Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 109-minute talk, Ven Thubten Gyatso introduces the cultivation of universal love and compassion, the bodhicitta or “mind of enlightenment” in Tibetan Buddhism. He contrasts three worldly modes of living—pursuing happiness in this life, aiming for heaven or avoiding hell, and nihilistic rejection of meaning—with two non-worldly paths: personal liberation through eliminating suffering’s root cause of ignorance, and the bodhisattva commitment to guide all beings toward enlightenment. He then teaches the Seven Techniques of Cause and Effect, a foundational meditation: establishing equanimity toward all beings, recognizing them as one’s past mothers due to beginningless rebirth, remembering their kindness, generating heartwarming love, cultivating great compassion at witnessing their suffering, taking on universal responsibility to rescue them, and finally generating bodhicitta—the irreversible commitment to become a Buddha. Throughout, he draws on his own monastic experience in Nepal and Mongolia, stories of his teachers’ extraordinary compassion (Lama Zopa offering his blood to mosquitoes), and the historical Buddha’s past-life sacrifice to illustrate radical selflessness. The talk addresses a mixed audience including newcomers unfamiliar with rebirth and karma, with extensive Q&A exploring how wisdom must accompany compassion, Christian parallels to bodhisattva practice, and moral dilemmas in protecting human life.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 W o L 2010.mp3
UUID: 2cec13ff-82a3-4146-9900-88d97fc259c0
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: 109.5 minutes
Words: ~13,377
So, good evening everybody. Thank you for coming tonight. Very pleased to see you all here for the last of the talks I’m going to be giving at Buddha House for now. On Tuesday night, notes that some of you may have, sort of an outline which I discussed on Tuesday night as a sort of foundation or preparation for tonight’s discussion on how to cultivate the supreme or the highest attitude that we’re capable of cultivating within our own minds, meaning of life, the highest purpose for living our lives. And this is the in general, we can call it the cultivation of an altruistic attitude, a completely selfless thought which looks towards all others and regards their need for happiness, their need to be free from suffering as being of supreme importance, and making the very strong, irreversible decision to devote one’s entire life and lives, future lives, to others, to guide others out of suffering by eliminating the causes for suffering and unhappiness, and to bring them to every happiness.
And this is possible because in the Buddhist teachings in general it’s explained in great detail how the very root of all suffering experienced by any being human, animal, whatever it were in the wheel of life. All problems, all suffering, are rooted within our own minds. So, there are indeed external conditions which are associated with difficult situations, with pain and suffering, but the root cause why we meet these conditions and why we’re born in bodies which are by nature magnets for suffering and pain, is within our own minds. And there’s no way that we can make a perfect environment, a perfect world, where no problems will happen. The world is not in our hands, it’s not in our control.
But our own mind is potentially under our own control and if our own mind is the source of all suffering, by gaining control of the disturbing emotions which are the cause of problems and avoiding the harmful actions that arise from those disturbing emotions then we can bring an end to our own suffering by eliminating its cause, and through that, and through the accumulation of great wisdom and compassion, we will have the capacity to be able to guide others. We will be qualified to guide others. Without having done it ourselves, we will not be qualified to guide others. We won’t we’ll only have a theoretical understanding of the path to freedom or nirvana or liberation. And that’s not enough.
Our own mind will be an obstacle and will be a very limited help to others. Tonight’s talk will be on how to actualize within one’s own mind the altruistic thought or the thought that cherishes all living beings equally, without discriminating some as better than others or worse than others, but having equal love and compassion at a level which is far greater than we can even imagine that we would have for those who are dear and close to us in this life. So, So, cultivation is obviously, it’s a supreme goal. It’s a difficult goal. And this practice comes at the very end of the outline of the path.
I’ve mentioned in those notes, those who received them, just the Buddha’s teachings embrace two main spiritual paths: individual path to personal liberation, to personal nirvana, which does involve the cultivation of great love and great compassion, but it doesn’t involve the intention to rescue all beings from suffering. The dominant thought is for oneself to gain freedom from the suffering wheel of life, death and rebirth, death and rebirth, under the control of karma and disturbing emotions. So, most people feel more comfortable with that. Eventually, even if we follow that path and achieve nirvana, eventually everybody will gravitate towards the recognition of the greatest suffering in the world beyond ours. Even if one achieves nirvana, eventually one will sort of come out of the blissful state of meditation and one will see the suffering of all beings that still exist, and one will then enter the path of cultivating altruism and directing the mind towards Buddhahood or for enlightenment, which is our potential.
Every one of us has the potential to achieve that result. So, I’m introducing different words like Buddhahood, karma, and bodhicitta. bodhicitta is what we’re talking about, the Sanskrit word, the mind of enlightenment, which has ultimate nature ultimate aspect and conventional relative aspect. So, we’re talking about the conventional bodhicitta, the great compassion determined to rescue all beings from suffering. The ultimate bodhicitta is the wisdom that necessarily supports that great compassion.
And working on the two together. Buddha means the point where one’s mind becomes totally the unification of wisdom and compassion. Wisdom alone can lead us to nirvana, but it can’t lead us to Buddhahood. Compassion alone won’t even take us to nirvana, but it is the driving force which will take us to Buddhahood with the support of wisdom. So, we need to practice wisdom and compassion together.
Even in everyday life, there’s a big problem happening, just compassion and wanting to ease others, help them get out of their suffering is nice. But without wisdom we can sometimes do the wrong thing. We won’t know what is best to do to help those who are suffering. So, everyday disasters, can see the terrible earthquake in Haiti, food and aid and medicine is good, but we need wisdom to know how to distribute them and what is best. When I was first ordained, I had a medical clinic at the monastery in Kathmandu in Nepal, and people would send me, at some expense, medicines from Australia to help run the clinic.
And maybe two thirds I would throw away because they were tranquilizers. All of these things were complaints which we experience here in Australia but which nobody in Nepal experiences. In Nepal they needed antibiotics and fundamental medication for infectious diseases and so on. I always felt it was a great pity that they’d gone to all the expense of air freighting these medicines which were useless in Nepal to treat people. I would just like a little example, but there are many things when we want to help people, we just don’t know the right way or the best way to help them.
And especially, from the Buddhist point of view, we need wisdom because the very root cause of suffering is ignorance, is confusion about the reality of our self, how we exist as and the reality of others, even confusion and ignorance of the wheel of life. Confusion and ignorance not knowing about the cause and effect of karma, karmic cause and effect. And so, if we’re really going to help people, we’re going to need to allow them to develop their wisdom. And so, we have to be totally skillful in teaching them. Alright, so, as we go through, please, if there’s something which you want to ask about, put your hand up and if I can, I’ll be happy to answer, clarify any points that come out.
On Tuesday night I said, If we look at what people are doing, our goals in life, why we’re doing it. We can divide our human behavior into worldly directions, so worldly behavior and non worldly behavior. Worldly behavior I classify it as three: the simple pursuit of happiness and avoiding pain and unhappiness in this life. Just, you know, we wake up each day, What do do today to be happy and to avoid unhappiness? So, it’s very much motivation or an idea oriented around this life how I can extract as much pleasure and avoid as much pain as possible and just live whatever time I’ve got in as nice a way as possible.
And a lot of people are living with that general thought. Even if they do entertain belief in heaven and hell and the potential after death, there’s something. If you analyze their daily behavior, they’re not really working towards going to heaven or to avoiding hell. They’re just simply pursuing the happiness of this life and avoiding the pain of this life. So, there’s no fault in that other than, Is this what human life is all about?
