Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Thubten Dondrub leads a 115-minute evening teaching on Mind Training at Buddha House, intended for regular students with Buddhist background. After opening prayers, motivation-setting, and brief breathing meditation, he launches into an extended analysis of self-cherishing—the mistaken prioritization of a false ego-self—as the principal obstacle to enlightenment. Drawing heavily on Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life and the seven-point mind training text, Dondrub explains how self-cherishing obscures Buddha nature, activates all disturbing emotions, and motivates negative actions across lifetimes. He distinguishes self-cherishing from selfishness, illustrates it through everyday examples (staying warm in bed, blaming others, distraction-seeking), and shows how recognizing it—rather than denying it—is the first step toward bodhicitta, the altruistic wish to achieve enlightenment for all beings. The teaching is conversational and includes substantial Q&A, with Dondrub emphasizing repeated reflection and honest self-examination as essential to practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 07 11 Mind Training.mp3
UUID: 4672e0b9-17d6-4904-b360-c7a4653f32ac
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Mind Training (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-07-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 115.6 minutes
Words: ~13,378
So I’d like to welcome everyone to Buddha House and to our Thursday night class, and especially to those people who haven’t been here to this class before or have never been to Buddha House before. Since there are some new people I don’t know, do you have any Buddhist background? No, none. None. Yes, yes bit okay dyslexic oh I mean I can’t even say the word I’m so dyslexic right eclectic Okay, welcome.
What we’re doing is actually designed for people with a Buddhist background but anyone is welcome. There’s lots of concepts you may not be familiar with, that’s the problem. I will try and make some sense of it. Our first night is kind of our traditional Buddhist night where we do all the traditional things because most people have considered themselves Buddhists so we do some traditional prayers so don’t be put off by this too much. So if you’d like to join in we start with this little prayer book Buddha house teaching prayer book.
So we start with prayer to the lion faced dhakini. I’m sorry I don’t have time to explain all these things. There is an explanation of meaning behind all of them, the reason why we say all these particular prayers. Lee, if you can try and put your feet just a little. Yeah.
Good. Pray after Kharos and the three kharos who abide in the holy yoga of using space by the powers of clear voice and magical emanation. Look after practitioners like a mother, her child. By the teachings of the three supreme jewels possessing the power of truth, may all the outer hindrances be transformed. May they despaired.
May be pacified. May they be completely pacified. May all negative forces opposed to dharma be completely pacified, may the host of eighty thousand obstacles be pacified, may we be separated from problems and harmful conditions to dharma, may all the giants be in accord with the Dharma, how may there be auspiciousness and perfect happiness here right now. Then we might do the praise to Mañjuśrī on the next page, page six. Mañjuśrī being the Buddha who embodies all the wisdom of the enlightened mind.
Abidance to my guru and protector, Mañjuśrī who holds to his heart a scriptural text symbolic of his seeing all things as they are, whose outstanding wisdom shines forth as the sun, unclouded by defilement or traces of ignorance, who teaches in sixty ways with the patient love of a father for his only child, all creatures caught in the prison of saṃsāra, confused in the darkness of their ignorance, overwhelmed by their suffering. You whose melodious thunder proclamation of the dharma arouses us from illusions and frees us from the iron chains of our karma, whose powerful sword of wisdom hews down suffering wherever its sprouts appear, clearing away the darkness of all ignorance. I salute you O Mañjuśrī whose princely body is adorned with the one hundred and twelve marks of a Buddha who has completed the ten stages achieving the highest perfection of the bodhisattva, who has been pure from the beginning. O Mañjuśrī, illuminate with the brilliance of your wisdom who illuminate the darkness in closing my mind. You enlighten my intelligence and wisdom, so that I may gain insight into Buddha’s words and the texts that explain them.
As part of the tradition, we make a request to receive the teachings. So we think of the Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha, the historical Buddha Śākyamūni appearing directly in front of us. We imagine the Buddha having this incredibly beautiful magnificent body, a hollow body of golden light, wearing the saffron robes of the monk, supporting a deep blue begging bowl in his left hand, which we imagine is filled with wisdom nectar that overcomes all the causes of suffering. And we imagine the Buddha is seated on a lion throne, and on the throne is a lotus symbolic of non attachment or renunciation, then above that a moon disc, symbolic of great compassion sorry, a sun disc, symbolic of wisdom, and then a moon disc symbolic of great compassion. So the Buddha is seated directly above the moon disc.
And we make the mandala offering where we try to imagine and visualize offering all the whole universe, particularly all the beautiful things in it, especially the things that we are most attached to. We imagine offering these up as a way to make an offering to request the teachings, as a way to accumulate merit that helps us understand the teachings, and a way to free our mind of non attachment and all other disturbing thoughts that are obstacles for us to understand and practice the teachings. So as we continue to think of the Buddha in front of us, it’s really important now to try and generate the best motivation for being here and listening to the teachings. So we should try to have the motivation wanting to check the teachings to see whether we excel and are beneficial with a wish to apply the teachings to in our life, not just to make this life beneficial and have less suffering and more happiness, but particularly by recognizing that our trying to have that awareness that our existence right now and at every moment of our existence arises completely depending on others Our mere survival day by day depends directly or indirectly on all living beings.
For all the good experiences we have, ordinary and spiritual, also we rely directly or indirectly on all living beings. For all the good qualities and skills that we develop, ordinary and spiritual, again the only way we can develop them is by relying on others, so directly and others indirectly. So really are receiving and depend on so much kindness which we receive from living beings in so many ways. Unfortunately, of the kindness that we receive day by day, moment by moment, we don’t recognize it, but we do receive it, we do depend on it. And so that’s one thing.
The other thing to consider is that all these beings who we are inextricably interconnected with, who are so kind to us in so many ways, are suffering like ourselves, because we’re all trapped in cyclic existence, our mind controlled by delusion and karma. But if we check, we can start to see that the vast majority of other living beings are, in fact experiencing far more suffering than ourselves and have far less ability at the moment to reduce their suffering, to transform it, to make sense of it, to eliminate it. And even with confusion, most sentient beings much of the time are actually creating the causes for more suffering. So if we think about this more and more and more, we can develop this unbearable compassion for all sentient beings. And this can lead to the thought that no matter what, I must use this and all my future lives to achieve enlightenment, to realize the true potential of my mind, to free my mind of all obscurations, disturbing thoughts, liberate this amazing Buddha quality that exists within me.
And because I am as a Buddha, am I in a position to be able to really repay the kindness and perfectly benefit all sentient beings. So this motivation, the wish to achieve enlightenment in order to enlighten all sentient beings, free them from suffering, lead them to peerless, everlasting happiness. This motivation is called bodhicitta. We can try and, as much as possible, generate some form of that bodhicitta motivation here, right now, tonight. And a helpful way to do that is to try and have a strong sense of living beings surrounding us, especially those that we are most connected to in this life.
So we think of our mother on our left, our father on our right. Behind us we think of or imagine that the rest of our family, all our friends, anyone who has ever helped us, of these people are behind us. In front are the people who dislike us, who have harmed us. We put them there not to generate more aversion to them but actually to try to realize that they are suffering beings like everyone else. So in fact they really deserve my compassion, not my aversion.
Sometimes as much as possible, we can open our hearts and minds to an awareness and concern for all other living beings. Thinking that no matter what, I must achieve enlightenment. To achieve enlightenment, I have to follow the path to enlightenment. And to be able to do that successfully, I have to understand the path. That’s why I need to study the teachings more and more.
