Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Thubten Gyatso traces the foundational steps of Buddhist practice for Western practitioners in this 44-minute talk. He begins by examining why rebirth and karma—unfamiliar concepts in the West—must be reflected upon deeply and tested against personal experience rather than accepted on authority. He then outlines the sequential meditations on the path: recognizing the reality and suffering of lower realms; appreciating human potential for wisdom and compassion that animals lack; taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha; establishing moral conduct; developing renunciation not just of suffering but of saṃsāra’s entire pursuit of sensory pleasure; and cultivating single-pointed concentration to achieve direct realization of emptiness. Gyatso emphasizes the distinction between intellectual and direct knowledge, and previews his coming teaching on bodhicitta—the universal compassion that distinguishes the Bodhisattva path from the individual vehicle seeking only nirvana. Suitable for newcomers and serious practitioners unfamiliar with the progressive structure of Lamrim practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 2010 02 09 BP.mp3
UUID: d5e87bce-7636-4585-8cf6-4444f24337ac
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: 43.6 minutes
Words: ~4,901
Ways, which is the state of a Buddha. Alright? So, if we move on, I’ve just listed six of the outline of the meditations that we need to follow. Like for the vast majority of us, we’re all starting off equally in a state of a lot of confusion, and so we need to train our mind gradually on the path toward Buddhahood. As I’ve said, it takes countless eons of rebirth after rebirth to achieve.
So, to begin, for us in particular, in a Western society where rebirth and karma are alien concepts, we need to reflect very deeply upon the teachings of rebirth and reincarnation and karma, the actions that we do under the motivation of confused and start to gain some sort of appreciation that these are not just Eastern concepts, but they’re living realities in my life. They’re living realities in the lives of all of those around me. It’s a really exciting time to hear the explanation of karma and rebirth, to think about it, and really think about the meaning, and then to look at our life if it were true. We should not just accept it as being true because Buddha was a famous person. He himself said that.
Don’t do that. You’ve got to think about it and check up in your own experience and see if your own experience can be explained by karma and rebirth. Is there anything which contradicts karma and rebirth? Look at it. Ask yourself.
Question it. So it’s a process of thinking which can take years, but it’s very important because it becomes the foundation of our decision to enter one of the non worldly paths, to gain a direction in life that is more than meaningful. We will be convinced that there is an attainable goal, either nirvana or full enlightenment. It’s clear that the two non worldly directions are both Buddhist, which is not criticizing other religions. Not putting it down.
It’s just that other religions don’t talk about nirvana. They don’t talk about liberation from self centered ignorance, anger, attachment. They don’t present a path towards the cessation of these confusing emotions. They do present paths of morality, like the Ten Commandments and Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, which give individuals a solid foundation of morality through which they can achieve their goal, which is heaven. As far as I’m aware, there’s no other philosophical system or religion in the whole world other than Buddhism, which presents the meaning of nirvana and Buddhahood, which are defined.
It’s not as if there’s some unspeakable ideals. They’re very clearly described and defined. And so we can check up, Is it possible for this mind to experience nirvana, to experience Buddhahood? Only then will we actually decide to follow that path. So, to reach that decision, we have to begin with karma and reincarnation or rebirth.
So, the first step is recognizing the reality of rebirth, and then in consequent upon that, that there are lower realms, that I could be reborn in lower realms, and those beings in the animal realm, in the hungry ghost realm, in the hell realm are indeed suffering. And I’ve been there, and I could go there again in the future. So having strong recognition of the terror, the incredible misery that is experienced in those three realms of great suffering, then the next point is to look at oneself. I’m not there. I’ve got a human life.
And to realize that potential of a human life is so much greater than catching the next movie, than going to the next rock concert, eating at the best restaurant, the finest foods, wearing expensive clothes, buying the best car, living in the best house in the best neighborhood, having the best job. All of the things that people are just pursuing so strongly, having the most beautiful partner, the most wonderful children, all of the ideals of society. All right. Not putting them down, but I hope there’s a lot of dissatisfaction and there’s a lot of problems associated with pursuit of those ideals. But our human potential is that we’re not in the hells.
