Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Over two hours, Venerable Thubten Dondrub leads a class on mind training, working through the commentary “Mind Training Like the Rays of the Sun” on the classic Tibetan text “The Seven Point Mind Training.” He begins with prayers and motivations for studying the dharma, emphasizing the importance of bodhicitta—the aspiration to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all beings. The core teaching focuses on transforming adverse circumstances into the path to enlightenment. Dondrub explains that we live in a degenerate time marked by increasing environmental degradation, moral decline, and intensified delusions in sentient beings. Rather than viewing problems as purely negative, he teaches that suffering offers valuable opportunities to develop patience, compassion, humility, and courage. He illustrates this with examples of ordinary people who transformed devastating hardships—a parent of a severely disabled child, families torn apart by violence—into sources of spiritual growth. The practical technique involves recognizing at least one positive aspect of a difficulty and focusing on it sincerely, ultimately reframing problems as meaningful rather than meaningless. He emphasizes that this mind-training approach is not uniquely Buddhist but universal among spiritual practitioners who have transformed themselves through adversity. The teaching ends with dedication prayers for the Dalai Lama and all sentient beings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 09 12 Mind Training .mp3 DISTORTED.mp3
UUID: 4fbf1a35-1723-411e-bf60-c831ec865ab8
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Mind Training (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-09-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 113.3 minutes
Words: ~12,172
Around in Buddhism. But it’s you know, anyone’s welcome to come along. What we’re doing is there is in front of you a like a little prayer book and also another book called this a little text called the seven point mind training. So there was a commentary written several hundred years after this Seven Point Mind Training was written called the mind training like the rays of the sun. So we’re going through this commentary.
So we’re about halfway through. It’s only taken us half a year to get more than half a year to get halfway through. So that’s pretty pretty good. And so since this class is meant for people who have some background in Buddhism, we we do lots of traditional practices. So I it’s really not possible to really explain them all because we just take too long.
I think people, like everyone who comes to Buddhist centers, one one needs to pick up bits and pieces with time, everything. You put the jigsaw puzzle together after some time. So we start with oh you didn’t give me the prayer book. It’s just a minute. I think I’ve got a copy anyway.
Yep. So we’re starting the the little prayer book that we’re on page page five. I prostrate to the gathering of dakinis and the three khatvangas who abide in the holy yoga of using space, by powers of clairvoyance 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 inner and outer hindrances be transformed. May they be dispelled.
May they 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 enjoyments be in accord with the dharma, and may there be auspiciousness and perfect happiness here, right now.
Abasance to my guru and protector Mañjuśrī who holds to his heart a scriptural text symbolic of his seeing all things as they are, whose understanding shines forth as the sun, unclouded by defilements 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 Samsāra, confused in the darkness of their ignorance, overwhelmed by their suffering. You whose 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 entreat you, O Mañjuśrī, whose princely body is adorned with the one hundred and twelve marks of the Buddha, who has completed the ten stages achieving the highest perfection of the bodhisattva, who has been pure from the beginning. O Mañjuśrī, all loving one, with the brilliance of your wisdom, illuminate the darkness enclosing my mind. Enlighten my intelligence and wisdom so that I may gain insight into Buddha’s words and the texts that explain them.
So now we make an offering of the mandala of the whole universe to the Buddha as a way to request the teachings, as a way to free our mind of attachment and which is such an obstacle to being able to understand and practice the Buddhist teachings and by making the offering of the whole universe this is a way to accumulate the positive imprints, positive merit that helps us to understand and be able to practice the teachings. So we try and think, visualize the Buddha in front of us as the very embodiment of all the Three Jewels of refuge, the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Thinking of the Buddha as the very embodiment of all perfect qualities and the embodiment of all our teachers of the path, present and future. So then still thinking the Buddha in front of us, it’s important to try to generate the right motivation for studying the teaching, listening to the teachings and putting them into practice. So, particularly, we can try and Sorry, I’m not very concentrated tonight.
Just a minute. I’ll just rearrange myself. So when we first listen to the Buddhist teachings the reason is to check the teachings to see whether they make sense something that could benefit us now and in the future are really meaningful. And if we after some time checking the Buddha’s teachings we feel a connection to them then the purpose for continuing to listen to them is really to understand them more in order to put them into practice. So this is the main purpose of the Buddhist teachings is they contain all the methods that we can apply to our mind to free our mind of confusion, to waken all our positive qualities.
And the basic motivation for doing that is firstly so that when when we die we can ensure that we have a good rebirth. Of course by practicing the Buddha’s teachings now working with our mind now, life in this life will get hopefully more freer of suffering, more meaningful, but especially the main purpose is to practice to ensure that we’re going to get a good rebirth. More than that, we can practice, apply the teachings to our life, to our mind, not only to get a good rebirth but to develop the wish to be completely free of cyclic existence, to eliminate all causes of suffering from our mind. But the highest motivation we can possibly have is wishing to use the teachings to apply to our mind so that we can not only eliminate all causes of suffering and limitation and harm from our mind, but we can awaken all our positive qualities as well so that we are in a position to be of perfect benefit to all sentient beings. And the reason to want to be of perfect benefit to all sentient beings comes from understanding more and more deeply that we are interconnected directly and indirectly with every sentient being.
We always have been, we always will be, especially while we’re in cyclic existence. To free ourselves from cyclic existence, we also depend on the great kindness either directly or indirectly of all sentient beings. And the sad fact is all these beings who we really depend on, who show us so much kindness in so many ways life after life All these beings are trapped in cyclic existence, subject to all the sufferings of cyclic existence. And most of them experiencing far more suffering than ourselves right now. And with far less ability at the moment for all sorts of reasons to make sense of their suffering, to reduce it, modify it, transform it or eliminate it.
So thinking about these things, we can generate this wish to free our mind of all limitations, awaken all our positive qualities, achieve the enlightened state for the sake of all sentient beings. This is the very best motivation we can have. It’s the most compassionate, the most wise, the most all encompassing, most courageous, profound motivation. So to help us generate that motivation, we can try and have a sense of all sentient beings surrounding us right now, starting with our mother of this life on our left, our father on our right, the rest of our family, friends and helpers behind us, those who harm us in front, not to generate negative thoughts to them, but to realize that they are suffering like everyone else, want happiness like everyone else. So they deserve my compassion, not my my aversion.
