Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 62-minute session from a 1984 introductory Buddhism course, Venerable Wendy Finster develops the Buddhist framework for transforming how we relate to others. She opens by establishing the foundation: that genuine love and compassion for all beings depends first on recognising and coming to terms with our own suffering. She then traces how attachment, anger, and ignorance create the three categories we habitually project onto people—friends, enemies, and strangers—showing through concrete examples that these labels shift constantly based on our mental state, not the other person’s actual nature. From this analysis she moves to the Buddhist understanding of the mind’s supremacy in determining experience: our mental attitude, expectation, and motivation shape what we feel far more than external events. She concludes by exploring how to work with this insight in daily life through two key practices—setting a pure altruistic motivation before any action, and dedicating the positive energy afterwards to benefit all beings. Foundational teaching for those new to Buddhism seeking practical tools for mind training.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Tape 3 .mp3
UUID: 6abbb20f-505b-441d-8201-72113cf89408
Teacher: Ven Wendy Finster
Collection: Intro to Buddhism 1984 – 5 tapes missing (Ven Wendy Finster)
Date: 1984 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 62.2 minutes
Words: ~5,157
Altruistic love and altruistic compassion or pure love and pure compassion without first recognising our own suffering not only recognising it but actually getting to a point where we are fed up with it. In other words, we renounce our own suffering. And to the extent that we do this, to the same extent we can develop pure love and compassion for others. In other words, to wish to relieve or eliminate others’ suffering from their experience and to help them attain happiness, the experience of happiness. So for that reason it’s very important to contemplate upon our own suffering.
Instead of pushing it aside and forgetting about it, bringing it to the front, contemplating on it, thinking about it. The dissatisfactions apart from the obvious pain and sufferings that are part of human life. And we finished off by looking at some ways of trying to understand reincarnation or the continuity of life after life. In other words, the beginningless nature of the mind. We talked about this in relation to developing a feeling of relatedness to all beings, so that if in fact I have had countless innumerable previous births I’ve also had countless innumerable previous bodies who have which have been born from countless innumerable previous mothers and fathers So as a starting point for attempting to develop an equanimity of mind, an equal mind to all beings, and effective ways to contemplate on the beginninglessness of my own mind, my mental continuum, and having had countless previous rebirths and being cared for in every way with the kindness of parents, particularly of mother.
So if that’s been the case, infinite beings have been in all kinds of relationships with me in previous existences. But particularly we concentrate on the kindness of the mother Because generally speaking although of course there are or can be exceptions but generally speaking, the mother’s love, the selfless love that a mother has for her own child, is the closest example of the selfless love and compassion that an enlightened being has to all towards all beings. A mother has that selfless love and compassion for her own child. So it’s partial because it’s not to all children it’s to one’s particular family or children But that kind of love and compassion that a mother feels is similar in the sense that, for instance, if a child is sick or suffering some kind of pain, the natural response of the mother is to wish to have the pain themself, that the child wouldn’t have it, to experience it instead of the child. A selfless caring for the child without thinking of their own well-being.
So contemplation on the kindness of mother forms a very basic part of the development in our own mind stream of the altruistic love and compassion for all beings. But we also recognize that all beings have been our mother in some past life. It’s just because of the changed body, changed environment, changed perspective that we don’t recognize it. Let’s look at how we relate to those that we meet and those who are close to us in our present existence. In my present rebirth I have a very close relationship with my parents and according to Buddhist understanding our karmic or energy connection with our parents of this life is the strongest connection that we have, simply because our mind at the time of rebirth had a very strong connection with that of our parents in order that we were born to them, that our mind actually was conceived with those particular parents.
And we also have relatives and friends as we grow up, and then we also develop our own families And we feel very close, we share everything with those we feel close to. But the love and the compassion that we feel towards those that are close to us somehow doesn’t extend very much further because we don’t feel any particular connection with others that in this life we haven’t, we don’t see any, we haven’t experienced any relationship particularly. So then we have, I guess, kind of a category of those that we don’t know, strangers, people we pass without recognition, people we don’t have any particular feeling one way or the other towards. Just neutral. Not liking, not disliking, just indifferent.
Neutral. And I guess this way of relating is one which characterizes the daily life of many people, feeling that they live in an alienating world full of strangers. And then there’s a third kind of relationship that we have, and that’s to those that we actively dislike. For some reason, sometimes people don’t even have to say anything, you just look at them. You think you don’t like them.
Or it may be someone who you feel has done you an injustice, or it may simply be a person who’s driving a car next to you and cuts in at that time. That’s an enemy, someone you dislike. It can be someone you see as actually harming you physically or psychologically. So we feel some kind of harmful thought towards some people. Or some kind of aversion.