So this is why I will study this teaching tonight. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create by practicing the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings? If you find it helpful, one can imagine the Buddha in front is very pleased with one’s motivation, and because of that, we imagine the Buddha now comes to the crown of our head. And when directly above our crown, we imagine the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light.
And that light pours down into us, blessing our mind to be able to understand the teachings, blessing our mind to be able to put them into practice correctly, blessing our mind to be able to eventually gain the unmistaken transformative realizations of these practices. So just for a short time we can reinforce this positive state of mind we have generated by doing some breathing meditation. For those who are familiar, it is good to do the nine round breathing exercise just to help establish a more calm, clear, concentrated mind so that we can use that mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. Okay, thank you very much. Very quickly for the people who are new to the class, what we’re doing on Thursday nights, or trying to do, is we’re going through a text called the Mind Training Like the Rays of the Sun.
We’ve been doing this for about six months now, haven’t got very far. This text was written on about five hundred years ago and it’s a commentary on a much smaller text called the seven-point mind training which everyone should have a copy of which was written a couple of hundred years before that. And so the seven point mind training and the commentary on it is the topic of all of this is bodhicitta. So As I try to say in the motivation, bodhicitta is the wish, determination to achieve enlightenment in order to repay the kindness of all sentient beings by freeing them of all causes of suffering and leading them to peerless everlasting happiness, which is a code word for enlightenment. Basically Buddhist belief is we have a mind which is beginningless and endless and our mind in its very nature is pure and perfect and has this Buddha quality, Buddha potential.
But unfortunately this Buddha potential which exists within all sentient beings is obscured. Because of that, that obscuration takes the form of ignorance, attachment, craving, hatred, pride, jealousy, and all sorts of other disturbing thoughts. So those disturbing thoughts obscure our mind, but we also act on those disturbing thoughts, engage in negative actions, those negative imprints before they ripen, also obscure our mind. When they ripen, they bring more suffering. So the Buddha’s path is to one basic point is to alleviate our suffering by stopping the causes of it, but more than that, to eliminate these causes of suffering from our mind so that we can become free of all suffering.
Another way of putting that is to get out of saṃsāra. Samsāra being our mind controlled by delusion and karma. When our mind is no longer controlled by delusion and karma because all of that has been eliminated, we experience the state of nirvana. But the ultimate aim of Buddhist teaching, especially the Mahāyāna teachings of the Buddha, is not just to achieve nirvana for ourselves, but to achieve enlightenment so we can help everyone become free of suffering. So to achieve enlightenment, the key thing is to generate bodhicitta this incredible determination to achieve enlightenment, which means developing the determination to get rid of every negativity that obscures and controls our mind and to awaken every positive quality that we have and to be willing to do everything necessary to achieve those two things, no matter how long it takes and how difficult it is.
So that’s bodhicitta. And at the heart of it, it’s about giving up the self-cherishing thought, which in the last talk I tried to explain a little bit what self-cherishing is. I’ll try and talk a little bit more about it tonight. That’s my introduction And we’ll just sort of continue the text. So sorry if it gets a bit confusing.
Please, anyway, everyone, if if you if you wanna ask a question, just put up your hand, and I’ll try and deal with any confusions I’ve created or misunderstandings or whatever as we go along. Because I always intend to leave time for questions, but as you as you know, I just and usually, there’s no time. So we should be on page forty seven. I think I started to yes, we did start to talk about this, but I’ll just read the bit that we’ve covered. I won’t say anything more about I’ll try not to say anything about this bit because I have covered it.
So the second line of the seven-point mind training says, Banish the one to blame for everything. So the one thing to blame for everything is the self-cherishing thought. So just actually very briefly, The two main causes of suffering that we have that the Buddha identified are firstly ignorance. We have this mental factor obscuring our mind that in a sense forces our mind to perceive conceive ourself, experience ourself in a false way and to experience the whole world in a false way. And because of that, and only because of that, do we have disturbing thoughts such as craving and grasping and anger and pride and jealousy.
I’ve tried to explain that before. I won’t try and explain it right now. But this is the fundamental view that because we have this what is called, self grasping ignorance, that is the very root of all our suffering because without it we wouldn’t have disturbing thoughts. If we didn’t have disturbing thoughts we wouldn’t do negative actions. But because we do negative actions we generate negative karmic imprints that ripen suffering throughout our life but also can force us to have really horrible suffering rebirths as well.
So that’s the very, you know, heart of the problem, is this ignorance. But to get rid of that is extremely difficult. It’s possible, but that is the last thing to be done, right? Because that ignorance that creates this false appearance about ourselves and others and everything else, that false appearance is extremely difficult to understand and identify and therefore get rid of. But because of this self grasping ignorance we have this other problem which is called self-cherishing.
I can never remember the Tibetan term but it’s translated as self-cherishing. self-cherishing sounds like it’s a good thing. Of course we should cherish ourselves but this is a term, you know, the the English words are translating a term that is about is about a mental factor that we all have that isn’t even it sounds good is really bad because it’s it’s talking about this self-cherishing that controls our mind much of the time, day by day. The self that’s being talked about is not the self, the person that we really are because the person I does exist, but it’s the false self that the ignorance creates the illusion of I wish I could speak English probably. Ignorance creates the illusion of a person existing in a particular way, in a way in which the per we don’t really exist.
So there’s that full the appearance of a false self. Right? Or I should say false appearance of a self that we think is true. Right? So self-cherishing is trying to make that self happy, but that self doesn’t exist, so you can’t make it happy.
It’s a disaster. And how do we try to make ourselves happy under the control of self-cherishing? We follow our disturbing thoughts. We crave and desire and grasp things in the external world that appear to our obscured mind to be the sources of happiness, such as other people, nice things, pretty things, beautiful objects, money, power, fame. All of this stuff which exists out there, we grasp onto it as being happiness or the source of happiness.
But actually all it does is activate our disturbing thoughts of attachment. As soon as you have attachment and craving or desire, afflicted desire, always you bring with that inescapably the potential to get angry and be afraid. Because how do we, in our confusion, protect the things that we’re attached to? We get angry. And we get very firstly, get very afraid that someone’s threatening me and my happiness.
So then out of fear, we can do all sorts of really stupid negative things, especially get angry. And then with anger, we do some really disastrous things. So from my point of view, self-cherishing is a disaster. Isn’t it? Very briefly, the person that actually exists, the person we really are, that’s correct, isn’t that grammatically correct, the person we actually are is something that arises dependently on our body and mind.
We, the person, we, is not something separate, in dependence upon our body and mind. Trust me. This is what the Buddha says. Alright? So if we disturb our mind, if our mind this is our mind.
It could be very clear and beautiful, like a mirror able to reflect and know everything as it is, but when disturbing thoughts arise, our mind is shaking like that, which means it’s suffering. It’s disturbed. It’s suffering. So where our mind is suffering and disturbed, I can’t be happy because I am not something separate from my mind. So when he follows the self-cherishing thought believing this is going to make me happy, it actually disturbs the mind, so I actually suffer.
When we don’t follow the self-cherishing thought and actually activate our virtuous minds of love, compassion, tolerance, kindness, sensitivity, patience, etc, etc, all these things, then those things don’t agitate the mind. Like because they are reflections of the true nature of our mind. So when the mind is like that, it’s okay. It’s peaceful. It’s joyful.
And so when the mind is okay, guess what? I’m okay. I’m happy. When the when the mind is at peace, I’m at peace. Actually, that’s the whole of Buddhadharma in a nutshell.