We can train our mind in wisdom and compassion. We have the intelligence. Animals have much less suffering than the hells and hungry ghosts, but their brains are not sufficiently developed to allow their mental intelligence to manifest. But our human brain is. It’s the best.
The human life is the best life in which to generate altruism, bodhicitta, because not only do we experience suffering, others are experiencing We can have empathy through our own suffering, we can have strong empathy for the suffering of others, and just through our own intelligence, even if we don’t experience the suffering of others. And we can just see the news, can see the starving children in Africa, the people all around the world caught up in war, in earthquakes, floods, and so on. So much suffering. We can identify with them. We can feel true empathy because we understand what they’re going through.
You know, if animals see other animals suffering well, elephants. We read of elephants who stay with a wounded or dying elephant and have strong family connections. So there’s a degree, definitely a degree of compassion and a degree of empathy. But most animals, if we go down the scale of evolution, are less and less concerned with the welfare of others. In fact, in many types of animals, if there is a wounded member of their own species, they will kill it and eat it.
This is reality. Maybe there’s survival value there or whatever, but this is the reality. Mostly humans don’t do that. We don’t kill off the sick and injured, although we’re starting to think about it in terms of the aged and the terminally ill. Anyway, that’s another story.
With our human life, which is no guarantee how long it’s going to be, we have such potential to mature. Most human adults are mentally immature, just like children. But if we have access to the teachings, we can mature. We can actually grow in wisdom and compassion. We can diminish our selfishness, our anger and attachment.
Is such rare opportunity. It’s so wonderful. But we don’t know how long we’ve got it. Death is imminent. So, in this first step, the purpose of these meditations is to generate intelligent fear of being reborn in the lower realms, of being an animal, being in hell, being a hungry ghost, which sounds familiar.
Christianity! Yes, be afraid of hell. This fear is not something irrational. It’s totally rational because hell is reality. Therefore, just as we teach our children, Don’t touch the red hot coal or Be careful of the stove, you’ll get burnt.
It’s intelligent. Don’t do this. There’s great danger if you do that. Children need to be told because they sort of ignorantly put themselves into dangerous situations, running across the road without looking right and left. Look right and left and right again.
Okay, so that’s rational fear. So we need to have strong rational fear of rebirth in the three lower realms. And if we look at our behavior and we’re honest in how we’ve acted in our life up until now, and if we understand the teachings on karma, we will understand that we have created far more causes for a lower rebirth than we have for a happy rebirth. We need rational fear of rebirth in the lower realms, and through this fear we make the decision, I must practice Dharma. Now, Dharma is the teachings.
I must practice the teachings. I must train my mind in wisdom and compassion. The next step, the next meditation, is to reflect upon the qualities of the Three Jewels. The Three Jewels refers to the Buddha himself, the Dhamma, the teachings that he taught, and the Sangha, who are the practitioners who have actualized the teachings in their minds, not just intellectually understand them, but have the inner realization, in particular the inner realization of emptiness. Such a practitioner, it doesn’t matter whether they’re monk or nun, or layperson, if they have realized emptiness, are true Sangha.
Sangha means the community, like the special community of practitioners. So, one needs to the second level reflects upon what it means to be a Buddha, and what the qualities of a Buddha are, what the qualities of the Dharma, the teachings, are, and what the qualities of such practitioners are. And in those we generate the faith, the confidence, that the direction they indicate is a safe direction to follow, and to decide to follow that direction. So here we’re going back: worldly directions, non worldly directions. So, the direction indicated by the Buddha and his teachings and the practitioners who have realized the teachings are, and in realizing it they’ve verified what the Buddha taught.
And there are vast amounts of scriptures written not just by the Buddhas but by the great meditators and practitioners of India, Tibet, and other countries which verify the original teachings and which can completely relied upon as showing us what we can do, what we need to do. So, we make the strong decision to follow the direction indicated by the Buddha. In Buddhist jargon we talk about taking refuge. Refuge means the individual making the decision to align his or her life according to their understanding of the teachings. That’s all.