And as much as possible, then we try and open our hearts and minds to an awareness and concern for all other beings. Thinking, in order to achieve no matter what, now that I’ve found this precious human rebirth, I must use it all my future lives to achieve enlightenment. And to achieve enlightenment I have to follow the path. To follow the path successfully then I have to understand the path and that’s why I’ll study this text which is particularly about the very essence of the path to enlightenment which is this great compassionate mind of bodhicitta. How to develop it, how to maintain it and increase it.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme assembly by the merits I create by teaching the Dharma. May I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So if you find it helpful, imagine the Buddha is very pleased with your motivation and shows this by now coming to the crown of your head. And when directly above your crown, imagine the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light so that that light can then pour down into you, blessing your mind. So then for a short time we can enhance that positive state of mind by doing some breathing meditation, such as, if you know how, the nine round breathing exercise to help develop a calmer, clearer, more concentrated mind so that we can use that mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight.
Okay. Thank you. So last Thursday we got to page eighty of the text of the mind training like the rays of the sun And in the root text, the seven point mind training, we’re we’re up to the section where it says, practice a combination of giving and taking. Giving and taking should be practiced alternately. So I think we did cover page eighty I’m not one hundred percent sure but just very quickly it says you might wonder what practical use love and compassion could be.
Well actually, the answer is they’re incredibly practical and useful. Great beings like the hearers, solitary realizers, and great bodhisattvas on the tenth stage possess boundless virtues enabling them to work for the benefit welfare of other beings. Meaning in other words that these beings arhats, the two kinds of arhats which are the hearer arhats and the solitary realizer arhats, they also possess love and compassion and so they benefit sentient beings but especially the bodhisattvas have developed love and compassion to the fullest extent. And so as a result of that they possess these boundless virtues that enable them to be able to work perfectly for the welfare of all beings. Nevertheless, only by attaining the state of enlightenment can they place innumerable beings in the state beyond suffering spontaneously and uninterruptedly until the end of cyclic existence.
So just sorry to bore you with technicalities again. When someone, a Bodhisattva, for the first time directly perceives emptiness, the nature of reality, that bodhisattva becomes an ārya being and they enter what are called the bodhisattva stages of which there are ten stages And during those stages the Bodhisattva progressively develops their merit and wisdom. Right? And the last stage before becoming a Buddha is the tenth stage. There are ten stages of an Ārya Bodhisattva.
So when you become an Ārya Bodhisattva, a first level Ārya Bodhisattva according to the teachings you are able at that point to manifest a hundred different bodies. While you are sitting at home in your bedroom or watching television or whatever, you can actually create with your mind a hundred different bodies that go out to benefit others. Each of those hundred bodies is then able to emanate another hundred bodies. So when you are a first level Aarya Bodhisattva you can manifest ten thousand different bodies which you can send out all over the place in different aspects as human beings, dogs, trees, whatever to benefit sentient beings. And when you become a second level bodhisattva you are able to manifest more bodies progressively.
But because even a tenth level bodhisattva their mind is still a little bit obscured they cannot be of perfect benefit to all sentient beings. So what the text is saying is only when you become a Buddha, which is beyond the tenth stage, only an enlightened being has this unrestricted ability to benefit all sentient beings. They can manifest infinite bodies. Just very quickly, the question arises if a Buddha has unrestricted ability to manifest infinite bodies to benefit all sentient beings and has this perfect wish to benefit all sentient beings. How come I’m suffering?
How come the Buddha hasn’t helped me? How come I’m still just an ordinary being? Where’s my help, Buddha? And the answer according to the teachings is that although the Buddhas have amazing psychic abilities, They can only do so much because from our side we are very obscured. So a Buddha could be standing here in front of us and we wouldn’t be able to see them because we don’t have the pure mind to see a Buddha.
So even though actually from a Buddhist point of view, there are Buddhas standing in front of us. The Buddha mind is everywhere doing things to benefit us, you know, sort of trying to, you know, tap on our shoulders saying wake up. But we don’t hear, we don’t see because we’re so obscured. As we purify our mind, are able to be influenced, affected by the Buddhas more and more. It’s an interesting thing to think about.
Yes, yes, yeah, because it’s opening, starting to open your mind to things. You’re asking, you’re sort of creating a channel in a sense whereby the Buddhas can influence our mind. But it’s like people, many people come along to hear Buddha’s teachings and some think they’re wonderful and some think they’re just ridiculous. It depends on our mind. If we decide Buddha’s teachings are ridiculous, they can’t benefit us.
No matter how amazing they are. If from our side we don’t have the karma to recognize incredible wisdom and compassion of the teachings. They can’t have any effect. It’s just like we have someone like His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, who is the closest thing maybe, a closer person to a Buddha on our planet. And some people feel that His Holiness is somebody very, very special, and other people think He’s nothing.
He’s just another person. He’s just some kind of famous person. Not a particularly nice person. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t like him. He’s you know, what did Rupert say?
He was the guy that goes around in the big shoes or something. The expensive shoes. Yeah. He’s supposed to be a spiritual person, but he wears expensive shoes. And then, of course, the Chinese government hate him.
I remember many, many years ago when I was first a monk here in Australia, there was an article in one of the Melbourne main Melbourne newspapers which made this report without any comment, you know, very seriously reported that according to the you know, which came from Chinese propaganda machine, Chinese government propaganda machine, is that every time the Dalai Lama read a sūtra, they sacrificed a baby. That was in a major Australian newspaper. So that was a fact that every time like, when his lived in in Tibet, every time he didn’t, by the way, just in case you thought that was what he actually did, that it was just reported as a fact that every time His Holiness opened a book and read it, a Dharma book, a Buddhist book, they would sacrifice a baby. Sorry? Yes, that’s what the Chinese government was saying the Tibetans did when His Holiness was in Tibet.
So this is kind of like impure view. Yeah, it really depends on the mind. So it’s difficult for His Holiness to be of much benefit to people who think like that. Yeah. So yeah.
Oh sorry, I didn’t finish reading that sentence actually. I’ll read it properly. Nevertheless, only by attaining the state of enlightenment can they place innumerable beings in the state beyond suffering spontaneously and uninterruptedly until the end of cyclic existence by emitting one ray of light or giving one session of discourse. In addition, it is only as a Buddha that you acquire perfection of your own personal fulfillment of abandonment and insight. Only when we ourselves achieve our full potential and become Buddhas that do do we perfect what we want, which means, you know, what we want is deep down whether we know it or what what not, is to be be totally free of all suffering and to achieve perfect, peerless, everlasting happiness.