Don’t have to understand much more than that. If we really understood it to be and practiced it, it’d be terrific. But of course the trouble is our self-cherishing, when it arises, it doesn’t arise as, Oh, this is my self-cherishing. We don’t recognize our self-cherishing as self-cherishing. It always arises if we’re not with the help of the Buddha’s teachings and so on, of course, we can start to identify it.
But without that, throughout most of this life and of course in past lives, the self-cherishing arises as just these nice thoughts. You know? Like on a cold morning and we’re in bed, the self-cherishing thought says, stay in bed. Stay in bed. It’s comfortable and cozy.
Don’t get out. Don’t go to work. Stay in bed. It’s lovely. That’s the only way to be happy.
So maybe you couldn’t hear the self-cherishing feeling then. So but it’s usually it’s very soft. You can always hear it, and it’s very convincing. It’s very convincing. We always get convinced that it is the best thing to do.
No matter how stupid it is, we are always convinced that’s the best thing to do. And, of course, we’ve been following the self-cherishing thought, not just in this life, but because our mind is beginningless. That self-cherishing thought has always been there because ignorance has always been there. So the power of the self-cherishing thought is immensely strong. Whereas although our good qualities are always there and can never be eliminated.
They’ve always been squashed a lot and they only manage to break through the clouds of our confusion occasionally so they’re not very strong. So it’s really difficult to, but not impossible, to counteract the self-cherishing thought. But that’s at the heart of generating bodhicitta, is recognizing that self-cherishing is the real problem apart from ignorance. But especially for us, this is the thing that we really need to work on because we can try and understand what ignorance is and what it does and what the opposite to ignorance, this wisdom that sees things as they are. We can try and understand those things and it’s useful, but the most important thing to work on is our self-cherishing thought because that harms us right now.
It causes us to harm others right now. And if we don’t do stuff right now, we’re never going to, you know, be in a position to do anything good in the future. It’s like, you know, if you had in the good old day or the or the bad old days, you had a a fortress, a castle, a tower, and around it was a wall, and then there was a moat. So before you can destroy you know, if you were attacking the castle, you know, before you can knock down the castle, the tower, first, have to get across the moat, and then you have to knock down the wall, and then you can attack. So there’s ignorance which is the main thing to attack, to get rid of, but before we can get to that we have to attack the wall around it, which is self-cherishing.
self-cherishing is a byproduct of ignorance, but it also, every time we follow it, it reinforces that ignorance. Anyway, so the one thing what we have to the banish the one word to blame for everything. What is the theory to blame for everything? It’s our self-cherishing thought. We do the opposite.
We blame. Oh, this the text is gonna say this, I’m getting in that head first. I have the control of self-cherishing. Where we suffer when things go wrong in our life, our instinct is to blame something out there, usually other people, you know, and the government. But something out there is the problem, not me.
It’s not me. I’m perfect. We don’t say that out loud to others, but deep down, you know, we’re perfect. We think. We we never do anything wrong.
Just teensy, teensy little things, but, you know, not like other people. They always do terrible bad things, but not me. I never make mistakes. It’s always other people that do that. That’s the self-cherishing thought.
But what what we’ve been encouraged to realize is that the cause of our suffering also other people and the government and the weather can be conditions for our problems, but the real cause is something within ourselves. This is what the Buddha discovered, this is what the Buddha teaches. I attempted to try and explain that more, but I try and leave it for the time being because I have tried to explain that more and more. Maybe just a simple thing to think about is that even if there are conditions you know, there are conditions for suffering in the external world, there’s no question about that, but we tend to see those conditions as the real cause. But just consider this simple point: if we didn’t have the potential for suffering within our mind, within ourselves, within our mind, how can those things out there be a problem?
You know, just to give a kind of silly example, but if I hit this, you know, this thing doesn’t you know, I just hurt my hand then. But this thing doesn’t suffer. Alright? Why? Because it has no potential to suffer.
There’s nothing there, anywhere there that has a potential to suffer, but this thing does. Inside this, there is a mind, roughly speaking, and that has a potential to suffer. And it does. But it also has a potential for incredible joy and bliss and happiness. Right?
But that if you think about it, I think that tends to indicate it’s not just what’s out there, it’s what’s in here that is important. Especially if you think that when a group of people experience some kind of terrible event, people experience it in different ways. Some people are really kind of destroyed by it, some quite badly affected, some slightly, some people maybe not so much at all. So there’s that one thing happening, but it really depends so much on our own mind. So the Buddha says, really the source of our suffering, the source of our happiness is not anything out there, it’s within our mind.
And particularly the source of our suffering, the real source of our suffering in every situation is this self-cherishing thought. And of course, from that, not only is our self-cherishing thought the actual cause of our suffering, but it also when we experience suffering our self-cherishing makes it worse. However much self-cherishing we have, that much more we will suffer. Because the nature of the self-cherishing thought is it can’t bear suffering. Wants to be happy instantly, easily.
As I I’m sorry I’m repeating all this, but I think it’s good to repeat. I had to repeat it to myself. I don’t know about you. Classes are mostly for me. Forget about you.
Oh, what was the point? Yes. Oh, no. I think I’ve lost my point. Anyway yeah.
So, anyway, self-cherishing is the problem. So that’s what we need to blame. Oh, yeah. Well, I thought it was wasn’t the thing I’ve forgotten but another thing I wanted to mention is no I think this has gone from my mind. Just when I say that or when our teachings say that our self-cherishing is the source of our suffering.
We shouldn’t understand it in the sense that because I have self-cherishing right now, I’ve done something motivated by self-cherishing, immediately suffering comes to me. But for example if we get a disease or something goes wrong in our life then the root cause of it is our self-cherishing. We acted on our self-cherishing in the past and now the karmic result ripens as this problem, this difficulty. It doesn’t mean that whatever suffering we’re experiencing right now is because we’ve done something terrible or bad or self-cherishing right now. But what we’re experiencing is due to our is a ripening of an activation of negative karmic imprints.
And those negative karmic imprints are due to negative actions which are motivated by self-cherishing. So that’s why we can say every suffering we experience is due to our self-cherishing, not to other people’s negativities. They are just a condition. Alright. So that’s so it’s the the really important thing is rather than blaming other people and external things for our problems and suffering, we need to recognize if I don’t want this suffering again, I have to stop the causes for it.
The causes aren’t the government and other people. It’s my negative behavior, my self-cherishing behavior. Alright? And the more I can reduce that, the more peace I will have. And even when I have problems, if I face those problems and difficulties and whatever with less self-cherishing, it won’t be so bad.
Which I think now leads into I kind of remember what I wanted to say, which is the nature of self-cherishing is it can’t bear suffering. It’s the mind that wants happiness immediately. And what I’m I I I can’t avoid going into some details, but we have this natural wish for happiness, but and and the Buddha is saying that real happiness that we’re seeking doesn’t exist in the external world. It’s really within our own mind. Our mind and its nature, when it’s not disturbed, is naturally blissful.
But we seek in our confusion, we believe happiness is out there. And we all have some sense of disquiet and discomfort and and unhappiness. And we all try and pretend to each other that we’re all perfectly okay and happy and fine, and we smile and everything. But deep down, everyone has some dissatisfaction. This is certainly what the Buddha says.
No matter what people appear like, how rich, beautiful, famous, successful they are, everyone is suffering in some way. We have to be because we’re controlled by delusion and karma. As soon as we start and sometimes we can hide that from ourselves, but as soon as it starts to become noticeable, instead of experiencing that, the self-cherishing thought wants to be distracted. self-cherishing doesn’t want to know about our problems and suffering, so we distract ourselves with something, someone, anything. So what we think of as happiness in many cases is just distraction, entertainment.
