Three Principal Aspects of the Path: undated recording, part 2

Yeah. So we should generate, as usual, powerful motivation to attend to the teachings and from the teacher’s side to explain the teachings for the benefit of others, and generally speaking, the benefit of all others. And in so doing, we will give rise to a vast collection of merit whose results we will experience life after life. And, therefore, let us generate that motivation of bodhicitta, which aspires to attaining the state of full enlightenment, which is a state where all faults are eliminated and all qualities are actualized for the benefit of the infinite ocean of suffering mother sentient beings. So we will meditate one or two minutes on the this motivation, whereby we attend this teaching of the three principles of the path, are the very heart, the very essence of the Mahāyāna, and do so not for our own sake, but for the benefit of all suffering mother sentient beings.

Preliminary prayers. If you’re not familiar with phonetic Tibetan, you know, there’s a page to can read on the English. And the after the inviting the guest to come, then after this verse, we will recite on Guru Puja. There is a Gandhian Hajam. The the fourth verse starting from the third verse is very special today that we have received the hearer.

The arrive very kindly here in takes his. And now it’s in the Guru Puja book, and the fourth verse is starting from page 52. Now which we go on page one, the four measurable. Page five. And dollar offering.

And we recite the first and the last. Alternate that up. Is that his? So the great Tibetan bodhisattva Nyagrodha Dharmabhadra, who lived the end of the eighteenth, early nineteenth century, had a famous quote which referred broadly speaking to what Rinpoche taught last time on the importance of generating equanimity. We have been accustomed since beginningless time to the minds of desire and hatred and largely in dependence on this habituation.

These minds, are actually erroneous minds, which are grounded on an erroneous or incorrect apprehension of reality, have taken a hold and have become very powerful, tremendously powerful within our mind screen. The process of training in equanimity is one

Whereby the power of these two minds of desire and hatred will decrease, will be leveled. And eventually, this is possible only because they themselves are erroneous or incorrect. So as says in his quote, from the side of friends, why should there be anyone? And everybody says, a good simile for this is to reflect on the toing and froing of the waves on the beach. If you walk on a beach in Australia, you can see that the waves or the boundary between the sea and the land is never fixed.

It’s constantly fluctuating, and it is exactly the same thing in our relation with friends. Today’s friend, as Rinpoche explained last time, is tomorrow’s enemy. Today’s enemy is tomorrow’s friend. There is no constantly constancy here. The boundary is constantly fluctuating.

Therefore, from the side of friends, as Dharmabhadra says, why should there be anyone? And as for the remainder of the quote, from the side of the unpleasant and the hated, the first part of this quote from the side of the unpleasant refers to specifically meditation on ugliness or unpleasantness. One would meditate on the ugliness and unpleasantness of various sense objects. For instance, starting with colors, red is generally a very attractive color, so one would meditate on seeing colors as black and dull. One would meditate on seeing all objects of sensation as coarse and rough instead of smooth and pleasant.

And then there is a very powerful meditation on ugliness one can engage in at this point. One, visualizes on one’s forehead a point, a small circle, of the nature of bone. It’s as if the skin, at the level of our of our forehead was peeled off. And then we imagine that progressively this boneless, this bone nature, which is the actual nature of our body, spreads and our entire skull appears, our tongue disappears, and our teeth jut out naked. And then this bone nature continues moving downwards.

The flesh around our throat disappears. All that remains is the neck bone. And as it moves downwards, our ribs jut out. All the inner organs are imagined as disappearing. Only the bone nature of the body survives, and one continues his visualization downwards.

One’s thighs disappear. All that’s left are the thigh bones. Likewise, one’s shins, disappear, all that’s left of the shin bones, and the toes jut out. The toe bones jut out. And then one meditates on oneself as a skeleton for a long period of time.

And if one does this, then the object of desire will disappear. So if the object of desire disappears, Āryadeva says, how could desire arise? And then we extend this meditation to all sentient beings and all the environment. All sentient beings and all the environment are visualized as mere white skeletons, and then no desire can arise in the mind at all. And then if we reflect on how we adorn our bodies, we put a lot of makeup and lipstick and perfume and beautiful clothes to adorn the body, and the exterior of the body is very clean and perfumed.