So it’s only as a Buddha, not even an arhat, but as a Buddha, that one achieves that. Because even an arhat’s mind, even though they are free of suffering, their mind is still obscured to some extent. There’s no obscuration when we achieve enlightenment. Understanding this, you should train yourself thinking, I shall attain enlightenment to fulfill the aims of both myself and all sentient beings. So as I mentioned before, a common feature of all Tibetan texts is that they make you know, the author makes some points, argues a point and then to establish that that point that they’ve made, that they’ve argued is a valid point according to the Buddhist tradition, then they will quote Indian texts that are recognized as authentic texts in the tradition, either the sutras or the commentaries on the sutras by the great Indian masters.
So this is what the Tibetan author of this text whose name was Horton Namkha Pal. So he quotes from this sūtra called the Questions of Virudhaka to illustrate his point. So that sūtra says: If the merit of generating the awakening mind or bodhicitta were to take physical form, it would fill the whole of space and still exceed that. Were someone to fill the Buddha fields with the most precious jewels, numerous sand grains in the Ganges and offered them to the protector of the world, meaning the Buddha, and were someone else simply to fold his hands out of respect for the awakening mind, out of respect for bodhicitta, this latter act would be the superior offering and its merit would be boundless. So even if we put our hands together in respect for the idea of bodhicitta, bodhicitta being that perfect, pure determination to achieve enlightenment, so even if one pays respect to that mind sincerely, it creates enormous merit.
So therefore someone who actually generates bodhicitta accumulates infinitely more merit, more positive potential in their mind. Another text, the Compendium of Training, says: The aspiration for the awakening mind is the resolution to become enlightened. So this mind is attained by wishing for it. So in other words, enlightenment is achieved by developing bodhicitta, which is the wish to achieve enlightenment and bodhicitta is developed by wishing to develop bodhicitta. So first, how do we develop?
So we have to develop this wish. Right. At our level, we are not at the stage where we can actually generate bodhicitta, to be honest, but we can develop the wish to generate bodhicitta. And that comes from understanding how wonderful the mind of bodhicitta is, how beneficial it is, and how also how fortunate we are to know about it and to be in the position to do something about it because we have the precious human rebirth. So as I have tried to say in previous classes, order to achieve something, firstly, we have to admire it.
We have to have and the more we admire something, we will want to have that thing or that that quality ourselves. So the more we admire what bodhicitta is, how wonderful it is that it is the most perfect mind conceivable, then also if we develop some belief that it’s not just a nice idea but bodhicitta, that mind of bodhicitta is a reality, that it is possible to develop this mind that is utterly committed to achieving enlightenment for the sake of others. So the more we admire that mind by thinking about it, studying it more and more, so through such texts as this, then we will start developing the wish to develop bodhicitta. And the more we have the wish, we will start doing the things that lead to developing bodhicitta. So this is what we can do in this life train our mind into wishing to develop bodhicitta, trying to lay the causes for developing bodhicitta in this life while we have the chance.
And this will make this life as meaningful as possible. This is one of the essential meanings of having a human birth rebirth where we have a basically healthy body and mind, we have met the Buddha’s teachings, we have some faith in them and we recognize that we’ve got all the basic conditions to practice the Dharma. Because most people in this world don’t have that situation. Another feature of Tibetan texts is that they have many subdivisions. They break up the text into many compartments and then each compartment section is then further divided into many sections.
So the rest of the text is now divided into these which are instructions concerning the five precepts or factors that are factors of training the mind in the in the in the wish, the resolution to become enlightened. So the factors in the training the mind in developing bodhicitta. So there are five factors in help us to develop the wish to become enlightened. One factor is knowing how to transform adverse circumstances into the path to enlightenment. Because if we don’t know how to deal with adverse circumstances, problems, difficulties, sufferings as we are trying to follow the spiritual path, we will just get overwhelmed and give up.
So we won’t be able to develop because bodhicitta, the wish to achieve enlightenment, if you think about it, is immensely courageous mind. It is the most courageous mind possible. Because it’s the mind determined to achieve the most amazing thing possible, which is enlightenment, which is not easy to do. So if we want to get to that point, we have to develop a mind that doesn’t give in to problems and get overwhelmed by them. We have to develop a mind that is able to use problems in a positive way.
Because yeah. Yeah. So in Tibetan, this training the mind in transforming problems into the path, the Tibetan term for that is Lojong which simply means mind training. All of Buddhist teachings are mind training. They’re training the mind to think and feel in a positive way to perceive ourselves and all of reality in a more realistic, insightful way.
So all of Buddhism is mind training. But here in the context of bodhicitta Lojong mind training means training the mind in actually Lojong here has a bit of a broader meaning. It means training the mind in developing bodhicitta. And very specifically training the mind to be able to overcome, transform problems so that they help us in developing bodhicitta and increasing our bodhicitta rather than becoming obstacles to developing it. So this is one of the five factors that we have to train ourselves in.
The second one is an integrated practice of a single lifetime. So we’ll go into these in details later on. Then there is the measure of having trained the mind in other words there’s these guidelines that we can use to check whether we really have been successful or to what extent we’ve been successful in training our mind in bodhicitta. Then there are the commitments of mind training and things that we need to do in our daily life to keep on the Bodhisattva path and then there’s some advice. So these are the rest of this text or most of the text is going to talk about these five things.
So the first one is Transforming adverse circumstances into the path. So this subject is something that is extremely useful and practical in ordinary life whether one is trying to follow a spiritual path or not. But of course it’s particularly taught in the context of someone trying to follow the spiritual path and especially trying to generate bodhicitta. So, this section has two parts a brief and an elaborate explanation. So, the text itself meaning the seven point Mind Training Actually for some reason it skipped this commentary has skipped a whole lot of lines Oh no, we have covered all of that.
Yeah. So it says in root text, the seven point mind training, When the environment and its inhabitants overflow with unwholesomeness, transform adverse circumstances into the path to enlightenment. So according to Buddhist understanding, when the Buddha appeared in the world as a Buddha manifested achieving enlightenment and then taught for what was it something like fifty years that happened because there were enough human beings on the earth who had the karma to understand the Buddha’s teachings and actually to practice them, at least to practice the path to nirvana, to achieving freedom from Samsāra. It is believed that that was the when the Buddha was alive, was the optimum situation to be able to practice the Buddha’s teachings. The teachings were perfect.
