Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 68-minute teaching, Ven Thubten Dondrub guides practitioners through mind training, focusing on the practical precepts and advice for cultivating bodhicitta, the awakening mind that seeks enlightenment for all beings. He opens with the precept of putting on mental armor—a determination never to abandon bodhicitta no matter what difficulties arise—then covers distinguishing genuine compassion from misplaced compassion (pitying those who renounce worldly life to practice), avoiding wrong motivation in seeking enlightenment, and practices that undermine bodhicitta like worldly accumulation and self-centeredness. He walks through cultivating admiration for the Buddha and bodhisattvas’ virtue, patience in spiritual practice, and consistency in effort—advising practitioners to build gradually rather than burn out with initial intensity. Throughout, he emphasizes that self-cherishing is the root obstacle to bodhicitta and that continuous, humble practice (without expecting gratitude or worldly reward) gradually transforms the mind. The teaching concludes before moving to the more advanced topic of ultimate bodhicitta and emptiness. Pitched at practitioners familiar with Buddhist refuge and bodhisattva ideals.
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File: 2014 01 30 Mind Training.mp3
UUID: 54fa4936-baa2-4165-a4c3-b5f8d26774a8
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Mind Training (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2014-01-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 68.2 minutes
Words: ~7,370
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. A blessings 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 stupa 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 a Mañjuśrī whose princely body is adorned with the one hundred and twelve marks of a Buddha, who has completed the ten stages achieving the highest perfection of the bodhisattva, who has been pure from the beginning.
O Mañjuśrī, O loving one, with the brilliance of your wisdom, illuminate the darkness enclosing my mind. You enlighten my intelligence and wisdom so that I may gain insight into Buddha’s words and the text that explain them. So then offering the mandala to the Buddha. So as we visualize Śākyamūni Buddha in front of us as our source of refuge, inspiration, and guidance, we think of the Buddha as the embodiment of the Three Jewels of refuge and of all our teachers of the past, present, and future. So and at the same so we do that to help us generate the mind of refuge in the triple gem and to help us generate the the Mahāyāna refuge wishing to that has that bodhicitta motivation.
We try and have a strong sense of all sentient beings surrounding us, trying to have that strong sense of how we’re interconnected with all of them because of their immense kindness and particularly how they’ve been my mother and father many times in beginning with saṃsāra and thinking of how they are all trapped in saṃsāra, most experiencing the suffering of the lowest realms. But even if they’re right now enjoying the pleasures of the god realms, this pleasure isn’t going to last. Those beings are going to fall into extreme obvious suffering sooner or later. So thinking like this, we can generate the thought that no matter what, I I I must use this precious human rebirth to give up the self-cherishing thought, which has trapped me in cyclic existence since beginningless time, and replace it, because now I’ve got the freedom and opportunities to replace it with the mind cherishing others more than self. And because of that, engage in the path that leads to complete enlightenment so that I can perfectly repay the kindness of suffering mother sentient beings.
So to achieve enlightenment, then I have to follow the path. To follow the path successfully, I have to understand the path and particularly the very entrance to the Mahāyāna path which is bodhicitta. So for this reason I will study this mind training text called the Rays of the Sun. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly by the merits I create through the Dharma. May I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings?
So thinking the Buddha is pleased with our motivation, we imagine the Buddha now coming towards us and that when directly above our crown, we imagine the Buddha then dissolves into blissful golden light so that that light can pour down into us, blessing our mind in such a way that we’re able to really understand the text correctly, blessing our mind to be able to put it into practice properly, blessing our mind so that eventually we can gain all the different realizations that bring about complete enlightenment. So if we can enhance that positive state of mind by doing the nine round breathing exercise just for a short time, helping develop a calmer, clearer, more concentrated mind, and using that mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. K. Thank you. So we are in the last section of the first main part of this text which is about cultivating the conventional awakening mind of bodhicitta.
So we’re in the section which is called the precepts or advice of mind training. So we’re on the one that says, yeah, in future always put on armor. Right? Yes. So so these are just very practical, simple advices, reminders of how we can especially put integrate bodhicitta into our daily life, try and maintain what bodhicitta we have generated, and increase whatever degree of bodhicitta that we have generated.
