Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 118-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub teaches on mind training, specifically the practice of giving based on Geshe Chekawa’s seven-point mind training. He focuses on transforming one’s body and possessions through visualization to benefit all sentient beings—from ordinary people in different realms to advanced bodhisattvas—and explains how this develops generosity and undermines self-cherishing thought. Dondrub walks through imagining the body transforming into wish-fulfilling forms, offering possessions such as food and clothing, giving away accumulated merit, and even offering prostrations. He emphasizes that imagined giving is spiritually valid and powerful when done with the right motivation, and connects this practice to the cultivation of bodhicitta, merit accumulation, and ultimately the path to enlightenment. The talk includes extended practical guidance on water bowl offerings, the relationship between generosity and happiness, and stories illustrating the power of sincere practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 08 22 Mind Training.mp3
UUID: fd165166-9cab-4fdb-b256-dbc9c45b8028
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Mind Training (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-08-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 118.1 minutes
Words: ~12,683
A prostration to the glorious protector of the three chakras who abide by the holy yoga of unceasing space, by the powers of clairvoyance and magical emanation, Look after practitioners like a mother, her child. By the blessings of the three supreme jewels possessing the power of truth, may all inauspicious signs be transformed, may all be dispelled, may they be pacified, may they be completely pacified, may all negative forces oppose to die or be completely pacified, May the host of eighty thousand obstacles be pacified. May I be separated from problems and harmful conditions to dharma. May all the auspicious signs be in accord with the dharma, and may there be auspiciousness and perfect happiness here right now. Homage to Mañjuśrī, glorious protector who holds to his heart a scriptural text, whose knowledge of all subjects is as they are, whose understanding shines forth as the sun uncluttered by defilements or traces of ignorance, who tends all beings with the patient love of the father of his only child, all creatures caught in the prison of saṃsāra, confused in the darkness of their ignorance, overwhelmed by their suffering.
Your dragon thunder proclamation of the dharma arouses us from the stupor of our delusions 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 will treat 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 a bodhisattva, who has been pure from the beginning. O Lord Mañjuśrī, O loving One, with the brilliance of your wisdom, who illuminate the darkness enclosing my mind, illuminate my intelligence and wisdom, so that I may gain insight into Buddha’s words and the texts that explain them. So now we offer a mandala of the whole universe as a way to request the teachings, to create the merit that helps us to be able to understand and put these teachings into practice, and as a way to free up our mind of attachment and so on that are hindrances to understanding and practicing.
So as we visualize the Buddha in front of us as our source of inspiration in refuge and guidance, and think of all sentient beings surrounding us, trying to have a stronger sense of how we are interconnected and interdependent on all these beings, always have been, always will be while we remain in saṃsāra. And in order to gain liberation from cyclic existence, we again we depend on sentient beings. To achieve enlightenment we have to totally rely on the kindness of all sentient beings which we receive life after life in all sorts of ways directly and indirectly. And as the text itself points out, even our enemy is, when looked at from a Dharma point of view, kind to us. By thinking about that, this helps us to generate bodhicitta motivation for listening to the teachings and wanting to practice them, and also especially trying to have that awareness right now that all these beings who are so kind, whom I so much depend on, are suffering in cyclic existence, experiencing right now far greater suffering than myself, and with less ability to understand their suffering and reduce it, modify it, transform it, eliminate it.
So thinking like that, we can generate this wish that no matter what, I must use this life, this precious human rebirth, all my future lives to achieve enlightenment as the way to be in a position to perfectly repay the kindness of all beings. So to achieve enlightenment I have to follow the path. In order to follow the path successfully, I have to understand the path. So this is the reason to study this text tonight. So as we say the prayer, as well as thinking of the Buddha in front of us, we try and have a sense of all sentient beings surrounding us, starting with our parents on either side, trying to have that sense that they are only kind but unfortunately only suffering.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So I can imagine the Buddha pleased with our motivation and showing this by now coming to the crown of our head, and when directly above our crown we imagine the Buddha dissolves into light blissful golden light so that that light can then pour down into us, blessing our mind. Briefly, we can reinforce that positive state of mind by doing some breathing meditation, especially doing the nine round breathing exercise, as a way to help establish a calmer, clearer, more concentrated mind in order to use that mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. Okay.
Thank you. So our text, Mind Training, like the Rays of the Sun, is a commentary on Geshe Chekawa’s seven point mind training. And in the seven point mind training root text, we are on the line that says Meditate on the great kindness of all beings. So we’re on page sixty six. Heading is offering to those who are engaged in the spiritual path.
So in the commentary on this section, Geshe Horton Namkha Pel, who a direct disciple of Lama Tsongkhapa, is talking about the practice of giving, particularly. Sorry. No. Hold a minute. Hold it.
Now we’re on the line. Practice a combination of giving and taking. So in terms of that, in the giving of love, he he talks about transforming our body and imagining that taking the form of all sorts of things that can bring freedom from suffering to others and bring them happiness. So we’ve gone through that section. So we’ve got we’ve started that section where where he was talking about how to imagine giving one’s body in general and, you know, firstly, to those who are not following the spiritual path and those who yeah.
And, you know, and those in particular who harm us. And in this section, which we’re up to now, it’s about how to offer those who are engaged in the spiritual path, which is basically the same as how to offer to those not engaged in the spiritual path. This section I went to now is very straightforward. It doesn’t really need much commentary. Anyway, it’s important that we go through it.
So it says make offerings to the practitioners of the low vehicle, which is a politically incorrect term these days for those following the path to liberation. So we make offerings to those practitioners by imagining, transforming our body into wish fulfilling forms which meet their needs, the needs of these practitioners. So for example imagine that each one provides the practitioner or each one that means the things that we’ve transformed our body into So each one of these things that we transform our body into provides that practitioner with the perfection of the two collections, meaning the collections of wisdom and merit, the complete causes and conditions inner and outer, to actualize the state of Buddhahood or the state of Buddha, the transcendent subduer, in this very life, that thereby they experience the bliss of the perfect body of truth in their mind streams. So here we start off by mentioning transforming our body into things to benefit those wishing to follow the path to liberation, the author is saying we imagine them getting all the things necessary not just to achieve liberation but also complete enlightenment, even though they’re not aiming for that. There may be some people here who weren’t here last week, and this may all sound very strange.
Trouble is I can’t explain all the background every week because we’ll just get nowhere and the people who are coming regularly will stop coming regularly because I’m just repeating the same things. But the practice of of happiness happiness is the mind wishing sorry. Love is the mind wishing self and others to have happiness. And so one way there are countless ways of cultivating happiness. The very basic way, the vital way, of course, which everything else is connected to, is developing the mind that realizes that others or self and others lack real happiness.
Everything that we call happiness is just really a bit of pleasure. It’s just the illusion of happiness. It’s not what we really want. It’s just what is actually an example of the what is called technically in in the Buddhadharma, the the suffering of change. It’s not happiness at all.
