Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Thubten Dondrub explores the foundation of Mahāyāna Buddhist practice by examining the three principal mental qualities that must develop sequentially: renunciation, bodhicitta, and wisdom. He opens by clarifying what renunciation actually means—not physical renunciation but a fundamental disenchantment with worldly attachments and samsaric suffering—and argues passionately that it is essential, not optional, for genuine spiritual development. Without renunciation, he insists, one cannot develop authentic compassion or wisdom. He traces how renunciation must first address obsession with this life alone, then expand into renouncing saṃsāra itself. Building on this foundation, he explains how bodhicitta—the determination to achieve enlightenment to benefit all beings—and wisdom realizing emptiness naturally follow. He emphasizes that these three are not separate qualities but interconnected aspects of a single path, drawn from the Gelugpa tradition’s Lamrim teachings. This 45-minute talk is dense with philosophical argument and personal conviction, aimed at practitioners who may already have years of Buddhist study but still lack clarity on how the path actually unfolds.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 Combining Sūtra and Tantra 1998 02 22.mp3
UUID: eed2b754-0308-4313-bba8-8fe28ddd84ac
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Retreat (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 1998-02-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.4 minutes
Words: ~5,079
Happiness, to be completely free of all kinds of dissatisfaction. There’s three kinds of suffering. There’s three kinds of dukkha. The dukkha, which is the suffering of suffering, the dukkha, which is the suffering of change, which we call happiness. Right?
And the dukkha, which is the all-pervasive suffering of conditioning. One wishes sentient beings to be completely free of all that and to have perfect happiness. So that’s one aspect of bodhicitta, wishing them to have that. The other aspect of bodhicitta comes from thinking, well, how can I do that? How can I give them that?
Or how can I be a cause for sentient beings to have this wonderful state? And one comes to the conclusion by thinking about it more and more that the only way that I can lead sentient beings to develop wisdom and destroy their suffering, the causes of their suffering, the only way I can do that for all sentient beings perfectly without making a botch of it. You know? The only way is because we all try to be kind, right, and helpful. We try.
I hope we all try some, but often we just botch it up. We do the wrong thing. But we we try. We try. The only way to really succeed and not to create create more confusion, but actually to really fit the perfectly benefit of others.
The only way to do it is to be a Buddha, an enlightened being, to have a perfectly pure mind, free of all even the slightest trace of discrimination, slightest trace of hate. Yes. Discriminating friend, enemy, stranger, completely free of that, completely free of all negativity and possessing all positive qualities, and particularly having omniscience, knowing everything perfectly, knowing the minds of other sentient beings perfectly, knowing their whole past karma perfectly. Because it’s only when one knows that one can guide each sentient being perfectly to experience their own true nature. So this is what bodhicitta is.
It’s it’s the determination, I must become a Buddha, because it’s the only way to to repay the kindness of sentient beings. It’s the only way to be of real benefit to them and free them from their suffering. Of course, this wish is something inconceivable. It seems totally unimaginable. I’m just imagining trying to make all the people in Adelaide happy.
Imagine how long it would take. It’s quite a big job. Nobody’s even managed to make people that live temporarily happy, let alone perfectly happy for all time. But the Mahāyāna teaching is saying, this is our potential. Mhmm.
We have Buddha nature. In the in the Hīnayāna teachings, it doesn’t talk about the Buddha nature, that we have this Buddha potential. But in the Mahāyāna teachings that the Buddha revealed, he revealed that because we have mind, mind has this Buddha nature, this potential for omniscience, the potential to be able to benefit all sentient beings. So how do we develop this Buddha nature? If one develops wisdom for one’s own sake, that will destroy the obstacles within the mind to liberation.
When those are destroyed, one is liberated, One is experiencing perfect bliss. One is in this state of nirvana, but one hasn’t developed one’s Buddha nature. One hasn’t become a Buddha. One hasn’t become enlightened. One hasn’t fully developed the potential of the mind.
So how is this complete potential of the mind developed? The the way the full the potential of the mind is developed is by eliminating firstly, have to eliminate the obstacles to liberation, which is our our delusions and the root delusion of ignorance. But after that, beyond that, we have to eliminate the obstacles to omniscience, which in our heart hasn’t eliminated. So these obstacles to omniscience are something very subtle and often to be the imprints of the delusions, the imprints of ignorance. Ignorance has been removed, still there are these very subtle imprints.