And to strongly accept the Buddha as being a valid guide, the teachings valid path to follow. And to try and live as much as one can in accordance to one’s understanding and to continue to train. So, this is a very important step. To assist us with following the path of safe direction, then we need to examine karmic cause and effect, understand the teaching of karma, and develop and establish a code of morality. That code of morality is based upon recognition of the reality of karma, and it follows very closely upon other moral codes.
It’s very wide in that the non harmfulness, which is the essence of morality, embraces all living beings, not just human beings, and not just Buddhists. Every living being equally, no matter their race, their religion, their philosophy, no matter their criminal background, their terrorist background, are embracing them equally as we do the animals. So this, again, I think is a unique tenet of Buddhism to regard all living beings equally. And for one’s moral standards to embrace all living beings. The foundation of morality is taking vows.
vows can be level of laypeople or ordained people. vows of not killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, taking intoxicants. These are voluntary. As much as one understands the meaning of the teachings, one can take any of those vows. Or if one wants to go further, live within the moral restraint of being a monk or a nun, then Buddha gave different levels of ordination as the foundation of morality.
Okay, then the next step is reflecting upon the suffering of the upper realms, because so far we’ve just talked about generating rational fear of the lower realms. But we might think, Well, want to be human, I want to go to heaven. But that’s not enough because, as I’ve mentioned, if we go to heaven, if we haven’t eliminated ignorance, we can fall again. So, the next step is to reflect deeply on the sufferings of human life, of the divine beings’ lives, and generate renunciation renunciation of the entire will of life, not just the three lower suffering realms, but even of the so called three happy realms, because it’s not perfect happiness. Renunciation means the state of mind which really turns against the whole tide of society.
Society is flowing strongly like you know what it’s like to be caught in a rip in the surf. You have no choice but to go with the flow. Otherwise, you’ll drown if you try to fight the flow. Right? And this is the way to survive.
You go out and then you go down the beach and come back again where the rip doesn’t exist. So we are caught in the rip of society the pursuit of pleasure here and now, sensory indulgence, very little thought of future lives, and certainly very little thought of achieving nirvana or enlightenment. Renunciation is the decision to go against the tide. Will we drown? Well, we won’t drown if our determination is is strong.
And the very act of facing up, not just to external society, of course, but facing up to our social conditioning, our whole psychology since we were born has been trained to do what everybody else is doing. And it’s very difficult. Actually, it’s very easy to go against social norms. In the sixties it was dead easy. It was fun.
And they copied us. Everybody started having long hair and beards and torn jeans became expensive fashion items. So it’s easy to go against the thrust or the riptide of external society. It’s very difficult to go against internal momentum of what we’re being conditioned with as we’re growing up. But it’s essential.
We have to do it. And because it’s only our own mind, we’ve got space, we’ve got time. In some ways we should be afraid of our own mind when it’s uncontrolled, but in other ways we shouldn’t be afraid of our own mind because it’s just our own mind. So many of our worries and fears and problems are just our own mind. Not saying they’re not real.
We tend to say, Look, it’s just in your mind. Meaning, it’s not real. Inventing it. Well, give me a break. I’m suffering.
Don’t tell me it’s in my own mind. I’m miserable. That’s real. And in many cases, it is self created. And because it’s self created, we can self destroy it.
We don’t have to follow our conditioning. The Buddha’s path really self brainwashing. It is eliminating the confusion, the stupidity, the selfishness, the anger and attachment with the soap of replacing it with the beauty, the peace, of love, wisdom, and compassion. Renunciation is the beginning of doing that. Renunciation is not something that occurs overnight.
It just grows as a sense, Wow, things are not what they’re cracked up to be. That alone is fabulous! That’s like an earthquake shaking our entire saṃsāra, our state of being under the control of confusion and karma. Gradually, gradually each one of us can grow in the path of renunciation. As I say, you don’t have to be a monk or a nun.