We’re trying to and so real love, that mind of love, that mental factor of love, arises by realizing that oneself and, and others lack genuine happiness and aren’t creating the causes of it. So then the mind wishing others to have genuine love, genuine happiness, and its causes arises. And on that basis, one can then further cultivate loving kindness, wishing others to have genuine happiness by, for example, thinking of giving them all the different things that will bring about every kind of happiness. And just by giving physical things to others, of course, that’s not going to bring about genuine happiness. But the the idea is one thinks that one has the motivation that by establishing others in comfort, basic comfort, having the necessities of life, this is vital in order to be able to practice Dharma which will bring about ultimate happiness.
So it’s all connected. And since we don’t have all the actual physical things to give to others, it’s very valid to imagine giving things to others. In the teachings it says giving actual fears to others, genuinely, sincerely imagining giving to others, the merit is the same, the benefit is the same. And in fact, as I mentioned with the example last week of the king who offered food to the Buddha, but the Buddha dedicated the merit to the beggar who rejoiced. In some cases the imagining of giving is more powerful than the actual giving because someone who may have lots of stuff it’s very easy to give it away or some of it away, but it’s it’s not it’s not much real effort is involved because because some people have just so much they can give it It’s easy to give away without any effort, without any self sacrifice.
Of course, some people who have lots find it very difficult to give away even tiny things. But anyway, for some people, giving doesn’t involve much sacrifice, but someone who doesn’t have anything to give, they can cultivate a mind wanting to give which is really something really genuine and sincere and powerful more so than the person who is actually able to give. So in our tradition we are encouraged to really train the mind in imagining giving, because this lays the foundation to be able to engage in every kind of giving, including the actual giving of our body at some point if this is necessary to benefit others. Because there are stories of bodhisattvas who gave up their life or gave up parts of their body, such as Āryadeva who took his eye out, gouged his eye out to give to a blind person. And then the blind person threw it on the ground because he said, You gave it to me in the wrong hand, which was very offensive.
Poor old Āryadeva got really upset and was almost about to give up his bodhicitta by thinking, you know, sentient beings, you know, it’s really difficult to benefit sentient beings. You give them your eye and they don’t appreciate it. So he was about to give up. I can’t remember what happened after that but anyway I think the Buddha appeared and encouraged him to keep going. Anyway, so imaginary giving is a really valid practice, something that we really should train in.
I don’t know if anyone remembered to try and do it during the week as I mentioned. This is also why we have the practice of doing water bowls, something that is such a simple practice, something I highly recommend and encourage people to try and do every day. As one falls, everyone can afford seven or eight bowls, even plastic cups. If you can afford crystal, buy crystal. If you can afford gold bowls, buy gold bowls, which is very difficult to say.
Bowls. But if you can’t afford gold bowls, silver bowls, crystal bowls, glass bowls, buy plastic bowls. If you can’t afford to buy them, ask someone to give you some plastic bowls, cups, ask McDonald’s or someone and fill them up with water. We can all afford water, but as one fills them up with water, one imagines offering all these beautiful things to the Buddhas and the Gurus flowers, incense, light, perfume, food, music, drinking water, water for bathing the feet, all these wonderful things. And one accumulates skies of merit.
So it’s training the mind. That’s why we also do mandala offerings. Because you try and imagine there’s a whole practice one can learn of trying to visualize offering the whole universe to the Buddha’s skies of merit in five minutes. Literally I think probably for us as Westerners it’s very difficult to believe in this but merit is the basis. These positive imprints in our mind are the basis of every kind of happiness, worldly and spiritual.
To gain all the realization, as I just mentioned, you know, the two collections, one has to complete the two collections of wisdom and merit to achieve enlightenment. And so to gain all the realizations, one has to have merit. One way to accumulate merit is to practice generosity. You know, it helps cultivate loving kindness, but it also, you know, because loving kindness is a virtuous thing, one accumulates merit. But it’s also a way of practice practicing Chenrezig, is virtuous and accumulates merit.
And even if one doesn’t have things to give, one can visualize giving. My teacher says, one accumulates in a couple of minutes skies of merit, a lot of merit. We can never do with enough merit. Really, everyone understands or maybe misunderstands that we need lots of money. Everyone thinks one needs lots of money.
No one is ever satisfied with a certain amount of money. Everyone, including billionaires want more billions. Should have that mind with merit. There’s never enough merit. Right.
So this is the whole basis behind that. So this very clever way to do all of this practice accumulate merit, practice generosity, cultivate loving kindness is imagining transforming one’s body into all sorts of things, ordinary and spiritual, to benefit sentient beings from the most ordinary way up to bringing about complete enlightenment. In a similar manner, offer your body to followers of the great vehicle meaning those of the Mahāyāna, follows on the paths of accumulation and application up to the great bodhisattvas on the tenth spiritual level. One actually enters the bodhisattva Mahāyāna path and and to be able to enter the actual Mahāyāna path we have to be able to generate bodhicitta. First, need to develop renunciation, a little bit of wisdom, and we have to be able to generate bodhicitta, spontaneous bodhicitta, the real thing, spontaneous bodhicitta.
Once one has actually generated that on the basis of refuge and having renounced cyclic existence, one enters the actual path to enlightenment. As many people here are familiar with the Lam Rim, the graduated path to enlightenment where we study and try to practice the meditations on Guru devotion, precious human rebirth, impermanence death, so on and so on. And we sort of think that’s the path to enlightenment, but that’s not the actual path. That is leading into the path. Doing all of those things enables us if we train our mind in all those meditations and all the subsidiary practices such as purifying our mind and accumulating merit, then at some point we will be able to generate bodhicitta and then we actually enter the path to enlightenment.
And one enters the path to enlightenment itself is divided up into five stages or five paths. I don’t know if that’s a bit misleading. The path to enlightenment is made up of five paths. The first of these is called the path of accumulation, which is mentioned here the path of accumulation. And then the second stage is the path of preparation.
And then the third path, which isn’t mentioned here, is the path of insight, which is when a bodhisattva for the first time directly perceives the nature of reality, of self, of the person directly. Up until that time the bodhisattva has developed a correct conceptual understanding of emptiness, of reality. But it’s only on the path of insight that the bodhisattva directly, in deep meditation, directly perceives the emptiness of the Self. So at that stage the bodhisattva becomes an ārya being, a pure being, and enters is on the first of the bodhisattva stages. And then after the path of insight is the path of meditation.
So that includes the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth of the bodhisattva levels. Bodhisattva Bhumis. The first level, the first Ārya Bodhisattva Bhumi is the path of insight and then the other nine stages are in the path of meditation. At the end of that is the fifth path, which is actually enlightenment itself, which is called the path of no more learning. Because when you’re enlightened, there’s nothing to learn anymore.
One has learned everything completely. One is omniscient. So what we’re doing, or what we’re being encouraged to do, is to imagine transforming our body into all these beneficial things for all these different levels of bodhisattvas, all the different levels of practitioners up to the bodhisattvas on the tenth spiritual level, the tenth bodhisattva bhūmi, the last stage before enlightenment. The fact that they too obtain the bliss of the perfect body of truth. So as I mentioned last week, the perfect body of truth refers to the enlightened mind of the Buddha, the dharmakaya.