Right. And traditionally, they explain, and you may have heard of this analogy before, that, like, if you have a bowl of and which you crush garlic here, then if you take out the garlic and you you wash the bowl, then all the garlic is gone. So that’s like being liberated. But still, the bowl has the smell of the garlic there. There’s no garlic really there, but the the smell, the odor, remains.
So the obstacles to omniscience are like that. The ignorance has gone, and it will never return, but there are these very subtle imprints of it left. And these very, very subtle imprints are called the the obstacles to omniscience, and these prevent the full development of our mind. These subtle imprints are also called the dualistic mind. We have this dualistic mind that prevents the full development of our mission.
So what gets rid of these subtle obstacles to emissions? It’s our wisdom. The same thing that gets rid of the obstacles to liberation, this wisdom. Also, the wisdom realizing emptiness, the true nature phenomena, it is the same wisdom that is developed on the Hīnayāna path that we have to develop on the Mahāyāna path to get rid of the obstacles to omniscience. And you could ask, why doesn’t an arhat, someone following the Hīnayāna path, since it’s the same wisdom, why don’t they just keep going to get rid of the obstacles to omniscience?
Well, the reason is that they haven’t generated this powerful compassion which transforms into bodhicitta. So it’s the combination of these two in the Mahāyāna path, the wisdom, but the wisdom empowered by this great compassionate thought of bodhicitta. This extra energy, it is that which enables us to get rid of the obstacles to omniscience. Right. I mean, this is a lot of kind of very technical information.
It might be boring. But I think it is kind of maybe you’re already familiar with it, but it is kind of useful to know these things because to have some kind of very general idea of the path. Because what all that I’m talking about, you know, are vast volumes of the details of all of it. Now huge details on all of these points, how it works, and what has to be got rid of and how it’s got rid of. So just knowing that and the details can give great confidence in the path, that there is a path, and it’s very, very clear.
It’s understood. It’s known. It gives some kind of confidence that these teachings are coming from the enlightened mind, But every aspect of the path, every little problem, every detail is known. And all the ways that you the subtle ways that you get rid of, and all the subtle difficulties and problems that can arise are all known and explained in the Buddha’s teaching. So if we go through it now, just considered a little bit generally the Mahāyāna path itself, the Mahāyāna vehicle.
So in our tradition, this tradition that is taught in Buddha House is part of the the teachers of Buddha House all belong to what is called the Gelugpa tradition. In Tibetan Buddhism, there are four schools. The very first one that developed was the Nyingma school. Then came the Sakya tradition, then the Kagyu tradition, and then finally, the last school developed in Tibet, the last major school that was developed was developed by the great yogi, more bodhisattva than Buddha, Lama Tsongkhapa, died in about fourteen fifteen, I think. So here, his teachings led to the development of the Gelugpa tradition.
So this is the tradition that Buddha house belongs to. So this tradition particularly emphasizes what is called the teachings of the Lam Rim, the graduated path to enlightenment, which was originally developed by the great Indian master and bodhisattva, Atisha, which is a like a a a way of condensing all of the Mahāyāna sutras because there’s vast numbers of them. It’s impossible probably even to read all the Mahāyāna sutras in one lifetime, even if they were in English, in whatever language they are, even if you knew that language they’re in. They’re in Tibetan, and Japanese and Chinese, I think, are the only full versions of the Mahāyāna Sutras, or in Korean. So even if you could read any of those languages, it probably would it would take a lifetime to read them.
And certainly, to understand them would take even more to even really understand them, even intellectually, let alone at a deep level. So it’s the great great accomplishment this great being such as Atisha to condense all the essential meanings of all the different sutras into one teaching in a logical sequence from the beginning to the end. Because if you just take any sūtra, you’ve no idea by reading it what where it is on the what it’s actually how to practice it, what it’s really talking about, and how you practice that, and how it is part of the path. But the Lamrim teachings show all that from the beginning to the end. This is the beauty.
