LAMRIM TEACHINGSVolume 4

Advanced Scope

Bhikṣuṇī Thubten Chodron

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Sravasti Abbey692 Country LaneNewport, WA 99156 USA www.sravasti.orgwww.thubtenchodron.org © 2016 by Thubten Chodron Cover design by Traci Thrasher This ebook contains lightly-edited transcripts of teachingsgiven by Venerable Thubten Chodron at Dharma FriendshipFoundation, Seattle, from 1993 to 1994. They have beenorganized and formatted by Lai Wee Chiang. The merit created by preparing this ebook is dedicated tothe good health and long lives of our precious teachers andthe flourishing of the Buddhadharma. May the light of theDharma illuminate the minds of all sentient beings, andawaken the seed of compassion and wisdom that lies withineach of us.

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http://www.sravasti.orghttp://www.thubtenchodron.org

Contents

TitleCopyright

CHAPTER 1 Training the Mind in the Stages of the Pathfor an Advanced Level Practitioner

The Advantages of the Altruistic Intention1. It is the only gateway for entering the Mahayanapath3. One receives the name “child of the Buddha”3. One will surpass in brilliance the sravakas andsolitary realizers4. One will become an object of highest respect andofferingOther advantages of the altruistic intention

Developing Equanimity: A Preliminary Practice forDeveloping the Altruistic Intention

CHAPTER 2 Seven Points of Cause and Effect1. Recognizing That Each Sentient Being Has BeenOne’s Mother2. Remembering Their Kindness to You as YourMother3. Wishing to Reciprocate That Kindness4. Heart-Warming Love—Seeing Others as Lovable5. Great Compassion6 & 7. Great Determination and the Altruistic Intention

CHAPTER 3 Equalizing and Exchanging Self and Others

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Equalizing Self and OthersLooking from the viewpoint of others on theconventional levelLooking from ultimate levelReviewOvercoming resistence

The Disadvantages of Cherishing OurselvesSelf-cherishing causes us to create negative karmaSelf-cherishing prevents us from achieving our goalsSelf-cherishing makes us extremely sensitive andeasily offendedSelf-cherishing makes us feel guilty or engage inself-pitySelf-cherishing causes fear

The Advantages of Cherishing OthersWhen we cherish others, they are happyOur attitude towards others affects our happinessCherishing others creates good karma and benefits usChanging our mind changes the results

Exchanging Self and OthersGiving Your Own Happiness and Taking the Sufferingof Others

CHAPTER 4 The Bodhisattva VowsTaking the Bodhisattva Vows

Two types of bodhicittaTwo types of aspiring bodhicitta

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Commitments of the Aspiring Bodhisattva VowsHow to protect our altruism from degenerating in thislifeHow to prevent losing the bodhicitta in future lives

The Eighteen Root Bodhisattva VowsRoot Vow 1Root Vow 2Root Vow 3Root Vow 4Root Vow 5Root Vow 6Root Vow 7Root Vow 8Root Vow 9Root Vow 10Root Vow 11Root Vow 12Root Vow 13Root Vow 14Root Vow 15Root Vow 16Root Vow 17Root Vow 18

The Four Binding FactorsThe Forty-Six Auxiliary Bodhisattva Vows

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Auxiliary Vows 1–7: Vows to eliminate obstacles tothe far-reaching attitude of generosity and obstaclesto the ethical discipline of gathering virtuous actionsAuxiliary Vows 8–16: Vows to eliminate obstacles tothe far-reaching attitude of ethical disciplineAuxiliary Vows 17–20: Vows to eliminate obstaclesto the far-reaching attitude of patienceAuxiliary Vows 21–23: Vows to eliminate obstaclesto the far-reaching attitude of joyous effortAuxiliary Vows 24–26: Vows to eliminate obstaclesto the far-reaching attitude of meditative stabilizationAuxiliary Vows 27–34: Vows to eliminate obstaclesto the far-reaching attitude of wisdomAuxiliary Vows 35–46: Eliminating obstacles to theethics of benefiting others

CHAPTER 5 Introduction to the Six Far-ReachingAttitudes

The Six Far-Reaching AttitudesNecessity and Function of the Six AttitudesHow the Six Attitudes Fulfill Our Own and Others’PurposeCreating the Causes for Precious Human Rebirth withthe Six Attitudes

Chapter 6 GenerosityThe Three Kinds of Giving

1. Giving material aid2. Giving protection from fear3. Giving the Dharma

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The Giving of Body, Possessions or Root of Virtue inTerms of the Four PointsHow to Enhance the Practice of the Far-ReachingAttitudes

Set a proper motivationThe emptiness of the circle of threeIntelligence

CHAPTER 7 EthicsThree Divisions of Ethics

Abandoning acting negativelyActing constructively or virtuouslyThe ethics of benefiting others

Practicing the Far-Reaching Attitude of Ethics with theOther Far-Reaching Attitudes

Generosity of ethicsPatience of ethicsJoyous effort of ethicsConcentration of ethicsWisdom of ethics

CHAPTER 8 PatienceThe Three Kinds of PatiencePatience of Not Retaliating to HarmThe Disadvantages of AngerThe Antidotes to AngerPatience of Voluntarily Enduring Suffering

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Patience of Definitely Practicing the DharmaCHAPTER 9 Joyous Effort

The Three Types of Joyous Effort1. Armor-like joyous effort2. Joyous effort of acting constructively, or gatheringvirtues3. Joyous effort of working for the benefit of others

The Three Types of Laziness1. The laziness of procrastination2. Attraction to trivial matters and negative behavior3. Laziness of discouragement (low self-esteem)

Four Aspects of Joyous Effort1. Aspiration2. Steadfastness3. Joy4. Rest

CHAPTER 10 Meditative Stabilization and SpecialInsight

Practicing Each of the First Four Far-ReachingAttitudes in Relation to the Other Five

GenerosityEthicsPatienceJoyous effort (enthusiastic perseverance)

Meditative Stabilization (Concentration)

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WisdomPracticing Concentration and Wisdom with the OtherFar-Reaching Attitudes

ConcentrationWisdom

More on WisdomCHAPTER 11 Training in Calm Abiding

Etymology, Definition and Explanation of CalmAbidingArranging Proper Circumstances for Calm AbidingMeditation

1. Live in a proper and conducive place2. Have few desires and attachments3. Be content4. Avoid distractions and extraneous activities5. Maintain pure ethical conduct6. Abandon preconceptions about sense objects

More Advice on Doing Retreat or Meditation PracticeThe Object of Meditation

Objects for purifying behaviorUsing the image of the Buddha as our object ofmeditationUsing the mind as an object of meditation

Actual Way to Practice Calm AbidingFive hindrances to calm abidingNine stages in practicing calm abiding

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Way to Develop Actual Calm Abiding from ThisCHAPTER 12 Wisdom

Three Levels of Dependent Arising1. Causes and conditions2. Parts3. Concept and label

Why Is It Important to Learn about Dependent Arising?Wisdom Realizing Emptiness: The Antidote toIgnoranceOur Mind Imputes and Projects Meaning onto ThingsIndependent Existence and Inherent ExistencePeople Do Not Exist in the Way We Perceive Them

CHAPTER 13 Ripening the Minds of OthersWhat Does ‘Ripening the Minds of Others’ Mean?Training in the Four Factors of Gathering Disciples

1. Being generous2. Speaking pleasantly3. Giving encouragement4. Acting according to what one teaches, setting agood example

CHAPTER 14 The Eightfold Noble PathHigher Training in Ethics

Right SpeechRight ActionRight Livelihood

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Higher Training in ConcentrationRight MindfulnessRight ConcentrationRight Effort

The Higher Training of WisdomRight ViewRight Thought

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CHAPTER 1Training the Mind in the Stages of the Path for an

Advanced Level Practitioner

We’re going to begin the practice of a higher levelbeing—the bodhisattva practice, or at least learningabout it, let’s put it that way. If you look at theoutline, it’s point ‘C’: Training the mind on the stagesof path when you are a person of higher level.