But the moment you peel away that exterior, all you find inside is garbage and mud. Fundamentally, according to, the Tibetan tradition, the entire human body arises from the union of the father’s semen and the mother’s egg or the mother’s blood. And the father’s semen, the father’s drops, generate the bones of the body, the marrow within the bones, and the sinews. Whereas the mother’s blood or the mother’s egg gives rise to the skin, to the flesh, and to blood which circulates within the veins in the flesh or in the muscles. So it is as if on this armature of bone, sinew, and marrow, masses or slabs of flesh and skin were just stuck on.

And we can only desire this because we don’t actually reflect on the real nature of our body. Oh, I forgot to translate. Says, there is a beginningless heap if we reflect on this. There’s a beginningless heap of male semen and female blood, which has given rise to our bodies life after life after life, and this is absolutely disgusting if we think about it. But he says if you imagine yourself entering down, visualize yourself entering through your gizzard and moving downwards, imagine what you will see.

You will see first the flabby lungs, then moving down with the stomach, the intestines along spirals of the gut, the kidney, the liver, then you will see big masses of feces, of urine, and of blood. He really doesn’t want to continue because it’s quite revolting. So we’re not aware of this because we are wrapped up in this envelope of skin which hides all of this revolting the revolting contents of our bodies. And at the time of the Buddha, many of the members of the early Sangha meditated very forcefully on the impurity of their body and of the environment, and they developed a sense of profound disgust with their own bodies, which they saw as heaps of garbage and of filth. And in dependence on the sense of profound disgust with their bodies, they did not want to stay anymore in this environment, and they would commit suicide sometimes by strangling themselves.

Now this obviously is not the goal of these meditations on the impurity of the human body and on the dirtiness of the human body. So Buddha himself forbade this and said, it is good to meditate on the impurities of the human body, but one is not allowed to put an end to this life. But says, quite frankly, when we meditate on the of the human body and the impurities of the human body, we don’t want to stay.

So when desire arises within our mind for the body of another person, for instance, it is a totally mistaken, emotion because we apprehend this body as something of pleasurable, something which will grant happiness, whereas it is not pleasurable. It’s a product of its collection of aggregates, are the product of contaminated karma, contaminated karma, contaminated deeds. And we perceive the objects of desire as mistakenly as having four characteristics. We perceive them as being in the nature of happiness, as satisfying, as providing pleasure, whereas they are in the nature of unhappiness and suffering. We perceive them as clean, whereas in fact, they are dirty and filthy.

We perceive them as permanent, whereas in fact, they are impermanent. And we perceive them as endowed with a self, as having a self, whereas in fact, they are selfless. So these are the four mistaken views we have with respect to the objects of desire. So now we speak of the three poisons, desire, hatred, and ignorance. The root of the three is ignorance, and what is meant here exactly by ignorance?

Ignorance is that state of mind which doesn’t apprehend phenomena the way in the way they actually exist. What is the actual mode of existence of phenomena? The actual mode of existence of phenomena and of ourselves is existence as mere nominal imputations. In other words, as mere names. For instance, if we take the table in front of Rinpoche, this table exists as a mere name, which is imputed on a collection of parts.

Likewise, our bodily aggregates, the five aggregates exist, but they exist as a mere nominal imputation on a collection of parts. So this mode of existence is established. However, this is not the way phenomena appear from their own side. Phenomena appear from their own side as having inherent or true existence. And what is meant by this is that they appear from their own side as existing independently of nominal existence of or nominal imputation.

They appear as if existing really from their own side irrespective of our apprehension of them. And when this state of mind arises, whereby all phenomena appear to us as inherently existent, then the conception which acquiesces to the inherent existence of phenomena in turn arises, that mind which thinks phenomena actually do exist from their own side. Now if this were indeed the case, if phenomena did exist truly or inherently, then there would be no Buddha, there would be no Dharma, there would be no Sangha, There would be no causality. Phenomena would be, as it were, frozen. It is precisely because they do not exist truly or inherently that Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and for that matter causality exist.

