Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Thubten Gyatso explores the foundation of Mahāyāna Buddhist practice: cultivating universal compassion and bodhicitta, the altruistic mind of enlightenment. He begins by examining how recognition of past connections with all beings—everyone having been our mother countless times in previous lives—serves as the logical basis for extending love and compassion equally to strangers, enemies, and animals. He outlines the two main directions in Buddhist practice: the Hīnayāna path toward personal nirvana, and the Mahāyāna path toward Buddhahood motivated by the determination to guide all beings from suffering. He explains how bodhicitta—not mere emotion but a mind of universal responsibility—generates the energy and courage necessary to transform oneself through the accumulation of merit and wisdom. He distinguishes between the gradual Paramita vehicle practiced over countless eons and the accelerated tantric or Vajrayāna path, both part of the Mahāyāna tradition. The talk concludes by contextualizing these aspirations within worldly and non-worldly directions of life, from selfish pursuits to ethical conduct motivated by future lives to the ultimate goal of enlightenment for others’ sake. Suitable for beginners seeking foundational understanding of Mahāyāna motivation and those with prior Buddhist training.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 2010 02 09 BP.mp3
UUID: b4f10fe4-397d-4b3b-b00b-d0f2c4f25e2e
Teacher: Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman
Collection: Misc teachings (Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman)
Date: 2010-02-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.8 minutes
Words: ~5,239
We remember the good times in the past, maybe we were at school together, university or you know, when we were younger we were very close and we enjoyed so many good times together. And so there’s this feeling of recognition, identification and warmth immediately arises, even if we haven’t seen them for twenty or thirty years or more even. Interesting, tomorrow I’m going to meet a cousin of mine I haven’t seen for forty years. Ah, who saw my picture in the newspapers? Amazing how things happen.
I thought it was somewhere else. So, is it valid? It certainly is valid to have such a feeling towards friends, but what about all the strangers, even the people we hate, some of whom may well have been good friends in the past? Well, yes, there is a valid reason, and the valid reason is that we are indeed connected to every single living being, not just the humans, the animals, etc, all the living beings. We have had every close relationship with them in past lives.
They’ve been mothers, they’ve been our fathers, they’ve been our spouse, they’ve been our children, we’ve been their children, you know, they’ve been our friends, our uncles, our aunties. We’ve had so many close relationships with every living being, with each other. Now, we can’t remember past lives, so for this we have to rely upon the Buddha’s word and the word of those meditators who through the power of single pointed concentration have gained the clairvoyant power to remember past lives and not only of themselves but to see the past lives of others. So that power is achievable well before enlightenment. You don’t even have to be a Buddhist to achieve that clairvoyant power.
It is achieved in dependence upon the power of concentration, single-pointed concentration. Anyway, we’re going to talk more about this later, probably on Thursday night, about really meditating upon these realities. But the point is that there is just in this introduction, there are logical reasons why we should relate to each other just as we would relate to an old friend who we haven’t seen each other for a long time and we’re really interested in their welfare. And our love is wanting them to have a happy time and our compassion is wanting them to not have suffered, or if they have suffered, feeling empathy and compassion for the troubles they’ve experienced. So, the mind of a Buddha is simply that.
When I say the unification of wisdom and compassion, it sees reality, ultimate and conventional reality, and it sees living beings with a warm heart of great love and great compassion and has the not just the wish to stop the suffering of others but the intention to guide others out of suffering by indicating a way, by teaching, demonstrating, showing the Four Noble Truths. The truth of suffering, the truth cause of suffering, the truth of cessation of suffering and the true path which leads to cessation of suffering. So, our minds do have that potential to manifest or to achieve the unification of wisdom and compassion. In these talks, I’m going to talk about the compassionate side. And so, I’ve generally called the talks about altruism and the notes that I’ve handed out the path to altruism.
So I just use the word altruism as a synonym for the Sanskrit word of bodhicitta. I don’t like to use words where it sounds like Buddha’s jargon, but bodhicitta is a pretty important jargon. So we need to understand what it means. Bodhi literally means enlightenment and citta means mind. So it’s the mind of enlightenment.