I mean, it’s an incredible special feature of the Lamrim teachings, especially for people like us, ordinary people who may be reasonably intelligent. I hope we’re all re we are quite intelligent people, but we’re not like bodhisattvas, like a teacher who can just read any sūtra, understand it completely, and know how it fits into the path to enlightenment. Because also, if you ever studied sutras, that they many of them contradict each other. One says this, one says that, and another says something else. So how do you make sense of all that?
We don’t. We have to rely on the teacher and all the great masters because they made sense of it. They understood what how to put these contradictions together. Although it looks like there are contradictions, actually, they’re not. The body was just teaching certain things to certain people at certain times, and always underneath those contradictions is the underlying great care of the Buddha leading sentient beings to enlightenment.
So if we rely on on the Lam Rim, we’ve got everything there. So in the Lam Rim, it teaches the graduated path, teachings to enlightenment, it emphasizes three things. You know, there are within the long run teachings, there are many things that we have to achieve, but it comes down to achieving three things, three states of mind, which are renunciation, bodhicitta, and wisdom. These are the three things that we have to achieve in on the Mahāyāna path. On the Hīnayāna path, you have to develop renunciation and wisdom.
On the Mahāyāna path, we have to develop these three principal paths in our mind or three principal states of mind, ways of being, and ways of thinking and perceiving, which are called renunciation, bodhicitta, and wisdom. These are the three essential qualities of the Mahāyāna path. There’s nothing else outside of the Mahaya Mahāyāna teachings other than developing renunciation, wisdom, and bodhicitta. That’s it. Nothing else.
But we have to achieve these things, and there is a graduated sequence in developing developing them. And especially, we have to develop renunciation first. Then after on the basis of developing renunciation, we have a choice of developing wisdom first and then bodhicitta or bodhicitta and then wisdom. But if we follow the advice of Lama Tsongkhapa, the great Lama Tsongkhapa, he advised that it’s much more practical to develop bodhicitta first and then wisdom. Because if you develop wisdom first without developing bodhicitta, you can fall into the Hīnayāna path.
But if you develop bodhicitta first, you will never fall into the Hīnayāna path. So the main sequence in the graduated path teachings of the Gelugpa school is to develop renunciation first, then bodhicitta and wisdom. Of course, what we try to do in our daily life as Buddhists following the Gelugpa system is to to develop all three qualities, try and practice all three right now, to have some renunciation in our life right now. Yesterday, I was talking about overcoming attachment. So that is the main aspect of developing renunciation.
Right? So we that’s the so we our daily life, we have to have renunciation, bodhicitta, and wisdom. Or, put it simply, we have to have some non attachment, a good heart, and some intelligence, some wisdom in every moment of our life. It’s absolutely essential. Fundamental.
I mean, and we have to have renunciation. People don’t like this renunciation. Everyone wants to develop wisdom and bodhicitta and practice tantra, but people don’t want renunciation. People don’t even like the word, and many Buddhists now think up all sorts of other words to escape using this word renunciation. I refuse use these other fancy words.
I like the word renunciation. Mean, someone invented this word definite emergence, which is the literal translation of the Tibetan, nge jung. And people say, renunciation is just a Christian concept. It’s got nothing to do with Buddhism. I think it’s got everything to do with Buddhism if you study the Lam Rim.
And people say, Oh, renunciation means giving up things. Renunciation, what Nge jung is about, you don’t have to give up anything. This is garbage. I’m sorry. It’s utter garbage.
You have to give up everything in order to be a Buddhist. Because what we have to eventually give up is our self-cherishing. You have to give it up. You have to renounce it utterly. Now, no way.
That’s what the path is about. And, of course, you know, they say, it’s true. Renunciation is basically state of mind. It doesn’t involve necessarily giving up physical things. You can have physical things but still have renunciation in the mind.
This is true. But at a final point, if you look at the great, great practitioners of the dharma, such as Milarepa, he gave up everything. He didn’t have much to start with, but he gave it all up. Yeah. He went around naked most of the time.
Yeah. And all you know, the and this is not just something from the past. You know, the great, like, who? I can’t think of his name. Patrul Rinpoche.
Yeah. This great Nyingma lama, who lived in late nineteenth, early twentieth century, I think. He used to just want He was so famous and everyone wanted to throw money and everything, but he refused to stay in monasteries. He just wandered around in racks in Eastern Tibet, just living in holes in the ground because he had renunciation. When you have real renunciation, you don’t need things anyway, but if you’ve got them, it’s okay.