So it says in future always put on armor. So in in the good old days when people went into battle, they put on armor so that armor protected them from different kinds of weapons. So the person to to some extent, at least, not completely, but gave them a a large degree of protection, especially if the the armor was really good. So if you were wearing this really good armor, even though you knew you were going to be sort of attacked by different, you know, axes and bows and arrow you know, and well, arrows, not bows, arrows and spears and whatever, you could have some confidence of sort of charging out into into the affray because you had this armor on. So in the same way, what we need to do is put on the armor like determination not to be separated from the awakening mind.
No matter what happens, we try and cultivate this thought that no matter what happens, good or bad, success or failure, happiness or suffering, good health, bad health, no matter what’s happening, I won’t give up bodhicitta, I won’t lose my interest and practice of it. So if we put that mental armor on, if we have that attitude, and the stronger that attitude is, the more genuine it is, then when the difficulties come, they the you know, we’re prepared for them. We’ve got this armor on our mind that won’t be so upset and so on and affected by obstacles and difficulties. So we should have this armor like determination until we’ve actually attained Buddhahood because once we’ve attained it, of course, one doesn’t need anything, any protection of any kind. So Namkha Ukchapal quotes from the sūtra called the cloud of jewels, which in Sanskrit was called the Ratnamegha Sūtra, So the Cloud of Jewel Sūtra recommends the determination to acquaint yourself with the awakening mind and never to be separated from it as a cause for not being separated from it.
So the cause for not being separated from the bodhicitta is making the determination not to be separated from it. If we don’t make that determination, that conscious determination to be separated from it, then when obstacles come, then we can we can lose interest. We can lose heart. We can get despondent and think, oh, this is just far too difficult, far too complicated. But if we’ve made the determination, no you know, we’re going to, you know, persevere no matter what, then that really helps.
And making that determination also comes from understanding more and more that bodhicitta is the most wonderful thing, the best thing. It’s the most vital thing to have. Right? We have to be really convinced of that. As His Holiness says, we need to develop this really, really deep admiration for for for what bodhicitta is, what it can, what benefits it brings to self and others.
So I hope you are all convinced of that. How great bodhicitta is. So as Śāntideva says at the beginning of the Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, he says what does he say? Something like if even a thought to cure one person of a headache is said to be a really virtuous thought, how how much more so is the thought to end the suffering of all and and the causes of suffering of all sentient beings? Right?
And he also says in that first chapter something along the lines that, this thought, you know, bodhicitta, this thought to end the suffering of all sentient beings and help all sentient beings achieve perfect happiness, we have never even generated it towards our self in the past. You know? Our wish our wish for happiness right now is mostly just good old or bad old self-cherishing. Yeah. It’s not it’s not an actual genuine love for ourselves.
It’s just self-cherishing, the easy happy now mentality. So we haven’t even generated love for ourselves, let alone for others. Whereas a bodhisattva has generated this, you know, this pure, uncontrived, all encompassing love and compassion for every sentient being. And Śāntideva points out that even our parents don’t have this love and compassion for us that a bodhisattva has, someone who has bodhicitta. Because a parent just, you know, being an ordinary sentient being has an ordinary view of happiness.
So, you know, an ordinary parent wants their child to be happy, meaning to be healthy, to have, you know, a nice job, a nice husband or wife, a nice bunch of kids, a nice house, a nice job, a nice car, a nice reputation, a nice hairdo, nice friends, nice shoes, a nice, I don’t nice kitchen. You know? That’s, you know, what what our parents want for us. They want us to be nice because if we’re nice, we will be happy. And if we have nice friends and we behave nicely, we’ll be happy.
Yeah. But a bodhisattva wants us to have peerless, everlasting happiness. Not just wants it, but a bodhisattva is working, acting to to guarantee that we’ll have it so we can generate that mind. So that mind is the most wonderful mind possible. So understanding what bodhicitta is and all its benefits then we can put on this armor like determination never to be separated from it because we’ve finally met it.
We haven’t actually generated bodhicitta but we’ve met the concept. We are we are starting to understand what that concept is really about and how one can actually generate it. And hope hopefully, we’ve met the had the good fortune to meet people who are living embodiments of it, such as his holiness, the Dalai Lama, and people like Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Khensur Rinpoche who passed away, and Khandro-la who hopefully is coming to Australia, but her visa has been rejected so far. So so we all have to pray strongly that that the second application will be accepted because it is very difficult, you know, to meet people like this. You know?