Imagine that they obtain this in their mind streams through the perfection of the two collections of wisdom and merit. So then we can offer our body to our direct spiritual masters, those belonging to their lineage and to the fully awakened beings residing in the infinite extensive worlds of the ten directions. What we can do is imagine our body transforming into all sorts of things beneficial to our direct spiritual masters. So the direct spiritual masters of course means the teachers who are actually our Gurus of this life who we’ve accepted as our Gurus who are teaching us directly. And then it refers to the teachers, the spiritual masters, belonging to their lineage.
Our Gurus, they have a Guru who had a Guru going back and back in the lineage. So we imagine offering to all those lineage Gurus as well and also to the Buddhas. So this is what we can try to do as a way of making merit and training in giving which is also connected with developing loving kindness. Also, it is important in creating — also, I should try and make this point — to develop bodhicitta, the crucial ingredients are loving kindness and compassion. bodhicitta is more than that, but the very basis of bodhicitta is loving kindness and compassion or great love and great compassion.
And the greatest obstacle to developing bodhicitta great compassion, great love is the self-cherishing thought. Right? That’s the big problem. All the different levels aspects of the self-cherishing thought. So one way to undermine the self-cherishing thought is to practice generosity, giving.
Because it’s contrary to the self-cherishing thought. One aspect of the self-cherishing thought is that it finds it very hard to give. So this is why we train to give imagine giving our body this mass the thing that we’re most attached to, that our self-cherishing is most obsessed with. We imagine giving it, transforming it into all sorts of things. And we give that and it’s it’s kind of easy to imagine giving it to our Gurus, but and the Buddhas and so on and the Bodhisattvas but much you know more difficult to imagine giving it to ordinary beings and relatively easy to imagine giving it to nice people But as it mentions earlier on, we we try to imagine giving our body to everyone, the beings in the hell realms, in the preta realms, and to our enemies.
Yeah? So that’s really powerful if we can do that genuinely. Yes. Sorry. I missed that last bit.
No, no, I don’t think so. Now practicing Dharma shouldn’t make us miserable. If one does something virtuous, is you know, and everything all Dharma practice is virtuous. It makes the mind happy. Whether you want it to be or not, it will be happy if you practice virtue properly properly.
Actually giving up the self-cherishing thought by practicing generosity will actually make you feel good. You can’t help it. It will make you feel much better than being self-cherishing. Even though we follow self-cherishing thinking that will make me feel good. Dharma practice should make us feel good in some way.
It can still be difficult and hard and it can be challenging to our self-cherishing, of course, which in one way makes us feel bad. But we can feel good about feeling bad because we know we’re giving up ourselves cherishing which is good. I hope you understood that. Well it will interfere with that, yes, to some extent. Yeah.
Of course it’ll give you some temporary buzz thinking aren’t I good and people will like me for this and blah blah blah but that fizzes out. But the positive imprint from from genuinely giving that is something that will ripen as genuine happiness. And also, you know, there should be there can be some temporary, good feeling from knowing that one has done something worthwhile. Yeah. Yeah.
It’s hard to know people think that, like in doing good things, you shouldn’t enjoy them. Being selfless doesn’t mean there’s any pleasure in being doing a selfless act. If you get any pleasure out of it, it becomes selfish. This is, I think, a complete misunderstanding of what how things work. I mean, this is the whole message of the dharma that the dharma is the real source of happiness.
So if we do something genuinely positive, virtuous in a good way, there’s not it has to you know it has to be satisfying. I was just using what you said to because more people make this point that I don’t know if that somehow that if you if you feel any pleasure doing something good that this is somehow well, that means it’s selfish and it’s not which is not selfish anyway but yeah it’s a different kind of thing anyway okay moving along So we imagine creating many bodies before each of the Gurus and Buddhas and that these bodies have numerous arms and hands enabling us to offer innumerable prostrations, stimulated by an understanding of the advantages to be gained thereby due to the process of actions and its results. Now if I was a good student I would know what the advantages of prostrations are but there are ten that Lama Zopa Rinpoche often mentions but I don’t remember exactly but they’re all very good benefits. Anyone remember? Should have checked.
In general the benefits of prostration is that it does and why it’s encouraged to be done is to it helps to purify the mind of every kind of negative imprint. It helps to reduce pride which is one of the great obstacles to following the spiritual path and gaining realizations. What we can then what we can we then which is part of the tradition, so many other Lamas would presumably say the same thing, is that when one engages in this practice of prostrating to the Buddhas, one imagines that as you are prostrating, you imagine that countless other bodies your past life bodies are also prostrating at the same time. In this way this increases the purification. And also one imagines that by prostrating you’re encouraging your family, friends, all sentient beings to prostrate.
So the more people, more of your own body as you can imagine prostrating, the more you can imagine other sentient beings prostrating, the more powerful the practice becomes, the more merit, the more purification. Here he mentions that vows are visualizing having many arms, then you can make more prostrations. Lama Zopa Rinpoche often makes the point that when you do prostrations, this with the full length prostrations, you should try and spread your arms out completely because the more earth you cover with your hands the more merit you make. So this again sounds at one level very difficult to believe it sounds kind of airy fairy stuff but it is actually mentioned in one of the sutras. This is not something made up by the Tibetans but it is in one of the sutras.
It actually comes from one section of the Surangama Sūtra where it says that however many atoms of the earth you cover as you’re prostrating that much merit you make. One’s encouraged to spread the arms out wide. Rinpoche always makes the joke that if you go very tall or very fat then also you make more merit when you prostrate. So Lee could make lots of merit that way. Yeah.
Well, if you’ve got space, it’s good to do it. Imagine immense heaps of inconceivable offerings aerated from this wish granting body, and that thereby a great uncontaminated peace is born in their mindstreams. So we can imagine that in addition from this wish we turn our body into a wish granting body because we imagine our body turning into all these things that grant the wishes of ordinary sentient beings of all the different levels of practitioners including our Gurus and we imagine that by making all these offerings it generates great peace and great bliss in the minds of all these beings. The practice of Guru devotion he had mentioned about making offerings to the Guru. So if we’re trying to cultivate the traditional practice of devoting to the Guru where we see the qualified Guru as actually a Buddha, then of course the Buddha doesn’t need anything, the Guru doesn’t need anything, and the Guru is already perfectly happy and blissful.
But from our side it it it’s beneficial. It it accumulates merit to imagine that by giving these things to the Guru, it makes the Guru’s mind happy. And in a sense it does because the Guru is pleased that we are practicing. The Guru is pleased that we are practicing generosity, trying to overcome the self-cherishing thought and practice bodhicitta. So in regard to the bodhisattva way of life it says: May sentient beings repeatedly make offerings to all the Buddhas and may they constantly possess the inconceivable bliss of the Buddhas.