So generally speaking we can differentiate three types of categories of relationship that we have in our everyday life I’d like to look at the root or cause of us making those differentiations. Spoke the time before last about the ignorance or the misconception, the root cause of all problems being our misconception or our wrong view of the way that I exist. Based upon that, not not understanding the true way that I exist, who I am, how I am, my absolute true nature. You’re having a misconception on how I exist from that root cause arises attachment to self I. And this attachment to self I is is kind of an attachment or a possessiveness to my own view, to my own self comfort, to who I am and to how I am So from that attachment arises anger, which is the next, causation along this chain.
The anger arises because of someone or something disturbing my self comfort or my self view viewpoint or conception or whatever. So someone or something or some event or some situation disturbs my conception, what I believe is my self comfort or my attachment to my own self view, that is how anger arises. So attachment arises towards objects in our world, both persons as being objects to us, and material objects or situations, which, in our view, help us in our self comfort, make us feel better, give us good feelings, reinforce our own view of what it is that makes me happy or comfortable so persons in our life, in our own small environmental world who give us those feelings, it’s easy for us to become attached to. And that attachment is not love. That attachment is based on self interest or self comfort.
So we may also love those same persons, but we have to differentiate what is love and what is attachment. The attachment being the negative, self seeking, selfish view of what we what we receive back from that person. So it’s attachment which points out to us, those that help us, and therefore we see as friend. I’m using the friend as a word to for all those that we feel some kind of close connection with. So then anger is the delusion of the mind which points out to us those people or situations which disturb our self comfort.
So we can call all those persons’ situations as enemy at that particular moment in time, a hostile aversion, sometimes even want to harm back towards those persons or situations that we see as harming to our own self interest or causing unhappiness within our own mind. So then it’s ignorance or an uncaring attitude, disinterested in others, not recognizing the close relationship we have with all beings. It’s this kind of ignorance and uncaring attitude which points out a stranger that neither helps us nor harms us, hinders us. So we also pay no attention. So that’s a stranger.
That’s what we call stranger. And in Buddhism, we call these three aspects of the mind three poisons of mind: ignorance, attachment, and anger or hatred. Because in the same way as poison, once it enters the bloodstream or the circulatory system, will will contaminate the entire body. So in the same way, once we allow our mind to be contaminated by one of these three poisonous attitudes, it very quickly can envelop the whole mind or mental attitude. So they’re regarded as poisons of mind.
So let’s look at whether or not the friend, enemy, and stranger are true friend, enemies, and strangers. For instance, if I have someone who is a very close friend, but there was a time before when that person wasn’t a very close friend. Before that person became a very close friend, actually that person was stranger. And either it’s happened to us or we know people it’s happened to someone who’s had very close friend who’s become enemy And, also, we’ve had perhaps experience or now others who’ve had the experience of someone who’s had enemy who’s actually become friend best friend used to be enemy. Now when I’m using the word enemy, I’m not meaning an enemy who’s going to go out and kill you.
I’m talking about psychological aspect of the mind which is reacting as though that person is a harming person, and you dislike that person very much. So I’m talking about enemy in that sense. At that moment for your mind, the person’s enemy. So if it was a true friend, enemy, or stranger, a real, definite friend, it would be friend for all time. No change.
Absolute friend. That we can see that changes. So from the person’s side themself, there’s no true friend, enemy or stranger from their side. They’re still the same. It’s our own relationship with them which is changing.
That comes from our own mind. The three poisons of mind: making a judgment, making a decision. This is how I relate to that person. Also, if it was a true, real friend, or enemy, or stranger. That person if it was from that person’s side, that person definitely is an enemy.
Definitely. No doubt about it. If that was the case, that person would be enemy to all all people equally, because that’s his nature, his enemy. So everyone has to see that person as enemy, because that’s how he is. That’s how the mind believes anyway.
The mind acts. Mind acts as though it’s a definite or real friend, definite or real enemy, definite real stranger from the person’s side, from the other person’s side, from the object’s side. We didn’t make it up, nothing to do with us. It’s you know, we point out it’s their problem, their fault, that’s them, that’s them, that’s that’s how they are. I’m just telling them how they are.
But we have to check. There is not one single person, not one single being that is totally negative. But the mind makes up that. When we dislike someone, we we view them sometimes as totally negative. There’s not one single being that doesn’t have someone that loves them.
It’s not from the being side at all, not from the other person’s side. It’s from what we make up and and project onto the person. Also, the same person can be all three in one day if you think. Sometimes in relationship, couples argue. First of all, starting out as friend, very close, some argument about something.