His Holiness lived in a palace in the Potala, the hugest building in the world up until recent times, full of stuff, gold statues. If you ever go there, it’s unbelievable, beautiful, but really His Holiness had renunciation, so it wasn’t a problem. His holiness does have a renounced mind. So when you really have renounced mind, if you’ve got things, got and haven’t got things, it really doesn’t matter because you’ve got something in here. You’ve got the most precious thing.
You’re in contact with your Buddha nature. Right? No renunciation. No way to experience this inner peace. Right?
Because what is non renunciation is attachment, obsession with the world, and there is only suffering in the world. There is not happiness. There is just temporary pleasure, which is the suffering of change. It is dukkha. It is the very thing we’re trying to get rid of if we only knew it.
There is only the illusion of happiness in the external world. It is our obsession with stuff out there that is the problem. If we can’t give that up, we are not on the spiritual path, any spiritual path, the Christian path, the Buddhist path, any valid spiritual path. So, we have to have renunciation. If we’re obsessed with all the stuff out there, obsessed with it, attached to it, and attachment means you believe this is happiness.
You think it’s permanent. You think it will make you happy. That’s what attachment is. Intellectually, can know otherwise, but attachment isn’t intelligent. One can intellectually know this is not happiness but still have attachment.
Right? So while we have this emotional attachment, there’s no way we are stuck in the world. Our mind is obsessed with the world, with limited, unsatisfying things. And there’s no way in that situation one can develop the mind simply because, apart from anything else, there’s no time. Attachment doesn’t give us any time because attachment continuously takes us into the external world all the time.
And to develop the mind which is the source of happiness, real contentment, real peace, at the very least, it takes time. You have to spend time doing it. It just doesn’t happen. It takes a lot of time, but it does work. And if we don’t take the time, we don’t get the result.
If we take the time and work with our mind, the result comes. Now, this is the law of cause and effect. No cause, no effect. An obsession with the external world is not the cause to produce the effect of inner peace and contempt. Never ever will it be.
So, we have to have renunciation. We have to let go of our obsession with this life. There are two levels of renunciation, Right? Firstly, we have to let go with our obsession with just the happiness of this life, thinking there is just this life and there is happiness in this life. We have to let go of that.
That’s the first stage. That’s the very beginning of the spiritual life. Gampopa said to Geshe Dromtönpa, If you are attached to this life, you are not a dharma practitioner. You are not a religious person. So this is the very first step.
It’s a major step. It’s a huge step. It may take all this lifetime just to develop this level of renunciation, but it’s the first step on the real path to enlightenment, or even this is also the first step on the path to liberation on the Hīnayāna path. One has to get let go of our obsession with just this life and use this life to work at least for future lives. That’s the basic renunciation.
When we’ve developed that, we can develop the great renunciation, which is renouncing saṃsāra altogether. Right? Because if we work for the future when we have the first level of renunciation, we work for future lives thinking, well, I’ll be able to create the cause for good life. My next life will be good. And then you think, Then I’ll create the cause for a good life after that and after that and that, and it’ll be okay.
But it won’t be, because even having a good human rebirth again and again, one won’t escape suffering. One will have to experience so much suffering again and again and again continuously. And while one is suffering, one can’t benefit others very much. So the more we think about that, one develops the great renunciation. Saying, I do not want just a good rebirth that has suffering again and again.
I want to be completely free of it. I want to be completely free of all dissatisfaction. So that that mind of great renunciation is the mind that says, now give up delusion. I just won’t subdue it, pacify it, but I will completely eliminate it. And in order to eliminate that, one has to destroy ignorance.
One has to make the determination. I am really going to eliminate ignorance, which means I’m going to eliminate ego grasping. I’m going to eliminate the view I have of myself. That is a huge decision and very scary. So, that’s renunciation, very simply.
So then on the basis of that, one can develop bodhicitta and wisdom. If we are obsessed, if we have no renunciation, and we’re just obsessed with worldly pleasure for ourselves, thinking that’s okay, not even developing the renunciation of saṃsāra. If we have no renunciation at all, that means we have no real love for ourselves. We have no wish for real happiness for ourselves because we’re content with the illusion of it. So that means we don’t really love ourselves because love wants happiness.