That’s all. Buddha’s mind, the Buddha mind. And as I’ve mentioned, there are two aspects to the Buddha’s mind. There is wisdom and compassion. So, in the texts you will read about ultimate bodhicitta, the ultimate enlightened mind, that refers to the wisdom seeing reality, conventional and ultimate.
Then there is conventional relative bodhicitta, that refers to the altruistic mind and when I use bodhicitta during these talks I’ll be talking about the relative or the conventional bodhicitta or altruism, which is not merely love, not merely compassion. It is a state of mind which is born out of love and compassion. And it is an attitude of universal responsibility, that it’s my responsibility to guide all beings out of suffering. So why is it my responsibility? Because in the training we reflect very deeply on the fact that every being has been my mother, my father and so on in past lives.
That we actually have this close relationship with every living being. And in those past lives, my past mothers and fathers have been incredibly kind towards me. And just as it’s sort of socially acceptable and natural that if our present mothers and fathers, or just talk about the mothers, are in trouble, then we, their children, are morally responsible to look after them, to help them. We wouldn’t just stand aside, you know, if we come home and the house is in flames and our mother’s trapped, we wouldn’t say, Oh look, will you go in there and help? We would just automatically feel that we have to do something.
We have to put our own lives at risk to rescue our dear mother, who is in danger of being burned alive. So the reality is that we are surrounded by our dear mothers and the reality is when we think about the great danger of the ignorant mind that leads us into uncontrolled attachment and anger, then it’s as if our past mothers all around us are caught up in flames. Flames of suffering, real and potential because of the karma etc that they’re creating through confusion. So when the meditator reflects deeply and deeply upon this reality, the meditator then generates a sense of universal responsibility. It’s my responsibility to rescue all my past mothers.
We don’t even say, Oh look, there are hundreds, thousands, countless Buddhas, can’t they help? If we thought that, we would never achieve Buddhahood. We would never achieve the unification of wisdom and compassion. We would never achieve Mahāyāna path. We would never generate bodhicitta in our mind.
So bodhicitta, this urgency to rescue others from suffering, that is the power, the energy that drives us to work on our minds to eradicate the saṃsāra confused miserable ignorant mind, you know the ignorance within our mind. You can’t destroy the mind, that’s non physical, that’s indestructible. But we can certainly bring to an end the confusion. Because confusion is based upon ignorance and wisdom opposes ignorance and extinguishes ignorance. But wisdom has to be supported by strong determination and strong courage.
It’s not easy strong easy to get into our own minds, to start opening up the layers of self centeredness, of anger, of attachment, attachment, of pride and jealousy. They have been ingrained into our consciousness over countless past lifetimes. They’re very powerful. And to try to free our mind from self centeredness is something which is extremely difficult and takes so much effort and will take such a long time, many lifetimes. I don’t know how many people ask me, Are you a Buddha?
Are you enlightened? Say, Give me a break, come on. It’s not something that can possibly occur overnight, especially in this day and age when there’s so much distorted views, so many wrong views in the world, strong attachment, strong anger, strong selfishness. It takes many many many lifetimes to follow the path and to get into the mind. And so, to do that we need to have the perseverance and the courage and determination, as I’ve mentioned.
This requires requires a sense of urgency born through love and compassion towards all other beings. I must carry on and break through the veils of ignorance in my mind because if I don’t do it, I can be of no help to others. Sure, I can dedicate my life to giving material help food, shelter, education, medicine, whatever is needed at a physical or material level. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, that’s great.
But unless I can teach and explain and guide others on the path of entering into their minds to eradicate the garbage from their minds, I can’t be of great help. I might ease their physical situation, but they’re still gonna hate each other. They’re still gonna become attached. They’re still gonna become jealous and proud. And they’re going to compete.
And they’re gonna fight. And they’re going to create the cause for even worse rebirth than this human rebirth. So, the best way, the proper way, the only final way is to help them to remove their ignorance and help them cultivate universal love and altruism. I cannot do that as long as wisdom and altruism remain intellectual ideals for me. I have to actual ize wisdom and compassion.
Only then can I become a proper guide, a trustworthy guide, you know, who knows exactly what to say and how to guide others? So, when we see the reality of that and understand the meaning of that, then we think, I’ve got to become a Buddha. This is the unification of wisdom and compassion. So, I must become in order to rescue my past mothers. So, therefore, with this strong determination and seeing the suffering, the continual suffering that’s happening all around, just in the human society, one is energized again and again just by seeing other sentient beings to persevere in one’s own practice.