The teachings at that time were completely pure because they came directly from the Buddha. You could hear them from the Buddha if you had the good fortune to actually meet the Buddha. And also then his direct disciples who were arhats. So those beings were completely pure beings teaching the Dharma perfectly. Right?
So that was the absolute optimum time to practice the Buddhadharma. Things have got progressively worse ever since. In the teachings it says that every five hundred years a certain aspect of the Dharma sort of degenerates and it becomes difficult in general. Of course for any particular person, any particular person may be able to achieve enlightenment at any time. But in general with time things get more degenerate, more difficult.
And they talk about the Kali Yuga which is the time of the five degenerations. What the five degenerations are the degeneration of time meaning when just things in the world are much more difficult than in the past. So, for example, you have things like global warming and pollution this kind of thing as a result of the degeneration of the time and then you have a degeneration of the lifespan So this part is a bit difficult to work out how it fits in. But according to the teachings, as the times become more and more degenerate, the lifespan of human beings is getting shorter and shorter. But actually, from a scientific point of view, the lifespan of human beings is getting longer, at least in the the first world.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry? Attention span mate, it’s definitely getting shorter.
Here with the lifespan But actually, one of the old students in the Hayagrīva Centre made this point that actually, that maybe the Buddha’s teachings on this point is completely true because if you take into consideration how many beings who are conceived don’t get born because of abortions, then if you took average that out, the lifespan of human beings is getting smaller and smaller, shorter and shorter. That’s one way of looking at it. Oh, yeah, we could wait one and see what’s happening. Well, actually, think they are predicting now that the next generation of kids will be the first ones who have a shorter lifespan the West than their parents. That was just mentioned fairly recently because of things with obesity and whatever, the incredible terrible food we eAt this stage which is full of all sorts of chemical stuff, which is an example of the degeneration of the times where the food we eat is nothing like what it was in the past.
Totally plastic. So then there is the generation of views so that people have much more materialistic views. The spiritual views in the degenerate times fade away. People have less and less respect for spiritual and belief and that’s certainly happening in our society. I mean there’s a little blimp in, you know, example, the people becoming interested in Buddhism but in general the people interested in following spiritual traditions of any kind are less and less.
All of the spiritual traditions are generally in decline and materialistic views and worse are increasing. And then also another sign of the degenerate times is that the human beings who get reborn on this planet, their delusions become heavier and heavier. They still have the karma to be reborn human, but people have so much more attachment, more anger, more jealousy. The mind is much harder to control. And what’s the next one?
The degeneration of sentient beings in general. So we get smaller and smaller physically. They predict. It it says when when Maitreya Buddha no. What happens?
Yes. When Maitreya Buddha appears in the world, which will be, you know, in millions and millions of years time, he’s the next Buddha to come. At that time the people in the world will only live to be about eight years old. The whole lifespan will you die when you’re about eight. You will have gone through the whole gamut of puberty and everything and then die, become very old when you’re eight, and people will be extremely small, extremely ugly, very angry, full of attachment, really nasty, horrible, little sentient beings.
And then the Buddha the Buddha, Maitreya, will appear in the world, this incredibly beautiful being, and all these ugly sentient beings full of hatred and aversion and anger and jealousy will look at this incredibly beautiful being and think, how did this being get to be like that? And then the Buddha will explain that if you want to look like me, then you have to practice virtue. You have to be kind. You have to be compassionate. You have to be generous.
And then so people will start to practice virtue once again. So anyway, there’s many signs that we are in the degenerate times now with people, people’s views and the environment and so on. It says in the degenerate times there will be many new diseases appear in the world which are extremely difficult to cure. So that’s written down in the sutras. Two and a half thousand years ago it mentions that.
So that kind of thing is happening now. So, as a result, our environment is filled with the circumstantial results of the ten unwholesome actions, and the sentient beings who inhabit it think of nothing but disturbing emotions and do nothing but unwholesome deeds. Well, that’s a little bit exaggerated. We don’t only do negative things, but this is becoming more and more dominant. For those who have studied the Buddha’s teachings here, especially the law of cause and effect about karma.
You can remember that if we engage in the negative action of body, speech and mind with all the four determining factors present strongly, we create what is called a ‘throwing karma’. And a throwing karma is the type of karma that ripens at the time of death and can throw us, the mind, into its next rebirth. It determines the kind of rebirth we will have. So when we engage in negative actions, the negative throwing karmas have four results. One is the rebirth in a lower realm, a non human suffering realm.
But when that karma finishes, there are three other effects of that one action to still be experienced when one is reborn in the human realm. And one of those results is the environmental result. Right? For every throwing karma we create, one of the karmic results is the environment we are born into. So for example, if one is experiencing the karmic result of killing the environmental karmic result of killing the environment of that is to be born in a place where there is incredible violence and a lot of disease and plagues and where even things like the food you eat has very little nourishment and even the medicine available in that place doesn’t work very well.
So every kind of negative action one has, has a karmic result that influences the environment we are born into. As I think I mentioned last week or sometime before, the Buddhist view is the world we live in is the karmic result of the actions of all sentient beings. So being born on this human earth is generally the result of the good actions of sentient beings. But on this earth there are many, many different kinds of environments one can be born into. In general, we could say Australia is a really to be born in Australia is a really good karmic result because it’s a very peaceful generally speaking, if we look around the world, it’s a very, you know, it’s got lots of resources.
It’s a very peaceful place. It’s a very protected place, etc, etc. But even in this country there are also horrible environments that one can experience. Either, you know, that that go on for a long time or just temporarily. So these are all karmic things.
Nothing happens without a cause. Sorry, this is getting a long story. But that’s what it’s talking about. So our world now is really degenerating. I mean, some people are denying this, but I think it’s well, some people find it easy to deny.
I don’t know how, but things are getting worse. The climate is warming up. That’s not going to go away. And it’s apparently happening faster and faster than predicted. They just say in the news, in the last days that the ice in the Pole, South North Pole is melting faster, even far faster than they predicted.
Many things are happening like that. And there’s so many things we’re doing which we have no idea what the full results will be. How we’re messing up the environment with doing so many things. Modifying food things and all sorts of stuff. Yeah.
You think of all the all the chemicals we use which go back in the soil and what happens to that in the future. We just no idea. But anyway, we are messing we seem to be messing up this planet. Yeah. So what was a very beautiful place is getting there’s still a lot of beauty on this planet, beautiful places, healthy places, this and that.