Real love wants real happiness. So why we have no renunciation if we have no real love? And why we don’t have renunciation, we have no real compassion for ourselves. Because while we don’t have renunciation, we’re just caught in suffering. We’re just allowing ourselves to suffer more and more, again and again.
So it means we have no compassion for ourselves. We just have self-cherishing. No compassion for ourselves. We’re content to be miserable because it’s too difficult to get out of it, which is what the self-cherishing thought says. Because the self-cherishing is a very cowardly mind.
self-cherishing is desperate for happiness, but it settles for just momentary happiness. self-cherishing can’t stand suffering, but to get rid of all of suffering is too difficult. So it wallows in suffering, even though it can’t stand it. It can’t stand the bite of a mosquito. It can’t bear that.
But self-cherishing is so stupid and cowardly that it will put up with continuous samsaric suffering because it’s too difficult to get rid of. self-cherishing is really stupid. But that we all have it. Sorry if I’m insulting you. I only do that because I’ve got it too.
It is really stupid mind. It is totally contradictory. It wants happiness, but it can’t be bothered working for it. It doesn’t want suffering, but it can’t be bothered getting rid of So there is no love and compassion in self-cherishing. So renunciation is getting rid of that, renouncing self-cherishing, at least the grossest form of it.
The grossest form of it. The basic renunciation is getting rid of that. So while there’s no renunciation, there’s no love and compassion for ourselves, so how can we develop love and compassion for others? If we’re content to wallow in misery and to be content with the illusion of happiness, How can we want real happiness for others? And how can we feel compassion for others if we can’t feel compassion for ourselves?
It’s not possible. Intellectually, it’s possible. Oh, I don’t care about suffering myself, but I can’t bear the suffering of others. That’s just intellectual words. That it’s not emotionally real.
It’s just a word game. It’s only when we can’t bear suffering for ourselves that we can bear it for others. If we can’t see our own suffering, we can’t see the suffering of others. It’s impossible. If we can’t see our own potential for suffering, we can’t see the potential of suffering in others.
So without renunciation, you can’t have compassion. Without compassion, you can’t have great compassion. Without great compassion, you can’t develop the mind of universal responsibility. Without the mind of universal responsibility, you can’t generate bodhicitta. And without generating bodhicitta, you can’t get enlightened.
And if you’re not enlightened, you can’t benefit sentient beings. So if you want to benefit sentient beings, we have to develop renunciation. Developing renunciation is part of the Mahāyāna path. In the Hīnayāna path, we develop renunciation just for our own sake. But on the Mahāyāna path, one generates, tries to generate renunciation at the very beginning with trying to have the Mahāyāna motivation, that I want to benefit sentient beings.
I want to benefit them perfectly. Therefore, I have to achieve enlightenment. The only way to achieve enlightenment is first to get renunciation. First, have to develop the basic renunciation, then the great renunciation, then all the other qualities will come. No real renunciation.
No real bodhicitta or wisdom will develop. It’s inescapable if you really understand the lam rim, if one really understands the way the mind works. Renunciation is fundamental quality of mind necessary for compassion to work, and it’s necessary for wisdom to work. No renunciation, it means we have complete attachment to this stuff out there. And why we’re attached is because attachment comes from ignorance.
Attachment is an aspect of ignorance. It’s an ignorant way, a distorted way, of perceiving things and people. It’s not a valid way of perceiving things and relating to things. It is it is ignorance. I mean, maybe the Geshe’s would kind of debate the but, you know, just for the purpose of this talk, you know, to make the point attachment is ignorance.
It is the function of ignorance. It is an aspect and expression of ignorance. So if we follow attachment, we are following ignorance. We are reinforcing ignorance again and again. So if we follow attachment and therefore do not develop renunciation, how can you develop wisdom?
This is like doing exercises to lose weight. As soon as you stop doing the exercise, you run around the block five hundred times to lose weight, come inside and eat ten chocolates. There’s no point. These two things are just fighting each other. No renunciation that you spend hours trying to understand the teachings on emptiness and meditate on them.