Without that compassion and without that determination to help others, we won’t do it properly. We will slacken off. We just won’t have the energy that’s required to accumulate what’s necessary in the mind to become a Buddha. And there are many stories illustrating the historic Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha himself, in his life as a bodhisattva, where in various rebirths he sacrificed his life in many different ways out of love and compassion. And in doing so, created the cause to achieve Buddhahood because it’s not enough just to have the wisdom and compassion.
One has to have the means through which one can communicate with sentient beings. So, the path to Buddhahood, we hear, requires the gathering of the two great collections: the collection of wisdom and the collection of merit. Merit is the positive energy which begins with acts benefiting others through karma and as one grows and matures on the path and realizes emptiness, it is the sort of uncontaminated karma or the pure actions directed towards attaining Buddhahood. And through this collection of merit or positive energy upon attaining Buddhahood, one has one, just through the power of one’s mind, supported by this accumulation of merit, one manifests what’s called a pure land. So, a pure land is a place where high practitioners who have realized emptiness and are on the path to Buddhahood can be born and where, as Buddha, we call it the Sambhogakāya, the complete enjoyment body, one gives the teachings and the practitioners are able to complete the path to enlightenment in the best circumstances.
So, the pure lands are not within the wheel of life. The bodhis bodhisattvas who are born there don’t even necessarily have achieved nirvana, but what they have achieved is the direct realization of emptiness. So they are called ārya bodhisattvas, ārya noble. Their mind has been ennobled by the direct realization of emptiness which means they have actually destroyed karma. But they haven’t yet eliminated all of the obscurations from their minds.
So they can be born there. But if one doesn’t have that realization, one can’t be born there. So, from this pure land state, a Buddha has the power, again, as a result of great compassion, as a result of altruism and the vast accumulation of merit on the path. The Bodhisattva has the capacity to send emanation bodies or Nirmāṇakāya that they can emanate in many different forms in other planets simultaneously, either as Śākyamūni Buddha, turning the wheel of Dharma, teaching the whole path, or simply as ordinary beings or as animals. In any way, wherever their past mothers’ minds are ripe, ready to comprehend any facet of the teachings or the whole path, as in the case of Śākyamūni Buddha, turned the wheel of Dharma, then Nirmāṇakāya Buddhas, Buddhas in the aspect of this Nirmāṇakāya or emanation body are able to manifest and guide those beings in the right direction.
So, that’s the only way they can help, by teaching, by showing, look, this is your mistake, this is the correct way, learn from your mistake, follow practice the path, but they can’t grab us by the scruff of the neck and drag us along the path. Because the path is internal. The path is in our mind, it’s nowhere else. We are the only ones who can reach maturity in our own minds. And I’ve been using it too.
The spiritual path is really a path of maturation. Physically, our bodies grow up and mature quite rapidly, but mentally we remain immature, particularly when we’re under the control of self centered ignorance, uncontrolled anger, attachment, pride, jealousy. And in many times in the sūtra teachings of Buddha there is reference to the childlike sentient beings. Why are we child like? Because we’re just like children mentally.
We have not matured to go beyond our wrong conceptions, our wrong ideas. We’re still slaves to our uncontrolled disturbing emotions. We still cry and make others cry stupidly, selfishly, in competition with each other and this goes on and on until we die. Unless we have the great fortune to meet somebody who indicates to us that our root problem is not our husband, our wife, Mr. Rudd or Mr.
Abbott or the weather, the root or not even our body, our root problem is in our own mind, it’s selfishness. And that selfishness comes from ignorance of the reality of the self. So, learning that. And then, if we’re extremely fortunate, we meet practitioner will explain to us Mahāyāna path, the universal vehicle path towards Buddhahood. In the notes there is a mention here that the Buddha’s teachings are divided into two parts: the individual vehicle and the universal vehicle.