But a lot of them a lot of it is being more and more quickly degenerated. And that’s our karma to live in that situation. And there’s physical environment but also like the what can you say? There’s an economic environment, social environment. So we we live in a world, all of us now, where there are terrorists who just blow up people.
Anybody, including their own people, you know, people who from their own religion, but they don’t care. They just blow anyone up. So that’s our karma. To live in such a world, such an environment, such a political, social, economic environment which didn’t exist before. And once that starts, you know, it’s very difficult to stop.
More and more people use that as a method to try to gain their political goals. It’s happening in more and more countries. And hard to imagine that it will be here, but probably one day someone will think the best way to change the government is to wrap a few bombs around oneself and blow up some people. And then it’ll start here. Maybe.
But anyway sorry. So our environment the environment is always the result of the actions of people and as the environment gets worse it’s showing that this is the circumstantial results of the ten unwholesome actions. And then we have, like I said, sentient beings who are so deluded that they kill indiscriminately. And people who get so angry so quickly, you know, we have road rage and things. And, yeah, and people out totally out of their minds on drugs like ice and whatever who who would just do anything because they’re they’re just they’re just really insane.
Yeah? So when things are like that, when things are really difficult, we need a method to deal with it. For these reasons, the gods, nagas and hungry spirits who favor such black actions are invigorated and increase in their power and strength. Lots of magical things tonight. But from the Buddhist view, you know, there are these sentient beings in the other realms and there are some sentient beings like human beings.
There are some human beings, you know, who are extremely virtuous, extremely kind, good people. There are human beings who are really, really vicious people, Extremely negative. Who have a lot of hate, jealousy, have no very little ability to empathize with the feelings of other people. So are willing to do the most brutal things. I don’t know if you hear or read much about what goes on with the drug groups in Mexico and South America.
This is truly, truly horrific what the level that they have got to, the absolute brutality of some of these drug groups and what they do just to make money, just to sell their drugs is just unbelievable. So yeah. And then there are human beings who are just, you know, okay. You know? You know?
Just that. So, you know, also in the God realms and the Nagas and the spirit realms, there are good ones, bad ones and indifferent ones. And when human beings act badly, it attracts these negative forces, these negative beings. And when people act well, the good ones, the gods of the white side, the spirits of the white side, and the nagas of the good side, they are attracted. Yeah.
Just to get too spacy a little bit more magical. In a place like this, which is dedicated to something really good, which we try to dedicate we’re just ordinary beings, but we’re trying to dedicate this place to the most wonderful thing, which is the Buddhadharma and and so on. And there’s holy images here, and holy beings have been here, and the Buddhadharma is being practiced and taught here. This tends to attract the good people, the good beings. They they may be here.
Really. That’s why when people come to places like this, they often feel some good, good vibes. That’s because some good beings are hanging around. I believe that. I really do believe that.
That’s what the Lamas say anyway. Especially in monasteries where there many monks living a pure life, dedicating their life. They are living a life of pure morality dedicated to the dharma. Definitely in places like that, these holy you know, these beings come. And then there are other places I think maybe you’ve had this experience.
You can go to places that feel really good. They feel something really good, and you can go to places that creep you out. They are really you know? Because something’s there. I could tell you a few stories, but that will get start to get too long.
As a result, spiritual practice practitioners in general are troubled by many interferences, and those who have entered the door of the great vehicle are beset by various adverse factors. Now as I’ve said before, in the teachings it says that if someone is practicing the Dharma really well and therefore is in a position potentially to be of great benefit to others, this can attract a lot of obstacles from the negative side because they don’t want these good guys to win. And that’s illustrated in the life story of the Buddha where just before he achieved enlightenment he was attacked by the the Maras of various kinds. And they say that that’s what happens to practitioners that someone who’s maybe just about to gain a realization, some really beneficial realization of something, they can lose that by being strongly influenced by some kind of negative influence. So for this reason this is also why we do, you know, at the beginning that prayer of of the lion-faced dakini to develop dispel obstacles because, yeah, as I’ve said some time ago, it’s extremely easy to do destructive things.
When you when you want to do something harmful to others, it’s very, very easy to be negative and destructive, and all the factors come together very easily. If you want to do something really beneficial, it’s really difficult. Alright. So that’s why reciting these prayers to get rid of obstacles when we’re doing something beneficial is done. So under such circumstances, if you engage in this kind of practice and are able to transform hostile influences into conducive factors to see opponents as supporters and harmful elements as spiritual friends, you will be able to use adverse conditions as supporting factors in the achievement of enlightenment.
So that’s the advice but it actually doesn’t tell you how to do that in the text. So I’ll tell you how to transform adverse circumstances into the path. Actually, the technique of course is very very simple. The only problem is it’s difficult to do. Like most things in the Buddhadharma, most things in the Buddhadharma, the techniques are actually very simple.
The only problem is they’re difficult to do. But why are they difficult to do? Because we are not familiar with them. That’s all. But through the power of familiarity things become easier and easier.
Quickly in a nutshell, how one transforms problems into the path is by looking at them in a different way. What we as looking at problems, difficulties, suffering in a different way, experiencing them in a different way, step by step. So what happens for us as ordinary people, especially controlled by the self-cherishing thought, when we experience a problem of any kind, difficulty, suffering, we see it as bad, and we see it as a hundred percent bad, something to be a hundred percent rejected. And everyone would say, well of course that’s how you would see it. Because it’s bad.
It’s suffering. And the Buddha says, you know, everyone wants to be free of suffering. But the problem is, by seeing in that way, it makes it worse. And in wanting to get rid of suffering, having seen suffering as a hundred percent bad, that creates the space, the situation where because of our self-cherishing thought, are willing to do anything to get rid of that suffering. And therefore, that leads us to engage in unskillful, negative actions of getting angry, lying, stealing, this and that to make the suffering, the problem go away.
So, of course, the Buddhist teachings are all about getting rid of suffering. But in order to get rid of suffering, we have to get actually rid of the causes. Right? So to do that, what we have to do sorry is in order to eventually get rid of suffering which means get rid of the causes of suffering firstly we have to learn how to bear suffering, to put up with it, so that we don’t create the causes for more suffering. Right?
My teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, once said he asked the question, What is the difference between ourselves as ordinary beings and bodhisattvas? And the difference is that we, as ordinary beings, we are really we can’t bear suffering. We are really afraid of suffering. We can’t bear it, but we are very courageous in a stupid way in creating the causes of it. We have no fear about creating the causes of suffering.