If we can entertain ourselves long enough, distract ourselves long enough, we think we’re happy because we can’t feel, we don’t notice what’s going on underneath. Anything that can distract us, the self-cherishing calls that good, beautiful, happiness. Check up. Check your own mind. Check how so sorry.
You know, if your mind is anything like my mind, you know, anything that will distract me is good. It can be really stupid, totally stupid, pathetic. But if it can distract me for a while in that moment, it’s good. Yeah. Are you capable of watching the most moronic, stupid television programs in the world?
Sometimes, yes. If the mind is unhappy, and you you tell yourself while you’re what you you say, this is rubbish, but, oh, well well, it’s kind of interesting. Yes. It’s rubbish. No.
It’s kind of interesting. So you keep watching. Or you change the channel and find something else. Anything but to look at one’s own mind. So the the the system is that self-cherishing wants this entertainment distraction, which it fixes happiness.
It wants it quickly, and it wants it now. Easily, it wants it easy, easy, happy now. And then the more we have that mind, the more we create the opposite, that we can’t bear any problem and we want to get rid of it quickly. If it lasts and it’s difficult to get rid of or requires any effort, that’s horrible. Of course, when we’re stuck in that mind, anything that will distract us is terrific.
If it will distract us quickly and easily, that’s wonderful. So we bounce between these two things. And the more we want easy happy now, the less we can bear the opposite. And the less we can bear the opposite, the more we want easy happy now. That is our culture at the moment, easy happy now.
And we want the government to solve all our problems immediately. There has to be a law for everything. So if something goes wrong, we have to have another law to make sure it will never ever ever happen again, which is impossible because we’re in saṃsāra. Samsāra is a mess. That’s what saṃsāra means.
When you have mind controlled by delusion and karma, you have people making messes. Nothing is ever perfect. Things will always go wrong. Ah, but we’ll make a law, then it won’t. Anyway, it’s long.
I haven’t got to the text yet. I was gonna rush into it without any commentary. I hope I’ve had something intelligent and useful. Well it’s my version of the anyway. So this is what we have to blame, the self-cherishing thought to recognize that whenever even from the smallest to the biggest worst thing that happens in our life, the root underlying cause is some cherishing, some self-cherishing that we indulged in at some point.
So if we don’t want any problem from the smallest to the biggest, the key thing is to try to avoid as much as possible the self-cherishing thought. Because the ultimate result is this unwanted suffering. And of course our self-cherishing harms others, you know, that’s another story altogether, but it harms us. So now I’ll quickly read this. We sentient beings run after misery that we do not desire and never achieve what we wish.
At the root of it all, we seek to lay the blame elsewhere, which is a mistake. This is because all the various lengthy and violent sufferings that come from being born among the five or six kinds of existence, from the hell without respite to the peak of existence, and not without causes, nor do they arise from unrelated causes. These come about interdependence upon the actions and disturbing emotions that give rise to everything. Since actions are caused by disturbing emotions, disturbing emotions are the primary factor of our suffering. Moreover, amongst the disturbing emotions, it is the ignorance that clutches on to a misconception of self that is the principal source of all misery.
So in this famous text called the Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, written by this great Indian master called Śāntideva, it says, however much torment, fear, and suffering there is in the world, it all arises from the misconception of self. Oh, what trouble this great ghost brings me. Furthermore, since disturbing emotions chiefly created by seizing onto a misconception of self bring us harm, they are the actual adversary. The enemy isn’t out there, it’s in our own mind. It’s our ignorance and our self-cherishing.
So the same we should not maintain relations with this long term antagonist but we have been maintaining friendly relations with this enemy which is in our mind. So the text says, Thus through long unbroken contact he is our foe, sole cause of an ever increasing heap of trouble. When we are certain of this in our hearts, how can we be happy and unafraid in cyclic existence? How can we, when we ourselves are controlled by self-cherishing and everyone else is? I have to avoid getting too political and everything.
I’m not allowed to do that, I shouldn’t say. But we all have all of us in this world are facing the problem of global warming, and there’s all sorts of drastic why do we have it? Because of self-cherishing. Because we don’t think about the future. We just want things now.
We don’t think about the long term effects of having all these things and polluting and polluting, but and then we get the result. But then to solve the problem, really drastic things are needed to be done in this world. I mean they are predicting that by two thousand and fifty the world will be four degrees hotter on average which is going to have all sorts of amazing effects. But to you know? So we should have done things before to but now that’s too late.
But if we don’t do stuff, radical stuff, you know, things are gonna get incredibly worse. And but no government or politician is willing to do this because most people don’t won’t vote for them because it’s all cost money, and it’ll you know, blah blah blah. And we want our money. We don’t want the government to take more taxes to deal with these problems. This is all really the self-cherishing thought.
We want an easy happy now solution to a huge problem. So the the politicians who will offer an easy happy now solution will vote for them. And anyone who gives a a difficult solution, doomed. I’ll shut my mouth now. That point at least.
Therefore, we can attribute all these harms to our selfish attitude and thinking of how it slams the door on all benefits and accomplishments we should be aware of it. So I just like to make a point now that in this translation it’s obvious that the word that which I can’t remember in Tibetan that has been translated here as selfish is really should be translated as self-cherishing because there is a difference between selfishness and self-cherishing. Selfishness is an example as a type of self-cherishing but not all self-cherishing is selfish. Because the nature of selfish is you only think about yourself. And, anyway, so this is a bowl of fruit.
Here is a bowl of fruit. There’s a whole bunch of people hungry here, and this is there there’s a bowl of fruit for everyone. So I come along, and my self-cherishing looks at the bowl of fruit and picks the best one. Thank you very much. Forget doesn’t takes the biggest one or maybe even two before everyone else can get to them because I want the best one.
I want a lot. You don’t think about all the other people who would like an orange or whatever it is. You just take. So that’s selfish. It does, at least from a worldly point of view, get you what you want.
You get the biggest apple. Whereas and that is also self-cherishing, but not all self-cherishing is selfish. It doesn’t immediately give you even from a worldly point of view what you know, something beneficial, such as the example I gave before. I’ll I’ll I’ll elaborate the example. You know, it’s cold morning.
You’re in bed. Sorry. I always give you I always give the same examples for twenty years now. But you’re cold, you’re it’s in bed, you’re in bed, you’re warm in bed, it’s cold outside, and the self-cherishing thought says, stay. You know, you have to get up.
And why you have to get up is because you’ve got an appointment to, say, example, a job interview that if you get the job, you get you know five hundred thousand dollars more a year, you know the job that you’ve always wanted all your life, huge amount of money blah blah blah but it’s cold And the self-cherishing thought says, stay in bed just five minutes, five minutes longer, five minutes. And you stay in bed five minutes longer listening to the self-cherishing thought, then you stumble out of bed, fall over, you know, all these things go wrong, miss the bus, or, you know, know you’ve got a car. Anyway, you’re late for the interview. Don’t get the job. Follow the self-cherishing thought, but it didn’t help you.
Didn’t help you at all. You didn’t get the apple. Whereas selfishness, you get the apple. That was a pretty good example, Kathy, I thought. There’s a definite difference.
As a from a point of view, selfishness does seem to give give you something, but just a lot of selfishness actually doesn’t even give us worldly benefits, let alone anything else. But of course from a dark point of view it’s also generating all these negative imprints in the mind. But even from an ordinary point of view there’s a difference between All selfishness is a type of self-cherishing but not all self-cherishing is selfish. Selfishness is the worst kind of self-cherishing, of course, and particularly in following the spiritual path of trying to generate the wish to benefit all sentient beings. Selfishness is really a huge obstacle.