The individual vehicle is called the Hīnayāna and the universal vehicle is called the Mahāyāna. So, what this refers to is that we have a whole spectrum of mental aptitudes and interests and aspirations and so on. And for most of us, we’ve lived our life trying to be happy, trying to avoid suffering. It’s been fairly self centered in our behavior. Me and my family, we’ve worked towards personal happiness for me and mine.
And it’s very, very difficult for our minds to embrace the concept of every single living being, to see the ants in our garden. Not only equally to the way we see our mother, but seeing both our mother and the ants equally as having been our mother countless times in the past, like a huge amount of love and compassion and respect and wishing them to not suffer and wanting to help them. So, this altruistic attitude, which goes totally beyond any formative self preservation or desire for my happiness and my freedom from suffering, it’s very difficult to entertain. So, Buddha taught those who found that a very difficult concept to embrace. The Buddha taught the path to nirvana.
nirvana is the cessation of one’s suffering and its cause. It is the complete cessation and liberation from the wheel of life by generating the wisdom seeing reality. And that’s the main goal. There is, of course, on this path that wisdom needs to be supported by great love and great compassion. And these have to be cultivated.
But there is not the sense of universal responsibility. There is simply the goal to achieve nirvana, my personal liberation. That’s why it’s called the individual vehicle. And so most of Buddha’s teachings were given explaining that path because that’s what most people could tolerate. But there were a few amongst the Buddhist disciples whose minds were capable of embracing the bodhisattva ideal, the altruistic, the thought of cultivating altruism, this attitude of universal responsibility.
For those, Buddha taught the universal vehicle or the Mahāyāna, which is the teachings on how to cultivate the bodhicitta, the altruistic mind, and how to put it into practice. It includes all the teachings of the individual vehicle and on top of that, and all the practices of the individual vehicle, and on top of that, the specific practices designed towards gathering the two great collections of wisdom and merit which are required to achieve Buddhahood. So the path to Buddhahood is very difficult, but it’s possible. So, Śākyamūni Buddha showed that path. There are times, and there will be in this world when future Buddhas come, who will only teach the individual vehicle because the people around at that time will not be capable of comprehending the Mahāyāna vehicle.
Now, think Maitreya Buddha will just teach the individual vehicle. Have you heard that? I think I’ve heard that. I’m not totally sure. I have to check that mean that Maitreya Buddha is not a Buddha and doesn’t know the universal vehicle.
It just means that the people who will be around when Maitreya, the next Buddha comes, will not have the seed or the thought to practice the Mahāyāna. But I’m not totally sure. I just think of it. Anyway, if not Maitreya, certainly many of the other thousand Buddhas who appear in this world, some will teach both the individual and the universal vehicles, others will teach just the individual vehicle. There are other times when Buddhas appear and they look around and they shake their heads and disappear.
No hope. And you see, for us to receive the teachings, we have to have the cause. Nothing happens by chance in this world. For us, I think as I mentioned last week, if we want to win lotto, six numbers are not enough. We also have to have the karma.
We have to have the cause. As Lama Zopa Rinpoche told me when I asked him for six numbers and he very readily gave me the six numbers. As I was leaving the room he carefully reminded me, looked up and said, Oh, you also have to have the karma. Which I didn’t have. So, within the Mahāyāna or the universal teachings, Buddha also taught at two levels.
One level we call the perfection vehicle or the Paramita Yana or sometimes called the Sūtrayāna. So, is the Bodhisattva’s practice of training in the ten perfections founded on the six perfections of generosity, patience and so on. The various six perfections. Amongst students who were capable of practicing the universal vehicle, the vast majority could only embrace the perfection vehicle, the progressive path towards enlightenment which takes three, minimum time, is three countless great eons of time, which is a vast duration of time. It’s longer than duration of this Earth.
So one has to be reborn again and again on different planets. Even when this Earth ceases, one won’t have finished one’s part on the perfection vehicle, one will have to go to another planet which is more conducive to continue one’s practice. Amongst those followers of the universal vehicle who Buddha taught, there were very few who were capable of the profound practice of Tantra. So, for those Buddha taught in aspect of Kālacakra, the Buddha taught the tantric vehicle or the vajrayana. So this is not different.
This is not a third vehicle. This is part of the universal vehicle. To practice the vajrayana, one has to complete all the practices of the perfection vehicle. At least have solid realization of renunciation, bodhicitta, and the wisdom realizing emptiness as the foundation for tantric tantric practice. So, for a very few students, Buddha taught the tantric practices and these have been maintained.