Is this really a useful thing to do with our lives? So, if we check up what people are doing in trying to be happy and trying to avoid unhappiness, which is most of us, not too many of us are achieving what we want. There is so much frustration, so much disappointment, and even when we do find happiness, we become dissatisfied and we abandon that which gives us pleasure and look somewhere else. We’re constantly looking elsewhere and for better improvement and change and this and that in our relationships, in our jobs, in our possessions and so on. So, I don’t think there’s anybody who would say, Yes, I have achieved the perfect life of pleasure and freedom from unhappiness.
We can’t help but avoid the inevitable effects of being a human. There is sickness, there is ageing, and there is death. So, these three fundamental problematic situations are unavoidable. And when they occur to us, or to our family members, those with our friends and so on, there is so much. No matter how much wealth we’ve achieved, no matter how much happiness we’ve established, the unexpected, the unwanted, inevitably come and undermine all that we’ve achieved.
So, in the long term, if we haven’t really thought about anything beyond this life, when we die and if we look back on this incomplete life, this unsatisfactory life, not only does it seem to have been of meaningless, but it also is a bit like a dream. And what is the great happiness that we experience on the holiday of some date in the past, which we try to bring back again and again. It is really, if you look at it, is really no different to last night’s dream. Last night’s dream can be very happy or very unhappy, but when we wake up in the morning and we think about it, we think, Oh, it was just a temporary, really meaningless experience. There was no essence to that dream, whether it was a happy or an unhappy dream.
And a similar similar feeling can indeed occur when we’re approaching death and we look back into our memories. They’re very similar to last night’s dream. There’s no essence which we take with us into the deathbed, into the unknown future, if we even think there’s a future. So, that ordinary pursuit of happiness and avoiding unhappiness for self and family and friends is a very superficial way of living. And really, if we look at animals, they’re doing exactly the same.
It’s not different to animal behavior, that they’re doing the same thing. The second type of way of living our life that I mentioned on Tuesday night that was we do have a belief in an afterlife or something after death. Many with a Judeo Christian background believe in the possibility of being born in a heavenly paradise or being born in hell according to our actions, our behavior in life. So, there is indeed a thought of how important it is to have a framework morality, of ethical conduct within one’s life, to do the actions which will take us towards Heaven and avoid going to Hell. And indeed, that belief system is very important for a proper ethical behavior and conduct within life.
And so, still there is pursuit of happiness and avoiding unhappiness, but there is a greater goal and people can indeed achieve that result. Not going to hell and going to heaven. In Buddhism, it’s completely a valid spiritual path. But in Buddhism, which says heaven exists, it’s taught that unless we remove the root ignorance in our mind, the confusion of reality, unless we purify all of the karmic imprints from our mind, being reborn into heaven is not enough because that will be finite existence. It is not infinite, nor is Hell infinite.
One is reborn in such a state out of virtuous karma or non virtuous karma, and eventually the karma for the Heavenly existence or the hell like existence will be exhausted. One will die, and one will again be reborn, either in a happy or an unhappy place according to accumulated karmic imprints in one’s mind. There’s a couple of seats up front if you can’t find or on the sides. The third way of approaching life I added on Tuesday, that was nihilistic self destruction which is becoming a stronger and stronger thought in people’s minds, especially the younger generation of already thinking it’s meaningless, that life is meaningless and really not having any goals other than just immediate sensory pleasure and not caring whether one lives or doesn’t live, which leads to reckless behavior and a sense that life is not so good, it’s meaningless, and a sort of nihilistic view that there is nothing afterwards. And it’s very sad and it seems to be on the increase this general attitude of rejection, of of moral values, certainly an abandonment of any thought of ethical conduct and restraining one’s impulses.
That’s really why I put it in, because when one has that state of mind, one has no sense of need to follow social conduct, you know, the rules of social conduct or the religious rules of social conduct. One just does whatever impulse arises, one acts upon it. It’s very scary and it comes out of confusion. The two ways of living that I described on Tuesday night that are non worldly, which means that there are two lifestyles, which I’ve already mentioned, which bring about certain goals where one is completely free from the will of life, where one can actually go beyond suffering by destroying the cause of suffering. The first is the personal goal of achieving nirvana.
The second is the goal for others altruism, the goal to achieve full Buddhahood in order to be perfectly qualified to guide others out of suffering. That such a purpose for life is born out of great love and great compassion for all beings. That’s what we are going to talk about, how to develop that tonight. Okay. Alright?
Any questions? Go ahead. Don’t be shy to ask if you want to. Now, I finished last week in a bit of a rush. Began to talk about the obstacles to developing universal love and compassion equally for all beings.
And I just, at the very bottom of that list, those who had it, there are the disturbing emotions headed by self grasping ignorance. So, is the confusion of what we are as an individual and within that confusion, it’s not just not knowing, within that unawareness of how we exist as a person, as an individual person, we all invent a person, a self, a sense of self. We have a self image which is generated in our first moments of thought in life. And this self image is added to and seen either in an attractive way or an unattractive way, whatever. We have a strong conviction of a true, real me here, somehow the the one behind the experience, the one who is doing the experiencing, the one who is being unhappy, the one who is being happy or sad, the one who is being attacked or abused and so on.
There’s a strong sense of self, a real true me here somewhere in the background. And this is a rock solid, powerful idea that we all have, and we never question whether the I as we see it exists or not, whether it’s a valid thought or not. The Buddha taught that if we check up our self image, our conception of self, and we try to see how it manifests in our mind, how we are dominated with the thought of ME and there is this self reference to everything that happens in our life. And when somebody says I love you, it’s the ME! I mean, where where is that love directed?
It’s not directed towards the body or the mind, it’s to me. He loves me, she loves me. And there’s this strong sense of me and this very grasping at the person, at those words, we crave those words. So much of our life, if we fundamentally look, what are we looking for? We’re looking for affection, kindness, love from others.
And we are running away from rejection, dislike, hatred. They hate me! They said that about me! And it’s this strong sense of self which indignation arises and then we become very angry, aggressive towards all those who send negative vibes towards us. Way over the top!
I mean, our outbursts of anger and hatred can be so powerful and much greater than is necessary that they can completely destroy our entire equilibrium. An angry mind is such an unhappy mind. Now, why do we do it? Why does it come? Because we there is this precious me that feels insulted, that feels hurt, that feels rejected.
All the different things. Or even when there’s physical pain, Poor me! It’s not fair! So, we feel discriminated against. We feel that, you know, our family, friends are against us.
And this strong self pity can, as we know, when we think about it again and again and again, and we’re always projecting the cause of our problems out there towards others, we can sort of spiral into a completely paranoid state where we are inventing totally unreal attacks upon me, directed towards me. Buddha said, Observe your behavior. Observe your happiness and unhappiness, and your attachment to those things which make you happy, your aggression towards those things which make you unhappy. Now, look at the me. Look at the way this sense of I arises in your mind.
Try to identify the me that feels so hurt, the me that demands to be loved and just wants to hear those words, I love you. How does it appear in your mind? So, check the appearance, then identify it, then relocate the I that appears to your mind. Pinpoint it. If it exists as your behaviour seems to indicate your insecurity or your sensitivity of one’s self image in the face of what’s happening in the world, and always looking for praise, always afraid of criticism.
