Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 42-minute session, Ven Thubten Gyatso addresses an audience of mixed experience levels, from newcomers to long-term practitioners, to explore how self-centred thinking creates suffering while love and compassion make life meaningful. He begins with a guided meditation on breath awareness, using the metaphor of a mirror covered by dust to illustrate how disturbing emotions distort our perception of reality. After establishing the mind’s natural capacity for clarity, he leads the group through a compassion practice: generating love from the heart, radiating healing light to parents, family, friends, difficult people, and all beings, then dissolving into emptiness before generating the determination that every action, word, and thought will benefit others. The teaching emphasizes that we need not wait until enlightenment to help others—each step of practice itself becomes a stepping stone to serve those at our current level.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 DE 1995 10 21.mp3
UUID: 7715fc70-e2a4-4a6f-8073-2f89c9dd1199
Teacher: Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman
Collection: Dealing With Disturbing Emotions (Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman)
Date: 1995-10-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.4 minutes
Words: ~2,666
So although initially the the field of activity in meditation and contemplation and, you know, study, initially, we we’re thinking of our personal needs and requirements. Necessarily, we have to cure our own mental sickness before we can help others cure their mental sickness. But we don’t have to wait until the attainment of nirvana or enlightenment. It happens every step along the way. We’re able to show others and help others reach the point that we’ve reached.
So that’s the the theme of today’s talk. Now I’m not sure how where you’re coming from. I I gather there’s a mixture of people who have been around for a while and others are fairly new. Maybe can you just show who is anybody completely new? Is this your first course in Buddhism?
A few. And others just a little bit new? And others have been around for varying varying times. Okay. So don’t hesitate to ask me questions.
I’m not too keen on having formal lecture situations. I much rather have conversation and discussion during the talks so so you don’t get lost or if there’s some point which you find an obstacle to your understanding or even to your acceptance, then by all means, feel free to to interrupt and and or try and clarify. I thought I would begin with meditation before your legs get too stiff and painful. So I think we’re going to have sort of two main sessions. Beginning now with meditation and then some talk and discussion, and then there’ll be a tea break.
And then after the tea break, again, we’ll have a meditation and another talk and discussion. So roughly, we’ll divide the day into two main sessions like that. So I hope you’re comfortable. You got enough cushions? So I’ve I think I’ve sort of established or pointed out that the the field of practice is our own mind.
And as it’s our, the uncontrolled disturbing energy in our own minds, which reflects in an uncontrolled disturbed world for our personal experience, then the way of of gaining control and freedom from the uncontrolled energies in our mind is, first of all, to through meditation to generate stable concentration stability to be able to hold our mind upon an object without wavering. And then in dependence upon that stabilized mind that is able to remain both clear and concentrated, then the the activity is to increase our our wisdom, our knowledge, our understanding of the nature of our mind and just the the nature of the disturbing mental factors and the nature of the positive mental factors. And once we can recognize the the makeup, sort of the structure of our mind, those bits which are undesirable and those which are desirable, then still in meditation, we practice to eradicate disturbing mental states and to to increase the strength of of positive mental states such as as wisdom itself, such as loving kindness and compassion. These are the love and compassion are the two mental attitudes which make life meaningful. I think it will come across quite strongly during the talk that life tends to be meaningless when we are doing things just with purely self selfish motivation.
We are when preoccupied with just of me and maybe my close circle of friends, my family, me and mine, and we exclude the welfare of others from our thoughts, then life becomes very, very narrow. And from the Buddhist point of view, becomes, because of the self centred attitude, it’s a very dangerous way of living because of the possibility of generating disturbing emotions of anger and attachment and jealousy and pride and all of those disturbing emotions that flow from the self centered thought. So when we act in a selfish way, when we live only thinking of ourselves and our actions from the Buddhist point of view are meaningless, that that we actually miss out on the happiness that we’re seeking and we unintentionally create the cause for more suffering, more pain. On the other hand, if we can open our hearts and generate the thought of love, which is the that state of mind which delights in the happiness of others, really sincerely, wanting others to be happy, to experience their pleasures, whatever pleasures they seek, then having a real sort of fondness and a wish that they they’d be happy without any, no conditions attached.
