Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Thubten Gyatso (Adrian Feldman) concludes a weekend teaching on the Wheel of Life by emphasizing the critical importance of recognizing saṃsāra as suffering and generating genuine renunciation. He contrasts how society conditions us to pursue worldly and heavenly pleasures with the Buddhist path of liberation: destroying attachment and anger in one’s own mind to achieve nirvana. He situates this teaching within both the individual liberation (Hīnayāna) and compassionate Bodhisattva (Mahāyāna) frameworks, urging practitioners to use daily experiences—newspapers, films, relationships—as reminders of the Wheel of Life teachings and motivation to develop universal compassion. The session addresses practical student questions about ordination vows, the critical importance of carefully choosing and testing a qualified teacher rather than naively following anyone in robes, and the role of joy and happiness in the path. Pitched at practitioners with some familiarity with Buddhist terminology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 W o L 2010.mp3
UUID: 73a5dbae-14e9-461f-9e1d-63d471a44bcb
Teacher: Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman
Collection: Wheel of LIfe (Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman)
Date: 2010 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.7 minutes
Words: ~3,796
So, all that we’ve talked about in the weekend, we’ve talked about Samsāra and its causes. And when we reflect upon these teachings we should all strongly generate the recognition of seeing saṃsāra, you know, life under the control of karma and afflictions as being like being trapped in a blazing fire. You know, you can imagine what it must be like to be caught in a burning house and the strong thought arises to get out. You know, you wake up and there’s flames and smoke. You just want to get out of the house.
You want to escape the flames. So that is how we should see daily life under the control of afflictions, which is totally opposite to the way the picture is painted by society, by our own mind, by our whole cultural upbringing. We are taught to believe that there is true happiness out there and true happiness in the things that everybody else is doing in society and this is what we should aspire to, this is the meaning and purpose of life is to pursue the pleasures of this life or the pleasures of rebirth in heaven and avoiding hell, but still even if we go to heaven it’s still in saṃsāra and we will fall from heaven when the karma is exhausted and we’ll come back down again. So the wish to escape that one should generate in one’s mind is the thought to achieve nirvana as at the top of the picture of the wheel of life Buddha is pointing to the full moon, indicating this is it. Destroy your saṃsāra, your saṃsāra.
Don’t start criticizing anger and attachment in the minds of others. Criticize anger and attachment in your mind. Destroy those emotions in your mind like an elephant destroys a grass hut and achieve nirvana. So this teaching, of course, is in the Lam Rim comes within the teachings for the being of medium scope, the person who aspires to achieve personal liberation, nirvana. From the Mahāyāna point of view, we need to meditate strongly, even more on the wheel of life with a recognition that all other beings are caught up in their own wheels of life and generate the strong thought of how essential it is to rescue others who are caught in the burning houses of their own saṃsāra.
Through great compassion, universal compassion, we can strongly, by meditating on the wheel of life, we strongly motivate to become a fully enlightened Buddha in order that we can be fully qualified, have all the powers, the many unique powers and capacities that an enlightened being has to work for sentient beings forever and ever, because that’s one’s purpose for becoming a Buddha. And really there is so much input that we can gain from the world around us. We just have to read the newspapers, watch the television, not only the news but even the fantasy stories and the films and so on. Instead of engendering attachment and anger, we can use them to generate compassion, loving kindness in our mind. With that motivation, then go to the movies.
Alright? Don’t go for self entertainment or self distraction, but go to the movies in order to hone your powers of love and compassion and wisdom. Wisdom seeing reality. And then everything becomes a teaching. With this teaching of the wheel of life, everything is indicating the reality of it for us.
And this is how we can investigate and check up to see how the experience of life fit with our understanding and then especially motivate with great compassion to rescue others from their wheel of life according to the Bodhisattva’s training and the Bodhisattva thought of altruism. So if I did my job properly this weekend you shouldn’t be able to sleep at night, right? You have a very restless night tonight worrying, and that’s good because we don’t worry. We we become so complacent. You know, when there’s a big event in life is a separation or a death, and we may make so many resolutions to change, etcetera, but we soon slip into the old bad habits and we see no urgency and our main fault is we think I’m not going to die tomorrow.
I mean, there aren’t too many of us who woke up this morning and thought I might die today. We presumed we were going to live today and we’re going to live tomorrow and a long time because we’re already making plans for what we’re going to do. In a few years time, even in many years time, we’re planning what we’re going to do. So this indicates that we don’t believe that we’re going to die soon and this goes in the face of reality that we can die at any moment, death is definitely coming, we were born with a certain karmic lifespan and that lifespan has been diminishing ever since we were conceived in the womb and karmic lifespan is something that can’t be changed. When we do long life practices, we do them to remove obstacles that can make us die before our karmic lifespan is up.