Where is that self that is so afraid and wants so much? And analyze, locate it. Look for it in the body, look for it in the mind, and come up with it. And so, people did that and his students would come back to Buddha and say, I failed! I couldn’t find the self!
It’s there because it’s me! But I couldn’t find it! The Buddha said, No, because it’s not findable. You have fabricated the image of a true, real me here. Somewhere in your heart or in your head that is the one experiencing.
But the reality is there is no such thing. There is a body, there is a mind. The mind experiences pleasure, the mind experiences pain, the body has sickness and so many things. But with regard to what constitutes a human being, there’s nothing other than that. There’s a body and mind.
Now, that doesn’t mean there is no self, there is no I, there’s no person. But he explained that the I is just labeled upon the body and mind. We establish ourselves to exist as individuals, in dependence upon simply the word I or me or the name that our parents give us. So, when a new baby is born, everybody asks, What’s its name? So, the parents that they’ll reply, sometimes the name may not come for a while, but as soon as people understand that, ah, they identify this new baby, this new person that’s been born into the world, and the name becomes very strong.
And so, that’s how we recognize the new person, in dependence upon the name. And when we introduce ourselves to each other, we swap our names. So, we recognize each other, in dependence upon our names. Right? That’s what establishes us as the name connected with this body and mind.
And the body and mind are not the same as the body and mind when we were babies, when their parents gave us our name. They’re definitely not the same, but they are the continuity of that body and mind, and of no other body and mind. So, we’ve grown up, we’ve become adults and so on. So, different things have been experienced by the mind and the body has changed, but still the same name. And we have functioned.
We sign our signature, you know, and somebody calls us, Are you here? And I call that our name. Yes, I’m here. So, our name, connected to this changing body and mind, establishes us as functioning individuals. Buddhism says that’s all there is to it.
There is no true real me behind it all. This me which I’m so protective of and which I cherish and which hurts when bad words are directed towards this body and mind. It’s me they’re saying that about and our emotions completely get angry or they fall apart with sadness and misery. And the same, we have the same projection onto others. There’s a person we love.
So, what we say we love it’s far more than is actually there. We project upon the other person a real true entity in his or her own right, somehow abiding within that body and mind. And that’s when we say, I love you! And whenever we hear the name, this whole image of the real concrete unchanging person that we either love or hate appears to our mind and we take that to be the real person. And our emotions are very much disturbed through these pushing or pulling attachment or aversion, pride, jealousy, miserliness.
There are so many disturbing emotions always associated with a belief in a real true me, real true other. That Buddha taught that is the root of our problems. Those disturbing emotions, when they manifest, the mind is miserable and they cause us to hurt others. They cause us to do so much to hurt others. Killing, stealing, lying, sexual infidelity are harsh words.
You know, there are so many hurtful things that we can do strongly under the belief that there’s the real true me and the real true other and not just persons, even real true objects. We see them as much more than they actually are. So, the attainment of nirvana is dependent upon generating the wisdom that realizes the emptiness of all of our false mental fabrications, that I’m not what I think I am, that others aren’t what they think what they are. They are just merely labeled individuals. And so the whole intensity of me and not me subsides.
We can relax, we can relax so much. I think there’s just this body in mind, none of which is truly me. When the sickness comes, of course, bodies get sick. There’s no such thing as a perfectly healthy body. And there’s no true me who’s going to even suffer the pain.
There is pain, but it’s just pain. And that’s reality. It’s not pretending, it’s not suppressing anything real. It is just seeing things as they are. And it gives so much courage in one’s own life, not just to work towards nirvana, but it’s the foundation of working towards altruism, of generating pure love and pure compassion for others.
So, if we really check up our lives, what does bring the most peace of mind is when we do things to help others. It is when we have kind thoughts, loving thoughts, wanting others to be happy, wanting others to be free from suffering. We say, don’t we, that the happiness is in giving giving rather than receiving. And that’s true. It really is true.
To make others happy, I mean especially children, we can use them as example. It’s so rewarding to put laughter and smiles on the faces of others and to ease their frowns and their tears and their problems. We are only thinking of them and in the process our own mind forgets our own neurotic demand and need for consideration, for love, for compassion, for kindness. And so, our mind is peaceful. So, experience this.
We know this. So, imagine how it would be if we could see every living being, all humans, or even the animals, with love compassion greater than we would even have to our own loved ones of this life. So, just a couple of stories that I want to talk about. One is of the Buddha when he, the historic Buddha, he described or he told certain stories about his life as a bodhisattva, like working on the path to attaining enlightenment. Like, the Buddha was completely ordinary like us, totally under the control of karma and ignorance, attachment and anger.
And in dependence upon other teachers, other Buddhas, there have been countless Buddhas in the world, in the universe, he followed the path and attained full Buddhahood through great compassion and love. And one of the stories is when he was actually a highly advanced practitioner. He was born as a prince and he and his one of his two of his brothers, they went into the forest one day just gathering flowers or something and they came across a starving tigress with five cubs and they felt great compassion, sorrow and pity for this tigress who they saw was so hungry, so thirsty that it seemed like she was about to eat her own cubs. And so the two brothers, two of the brothers went off to try and find some food and something to drink for the tigress. One of the brothers stayed behind.
He said, Oh, he made an excuse. He knew what he was going to do. So he excused himself and the others and they went off and he went back to the Tigress. And he thought of how so often in his lives he practiced generosity and giving and kindness and love, but he’d never given his own life. I mean, as I say, was a highly developed practitioner and through his understanding he felt that was opportunity to give his life out of love and compassion.
So he lay down in front of the tigress and invited her to eat him. She was too weak to even do that so he took a sharp stick and cut open his veins and arteries enabling the tigress to drink his blood and then gain the strength to eat him. And when the other brothers came back there was nothing but bones and he was gone and they realized what had happened. The story, and this comes in one of the sutras where Buddha actually taught his followers this story. It’s not some sort of legend that came from anywhere else.
It came from the mouth of the Buddha himself during one teaching. So, that is a demonstration of what we’re talking about tonight. The goal, the total state of selflessness and the total state of cherishing others. So even animals, humans, are all seen equally to the point where one could sacrifice one’s own life for others just as Jesus Christ did on the cross. We would sacrifice his life for us.
Why? Because he had great love, great compassion, universal love and compassion. So, the second story is a more modern story. And this is in relation to my own teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who he and Lama Yeshe were my sort of original teachers. Lama Yeshe passed away, was reborn and recognized as a young Spanish boy who’s now living in Spain and doing interesting things.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche sort of took over the running of our whole organization. Roger Kunsang, he’s an Australian monk who is his attendant, told me that one time they went to Kushinagar in India, they went on pilgrimage and they were staying at a very primitive hotel room and the hotel room was full of mosquitoes. And the beds had like four wooden posts and mosquito nets rolled up and when you went to sleep you’d roll down the nets and tuck them under the mattress and keep away the mosquitoes. So, Roger was sharing the room with Lama Zopa’s room to share and he said his mantras, his prayers and he was going to to sleep. So, he unrolled his mosquito net and set it up on his bed.