The first two levels and the reason for the words“in common”

Point ‘A’ was training the mind on the stages of thepath in common with an initial level practitioner. Inthat one, we were trying to develop some care andconcern for how we are going to die and what we aregoing to be when reborn. We realized that unfortunaterebirths are a possibility, and that they’re due tonegative karma. As an antidote to that, we want toclean up our karmic act. In other words, we want todo some purification, to avoid doing the ten non-virtues and to try and do the ten virtuous actions asmuch as possible. This is the training of mind on thestages of the path in common with the initial levelpractitioner.

The reason it’s called ‘in common’ is because theLamrim, the gradual path to Enlightenment, isdesigned for somebody who already knows they wantto practice the highest level. What you’re doing at thisfirst level is in common with the person of the initial

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level because you are doing it in common with them,but you have in mind that you are going for thehighest level. That’s why at the beginning of all of oursessions, we spend time generating the altruisticintention of bodhicitta, which is the motivation of thehighest level practitioner, even though we might thengo back and meditate or study one of the meditationswhich are in common with the initial levelpractitioner.

Point ‘B’ was training the mind in the stages of thepath in common with an intermediate levelpractitioner. An intermediate level practitioner issomebody who not just aspires for a good rebirth, butalso wants to totally get out of samsara, and whorecognizes the causes of being caught in cyclicexistence are ignorance, anger and attachment. At thisintermediate level, one practices the three highertrainings of ethics, concentration and wisdom in orderto free oneself from cyclic existence. We practice thepath that is in common with the intermediate levelpractitioner because we are still aiming for the highestpractice, the highest path.

Now, we have finally come to the training of themind in the path where you are a person of higherlevel. Even though we ourselves may not be a personof higher level right now, still it’s beneficial to hearthe teachings on this, contemplate them and meditateon them because it puts some imprint on our mind thatbegins the learning process. It plants the seeds andthese seeds can gradually get nurtured as we listenand contemplate and meditate more and more. It’s notthat you have to do the initial level practice withoutknowing the rest and master that level before you

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learn the next level, but rather, you try and learn thewhole path so you have a broad overview of it, andthen you concentrate on the level that is really whereyou are at. You do practice as much as you can on thewhole path, even though your emphasis is at the levelwhere you are really at.

This is why we may have taken tantricempowerments. “I didn’t understand everything, whatdo I do? How am I qualified to do this, I can’t evenspell Chenrezig!” [Laughter.] If you have someknowledge of the whole path and some awareness ofthe determination to be free, the bodhicitta, and thewisdom realizing emptiness, then you start on theChenrezig practice which belongs to the lowest classof tantra. It’s not the highest class of tantra, so it’smuch easier and much simpler. Even though youdon’t understand everything completely, it’s puttingimprints in your mind. You practice it the best thatyou can. As you practice it, what you do will relate tothe earlier levels of the path, and the earlier levels ofthe path will start relating to the practice, and you willbegin to see how it all fits together. So there’s no needfor despair. [Laughter.]

In this section of training in the path of the personof the highest motivation, there are three mainsections:

1. Discussing the advantages of the altruisticintention or bodhicitta

2. The way to develop it3. Having generated it, how to engage in the

bodhisattva deeds, bodhisattva practices

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The Advantages of the Altruistic Intention

This is the hard sell. Whenever they talk about theadvantages of something, it’s really to sell you on it.Not just to sell you on it, but to get you to value whatthis thing is and have a mind that is full ofappreciation and optimism so that you will want toengage in that practice. If you don’t see the benefitsof it, then what’s the use of putting all the energy intoit? Just as we now see the benefits of making a lot ofmoney, we have much energy to go to work. You wantto make money, so you get out of bed in the morning;your wish to make money gets you out of bed in themorning. It gets you in your car and going to workeven if you are exhausted. Even if you are sick youstill go to work. You spend extra hours workingbecause you see the value of money. You are not lazyin it.

When we see the advantages of something, thenthe joyous effort comes very spontaneously. Onereason why we don’t have much joyous effort in ourmeditation practice, is that we may not yet know theadvantages of it. Understanding the advantages ofsomething helps. If we know the advantages thenwe’ll get out of bed in the morning to meditate onbodhicitta, and we will work on bodhicitta all day longwithout fatigue, even overtime. [Laughter.] It won’tseem such a big strain because we will see theadvantages of it.

People may be quite surprised, I don’t know ifeverybody knows that Lama Zopa doesn’t sleep.Nobody’s ever seen him lie down. Nobody, not evenhis attendants, have seen him lie down. So for about

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forty-five minutes between like 3:30 and a quarterpast four, he’ll go into a very deep meditation and hishead will go like this, and then forty-five minutes laterhe’ll lift his head up and continue doing his prayers.He just doesn’t sleep. You know how it is that thishappens? It’s by the power of the bodhicitta—hisbodhicitta doesn’t get him out of bed in the morning,it gets him not to go to bed at night! [Laughter.] Thisis the reason why he stays up into all hours of the dayand night teaching. We’re all sitting there fallingasleep but he’s completely ‘on’, one hundred percent.He comes back here and talks to people until allhours, again teaching them, and then he starts hisprayers very early in the morning and has thiswhirlwind schedule.

Also, you look at His Holiness and how he lives—whirlwind schedule, very little privacy. This is madepossible by the force of the altruistic intention. Thesethings don’t become hardships, but rather becomejoys. If we contemplate the advantages of thebodhicitta, then engaging in the practice becomes ajoy rather than a hardship.

1. IT IS THE ONLY GATEWAY FOR ENTERINGTHE MAHAYANA PATH

When we talk about the advantages of the bodhicitta,they really emphasize that it is the gateway forentering into the Mahayana. And we get all high andmighty because we are Mahayana practitioners, notthose Hinayana lower vehicle people who don’t havecompassion. [Laughter.] “We are Mahayanapractitioners!” What this point is emphasizing is that

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you are not really a Mahayana practitioner if youdon’t have the bodhicitta. That just talking aboutbodhicitta and calling yourself a Mahayanist doesn’treally do anything. The whole thing depends uponyour state of mind and your level of realization. If youdon’t have the bodhicitta, even if you practice thehighest tantra, it doesn’t lead you to realization of theMahayana path!

In fact, there is even a story of one person whomeditated on one deity and because they didn’t havethe proper bodhicitta motivation, not even theartificial bodhicitta (what we try and create), he wasreborn as a spirit in the shape of that deity. It is reallyemphasizing that, for tantra to be effective, we needto do the bodhicitta practice. Meditating on bodhicittais the best preparation to make your Chenrezigpractice go well. That’s why Rinpoche talked aboutbodhicitta the whole first night. Also, the more you doChenrezig practice—because Chenrezig is theembodiment of compassion—the more that is going tohelp your bodhicitta practice as well. Lama Yeshe saidif you recite ‘Om Mani Padme Hum,’ even if youdon’t want to develop compassion, you will.[Laughter.] Doing the Lamrim meditations on altruismplus doing the Chenrezig—or if you didn’t take theChenrezig initiation, then reciting ‘Om Mani PadmeHum,’—they complement each other, they help eachother a lot.