We have the great fortune that they were not just maintained in terms of the verbal transmission, but they’ve been maintained in terms of the practical actualization of yogis and yoginis in Tibet and India through the centuries. The Lamas of today are qualified teachers of the whole universal vehicle. So we’re extremely fortunate to be able to meet such teachers. By the way, you can ask questions at any time if there’s something that’s not too clear. So now, in the notes, this is coming partly from me but also from the teachings.
We all have a direction in life and if we don’t have a direction we’re looking for a direction. But even if we think, oh, life is meaningless, we still go day to day doing things. We still have our direction, but and it’s a bit of wisdom to recognize that the ordinary direction in life is sort of a bit circular. It’s not going constructive anyway. We wonder what is it all about?
What’s the meaning of life? But still within that intellectual wondering we have a direction. And so, we can talk about directions in life and the meaning of life in terms of worldly sense and non worldly sense. So, a worldly direction in life is the simple pursuit of happiness in this life, know, here and now happiness, and avoiding unhappiness and suffering and pain, again, in this life. Know, this is just what we’re our thoughts are just embracing this life.
We’re not really thinking beyond this life. We’re just thinking about what we’re going do today and tomorrow and next week and next year. What I’m going to do to be happy and to avoid unhappiness and suffering. So, this is in the worldly category because it’s worldly. It doesn’t go beyond this life.
And the vast majority of humans in the world simply have that direction in their daily activities. Certainly all the animals are just sleep, they wake up and they wonder where they can get the next meal from and they just want to experience pleasure and not experience suffering. It’s not different. Actually, the human endeavor of pursuing our happiness, although we may intellectualize and glorify our arts, our music, our painting, our films, etc. It’s really, in general, it’s just superficial, sensual gratification.
Especially food and going to the beach, the clothes we wear, a lot of it is extremely superficial gratification in the sense of trying to be pleasure and not have suffering. So, we work very hard to make money, to have a house to protect us and able to buy food and medicine when needed. But there is nothing deeply meaningful in this life other than survival really. Survival in a happy way. In the process we all meet frustrations, incompletions, we lose all that we work so hard to accumulate, things often don’t turn out the way we expect them to, we have incredible disappointment, the people we invest our hopes in let us down.
It could be our spouse or our children or our friends. There’s no guarantee that hard work will bring definite results of good happiness and security. Especially for all our hopes in the stock market, as so many found out. So, as a result, we get frustrated, we get angry, we become competitive, we hurt each other. We tend to pursue happiness and avoid suffering at the expense of others.
And, you know, we hear the metaphor, rat race of human life. Well, it’s not just cynics who see human life as a rat race. And we know it a rat race, like rats definitely, what is a rat race? I’ve always presumed a rat race is, like rats are pretty nasty and they’ll go for whatever they want at the expense of other rats, is that right? Is that what you mean by a rat rat?
Oh, circular wheel. Is that? Maybe. Right, well both Right. So I learned something.
Somehow I’ve always had the picture of a rat race is a real free for all fight, which if we look at human society, hey, it’s there. You don’t have to drive a V8 car through Adelaide during the football Sorry, I was just joking, but I did have my car bashed. Alright, so, it’s not that pleasing, you know, if we take an honest look at what we’re doing to each other, the way we do fight each other and the things that do go on. We just read the news headlines day in, day out. Scary.
And so much of it is domestic violence or racist violence or road rage, the ridiculous things that we do do out of uncontrolled emotions. That is one of the worldly directions. Another way of living and a meaningful life and a direction in life is those who have a belief in future lives, either from the Buddhist point of view of reincarnation in different realms, or Judeo Christian Muslim belief in a future life either in heaven or in hell. And so, one adopts these beliefs as a basis for ethical conduct. And I think this is extremely laudable because it is.