So this great master Śāntideva who wrote this book, The Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, is saying that we should, you know, as we as ordinary sentient beings, should repeatedly make offerings to the Buddhas. The Buddhas don’t need the offerings. We need to make them. We need the merit. And the Buddhas are the highest objects of merit.
If you study the law of cause and effect, there are four factors involved in determining the potency of the negative and positive imprints we make and one of the factors is the object. The nature of the object that you that you direct your positive or negative actions towards. So for example, harming a human being is karmically worse than harming an animal. Even though both an animal and a human being have Buddha nature, a human being is a greater position, has a greater capacity to make use of their Buddha nature. So harming a human being is a much more negative action therefore generates a far more negative karmic imprint.
And of course if one harms someone who’s actually following the spiritual path this is even worse. And if we benefit someone following if you, you know, helping a human and this is also in general, there could be, you know, some exceptions for various reasons. But helping a human being is better than helping an animal, and helping a spiritual practice practitioner is better more meritorious than more virtuous, more meritorious than benefiting an ordinary person. And so of all spiritual practitioners, the the the person that we if we can benefit by benefiting that person, we accumulate the greatest merit is our own teacher, our own guru, the one we see as the Buddha. So that person, if we actually especially if we see them as Buddha, we’ve cultivated that devotion seeing the Guru as Buddha and we try to benefit that person, try to follow their advice, help them in any way, then that creates the greatest merit.
That is why in the teachings it says, you know, you offer one glass of water to the Guru. That this this accumulates. Seeing the Guru as Buddha, sky’s a merit. Once again enormous merit. Even offering a glass of water to someone who you know is a student of your Guru, skies of merit.
Because the students of the Guru are said to be the pores of the Guru. Just like the body breathes through its pores, so the Guru acts through the students. So even by helping the student of your own Guru, without understanding, skies of merit. This is one way how the Guru is so necessary to achieving enlightenment because by relating to the Guru properly, One accumulates — this is the easiest way to accumulate an enormous amount of merit which is necessary for enlightenment. If we didn’t have the Guru, it would be so much more difficult to accumulate the merit as quickly and as easily.
But once one connects with the Guru and sees the Guru as Buddha, then it’s so easy to accumulate merit and also purify the mind. Rinpoche, my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, says, the best way to purify the mind is to follow the advice of the Guru, the difficult advice. If one can follow happily the difficult advice of the Guru, this is how one quickly achieves enlightenment. And of and that’s how, of course, Milarepa achieved enlightenment because he happily followed the advice of his guru no matter what it was, no matter how difficult, never questioned it, never doubted that it wasn’t the perfect advice and did it a hundred percent. I think that got a little off the topic.
Not well not really. It goes on to say May the Bodhisattvas fulfill the welfare of sentient beings as they wish to do and may all living beings receive all that the Buddhas have intended for them. Certainly may the solitary Buddhas and the hearers enjoy peace. So this concludes the procedure for giving to the beings dwelling in the world. Another aspect of giving is giving it to the environment, because the environment is where sentient beings inhabit that environment, so one can give to make the environment a wonderful place for sentient beings to live in.
I think this section, you know, maybe the examples it gives, maybe a bit, anyway, this particular section is maybe even more relevant these days because our environment is rapidly degenerating and global warming is really here faster than anyone thought and worse than was predicted. So it says we can transform our body to all sorts of things that could change our environment, save the world. So to offer our bodies to the environment beings live in, send them forth to infinite worlds within the ten directions in the aspect of wish fulfilling jewels. Wish fulfilling jewels according to Buddhist mythology, these exist down at the bottom of the ocean. They’re very rare but if you find one and bring it up from the bottom of the ocean there’s a particular way that you clean it and then you put it on a very long pole.
Some description. Also a very difficult pole to find. And once that’s all done then any wish you make to that wish fulfilling jewel is fulfilled. Any ordinary thing. So it doesn’t really matter whether such things exist.
Idea is interesting that we can imagine transforming our body into things which fulfill the wishes of everyone. We imagine transforming all impure environments filled with decayed logs, thorns, thorns bushes sand crevices cliffs and so forth into wonderful pure lands in the nature of various precious stones as level as the BAM of your hand open, extensive and smooth to touch, stainless and bright, perfumed with sandalwood, scattered with celestial flowers and fenced with jewels. So of course we don’t have to visualize it exactly like that. These are just suggestions.
The main thing is to use our imagination to create merit, to imagine transforming our body into all these things that could then transform this world. I mean, he’s suggesting the whole universe, but we can start with this world and we can start because anything is a lum rim really. All practice is a lam rim. It’s a graduated path. We start small, first step, right?
So one can imagine the immediate environment we’re in, our local neighborhood or Adelaide or whatever. Imagine transforming it into a perfect environment to practice the Dharma for people to have peace and prosperity and everything to practice the Dharma. I’ve had the good fortune to spend quite a bit of time in Nepal in Kathmandu which these days is getting a truly horrible polluted city but everywhere you go in Kathmandu there’s all these little roads and there’s these little laneways going into courtyards and you peek in these courtyards and there are Buddhist stupas there hundreds of years old, small ones, beautifully carved and it looks like sort of volcanic rock isn’t it? They’re everywhere, everywhere. I always used to think wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could walk down the streets of Australia and everywhere you look down a lane there’s a stupa but you know there’s one on Kangaroo Island but how many stupas are there in South Australia?
Crafters in somebody’s oh, biggish. I mean, we have a stupa here, a small stupa, but I mean actual like building type stupas or public stupas. Many. Right in the school. Yes.
Yes. Great. Yeah. But not many. So you can imagine tearing your body into stupas all over the streets of Adelaide, turning Queen Victoria’s statue into a stupa.
Your heart dissolves into it and transforms into into a stupa. Is that statue still there? Queen Victoria? A temporary been taken. It’s forty years since I’ve lived in Adelaide.
I was just trying to remember what’s still here. I want to describe how this pure land that we build up is filled with powdered gold, silver and pearls covered with Utpalas, which as far as I can work out are blue lotuses, the very rarest kind which considered and often in the thangkas. Oh yes Tārā is holding a blue lotus. Often that’s what Tārā should be holding is a blue lotus. Often they show the Lamas or the deities holding different colored lotuses but usually apart from Chenrezig who holds a white one they should be blue lotuses but definitely Tārā holds an Utpala blue lotus.
Lilies so beautiful lakes pools and ponds containing water possessing the eight pleasing qualities, over which fly different kinds of water birds singing sweetly, enhancing the scene. Think that these constitute magnificent clouds of offerings to assemblies of Buddhas and exalted bodhisattvas, and that they do not for a moment provide the slightest cause for pride, arrogance, or conceit in the beings who inhabit and enjoy the pleasures of these abodes. Think that on the contrary they realize enlightenment due to such favorable conditions. So we can use our imagination to imagine transforming you know, the the environment around us into all sorts of beautiful things that please the minds of of beings, pacify their minds, and help them to follow the spiritual path and realize that path. In Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life it says, May everywhere the earth be pure, free from stones and pebbles, level as the palm of my hand and smooth in the nature of aquamarine.