I emphasize this because many people in the Westare just so enthralled with, “We want the highest classtantric practice!” We go to this high lama and thathigh lama, collecting initiations like people collectstamps. You ask them what is bodhicitta and they say,

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“Bodhicitta?” You can see that if a person doesn’tstart with the basic fundamentals, the aspiration forthe highest goal will not bear fruit. It is reallyimportant to cultivate the fundamental practice.

The real miracle

In the same way, many people get all excited aboutdeveloping clairvoyant powers or healing powers orsome special powers. But again, even if you developthese powers, if you don’t have the altruisticintention, what good do these powers do you? Youmight have these powers, but then if you don’t havethe proper motivation, they go for increasing one’sown pride and ego. After death what happens is thatinstead of having a good rebirth, somebody has alower rebirth, even though in this life they haveclairvoyance or some other kind of fantastic power.

It reminds me of a story. When I was in HongKong, I used to teach at the schools (some of theteachers would ask me to come in), and at one schoolone student asked me if I could do magic powers, if Ihad miraculous powers. I guess he had just read abook on Uri Geller, because he asked me if I couldbend spoons. [Laughter.] He asked if I could readpeople’s minds and things like that. People are just soexcited by miraculous powers. I told this student that Iwasn’t impressed with those kinds of things. To methe real miraculous power was being able to have akind heart towards all the different people that youmeet. I think that’s much more miraculous than beingable to bend spoons. I mean, bending spoons doesn’thelp anyone, it might even make somebody angry if

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it’s their spoon you’re bending! [Laughter.] Likewise,reading somebody’s mind might make them angry,might harm them too, and it might harm yourself! Butif you can have a kind heart towards somebody, and afeeling of altruism, then that’s something that isuniversally beneficial. I think that’s the real miracle.That’s what we want to emphasize in our practice.

Beware of being sectarian

When the Tibetans start talking about the bodhicittaand the advantages of bodhicitta, they go on a bigthing about how superior a bodhisattva is to an arhat.An arhat is somebody who has attained liberation,they’ve removed the afflictions (of attachment,aversion and ignorance) and karma. They’ve freedthemselves from the twelve links of dependent arising.They’ve attained liberation, but they haven’t yetdeveloped the altruistic intention so they haven’tremoved the cognitive obscurations in their mind. Andso you’ll find, in the Mahayana sutras and in theIndian …

[Teachings lost due to change of tape]

… is that it’s a way of encouraging us to enter into theMahayana path from the very beginning. There aretwo ways to reach Enlightenment.

One way is to enter the Mahayana path,developing the determination to be free, developingthe altruism, doing the bodhisattva practices andbecoming a Buddha. You go straight that way, that’sone way to do it.

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The second way is that you enter what the Tibetanscall the Hinayana path, we might call it the Theravadapath, and you become an arhat and you are free fromcyclic existence, but you haven’t developed thebodhicitta. You stay in your blissful samadhi onemptiness for eons and eons and eons, because youare liberated and it’s wonderful. But you don’t havethe bodhicitta. You’re in what they call the extreme ofnirvana in your meditation on emptiness, and at somepoint, the Buddha wakes you up, and you have todevelop bodhicitta and then start at the beginning ofthe Mahayana path and do all the bodhisattvapractices. It’s kind of like taking a detour of becomingan arhat first, then you have to switch back to thebodhisattva practice.

They say that for some people, that’s the best wayto do it. But if you could enter the Mahayana practicedirectly, it saves time. And we all want to save time.[Laughter.] They say, even if you have to spend alittle time in hell on the way to Buddhahood, it’sworthwhile rather than detouring into the blissful stateof nirvana and then coming back to the bodhisattvapractice. I’m telling you this because you will hear itfrom Tibetan lamas as you go on. I am telling you thisto help interpret it a bit.

They always tell a story. There were sixtypractitioners who were just about ready to, I think,realize emptiness. They were going to attain nirvanaor liberation very, very soon. And Manjushri cameand taught them about bodhicitta, but because it wastoo much for their minds, they generated wrong viewsand because of their wrong views, they were reborn inthe lower realms for I don’t know how long, but some

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time. [Laughter.] When they got out of the lowerrealms, they entered the Mahayana practice and wentstraight to Enlightenment. People were curious aboutwhy Manjushri did this, why he taught them thisteaching knowing that they would generate wrongviews and be reborn in the lower realms. Buddhaexplained that this was actually a skillful method toput the seeds of the Mahayana practice in somebody’smindstream in order that they could then progressalong the path.

I think there is some difficulty in this. Sometimesthe way this is taught may sound very sectarian to us.It may sound to us like we are putting people down:“They just watch their breath and practice Vipassana,and try and become arhats, while we’re the greatMahayana practitioners.” People who hear this mayfeel that it sounds quite sectarian. I am bringing thisall up because we talk about sectarianism at theconference. I am a fundamentalist regarding beinganti-sectarian. [Laughter.]

I think we have to really know how to interpretthese passages very well. They are offered in thecontext of encouraging somebody to develop love,compassion and altruism, because that person alreadyhas that kind of interest and inclination. It’s not saidas a put down for the Theravada practice, okay? Itmay sound that way sometimes, and some people whodon’t know how to understand it, might become verysectarian. The reason it is spoken of this way, is as away of encouraging us in the Mahayana practice, notas a way of putting down and creating differenceswith other traditions. They are also, at other points inthe teachings, very quick to remind us that we should

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never disparage arhats. The arhats have much morelove and compassion than we do! [Laughter.]

It’s not that arhats lack love and compassion, it’snot that you don’t have love and compassion in theTheravada tradition—there is obviously the mettameditation; this is something that is taught. It’sprobably taught more and emphasized more in theMahayana tradition, but the teachings on love andcompassion, bodhicitta and bodhisattvas are alsofound in the Theravada teaching.

I am telling you all this just to show you howcenturies of Asian misconceptions get passed down. Iheard one Westerner tell a story about a Vipassanameditator in Thailand or Sri Lanka in the Theravadatradition, who got very, very far on his meditation andthen got stuck and he couldn’t deepen hisconcentration. One of the teachers there saw that thatwas because he took the bodhisattva vows in aprevious life. The moral of the story is be careful andmaybe don’t take the bodhisattva vows since theymay interfere with your practice. Could you haveattained nirvana quicker if you didn’t take thebodhisattva vows? This is the kind of implication ofthis story. I heard one Westerner say it, and I’m surehe learned it from an Asian teacher.

It’s the centuries of misconception that you havepassed down, that the Theravada people might say,“Be careful of bodhicitta because you won’t becomean arhat,” or “It distracts you from the path.”Mahayana people say, “Well, those Theravada people,they are from a lower vehicle and they don’t havelove and compassion.” I think both those attitudes areincorrect. I think that as Westerners, we don’t need to

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import these kinds of attitudes from Asia. If we have atendency and we are interested in a tradition of loveand compassion, to recognize that this is found in theTheravada teachings. Learning the metta meditationdone in the Vipassana communities is very helpful forus to do. In our own teachings, it emphasizes thispractice a lot more, and that may fit more with ourpersonality and our disposition, so go for it, but don’tcriticize other people who don’t emphasize it.

I think sectarianism happens among the peoplewho don’t have realizations. The people who reallyunderstand the Dharma, they have no need to besectarian and put one tradition up or another traditiondown. That’s why I said I think those people whowrote these passages in the Indian scriptures aren’tbeing sectarian. They are trying to do it as a way ofencouraging people with the disposition. But otherpeople might misinterpret it as being sectarian.

One example of this, and why it’s good not to beproud, is one time, I was invited by a Mahayanacenter to teach, but when I reminded them abouthelping with my airfare, they hummed and hawed andsaid: “Well, we didn’t expect it. We don’t know aboutthis and there are all these other expenses.” They hadjust had a big fund raiser and raised a whole lot ofmoney. They were really humming and hawing abouthelping with the airfare.