All the time Lama Zopa Rinpoche was just meditating in the middle of his bed. So, without saying anything, without disturbing Lama Zopa, Roger let down Lama Zopa’s mosquito net and tucked it into the mattress and then he went into his bed and went to sleep. Then, sometime during the night, he woke up and Lama Zopa Rinpoche always leaves the lights on wherever he is because he offers the lights to the Buddhas. It’s sort of part of his practice, offering lights. So, the lights were on and Roger woke up and looked over towards Lama Zopa Rinpoche and the mosquito net had been rolled up and Lama Zopa was sitting in the middle of the bed and he’d pulled his shirt over his head and totally exposed his back and his back was black with mosquitoes and Lama Zopa was offering a midnight snack for the mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes. So, could we do that? We certainly couldn’t offer our life to a tiger or tigress and her cubs. It’s hard enough to allow one mosquito to take a drop of blood, isn’t it? But not just here am I, the great yogi resisting this pain but with unbelievable love, unbelievable love, you know, seeing that mosquito as dearly as anybody in this world equally with great love.
So how is it possible to have such an attitude? The thing with Lama Zopa and mosquitoes is it wasn’t a one off. He was reputed to do this. At Kopan Monastery in Nepal, where I lived for four years after I was ordained, we would close the windows or close the screens at night to keep mosquitoes out and Lama would always open his. One morning I went to see Lama Zopa for some reason, I can’t remember, and he just said, Oh I had lots of injections last night.
I said, What? And he showed me his arms and they were just all mosquito bites, totally. So, offers. So, if we want to become Buddhas we have to have such love, such compassion, such patience to be able to achieve that. That’s what I want to talk about.
He must have been a very strong man because mosquitoes normally carry some form of disease. He survived? Yep. Extraordinary. Yep.
I mean, in Nepal there are other bad diseases carried by mosquitoes. He’s had other physical problems like diabetes or more recently but he’s never got anything. It is. I couldn’t do it. But I did get malaria in India.
Don’t want get it again. So, this meditation is when one is at the point on the path where one wants to cultivate such love and compassion. So, I mean, I know a lot of you are very new, maybe the first time you’ve been to Buddha House and you’ve lots of doubts about rebirth altogether and karma. That’s alright. And I’m not saying you’ve got to believe this or you’ve got to do this.
I’m just saying this is how the path is taught and think about it and think about this possibility of altruism, of universal love and compassion. What’s the reasoning behind it? And there has to be a reasoning behind it. It’s not just faith in Buddha, who’s a great being, or even faith in the Lamas who do these incredible things with mosquitoes. That’s not enough.
Each one of us has to have it, so we have to convince our mind of a valid reason to train in such an attitude. There is a presentation of the benefits generating it, but maybe if we get time we can talk about that later. So, the first step: there are two methods are taught to us by the lamas and the first one is called the Seven Techniques of Cause and Effect. So, there are causes bringing about the result. And they begin with a preliminary step of generating equilibrium, a balanced mind towards all beings.
So, we should reflect upon how we behave in relation to friends, people we label as friends, how we behave towards people we label as enemies, you know, those who we feel have hurt us, insulted us, etc, and we dislike them. We may not call them enemy, but they’re the ones that we avoid. Some people say, I don’t have any enemies. Yeah, check up. There are people we would rather not be with and there are people we would rather be with.
So, we do discriminate that way and we also discriminate strangers towards enemies, we want to hurt them or at least we’re quite delighted if we hear that somebody else criticizing them and we say yes, they did this and this and so we want their reputation to go down. We want others to dislike our enemies and we gossip and we spread the words true or not true we certainly enhance as much negative energy as we can directed towards them. Then the ones so we have aggression towards those we dislike. To those who say, I love you and look after us and give us presents smile towards us, it’s nice to be pleased. No problem with it.
But we become attached. We cling to them and we favor them far more than anybody else. We will do things. We’ll go out of our way to help them not so much out of love and kindness but I want you to keep doing nice things to me. You know, I want you always to be pleasing me.
Check out: there’s not so much altruistic forms in our kind actions towards friends. There is a strong self centered wish of not wanting to excluded from their sphere of benevolent influence. So, we’re attached, we cling, we don’t want to be separated from them. And then the strangers, we don’t really have great concern whether they’re happy or unhappy. And so, we sort of categorize people into those even animals into those three nice animals, there are nasty animals, and so we categorize them as well.
And we act out of attachment attachment to those we label friends, out of aggression towards those we label as enemies, and just a little bit ignorant, not caring, ignoring those who are not connected to me in any way. This discriminating mind is universal and it’s impossible to have universal love whilst we discriminate. We’ve got to at least see others equally. So, we need to reflect that sometimes friends can become enemies. Often friends can become enemies.
Just go to the divorce courts and see how that happens. And domestic violence is so powerful. We’re the ones we have taken to be our partners for life can become our worst enemy and the horrible stories we hear of killing. One happening now. A man killed his wife and the son led to death.
All over money. It’s just awful and it’s so frequent. So, indeed, our closest friends can become our worst enemy. They can become our murderers. Now, this doesn’t mean we should reject our friends and not have friends, but we should be realistic.
Why are you so attached and clinging to that person? Often we may not be physically hurt but they can be behind our back, they can be, you know, saying things about us, they can be cheating manipulating us for their own benefit. So, this is reality. And stop being attached to friends. On the other hand, there are many situations where worst enemies can become best friends.
I remember reading a long time ago how two men had got into a fight and one had attempted to kill the other with a gun and then by the time the court case came around, the two men had become best friends. And so when the attempted murderer was under trial, the one he attempted to murder gave a character witness for him. He’s actually a great guy, you know. So, that’s like an illustration of how even our worst enemy can become a best friend and strangers too. Strangers can either become enemies or friends.
So, the point is that we should not judge people good, bad and act accordingly to our good, bad accordingly to our judgment but see everybody equally have a balanced outlook. Exactly, that’s great. Without anger. Yeah. Of course we must defend defend ourselves out of love, protecting others from creating a strong negative karma and protecting our life.
But we don’t have to do it with aggression. Parents restrain their children to the point of the children getting upset and crying, but they do it out of love. They have to be strong because they can see that what the kids want to do is dangerous for them and for others. Yes, restraint, of course. It would be silly to become totally a doormat and allow people to do whatever they want.
That’s a lack of wisdom. This is why wisdom has to be united with compassion. Who you know is heavily addicted to alcohol or drugs, even if they plead, you don’t have to give them the alcohol and drugs because it’s more harmful. So you do what is wise, whatever you can do. So, what we’re talking about is generating a state of equanimity or equilibrium which is the foundation of universal love and compassion.
Each of us has to reflect upon the way we react in different situations in life and are we discriminating? Am I seeing this person in an exaggerated, negative, hateful way and wanting them to hurt? Or, you know, am I seeing people in strong attachment and clinging? And just not having that attachment and clinging, being balanced. Don’t reject them.
Don’t reject friends. And open up to strangers. See all beings equally. And also, of the meditation is to reflect on previous lives that we’ve had every relationship with each other time and time again. Each of us has been each other’s mother, father, husband, wife, brother, sister countless times.
So, we are one big family. And just as we tolerate, well, to a degree, we can tolerate harmful things from our family and friends. Recognizing everybody as our family, even the animals as our family, we can tolerate the harm and react in a skillful way and we won’t be so attached. So now, the seven techniques of cause and effect. The next point to meditate on is the fact explained by Buddha that as life is beginningless.