So that verse you may recognize is said many times in the Tibetan tradition. For example if you take the eight Mahāyāna precepts before actually taking the precepts that this prayer is recited. Firstly, in order to take the precepts, the eight Mahāyāna precepts for a day, you visualize the Buddha coming or Avalokiteśvara coming to grant the precepts. So before you invite the Buddha to be present to grant the precepts, you imagine transforming this ordinary environment into a pure land. And so in order to do that, this prayer is chanted.
Check it out next time. If you look in the volume one of the gold prayer book of the FPMT, I think at the beginning of that prayer book is the eight Mahāyāna precepts. So that prayer is there. The next verse goes on to say: may all embodied beings uninterruptedly hear the sound of the doctrine issuing from birds, trees, beams of light, and even from space. So I think I mentioned last week was it last week or sometime that the Buddha’s once a being achieves enlightenment, the mind has the power to create the illusion of maybe I shouldn’t say it’s an illusion.
Anyway, they create a pure land where sentient beings can be reborn into and practice the Dharma. So this world that we live in has been created by the minds, the deluded minds of sentient beings, where Buddhas create pure lands. So this world is an impure place where everything good and bad can, by coming in contact with it, can generate our delusions. We see ugly things and we get upset and angry. We see beautiful things and desire can arise.
Whereas in the pure land everything is beautiful but it doesn’t activate our delusions. And in fact everything, because it’s the product of the pure mind of the Buddha, actually helps us you know, be peaceful, virtuous, inspired by the Dharma. And so even the trees are the manifestation of the Buddha’s mind and the wind blowing through those trees, you know, creates the sound of the Dharma. So everything in you know, is a positive influence. So we can imagine transforming the world into such a place for the benefit of others.
Any comments? Actually, since we’re up to finish one section, maybe we can take a break now. We’re almost at that time. Yeah. It’s a tab break.
Ten minutes. Ten minutes. Just before we start again, you remember, I was talking about a book by Peter Singer. This is the book, A Life You Can Save, about how you can give away all your money. Encouraging to give.
If anyone wants to borrow it, are welcome to borrow it from me. We have covered the section on how to practice giving the body in visualization. Now it turns to the practice of giving away one’s actual possessions. So it says: those to whom we should give are in the same order as before. That is if you remember it started with ordinary beings of the different realms and then practitioners of the small vehicle, then the Mahāyāna, so in the same way we can practice giving our possessions.
We should send forth our possessions such as food, clothing, dwellings, companions, servants, and so forth in forms that fulfill all wishes. Imagine that extensively satisfying the needs of beings in all the world generates mundane and transcendental wealth, which creates the causes for accomplishing the fully awakened state. And after attaining enlightenment, their minds obtain the bliss of the perfect body of truth. So again it’s basically the same thing that instead of visualizing our body transforming into everything beneficial, our actual possessions we imagine give. So firstly what we can do is imagine giving away our possessions visualizing or imagining giving away our possessions, and imagining them satisfying all ordinary needs.
By satisfying ordinary needs people are able to turn their mind to the practice of Dharma and eventually achieve enlightenment. So even if we can’t actually give things, can at least in our mind imagine doing so. So this is laying the path to develop the mind of generosity more and more so that when at some point we do have possessions we will be able to give them away. And of course one way we can encourage ourselves to practice generosity is realizing see here this is the tricky comes in again that the benefit of practicing generosity, the karmic result of practicing generosity, is that one will have wealth and resources. By not practicing generosity, by being very tight with one’s money and possessions, the karmic result is to be poor and not to have necessary resources.
But by practicing generosity, generosity, by giving away, one creates the cause to receive in the future. Not necessarily life unfortunately. Instant karma is not quite the way the Buddha taught things, actually. But the result can come in this life. And I think, for example, in the case of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, he’s always practiced incredible generosity in this life.
And because, you know, Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe, when they came from Tibet, of course, had nothing. You know, the the monks, you know, left with with nothing. They were very poor and lived, you know, terrible lives in Buxa for for many years when many, many monks died because the conditions there were so appalling. And but then, you know, Rinpoche got started teaching and had some disciples who looked after him. But Rinpoche makes these funny tells these funny stories because Rinpoche’s and Lama’s first disciple was Zina Rachevsky, this American woman or, you know, she was her father was a Russian prince.
I I think her her mother was American. Anyway, so when when she met up with Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, she she looked after them for some time, but she didn’t look after them very well at all, actually. She had no idea, and they were actually really hungry. Rinpoche used to say they had these stories of, like, really being incredibly hungry. She lived a life of luxury, and she kept Lama Yeshe and Rinpoche in this little hut, you know, off the side of where she lived in luxury and they they had hardly anything.
But I know I had the good fortune to be Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s attendant for three years and when I first got this job, Lama Yeshe took me aside. Oh, not not exactly because Rinpoche was there and and he said, as soon as Rinpoche anyone gives Lama Zopa Rinpoche any money, you take it because Rinpoche will give it away and we need this money. Sounds very great, but why Lama wanted the money was to feed the monks at Kopan monastery. So he said, you grab you know, he never said that. He said, you you you take control of the money.
You take it straight away. So that’s what I used to do, get the money straight if I could. There’s one one I I think I’ve sorry. I repeat these stories so many times. I don’t know if I’ve told you already, Dent, but once in Spain, this lady gave I missed it, see.
Gave Rinpoche some kind some kind of object. I think it was a like a something like this, a box, which was a family heirloom. And and and what this is something that Rinpoche often does. You know, people come in to see Rimshet for advice, and they give him something. You know, usually in the old early days, it was something very, very ordinary, you know, box of choc you know, one chocolate or packet of peanuts or something.
And Rinpoche would give it to the next person who came into the room. You know, everything got recycled. So Rinpoche was given this box, which was a family heirloom by the Spanish lady, and he immediately gave it to the purse the next person who came into the room. And it turned out this box was worth a fortune. The lady was some kind of Spanish aristocrat.
It had been in the family for hundreds of years and was worth thousands of dollars or something. Rinpoche just gave it to the next lady. Anyway, Rinpoche in the three years I was with Rinpoche, Rinpoche never used his money, the money he was given, or anything he was given for himself ever. I can honestly say that except once when we were it really surprised me when we were I think it was in Singapore airport. Rinpoche asked me for some money.
I was really shocked. He’d never asked for anything ever. And so and he wanted to buy some orchids, and, of course, the orchids were to offer to the Buddha. That’s the only time Rinpoche used any of his money for sort of himself. He never bought any clothes.
He gave all his clothes away. I once had to ask a monk whom Rinpoche had given his last pair of socks to get the pair of socks back because he didn’t have any socks left. It’s very difficult to get socks in Dharmasala. So but now, you know, Rinpoche had because of being incredibly and most of Rinpoche’s money that he was offered, he would use to sponsor pujas in monasteries to benefit students and the organization. But now Rinpoche has many wealthy disciples who give vast amounts of money, so Rinpoche can sponsor all sorts of things.
