alright. So we’re starting with the Discovering Buddhism. Well, there’ll be three talks in January on something we haven’t worked out what yet. Maybe it’ll be basically introductory for new people, but everyone’s welcome to come.
Not sure what it’ll be, but anyway, thirty first of January, the discovering Buddhism starts again with the wisdom of emptiness. Okay. Don’t miss it. Okay. So we can dedicate the merit of this time.
Page seventeen. And then on page sixteen is the bodhicitta prayer, which is in the sort of two thirds way down, which is in the large print, the largest print. The precious body mind not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore. Many years ago, Lama Yeshe gave a talk.
I wasn’t there, but it was made into a book about the theme of Christmas. So we’ll get there one day. Okay. We should take a break. Thank you very much.