There was no time when our mind stream first began taking life and dying and taking life. Life is beginning less, which means that there is no I, you know, there’s no true, real, concrete me that’s been existed since beginning of this time. But the mind that is associated with this body, this stream of consciousness, this continuity of awareness, is something which survives death. It is supported by very subtle physical support but the continuity of consciousness is what goes from life to life. And, of course, as it’s the consciousness connected with this body, which will, according to its karma, will be connected with the future body, that future mind is very similar.
It has all of the good and bad qualities that exist here and now. They’re carried on the mind. So, this stream of consciousness came from a previous life. So, when we were born, we were born with the inherited mental qualities of whoever it was who died in the previous life. And so we inherited their mind.
We? Who is the we? Who is the real me? There is no real me. Just the baby has an inherited mind just as it’s got an inherited body from its parents.
But the mind didn’t come from the parents. It came from previous life. Mind can’t it’s not a physical thing. It can’t be broken up and multiply. So there are countless streams of consciousness which have been existing since beginningless time in the wheel of life, death and rebirth, which means that each mind stream has had countless mothers in past lives and fathers, etc.
If focus upon the mother, because the mother especially gives so much to the child when it’s still in a womb, when it’s being born and when it’s growing up. We rely much more upon our mother for her kindness and support in order to grow properly, to be educated, to be protected from all the dangers. I mean, if our mother, even many of us, fit up with our mothers, but look, if she had abandoned us for just two or three hours when we were little babies, we could have died so many times. She saved our life and at great cost in terms of her own happiness. She gave up her own happiness for her children or her child, for you, time over and over and over again, her sleep, even her food.
She would save the best food for you and so on. And even before we were born our mother was planning our life, our education. Why? So that we could be happy. You know, the fundamental wish was for her child to be happy and free from suffering.
And so, just as our present mother has mostly, and I know that some people have difficult situations when we are talking in general, It might be grandma who gave us all this kindness or father, you know, it could be some other body, someone else in our family. But, in general, mother gives so much and our present mother has done this not just once, but many times, innumerable times in past lives, even as animals. You know, we hear lots of stories like cats and dogs and birds which sort of sacrifice themselves for their chicks. Is not limited to the human realm, the mother’s kindness in protecting the young. So, this is reality.
It’s not just an invention and it gives us a whole new perspective to look at mother, our own present mother, think of her, recognize the kindness and then expand the concept to seeing all other beings as having been my mother and remembering the kindness. So, we’ve talked about the preliminary practice of equilibrium. Then the first cause is to reflect upon all beings and to see beings as one’s mother. The next step is to have the strong memory and cognition of the great kindness kindness that we’ve received from every living being as our mother. And this is reality.
The next step, it’s a change in our mental attitude, right? A total different way of looking at it. Now you can see the mosquito in an entirely different light. An entirely different light. Mother is in this body of a mosquito.
We change our bodies every time we we die and there’s no guarantee that we won’t be mosquitoes in our next life. We’ve been mosquitoes in previous lives. We’ve been to heaven in past lives. We’ve been to hell in past lives. We’ve been everywhere.
So, because the mind’s not physical, it’s not impossible for consciousness to abide within the tiny brain of a mosquito because that brain is its support. And mosquitoes do have feelings. They have happiness. They have unhappiness. They’re very happy when they’re drinking your blood, they breathe and they live a short life, they feel pain.
They may not be too intellectual and too intelligent but that’s only because their brain is not capable of allowing their innate intelligence to manifest. But when they die and the continuity of their mind inhabits human body, then the potential for intelligence is able to manifest. So, on remembering being aware of the kindness of all beings, the next step almost spontaneously occurs the wish to repay the kindness. I thought, How wonderful if I can repay the kindness of all living beings. It is all living beings but we’re sort of more focusing upon human beings because they’re the ones we interrelate with so much in life.
So, now we have a valid reason to be kind to others. Just as we like to give gifts to mother and look after mother, because we know how kind mother has been to us, how kind our mother has been to us in this life, it’s not incorrect to have the same attitude towards all beings. So here is a valid reason for being kind and looking after all living beings equally, no matter matter how harmful they may be towards us or how friendly equally, we want to help as best we can because it’s difficult. You know, we all know when people come to us with problems. We can see the problem and we can see the answer.
But it’s so hard to get them to understand the answer. So, we need wisdom and love and patience to gradually get to know and help those who are in need as best we can. Having reached this step of seeing beings as mother and remembering the kindness and wishing to repay the kindness, the next step is called heartwarming love. Now, in general, when we see somebody very dear to us in this life father, whoever it is, we feel heartwarming love. We hear their voice, Ah, they’re coming!
Or we just hear their name and we feel this warmth radiating from our heart. Joy and like and love, wanting to be with this person, wanting them to be happy. So, now, instead of having the discrimination we’re judging, somebody comes in, we’re suspicious, are they good or bad, we listen to their accent or look at the color of their skin, we judge them. And if we hear, if we’re in England, we hear Oxford accent or a Cambridge accent and we’re from Oxford or Cambridge, instantly, Oh, Cambridge, I went to Cambridge. Friend.
No matter how good or bad they are, they’ve got the right accent. The type of clothes they wear or we’re judging people by the clothes they’re wearing. And so, are categorizing. Before they even speak, we’re categorizing their physical appearance. Their hair is messy or not too keen on that one dreadlocks, oh my God.
Anyway, I just remembered my headmaster at high school sort of impressing upon us how our appearance is all important. But he was up against it. But now he wasn’t so wrong when I think about it. It’s true that we judge each other and we pigeonhole each other even before we open our mouths and so that’s gone out the window. Stop judging others through your prejudice, your preconceptions.
Let go your preconceptions. See other beings as your mother, your dear kind mother and have this outgoing heartwarming love. So that’s this step and this is something to practice. Go down the street and look at the people in the shops strangers on the street and just see them as being kind. And not just you, watch mothers looking after their children, fathers looking after their kids.
Look at the kindness that’s happening rejoice in your universal family. How there is so much goodness especially manifest in human society. This is there and it’s something that can make you so happy, much more happy than going and getting a Big Mac or Coca Cola or something or going to the latest movie, are temporary and then it’s finished but there are always people and animals and you can take so much joy in others looking after each other. The sources of happiness in our society are unlimited! Each other!
We are kind! We wouldn’t be human! To be born human we have to ripen an incredibly karma, virtuous karma, born out of love, created out of love and compassion. Which means that because we’re human, very close to the surface of our mind is that great state of virtue in which we died in our previous life. If we had died in an angry or very attached or self pitting, miserable state in our previous life, we would be an animal or we’d be a hungry ghost or we’d be in hell.
But we’re not, we’re human, which means that there is so much innate goodness in human beings. Animals have got the innate goodness too, but they can’t express it so much. But every human baby is indeed precious, precious treasure and its mind is primed with love and compassion. Why do some people grow up very differently and agree? Because social conditions, actors’ conditions, will also bring with us the seeds of hatred, the seeds of discrimination, seeds of attachment, the seeds of jealousy and pride.
And so if our environment, the nurture that we experience, it can suppress our innate love and compassion and bring up our innate selfishness, our innate anger attachment. And as I said on Tuesday, we don’t have to teach our babies to be attached to my toy. Be strongly attached to my toy and defend my toy with strong anger towards other children who dare encroach upon their sphere of mine, you know. And it can be, wow, it can be quite embarrassing sometimes when we see the temper tantrums and just the selfishness. Mother and father look at each other, It didn’t come from me.