And insofar as phenomena appear to us mistakenly like this, in dependence on this desire and hatred arrive because in dependence on this mistaken appearance of phenomena as inherently or truly existing, then that mind which splits them in two into a totally good part and a totally bad part arises. And that mind which sees a certain category of phenomena as totally good, as 100% good, then desires those phenomena which it sees as totally good for their own side. And that mind which sees that other category of phenomena as totally bad, inherently evil, then wishes to destroy or eliminate those phenomena which it sees as inherently evil. Both desire and hatred for these two categories of phenomena arise from that ignorance which misapprehends a nature phenomena. And this ignorance can be dispelled.

It can be destroyed because it is a misapprehension. It is erroneous, incorrect, and wrong, and phenomena do not exist in this way. That force which dispels the incorrect apprehension of phenomena is that wisdom which realizes emptiness. So says, the root of suffering in the cycle of lives is the three desire, anger, and ignorance. If we reflect upon this desire, anger, and ignorance, desire, hatred, and ignorance are definitely the root of all suffering in our lives.

And specifically when it comes to desire, the direct antidote to desire is renunciation. Renunciation refers to a state of desirelessness of nondesire, which functions as the antidote to desire. Likewise, the foremost antidote to anger or hatred is nonhatred or nonanger, which refers to a state of bodhicitta which is generated in dependence on love and great compassion. And finally, the foremost antidote to ignorance is that wisdom which understands the selflessness of phenomena. That wisdom is the antidote to ignorance.

So these three, renunciation, bodhicitta, and the view of emptiness, are the antidotes to respectively desire, hatred, and ignorance. Without these three, there is no way to put an end to the cycle of lives, irrespective of the practices one engages in, whether it be the recitation of a mantra or any other advanced practice. These three renunciation, bodhicitta and emptiness are the antidotes to desire, hatred, desire, hatred and ignorance and therefore their practice is absolutely fundamental.

Śāntideva says, if I do not know, if I do not understand that friends will leave and enemies will leave and I myself will leave, then where will I end? I will end in the lower realms. And the meaning of this quote, Rinpoche says, by the great Śāntideva, is that if we develop strong attachment to those who are close to us, friends, fathers, mothers, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, children, then in dependence on the strong attachment, we will accumulate a large amount of non virtuous karma connected with desire. And yet all of these beings — fathers, friends, mothers, children, wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends — they will all die. They will all disappear.

But the karma they have created will subsist. Likewise, if we generate strong negative karma with respect to beings which we perceive as our enemies, those who are not our friends, our enemies of a long time, eventually they themselves will die. But the karma we have accumulated with respect to them, that karma will not disappear. And finally, ourselves, we will disappear too. So if we look at these three categories of beings, friends, enemies, and ourselves who are the actor and recipient of the deeds, all three categories of beings will disappear completely.

Not the slightest trace will remain of their existence. But the non virtuous karma which has been accumulated in dependence on desire, hatred, and ignorance with respect to these three categories of being, that non virtuous karma we will have to carry on our shoulders. We will have to carry the non virtuous karma accumulated through desire on our shoulder. We have to carry the non virtuous karma accumulated through anger on our shoulders. We would have to carry on our back the non virtuous karma accumulated through ignorance, and this will cause rebirths in the lower realms.

So even though the beings with respect to whom we generated these afflictions have completely disappeared, nonetheless, the suffering which results from the afflictions will stay with us for a long time. Therefore, it is very important not to allow desire, anger, or ignorance to arise in our minds, and this is the meaning of the quote of Śāntideva. The great said, I stand guard in front of the fortress of my mind, a spear inherently, and whenever I see the afflictions approach, I chase them away. This is the practice of a great yogi, Rinpoche says, and this is how we should practice. We should examine our minds constantly.

And the moment we see afflictions arise within our mind, whichever they are, whether they are desire, hatred, or ignorance, we should react forcefully and violently and crush these afflictions as soon as they arise because there is nothing beneficial. There is nothing good about afflictions. The only function of afflictions is to cause harm to us. They are our foremost enemy. So this is, for instance, the main thrust, the main meaning of the meditations on ugliness and filth, which Rinpoche explained previously.