Any way. Most people practice the Dharma in lay situation without being ordained. So, the next step is the actual trainings on the individual vehicle, training the basis of morality as the basis, because without living in pure morality one cannot gain perfect concentration. One needs to achieve single point of concentration. And if the mind is not trained in morality, when one goes to meditate, the lid will be taken off the garbage bin and we will just indulge in fantasies, which we’ve been doing most of our life, and desire will come up and the perfect partner and the perfect job, it’ll all come back.
I know from my personal experience the garbage just floats and we just get trapped. We’re sitting looking very cool. But the physical appearance is a lie. The mental might weigh off. Without renunciation of our social conditioning of total sensory indulgence, will never gain single pointed concentration.
If we don’t gain single pointed concentration, Samādhi, we will never gain the direct realization of emptiness, of ultimate reality. Because that direct realization is necessarily supported by a mind of perfect single-pointed concentration. Could you tell me the difference, please, between the Well, yeah, look, there are three levels of growing wisdom or knowledge. The first is called generating the wisdom of listening. So that means receiving the instructions and reading also not just verbal teachings, but also reading information from books.
Through that we gain a lot of knowledge, intellectual knowledge. Then the next thing to do is to cultivate the wisdom of reflection or analysis meaning of what we’ve heard. Because words are just signposts pointing to a more profound meaning. So we need to really analyze intellectually the profound meaning. And we gain We’re talking about emptiness.
We gain the intellectual or inferential understanding meaning of emptiness. Emptiness is a real phenomenon. It’s the ultimate nature of everything that exists. So everything has its emptiness. Inference is not just knowledge.
An inference is knowledge based upon perfect logical reasoning. But it’s still an idea, it’s still a conception of emptiness. And when we have a conception of emptiness that means that what’s appearing to our mind is our mental image of what we think emptiness is. But that mental image is not emptiness. It’s what we think emptiness is.
And even our inferential understanding is correct, there is an element of confusion in that we mistake emptiness of emptiness, with our idea of emptiness. We can’t distinguish between the two. So it’s a correct inferential understanding, but it has an element of mistake. So we can call that realization as the intellectual realization or the inferential realization. Then, the third level of wisdom is the wisdom of meditation.
And what we do is that we have to meditate. We have to go through the nine stages of developing śamatha, calm abiding, or mental quiescence, which means that the mind is totally undisturbed by any distracting thoughts and it is effortlessly focused upon the object. So that is much more powerful than the previous level of wisdom because the power is the concentration. Now, initially the wisdom of meditation is still intellectual, and what we’re focused upon is our intellectual understanding of emptiness. But it’s much more powerful because it’s the foundation of śamatha, single-pointed concentration.
Now we have to meditate again and again on emptiness. And as our power of concentration grows even stronger, we are able to break through the idea, the mental image of emptiness dissolves away, and we have what’s called the direct experience of emptiness. The mind directly observes emptiness. That’s the direct realization. That has the power to destroy the root ignorance, not knowing reality, which invents inherent existence self, inherent existence other, and believes that to be true.
The correct inferential understanding of emptiness does not have the power to extinguish the innate ignorance. But this power of concentration and directly relating it, that has power. And it doesn’t immediately remove all ignorance. Ignorance has many levels. Attachment has many levels.
Anger has many levels. Initially, the initial realization only extinguishes intellectual wrong ideas. The innate ignorance is still happy, it’s still strong, and the innate attachment, the innate anger are still there. But when we come out of meditation, even though because of the imprints of ignorance things still appear wrongly to exist from their own side, we know it’s false and we’re not fooled by it. And so, with further accumulation of merit and wisdom, we eventually extinguish the grosser and more and more subtle levels of afflictions through the realization of emptiness.
So, does that answer the question? Any other questions? I have to go through this. You say, Why isn’t he talking about altruism? Well, is.
We’re getting there. We have to go through this to talk about altruism. Know time’s rapidly going, but I just want to finish. Well, no, can’t possibly finish. I’m going to talk mostly tonight about anger.