Whereas a bodhisattva is able to bear suffering but has great fear of creating the causes of it. That is very interesting to think about. So our problem is we don’t fear creating the causes of suffering. We fear suffering and therefore can’t bear it. And what makes it worse is because we have this mindset fearing suffering, as soon as we start to experience it, we label it as only, only bad, and that makes it worse and more unbearable.
So, this the the what one has to try to do to to change that whole situation is the simple technique of trying to find what even just one aspect of a problem or a suffering or an obstacle which has a good aspect to it. One good aspect to a problem. And then the skill is to focus on that. Because if we focus on, you know, if we say, you know, this thing is a problem because of this, because of that, because of that, because of this, because of that, that, that, that. You know, just make a huge many problems in our mind.
And the nature of the mind is that by focusing on one thing we experience it more and more. We feel it more and more. So if we focus on the bad, we experience the bad. We feel the bad more and more. So what we have to try and do is find a at least one positive aspect to a problem and focus on that positive aspect.
Because by focusing on that, that positive aspect will well, we are not able to focus on the other negative aspects so much, and therefore they won’t overwhelm the mind so much. So that’s the actual technique which is yeah which in one sense is not difficult but it’s difficult to do. The technique is simple but is difficult to do because we’re not familiar with it and many people hearing this would say, That’s ridiculous because problems are bad. They’re only bad. But that is the problem thinking like that.
Yeah? And one of the reasons why we need to develop this mind training to see some benefits of problems is that you know, our solution, our idea is that when a problem is there, the only solution is for it to go away. Right? That’s the only solution. It’s got to go away.
But the Buddhist solution but the point is, if we understand the teachings on saṃsāra, if we understand that saṃsāra is our mind controlled by delusion and karma, while we’re in saṃsāra, problems are always going to come. You get rid of one, you make one go away, and sooner or later another one will come. Sorry to say, but that’s the truth, right? That’s what the Buddha Dharma is all about: looking at what is true. Sorry, this may sound very grim, but just to make the point: one has a life threatening disease Terrible, terrible disease.
And then you are cured. Oh, fantastic! But we are still going to die. We will get another disease, or we get run over by a bus the next day. We just get cured from this incurable disease, and the next day we run over.
Or we get shot. So, what is much better and also like here in the centre we pray for people who are sick and we pray for them to get better or that people have a problem, we pray the problem goes away. But it’s actually much better not to pray that way but to pray that the person can bear the sickness, bear the problem. Because that the ability to develop a mind that can bear suffering is much better. Because suffering is always going to come to us while we are in Samsāra.
So the ability to be able to use that suffering, not be overwhelmed by it, to benefit from it. Because there are many stories of people just ordinary people, not necessarily religious people at all. Well, there are people when they experience suffering who get overwhelmed by it. And that’s completely understandable. They’re totally destroyed by their suffering, by their problems.
There are other people who have terrible, terrible problems but somehow they something enables them to grow from that suffering. They do suffer. You know, it wasn’t fun, but they managed not to be destroyed by it, but actually they grow from it. So which one do we want to be? So this is a crucial time to stop, but we have to just maybe just briefly so rather than trying to make our problems go away, we have to learn to develop the mind that can bear them.
Yeah? Not to torture ourselves, but to make our mind more strong, more compassionate, so that if we learn to be able to bear one little problem, that gives us the familiarity to then deal with another problem that’s a little bit bigger, then another one that’s a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger. Of course we can’t start with huge problems, we have to accept we have our limitations. But we can train our mind step by step. And the thing that in the technique of finding a one even just one positive aspect to the problem, one has to be sincere about that.
One can’t pretend this is beneficial. One has to recognize oneself, oh, that this aspect of this problem is really good for me, is really beneficial for me. And people have discovered that usually in hindsight, but here the teaching says to discover that from the beginning, not afterwards, but from the beginning to try and see the benefit. If I I’m not sure I may have mentioned this story before. Remember all the details now.
But some years ago, when I was teaching in Perth, one of the students there she is a counselor of some kind I’ve never worked out what kind But anyway this man came to see her and he explained that he was having a lot of problems with a huge anger he’d developed because he was married, he was just a young know, youngish guy, just an ordinary bloke. He wasn’t religious of any kind, just an ordinary person, not particularly educated, just an ordinary worker and he had three children and his third child I can’t remember all the details but anyway, was born horribly deformed. And actually, I can’t remember properly, but the doctors didn’t expect the child to live, but they asked permission from the parents to do certain kind of medical procedures that they wanted to experiment with but they kind of knew that they wouldn’t be of much benefit but they just wanted to do it. So anyway, the parents, including him, agreed. And as a result, the child lived.
But this child cannot do I mean, it’s a sorry to use gross expression, but it is a complete vegetable that requires a hundred percent attention. So he came and he’s just really angry about that. Just completely angry that his whole life is now having to deal with this child who could have been allowed to die naturally. Would have been something like that. So this is like a really, really horrible situation to have to face.
Right? So this woman said, Oh, I didn’t know what to, say to him. So I said, why don’t you say you know, tell him about my don’t talk in Buddhist way, but about mind training, and ask him to go home and see if he can think if there was even the slightest good thing that has happened as a result of this baby being born. So he he she tried that, and he went home and came back the next week with a list. Not one thing.
He came back with a list of things, including the fact that he and his wife were you know, he brought he and his wife together much, much more. The kids were completely sweet with this little baby because it was so helpless. So the whole family was actually very united around taking care of this child. And he hadn’t quite realized that because he was so caught up in feeling a victim of that situation that he hadn’t been able to appreciate that. And he said that they’d met all these other parents in similar situations and how amazing these people were That he would never have met these amazing people if it hadn’t been for this So these are some of the things I remember that he made.
Yeah? So his attitude started the problem didn’t go away. It was still, you know, as you can imagine, a very difficult situation. But he had developed, started to develop a way of a different way of looking at it. So this is not just what holy beings do, Tibetan holy beings or Indian holy beings.
These are ordinary people. Just before you have a good tea, you know, I’ll run out. Many, many years ago, I read this story, which I’ve told many times just very briefly, about this young girl, a university student in America who went during the apartheid period, to South Africa. She was against apartheid so she went and she was taken by some black friends to one of the slum you know, horrible slum areas in South Africa. But all these other young black guys saw this white woman, and they went ballistic.