These meditations are designed to crush, to eliminate the affliction of desire as soon as it arises within our mind. And we should therefore strive to practice as Geshe Langri Tangpa strives to practice. And then if we examine our minds, we will find that there is one factor which has caused countless harm and difficulties for us since beginningless time. There is this one factor which has been our enemy from the very beginning, and these are the mental afflictions. So when something is, since beginningless time, a source of problem and harm to us, then we can really call it an enemy.

And our main enemy, therefore, is an interior enemy. It is against the interior enemy that we have to fight. The exterior enemies are not enemies. The exterior enemies merely arise contingently independent on the interior enemies of the afflictions, in dependence on the karma we have accumulated, exterior enemies will in due course arise. If, however, we have not accumulated the karma for them to arise, they will not appear.

So if we have eliminated the interior enemy, then the exterior enemy is powerless. And with respect to this fight against the interior enemy, the great Kadampa practitioners of yore said, applying the antidotes to the delusions is Dharma, not applying the antidotes to the delusions is not Dharma. And this is a very good definition of Dharma. Understanding the afflictions as afflictions and applying the antidotes, that practice is, in a nutshell, what is called Dharma. There is no other Dharma but this.

Reciting manis in and of itself is not really Dharma. Dharma is that practice of counteracting the afflictions and doing so very forcefully. If on the other hand, we don’t counteract them and we let them increase ever more within our minds, eventually, will overwhelm us and precipitate us within the lower realms. So it’s extremely important for us to know exactly who our enemy is, the inner enemy. What the hell is that?

So to finish translating what Rinpoche had said previously, Rinpoche said, then the way for us to practice is to identify the foremost delusion within our mind and to apply the antidote against that first, and then apply antidotes against the other delusions progressively. And he says he feels very awkward because you might think, oh, this is a very great lama, and he is telling us how to practice, and he himself has attained this. But he says, this is very difficult for him too, so he is just reporting what the great lamas of the past practiced and suggesting that we also try to do the same thing. But he says he himself is not able to practice like this, but he refers mainly to the practice of these great practitioners of the past, and we should all make prayers to them that we are able we’d be able eventually to practice like they were able to practice, and we should try to abandon in this life the faults which we can abandon, and those which we cannot abandon, we should resolve to abandon later on in future lives and make strong prayers to progress upwards quietly. And then, basically, as Rinpoche explained, the foundation for our practice must be this generation of equanimity, which is a state which is bereft of desire and hatred.

Now if we can actually eliminate desire and hatred from our mind stream, equanimity comes by itself. It is almost automatic. It is quite easy to generate. But otherwise, if desire and hatred are present in our mind stream and we have this strong feeling of closeness to friends and antipathy towards enemies, then any compassion or love we might generate within our mind stream will automatically be partial. We will be partial to our friends, and we will be hostile to our enemies.

And this is not an authentic way to practice. So the foundation for the practice to generate bodhicitta in dependence on the sevenfold cause and effect modality is first and foremost the generation of equanimity. And then in keeping with the definition of bodhicitta in Abhisamayālamkāra, bodhicitta is that aspiration for the benefit of others of an aspiration towards full enlightenment. The two last verses in that quote refer to the various steps in the sevenfold generation of bodhicitta. For the benefit of others refers to the three last of the sevenfold process for the generation of bodhicitta, which is a generation of compassion, of love, and of the great determination, that determination to oneself take responsibility to place others in a state of happiness and in a state bereft of suffering.

The final part of the verse itself, aspiring to full enlightenment, refers to the four first steps in this practice, which is a recognition of beings as one’s mother, the recollection of their kindness, the wish to repay their kindness, and that love which aspires to their being happy or content. So this one quote in Abhisamayālamkāra therefore refers to the sevenfold process of generation of bodhicitta.

Now as Rinpoche explained, after generating this mind of equanimity, the next step in the sevenfold cause and effect generation of bodhicitta is generating the recognition of all sentient beings as one’s mother. This is specifically done by by Rinpoche through the following lines of reasoning. The lines of reasoning uses are that cyclic existence itself is infinite in the past. saṃsāra is infinite in the past, and for that matter, our individual cyclic existence, our individual samsaras are infinite. There is no beginning to our individual cyclic existence as there is no beginning to cyclic existence in general.