But unless we’re great tantric practitioners, we can’t extend our lifespans. We have an allotted time in this life and we don’t know how long it is, and so there’s no guarantee that we’re going to grow old, it can happen at any time. So, don’t fall into the trap of complacency thinking that you can always practice Dharma in the future when children have grown up and this responsibility is finished and that responsibility is finished. There will always be more responsibilities blocking your wish to, you know, listen, study and meditate. Take the chance now whilst you can and even our bodies are growing more feeble with age and our minds are becoming less capable of enduring the hardships of meditation and study and practice.
We have to start immediately in what ever way we’re capable and do something about our wheel of life. And it’s up to us. Nobody can do it for us. So, think that’s sort of implied in all that has been taught so far. Are there any remaining questions?
I thought we’d finish with a meditation but if there are any discussion to complete? How was St Kilda go this year? I was just wondering what does somebody such as yourself have to do to get booted out of the organisation? Know what I mean? One can conjure up lots of interesting scenarios.
Is it possible for somebody such as yourself or whatever to be asked to leave or disrobe because of some monks and nuns have vows at different levels. There are root vows and then there are vows are in different groups. If you break a root vow, your ordination ceases. It’s not that somebody tells you you’re no longer a monk or a nun, the ordination is something which is acquired within one’s mind stream. It will cease if you kill deliberately, steal, lie, particularly a lie about realizations.
If you claim to have clairvoyance and you don’t, you’re breaking a root vow. So that will break all of monks’ nuns’ others will incur certain infractions, but they can be purified so you don’t lose your ordination. This was prompted by something I was reading about, know, to say if you want to take a teacher, just Right. I think I know who you’re referring to. Yeah, we have to check out.
I mean, the Lam Rim it says one shouldn’t because it’s so important to have a teacher as a personal inspiration and guide and has to be a pure teacher living according to pure Vinaya. Not just the Vinaya of ordination vows, but a set of vows and the tantric vows as well, in terms of Tibetan Buddhism. So we shouldn’t take a teacher like a dog eating meat. You know, a dog sees something attractive and woof, down it goes, and it could be poisoned. So one should indeed, understanding the importance of having a proper teacher, one is told to You can receive teachings from anybody, but you don’t see that person as your teacher, you see them as like a tutor, and you learn something.
The decision of having a personal teacher is much later and one needs to investigate somebody who appears to be a qualified Mahāyāna teacher, and you take years years to check up and eventually when you feel capable of taking on a role, so this is a role, it’s like getting married, you don’t just take the first Tom, Dick or Harry who comes along. We select somebody who may be compatible to be a partner, but as most of us have experienced, our selection may not necessarily be valid even in choosing a life partner for marriage. So it’s but we still were quite discriminating in who we decide to marry or not. It’s even more important to be discriminating and choosing a teacher or not. Much more important.
It’s not just this life that depends upon us, it’s all our future lives. So I think it’s much wiser to regard Śākyamūni Buddha as your root guru, and then you can’t go wrong. And then you see great beings like His Holiness the Dalai Lama as being embodiments of Śākyamūni Buddha or of Chenrezig, you know, the embodiment of great compassion. And so you can see that they’re able to teach and so you can, you know, listen, read and follow their teachings and practice accordingly. And everything can be your teacher even as I was saying before, movies, the news, the newspapers can be the Lam Rim teachings for you.
And you can see that this is coming from your teacher. So it’s much safer for us in the West, where qualified Lama teachers are few and very rare to find. I am not a qualified spiritual teacher. Anybody make any mistake about that. Can be regarded as like a tutor, but the qualified teacher is a professor at university.
The tutor helps and things like this weekend’s courses, but the professor Like Lama Zopa? Yes, well, from my point of view, Lama Zopa Rinpoche is indeed a qualified Mahāyāna spiritual guide. But even one person who is perfectly suitable, qualified Mahāyāna teacher for one person is not necessarily suitable for another person. Because we all have different karmic makeups and we can relate to some very simple person, monk or nun, who may not have all the high realizations, but who is keeping his or her vows very purely and is very sincere in their attitude. Such a person can be, for us, a great guide or even our Guru.