Lunatics are allowed into Australia easily. People who, you know, know, preaching hate and, you know, that there’s no global warming. This lord what’s his name? Lord Horror or someone who whatever his name was, it was brought here to Australia to preach that absolute sorry. I probably shouldn’t say this sitting up here on but little bias there.
But, anyway, but someone who’s coming to teach bodhicitta to be, you know, how to, you know, can’t come in too dangerous. Yeah. Anyway, so it’s it’s very difficult to make the word as I’ve said many times before because I think, you know, it’s really blows your mind when you think about this that most people on this planet will live their entire life never even hearing the word or seeing the word bodhicitta or Buddha. They will never ever see the word or hear it, let alone have any idea what it means. Yeah.
So we’ve met these words, and more we’ve met people who live those words. And we know yeah. And we have the teachings that can show us how we can awaken bodhicitta in our mind. So once we’ve met that, we should really be determined never to be separated from it in all our lives. So putting on that armor also means trying to practice the six perfections and and love and compassion as much as possible because that that is what bodhicitta is all about, developing and increasing one’s love and compassion and perfecting the six practices of generosity, morality, patience, perseverance, concentration, and wisdom.
The six perfections. So the other next piece of advice is don’t apply a wrong understanding. So the explanation of this reminder is we should acquaint ourselves with compassion for sentient beings tormented by various sufferings. So this is what we should really work at, developing our compassion for sentient beings who are actually experiencing suffering and creating the causes of it, but to feel pity for those who are slightly troubled by lack of food or clothes as the result of their endeavoring to listen to and think about religion is inverted compassion or misplaced compassion. So many people Buddhists as well, some Buddhists and many non Buddhists, when they see people or hear about people who are practicing the Dharma and renouncing things and living a very austere life think, oh, these poor people, how pathetic they are, how miserable they are.
But actually these people are not objects of compassion at all because they’re doing something which is incredibly meaningful. If you know the life story of, which I’d highly recommend people to read, the life story of Milarepa, which is really very inspiring. And there are also the hundred thousand songs of Milarepa, which are translated into English. These are really I think we have it in the library. Should have.
So these are spontaneous songs that Milarepa spoke or chanted, sang as, you know, like spontaneous teachings to people who he met in his life of wandering up in the Himalayan mountains. And so he lived you know, he’s the example of the perfect renunciate who much of the time went around not wearing anything, which totally freaked out his sister. So his sister was always trying to make her brother a respectable person, and she knitted him clothing and things, and whatever, and, was trying encouraging to put clothes on and behave like a normal person. So this is an example. And and she had real pity and felt, you know, really sorry for her brother, but her brother, Milarepa, was actually this incredibly highly realized being who actually became a Buddha in that lifetime.
And she just thought he was this pitiful loser, you know, who couldn’t even afford to wear a pair of vandis or something. So she tried to you know? So this is an example of, you know, cultivating wrong compassion and worrying about the wrong people. And many people think, you know, monks and nuns, or they’re they’re poor, miserable things. They don’t have sex, drugs and rock and roll, you know, we should help them have all these things.
So this is misplaced compassion. So, secondly, we do need to set an intention to attain ultimate enlightenment for the sake of all living beings. So that’s what we should do, but we shouldn’t apply the wrong understanding, which is to do this, seek enlightenment out of interest in worldly prosperity in general and the rewards and honor of of this life in particular. So this is an inverted intention or wrong intention, completely wrong motivation. So there are in the world more and more with the degenerate times people who practice the Dharma and also unfortunately teach the Dharma to become famous, to become rich, to become powerful, etcetera, etcetera.
There are more and more of these people appearing in the world. And sadly, they seem to often attract more disciples than the real masters. I’m not quite sure. Well, I think I know the reason. I think partly the reason is that it’s very hard to create the karma to meet great authentic teachers.
And it’s very easy to create the wrong karma that leads one to be attracted to and admire phony teachers thinking they’re absolutely wonderful. So we don’t want to practice the Dharma to become rich and famous and attract lots of disciples who will take care of us. That’s not that’s not the idea at all. One of Lama Yeshe’s disciples, who I personally know, before he became a monk, inherited his father’s wealth. So he he became a millionaire, was a was a monk.