When I got there, I gave a talk at another placewhere the chief was a Sri Lankan monk from theTheravada tradition. Most of the people therepracticed in the Theravada tradition, although theyhave people from all traditions practicing there. At theend of the talk, this chief monk, whom I really respect

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very much, asked me to come and see him. I came inand some people from his committee were there, andhe made an offering and said, “This is for yourairfare.” Somehow he heard about it through thegrapevine, and he hadn’t even been asked! Here arethe Theravada people who are helping and theMahayana people who are saying “Well …”[Laughter.] That’s why it really comes down to what’sin your heart and how you live your life, not spoutinga bunch of philosophy about how great your traditionis.

What bodhicitta is

Anyway, if we see some advantage to having aMahayana mind (not just a Mahayana label), and theresults that it can bring and how beneficial our livescan become for others, then it is important to knowthat generating the bodhicitta is the gateway toentering that path.

We have to know specifically what bodhicitta is,because we are talking about it here. I’m translatingbodhicitta as the altruistic intention. Other peopletranslate it as the mind of Enlightenment and theawakening mind. There’re lots of differenttranslations. Bodhicitta is a primary mind that isaccompanied by two aspirations. One aspiration is tobecome a Buddha and the second aspiration is to beable to benefit sentient beings. You want to become aBuddha in order to benefit sentient beings. The mindthat has these two aspirations, that’s the bodhicitta.Bodhicitta isn’t just wanting to help others, becauseyou can want to help others without wanting to

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become a Buddha. Wanting to become a Buddha isn’tbodhicitta either, because you can want to become aBuddha and not want to help others.

The right way to approach bodhicitta

Bodhicitta isn’t just having a kind heart, it isn’t justlove and compassion, but an actual wish to become aBuddha so that one can help others more effectively.The emphasis here in the bodhicitta, is being ofbenefit to others, working for the welfare of others.The emphasis is not on becoming a Buddha. Actually,they are both equally important, but I think it is moreimportant for us to work for the welfare of others.Otherwise, we get into this thing of, “I want tobecome a Buddha. I want to become a Buddhabecause Buddhahood is the best! I want to be thebest! I want to be the highest! I want to be the mostglorious! I want to be a Buddha!” Helping othersbecomes a ‘tax’ that you have to pay in order tobecome a Buddha, you know? [Laughter.] It’s like, “Iwant to become a Buddha, so okay if I had to helpothers, I’ll do it.” [Laughter.] That’s not the attitudethat we want to have, but rather what we want to tryand cultivate, is this real strong wish to serve others.We realize that at the present, our ability to helpothers is limited. We want to become a Buddha inorder to overcome our own limitations and purify ourmind so that we can help others most effectively.Becoming a Buddha becomes the method for carryingout this strong aspiration to serve others. That’s howwe want to approach bodhicitta.

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3. ONE RECEIVES THE NAME “CHILD OFTHE BUDDHA”

The second advantage of bodhicitta is that you willreceive the name, “child of the Buddha”. I willexplain it, then I’ll give my commentary. [Laughter.]If you generate the bodhicitta—which is the wish tobecome a Buddha for the benefit of others, eventhough you haven’t yet become a Buddha and maynot yet even realize emptiness, you are still called a“child of the Buddha” in the sense that you enter intothe Buddha’s lineage, you become an heir to theposition. Think of the Buddha as the parent. When theparents have heirs to their kingdom or queendom orwhatever it is, then the heirs are very special. Theheirs are their special children. The bodhisattvas,those who have generated bodhicitta, become thespiritual heirs, so to speak, of the Buddha, so they arecalled the children of the Buddha. That’s considered agreat honor.

Now to us, Westerners, I don’t know about you,but I listened to this and I feel, “Well, I don’t reallycare if I get called the child of the Buddha. Why do Ineed another label?” I don’t know if any of you feltthat way. For those of you who may have thisskeptical mind like I do, when I heard this teaching, Ithought: “Why is that an advantage for generatingbodhicitta? I get the title of the spiritual child of theBuddha—big deal! Who cares about another title!”For somebody like me, that may not appear as anadvantage, but if you look at it, for other people, itmight be very encouraging. “Wow, that means I’mreally entering into the Buddha’s family. I become the

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spiritual child of the Buddha, and just as a child growsup and takes over the Buddha, the parents’ place, thebodhisattvas grow up and they also assume the workof the Buddhas. Gee, that’s what I want to do!”

3. ONE WILL SURPASS IN BRILLIANCE THESRAVAKAS AND SOLITARY REALIZERS

The third advantage of bodhicitta is that you surpassin brilliance the sravakas and the solitary realizers.The English translation for “sravakas” is the“hearers,” because they hear the Dharma, theypractice it, they attain nirvana. The solitary realizersalso hear the Dharma, they also eliminate the afflictedobscurations and attain nirvana, but they do so in theirlast rebirth, at a time when there is no Buddha onEarth. That’s why they are called “solitary realizers.”In their last rebirth, they practice in a solitary way.Both the hearers or sravakas, and the solitaryrealizers, are people who practice to attain nirvana.Like I was saying at the beginning, they stay innirvana for a long time, then later the Buddha has towake them up and say, “Hey, you aren’t done yet.You have to generate the bodhicitta and becomeenlightened for the benefit of others.”

It is said here that if you generate the bodhicitta atthe beginning, you surpass in brilliance these sravakasand solitary realizers. Even though they may be out ofsamsara and you may not be, and they have realizedemptiness and you may not have yet, still, they saythat you surpass them because of the potential and theforce of the bodhicitta. Because the bodhicitta is sopowerful it’s like a turbo jet? [Laughter.] I don’t know

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the latest thing—laser beam? Okay, it’s the laser beamof the practice. Even though you may not have therealizations of emptiness that a sravaka or an arhat ora solitary realizer has, because of the power ofbodhicitta, you have set yourself on a path where youare going to gain all of those qualities and more.

4. ONE WILL BECOME AN OBJECT OFHIGHEST RESPECT AND OFFERING

The fourth advantage of bodhicitta is that you becomean object of highest respect and offering. Somebodywho has generated the altruistic intention and workingfor the benefit of others, because this intention is soprofound and so pervasive in the service that it offersto humanity and to all sentient life, then, that personbecomes an object of respect and offering.

We shouldn’t look at it like, “Become an object ofhighest respect and offering? I thought I was supposedto give that up? Isn’t seeking offering and respectsomething to give up? Why is this an advantage hereof bodhicitta?” Don’t think of it that way. It’s not like,“Oh, I want respect and offering. Therefore, I amgoing to generate bodhicitta!” You don’t approach itthat way. Rather, it’s emphasizing again how noble thebodhicitta attitude is. If you have milk and you churnthe milk, the rich stuff is the cream that comes to thetop. Similarly, if you take all the Buddha’s teachingsand churn them, the richness that comes to the top isthe kind heart. It is bodhicitta. It’s a way of pointingout to us that this is really the core of the practice. Itis helpful for us to know, so that we make the core ofour daily life, developing a kind heart.

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I’ll continue with the advantages of bodhicitta nexttime. I want to leave some time for questions andanswers now.

Questions and answers

[Audience:] What’s the difference between bodhicittaand compassion?

Compassion is the wish for others to be free ofsuffering and its causes. Compassion is a cause forbodhicitta. First you develop compassion. But you canhave compassion and still not want to become aBuddha. You can have compassion, but still not wantto really engage in the process of helping others.Compassion is a step you develop first, and then yougo further and develop the bodhicitta and the wish tobecome a Buddha.