It’s pointless, not entirely pointless, some imprints, but the two things don’t fit. By following attachment, one is just reinforcing one’s ignorance, and attachment has this quality of believing in the permanence of phenomena, rejecting even the conventional truth that all things are impermanent. If we reject the conventional truth, how do we think we’re going to understand and experience the ultimate truth? Please tell me. I’d like to know.
I’d like to keep my attachments. If you find a method, I’d be interested in it, because you think we can reject the conventional truth and understand the ultimate truth. This would be a great leap forward in mankind, I think, if this was possible. It is not possible.
We can’t reject the conventional truth and hope to understand it and experience the ultimate truth. It’s utterly impossible. And when we’re attached, we are rejecting the conventional truth. Yes. Yes.
I mean, everyone can say the words. Everything is impermanent. Right? That’s very easy. Even I can say attachment.
We we have to, you know, act on that understanding, allow it to become just not just words, but a heartfelt experience. Everyone can go around saying, I I could die at any moment. I could die at any moment. But emotionally, we think we’re going to live forever. So, anyway, I just try to make the point simply briefly that renunciation is integral with the development of bodhicitta and wisdom.
Renunciation contains the seeds of bodhicitta and wisdom within it. One shouldn’t think that these three principal paths — renunciation, wisdom, and bodhicitta are somehow three different things. In fact, they’re all aspects of the one thing. So, anyway, this is what we need to do, follow this path. Particularly, we’re to develop all the qualities, a good heart, wisdom, and non attachment.
But especially as beginners, and we’re beginners for a very, very long time, we have to put a special emphasis on developing renunciation, but developing it with a good heart and with insight, with wisdom, with skill. So, we try and develop renunciation, wisdom, and bodhicitta. If those things really start to come together, then when we’ve developed or when we actually generate bodhicitta and we have some wisdom, or actually, when we generate bodhicitta, then we enter the Mahāyāna path. It may come as a surprise to some people who have been practicing Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, for many years, thinking they’ve entered the Mahāyāna path. Now I’ve entered the Mahāyāna.
We have not entered the actual Mahāyāna path. One has to have developed complete renunciation and bodhicitta and some wisdom, some understanding of emptiness. When you’ve done that, when we’ve generated these three principal paths, then we enter the Mahāyāna path. Right? It’s only when you completely generate bodhicitta that one has entered the Mahāyāna path.
So then, having entered the Mahāyāna path, there are five levels or paths within the Mahāyāna path. There is the path of accumulation. I won’t go into these in any detail. This is all an introduction to tantras. Sorry.
There’s the path of accumulation, then there’s the path of preparation. Right? Then there’s the path of insight. So the path of insight is very crucial, because at the path of insight is when a bodhisattva actually develops for the first time a direct perception of emptiness, the true nature of phenomena. Prior to that, on the path of accumulation and preparation, a bodhisattva has a correct understanding of emptiness, but is what is called an inferential understanding of emptiness.
It’s mixed with what is called a generic image. So it’s something indirect. But then on the path of insight, which takes place in one meditation sitting, sit down as a bodhisattva on the path of preparation. You sit on your cushion on the path of preparation, and then you go into meditation. In that meditation you directly realize emptiness.
You get rid of the generic image and you have a direct insight into emptiness in meditation. Then you become an Ārya Bodhisattva on the path of insight. You become a first level Bodhisattva on the path of insight. You are now an Ārya being. And so in in meditation, you’re now able to directly perceive emptiness.
But when out of meditation, you know, you’re you’re not able to maintain that. But then out of meditation, everything you have what is called what is called the anyway, out of meditation, everything appears like an illusion. There there is still the appearance of true existence, but you no longer believe in it. For us, there is the appearance of true existence, of inherently existing phenomena, and but we believe in it. We grasp in that appearance as being true, which is the big problem.
Whereas for a bodhisattva an ārya bodhisattva on the path of insight and onwards, Out of meditation, there is still the appearance of true existence. Just like we can see an illusion of water in the desert, but we don’t believe in it. We know it’s an illusion. So, it’s the same for bodhisattva. In the ārya bodhisattva, there is the appearance of true existence, but they don’t grasp at it.
They see it as like a dream, like an illusion.