He offered all that money to Lama Yeshe. Lama Yeshe wouldn’t accept a penny of it because he wasn’t accept you know, interested in making money off of his disciples. You may know, venerable Gatsuo who’s probably taught here, who was a doctor. Also Doctor Nick who was a monk for many years who established wisdom publications and wisdom archives. So in the early days, the monks and nuns in Nepal, the Western monks and nuns who were disciples of Lama and Rinpoche in Nepal, were incredibly poor, lived in incredibly difficult conditions.
So at one point, Doctor Nick and Doctor Venerable Gatsuo, said you know, volunteered said to Lama Yeshe that they would go back to the West and, you know, go back working as doctors and make lots of money to support the Sangha. Lama Yeshe said, no. No. No. That’s not the point of my you’re you’re monks.
The the idea isn’t to make money anymore even if everyone’s suffering. It’s difficult. That’s not the point. No. Yeah.
So it’s not the point for us either. So we should have an intention to elevate all sentient beings to the state of Buddha. So that’s what something that we should understand and and do. But what we shouldn’t do is involve ourselves in taking care of the property of the Three Jewels in general and the spiritual community in particular in a hope that they will befriend us. So that is a wrong intention, a perverse intention.
Also, along the same lines, what can happen in monasteries is that, unfortunately, monasteries get caught up in accumulating lots of possessions for the monastery. So this this also is really not what it’s all about. So we should really avoid these things because all of them really undermine our bodhicitta because these are all actually worldly concerns, yeah, related to our own self-cherishing and ego and greed. So if we if we keep following those things, we’re creating more and more obstacles to actually being able to generate and maintain bodhicitta. And similarly, if from the from the depths of your hearts you admire all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas practice of virtue, your own source of virtue will increase many times over.
So this is something that we should do. This is something we should understand and practice developing admiration for the Buddha’s and Bodhisattva’s practice of virtue. So this is related to one of the precepts of taking refuge. I think many people here have taken refuge. So when one takes refuge, one of the one of the commitments, one of the six general commitments of taking refuge is to always remember the qualities of the Buddhadharma and Sangha.
Because by remembering the qualities of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, one’s faith in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha will increase. And as one’s faith increases, this will lead to aspiring to develop those qualities oneself. And the more we aspire to developing those qualities, this will lead us to create the causes, you know, to be motivated to create the causes for those qualities. So in the same way so similarly, in admiring the Buddha’s virtue and the bodhisattva’s virtue because the bodhisattvas are the Sangha, the spiritual community. By admiring their virtue.
This is knowing the qualities of of the of the triple gem and admiring those qualities. So this is something, really you know, it’s it’s a basic commitment for refuge, but especially here in in in following the bodhisattva way of life, admiring the qualities of the Buddha because the the being who became Buddha became Buddha because of bodhicitta. And we admire the virtue of the Bodhisattvas, the virtue of the Bodhisattvas comes from their from their bodhicitta. So this is what we should admire. But to but in on the other hand, to rejoice over the small mishaps that befall someone you dislike is unseemly admiration.
So we should admire the Buddhas and Bodhisattva’s virtue, but we shouldn’t admire and rejoice when people we dislike have a bad time or, you know, have misfortune. That is completely misguided admiration, something completely contrary to developing bodhicitta because a bodhisattva doesn’t want even his enemies to suffer. In fact, a bodhisattva wants his enemies, his or her enemies, to be the first to achieve enlightenment. So next one. It says, you should meditate on the patience that endures whatever small sufferings and hardships arise in the course of listening, thinking, and meditating.
So these are the three things our dharmic practice consists of. We have to listen to the teachings, then we have to think about them or do reflective meditation on them, and then finally we have to we’re meditating here. The sinking is a type of meditation but when it says meditating that refers to single pointed concentration on the teachings which has the power to transform like an inferential conceptual understanding into a direct realization. So those three things of listening, thinking, meditating are referring to the three types of wisdoms that we develop. There’s the wisdom that comes from listening to the teachings, the deeper wisdom that comes from reflecting on them, and the most profound wisdom that comes from doing single pointed concentration on the teachings.