[Audience: inaudible]

Well, they are both aspirations, they are both mentalstates. With compassion you want others to be free ofsuffering and its cause, but you are not yet necessarilyaspiring to do anything about it yourself. Nor are youaspiring yet to become a Buddha to do somethingabout it. That’s why they say compassion is the causefor bodhicitta. It is a very important cause, so it isvery highly praised. You can’t have bodhicitta withoutcompassion, but you can have compassion withouthaving bodhicitta.

[Audience: inaudible]

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Philosophically speaking, in the doctrine, they domake a difference—even in the Theravada scriptures—between an arhat’s realization and the Buddha’srealization.

[Audience: inaudible]

What happens when the alarm clock goes off?[Laughter.] I’m not quite sure. They may just do allthis work of developing bodhicitta in the Pure Land,that’s my guess. And then maybe, after havingdeveloped the bodhicitta, they may voluntarily, out ofcompassion (not out of the twelve links, because theyare free from these), take rebirth in the other realmsof existence in order to carry out the bodhisattvaactivity.

If I can just kind of elaborate, you didn’t ask thisquestion but this might be useful information. In theTheravada tradition, they say that not everybody canbecome a Buddha. Everybody can become an arhat,but there are only a thousand Buddhas in thisparticular eon (Shakyamuni is the fourth) who wouldbecome fully enlightened Buddhas through doing thebodhisattva practice. Everybody else can becomearhats. Becoming an arhat is wonderful. In theMahayana tradition, they say actually everybody canbecome a Buddha, because everybody has theBuddha potential, and there’re more Buddhas thanjust a thousand in this particular eon.

[Audience:] On what basis is the discriminationmade that some people can attain Buddhahood andothers cannot according to the Theravada tradition?

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This is a question I’ve always had too. It seems to me,so obvious to my ignorant mind, that a mindstream isa mindstream. How can you say some people haveBuddha nature and other people don’t? I don’t reallyunderstand where this comes from philosophically.

His Holiness was saying at a conference that, ifyou see the Buddha nature in everybody, you want togo like this (hands folded in respect). In the “EightVerses of Thought Transformation”, it talks aboutmaking yourself the lowest of all beings. Everybodyhas the Buddha potential, everybody has somequalities we can learn from, everybody has somethingto respect. We should go like this (hands folded) toeverybody. At the conference, His Holiness wastelling the story that when he was in Thailand, thecustom in Thailand is that the lay people do this to theSangha, but the Sangha aren’t allowed to do it to thelay people, because the respect goes one way. HisHoliness said the first time he was there, he tried veryhard, all these people were going like this and he justhad to keep his arms down. He said, “This last time Iwent, I went like this to everybody! I think maybethey didn’t like it. They didn’t think I was a propermonk!” [Laughter.] “But,” he said, “I couldn’t helpit!” It is having an attitude of respect that comes quitenaturally from seeing that everybody has the Buddhapotential.

[Audience: inaudible]

They say yes, even in this degenerate age, you canbecome a Buddha. That’s why tantra is so effective inthe degenerate age.

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[Audience: inaudible]

Yes, I think as the age gets more and more degenerate,the ability to practice does become more and moredifficult. It is harder to generate wisdom, it’s harder togenerate concentration, it’s harder to keep ethics.There are many more obstacles. At a certain point,they say, “Okay, during this period, people can’t gethigher realizations than a certain level.” But in theTibetan tradition, they say first of all, if we start outwith the Mahayana practice, all these degeneratethings can become fuel for your practice, throughthought transformation. That’s why thoughttransformation is so important—because the times areso degenerate. Based on the thought transformation, ifyou then do tantra, this helps transform the difficultiesof the degenerate age into the path.

[Audience: inaudible]

They aren’t very good at statistics in the scriptures.[Laughter.] What percentage of bodhisattvas seek outa hell rebirth?

[Audience: inaudible]

From the side of the bodhisattvas, they would betotally delighted to be reborn in the hell realm.Whether they actually do or not, I’m not sure. Itprobably depends on the karma of those particularhell realm beings. But from the side of thebodhisattva, he or she is completely happy to do that.

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[Audience:] Why do the bodhisattvas want to bereborn in the lower realms?

To help others.

[Audience:] Why do they have to do that?

Because you have to appear in a way, and in anenvironment that enables you to communicate withothers very directly. That’s why they say that therecan be many Buddhas amongst us right now. But theylook like Joe Blow whom we criticize. The reason thatthe Buddhas and bodhisattvas may appear as JoeBlow, is so we can relate to them. If Buddha hadwalked in here with a golden body and thirty-twosigns and eighty marks, we wouldn’t have been ableto relate at all, “He is so far above us, how can wepossibly become like that?” But if a bodhisattvamanifests amongst us as somebody who is justordinary, that gives you the idea, “Wow! Look, thatperson is a human being but look what they are like. Ican do that. I can become like them!” That’s a realskillful way to help us.

In the human realm, a bodhisattva may manifeststhat way, or they may manifest in a way that directlyhelps people by giving them food, clothing and otherthings. Or a bodhisattva may manifest as an animal,and somehow teach the animals the Dharma.Similarly, in the hell realm, if those beings have thekarma, if they have some openness and receptivity,then a bodhisattva can manifest and help in whicheverway is possible. They may not be able to teach theDharma, it may only be possible to put out a little bit

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of the fire or something like that. However, becauseit’s beneficial, they do that.

[Audience: inaudible]

Yes, it does help those beings in the hell realms. It’sinteresting that in the Chinese temples (they don’t dothis in the Tibetan temples), when you wake up in themorning, they ring this enormous gong. They ring thishuge gong a hundred and eight times to get you up inthe morning. [Laughter.] They say that when the hellrealm beings hear the Dharma gong, it alleviates alittle bit of their suffering. When you wake up in themorning, when you are getting out of your own fog ofthe night, if you think about this, it makes the mindhappy to hear the bell.

Let’s just sit quietly for a few minutes.

OTHER ADVANTAGES OF THE ALTRUISTICINTENTION

We were talking about the advantages of the altruisticintention. The Sanskrit term for the altruistic intentionis bodhicitta. I went through the ten advantages thatare commonly listed, such as being able to purifynegative karma very rapidly, creating vast amounts ofpositive potential, and gaining realizations of the Path.There are some other advantages that I thought Iwould go into.

We please the Buddhas

One is that we please the Buddhas. By the force of

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having an altruistic intention and love andcompassion, we take some effort to act constructivelyand so all of our constructive actions are pleasing tothe Buddha. We please the Buddhas especially whenwe work for the benefit of others with a sense ofaltruism and compassion. The whole reason whyanybody who is a Buddha became a Buddha isbecause they cherish others. Therefore anytime wecherish others and do something to benefit others,that’s something that is automatically very pleasing tothe Buddha. When we have the altruism, the Buddhabecomes very, very happy.

Bodhicitta is our real friend who never deserts us

Another advantage is that the bodhicitta is our realfriend and it’s something that never deserts us.Ordinary friends—they come and they go and wecan’t always be with them. Whereas when we havethe bodhicitta in our heart, it will always be there. Nomatter what is happening around us, whether awful orgood, it doesn’t really matter. The bodhicitta is still inour heart and it’s our best friend that keeps uscompany always.