And as she she was in a car, they attacked the car, and they they killed her. She was killed. So these these four or five young blokes were arrested, and they were tried, and they were sent to jail for killing this girl. And the parents, of course, were absolutely distraught. They came to, South Africa.
And, anyway, they eventually met these young blokes in jail. And because of having gone to South South Africa and seen the situation there, they started to realize how appalling the life of the black people under apartheid in South Africa was. And they started to understand why these young men had done this, and they decided to help them in jail and look after them and afterwards because this couple were quite wealthy people. The husband eventually died, but the mother is still doing this work. So, yeah, instead of hating these guys and wanting them to be murdered and hum and everything, she’s dedicated her life to helping them and other people like them and has transformed her life.
Just another, know, more or less, ordinary person doing something, thinking in an extraordinary way. Another story, just briefly, along similar lines, after what is it? 9/11? After the Twin Towers were bombed and everything? One of the women whose husband had died in that Twin Towers thing ended up joining a group of Muslim women in some kind of conflict resolution type of meeting or group of meetings.
This woman whose husband who she loved had been killed in the bombing got all these phone calls from women saying how disgusting, you know, how can you have lost your husband mixed with these Muslim women and be okay with it? You should hate all Muslims, you know, blah blah blah. They hadn’t been affected by the bombing directly but they were the ones all angry. She who had lost her husband, she was trying to be positive. Was being positive.
Isn’t it amazing? It all depends on our mind. And these are ordinary people, yeah? Well actually they’re kind of extraordinary people but not people with any spiritual backgrounds and lots of training in this or that. Just modern people, ordinary people, you know, who’ve had horrible things happen in their life.
But instead of being destroyed by them, they have really grown as a result. That’s mind training. So one has to find some good aspect and focus on that. Not pretend there’s a good aspect, but find a good aspect and focus on it. Hold that.
And the one good aspect of all problems there are many good aspects from a Dharma point of view but one good aspect of all problems suffering difficulties is an opportunity to practice patience. And patience is such a wonderful quality. But it’s also a chance to be to develop compassion because the more we suffer, the more we can empathize with the suffering of others. You’re all suffering from a lack of tea, so when tea break. Time, lifespan, view, delusions, and sentient beings.
Okay. So in in the teachings on mind training it it goes through many many benefits that one can see from problems from a Dharma point of view. I won’t go through all of that now, but just two of the most obvious ones are the development of compassion and patience. Also pride, When we have problems and suffering it humbles us, it forces us to ask for help for other people. So reducing our pride is a very good thing.
And because pride is a great obstacle in the spiritual path, prevents us learning. So many, many if we think from a Dharma point of view rather than from the self-cherishing point of view, we can start to see that experiencing sufferings difficulties does have problems that can help us mature and and become stronger, more courageous, more patient, and so on. And those qualities are really helpful in the spiritual path. But as I said, the key thing is that we have to really, from our own side, feel that despite something being very difficult and painful to bear, there is some value in it, some meaning. Because if we can’t see that, it’s not going to work.
But if we can see that something there is a good aspect, a beneficial aspect to a problem, it makes that problem, that difficulty meaningful. And if it’s meaningful, it becomes bearable. If it’s not meaningful, it’s just if it’s just purely if we think experience things purely as suffering, meaningless suffering, then that is really unbearable. So the text goes on to say: In this context, Geshe Chengawa said to Geshe Sharawa, it is amazing that your disciples of mind training take support from adverse factors and experience sufferings as happiness. So if someone is able to practice mind training, this is what happens.
They’re able to take support from adverse factors rather than those adverse factors undermining them. It becomes a support and people are actually able to experience suffering as happiness in the sense that it’s happiness because it’s meaningful. It’s something that one can spiritually grow from. And in this context, Although this ability to transform as I was trying to say, just ordinary people without any spiritual beliefs are able to do this. In Buddhism, it kind of identifies the technique and gives many indications of positive aspects to suffering that help us apply the technique.
But it isn’t a uniquely Buddhist thing. I think it seems that all really great spiritual practitioners of the different spiritual traditions had this ability to be able to use problems in their own spiritual path. That’s why they became such great beings because they were they weren’t undermined by suffering but grew from it. That s why they became great beings unlike ourselves who haven t become great beings because usually suffering gets to us. So in this context there s a favorite quote I came across many years ago from a a famous German mystic of the Middle Ages called Meister Eckhart which some of you may have heard.
He wrote a little book called something or other. It was translated into English. Anyway, in there he says, and this is this is, you know, from a Christian mystic of the Middle Ages, but this is classic Buddhist thinking, mind training, lojong thinking. He says, there is a marvelous comfort to be had when adversity serves as well as fortune. Then pain is like pleasure.
So the aim of mind training is not to get rid of problems, but to transform them. And you don’t actually transform the problem, you transform the mind perceiving the problem. The problem’s still there, but the mind no longer sees it as a problem but as something beneficial. It may still be painful, unfortunately, but that pain becomes bearable because it’s meaningful. So the elaborate explanation of transforming adverse circumstances into the path has two parts.
Taking adverse taking adverse circumstances into the path of enlightenment by firstly relying on the special thought of an awakening mind, and the second way is by relying on the excellent practices of accumulation and purification. So in taking adverse circumstances into the path by relying on the special thought of the awakening mind, which is bodhicitta, the wish to achieve enlightenment, the text says so the root text, the seven point mind training text says, Apply meditation immediately at every opportunity. So what this is meaning really is that every opportunity whenever suffering, difficulties, problems arise, take that opportunity to immediately, transform the mind by meditating on the benefits. You know, being mindful to think about here is a chance to not follow the self-cherishing thought that sees problems only as bad, but to meditate on the positive aspects, the beneficial aspects. And particularly, we should take lightly every mental or physical difficulty that befalls us, be it great, moderate, or slight, whatever the circumstances, in happy times or hard times, whether we are at home or in a foreign country, in a village or a monastery, in the company of human or nonhuman friends.
So whatever this time and place, the situation, One point that is made is that one of the reasons why many people who meet the Dharma, who have faith in it, never get anywhere in their practice is because listening to our self-cherishing thought, we always wait for the good time to practice when it’s easy, when I’m not too tired, when I’ve got enough money, when the temperature is rising. It’s too hot to practice today. It’s too cold to practice today. I’m too tired today. I’m too sick today.
I’m too happy today to practice. I’m too busy today. I’m too bored today. Yeah. It’s too noisy today.