On the other hand, the number of beings itself is finite since there is a point where all beings will be said to have reached full enlightenment. There’s considerable debate about this one. But if the number of beings is finite and the number of past lives itself is infinite for every single being, then there is not a single place where beings have not been. There is not a single place where we ourselves have not been reborn, and there is not a single being of whom we can say this being was not our mother. Not only was each being our mother, each being was our mother countless times since there is a beginningless cycle of lives with beginningless lives and a finite number of beings.

Buddha Śākyamūni himself said, before I reached full enlightenment, the number of my mothers was incommensurable. So in dependence on these lines of reasonings, we should recognize the fact that every single sentient being has been our mother many times over. And after this, we should then engage in meditation on the second step in the process for generating bodhicitta, which is recollecting the kindness of these mother sentient beings. If we just take the case of our mother in this life, our mother in this life underwent tremendous suffering at the time of our birth. And yet, the moment we were born, she held us in her hands as a jewel and just looked at us and babbled away at us.

There was absolutely nothing she would not do for us, and she actually held us to her breast and fed her with her own milk, with the substance of her very body. So her kindness for us was inconceivable. Whenever we were ill, she did everything in her power to get medicine for us and to soothe the disease and everything she could to help us. And then recollecting on this infinite kindness of our mother in this life to ourselves, kindness without which we would not have survived even one minute. Rinpoche says that had it not been for the kindness of our mother in this life, we would not have lived more than two or three minutes, let alone have reached a point where we have actually we are fulfilling the goals of a precious human rebirth.

Recollecting then on the kindness of this mother in our life and extrapolating it to the kindness of all the mothers we have had in past lives. We must generate from our own side the strong wish to repay this kindness because the practice of the Mahāyāna is a practice of benefiting others. One cannot say one is a Mahāyāna practitioner if one is oblivious to the need to repay the kindness of others, specifically one’s mothers. So says, although we talk of the benefit of others, it is our benefit which we actually fulfill. And the meaning of this quote is that, actually, to attain a state in which all faults are abandoned and all qualities are actualized, a state of perfection, a state of full enlightenment, we actually must perform the welfare of others.

It is through performing the welfare of others that we ourselves will perform our own welfare and reach a state of full enlightenment, which is bereft of all faults and endowed with all qualities. If we were to try to attain such a state, independence exclusively on a mind striving to perform its own welfare, we would be unable to do so. And when we put great effort in that sense in performing our own welfare, then we are actually practicing at the level of the lower vehicle. For that matter, a bodhisattva who would pursue exclusively his own welfare would instantaneously fall down to the level of an arhat, a practitioner of the path path of arhats. And arhats are incapable of performing their own welfare.

They are incapable of freeing themselves of all thoughts and attaining all qualities. It is only the bodhisattva, through dedicating himself wholeheartedly to performing the welfare of others who in this at the same time performs his own welfare. And but she says there is very much a mistaken view, which is unfortunately quite common among us, that if I do a lot for others, nothing will be left for me. This is exactly the opposite, actually. The more we do for others, the more we ourselves will progress on the path.

And then as is said in, Lama Chopa in the Guru Puja, in brief, the childish only perform their own benefit, but the Buddhas strive exclusively for the benefit of others. With a mind which analyzes the qualities and the faults of each, I request the blessing to be able to engage in the practice of the interchange of self and others. Rinpoche says, the childish in this quote from Lama Chopa, the children, refers to us. We we exclusively focus on our own benefit. And although we exclusively focus on our own benefit, we do not achieve anything.

If we examine carefully, we will find there’s absolutely no result to the effort we are doing for our own sake. On the other hand, the fully enlightened beings have focused exclusively on the benefit of others at the expense of their own welfare. And in so doing, they have attained a state of full enlightenment where all qualities are actualized and all faults are eliminated. So it is up to us to compare the two. And if we compare the two, we can see very clearly that in focusing exclusively on the benefit of others, the Buddhists have actualized their own benefit, whereas ourselves, in focusing exclusively on our own benefit, have not only not actualized our own benefit, we have not either actualized the benefit of others, the welfare of others.