But, actually, when we come across this world selfish, it’s not just talking about, you know, this old, you know, selfishness. It’s talking about the whole problem of self-cherishing, which is this easy, happy, now mentality that becomes the condition for all our disturbing thoughts to activate. Likewise the self centered attitude which is getting the same as the self-cherishing thought is an expression of stupid ignorance. Such this lack of consideration for others is like taking hold of the sharp weapon of wrong views and slaughtering any concern for good and bad deeds. So we’re controlled by the self-cherishing thought.
You know, we justify all our behavior of of stealing, killing, lying, all all sorts of negative behavior. We justify it because it will benefit me. It will bring her ease it’ll bring happiness quickly, easily. You know, when we get angry, it gives us a lot of energy to do things that we wouldn’t do normally when we’re not angry. It’s the you know, someone gives a problem.
If I get really angry, I have this courage to sort of contradict them or even, you know, physically punch them or something. So our self-cherishing slaughters our concern for good and bad deeds because, you know, it says it’s okay to get angry and do negative things. It’s a completely wrong view that yeah. That wrong view underlines undermines everything. So right here within us is an evil butcher who cuts off the source of a life of high status and definite goodness.
So high status is referring to getting a good rebirth. Definite goodness is about achieving liberation and enlightenment. The selfish thought holding up the bag of the three poisons which is ignorance, attachment and anger It’s the thief within us who destroys our harvest of virtue by collecting rotten worthless things in the cave of our heart. We have here within us an owl headed deceiver who attracts all human and inhuman interferences. In the fields of action are planted the seeds of consciousness, irrigating them over and over again with waters of desire and craving is the farmer here within us who cultivates the numerous shoots of the five or six kinds of suffering beings.
Yet although the previous Buddhas, the transcendent subdues have spent as long as us in this beginningless world. We have been unable to adhere to any of the excellent qualities of this or the world beyond. So here within us is a naked empty handed slob behaving overindulgently. That’s a description of the self-cherishing thought: a naked, empty handed slob behaving self indulgently. Fortunately, the self-cherishing thought isn’t operating all the time but when it is, that’s what we become.
The lamas often say, the lamas often ask the question, What is the difference between a Buddha and ourselves? We all have Buddha nature. Our minds are actually the same in nature. So why is this person a Buddha and why am I a suffering sentient being?
And the answer is the person who became a Buddha gave up the self-cherishing thought, and I haven’t. That’s the difference. The people who became Buddhas saw, really saw, really recognized, admitted how harmful the self-cherishing thought is. And they had the courage and the compassion and the wisdom to give it up step by step, and they became Buddhas. The Buddhas and us, we have been saṃsāra the same period of time.
All of us have beginningless existence. The Śākyamūni Buddha wasn’t here before us. We used to hang around with Śākyamūni Buddha when he wasn’t a Buddha. And in his nature, the person who became Śākyamūni Buddha isn’t any different. If he was, there wouldn’t be reason to follow his teachings because if he was somehow inherently different from us, we wouldn’t be able to achieve what he achieved.
But the simple difference is that this being developed the courage to not follow the self-cherishing thought. They banished the one to blame for everything. So that’s where we got to last time. So now it’s all new. Any questions, comments, criticisms, arguments, please don’t be shy.
Definitely. This could definitely do that. Yes. Telling someone who doesn’t have any faith in the Buddha’s teachings that all their problems are coming from them is not usually very skillful. Yes, it would.
It would but yes, That’s what the boy is telling me. Take he’s take he the take the Buddha has been taking a long, long time to introduce people to the idea. Yeah. Well, it depends on if people come with an open mind and and can and and hear these things properly, then then, yeah, it can be yeah. It really depends on people’s minds.
Because, you know, because it’s difficult to accept that all our suffering comes from ourself. The the one the good thing about that is it also means that the solution is within our hands. This is also what the Buddha teaches because this is what he discovered is that although we have caused our suffering, we are the ones who can cause our happiness. No one else can. Because no matter how much we do rely on other people hoping, you know, being with this person or having this group of friends or whatever, this will make me happy.
And it does to some extent, but not completely. And yeah. Because the other two know, answers to this whole problem of why we suffer is there’s no reason. There’s no real reason. It’s just, you know, things happen.
There’s another expression I can’t use as Buddhist monk, you know, things happen. So that may be true, but if that is true, then we we are completely helpless. There’s not much we can really do if things just happen. And, like, no matter what we do, no matter how kind we are and careful and wise and compassionate, terrible things will continue to happen. Well, this is really it may be true, but it’s and to some extent, it kind of looks like that.
But if that is true, it’s a disaster. You know, we’re we’re we’re doomed. There’s nothing we can we can do, really. And the other the other view, of course, trying to avoid being too what’s the word? Sectarian or something is the the the the theistic view that everything depends on God.
But and that may be true. But then again, what God does is seems to be quite mysterious, that some people are happy and some people who are extremely nice have all sorts of terrible things happening to them and it seems very arbitrary. And of course, when you look at things, everything to some extent, what happens to people on oneself does seem arbitrary. But if one starts to understand the law of cause and effect, then it doesn’t seem so arbitrary at all. It does start to make some sense.
And then that and then that’s connected with the whole idea that if we want, you know, if to reduce our suffering, we have to do something about our mind. And we can do it. That’s the wonderful thing. We actually can do it if we work at it. And as you say, practicing Dharma, the Buddha’s teachings, I shouldn’t reinforce this point, but they it is hard to do.
But as I’ve said a number of times before, everything in life is hard. Getting out of bed is hard. Working, you know, is hard. Everyone goes to work and people say they enjoy it. So hopefully people have jobs that they do enjoy, but still there’s all sorts of difficulties with it.
Relationships are hard. People want them, but they’re still difficult. They don’t go a hundred percent wonderfully all the time. Everything in saṃsāra is hard. But as Śāntideva, this great master says, you know, saṃsāra, no matter how hard things you do, just Samsāra just continues.
There’s no end to it. Whereas practicing the Buddhadharma is hard but it comes to an end with enlightenment. That’s the big difference. Samsāra staying in Samsāra is hard, getting out of it is hard, but if you stay in Samsāra all you experience is, you know, hard times. The illusion of happiness and all this hard stuff, whereas getting out of saṃsāra is hard, getting enlightenment is hard, but then you you get there.
Tea break. It’s self-service. Okay. So the text goes on to say, maniacal oh, I’m sorry. Actually, this is next verse we have covered last time.
We are born from the peak of existence to the hell without respite, we dwell in misery. Whoever we befriend is a friend of suffering. Whatever objects we use are nothing but objects of anguish. These are the words of the Buddha, the transcendent, subdue found in the texts of the learned masters who have commented commented on his thought and are to be heard in the songs of realization of the supreme spiritual masters.
Yet even though this is definitely the case, like an old dog attracted to a scrap of food, the glutton within us is constantly engrossed in marvels of cyclic existence. So like an old dog because we’ve been in Samsāra for a very long time so we still haven’t got the message that cyclic existence having a mind controlled by delusion and karma, taking a rebirth again and again actually isn’t such a great thing, that our new life isn’t so fantastic. But yet we get bedazzled by it all. We see all these nice things, and the self-cherishing thought tells us that this will make us happy. And so we we keep believing these lies again and again.