So we should be patient with whatever difficulty there is in doing those three practices. But it is wrong in misplaced patience if instead we endure the various sufferings which result from subduing our enemies and caring for our relatives and so forth motivated by the eight worldly concerns. So ordinary people under the control of the eight worldly concerns can bear a lot of difficulties in order to, you know, fight with their enemies, get the better of people who are conflict with, they can put up with lots of difficulties to advance their family this way or that, their reputation, their wealth, their power and so on. So but that patience is just a negative kind of patience. It’s just part of the eight worldly concerns, and that is just it’s all a reflection of our self-cherishing, which is the greatest obstacle to bodhicitta.
Yeah. And that patience is always focused on just me and mine. And the more we we train our our mind in that in that outlook, that very limited outlook, we’re preventing ourselves opening our hearts and mind, trying to see all beings as worthy of happiness of, and worthy to be free of suffering no matter who they are, what they’ve done. Right? Is this all making sense?
Yes. Everyone’s so quiet, looking so serious. I’m wondering if I’m just blabbering on or not. As Lama Yeshe used to say, are we communicating? Are we communicating?
It goes on to say, having entered the door of the great vehicle doctrine, you should experience the flavor of this holy teaching by hearing and contemplating it. So the the only way to experience the flavor and to get the taste of of the teaching of of what it really is is to is is to contemplate it and put it into practice. But on the contrary, to indulge in sensual pleasures and motivated by attachment, to taste your enemy’s defeat and your relative’s defeat is to experience the wrong flavor. So these things should be given up. Okay?
Because they’re obstacles to bodhicitta. They they’re just we’re just creating within our own mind. We’re just reinforcing our own self-cherishing the very thing which is the main thing to get rid of to cultivate bodhicitta and the main thing to reduce if we want to keep that bodhicitta going and increasing. It’s it’s really worthwhile to reflect how in all our you know, most of this life, all our previous lives, we’ve been following the self-cherishing thought. And most of the time, we haven’t understood that that’s what we’re doing.
That’s what we’ve been doing. We’ve been doing it, but not knowing what what it actually is. Having met the dharma, we can now identify. We can know what self self-cherishing is, how harmful it is to ourself and others, and we can we have the because we’ve got the precious human rebirth, we’ve got the freedom and opportunity to let go of it, to recognize it, reduce it, let go of it, and more wonderfully, we’ve got the opportunity to replace it with cherishing others. If self-cherishing worked, we should be incredibly happy by now.
But if you look, everyone controlled by self-cherishing is suffering. The people who are reducing it or have got rid of it are the Bodhisattvas and Buddhas. We just have to compare the difference. So next bit of advice is: Don’t be sporadic. So this refers to meditating what we shouldn’t do is meditating occasionally and performing some virtues of body and speech in the name of religion, but without wholehearted faith in the practice of mind training, but instead being chiefly involved in amassing wealth or other things for this life.
Instead of behaving like this, it’s appropriate to concentrate all activities of body, speech, and mind single pointedly on this practice of bodhicitta. This is because this is the sole path traversed by all the Buddhas of the three times. Yeah. So, you know, in other words, what it’s saying is the only way to become a Buddha is to generate and practice bodhicitta. There is no other method.
No other method. You don’t we don’t become a Buddha any other way. One has to generate bodhicitta and keep practicing it. So it’s you know, Namkha Ukchapal is saying that we should concentrate all our activities of body, speech, mind on practicing bodhicitta, generating bodhicitta. So at our level, it’s pretty difficult to put all all our time and energy.
And I think I’ve said before, someone once asked his holiness about this and what was his advice about how to balance ordinary activities with dharma. And His Holiness said it should be fifty-fifty. But even for most people, fiftyfifty is quite a lot. But anyway, at least now that we’ve got the precious human rebirth, we should be trying to challenge ourselves and spend more time in Dharma practice.
And here it says, particularly in mind training in bodhicitta, Trying to do this as much as possible, not just, as it says, sporadically practicing. Whereas in and underlying that sporadic practice is really this much deeper interest in accumulating wealth and reputation and possessions and blah blah blah. What we should be trying to make the the the main thing out in our mind is the, you know, wanting to to practice. And following along from this, the next piece of advice is to practice unflinchingly without wavering, integrate all aspirations to this one purpose. The next piece of advice: Release investigation and analysis.