It didn’t come from you. It came from the previous life. And if mother and father are not in control of their emotions, if they have anger, they have attachment, jealousy, pride, baby will naturally follow their example because baby has those seeds of anger and so baby’s behavior will be influenced so much by parental behavior, by behavior of peers and others in life and it goes on throughout life. So, what I’m saying is, I’m going back, that, look, there are so many apart from that, there is so much love and compassion that we’re born with and this is something rejoice in, the very goodness that humans are showing to each other all the time. And we don’t have to buy anything, possess anything, we don’t have to be told we’re beautiful, told we’re loved.
We just have to walk silently down the street and look at the beauty of humanity. Mostly we’re looking after each other. We really are. And that’s something happy about because my mothers are looking after my mothers, you know? And so, with this, now then the next step is great compassion because when we look in the street, it’s not all, you know, as beautiful happily ever after as we would like it to be.
There is so much suffering. There is so much misery and unhappiness in human society. Even in our society, incredibly blessed Australian society. Every time I come back to Australia after travelling overseas, say how lucky we are, how fortunate and how ridiculous we whinge about what we’re getting from the government and what’s going on. We are just so fortunate compared to the place I’ve lived for four years in Mongolia, a country just emerging from seventy years of totalitarian, harsh communist rule and the stories that I heard so terrible are now incredibly poor.
Right now they’re experiencing minus forty degrees and this winter goes on and on and most of them live in felt tents. Many don’t even have that. They live in tunnels under the roads where there are central heating ducts and keeps their lives children, babies, adults, alcoholics. It’s terrible society. Anyway, they’ve got a lot of problems, but they’re cheerful and they get on with life.
But there’s big problems. But I come back to Australia and they don’t have Social Security. The medical system is horrific. It is so antiquated, dangerous to go to a hospital in Mongolia. So, we’ve got everything.
We’ve got it all laid out for us. So, still, we have our type of suffering. Can’t relationships can’t stay together and I don’t have to list problems. You know the problems and the pain and the misery that exists. So now, we’re seeing everybody as our family is so kind.
This heartwarming love just becomes great compassion. How unbearable. What can I I must relieve beings of suffering from the pain? So, great compassion is something to cultivate. You know, we consciously cultivate great compassion and become more aware of the pain and misery that is existing, not just in human life but in the hungry ghosts or in the hells.
I mean, the hells are real. It’s not a place where you go. You create hell with your own mind. Just as in your nightmare, you create a fearsome, terrifying environment and experience. Hell is created by your mind in the same way.
When you die, if your karma is like a hell type experience, when the mind separates from this body, it creates a living nightmare called hell. Just as we wake up from a nightmare, eventually our self created hell will cease and our personal experience, all our hallucinated demons like the demons in hell aren’t waiting there with their pitchforks ready to get they’re hallucinations! But, to the experience that they’re real and this is how I came to accept the possibility of other lives. When I first met the Lamas and heard about other lives, I’d just been working for about six months prior to that in a psychiatric hospital in Melbourne. The Lamas described some of hallucinations experienced in the hungry ghosts and the hell realms.
I was astonished. These were identical to what some of my schizophrenic patients told me they were experiencing. Identical! Even in great detail like giant birds with iron beaks who would peck out your brains. I I had a young eighteen year old boy describing this to me and he was terrified.
For him, he was pursued by these demonic birds who were accusing him of all sorts of sexual misdemeanors and wanting to attack him. He eventually committed suicide. He was so terrified. And then I heard Lama Zopa Rinpoche talking about giant birds with iron beaks who peck out your brains as one of the hell type experiences. Wow!
Maybe there is such a thing. And where does it come from? It comes from our mind. We should if we’re going to be afraid of anything in this life, we should be afraid of our mind. That’s the source of both pleasure and pain, the real source.
Alright, so great compassion. So now, when we see the reality of suffering supported by the heartwarming love and we see it in animals and we investigate, we meditate on animals whilst we’re training our mind in developing altruism. It doesn’t happen overnight. We look, we watch animals and behavior, observe their feelings and what happens and the way that even animals can be so kind to each other and look after each other, especially parent animals. So, then the next step is called very unusual special attitude.
It’s the thought that because all beings have been so kind to me, it’s my responsibility to rescue them from suffering. Just as we would have the same attitude towards our present family when they’re in trouble, we don’t just sit back and ask somebody else to help out. We automatically, naturally we do whatever we can, even put our own life at risk to help them. And so, equally, that we train our mind to have that attitude towards everybody because they are our family. So, this is the thought of universal responsibility.
This is the thought that goes against all that we have been habitually conditioned to do which is to cherish number one, to look after number one first. That has been based upon that wrong conception of self that I talked about in the beginning. We cherish this self image as being supreme and we really look after number one first. Even with our family, it’s number one first. And so, now this special attitude reverses that and we cherish others.
You know, our problem is we self more than others and we neglect others. So now we neglect that self-cherishing thought, we abandon that self-cherishing thought and cherish others. What valid reason can we put out to say that my happiness, my freedom and suffering is more important than everybody else’s in the world? There is no reason why we are more important than anyone else or everybody else. We are all equally important.
This goes back to our basis of this meditation, this equality. So, with this sense of universal responsibility, it’s my responsibility to guide all beings out of suffering, we then, the next final point is the generation of the bodhicitta, is the thought that at the moment I can’t stop my own suffering. I am still dominated by self centeredness, by anger, by attachment, by pride and jealousy. So I must become a Buddha. I must eliminate these disturbing emotions from my mind and achieve all of the qualities of Buddhahood which can take months to describe the qualities of Buddha’s body and mind and their capacity to work for others is vast.
So, if I really want repay the kindness of all my other senior beings, I’ve got to become a Buddha. One reason is to have all of those qualities, the ability to do things for others, and secondly is to remove the obstacles in my mind which will make me an inferior guide. I have to be a perfect guide. And how do Buddhas help? By guiding.
Because the problems are in our minds, the Buddhas don’t have access to our minds, but we do. So, they guide us, teach us how we can get with our own minds. So, that’s the fundamental method for generating altruism. There are others which use this as the basis, but maybe there’s some discussion that you might have about what we’ve talked about so far. Yeah.
Good question. We can do it both ways. We can spend not just a week, but maybe months generating equanimity, equilibrium, not discriminating friend, enemy and stranger. And when we feel something is happening in our mind, then we start just focusing on all beings having been my mother. Not yet remembering the kindness, but just seeing this mother.
It’s Amazing! Amazing how just that changes the way we relate to others by seeing others as mother. And when we start to feel that’s real This is actually the best way to do it. After weeks or months of doing that, then we really concentrate on the kindness of mothers. We use our own mother as an example and we think of the dedication that she’s given towards me and we think about others also being like this.
So, when we start to see others in that way, then we meditate on the thought to repay the kindness. So we go, that’s the best way to do it, over a period of time watching our mind and to be consciously meditating on it. We can also do all seven steps in one meditation session. It’s up to the individual how we wish to practice and how we’re instructed to practice by our teachers. Now, mentioned that this is what we call bodhicitta.
Bodhi means enlightenment, Chita means mind. So, this is the mind of enlightenment and we’re talking about the relative bodhicitta, this universal responsibility to rescue all beings from suffering and bring them every happiness. That That attitude is the very fuel which will give us the energy to persevere on the path. It will give us the courage and the enthusiasm to go through the very difficult path of abandoning selfishness, of generating wisdom, of reaching the point where we can give our life to a starving tigress and her cubs, or even feed a few mosquitoes on her back. We can’t do that now and we shouldn’t do it now.