Not that there’s ever enough money anyway, but you can see that, like, at the beginning, Kopan monastery was built so badly because there was no money. Where the monks lived was just truly appalling, and the building was really dangerous because it was just you didn’t build it, did you know? Yeah. And the and the food the food the monks had, everything was terrible because there was no money. Now if you go to Kopan Monastery, which I highly recommend, it is incredibly beautiful place.
It’s it’s just magnificent. Yeah. So as a result of being generous, things come even in this life. That’s not the point, of course. That’s not the point to get things, but that’s how karma works.
So it goes on to say, As before, we subsequently offer wish fulfilling wealth to the spiritual masters and Buddhas, imagining that a special uncontaminated bliss is born in their mind streams. And of course the karmic result is by imagining generating bliss in the minds of the Gurus and Buddhas is actually creating the cause for us to be able to generate this bliss. This is how karma works. At the end of this wonderful talk, we will dedicate the merit and and then there are the long life prayers for His Holiness and Lama Zopa Rinpoche and so on. So in the teachings it says that the karmic result of praying for the long life of the Guru is for oneself to have a long life.
So the more sincerely we want, we pray, meaning develop this heartfelt wish in our mind for the Guru to live long in order to teach the Dharma, we are creating the cause for ourself to have a long life where we can practice the Dharma. That’s how karma works. So it’s terrific. Everyone wins. The guru wins by by because by praying for the guru to to live a long life, that that is creating the cause for the guru to live a long life because the guru only stays, manifests having a long life if the students have the sincere wish to practice.
If we don’t want to practice, then the Gurus don’t hang around. They don’t stay. They manifest getting sick, dying and leaving. self-cherishing, being selfish. See, there’s there’s the same question again.
Well, if if we’re doing it just for that purpose, maybe, but the idea is to do it with with the reason to pray for the Guru to have long life is for the Guru to have a long life. Not for oneself to have a long life, but the more one sincerely wants the Guru to have a long life, the more one is creating this cause for oneself to have a long life. One can’t stop that. But if we’re praying for the Guru to have a long life, for ourselves to have a long life, maybe that’s not so good. The teachings are set out to teach ordinary people, that is us, to practice the Dharma, to encourage us to start the practice of Dharma and to continue it.
So it’s the old carrot and stick business. If you don’t practice the Dharma, you will suffer because you’re not creating the causes of happiness, and you will end up creating the causes of suffering. But if you practice these good things, even these worldly good things will happen to you. Yeah? So of course there’s a worldly element but this is something we have to accept.
It is impossible to practice the Dharma as an ordinary person purely. You know, everything starts out being impure, but we try to make it better with time. I mean the reason we have to start the practice is because our mind is impure and therefore our motivation is impure. We may think it’s pure but in fact it’s not. But that’s okay, that’s okay.
We can only start where we are but the idea is we try to with our experience and with increasing experience and understanding we try to recognize these impurities and what are called the eight worldly concerns and and try and get rid of them. But you know that’s what the Gurus say, you know, do this because there’s there is this all the and the Buddha said do this because there’s this this benefit you know if you practice patience one of the benefits is you will look nice in your best in your next life you know if yes yeah you know and if you if you practice generosity you’ll be rich in your next life This is not the real reason for practicing it, but it can it can encourage us to you know, someone yeah. For someone who is not naturally generous in this life, what is going to encourage us to practice generosity? And the fact that we’re not generous is because we’re attached to stuff, so the Buddha reminds us, well, if you try to be a bit more generous you’ll actually become you’ll get stuff. Oh good!
So it encourages us to start but having started the idea is to make our actual practice more and more genuine. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. And we become more sensitive to what our actual motives are in life. You know, we can start out thinking, you know, our motives are are just fantastic and wonderful, but that’s because, you know, our mind is like that. You know, we are self deluding, but when we calm our mind, become you know, our mind becomes more clear, more sensitive, we can start to realize that, oh, you know, my motivation isn’t isn’t so pure after all.
And then we can try and change it. But it to wait to have a pure, motivation to do something is ridiculous because a pure motivation won’t just arise by itself. Everything arises dependently and a pure motivation arises depending on having firstly an impure one that one becomes aware of and modifies. That’s how a pure mind arises by, you know, you don’t start off with one. We start off with an impure mind, a deluded mind, a contaminated, obscured mind.
But step by step we get rid of that. So that was very quick giving away possessions. The next topic, again in the practice of giving, is to give away one’s virtues. So of course in reality we cannot give away our karmic imprints. This is impossible.
But what we can do is imagine doing so, and this is just as worthwhile because one is cultivating a state of mind, and everything depends on our state of mind. So the mind wanting to give away our virtues is the very basis of our happiness, if you think about it, the highest form of giving, the most powerful. Wanting to give our own virtue to others or merit is something really radical, really transformative, really completely contrary to the self-cherishing thought. So with regard to our bodies and possessions, we can give away what we have and what we will acquire in the future. So we can imagine giving away actually give away no, we can only imagine giving away what we’ve got and we can imagine what we will have in the future.
But we can’t imagine it’s not valid to imagine giving away that which has already ceased to exist. However, the virtues of the past, present, and future are all suitable to be given away. Actually this translation I think is, you know, it shouldn’t be virtues, it should be merit. There’s a bit of a difference in meaning there. So it’s so the virtue the merit that we’ve accumulated in the past, the merit accumulated in this life, and the merit that we will accumulate in the future, all of these are suitable to be given away or imagining giving away.
But what that means is the the merit of the past is the merit of in the we’ve in the past, we’ve done virtuous actions which have created these meritorious imprints. So some of that merit has ripened and we’ve experienced it. So we can’t imagine giving that away, but the merit we’ve created in the past, which hasn’t ripened yet, that we can imagine giving away. Right? I knew someone should never have said that between virtue and merit.
Yeah. But the the experience has already happened to you. So how can you give that to someone else? But I think the idea is you imagine you’ve got this seed, this potential that’s going to ripen a wonderful experience. So you want to give that.
So you can’t give the ones that have ripened because the merit’s gone. It’s ripened. Yeah. So the merit that hasn’t ripened yet, even though it was created in the past, it’s valid to imagine giving that. I think that’s what this means.
Giving away the potential. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And so that yeah.
And and so that’s harder to give away because you haven’t had the experience in yet, and one would like to have that good experience, but you imagine giving it to someone else instead. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
As merit, it doesn’t exist anymore. The saints or potencies of past virtues, as well as those of the present and all future virtues up to the attainment of Buddhahood, can all be given away. The Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life says: All virtues produced in the three times should be given away without restraint to accomplish the goal of all sentient beings. And the master Nāgārjuna says, by this virtue may all beings gather the collections of merit and wisdom, and as a result of that merit and wisdom, may they achieve the two sublime bodies. So the two sublime bodies refers to the form body of a Buddha, the Rūpakāya, and that arises depending on the accumulation of merit.