We don’t get and and the self-cherishing thought always blocks out the suffering aspects of life. Just so many people who meet the Buddhadharma when there’s so much emphasis in the Buddhadharma about suffering and everyone gets so upset by that because they say, Oh, but life has got so many wonderful things in it. Yes, it does when everything goes right but there’s always underlying this old age sickness and death and everything else. There’s that and the first noble truth that the Buddha discovered, which is the hardest thing to accept, is that actually the nature of being alive is suffering. It’s unsatisfying.
It’s frustrating. It’s not always totally miserable, but it is difficult. It’s not perfect. There’s always something missing in it that has become frustrating, depressing, annoying, irritating, unsatisfying. Yeah.
But it’s very difficult for us to accept that. We don’t want to believe that. So we say all these nice things and we say, oh yes, this is this is life. This is what life is really about. I’ll be able to get all this nice stuff and put it together and life will be wonderful.
And there are people who think beyond themselves and think well, know, if we can rearrange the world, rearrange the equanimity, rearrange this, then not just me but all of society will be happy. And of course we should try to do these things but we should understand as Buddhists that this is only a superficial solution While while society is made up of people controlled by delusion and karma, there will will be suffering. There will be problems. No matter what we do, you know, how wonderful the legal system is, how great our politicians are, how good the schools are, how much money, how many hospitals we have, no matter how many doctors and nurses we have, people will continue to get sick, grow old and die, and fight with each other in the meantime about this, that and the other. That’s the reality.
And yet we we hide all that, and we ignore all that, and say, oh, but what about this, this, this, this, and this? And, yeah, this is this is it. In the teachings they give analogy something like we think of saṃsāra which we should really see as like a jungle full you know, really terrifying, you know, man eating and woman eating animals, but we see it as like a pleasure garden. It’s got all these pretty flowers in it. Yeah.
But and we we get distracted by those, and we ignore all the other stuff. We don’t want to know about it. It’ll go away, but it doesn’t. It won’t if we don’t do the right things. So that’s why the essence of the Buddha’s teachings is about waking up, know, that the enlightened person is completely awake, is completely seeing things as they are.
They’re not fooling themselves about anything. So one of the essential messages of Buddha’s teachings is that just even in our daily life, is so important to be honest about ourselves, about what is actually going on within ourselves and around ourselves, to not to pretend things are like something like the how we would like them to be, but to be able to experience things more and more validly, realistically. Because the more realistic we are, the more we acknowledge things to be as they are, there will be less confusion and problems in our life. When our later intervenes to pacify military conflicts, much confusion arises from a fundamental uncertainty over whether benefit will or will not be forthcoming. This is because a mediator who also may they may have good intentions but their mind is obscured by delusion and karma.
So what they do they never know what they do is the right thing to do or not. I mean, not just mediators in military conflicts, but parents with children and governments with society, that they may try and do something beneficial hoping it’s going to bring a result. But who knows? Who really knows whether it’s the right thing? So he lives with us because of a fundamental uncertainty about whether our fears will lead to trouble or not.
We have within us a coward who can only guess whether the barrier he or she constructs will suffice to allay his or her fears that one major hurt will ruin him again. We fight with swords, arrows, and spears in hope of gaining victory and profit, and when we lose, we console ourselves by accusing somebody else. So why do we fight with swords, arrows and spears and email messages and all sorts of things? Due to the self-cherishing thought. And when we lose those conflicts, we blame others for them, which is again the self-cherishing thought.
We have with us an evil being who shamelessly blames all problems on our learned teachers and abbots, our friends, and those dear to us, our parents and relatives. If the self-cherishing our self-cherishing isn’t pushed, when our buttons aren’t being pushed, can be very nice people. We can be quite charming. But as sad as the buttons are pushed, our buttons are connected to our self-cherishing and we all have our self-cherishing can manifest in different ways that’s why we all have different buttons. But as soon as those buttons are pushed, then you know, the the nastiness comes out because it’s there.
Because we have ignorance, we have the potential for every kind of negative thought and feeling and behavior. So we oh, sorry. We can have a turn against our parents. You know, there are people who kill their parents, steal from their parents, you know, pray for their parents to die quickly so they get the inheritance, you know, which is the self-cherishing thought. But when it suits us, you know, we can be not we we, you know, we can be nice to all sorts of people.
But then if they go against the self-cherishing thought, Something else. We are jealous of everyone. This is a kind of dark picture of people, this is very nice view of human beings. We have Buddha nature actually. The Buddha is saying we all have Buddha nature, that is our true nature.
But when we have ignorance there is self-cherishing and that when we come under its control then all these nasty things happen. Fortunately, we’re not always controlled by self-cherishing but it does arise often. So it’s talking about when self-cherishing occurs. When it’s arising we are jealous of everyone because we have a self-cherishing thought. We don’t want anyone to have better stuff.
I should have that. Why does he or she look like that? I should be better looking. Why have they got those nice clothes? I should have them.
Why did they get the job? I should have got the job. I’m much smarter and nicer, blah blah. I deserve it. Right?
This is the self-cherishing thought. So we’re jealous of everyone from the highest spiritual friend to the lowliest louse. We are competitive with equals, arrogant towards inferiors, become conceited when praised, and angry when criticized or abused. That’s if we listen to the self-cherishing thought. We don’t have to, but when we do listen to the self-cherishing thought, that’s how we behave.
Like the ride of an unbridled horse, of all the disturbing emotions within us, this is the most restless. So that makes a really vital basic point. We should never fool ourselves about the fact that happiness arises from virtue and suffering arises from evil. So that is one of the fundamental teachings of the Buddha, one of the fundamental insights that happiness doesn’t come from you know, power and prestige and money and possessions and blah blah blah. It doesn’t.
It just doesn’t and it can’t. It comes from, the result of virtue and virtue, virtuous actions come from being motivated by love and compassion. So it is our so here virtue is basically saying happiness comes from our positive, virtuous states of mind, nothing else. In a very moment these positive states of mind arise, there is peace and happiness. The mind is like that.
Motivated by the love and compassion and generosity, etc, we engage in actions that lead to more good results and happiness in the future. Right? And when the mind is free of all obscuration and those virtuous thoughts are the only thoughts operating in the mind, when there’s only love and compassion pervading the mind, then we are perfectly happy, continuously perfectly happy. This is the message of the Buddha, the main insight of the Buddha. And so our happiness comes from virtue and our suffering comes from our negative states of mind as I’ve been saying.
It doesn’t come from other people and everything else. Without going into any details, we blame the so called enemy people who dislike us and harm us for our suffering. But the question arises, why do we have enemies in the first place? Or why does a particular person you know, if you think of someone who doesn’t I I think we can all think of someone who doesn’t like us to some extent either now or in the past. Right?
Who wasn’t very kind to us, didn’t like us, maybe tried to hurt us in some way, our reputation or physically hurt us. So then you think of that person, and then you think, did that person have that attitude to everyone? And the answer is no. So why did they have it to me? Why did they have that attitude to me, and how come I met them?
And, of course, the Buddhist answer is infuriatingly simple. karma. We created the cause to meet such a person. I have to admit Buddhism can sometimes sound really smug because karma answers everything. It really does.
It’s infuriating. That sounds really simplistic but it’s quite profound. But this is the view, you know, yes, this person is causing me suffering, but why why did I meet this why did I why didn’t I meet this person who loves me, who’s kind to me? Yeah? I met this one.
Why? Is there no reason, god, or karma? We should check ourselves. That’s really important to check. So this statement is assured, has been stated by the transcendent subduer which is referring to the Buddha, is written in text by Lord Masters elaborating his thought, and can be heard in the glorious Holy Master’s songs of spiritual realization.