Our lives become very purposeful

Also our lives become very purposeful. We begin tohave a sense of meaning in our lives. Last week I wastelling you about the class of new people, that manyof them said they came for some sense of meaning intheir life, some sense of purpose besides having ahouse and a spouse, besides accumulating a lot of

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things.You can see that when there’s a sense of altruism

and when there’s a sense of compassion for others,life becomes very purposeful. There’s somethingthat’s really driving you, pushing your energy. Youhave some reason to live, some feeling that you cando something for others, that you can do somethingfor the state of the world. The situation in the worlddoesn’t overwhelm you anymore. Not only do youhave the ability to cope with it, but you also feel thatyour life is very purposeful. And I think that’ssomething really important because as the world getscrazier and crazier, the opportunity and the necessityfor bodhicitta or altruism, love and compassionbecomes much stronger, doesn’t it? In some way, thecrazier the world, the more important compassion is.Actually in some ways, it should be easier to developcompassion when things are really crazy. We see howout of control things are, and when we see suffering ina very deep way, then compassion automaticallyarises. So in some ways the fact that we are living in adegenerate time can make our practice stronger, can’tit?

It is the best way to serve others

Also, if you have some kind of wish to help yourfamily, the best way to help is through altruism andlove and compassion, through the aspiration tobecome a Buddha for the benefit of others. If you’refeeling exceptionally patriotic, and want to help yourcountry, the best way is also through the altruisticintention. When somebody in the society or in a

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family has a sense of altruism, that person’s actionsautomatically contribute to the benefit of the familyor the society or the world. So the best way really toserve those people is if we change our mind to one ofaltruism.

We will be balanced and we will relate to people ina very direct and straightforward way

Also, when we have a sense of altruism, we’re goingto be really balanced and the way we relate to peopleis going to be very direct and straightforward. If wedon’t have altruism and we try to be people pleasersand win other people’s approval, our actions aren’tgoing to be very straightforward because we will bewanting something in return or we will be looking forsomething in return. So even though we may try andhelp, it’s not going to work real well because there’sgoing to be a lot of trips involved. But when we havean altruistic intention, which means wanting others tobe happy and to be free of suffering simply becausethey exist and are just like us, then there’re no tripsinvolved. Then what we do can be very direct. Thingsdon’t get mushy.

We will not feel alienated or discouraged

Also, when we have altruism, we won’t feel alienatedor discouraged anymore. They say that bodhicitta is avery good anti-depressant—better than Prozac, andcheaper too [laughter]. You might think now, “Wait,wait, how is love and compassion a good anti-depressant? Compassion means I have to think about

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other people’s suffering. That’s going to make medepressed. So how is this going to work? How am Igoing to be not depressed thinking about this?”

The thing is that we get depressed because we feeloverwhelmed by situations. We feel like there’re noresources, no tools. We can’t do anything. When wehave a sense of altruism, we realize that there’s a lotthat we can do, and we feel very encouraged. We feelvery uplifted because we see we can do something.We see some path out of the misery, some path out ofthe confusion. And so we see that there is no reasonto be depressed. We have some self-confidence to beable to do something. We have the inner strength toendure situations by the force of love andcompassion. The mind doesn’t get discouraged anddepressed.

Bodhicitta eliminates fear

Similarly, bodhicitta is very good for eliminating fear.This is interesting, when you think of how manythings in our lives terrify us, how much fearoverwhelms us. Very often in retreats, people askquestions about that.

How does that work? Well, fear comes when thereis a lack of clarity. Fear comes when we have a lot ofattachment to things, and we’re afraid of losing them.Fear comes when we can’t find our own internalresources to deal with a situation. When we have loveand compassion for others, we have a sense of ourown confidence and power in the situation, a sense ofour ability to contribute. We’re in touch with our owninternal resources. We know that we have available

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tools that we can share with others. And because wearen’t attached either to our own ego or to our ownbody, possessions or reputation, we have nothing tofear about losing those things. So for all those reasonsthen, bodhicitta just makes the mind very courageous,very, very strong and no longer submerged by fear.When we get fearful, what happens to the mind? Itcurls up into little balls like the stinkbugs. Well, that’show we get when we are afraid. Altruism, on theother hand, makes the mind very strong andcourageous. It’s free of attachment and it has accessto inner tools.

Bodhicitta frees us from our pride

Bodhicitta also frees us from our pride, conceit andarrogance. Why? Because bodhicitta is really basedon looking at others as equal to ourselves, in thatothers want happiness and want to be free of sufferingjust as we do. Because we see ourselves and others asequal, there’s no reason for pride to arise. Andbecause we are not seeking a good reputation andpraise and we believe we’re okay, we don’t need toput on a false air of arrogance. We really don’t care ifwe have a fantastic reputation or not because we seethat as rather meaningless.

“Old age” insurance

Also, bodhicitta is a very good old age insurance[laughter]. They say that if you have an attitude oflove and compassion, you don’t need to worry aboutwho’s going to take care of you when you’re old

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because if you spend your life living from a space ofkindness for others, then others naturally are attractedto you. They naturally want to reciprocate. So we’regoing to try this one out and see if it beats Medicareor not. [Laughter.]

Very good antidote for loneliness

Also, bodhicitta is a very good antidote to loneliness.When we feel lonely, we feel disconnected fromothers. We feel unrelated to others. We don’t feel thekindness of others in any way. Whereas when wehave bodhicitta, there is a definite feeling ofconnection with other people because we realizewe’re all the same in wanting happiness and notwanting pain. We’re all exactly the same, so there’sthat feeling of connectedness and the heart openstowards others.

Also with bodhicitta, we’re quite aware andconscious of the kindness we receive from others.Rather than shriveling up into our own self-pity,“Others have been so mean to me”, “I’ve beenabused”, “Others are cruel” and “Others judge me”—you know, our usual trip—bodhicitta gives us strengthto be able to overcome that. We remember thekindness that we’ve received. We realize that we havebeen the recipient of a lot of kindness in the universe,instead of thinking we are the recipient of a lot ofcruelty. So it just depends on where we put ourconcentration on—what we emphasize will be whatwe perceive, what we experience.

Bodhicitta continuously brings us back toremembering everything we have received and how

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much of it is from others, so that takes away thefeeling of alienation, the feeling of loneliness. It’s avery powerful, very good medicine. You never hear ofthe Buddha being lonely, do you? Never heard ofBuddha having to call somebody up on the telephonebecause he’s lonely. [Laughter.]

Why be kind to others?

Before we get into the different techniques fordeveloping altruism, I just want to talk a little bit alsoabout the question, “Why be kind to others?” becausethis whole section on altruism is based on the idea ofkindness. In many ways, kindness and compassion arewhat we all want in our lives. Yet somehow, especiallyin recent years, it’s almost as if kindness andcompassion are being equated with co-dependency. Ithink that’s really quite dangerous for people: thefeeling that if you’re kind to others, then you’reopening yourself up and they’re going to takeadvantage of you. Nobody wants to think that ifyou’re kind to others, they’re going to get dependenton you, and you’re going to get dependent on them.

Also, thinking, “I’ve spent my whole life takingcare of others, now I’m going to meet my own needsand take care of myself.” And we get that really hard,tough attitude that completely blocks out kindness.People, in some ways, feel insecure about being kindnowadays. It’s so strange because we can see sodirectly from our own experience, what happens to uswhen other people are kind to us. It’s like the wholeheart chakra opens up. It’s like, “Oh wow, I can smile,I can laugh!”. You can feel what it does to you

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physically when you receive a little bit of kindnessfrom somebody else.

And so if we can give that kind of kindness toother people, how can that be bad, how can that beco-dependent? How can others take advantage of us iffrom our heart, we’re really giving kindness? If we’renot really giving kindness from the heart, but we’relooking for approval and other things, then of course,people can take advantage of us. But that’s notbecause of their actions. That’s because of our stickymotivation. If from our side, we’re being real cleanclear and just being kind for the sake of being kind,how can anybody possibly take advantage, because inour mind, there’s no space to be taken advantage of?