It’s, you know, it’s this, you know, self-cherishing says, it’s there’s always it’s always too something. So we we got we’re gonna wait when all the conditions are just like Goldilocks, just right. And the point is that time will never come. But the point is it has come because this is the perfect time to practice now. So even if it’s noisy this or that I should say that because I hate noise it drives me nuts.
Really can’t stand noise. It really upsets me. But that’s not a reason not to practice. We have to transform that, see that as an opportunity because there will never be a better time. In fact things could get worse if the degenerating times supposedly get worse and worse.
So we have to practice now. So we should take everything lightly. So one way to take everything lightly is or to try and take things lightly is to remember everything’s impermanent. Everything changes, and to take it lightly by, learning to understand more and more how everything really does depend on our mind. And, you know, we can change our mind.
You know? We have a problem, and we tell ourselves, this is a problem. This is a bad problem. It’s horrible. It’s suffering.
And we keep repeating that in our mind. And the more we say that, the more we think it, we make the problem a problem. We continue it as a problem. So it’s not enough just to change the words and say it’s not a problem. Because even though we may say and pretend, oh, this is not a problem, but we actually feel it is, then this is not changing the mind.
What we need to try to do is change the mind that thinks, feels that this is a real problem. And we we we all of us here have some ability to do that, to change our mind, to stop grasping that things are really like this. They are really bad. You know, we we need to try and train to catching the mind that is doing that, that, you know, that has decided this is really bad and I can’t bear it. Because part of the problem, you know, what or in transforming the mind, what we have to do is transform the concept of our self, of I can’t bear it.
I’m not capable. I am this permanent incapable person. But we’re not a permanently incapable person. As soon as we try to do something, we’re starting to make ourselves a capable person. It doesn’t mean we’ve become super capable straight away, but just merely by trying, we’re going in that direction.
As soon as we change the causes as soon as we change the conditions, things change because everything arises depending on causes and conditions. If we change that even a little bit, the thing that has arisen dependently changes. For example, and maybe it’s not a very good example but the only thing that popped into my mind is that if we had some ability to have one of those dimmers on the lights look, see, isn’t that bright pink? See that bright pink? If we dim the lights, it wouldn’t be as bright pink anymore.
If you change the conditions, the brightness of that depends on the light to some extent. So if you change that, this can’t maintain that same brightness to our experience Because it depends. This thing isn’t truly existing from its own side. It’s everything arises depending on many causes and conditions. If we change them, the thing changes.
It’s not separate, independent. So if we understand that more and more, we can start to take everything lightly. Did I make any sense? Did that make any sense? Oh, good.
I can go home now. I actually have to. It’s time. It’s time to go home. Yeah.
We’ll just finish this paragraph and then there will be time. It goes on to say, We should think of the many kinds of sentient beings in the boundless universe afflicted with similar troubles and make prayers that our sufferings may serve as a substitute for theirs, and that they may be parted from all misery. So this is one way to transform problems is that in developing and seeing it as a way to develop compassion because when we face a problem, difficulty, due to our self-cherishing, we tend to enter into this little bubble where there’s just me and my problem and this problem. No one else has ever had to experience this problem, and this problem is the worst problem in the world. But actually, having that problem can act as a condition to remind us that, in fact, right now throughout the world, thousands, millions of people are experiencing this same situation or similar situation.
Many of them perhaps experiencing it in a far worse way than myself. So thinking like that, it enables us to develop compassion and we can increase that compassion by imagining that this suffering I’m experiencing hasn’t arisen just, because of the ripening of my negative karma, but I we can make it meaningful by imagining that we have taken this suffering. We’re experiencing this suffering so others don’t have to experience that kind of suffering, that kind of problem, that difficulty. So this is going back to the practice of Tonglen giving and taking that we were talking about last week. So considering how wonderful it is to have fulfilled the purpose of our practice of compassion by taking on the suffering of others, we should sincerely rejoice.
So compassion is the mind not wanting self and others to experience suffering. It arises from feeling suffering and then not wanting others to have that suffering, not wanting them to have the causes of suffering. So when we we have a problem and are experiencing suffering, one way of thinking in relation to, you know, this Tonglen practice of imagining that we have taken on the suffering from others is to think, oh, the fact that I’m suffering means my Tonglen practice of taking on the suffering of others has really worked because I’m suffering. I’ve copped it. So this is terrific!
It’s very easy for me to say this, I can’t do this practice but at least I can repeat the words. Right. But you have Yeah. But somehow we have to try to imagine that we can get into character. You know?
That’s the thing. Yeah. Yeah. But But it’s still trying it’s it’s really trying to, you know, in every as Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, you know, one way of thinking brings every kind of happiness. One way of thinking brings every kind of suffering.
So when we are thinking in a way that we start to recognize due to our dharma understanding, this is bringing me suffering such as I have a problem and my self-cherishing is saying, poor me, poor me. I can’t bear this. I don’t deserve this. Blah blah blah blah blah, we have to try and counter it with thought transformation. Thinking how wonderful I’ve got this suffering.
It’s very meaningful. It helps me become more compassionate, more brave, more patient, more humble. And another way is to think, actually this is great that I’ve actually taken this suffering on others. You don’t focus on knowing deep down that you can’t do that in reality, which is true. You can’t.
But you don’t focus on that thought. You just focus on the thought that it’s like this. You have to concentrate on that in a sincere way as much as possible. I mean, this is also in the true in tantra. In tantra, you imagine you become a Buddha, but you’re not.
But you have to imagine it very sincerely. But there’s reasons to do it. There’s a basis for doing it. And on that basis, you try to you have to have you know, it it depends on having a you know, the more concentrated the mind is, the more it’ll work. It’s trying to sort of be like an actor or an actress where you you go into the role.
You don’t think you’re an actor acting. You’re just into the role. Thank you very much. Continue next week. So we can dedicate the the merit, the positive imprints from tonight.
May these become a cause for us to be able to practice mind training, generate bodhicitta so that we can quickly achieve enlightenment. So the dedication prayers start on page eight. 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 Bodhi mind, 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 holiness, the Dalai Lama, the master Padmasambhava, the Dharma king Songtsen Gampo and Trisong Detsen, the abbot Shanta Rakshita, 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 son 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 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 mother transmigratory beings achieve enlightenment quickly. Savior of the snow land teachings and transmigratory beings who makes extremely clear the path that is 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 subdueers’ 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. Oh, Lama, please, please live long.