This means that you should give up gross and subtle analysis of your motivation for your actions of body, speech and mind with reference to your long, middling and short term aims and should spend the time rejoicing. So what this is basically saying is that we should just get on with it. Stop analyzing and, you know, and analyzing one’s motivation and things. I mean, this is a tricky point because, of course, at some point, we should be careful about not fooling ourselves about why we’re doing things and pretending we’re doing things with this wonderful motivation when really it’s for some much more negative or worldly motivation. But, really, what this is is trying to say is that don’t give into this self-cherishing mind that analyzes for the purpose of getting out of practicing.
As I was mentioning a couple of nights ago, some people have this strange idea that if I’m not practicing perfectly, if my motivation isn’t perfect, I shouldn’t do it. It’s dishonest. It’s hypocritical. Only if my motivation is absolutely a hundred percent pure should I do this Dharma practice. And this is, you know, absolutely absurd because no one can start out doing anything purely.
That’s what Buddhas do. They do pure practice. You know, we start out with what our motivation is a mixture of, you know, a good motivation mixed with the worldly concerns. So but what we have to do is, through our training, try and reduce the the the intensity of of the worldly concerns and increase the intensity and genuineness of our of our dharma motivation. But we shouldn’t do all this analyst, you know, blah blah blah, and therefore come up and think, oh, you know, my motivation for doing this isn’t perfect, so I don’t I shouldn’t do it.
You know? Stuff like that. We should just get on with it. We should know this is you know, this action is a a, you know, a virtuous positive action. I should do it.
Maybe my motivation for it isn’t a hundred percent great yet. Maybe I don’t even want to do it, actually. I just know it’s good. So even then, one should do it because it’s a good thing to do. Otherwise, we’ll we’ll never get anywhere.
You know, we can you know, there there are people who are so intelligent, they get nowhere because they overanalyze themselves and everything and just intellectualize till the cows come home and don’t get anywhere. But what about this and what about that? You just do it. Just do it. Yes.
Yes. Yeah. It’s a clever form. Yeah. Next bit of advice, don’t be boastful.
Do not boast of the little good you’ve done for others by repeatedly reminding them of it. This is this is not this is not the Bodhisattva way of life. Bodhisattvas do things secretly. If it were proper to boast of the good you have done, the transcendent subduer would have said so, but he didn’t. And the Buddha would be boasting all the time, could get very worrying.
We should avoid this. Next bit of advice, don’t be short-tempered. So we should not express dissatisfaction with the size of offerings and rewards or you will breach the commitments not to grumble. So just like we yes. Later on, it says we shouldn’t expect gratitude.
So this is a very similar thing that we shouldn’t get upset. We shouldn’t expect any offerings from from from what we do. And and so if they don’t come to up to our expectations, we certainly shouldn’t get up be upset by it. This is particularly, I think, referring to also monks and nuns following practicing the Bodhisattva way of life. So and and the tradition has been for lay people to make offerings to monks and nuns in monasteries and so on.
So if you get an offering smaller than expected, one shouldn’t be upset by that and get angry and short-tempered. Next bit of advice, don’t make a short lived attempt. So this one goes back to the one about don’t practice sporadically and unflinchingly. So it serves no purpose if you affect some effort in meditation at the beginning and then leave it altogether. Effort needs to be like a great river or a strong bowstring.
So it should be our effort in Dharma practice and should be something continuous. So all the lamas suggest that we should start out in a small way, some something start our practice, be easygoing, and something that that is we can manage and we’re happy with. And by starting out small and continuing, are able to keep that practice up. But if we decide to take on a lot and we have some energy to do quite intense practice for a while, but after a while, we get we run out of steam, and then we give up. And that’s much worse because once one gives up to some extent, it’s actually harder to start again than to start in a small very small way and very build up gradually Because through the power of familiarity, by building up gradually, one one is familiar, one is comfortable with it, and so one can keep going.
But if you take on a whole lot at the beginning, and this is often what happens with dharma students because we meet the dharma, and it’s all very exciting and wonderful. And we think, oh, yes. Yes. This is so good. I should do this, and I should do this, and I should all do so we do all this.