In the midst of that argument, a lot of anger, and they’re actually at that time, the enemy is fighting. Perhaps after that has died down, the emotion from that has died down, then they act like strangers. So we can have these three poisons of mind can actually contaminate our mind to relate to the same one person in the three different ways within the space of an hour. So if it was a true friend, enemy, and stranger, that’s impossible. If it if it was entirely the other person, if it was entirely them, Their nature.
That’s their nature. So, from a Buddhist point of view, there is no absolute, no definite, no real friend, enemy, or stranger. They are categories, they are differentiations made up, created by one’s own delusion, according to what delusion is occupying or contaminating our mind stream at the time. So attachment points out the one that helps me, Anger or aversion points out the one that harms my self interest, what I believe it is anyway. And ignorance the uncaring attitude disinterested points out the one that neither helps us nor hinders us So these three poisons of mind are the main kind of weapons arsenal of the ego.
The ego being what we’ve set up to believe, who I am, what I am, totally based on a distortion without truly understanding our own true nature. So a Buddha, an enlightened being is beyond delusion, beyond ego. And for an enlightened being, there is no differentiation. There is no external enemy. There is no external friend except for the name.
There is no truly existing external enemy or friend or stranger. So for a Buddha or an enlightened being, all beings are equally regarded with compassion and love there’s no differentiation between a being who harms and a being who helps. They are equally objects of compassion and love. Recognizing that all beings wish to be happy and to avoid pain. So on that level there is no differentiation amongst beings.
So until when a being, a sentient being, attains liberation from the bonds of ego, until sentient being has gone beyond what we normally call pain and pleasure to what is regarded as a blissful state beyond that. So beings who are caught up in pain and pleasure who are caught up in the delusions of mind attachment anger ignorance and others all those beings are equally objects of compassion and love for the Buddha or for an enlightened being So it’s from this level that we start to try and develop an equal mind towards all beings as our starting point for generating true love and true compassion, altruistic love and altruistic or impartial compassion towards all beings, regardless of how they appear to us in our momentary, transitory relationships. So we can look at the transitoriness of our relationships just in our day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year life, in this life with this body. Or we can and we can notice that in fact the way we relate to people doesn’t have a sound basis. It just depends on how we’re thinking and how we’re feeling.
Or we can start to look even broader than that to previous existences, and recognise that we’ve been in every conceivable relationship with every being, infinite beings, in infinite existences. And so in the same way that we feel very close towards our loved ones in this life, So also others, we were in that relationship with others in a previous life, but we can’t recognize where they are, who they are. So this is a way to train the mind. If it’s difficult for you to think in this way, it’s not necessary to think in this way, but just to examine this life. Because without checking up on our day to day life and our reactions, interactions, emotions, connections with people, our meditation won’t make much sense.
So our checking, our watching of our everyday life actions, thoughts and feelings should go hand in hand with a meditation practice, developing a clarity of mind, a tranquility of mind, starting to gain some kind of insight into how the mind functions and have some control over the mind rather than feeling as though we’re led blindly by whatever happens in the mind. No control. So check up. Watch yourself in your own daily life, in your interactions with people. And when you find yourself acting or reacting in a certain way, check up in just look within.
What is it that’s there? So from a Buddhist perspective, the source of all happiness and the source of all pain or suffering comes from the mind. For the pure mind, for the enlightened mind, there is no external cause for unhappiness or suffering, because the outward or the external experience is secondary to that of the mind. And as we talked briefly in our first session how the mind actually has supremacy over the body, over physical or matter, the mind can determine what will be painful and what will be pleasurable. So if we have control over the mind, if we have the ability to transform the mind, we have the potential to transform seemingly negative or painful or suffering situations into pleasurable or positive ones.
Perhaps later on we may have time to talk a little more about that. But the mental energy, the expectation within the mind, the view or conception that one has in the mind or the motivation one has for doing an action, these kinds of mental events or faculties of mind can determine our experience of happiness or suffering. For instance, if we expect to experience pain, if we really concentrate on how we’re going to experience this incredible pain, then actually when the event happens we don’t feel any pain because we imagined it or we expected something a lot worse. So there’s no pain. And it wasn’t anything to do with let’s say it’s an injection something like that.
But nothing to do with the injection, the injection is the injection. The mind determines the experience of it. So start to analyze some of your experiences in this way, and start to play, enjoy playing with the mind, and seeing if you can change experience by changing your mind, and see if you can have some different kind of feeling resulting from a different thought in the mind. And check-in the mind at times when you are suffering or feeling very unhappy. Check within the mind first, and see what’s there before looking outside and blaming outside.