Altruism, a sense of universal responsibility, obviously its greatest opponent is hatred and anger. We talked about attachment last week, so I thought tonight I’d talk a bit about anger. Somehow the time is rapidly going. Let’s quickly skip through. We’re on the fifth point of the individual vehicle where one cultivates the higher trainings of morality, concentration, and wisdom, you can understand from what we said why we need the wisdom.
That’s what will establish us in nirvana because it destroys ignorance. And so that’s the sixth point. We attain the result, self liberation or nirvana, when the final, most subtle ignorance is extinguished, the mind appears. The mind achieves a state of nirvana. The universal vehicle, the first step is to do all of that, all of the individual vehicle practices.
You can’t jump over it’s a ladder, and you can’t jump to the highest rungs. You’ve got to go through the first rungs. So, if one enters the bodhisattva’s vehicle, or one wants to enter the bodhisattva’s vehicle, one has to do all of that, doesn’t mean one has to achieve nirvana. But it means one needs to study and practice those meditations, not with a thought to achieve nirvana, but with a thought to achieve Buddhahood. So you’re not going to go all the way to achieve nirvana.
That’s not your goal. Your goal is Buddhahood because you want to have the capacity to help others. On the path, by the way, a bodhisattva will achieve nirvana. I mean, whether they want it or not, they can’t help but to achieve it. But that’s achieved well before Buddhahood.
Even if they extinguish the most subtle affliction from their mind and achieve nirvana, still the bodhisattva has to have an even greater accumulation of merit, and the bodhisattva has to extinguish these subtle obscurations to omniscience, which are sort of the smell of the onions. You know, if you cook onions and if you wash the pot, get rid of all the particles, the smell is still there. And so even if we remove all ignorance, anger, and attachment totally, the smell is still contaminating in our mind. So even you’re in nirvana, still things appear to exist inherently or wrongly. And this appearance is an obscuration to the unification of wisdom and compassion.
The wisdom seeing ultimate and relative reality simultaneously and supported by compassion. So, to achieve that, the Bodhisattva does that, it’s another countless great eon after achieving nirvana, another countless great eon before achieving Buddhahood. So the Bodhisattva does that, practices the individual vehicle meditations, and then recognizing that one’s own nature, one’s own mind, has the Buddha nature or the potential to become enlightened, this becomes a strong reasoning factor behind the decision to enter the bodhisattva’s path. So, to do that, one has to work on renunciation, but not the same renunciation as before on the individual vehicle. The renunciation there was, I don’t want to experience suffering anymore.
I want out. The renunciation of the bodhisattvas vehicle is, I don’t want others to suffer. There is so much pain and misery out there. How terrible. It’s got to come to an end.
I’ve got to bring it to an end. So the renunciation You’re actually renouncing the suffering of all other living beings, And one’s own as well, because one is a sentient being still. Renunciation is so much vast. And there’s not one sentient being that we hope stays in hell. Equal determination to rescue the most evil Hitler or Stalin or Mao who’s suffering in hell.
Equal determination to rescue them from suffering as one of her own personal mother in this life. So, in order to actually enter the mayanda vehicle, one has to generate bodhicitta. On Thursday we’re going to talk about the meditations on how to actually generate bodhicitta universal responsibility in our own mind. See, I’ve put down a lot of anger comes from irritation. When we’re unhappy, something’s going we’re feeling irritated.
Through this irritability we’re impatient. We start to our fuse is getting shorter. And through impatience we are ready to explode in anger. Anger is an aggressive impulse to hurt physically or verbally the object that’s irritating us, to eliminate it from our sphere of life. Don’t be near it.
And through anger we can have hatred. Through hatred we can have resentment, grudge bearing, the thought of revenge and hostility. Through hostility we can have belligerence. Belligerence is where we’re really angry about someone or something, and when we’re confronted with it, with the explosion, we want to hurt you. I hate you.
Even bringing out a gun and shooting, belligerence is real. If the object is not there, we have resentment and grudge bearing, but that just sets us up for belligerent explosion when we meet the object which we resent so much. Spitefulness is more specifically saying something. Deliberately is to hurt. And Even jealousy comes from both anger and attachment, but often it mostly comes from anger not liking somebody having something that we haven’t got.