And then there is the dharmakaya which is the other sublime body of the body in the sense of a yeah. It’s not a physical body like a what? Anyway, the word kaya is translated as body, but it has more the meaning of like a corpus of something, the collection, a body of work. Yeah. A body of work.
But there’s the dharmakaya is the mind of the Buddha. So I suppose you would say that’s the collection of all the wisdom and compassion and and love, etcetera, of the omniscient mind. So anyway, that arises depending on wisdom. That’s why we have to collect, accumulate, complete the accumulation of method and wisdom, because we need the body and mind of a Buddha. So although the body and mind of a Buddha are inseparable things, they still have specific causes, unique causes.
So in the call, the questions of Gagana Ganja, it says, may whatever sources of virtue I have I have be transformed into sustenance for all sentient beings. So this is what we can imagine that our merit or virtue transforms into all the things that sustain sentient beings. Sustenance in the sense of food, but also we could understand that to mean everything that brings about, that sustains the the spiritual life of sentient beings. So all these are ways of giving away virtues from such weak virtues as the gift of a handful of food to an animal and incidental good deeds, to such powerful virtues as cultivation of the awakening mind. Merit or positive imprints, karmic imprints, virtuous karmic imprints can vary from very weak imprints such as just by you know if we give a little bit of food to an animal just that you know puts a positive imprint in the mind.
And there’s all sorts of incidental good deeds that we hopefully do during our life. You know, just being kind to people, giving them directions, helping people who are unhappy, this is in that. Any you know, all these small incidental good deeds we may do up to powerful actions such as actively cultivating, trying to cultivate bodhicitta. So all these imprints we can imagine giving away. All of them should be dispensed to beings in all the worlds as described above.
Think that they each acquire the complete causes. Think that meaning each sentient being, acquires the complete causes and conditions for attaining enlightenment, and with the perfection of the two collections of merit and wisdom, they awaken to enlightenment, possessing in their mind streams the bliss of the perfect body of truth. So as I was saying last week, training the mind in imagining these things is a valid meditation practice. It’s a valid way of training the mind in developing generosity. It’s a valid way of cultivating loving kindness because you see that by giving all these different things, it brings all these different levels of happiness.
You give an ordinary thing, so it gives a little bit of pleasure, some worldly happiness. But then we can imagine giving our body, our possessions, our virtues that brings about actual spiritual realizations and then actually the peerless everlasting happiness of enlightenment. So we’re training our mind in developing all these different levels of love, wishing the higher and higher forms of happiness. And it’s not that hard to do. Maybe to, you know, very concretely visualize things may be difficult, but to imagine these happen things happening, we can all do.
And it’s pleasurable. It’s enjoyable. There’s some instant benefit, you know, that it makes the mind it should make the mind happy imagining making others happy. If we get miserable imagining others becoming happy, then we’re in big trouble. But it’s not just entertaining the mind.
If we do it properly with the right motivation, it is creating this pathway in our mind so that we can actually do these things in the future. We will want to do them, we will enjoy doing them in the future. Should you wonder what is the use of training in the thought of giving, it is that unless you train from now on stop. It’s a reminder to take a pill, which I forgot to bring. Can’t win in saṃsāra.
Should you wonder what is the use of training in the thought of giving, it is that unless you train from now on, later you will be unable to make even the smallest gift, which will be an impediment. So right now we have the precious human rebirth. This is the optimum chance to practice every kind of Dharma, from the simplest to the most advanced. At least we can start the training, right? So if now, for example, we have the optimum chance to practice, to train in generosity.
Even though we may not have lots of stuff to actually give, we can still train in practicing generosity because generosity is a state of mind. It’s the mind wanting to give. So we can train our mind to want to give by doing these things and seeing how pleasurable it is. Because when we start to see and realize more and more how much happiness sentient beings can have by me giving, we will want to give. So we’ve got the optimum chance to do this.
So if we don’t do it now when we’ve got the optimum chance, when are we going to start? I mean this applies to the Dharma in general. We have the optimum chance to practice Dharma now. So if we don’t decide to start now when we’ve got the optimum chance, why we decide to practice when we don’t have the optimum chance? It’s a little bit like someone who is young and healthy and very strong who wants to climb Mount Everest.
Whole aim in life is to climb Mount Everest, and they’re young and healthy and very strong and have the money to do so. But they decide, I won’t do it now. I’ll wait till I’m really old and sick and frail and poor. Then I’ll try and climb Mount Everest. That is really, really dumb.
So if we don’t decide to practice Dharma now, we’re even dumber than that person. One Dharma practice is to train in generosity. Because also it leads to everything else. Know, the practice of generosity is what the first of the six perfections, and it psychologically lays the groundwork for all the others. By practicing generosity, it makes it easier to practice morality.
The more we practice morality, it becomes easier to practice patience. That makes it easier to practice perseverance. That makes it easier to develop a single pointed concentration. Once we’ve developed single pointed concentration it becomes easy as easy as it can be to develop the wisdom that realizes the true nature of self and phenomena. Right?
So it all starts with practicing generosity, which is also a way of practicing loving kindness. As I’ve said a few times in various places, once upon a time I found myself on a stopover in Chicago. I was traveling somewhere else and I ended up just staying a couple of nights in Chicago. And the first night I stayed at what I think was a Vietnamese temple for some reason. I don’t know.
I can’t remember how I ended up there. And the monk there asked me what I usually taught people. And I explained that I taught this in the Tibetan system we have this thing called the Lam Rim, the graduated path to enlightenment, which explains the whole path to enlightenment. And I said that’s what I, you know, that’s what I try and teach people. And he said, oh, this is far too complicated.
Far too you should just teach them refuge and being generous. That’s what that’s what people need. They need to understand refuge and how to be generous. There’s a lot of truth in that because if we’ve learned generosity, then, you know, everything flows from that. It starts to break down that self-cherishing thought.
And so and if we don’t do it now when it’s as easy as possible, then we we we will find ourselves reborn even if we’re a human being. We won’t have resources. We won’t have the things we need. And then, you know, and what we will have is lots of obstacles, lots of difficulties, and then we’re in trouble. So in our text called the Questions of Subahu Sūtra, it says: If you train the mind to give right away, with prolonged familiarity, you will find no difficulty in actually giving away your body and so on.
The King of Meditative Stabilization Sūtra says: Just as the more you analyze something, your conceptions about it increase, so does your mind become acquainted with it. And also another great master, Āryadeva, says: However weak is your intention to benefit others, you should always abide by this thought. Whoever has such a thought will bring it to fulfillment. So basically what those quotations are saying is that through the power of familiarity things become easier and easier. This is one of the most important things to remember in the Buddhadharma and encouraging ourselves to practice because many Dharma practices can appear very difficult and they appear so because they are contrary to the self-cherishing thought and so we don’t tend to do them or we do them very half heartedly and intermittently.