Whereas we can’t connect with Lama Zopa Rinpoche or Dalai Lama, you know, some other teacher. So it’s quite variable. But as Westerners, again, just the advice is don’t rush in and make that commitment. Don’t just as you don’t see a lovely person in the street and rush up and ask them to marry you, they could be have terrible personality or whatever. So we check up.
It’s not that we can’t they say Guru devotion is the root of the path but it doesn’t mean that we can’t practice without a specific relationship with the teacher. Of course we can. In fact, we need to. We need to practice in order to gain the wisdom, understanding the meaning of Guru devotion and how to the responsibility that a student has towards the teacher. That’s important, that’s more important.
And then the way to relate to the Guru, so there’s the fifty verses of Guru devotion we should think about. And also, if we really want a personal teacher, it’s good to have with refuge pray to Śākyamūni Buddha to meet him in a living aspect in this life. So create the cause to meet the teacher and do the especially the Lama Chopa, the Guru Puja practice, if we do that with good concentration and praying like that, we will, the power of that will be a cause to meet one’s teacher. Like they say, you’ll know when you know. Not necessarily because we think we know.
How many times do we meet Mr. Right or Miss Right? All our friends say, Boy, you’re making a big mistake. But we think we know. But we don’t know.
So ignorance, self centered pride, everything is still there. We’ve got to realize that we are children and we can’t trust our inner feelings because they may be right but they may be contaminated. So we have to be skeptical of our emotions and much better to hold back and don’t eat the meat like a dog. Yeah. Well, especially in our organization within the FPMT we’ve tried to provide people with answer to that by providing the programs that people can follow.
A lot of printed material and guidance. I mean, Lama Zopa Rinpoche is unbelievably kind in the way he set up Universal Education, you know, the sixteen guidelines and many and introduction to Buddhism courses. I mean, this has all come under the inspiration of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, because he knows that the vast majority of people associated with our centers don’t have a personal teacher, don’t have this personal guidance. And so trying to give them the opportunity to do what you want to do, to grow in the path by providing all these courses. His Holiness’s books are just, you know, all the books by His Holiness, Dalai Lama.
So there’s plenty of information to get. And as I say, we can see Guru Śākyamūni as our teacher and relate to Śākyamūni Buddha, have an image of Śākyamūni Buddha, don’t see it as a piece of bronze or wood or whatever, but see it as Śākyamūni Buddha. Talk to your statue. Offer your statue flowers and incense, not thinking this is just symbolic, this is real. Buddha is experiencing it.
Develop that relationship and do as I said before, pray to meet a living qualified teacher. As Lama Yeshe once said to me, I can’t remember he said it to me or to the group of monks and nuns at Kopan, don’t think everybody in red is a bodhisattva. Yeah. I mean there are a lot of monks and nuns out there who may be well motivated but really have incorrect understanding, especially westerners. They tend to enjoy the adulation, the financial support, the status that they receive by seeing a teacher and they’re not ready for it, they’re not really worthy for it.
This is why I insist that people don’t call me venerable. You know, I don’t like the term venerable, think it’s irrelevant in our situation. When I’m venerable I’ll tell you. Until then I’m just Adrian. One has to be very discriminating and well we just have to be suspicious because that’s the we’re we’re all in saṃsāra.
And even as Lama said, when he said he was referring even to Tibetan lamas. Already there’s lots of stories of rinpochees and geshes who have done pretty bad things, harming their students, leading their students astray. So again, hold back and check up. Make sure in the meantime, Guru Śākyamūni, Guru means guru. He is your Lama.
Sure you do. You can’t practice Dharma if you’re not happy. And we have to realize that, that happiness is a great asset to practicing strongly and properly. Also there a trap of attachment. So, I mean, before I went to Nepal for the first course I attended in ‘seventy four, others, people from Melbourne who had been there said these Lamas are really weird, these Lamas over there laugh all night.
And I said, really? Anyway, was at the course and I remember one night I got up, attending to my bladder, it was about two o’clock or three o’clock in the morning, I heard these peals of laughter because they had they were upstairs above the conference, incredible laughter, shrieking laughter. I walked over and there were about a dozen people in the middle of the just standing there bathing in the laughter. And every night was the same. They never seemed to sleep and they just spent the whole time laughing.
And especially Lama Yeshe, like when he taught he was just superb. I mean he would reduce us to tears of laughter. At times I thought I might die of being unable to breathe. At one time, Lama Zopa had been teaching three weeks of the one month meditation course and then Lama Zopa went to South India to receive teachings from Khunu Lama Rinpoche, his root guru. And so Lama Yeshe took over and for the first teaching session he started to mimic Lama Zopa.