His Holiness quite often, in response to thisquestion of “Why be kind to others?”, tells this verysimple story. I don’t know, somehow this is verypowerful for me. He says, “You look at the ants. Sitsometime in your garden and look at the ants. Youlook at all the ants, they work together. Some of themare building the big anthill. Some are running out andtelling the other ones, “Go this way, there’s a realgood fly over there.” [Laughter.] “Go that way, achild has dropped a piece of cheese, go get it!”[Laughter.] And so they all communicate and they telleach other where to get food. They tell each otherwhere to get blades of grass or things to build up theanthill. They’re all very busy and they all worktogether in harmony. There’re thousands of ants inone anthill. They don’t fight each other. They all worktogether. As a result, they’re able to build this hugeanthill.

The reason they work together is because they see

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that everybody needs to work together for any one ofthem to survive, that no ant can survive on its own. Sovery naturally, the ants work together. They don’tneed to come to Dharma class to learn aboutkindness. [Laughter.] They don’t need to hear aboutthe ten advantages of bodhicitta. They just help eachother. So the question comes: “If little, tiny creatureslike ants can be that way, then what about us?” Itshouldn’t be that difficult for us as human beings towork together for a common purpose, if the ants andthe bees can do it. You watch what the bees do? Theyall work together harmoniously. It’s really quitetouching when you think about this.

His Holiness also says that kindness is notsomething unusual. Sometimes, we feel it’s veryunusual, but he says actually it’s something that’squite normal in our society. He says the fact that it’sso normal is shown by the fact that the newspapersvery seldom reports acts of kindness, becausekindness is expected. We take the fact that there iskindness for granted. But the things that are irregular,the things that stand out—certain cruelty orsomething like that—get reported because that’s anaberration.

If you look at it, really, our whole society is createdby kindness. It’s not created by cruelty. Cruelty reallyis the aberration. If we look again at how inter-dependent we are as a society, and how everything wehave really comes from others, it’s very clear that wefunction by the force of the kindness of all beings, bythe force of what everybody contributes to thegeneral good. Even when people don’t have the wishto contribute to the general good, just by the fact of

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their doing their job in society, they contribute to thegeneral good. That’s an act of kindness.

So it’s really something that is present in our lives,that is ingrained in us, if we open our eyes and look atit. If we look at everything we have in our life, thesource of it is kindness. We have this house becauseof the kindness of the people who built it. You haveyour cars by the force of the kindness of the peoplewho built them. That we can speak is due to thekindness of the people who taught us to speak whenwe were little. All the people who held us up when wewere babies and talked baby talk with us so that weeventually learnt to talk regular talk. All the peoplewho taught us when we were young. All the skills wehave, the abilities we have, are again the result of thekindness of others. So kindness is something that’svery present in our lives, very present in our society.Kindness shouldn’t be something that’s difficult. It’snot a strange thing, it’s not a weird thing.

Again, why be kind? Because we are so inter-dependent. Just like the ants, one human being can’tlive alone. I think especially now, more than at anyother time in human history, we’re more dependent oneach other. In ancient times, people maybe could goand grow their own vegetables or they could shear asheep and make some wool and do their own clothesand build their own houses. But nowadays, we can’tdo any of that. It’s very hard to be self-sufficientbecause our society is arranged such that we’re sointer-dependent. And if we’re that dependent on oneanother, then the happiness of one part of the societydepends on the happiness of the rest of the society.It’s quite difficult for us as one person to be happy if

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we don’t take care of the other people who livearound us. His Holiness, for that reason, always says,“If you want to be selfish, at least be wisely selfishand take care of others.” If you want to be selfish andyou want your own happiness, then do it by servingothers.

And you can really see how that’s true. If you’reliving together in a family and you take care of thepeople whom you live with, the whole ambience ofthe family is going to be nicer. Whereas if everybodyin the family just gets really defensive and says, “Iwant my happiness. Why are all these other peoplebugging me?”, then that sets up an atmosphere oftension that breeds and festers. Nobody in thesituation will be happy even though everybody isgoing around saying, “I’m going to work for my ownhappiness. I’m tired of being kind and doing whatthese other people want.” [Laughter.].

Because we’re so inter-dependent, we’ve got totake care of each other, not just in our families but insociety as a whole. I remember a few years ago,Seattle was voting on a new school bond, and Ithought a lot about it (I used to be a teacher so theseissues are very, very personal). Some people whodidn’t have children in school thought, “Why do Ineed to vote for a school bond? Teachers already getpaid enough. Kids already have enough stuff. I don’twant to pay more property taxes for these brats to goto school. I don’t have any kids at home.” People feltthat, because they didn’t have children who woulddirectly benefit from their paying more taxes. I wasthinking that that’s really quite silly because if you cutthe money available to the schools, what are the kids

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going to do? They’re not going to have as manyactivities or as much guidance. They’re going to getinto more mischief. Whose house are they going tovandalize? Whose neighborhood are they going tomess up because they don’t have proper guidance andactivities?

So it’s not sufficient to say, “Well, my kids won’tbenefit from it so I don’t want to help other people’skids”. You can see we’re so inter-related that if otherpeople’s kids are miserable, it very directly affectsyour own happiness. It’s really the same with allaspects of our society and with what’s happening inthe whole globe. Now, that doesn’t mean that we haveto feel, “I can’t be happy unless this world is Utopia”.Not like that, because then we get overwhelmed againby the suffering. But rather, whenever we feel that wewant to withdraw because the world is too much, toremember that it’s difficult to be happy if youwithdraw, because we are so inter-dependent.

Little acts of kindness can have very, very strongrepercussions. Again you can see it from your ownexperience. Have you ever been down and somebodywho is a stranger smiles at you, and you feel kind of“Wow!”? One person whom I stayed with one time,told me when she was a teenager, she was just sodepressed, just overwhelmingly depressed. Whileshe’s walking down the street one day, one strangerjust said, “Hey, are you okay?”, or something likethat, and all of a sudden, that one little taste ofkindness she just had gave her the space to realizethat there was kindness in the world. If we look in ourown life, we could see how small things of kindnessaffect us. And they just stay in the mind and they can

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be very powerful.I went to the ex-Soviet Union when I was about

nineteen years old. I think I was in Moscow that time,or maybe it was Leningrad. Anyway, I was in asubway station, an underground station. I didn’t knowany Russian. I was trying to get around somewhereand I was obviously a foreigner. [Laughter.] Oneyoung woman came up to me. She had a ring. I thinkit was amber or something. She just pulled it off andgave it to me. I mean, she didn’t know me from a holein the head (as my mother would say) . [Laughter.] Somany years later, I still remember that simple act ofkindness of a stranger. And I’m sure all of us havemany stories like that to tell.

If we can see how we feel when we’re therecipients of that, and know that we can give that toothers too, we can see that there is a way to make acontribution for human happiness, for worldhappiness.

The value of keeping precepts

This is also where the value of keeping preceptscomes in. Because if we keep one precept, if we’reable to restrain from one kind of negative action, thisis a contribution towards world peace. It’s somethingyou don’t think about very much but if one person,let’s say, takes the precept not to kill, not to destroylife, then every other living being that that personcomes in contact with, can feel safe. It means thatfive billion human beings, and I don’t know howmany billion animals, have some safety in their lives.They don’t need to be afraid. If every person on this

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planet took precepts, just even one precept not to kill,what would we put in the newspapers every day?[Laughter.] How dramatically different things wouldbe! We can see what a contribution that is towardsworld peace.