Every one desires happiness and wishes for not even the slightest misery. Yet, when others encourage us in the direction of wholesome conduct, we fail to heed their words. We engage and why do we fail? Even if we hear the Dharma, we have teachers who are nice to us, amazing beings who are kind and teach again and again and again, and we listen and we think, oh, yes. That’s true.
That’s good. I should do that. That would be really beneficial, but we don’t. Or we don’t do it very much. Or we do it for a little while and we give up.
Why? So cherishing thought. Because we don’t get the instant result, the easy happy now. Or it it is easy happy now for a while, and then it gets difficult. So we you know, the effort gets less and less.
We engage in proscribed and natural misdeeds like water pouring downhill and act reluctantly to restrain them. So from a Buddhist point of view, there are two kinds of negative actions. There are actions that are naturally negative such as killing and stealing and lying and sexual misconduct. These are not something that are cultural but if the Buddha’s teachings are true about the nature of the mind exists and we all have minds which have the same nature, they all work in the same way, there are things that are naturally negative because to kill or steal or engage in sexual misconduct etc etc, those actions can only be done motivated by a particular kind of thoughts which in Buddhism are identified as disturbing thoughts because they disturb the natural clarity and peace and joy and purity of the mind. It doesn’t it doesn’t depend on whether you know this or not, whether you believe it or not.
It’s happening. You know, with our body there are things that if we do them just naturally will harm us. There are just things that we shouldn’t do or feed our body. It doesn’t matter whether we believe in this or not, know it or not, if we do it, it will harm our body. There are just things that are naturally harmful.
Same with the mind. If the mind, as the Buddha said, is naturally pure and perfect, if we do things that obscure that, that is suffering, that is negative, it is harmful. Whether we know it or not, believe it or not. But there are also other things that the Buddha prescribed. He said don’t do these things so they’re not naturally negative but the Buddha said don’t do these things because they are things to protect us so that we don’t engage in even worse things.
So for example Buddhist monks and nuns have many many vows. So some of the vows relate to what is naturally negative. So all Buddhist monks and nuns have vows not to kill and steal etc etc because these are naturally negative. But there is a whole lot of other vows we have which aren’t naturally negative but they’re there to protect, to help us keep those very essential vows and have some other effects as well. Yeah.
I won’t go into all the the gory details, but, anyway. So controlled by self-cherishing we will break both of them and controlled by self-cherishing we will be very reluctant to avoid those things It’s because the self-cherishing thought says, oh, doing those things is good. Killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, do it. It’s good. It’s, you know, it’ll it’ll bring you what you want.
So our wisdom mind says, No, this is harmful, it’s negative, I shouldn’t do this. But then the self-cherishing, which is usually so much stronger, says, Do it because it’s quick and easy and you’ll get the result now. And then we decide, yes, that’s the right way to go, but it’s the wrong way. We got fooled again, cheated again. So here with us is an evil holder of wrong views whose promises are completely contradicted by the way he behaves.
For a beginningless time I have been circling through cyclic existence because of the eighty four thousand disturbing emotions. I’ve never found a list of these eighty four thousand. Would be a bit depressing to read them all but it just means there’s an awful lot of disturbing thoughts we can whip up. This also applies to the numerous troubles and pains we have experienced until today. Yet, despite having closed many doors to the achievement of benefit and pleasure, Because of following a self-cherishing thought, say, oh, I’m not gonna do that.
It’s too hard. Even though this will actually bring us real happiness, we say, oh, no. This takes too long. It’s too difficult. You know, so we don’t do it.
We close the doors to those things. Yet but we still lack the vision to see even the slightest defect in any of this. You know? In other words, we’ve been following the self-cherishing thought since beginningless time. If it worked, we should be terrifically happy.
But we’re not. And we haven’t got that message. We haven’t got the message. We haven’t seen the slightest defect in following the self-cherishing thought. We just haven’t got it.
That’s why the Buddha has to come to explain it to us. Because also the Buddha but also the great teachers, when they come along, for example His Holiness came along to Australia recently, and if one has any kind of open mind to this amazing being, you can see that he doesn’t have self-cherishing. Or it’s very difficult to see it in him. And also that the other great masters of the tradition, they are people who don’t have self-cherishing or very, very, very little. And what is the nature of these people is that they are really happy.
Or they are they are you know, they have great peace and contentment. Happy is a kind of a silly word, which, you know, I don’t know. But they have this amazing peace and contentment and well-being that is excuse the expression. Palp I like this expression word palpable. It’s palpable when you’re in the presence of people like that.
You don’t have to ask them, how are you today? Your holiness. You know, you’ll know. You can feel it. This person is just dandy.
They are fine. And it radiates out to other people. It really does. So that is a great teaching for us to see that that, you know, giving up self-cherishing works and it has the very best effect. That’s why we need to cease and be with such people Because it’s not just the words.
I think why I have well, one of the reasons I have some faith in the Buddhadharma is I believe the words, the logic, the teachings. But I had the good fortune to hear these teachings from the real deal. My teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who has that picture with His Holiness and is on the left, Lama Zopa Rinpoche does not have self-cherishing. Was I had the good fortune to be his attendant, chief cook and bottle washer, secretary attendant for three years. Very difficult to detect any self-cherishing in that time at all.
Honestly, truly. People can fool you and sort of act selfless for some time, but I was with Rinpoche for many hours of the day for three years. Didn’t see it. His whole time is dedicated to the dharma and to benefiting others. All the time.
Really. Just it’s just mind boggling. You know, I spend my time thinking about biscuits and tea and, you know, when can I have another biscuit? When can I have another cup of tea? And what can I do to, you know, distract me and make me happy?
Rinpoche never asked for anything in all that time. Yeah. I want this. I want that. I want to do this.
Well, the only things he asked for is, know, we’re gonna do a puja. We’re gonna do this big ceremony. I want to go and do this and help people, but not like I want entertainment. I want something to eat. I want this.
Nothing. Never. I want some new clothes. I wanna go shopping. I wanna go sightseeing.
I wanna go to bed. As I’ve explained many times from between, he doesn’t go to bed. He doesn’t do bed. He doesn’t do sleeping. So it’s really important to meet these people in some way because then you have the example to see that, yes, if if, you know, I have an example of someone following self-cherishing, and this is a someone this is an example of someone who doesn’t.
There’s a big difference. So in a brief, if our actions, body, speech and and mind are done under the influence of a self centred attitude or the self-cherishing thought, the source of all this real conflict, they will bring upon us all the trouble of external foes and internal disturbances. Forming a self-cherishing thought creates the conditions, causes for all sorts of external things to go wrong but also it will agitate our mind bring all sorts of internal problems. Holding ourselves dear is like the bald-headed bird of ill omen. I don’t know if this is some kind of Tibetan thing, I think.
But basically it’s saying as soon as we hold ourselves dear, as soon as we come out of the influence of the self-cherishing thought, it’s a bad omen. It means something bad is going to happen. We don’t think so, but that’s what happens. As I mentioned a few times before, my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, once said that one of the best meditations you could do is to keep a record of all your self-cherishing actions and the suffering results that come later on. Just keep a diary.
Dear diary, today I followed myself cherishing and did this, and then you check some weeks, months later what happened. Therefore, now that we understand that we are to give up neglecting others, we should hold selfishness and self-cherishing as our principal enemy and set it apart as a foe. As the exalted Śāntideva says, those early times when you overcame me are past. Now I see you in another light.