Lama Zopa has lots of mannerisms when he’s teaching, all this sort of stuff, rocks back and forth. And Lama actually mimicked them perfectly. One hundred, two hundred people were just rolling laughing. So yeah, definitely we have to be happy and joyful. The Mahāyāna part, the Bodhisattvas part, is the happy part.
This teaching is very serious. It belongs to the middle scope. Renunciation. It sounds it sounds serious and important because the whole point is to generate renunciation. The whole Hīnayāna path is to renounce attachment to pleasure of saṃsāra and to achieve nirvana.
So, superficially, it looks sort of pretty heavy in avoiding pleasure and the objects of pleasure because you’re worried about attachment. And we do talk about all that and of course we talk about the sufferings of saṃsāra to generate renunciation. And there needs to be a degree of sadness, not just for our own suffering but sadness for the suffering of others. And that engenders compassion. The happiness comes from realizing that there’s a solution.
So many people are sad society because they see the misery. They don’t need the lum rim to indicate that we’re actually we’re in trouble. Even in our affluent Western style society, we’re really in big trouble. People are in general not too happy. And they’re looking for distractions in the form of drugs, etc, etc.
But this is undercurrent of great torment. We just have to talk to our family, our friend, even look into our own mind. And we know this is undercurrent of unease and unhappiness, despite the superficial pretense of happiness. So people are recognizing that but not seeing a solution. Even Australia beating Pakistan every time.
It’s not bringing real peace, real happiness. And what does? Most people don’t have much faith in Christianity or Judaism, know, the established Western religions. And so when one can see no solution, there’s real sadness. But with these teachings, the cause is presented and there is a solution, wisdom realizing emptiness.
So the the more we reflect upon that, the more joyful we should become because this is so great. And the meditator, you know, one who is practicing can be very like the Buddha: subdued. They don’t get excited. They don’t get depressed. Just People think, what’s wrong with you?
Why aren’t you jumping for joy? Or why aren’t you crying when someone close to you dies? Why don’t you show emotion? You’re miserable. You’re not.
Actually you’re blissful. But you don’t have to express it. So, actually it’s not happiness that we’re really looking for, it’s peace. Calm, just balance and that that comes with practice. Lama Yeshe was always getting us to have sporting competitions and picnics, every picnic and have games and laughter and he was definitely teaching us something there.
We should entertain, you know, so you should have a party here. Lama, yes, said no problem in having parties in the Gompa. I mean a lot of students are very oh oh, a bit uptight, you can’t have music in the gompa, you know, we don’t go as far as having alcohol and stuff, but we can definitely relax and be happy. On behalf of everybody, thank you for having me. Oh, you’re welcome.
So let’s just do a short meditation and we’ll conclude with that. So begin by focusing simply on the coming and going of your breath. Don’t, no need to do the nine round breathing. Just focus upon the sensation of the air entering your nostrils, going down to your lungs and coming out again. Keep your mind very clear and free from distraction towards thoughts of anything else.
Then think of somebody very close to you and generate great love for them by imagining giving whatever they need to be happy and being content with that happiness, joyful at peace. And in your heart, feel the love of simply rejoicing in their happiness, delighting in their happiness, that warm feeling associated with that particular individual being happy. Focus on the warmth in your heart of love and increase its power by reflecting it upon your family and friends and radiating this blissful energy to their hearts, imagining them also feeling completely fulfilled in peace and happiness. Then imagine sending this warm energy of love from your heart to all beings, all the strangers who you don’t know, including the animals all around the world. And then think of those who upset you, your enemies, who have hurt you recently or in the past, and with equal love, send the warmth, warm energy of love from your heart to their hearts as well.
Then finally, feel that your love has touched the hearts of all living beings. And now this blissful energy flows back into you, filling you with great joy and happiness. And focus single pointedly upon the clear and still nature of your mind and the aspect of bliss. Then mentally dedicate all the positive energy of this weekend to all sentient beings by thinking that through this through this positive energy may I quickly achieve full enlightenment in order to be able to guide all mother sentient beings out of suffering and to the bliss of enlightenment. Alright.
So then you can gradually stop and finish the meditation. Okay, so I’d like to thank Helen and George and all the people from Buddha House who have put so much work into maintaining Buddha House here for the benefit of others and inviting me here, hosting me here, looking after me, getting videos for me, whatever I need. And thank you all for coming. It’s been a great pleasure from my side to be able to share with you the things that Lamas have taught me and I hope we’ve established good connection, good karmic connection. Maybe we can meet in the future.
Who knows?