Cruelty and this harmful attitude is a total lack of compassion and non caring and even rejoicing. We hear our enemy has been hurt. Great! That’s cruelty. And just not caring what effects our actions have upon others, whether they’re animals or people.
It’s real, fundamentally, a lack of compassion. So, these derivatives of anger and irritability and lack of patience are clearly the opposite of love. And heartwarming love the necessary support for great compassion. And Great compassion is the necessary precursor of the sense of universal responsibility. It’s my responsibility to rescue all beings from suffering because they’ve been my mother.
So, because they’ve been my mother, this is the underlying cause for altruism. Seeing all beings, not just as one’s mother, but as having been one’s mother countless times and remembering the kindness that mothers give towards their children and just spontaneously wishing to repay the kindness. Therein is the foundation for altruism, and that’s the only reason for altruism, actually our close relationship with each other. As far as I’m aware, there’s no other teaching that the Buddha gave of why we should have this sense of universal responsibility and love and compassion for all living beings. So, next Thursday, I want to talk in detail how to meditate and grow this sense of universal responsibility in your mind.
And we’re so lucky that we’ve had the transmission of these teachings. They are not only unique in the world, they’re even unique in Buddhism. Even Mahāyāna countries like countries like Korea I was in Korea last year for three weeks, and I visited many monasteries. Also I was in Taipei, Taiwan, for two years. And when I was in Taiwan, Lama Zopa Rinpoche came to visit, and we visited many great monasteries there.
They take bodhisattva vows, in Mayanas they talk about the bodhisattva’s path. Lama Zopa Rinpoche asked each abbot that we met what methods do you have to generate bodhicitta altruism. And they didn’t have method. They always take bodhisattva vows. But bodhisattva vows are very important.
But they’re taken in order not to generate bodhicitta but to practice bodhicitta. One needs bodhicitta in order to take the vows. And they had lost these two methods that we’ve received the transmission of from Tibet and being preserved in Tibet. And so, last October, I toured many nunneries and monasteries in Korea, and they’re wonderful. I mean, so inspiring.
And the meditation and the harmony harmony between the Sangha was just so inspiring. And the support they received from the lay people. I asked the same question: What methods do you have to generate? I was copying those down. But I was sincerely interested, because it’s the same Buddhism as Zen Buddhism.
It came from China. Korean Buddhism came from China. Also, there was direct contact with India. But the same answer was just, Well, we don’t have. And I gave teachings for three weeks, nearly every day, two or three hundred people, different audiences.
So I taught how to develop bodhicitta, and it knocked them over. Mean, that was very sincere and I’m not saying I’m a practitioner, I’m not a bodhicitta, I’m not a bodhisattva but I aspired to be. So I taught what I had been taught, and it was recognized and appreciated. In Buddhism, the living lineage and tradition of these teachings is extremely rare. We’re very, very fortunate through the auspices of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to have been exposed to them, and the great Lamas who have taken up the struggle of teaching Dharma to the childlike Westerners.
My own teacher, Lama Thubten Yeshe, he was one of the first Tibetan lamas to take up the challenge. And his colleagues, the great Geshis, they’re children. They’ll never understand. You can’t give up. But he persevered, and look, Buddha House resulted in so many centers.
I mean, don’t think we’re out of the woods yet. We’ve seen a long way to go to justify Lama Yeshe’s trust in us, but I think it’s happening. Are there any more questions? Tell me when one becomes a One becomes a bodhisattva when one generates bodhicitta. The spontaneous, twenty-four hours a day, intention one’s mind is in the aspect of intending to achieve Buddhahood in order to rescue all beings from suffering.
A twenty-four-hour state, that’s when you become a bodhisattva. That’s the beginning of the bodhisattva’s path. Alright, so I think probably it’s a hot night. I’ve talked a lot tonight. Thank you for your attention.
It’s been very inspiring for me. I hope to see you on Thursday when we will go into the Bodhisattva’s path in detail. Good night.