We do need a reason for ethical conduct. Morality ethics are not well they can be innate, definitely we can from previous lives, from a Buddhist point of view, from previous lives, if by living in pure morality of not harming others, killing, stealing, lying and so on, that leaves powerful imprints to have the innate tendency in this life, whether we receive more teachings or not, we just have an innate tendency to behave ethically, to not kill, not steal, not lie, to have compassion and kindness. So, is a wonderful thing. But unless it’s reinforced by again meeting teachers who give an intellectual reason as a foundation for ethical and moral conduct, it’s very easy to lose. You know, for children, if they get caught up with the wrong crowd, very easily be talked out of their sort of innate goodness and become like their friends without any sort of moral restraint in their lives.
Especially so in our society which is growing more and more secular all the time. And the law is not enough. Our legal system says don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie and so on. But well, I mean of course we obey the law but not necessarily willingly and not through some understanding and there’s no great compassion. There’s no compassionate reason why we should obey the law.
Certainly, in my youth, the law was something to flout, something to reject. The police were pigs and whatever they stood for were against. It was just the culture of my friends and sometimes we got away with it, other times we didn’t. Alright. So, the pursuit of heaven or a happy rebirth is valid and it comes from some wisdom, some compassion, some teaching of the path.
And the Buddha taught, at least for the simplest spiritual goal, is to let go of clinging, the obsession with pursuing happiness and avoiding suffering in this life and to aim to think about the future life and start behaving in a moral way, in a non harmful way, with the thought of guaranteeing a happy rebirth and avoiding rebirth in a terrible suffering state. Alright. But still worldly because even if we go to hell, we’ll go to heaven, definitely hell, but even if we do go to heaven, and we can do that without generating the wisdom, realizing the ultimate reality of emptiness, then we will still be ignorant, we will still become attached, we will still have pride and jealousy, etc, etc. And so, there is danger that we will fall from heaven. From the Buddhist point of view, we will fall into lower rebirth states because life is so good in heaven that there will be no power, no initiative to really do something about our mind.
The human birth is best for understanding the reality of suffering and the cause of suffering. If we’re born in one of these heavenly states, it just goes on and on so beautifully. At the very end there’s great suffering and great misery as the inevitable death comes and we start to realize that all our pleasures are stopping and we become rejected, abandoned by our good friends who are not dying. But then it’s too late. It’s too late to train one’s mind.
One only has a week or so before death comes and so there’s great misery. So, I’ve included working to go to heaven and to not go to hell as a worldly direction in life. Not an invalid direction, I mean better than the first one, but not a final goal because there’s not only just no guarantee, one will definitely fall from heaven. We have been there. We have been to heaven countless times in past lives.
We’re back as humans. How long we’re gonna be human, we don’t know. We could be animals in the next life. The third one, I just added this nihilistic self destruction because there are people who are very cynical about life and they think beyond this life there is absolutely nothing. And even within this life it’s all meaningless.
And I know some young friends, like children of friends of mine, some who are into, I mean one in particular I’m thinking of, she is doing a PhD in philosophy. She’s also a cocaine addict and is in an extreme, extreme, dangerous, nihilistic mental state of just seeing meaninglessness in life and in trouble. I’ve been talking around, there are a lot of especially young people in a similar state of seeing no real meaning in what their parents are doing, what society is doing, and so they engage in self destructive behavior. Excessive drugs, alcohol, driving cars ridiculously, just kicks with little regard for their lives or the lives of others. I feel this it’s coming from this sort of nihilistic vacuum.
It’s horrible, actually, it’s really sad. And it sort of, it seems to be a direction in life that’s becoming more and more common. So, added it here. So, non worldly directions of life. Non worldly means I didn’t know what to put here.
transworldly or super Anyway, I ended up just putting non worldly as meaning the opposite. There are two directions and we’ve talked about them. The one is working, using one’s life to attain liberate, personal liberation from suffering and the causes of suffering to achieve nirvana. nirvana, which is the cessation of suffering and its causes. And the second is the aspiration and working or living to attain full Buddhahood for the purpose not just to become Buddha and to live in a pure land, etc, but the sole purpose behind the wish to actualize the full potential of our mind is the determination to become a perfectly qualified guide to show others the way out of suffering by understanding the cause in their own mind.
And one is perfected when one does it oneself. If one hasn’t done it oneself, one cannot be Buddha, one cannot be a perfect guide. One has to have done it oneself and in the process one accumulates vast powers and capacities to work for others in so many different