And when you’re feeling happy, check-in the mind and see what’s there as the source of the happiness. The most basic principle of the law of cause and effect or of karma is that it is impossible for positive state of mind to produce suffering. And it’s impossible for a negative state of mind to produce or cause happiness. In the same way as it’s impossible to plant the seed of a tomato and produce a potato. We plant a seed, the fruit of that seed flowers it doesn’t get mixed up with the seed of another plant So what are positive states of mind, and what are negative states of mind in different Buddhist texts there are long lists of descriptions of aspects of mind or different parts of the mind which are negative and different faculties of mind which are positive But basically speaking, one can say that any state of mind which produces suffering or causes suffering to oneself or to others is negative.
Any state of mind which produces or causes happiness within my own mind and in the mind of others is positive. To just give an example of some of the negative aspects of mind in Buddhist psychological texts they give six what they call root defilements of mind. So states of mind which defile, which disturb, agitate, contaminate the mind. And these, of course, start out with ignorance, the unknowing, which is the root cause of all the others, not knowing one’s own true nature. So misconceiving, misunderstanding, and on that basis, everything else comes.
Then comes what we’ve already talked about attachment or craving, grasping after things. Craving is a really good word, it’s kind of like it’s can’t satisfy craving. Craving just craves. It’s endless. The more one gets, the more one craves to get more.
Craving is like thirst, a thirsting. Never enough. So this kind of longing desire for more and more, never satisfied that particular, that mind that is like that, contaminated with that mental factor, is never at peace. Always, always needing something else to be peaceful. Thinking, I must have.
A bit more, just a bit more of that. Never satisfying. So it’s kind of a greed, kind of a continuous craving. Sometimes in the teachings it’s described as as like Honey on the tip of a razor blade. Anyway, honey, you know, it’s so sticky.
Kind of looks so sweet, but it’s so sticky, and it’s this craving attachment, it glues on the mind is sort of not free when it’s contaminated with this mental factor And then there’s anger, which we’ve talked about, this kind of factor of the mind which wants to harm mentally or physically, feels irritated, wants to harm back some way. Pride, and that’s kind of like the feeling of being special and feeling higher than others. As soon as as soon as I put myself up, as soon as I feel better than someone automatically, everyone else is lower. As soon as I feel up, everyone else is lower. I’m subject.
As soon as you have subject up, object down. It has to be. So pride is really a putting down of others, a blowing up of oneself, and a putting down of others and actually, if we really investigate what happens when we do that, there’s some kind of basic, very basic disrespect to that other being’s very nature. Not recognizing the precious nature, the potential within all beings as being equal being kind of hallucinated by what we see on the outside, the superficial and the antidote, of course, to this kind of pride is what we’ve been talking about, and that’s pure love The ability to really relate to others with warmth and caring and love and wishing to do whatever we can to make that being happy. From the smallest, smallest little thing that might make them happy to actually wishing that they attain enlightenment.
And then there’s doubt. Doubt is perhaps one of the most incapacitating mental factors. There’s a couple of levels of doubt, different types of doubt. I’m sure we’ve all experienced the kind of doubt or ambivalence which prevents us from doing anything. It’s kind of paralyzing.
First of all, you decide, well, yes, I’ll do this. But then something says, ah, but what about this, this and that? So you think, okay, well, I’ll do that. But before long, there’s a little voice that says, but if you do that, then you’re going to miss out on this and this and that. So you kind of like going from one side of the pendulum to the other, totally swinging.
And if that happens in the extreme, we don’t act, we’re paralyzed, can’t act. So kind of it’s very negative kind of state of mind. The other kind of doubt is it doubt in in relation to the dharma, doubt about my ability to attain enlightenment, doubt about the essence of my own being, having that capability, doubt about karma, action of course and effect a number of these aspects are negative Perhaps I should mention that there’s also positive doubt. All doubt’s not negative. There’s also positive doubt.
And positive doubt isn’t this one which paralyzes us, but positive doubt is the one that actually kind of energizes us. A positive doubt is kind of like a skepticism which actually puts the mind to work and checks up and enquires and works on something and evaluates. That kind of doubt’s excellent. So the way to determine whether something is actually a positive or a negative is the function of it so there’s also positive pride, also there has to be self respect there has to be in Buddhism we call we call this positive pride divine pride it’s the it’s the recognition that within oneself one has the the Buddha seed, one has the potential to become Buddha, one has the actual seed of all the necessary qualities which are going to produce the enlightenment within one’s own mind and that’s very different from the egoistic pride, which is saying I’m the best or I’m special so it’s a matter of looking at how this how the particular mental factor functions to see whether it’s positive or negative. It’s not just saying pride totally is negative.