And they have after some time. And, of course, underlying that is the thought, the feeling that the results, that all these wonderful results will come quickly. Because usually when we meet the dharma, the the the the effects are quite noticeable fairly quickly because before we meet the dharma, our mind is, you know, it’s insane. We we didn’t know that. We thought we were perfectly okay, or maybe we were unhappy, but, you know, our mind was completely you know?
And then we meet the dharma, and, you know, things start to go, you know, to some extent, okay. And we have a way to think about our problems and difficulties, which makes them manageable. So the difference is is very noticeable, but that doesn’t continue, unfortunately, except for maybe, you know, really exceptional practitioners. So, you know, it’s like the honeymoon period. And after some time, the honeymoon period fades away, and then there’s just the hard slog of trying to change the mind.
And that’s when people give up because they’re expecting it to be ever increasingly more wonderful and more easy, but it actually isn’t like that in my experience, and some other people’s as well. So it’s much better. What do they say? Softly, softly, catchy monkey. Yeah.
A little bit. Yeah. And just build up. Like, you know, a a a like a continuous river, a river flowing over rocks. It wears them away over time.
Yeah. So, you know, our acquainting our mind continuously with the Dharma wears away our self-cherishing, our and all our defilements and negative behavior. Yeah. If we keep our mind always connected with the Dharma, practicing, But these big bursts and then nothing, this is not so wise, not so helpful. I I think I I only have a limited number of quota of teachings and stories and things which I recycle.
So another one that you’ve probably heard I’ve said already fifteen times is, one thing I read soon after I met the Dharma, which I found very nice is it said something like, practicing Dharma is like walking in fine mist. Is that when you’re when you’re walking in fine mist, you don’t really notice it, but when you come out of it, your clothes are soaked in water. So practicing the Dharma can be like that. While you’re practicing it, you you know, you don’t particularly notice the effect it’s having on you. But, actually, it’s soaking.
If you’re if you’re walking through the mist, if you’re always in the Dharma, it’s it’s it’s it’s permeating you. It’s becoming so much part of you that you don’t you don’t even we don’t even notice it. But it is actually changing us. So then it makes a quotation, but I don’t understand the quotation, so I can’t comment on it. So some of you might understand the quotation, how that actually really fits.
Well, it’s I I understand the first two lines, where it says, for you to prove your superiority, not that we’re trying to prove our superiority with anyone, but we what we should show neither flex here the word shouldn’t be flexibility, but it that’s a mistranslation. It should be laxity. So we should show neither laxity nor rigidity. In other words, we shouldn’t be super lax and and slack in our Dharma practice, but we also shouldn’t be incredibly rigid where we stick to something Like I’ve been trying to say to the DB people that, you know, in establishing a daily practice, one can depending on the circumstances, like, Tibetan way of practicing is like an accordion or concertina. If you’ve got the time and energy, you can stretch out the accordion for a very long way.
But if you haven’t got much time, you just squash it up. You know? And you so you change. You don’t have to be incredibly rigid, but, you know, be be flexible with the purpose of maintaining some continuity continuity. Yeah.
The main thing is to have that continuity. And with that is a continuity of enjoying the Dharma of admiring that and continuity of a mind that sees that Dharma is vital for my life We’re all totally convinced that we need food and liquids in our body every day. No one has to force us to eat and drink. We’re all convinced of that. Right?
So in the same way, we should be convinced, you know, totally convinced that we need Dharma practice in our life, always in our life, all the time, taking care of our mind. So the next piece of advice for the budding bodhisattva or what Lama Yeshe used to call the baby bodhisattvas, we are baby bodhisattvas, don’t expect gratitude. So this refers to not expecting an immediate reward for whatever little good you do. You should give up saying that there is no use being good or otherwise to such and such a person because he can’t even say thank you. The great bodhisattva, Chekawa, put this into practice to good effect.
With a sense of satisfaction, he said: My manifold aspirations have given rise to humiliating criticism and suffering. But having received instructions for taming the misconception of self, even if I die, I have no regrets. So in other words, this great Geshe Chekawa, one of the great Kadampa masters who, you know, wrote the seven point mind training, he had these manifold aspirations to benefit all sentient beings. And the result of it was that throughout his life, people just gave him hell. They criticized him, humiliated him, caused him a lot of suffering, but he has no regrets.