You know, not wanting oneself to be happy, but wanting others to be happy. That’s that’s the meaning of love. And compassion is related to that. Compassion is the state of mind or the attitude where we see that others are suffering and various physical mental sufferings and being unable to bear that the thought of their suffering, wanting them to be free from suffering. So when we transform our mind to being into love and compassion, then everything we do, everything we we say, even every thought we have is meaningful.
Meaningful in in that it it brings the peace and the happiness that we’re all looking for. It makes the mind just by looking after others, by considering others, that gives an inner joy that is often even greater than the happiness we give them. And it’s meaningful in terms of the immediate state of mind in that by having love and compassion, our mind feels peaceful. Our mind is at ease. And then in the long term, it’s meaningful because we establish the imprints, or like to say, karmic seeds or imprints in our mind to experience continual happiness, happy results in the future, even though that’s not our intention.
Our intention is to help others with love and compassion. Indirectly, those actions, future obstacles in our lives fall away because we change the inner condition of our mind so that it cannot meet with unwanted, what Buddhist terminology calls karmic obstacles. We’re not going to be talking much about karma today, I don’t think. Anyway, you’ll have to bear with me to bring in these concepts even though you may not have had a thorough explanation of them. We’ve all heard the word karma anyway.
So my point is that life is made meaningful by cultivating loving kindness and compassion. Any other motivation, like selfish motivations, self centred, they do not make life meaningful. They waste our time. We waste our physical actions. We waste our verbal actions.
We waste our mental actions because we by acting selfishly, we don’t achieve the results that we want. Freedom from unhappiness and the experience of happiness. The self centered mind is contradictory to those, to achieving those goals. And I’ll explain I hope I can explain why after we meditate. Now I think for the meditation it’s probably better that we just go into it rather than me explaining beforehand.
And I will guide the meditation as we go through. Remember that the sort of first intention with meditating is to be able to concentrate, to keep our mind clear and un undistracted. So at first we’re going to meditate on the sensation of the breathing, just the air coming and going at your nostrils. You just focus your mind on the sensation of the breathing and hold it there. And if you can hold it, well that’s great.
But what happens is that this waterfall of thoughts and ideas just comes through our mind and steals our attention. And it’s very subtle. It’s very quiet. These distracting thoughts sneak in and before we realize it, we’ve lost our concentration on the breath and we’re off in a thought about something else. So we have to bring our mind back, bring it back constantly.
Catch the mind, let go of the distracting thought and bring it back. And after a lot of practice, years and years practice, then you might be able to watch your breath for, you know, ten minutes or so without distraction. But don’t think that you’re getting nowhere. Making the effort is very important. Making the effort is all that, you know, counts so much by, going through.
And then eventually as you practice then you’ll be able to experience some inner peace. So we’re going to watch our breath and we’re going to concentrate on the nature of the mind which is calm and still. For example, if you think of a mirror, the mirror a perfect mirror, its its capacity to reflect whatever appears before it without distortion, that capacity remains even though the mirror may be covered with dust and mud. It cannot reflect, but its natural capacity reflect is unaltered by the fact that there is dirt there. So when the dirt is removed, the natural capacity of the mirror naturally functions.
It reflects things clearly. And so our minds are very similar. Our minds their natural capacity, the mind is to reflect phenomena, reflect things that appear before it accurately and peacefully without distortion. But our minds are covered in a type of dirt which is our disturbing emotions, selfishness, attachment, anger, jealousy, pride, so on. When those emotions or thoughts are manifesting in our mind, instead of just our mind being aware of things as they are, this busyness of the thoughts distorts our mind.
It distorts the natural reflective capacity of our minds. And so our experience of the world is distorted by these superficial disturbing emotions. And so we never see reality as long as we have disturbing emotions because our our awareness, our mind is unable to, be free from this distortion. Wherever we look, whatever we think about, we distort. And so we don’t see the object or the person or whatever it is in the way it exists.
But our our mind does have the natural capacity like a mirror covered by dirt still has the capacity to see things clearly. Our minds do have the capacity to see things without distortion. So we need to reduce and eliminate this busyness of the superficial emotions. Okay? You know, I just think think about that.