What we need to remind ourselves is that through familiarizing ourselves with something, it becomes easier. This is the very nature of our mind. That something that starts out being extremely difficult if we, because our mind, it it doesn’t know it, isn’t familiar. But if we let our mind become familiar with something, then the mind will know it, will be able to experience it, be able to do it. So at first we may be unfamiliar with being generous because of imprints from past lives of not being generous.
In this life we don’t have a tendency to be kind or generous but through seeing its benefits we can try to be familiar with it, familiarize ourselves. That’s what all Dharma practice is. That’s what meditation means. The Tibetan word for meditation, gom, literally means familiarity or habit, habituating the mind. Right now, our mind is habituated with things which are not virtuous and not true.
Our mind is very familiar with those things. And and what so what we’re trying to do in meditation is familiarize ourselves with what is virtuous, such as generosity and what is true. And that’s the mind can do that. Right? When we were born, we couldn’t speak.
We couldn’t say a word. Not one single word. We couldn’t walk. We couldn’t do almost anything. And the only way we we were able to do all the things we do is through the power of familiarity.
We shouldn’t be put off by thinking, Oh, this is difficult. Because it’s difficult, I can’t do it. Our mind has the potential to do it if we allow ourselves to be familiar with it. It’s that simple in a way. It was just starting the path and keep going.
The great Chekawa who wrote the seven point mind training says: The more you are acquainted with it, the more you purify conceptions. Take the help of many examples such as seven generations. So this is a very strange appearing quotation. Basically what it’s saying is that the example of the seven generations is referring to the idea of our family going back seven generations and we we we identify that those people are our family. Right?
Even though they go back seven generations, we conceive we that we are connected with those people. But if you think about it, of course, our second generation, our grandparents, we are related to, connected to. We we most of us were alive. Sorry. For most of us, our grandparents are alive at some point in our life.
They haven’t died when we are born, usually. So we know them. But if you go back to your great grandparents and great great grandparents, we never see these people at all. We have no connection with them. And in fact, we think of them as my ancestors.
Right? But the person I am now, you know, for for example oh, how to put this? It’s getting too complicated. Well, you you can think, oh, my my ancestor so and so was so was this famous person, blah blah blah. And, you know, isn’t that great because this person is my ancestor.
But in a previous life, I may not have even been a human being. Or, you know, this this ancestor was, you know, Australian or English or German or French or something, but I may have been even if I was human, I may have been in a know, from another country. So I have no connection with those people at all in reality. It’s just a conception I have. Through the power of familiarity, I think of these people as being, you know, intimately connected with me, part of my family lineage.
And, of course, of my body, they are. My body is a result of those people, but my mind, there’s no connection. So anyway, in the same way we can familiarize ourselves with the practice of generosity. So in both sutras, the Jatakamala, the previous lives of the Buddha, we read: May all my actions such as seeing, hearing, remembering, touching or even conversing be of benefit to beings and may I always work to give them peace. This statement is a prayer that is often said in the Tibetan tradition in the context of generating bodhicitta to develop the wish that through practicing bodhicitta and purifying the mind, developing a good heart, may anyone who sees me, just sees my body, thinks about me and so on, may benefit.
So wouldn’t it be wonderful if that would be the case? That just by seeing someone seeing us that people were benefited? That that their minds were transformed and inspired into the dharma, which is the case, of course, with someone like His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. People just by seeing His Holiness or thinking about Him, their minds are uplifted. So we could become like that.
We have the same potential as His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. If we practice the Dharma, at some point in the future people will want to see us like they want to see His Holiness now. As I make these feeble jokes that, you know, for His Holiness to visit, you know, any country, usually hundreds and hundreds of people work for a whole year to arrange that visit, and they do it very happily. And many other people volunteer as well just so His Holiness can come to visit for a few days. So they don’t do that for us.
We don’t have people who work for hundreds of people for a whole year just so we will come and visit. But if we train our minds, it will happen one day. Wouldn’t that be great? Oh, so that was the that was it. So on that jolly note, we can finish for today.
Yes. Okay. Any final question, comment? Yes. Yeah.
Because one is hoping that that these imprints are going to benefit everyone. They directly benefit oneself, but one wants that benefit. Yeah. One wants one’s mind to change to benefit others. So yes, it is also practicing generosity.
Actually, the Chinese tradition, prayer, they use something where they talk about the transference of merits where you actually imagine transferring those merits that you’ve created to the other people. Yeah. Well, I know that stronger, but you protect it from being wiped out by anger and so on. That’s why we can do it now. Dedicate the merit.
Because we have created some merit tonight, and hopefully we’ve generated the most powerful kind of karmic imprints because hopefully the four factors have been present, which is having the conscious motivation, and we’ve had the try to have the best motivation, which is bodhicitta. And then we’ve had the best object, which is the the dharma. And, hopefully, if you listened well the whole time, then that’s the third factor of doing the action properly, well, strongly, and then we’ve completed it. You actually stayed to the bitter end. And hopefully you are happy not happy that it finished, but happy that you stayed and listened till for the very end so that makes a complete powerful throwing karma actually possibly just tonight you see So we have to dedicate that imprint that it really brings the very best and complete result possible.
Through the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious bodhicitta, not yet born, arise and grow. May that born have no decline but increase forevermore. The object of refuge of myself and of all transmigratory beings in all our lifetimes is the embodiment of the Three Jewels, the all encompassing three refuges in one, the guru, the wish granting jewel, his wholeness, the Dalai Lama, the master Padmasambhava, the Dharma king Songtsen Gampo and Trisong Detsen the abbot Shāntarakshita and the numberless 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. May all their positive wishes be fulfilled immediately.
Due to their limitless kindness, the sun of Tibetan Buddhism has now risen in the West, which was a dark land. But now that I have met with the Dharma, I have received the perfect human body, enabling me to lead a meaningful life. Our refuge and savior, the supreme one, his holiness, the Dalai Lama, and the Tibetan people have been so kind to us. Remembering this, we make the following dedication 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 mother transmigratory beings achieve enlightenment quickly. Savior of the snow land teachings and transmigratory beings who makes extremely clear the path that is the unification of emptiness and compassion. To the lotus holder, Tenzin Gyatso, I beseech, may all your holy wishes be spontaneously fulfilled. You who uphold the subduer’s moral way, who serve as the bountiful bearer of all, sustaining, preserving, spreading Mañjuśrī’s victorious doctrine, who masterfully accomplished magnificent prayers, honoring the Three Jewels, savior of myself and others, your disciples, please, please live long.
Lord of Dharma, who in accordance with the various dispositions of those to be subdued, makes clear in the light of your well spoken advice, the sacred Ganden tradition, essence of Buddha’s teachings, oh foremost and holy Lama to you who are supreme. O Lama, please please live long. Okay, thank you very much. Just to remind you that I can’t remember what I think it’s next Wednesday night. I’m doing a class on how to do water bowl offering practice.
So if you’re not familiar with it or need to just check if you’re doing it right, come along. Because it is a really great practice to do. I really highly encourage people to do this every day, every morning if you can. Yes. Okay.
So we can finish with three prostrations. If you’d like to join in.