And therefore, we should put great effort in engaging in this practice of interchange of self and others. Now Rinpoche says he has given elaborate explanations on this matter over the last couple of months, and this is the last teaching, on the topic of this year. You will have two months or so of vacations. He has explained in great detail, more elaborately than perhaps ever before, the, development of renunciation and will be explaining in great great detail the practice of bodhicitta. This was not done merely for your intellectual satisfaction.

This was done that you meditate upon it. So you have two months, and during these two months, you should think of your own happiness, your own welfare. And your own happiness, your own welfare can best be actualized through meditating on these topics, through generating these states of mind within your mind stream. Merely hearing and reflecting on these topics is not enough. If you merely hear teachings and reflect on teachings, your mind will not change in a durable fashion, in a stable fashion.

You have to meditate on these topics. It is through meditation that the mind will become stable, And therefore, he would like you all, he gives you the injunction, to meditate on this and not to waste your time. So what is meant here with respect with respect to the three activities of hearing, of thinking, and of meditating. Hearing is not just a matter of attending teaching teachings and listening to the teachings. It’s not an activity which is limited to your ears.

If one attends teachings and one listens to teachings, but the mind wanders all over, then one can’t really say that the activity of hearing is engaged in. The activity of hearing is engaged in when the mind is focused on what is being heard. What is being heard is held by the mind. It is collected and subsumed by the mind. Then we can say that the person has engaged in hearing.

But hearing itself is not sufficient. On the basis of hearing, of attending teachings, then we have to gain a definite ascertainment of the topic which is taught. And this is done through reflecting, through thinking again and again on the topic which was taught and analyzing it through various different angles so that eventually, certitude, definite ascertainment is gained with respect to this topic. And this definite ascertainment itself is difficult to budge. It is close to being incontrovertible, but it itself is not sufficient.

What we do need to attain in dependence on it is experience. We say in worldly matters of this or that person, he has a lot of experience, and this is this is praise indeed. It means this is someone who really knows the way things are, who has been there and seen things, who doesn’t just talk about them. What we need is experience, an experience we can only gain through meditation, meditating on the definite ascertainment, the certitudes we have gained through reflection. And there is two types of meditation, analytical meditation and concentration meditation.

So at the time of analytical meditation, in the context of meditation, we analyze a topic with respect to which we have gained definite ascertainment. And then at the time of concentration meditation, we place the mind on it single pointedly. And in dependence on this, we will gain experience of the topic. However, if we have not first reflected carefully on the topic, then there is no basis for gaining experience of anything. We will just be meditating in a void.

And to reflect carefully on the topic to engage in the activities of thinking, we must first attend many teachings and hear many presentations. Page nine. Verse nine. Okay. Before you leave, I have a few announce.

This weekend is the the one of the great teaching. Je Tsongkhapa’s secret life, realizations and meditation, etcetera. And if you still haven’t registered, must make sure registered. And it’s a weekend course, 114 for member, $220 for nonmembers, and lunch is provided. Of course, also tea and coffee.

And 20 oh, sorry. December 14, 02/2030 is a Tonglen practice led by Venerable Chamba Tenzin. And, you know, this is a very important day. It’s the December 21, which is a Tsongkhapa day. And we’re going to have here, I mean, the precepts, etcetera, and Guru Puja after evening and DVD show in evening and light offering.

And if you haven’t booked anything in Christmas, if you’re not going anywhere, you’d like to join here with Rinpoche and Venerable and all the other there’s a lots of other people, You must make sure and either please register with the Venerable Chama Tenzin and we will make sure what you have to bring on the Christmas day. Okay? Sorry. This is the last one. Compassion day is on the January 4 and 09:30 to 04:30.

It says a pre bring a lunch to share and minimum facility contribution for the for the 10 for the day is a $10. Okay.

K. And the newsletter is in a a website that you can download, and it’s already there. Okay. And that’s all. Good night.

Thank you very much.