I I sort of go into that so that when you’re meditating, then you can, you know what you’re doing. You know what your job is. Because quite often we sit down and think, I’m meditating, but we’re not quite sure what we’re doing. What am I supposed to do? Then a nice thought comes up, Oh!
It could even be like a positive thought. I’ll go and help somebody and do this and that and we go into this whole story. That’s not meditating, even though it’s the most positive thing we’ve ever thought. We’re supposed to be concentrating. There are times during meditation when we contemplate doing, you know, contemplating practicing love or practicing compassion.
But if we’re concentrating and we think about love and compassion, that’s distracting. Anyway, during this meditation that I’m going to lead, you’ll have a taste of everything. We’re going to touch upon many points, and I think it’s better that we we just go into it and, you can experience. So first with your posture, try to be comfortable. Sit with your back straight.
Rest your right hand and your left hand, the tips of your thumbs together. Just resting in your lap with your elbows loose. Your head is slightly bent forward, not not rigidly erect or too far forward. Just just comfortable. Shoulders level.
Now traditionally your eyes should be very very slightly open but most people find that distracting and so you can just lightly close your eyes so that the lids are barely touching. With your mouth closed, your tongue resting against the roof of the mouth and breathing normally. And now focus your whole awareness on the sensation of your breathing, of the air crossing the upper lip and going in and out of the nostrils with each breath. Just stay there watching the breath and undisturbed by thoughts of anything else. Keep your mind upon the breathing.
Don’t allow to be distracted. Keep your back straight. Release any tension in the muscles around your face and eyes. Then check your neck and shoulders. Let go any tension in the muscles.
Then your arms and hands, and your trunk and legs As your body relaxes, feel your spine straightening. Watching the coming and going of the breath at your nostrils. Now let the breathing go and bring your awareness inside. Feel that the subjective awareness is based at your heart in the center of your chest. And at that point, pacify your emotions.
Experience the mirror like nature of your mind. The peaceful and still nature of awareness, Calm. Free from disturbing thoughts. Abide at your heart. Experiencing the natural stillness of the mind.
Remain in the present. Let go of the past or the future. Now think of the love in the heart of parents when they see their child happy and laughing and playing. The warm joy that arises in their hearts, delighted in the child’s happiness. And imagine that warm, blissful sensation of love arising in your own heart directed not just to those who are close to you, but towards every living being, humans, animals, wherever beings are reborn.
Feel the blissful healing energy of love in your heart arising in the form of light, shining white light that spills over from your heart and then slowly spreads throughout your body and mind, cleansing away all problems and their causes, filling you with bliss. The warm healing energy love fills your whole being so bright that you shine like the sun. Imagine that meditating on your left is your mother and on your right, your father. And they’re bathed by the brilliance of this light of loving kindness and compassion. That totally removes all of their problems and their causes and brings every happiness to mother and father.
Then behind, imagine the remainder of your family and friends meditating and send the light to them as well, each one, filling them with bliss and removing all problems. Then in front, imagine meditating. Anybody who irritates you, who has harmed you or your friends, and with equal love and compassion, seeing that they’re really no different to anybody else. Send a light to them as well. And then imagine all remaining living beings in the form of humans all around as far as the horizon and send out from your heart wave after wave blissful, healing energy of loving kindness and compassion, cleansing away their problems, and bringing every happiness.
And having touched the hearts of all living beings, the light now returns, flowing back into you from above, below, and all around, filling you with happiness. Your mother and father, all those that you’ve imagined, just melt away into empty space. Then your own body melts away and dissolves into empty space from outside in. The last point to disappear is at your heart. And your blissful mind remains focused upon the ultimate nature of all things, emptiness, appearing like the clear empty sky at dawn.
Hold that as long as you can. Then within the emptiness, again, generate the thought of love and compassion, the warm, blissful thought which appears as light, And that light takes the form of your body with your mind inside. Think that your whole being is now a product of wisdom and compassion. The old person, the old self produced by karma and afflictions is gone forever. Make the strong mental determination that from now on, every action I do with my body will be to help others.
Every word I speak will be to please the minds of others. And every thought I think will be a beneficial thought for others. In this way, my life will become meaningful. The whole purpose of my life will be to benefit others through every action of my body, speech, and mind. And with that strong determination, then you can slowly relax and come out of meditation.