The Buddha explicitly said, I did that but I was highly developed on the path. Your human life is so precious because with this body and with this brain you have the ability to practice strongly on the path. And you should not give up your body if you will regret it. Now we don’t know we’re going to regret it but we can understand what is meant by that teaching. If we generate, Oh, I shouldn’t have done that, or regret it, we were not ready to sacrifice our body. So, the teaching very clearly says slowly, slowly train your mind.
And those two examples, the mosquitoes and the tigers, were real examples, true examples, but we train progressively towards that. So in the beginning we just stopped killing mosquitoes and, you know, we use whatever methods we can to put them out the window, catch them in a glass. Unfortunately, so many times you can catch them on the edge of the glass and squash them. Job done! Trying to rescue them and let them go outside.
To avoid that. Eventually you can be compatible and invite a few in and let them. That’s great and you see their little belly filling up and it becomes red and quite big. Great practice! Give them a drink.
I mean, how much milk have you drunk from that sentient being in past lives? Tiny drop of blood. In Australia there’s not much malaria. In Queensland you might be worried about dengue fever or something but mostly we’re okay. Right.
Right. Well, you just have this is where we have to bring wisdom into our practice and So we do all we can to stop mosquitoes coming into the house. Apply screens, repellents, mosquito nets. We do what we can to avoid the harmful possible diseases according to our wisdom and we act accordingly. I had the big problem when I started this clinic in Nepal that a lot of young monks in the monastery, probably all of them, were infested with roundworms, tapeworms, you name it, all these intestinal worms.
I had the medication which kills the worms. And so I went to Lama Yeshe, my teacher, I said, What do I do? Do I give them the medicine or not? I vow not to kill. And he explained, he said, First of all, these monks get very sick, extremely sick actually, from these worm infestations.
They are very sick, they can’t study, they can’t practice, they can’t meditate. Their human life is sort of shortened and made very difficult. So he said it’s very important to give them, especially as they become monks, give them every opportunity to make the best use of this life. So he said the worms are sentient beings and they should be looked after. So he said give the medicine, but in your mind you must have no sense of aversion aggression or hatred or dislike towards the worms.
He said he wanted me to, beforehand, meditate as strongly as I could on compassion and love for the worms. Say mantras and so on, as strong state of mind as I could have of kindness and compassion, and then in the light of the health of the monks, give the medicine. So I tried to do that. It is a moral dilemma, but why do we establish morality? Because we’re conscious of karma.
And the essential point about karma is the motivation behind the act. Now, karma means action. What type of action? Mental action. So, if the mental action is attachment, selfishness, or aggression, anger, hatred, that’s negative karma.
That is a natural negative karma. So, this is why Lama Yeshe said to me, What you can do is you do have the moral code of not killing. But if you genuinely generate great compassion and love for the you won’t be creating the negative karma of killing because you won’t have that branch in terms of a complete karma of killing. So, we need to understand karma and the intricacies of karma and the real meaning of karma. So, morality, what would we say, bodhicitta and great love and compassion override the fundamental teachings of morality which are meant to stop killing out of an unskillful mind.
I’ve got a story to tell you. I have a fruit tree full of wonderful yellow peaches, but I found that the fruit rats were getting at those So I threw some rat sack sat down with my partner and then got rid of the rats and saved the peaches for myself, but felt felt guilty when I saw a dead rat and a and a little baby rat. Yeah. Now in my western world, we’ve been raised to kill things that Mhmm. Are harmful.
Now how do I look at that? Because I felt very guilty about that rat and the little rat, but I still ate my peaches. Well, I’m just curious as to how my mind should look at that next year. Offer the peaches to the rats. Yes, I thought you’d say that.
And rejoice out there having a good or dig up the peach trees. Yeah, I mean, that’s it. We can kill out of just selfishness because we don’t want them to have it and we really have to change it. This just in terms of not to add altruism, in terms of karma. Now we’re under the subject of karma.
We’ve got to really look at our behavior. Why we do follow what society says: must kill these terrible flies and mosquitoes and so on. Killing isn’t necessarily the only option. I cover the tree with a net at the bottom on the stem and I’m not hurting any rat. Right.
But he can’t get at the beaches. Yeah, that’s okay. Okay. Protect the tree. Then little children can come over the back fence.
I was a notorious peach pincher when I was a kid. That’s what backyard guns are for, for little boys. Yeah. Sorry, do I? Could Jesus Christ have been a bodhisattva??
One becomes a bodhisattva when in dependence upon this meditation, one’s total mind, one’s whole mind, completely possessed by great compassion and great love and the intention to rescue all beings from suffering by becoming a Buddha. That is of the entry point into the bodhisattva’s path. And that’s when one becomes a bodhisattva. I’m not there. Oh, Jesus Christ?
I thought it was me. Sigmund Freud might have had something to think about. I do. Mean, Lama Yeshe, my teacher, in the early days we were the first big groups of Westerners to ever get involved with Tibetan Buddhism. And there were like thirty five or thirty six monks and nuns at Kopan.
Many laypeople would come. Was like the real meeting point of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. And every Christmas Eve we would have carols by candlelight actually. And all the little monks from the age of six upwards had memorized the carols. So, carols by candlelight and we’d do a special Chenrezig practice, the Buddha of Compassion, and then Lama Yeshe would give a talk And he said many times that the story of Christ is a real illustration of the story of a bodhisattva, a person who had actualized this altar.
You know, he sacrificed his life for others. Showing us, not taking our karma upon himself, but really being an example of showing that self sacrifice is not giving up your body, your life. Self sacrifice is the destruction of the wrong conception of self which is the root of all trouble. That’s the profound teaching that I interpret that Christ taught. We can’t I just I believe and he died for my sins.
Uh-uh. He died in order to show us how we can purify how we must purify our sins through generating wisdom, seeing the reality of self, and not being angry and generating great love and compassion. So, I interpret self sacrifice in that way, destroying the wrong conception of self. Yeah, when you read, of course, there’s so many parallels between his teachings and his behavior and the bodhisattva’s part. So, I think so.
You know, a bodhisattva can be a Buddha or can be a person with this bodhicitta who has the power to be reborn in any situation where he can help his mothers. And so, in any society, he can only help according to their belief system. Buddhism says there’s no created God but if Christ had said that he would have been crucified a lot quicker. So he couldn’t. So there’s no fault in believing.
The system created God and the Ten Commandments according to Moses is a valid basis for morality. And this is the key: morality and ethical conduct is the foundation of the entire path. Without a basis for your ethical behaviour, you won’t get anywhere. You will be selfish. You will fall victim to your uncontrolled anger, attachment, jealousy, pride and self.
So, indeed, I think that Jesus Christ was a bodhisattva and teaching according to the capacity and had such big influence in the world. I wasn’t brought up with any religion and you hear the stories of the Crusades and the terrible inquisitions like the terrible history of religion in our culture. But that’s not Christianity. That is individuals misinterpreting or using the basic fundamental teachings for their own selfishness, own greed, their own hatred just as the terrorists are totally distorting the reality of the teachings for their own completely misconceived ideas. I’ve become much more tolerant.