None whatsoever because he he lived the Bodhisattva way of life. So we can’t expect sentient beings to to thank us for what we do. Sentient beings, we should understand, are deluded just like us. They have self-cherishing. They have attachment and pride and jealousy and confusion in their mind.
So, yeah. But the point is to try to repay their kindness no matter how they respond because our positive mind towards others will always benefit us. Even if other sentient beings don’t see our positive actions to them as benefiting them, they definitely benefit us. So there’s no need to be upset if people from their side don’t recognize the benefit that they’re getting because we’re getting some benefit, which will also that benefit is a type of benefit that will enable us to be of perfect benefit to these people in the future in a way that they will know that they are being benefited and will be grateful. Okay.
So that concludes the section the the main section of the text, is about cultivating the conventional bodhicitta, which which is the mind seeking enlightenment in order to free all sentient beings from all causes of suffering and helping them to achieve peerless everlasting happiness. So the next section of the the text gets much more complicated because it’s about the ultimate bodhicitta, which is about emptiness. So before we start that, is it tea break time? It’s more or less tea break time, isn’t Some questions? Any questions, comments about anything so far?
Addicted. No. No. Yes. Yeah.
You can I think people can get addicted to a a strange, weird, creepy idea of the dharma and what it will do for you, for sure? But the actual dharma, you can’t get addicted to or attached to. I don’t think. Because the definition of afflicted desire and attachment is that the object of desire and attachment is a contaminated phenomena. What is a contaminated phenomena, folks?
What is the definition of a contaminated phenomena? What no. No. What is a contaminated phenomena? This is a a contaminated phenomena.
This is a contaminated phenomena. This my body is a contaminated phenomena. What is the definition of a contaminated phenomena? No. No.
No. No. Even pure things can arise from causes and conditions and parts. That’s a very simple answer. Yes.
Yes. It is. But what defines any the whole range of you you take any contaminated phenomena, why is it a contaminated phenomena? Yeah. That’s true.
No. A contaminated phenomena is a product of delusion and karma. Anything produced arising depending on causes and conditions which are the causes and conditions are delusion and karma, that is a contaminated phenomenon. So that desire and attachment afflicted the delusion of desire and attachment is only towards an afflicted phenomena, a contaminated phenomena. Right?
So the Dharma is not an afflicted phenomena is not a contaminated phenomena. And there also, as you were saying, the nature of attachment is to exaggerate how good something is. You can’t exaggerate how good the dharma is. The trouble is we don’t see how we need to exaggerate how good you know, we need to understand how good the dharma really is. With all due respect, many people, probably including myself, I think, I should admit, only see the dharmas like, like the spring you know, the icing on the cake.
We just want a little bit of dharma in our life to make it nicer. It’s not really absolutely vital. It’s just nice. I mean, I’m just you just check your motivation. I’m just you know?
But there is that attitude of of with many people following many religions that they just want a little bit of something in their ordinary life to make it, you know, give it a bit of a zing and make it a bit more attractive. But the dharma is meant to be like that. It’s meant to replace ordinary life, worldly life, ultimately, because worldly life is suffering. That’s why we never find the time to practice the Dharma because it’s not that important. Everything else is.
I once saw which which proves I wasn’t practicing Dharma. I watched an interview of, what’s his name? Andrew Denton? What what did he have? The enough rope where he was interviewing some famous businessman.
I can’t remember who the famous businessman was. He was famous because he also got into a few shady deals at some point. Quite a large gentleman. Anyway, was it? I don’t know if it was Bond.
No. It wasn’t. Anyway, during this interview, he was actually checking his mobile for the the stock up, you know, you know, all the time while he’s on live television on a national, you know yeah. Somebody. Yeah.
Because this man really knew what was important in his life, you know, the money. Like, even while he’s being interviewed about his life on the national, he’s checking. Yeah. Because making money was absolutely everything. So we should be checking our mind all the time, ideally.
In a relaxed way, not a neurotic, rigid way, but in the right way. And, anyway, if we’re going to exaggerate something in our life, the best thing to exaggerate is the dharma. Tea break.