It’s a way of how it is. It’s very important to check So then there’s also wrong beliefs and wrong philosophies which end up distorting our view of how we can start to work through the levels of delusion that are encompassing the mind. So for instance, having the wrong idea of what particular ethical practices should part of the path, what we should do, what actions we should encourage, what act in ourself, what actions we should discourage in ourself. So having the wrong view of that is negative because it’s going to sort of interrupt our practice. So that’s an example of wrong beliefs or wrong views, or the wrong view of I, who I am, how I am, that kind of thing.
So some of the positive aspects of mind would be factors such as some we’ve already mentioned: self respect, trust, confidence, shame in relation to recognising faults, effort or energy, effort of mind or kind of perseverance, and of course, the opposite to the three poisons, non attachment, non hatred, non ignorance. So it simply means that the mind is not at that time contaminated by that poison. So non ignorance would be a mind which is not deluded. So they’re positive attributes of mind. Alertness, suppleness, flexibility of mind that’s another mental factor.
Conscientiousness, equanimity. And of course the very basic basis of Buddhism, non harming, a mind which cannot harm, which can’t bear to see another being suffer. And I think that this non violence or non harming is probably very similar to the the concept which Gandhi espoused in his life of ahimsa. This nonviolence. And that’s like nonviolence in every way, not just the gross physical, but mental, psychological.
It means not harming another being with our speech and with our thought as well. It’s kind of a tall order. It’s a It’s big project. It’s total non violence or non harming. It’s to try and develop towards a state that the mind never produces a negative thought, a harming thought towards another being.
So through training the mind in different techniques and practices, definitely the mind becomes more closer and closer to these wholesome factors of mind, and eliminates gradually the negative factors of mind. So, I think our time’s up for tonight. Just while we’re talking about the nature of the mind and looking to see positive and negative attributes of mind, I’d like to just mention briefly about the practices in Buddhism of motivation and of dedication. The motivation or the intention within the mind prior to doing an action is the primary cause of whether something is positive or negative. It’s not the action itself.
So for instance, if somebody was giving a dollar to charity with a pure mind uncontaminated by ego, uncontaminated by thoughts of pride, thoughts of self gain, thoughts of reputation, or whatever, and perhaps feeling some sacrifice, some hardship from also giving that. And somebody giving a thousand dollars to the same charity in the same way but for egoistic purposes, the mind contaminated by these things. So from a point of view of karma, the Buddhist understanding of the law of cause and effect, the one action is negative and one action is positive. You can’t tell from the outside action. But also, I have to say that action of giving a thousand dollars to charity with contaminated motivation doesn’t mean to say that the action itself isn’t a positive one that will produce positive results for the for the the organisation.
I’m talking about the individual person’s motivation and the individual person’s result. So we also shouldn’t refrain from giving one thousand dollars because our action might be contaminated, and we wait till we’re enlightened before we give it. What we need to do is still do these actions which may be contaminated, but we try to kind of if it’s let’s say it’s ninety percent egoistic and ten percent you know, you thought might do some good. What you try to do is you still do the action, but you try to balance a little bit more. So you try and make eighty percent egoistic and twenty percent more altruistic.
So in this way we gradually in our day to day life actions try to work with increasing the amount of altruism in our actions and decreasing the amount of selfishness or egoism. There’s no point in stopping the actions altogether, waiting till we’re pure because it’s in the evolution of our working with ourselves and our mind our body speech mind actions that we can try and it’s a much faster method it’s difficult to do but it’s important that we we recognise that anyway I wasn’t meaning to talk about that. I just wanted to mention that motivation prior to an action, or the intention to do the action, is paramount. So before we do actions, particularly actions relating to meditation and listening to the Dharma, to make the mind positive and pure, altruistic, doing it in order that we’ll be able to benefit others by developing our own mental continuum, by actually gaining high realisations, becoming enlightened ourselves, we will have the capacity, the ability, the power, the compassion and the love, and these qualities which are necessary to really help others. And at the end, we do a dedication.
And that’s a gathering up or a heaping up together or a collecting together of all the positive energy or merit which has been expended in the course of the action. And prevent by dedicating it, it prevents it from being destroyed by later anger. Or we can also look at the motivation and the dedication in the way of, like, the reins of a horse. So which way the reins of the horse are pulling or pushing, then that is the way that the horse is going to travel. So in the same way, if we make the motivation that this is the purpose of what we’re the purpose of our action, then that will direct the energy, the mental energy or the karma, to actually attaining that goal.
So it’s important. So maybe, just to finish, we’ll do a short, meditation. Unhappiness. What’s mental unhappiness. There’s mental unhappiness, which is also