I was very anti Christianity, because it was the way to be in the sixties. Anti religion. It certainly nearly bounced off Buddhism before I could get get into it. Anyway. Was wondering whether you’ve had any heroes in your life or have now or do you have to get rid of those heroes?
Oh, Daryl Baldock. For those who don’t know, he was the captain of St Kilda when they won their only premier Like special people? Yeah. I mean, mean, Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, they were the first two people I met in my life and who I was in awe of their happiness, their joy, their lack of anger, their lack of selfishness, their wisdom. And I sat through a whole month of the teachings of meditation.
I didn’t become a Buddhist. But I think it was their personal demeanor that kept me there. I traveled afterwards and did a lot of thinking and eventually came back to them. So they’re indeed heroes. His Holiness the Dalai Lama I’ve met several times.
He too. And the Lama’s teacher. So, really there are beings who demonstrate bodhicitta, that there really are. And if you have a great fortune to meet them, like here in Adelaide, you’ve got Khensur Rinpoche, you’ve got Geshe la here in Buddha House. These are special beings and it’s so rare to meet them.
Sogyal Rinpoche visits occasionally. Now, I’m always mentioning Lamas. Well, am because I have great respect for not just the theory but the practice that I’ve witnessed. My father, he was Jewish and he had trained in a synagogue in St. Kilda.
That’s why we all barrack for St. Kilda of course. In my family you have to barrack for St. Kilda. He had done the rabbinical training and could have become a rabbi but he married out, so he’s ostracized.
But he met Lama Yeshe and he said the two greatest heroes in his life, the most impressive, he didn’t say hero, he said the greatest men were the rabbi who was his teacher in the synagogue and Lama Yeshe. He never became a Buddhist and he never really accepted me becoming a monk but he still saw Lama Yeshe as a phenomenal person, outstanding person. Now, it was nice room to say that. Supernatural supernatural experience in terms of, say, reincarnation that or any of those things that you have read and heard that you have personally experienced or actually been part of. Right.
I haven’t personally experienced anything beyond what I can rationalize as a scientist. You know, I’m still very much a scientist. And this isn’t reincarnation, but my older brother who went to Nepal before me and became a Buddhist and met the Lamas, he once offered his country house to Lama Zopa Rinpoche to do a meditation retreat. Every day his wife would take flowers and food for Lama Zopa, doing a lot of good. My brother, very keen on the horses, racing.
So he was staying in Melbourne, their house in Melbourne. During the time Lama Zopa was in retreat, my brother had started to dream on a Friday night of a horse race being called and he heard the three place getters in the race and he sort woke up Saturday morning and said, his wife, Quick, get the age, check out this race! He heard the number of the race, although he’d never heard the names of those horses before. So they looked at think it was the eighth race that horses weren’t running and they sort of forgot about it. But about lunchtime his wife looked at the races in Sydney and in the eighth race the three dream horses were running, the names which he’d never heard before.
So he ran down to the TAB and the two place getters in the dream had been scratched. They weren’t running. But the dream winner was still running. So he backed it and it won. And the same thing happened the next Saturday morning and the dream winner won again.
My brother was a bit freaked out. Anyway, the story got up to Lama Zopa and Lama Zopa says, Yes, yes. Now how much did he win? Roger, his attendant, said, Oh, so many hundred dollars but not a lot because my brother was freaked out. He just couldn’t believe it but he still did back it.
When Lama Zopa heard it was only a few hundred dollars, he shook his head and said, He hasn’t got much faith. And when I heard the story, I mean, I was in Sydney at the Atisha Centre in Sydney at that time and I’ve got faith, I would have put more money on it. But I didn’t hear the story until after the dream stopped. That’s the only close metaphysical experience I’ve had. Lama Yeshe died, he had cardiac disease, rheumatic cardiac disease, and he died quite young, you know, in his fifties.
And his reincarnation was recognized by Lama Zopa Rinpoche and His Holiness the Dalai Lama as a young Spanish boy. And I didn’t get to meet him until he was about six years old. I was at our center in Taiwan, in Taipei, he came to visit. And so I was skeptical as my normal approach. And this young lad came off the plane, came straight up to me and was very close.
During the two or three weeks he was with us in Taipei, I became convinced that this was Lama Yeshe’s mind in this little boy’s body. What he said, his mannerisms, were not an ordinary six year old boy. And it was so much like Lama Yeshe, was just incredible. And the way he related to other people took total command of the center and visitors came to see him. It was wonderful.
I still have no doubt that indeed this is my teacher’s mind and this little boy then now he’s an adult. So, that’s my mental experience. What’s he doing now? You said he was doing interesting. Yeah, he never became a fore monk.
He received sort of novice vows and he went to the monastery in South India, learned fluent Tibetan — he speaks four languages: Spanish, English, Tibetan and Hindi — and had I don’t know how many years, maybe ten, twelve years of education in a monastery. Then he decided to go back to Spain. He had some pretty hard times. At the monastery in South India, there are five thousand young monks and they’re young boys. They give each other a hard time.
They had a hard time. So, he went back to Spain and he wrote this really nice letter to us all and he said, I’m not going to be a lama sitting on a throne and teaching. I want to teach Dharma through audiovisual methods and be a lay person. So he studied he actually before that he went to Switzerland where he gained degree in philosophy and psychology, Western philosophy and psychology. Then he went back down to Spain and he did a course in filmmaking and he’s now a graduate film director.
He’s made a film and this is his way he wants to communicate the Dharma through documentary film and through artistic film and music. Fascinating. Being monks and nuns, it’s hard. I mean, I’ve dedicated my life to try and help establish Western monasticism in the Tibetan tradition. But we’re up against it.
Most monks and others have disrobed and it’s very hard in our society to But, you know, we’ll keep trying. Keep trying. I’ll keep trying anyway and see what happens. I can’t tell the future but we certainly receive encouragement from the Lamas to hang in there, but it’s up to us. In the early days I used to ask every high lama I met, including his Holiness the Dalai Lama, Will monasticism ever be established in the West?
Will the monks and nuns get it together? And the universal answer I received from them all was, We’ll see. And I understood from that that it’s up to us. It’s up to us Westerners to maintain the tradition of monasticism. You don’t need to be a monk or nun to practice the path and become a Buddha.
But we do need monks and nuns to live the life of uninterrupted study and meditation and teaching to preserve the teachings in society. So it’s up to us. Alright. So, look, thank you very much for your attention tonight. Sorry we’ve run out of time, but it’s been been a great pleasure to accept the invitation of George and Helen Manos, the director and the office manager of Buddha House, and all the people of Buddha House who have been so kind and helpful in inviting me here.
I’m heading back to Victoria tomorrow, back to the monastery that I’m trying to get off the ground. It’s been a great pleasure to meet you all, and I am sure I’ll meet you again sometime, somewhere. Thanks for being my mother in past lives. Would just like to give a special thanks to Kaz for being our wise and nurturing mother tonight and, you know, passing on on the teaching for clarity. And Geshe-la’s been teaching for the past fortnight here, and we’ll have a copy of recordings.
People that wanna leave their their details. As you just mentioned, he is actually trying to establish a monastery, which is the first under Ven Thubten Gyatso. And the actual recordings, you know, hoping people might make a donation in return for receiving the recordings towards the monastery. So, leave it up to you. Special thanks to Kaz.
Oh, thank you, George. Oh no, not necessary. That’s only for high lamas. No. No, just Tibetan culture, not Australian culture.