And wherever you go, I shall destroy your arrogance. Have I sold you to others, meaning I’ll I’ll replace the self-cherishing with cherishing others, I shall not be upset at having offered you into their service. If I should be negligent and not give you to other sentient beings, you will certainly deliver me to the guardians of hell because the self-cherishing thought becomes the motivating force to create the negative actions that lead to really tormented rebirths. If that should take place, my misery will be interminable. Now require any grudges against you, I shall destroy your concern for your own good.
So if we’re going to hate anything, dislike anything, we should dislike our own self-cherishing. We shouldn’t dislike ourselves because we have Buddha nature. That is our true nature. But obscuring that is our self-cherishing. So we should really hold a grudge against it and really want to get rid of it.
At this time, at the last time His Holiness was in Australia, His Holiness gave a commentary on this text that’s just been quoted Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life. And at some point when His Holiness was talking about the self-cherishing thought, he was saying, you know, having understood how bad the self-cherishing thought is for oneself and others, how much suffering it brings, one should really think, now it’s a thing of the past. My self-cherishing is a thing of the past, meaning I’m not going to follow it. That’s the past. The future is to cherish others.
Because I’m sorry. This is like, as I tried to say before, we follow the self-cherishing thought thinking it’s going to make me happy, but the self-cherishing thought actually itself is a disturbing thought, activates all the other disturbing thoughts, so the mind is a mess. So the result is I cannot be happy because I’m not separate from my mind. Whereas, when I cherish others more than self, that sounds like to many people, Or if really cherish others, think about others, I’ll become miserable. My life will go wrong.
I’ll be a disaster. I’ll lose out. But the Buddha is saying, no. It’s the complete opposite. Because where I cherish others, the way to cherish others is with love and compassion, with kindness, tolerance, etcetera, etcetera.
In other words, in order to cherish others, we have to activate all our positive qualities, positive potentials. So when we’re active, the mind is really at peace. There is real joy. So then, because the mind will be like that, I will be okay. I will be really happy.
Cherishing others, one is at peace. There is joy, and one is creating the cause for more happiness. So I think on that happy note, should stop, especially since I’ve got the I’ve got the gong. Except I should have read that sentence that comes after that. So the author of this text, Namkha Pel, is quoting Śāntideva and then he says, we should keep this in mind.
Yeah. So the reason for coming to a class to hear Buddha’s teachings is to if has decided, oh, this makes some sense, this is good, there’s some some or a whole lot or total truth and validity in this, it’s important to try and put this into practice in our life. But to put it into practice in our life, we need to reflect on these points over and over again because what happens is that we hear something and think, oh, this is good. This is true. If I did that, this would really improve my life.
It would help others around me. Yes. This is terrific. I should do that. I will do that.
But then along comes the self-cherishing thought. So you start doing these things and a self-cherishing thought is telling you, oh this is really difficult, this is really hard, this has taken an awful long time, I could be watching television and eating potato chips instead. So the resolve fades away and is gone. So that is why we have to meditate on the teachings again and again to imprint them in our mind so that we don’t forget them. They something they remain something active and fresh in our mind.
And if they stay active and fresh in our mind, because they’re active and fresh in our mind, we can apply it in our life. You can’t apply something in your life that you’ve forgotten about. Right? But if it’s active and fresh in the mind, then wherever there’s the appropriate situation, we will behave well, beneficially. Because there’s this terrific thought of the Buddhas.
The Buddhas are, you know, talking to us in our mind. Or our own Buddha nature is talking. Right? So I would really encourage people to reflect on these points as much as possible. Try and, for example, to think about the self-cherishing thought, not just in an abstract way, but try to use what I’ve creatively tried to explain to recognize your own self-cherishing thought because we all have it.
We shouldn’t pretend, oh, I don’t have that or none of those things or those weird extreme things he said. I don’t do any of that. But then we do have self-cherishing, and that’s a very sneaky thing. It’s it’s not obvious, you know, while it’s happening, but looking back, you can think, oh, that was self-cherishing. I did that out of self-cherishing.
It’s okay to admit it. It’s really helpful to see, to try and recognise how sneaky but also how harmful it is. So that when it comes along again, we start to recognize it so we don’t get cheated by it. And we can try and replace it more and more with not a false cherishing but a true cherishing of others. And a true cherishing of others is the best way to actually truly cherish ourself.
Now I stop. Can dedicate the merit, the positive imprints, if you would like to join in in the little prayer book. Page eight and onwards. Through the arts of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha, and the mind of your beings without exception into that of an enlightened state. May the precious bodhicitta, not yet born, arise and grow, and that which is born may it not decline, but increased forevermore.
The object of refuge of myself and of our transmigratory beings in all our lifetimes is the embodiment of the Three Jewels, the all-encompassing three refuges in one, the ground, the wish-granting jewel, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, the master Padmasambhava, the Dalai Lama, Tsongkhapa, the abbot Shāntarakshita, and the countless holy beings who preserved and spread the Buddhadharma in Tibet, and the Tibetan people who practiced and served Buddhism so faithfully for a thousand years, as well as those who along with many others died sacrificing their lives for Tibet and his holiness. Now all of their positive wishes be fulfilled immediately. Due to the immeasurable kindness, the sun of Tibetan Buddhism has now risen in the west, which was a dark land. But now I have met with the Dharma and have received the perfect human body and allow me to lead a meaningful life. Our refuge in the Saviour, the Supreme, and his holys, the Dalai Lama, and the Tibetan people have been so kind to us.
Remembering this, we make the following dedicating prayers: May all His Holiness, the Dalai Lama’s wishes, be successful immediately. May the snow land of Tibet achieve pure freedom and develop the Buddhadharma even more than before in Tibet, and may all other transmigratory beings achieve enlightenment quickly. And do the long life prayers. So now the holy one who attaches to transmigratory beings who makes extremely clear the path that is unification of emptiness and compassion. Tell whose heart is holy, Tenzin Gyatso, I beseech.
May all his holy wishes be spontaneously fulfilled. You have the power to subdue Mara, who serves the doctrine of all, sustained preserving and spread the glorious victorious doctrine, who masterfully accomplished magnificent prayers on your Three Jewels, Saviour of myself and others, your disciples. Please, please, live long. Lord, look down on all in accordance with the various dispositions and those to be subdued. Next, clear your well spoken advice, the sacred and traditional essence of Buddha’s teachings of foremost and high lam rim to you who are supreme.
O Lama, please, please live long. Okay, thank you very much. One more thing before we finish. Tomorrow is one of the four extremely high days of the Tibetan calendar. It’s probably the second most important day in the Buddhist calendar.
It commemorates the day when the Buddha for the first time taught the Dharma after he achieved enlightenment. So it’s considered a day where everything we do, positive and negative, has a far greater impact on our mind than at other times. So traditionally in Buddhist countries, in Buddhist cultures, people sort of set aside this day to put special effort into avoiding negative behavior and try to do some really positive things. So I’d encourage you to do that tomorrow. And for those who are interested, who would like to do some super virtuous things tomorrow at six o’clock tomorrow morning.
Are taking the eight people can come and take the eight Mahāyāna precepts here at the center. These are taken for twenty four hours. There is a lunch, a virtuous lunch at eleven o’clock here, right? In the afternoon, we’re reciting the the Golden Light Sūtra at two o’clock. Takes a few hours.
And then at seven o’clock in the evening, there’s a Śākyamūni Buddha Puja in English very nice. You can come along bring some offerings of light and fruit to the Buddha or stay home and do something good. Okay. Thanks. For those people who’d like to join in