Or if we take the precept not to take other people’sbelongings, or not to cheat other people, then againthat means every other person in this universe canfeel safe, that they don’t have to worry about theirpossessions when they’re around us. When people arearound us, they can leave their wallet out, they canleave their door unlocked. Nobody needs to worryabout anything. So again, that’s a very greatcontribution to society, to world peace. That comesfrom an attitude of kindness towards others.

Developing Equanimity: A Preliminary Practicefor Developing the Altruistic Intention

When we talk about the altruistic intention of thebodhicitta, there’re two main ways to develop it. Oneway is called the “Seven Points of Cause and Effect”,and another method is called “Equalizing andExchanging Self with Others”. I’ll go into both ofthese.

But first, I want to talk about a commonpreliminary practice for both of them, which isequanimity. Before we can develop love andcompassion for others, we have to have some sense ofequanimity, because love and compassion in theBuddhist sense refers to impartial love andcompassion. We’re not just being kind to some people

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and ignoring others and hating the rest. We’re tryingto develop a heart of love and compassion that goesequally towards everybody.

In order to do that, we first have to have somefeeling of equality about others, which meansplacating the attachment towards the people that wehold dear, the aversion towards the people we don’tget along with and the apathy towards strangers, thepeople we don’t know. So those three emotions ofattachment, aversion and apathy are impediments todeveloping equanimity, and if we don’t haveequanimity, we can’t develop love and compassion.We can’t develop altruism.

So, first step is equanimity. We’re going to do alittle research in the laboratory of our mind. Some ofyou may have done this meditation with me beforebut I do it many, many times and learn somethingeach time. So close your eyes. Put your notebooksdown. And think of three people. Think of one personthat you have a lot of attachment for, a very dearfriend, or a relative you really like to be around.Somebody the mind clings to. [Pause]

And then think of somebody you don’t get alongwith very well, who really irritates you. [Pause]

And then think of a stranger. [Pause]Now go back to that friend. Imagine that friend in

your mind’s eye and ask yourself, “Why am I soattached to that friend?” “Why do I always want to bewith that person?” “Why do I hold them so dear?”And then just listen to the reasons that your mindgives. Don’t censure it. Just ask yourself that questionand see what answers your mind gives. [Pause]

Now go back to that person whom you don’t get

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along with very well, and ask yourself, “Why do Ihave so much aversion for that person?” And again,listen to what your mind says. Just do research intoyour own way of thinking. [Pause]

And then go back to the stranger and ask yourself,“Why am I apathetic towards that person?” And againlisten to what your mind responds. [Pause]

[End of meditation session.]

Why are you attached to your friends?

[Responses from audience:]● They like the same things I like.● They’ve been kind to us.● They do things with us.● They cheer us up when we feel down.● They really accept us.● When we do things for them they’re grateful,

they’re appreciative. They recognize what we’vedone.

● They respect us. They don’t take us for granted.They agree with many of our views.

What about the people you don’t get along with verywell? Why is there so much aversion towards them?Because they criticize me!

[Responses from audience:]● They compete with us. Sometimes they win.

[Laughter.]● They don’t appreciate us or they just look at our

mistakes.● They sometimes show us aspects of ourselves

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that we would rather not look at.● They have a lot of negative feelings towards us

and misunderstand us. We don’t seem to be ableto clear it up.

● When we want to do something, they get in ourway. We have some project and they get in theway of our project, cause interference.

And why do you have apathy for the stranger?

[Responses from audience:]● They don’t affect us one way or the other.● It just seems like caring for them would sap all

our energy because there’re so many of them, soapathy is just the best way to deal with it.

● We’re not connected.

Sometimes we very easily put even the stranger intothe category of friend or enemy, even though wedon’t know them. We could see how swiftly we judgepeople by what they look like or how they walk orhow they talk or dress.

What word do you keep hearing whilst we’rediscussing this? What word? ME! [Laughter.]

How much the whole discrimination into friend,stranger and difficult person, depends on how weperceive somebody else relating to us. And yet in thiswhole process, we don’t feel like we’re discriminatingpeople on the basis of how they relate to me. We feellike we’re looking at what they’re like from their ownside, objectively. When there’s some person that isjust so wonderful, whom we’re so attached to andwant to be with, we’re convinced that that person is

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wonderful from his or her own side. We don’t think,“Oh, I think they’re wonderful because of whatthey’re doing towards me.” We think that there’ssomething in them that makes them more wonderfulthan anybody else in the world.

And similarly, when there’s somebody whom weconsider really obnoxious and difficult, we don’t feelthat that perception is something that arises dependenton us or on the situation. We feel like that person isobnoxious and rude and inconsiderate from his ownside. [Laughter.] I just happened to walk down thestreet and here is this jerk out there …

[Teachings lost due to change of tape.]

… realize that the friend, the difficult person and thestranger are basically creations of our own mind, thatnobody is a friend or a difficult person or a strangerfrom their own side. They only become that by uslabeling them that. We label them that on the basis ofhow they relate to me, because it’s obvious—I’m themost important person in this world. It’s very clear. Ifthis person is kind to me, they are a good person fromtheir own side. If they’re kind to somebody elsewhom I think is an idiot, then they’re foolish. We feellike we’re looking at them objectively, but we reallyaren’t, because their kindness is not the determiningthing. It’s who they’re kind towards. If they’re kindtowards me, they’re a good person. If they’re kindtowards somebody else I don’t like, then they’re not.

Similarly, we consider somebody an idiot or a jerkor an enemy or a threat, basically because of howthey’re relating to us, not because of some quality that

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they have in and of themselves. If they’re very, verycritical of us, then we say that they’re a difficultperson, they’re rude, they’re obnoxious. If they’revery critical of somebody else that we also happen tobe critical of, then we say they’re very intelligent.Their being critical isn’t the point. It’s who thecriticism is getting shown towards, that’s what thebasis of discrimination is.

We’re not really seeing people objectively, reallyseeing them for what their qualities are. We’reconstantly evaluating them through the filter of mebecause I’m so important. When there are difficultpeople in our life or when there are enemies or peoplewe feel uncomfortable about, they are a creation ofour own mind because we have labeled them thatway. We’ve perceived them that way. We’re notseeing the totality of who that person is, because nomatter how mean that person has been to us, thatperson is kind to somebody. And similarly, the personwho’s so wonderful to us can be very mean to otherpeople.

If we begin to realize how we create the friend andthe enemy and the stranger, we begin to realize alsothat these categories really aren’t necessary. We willrealize that if we took the “me”, the “I” out of thepicture, it might be possible to see all people in somekind of equal terms, because all of them have somegood qualities and some faults. They are all very, verysimilar that way. The person who has some fault canshow it to me, or they can show it to somebody else.Same with the person who has some good quality. Sobased on that, why should we cherish some beings,have aversion to others, and apathy towards a third

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group, if all of them really are capable of acting in anyof the three ways to us at any particular time. Whycherish some and not others?

We think, “Somebody was kind to me, that’s why Ishould cherish them.” Well, let’s say there are twopeople. The first person gave you a thousand dollarsyesterday and slugs you today. The second personslugged you yesterday and gives you a thousanddollars today. Now which one’s the friend and whichone’s the enemy? They’ve both done both things.

If we have a big mind and take a long-termperspective, and we’re able to see that we’ve had lotsof relationships with all the different sentient beings atone time or another, that everybody at one time oranother has been kind to us, everybody at one time oranother has been mean to us, and everybody at onetime or another has been neutral, then what’s thesense of being attached to some and having aversionto others and not caring about the third group? Whatsense is it to have this discriminating mind, this partialmind?

If we really contemplate how the relationshipschange, we will see how silly the attachment, aversionand apathy are. You just look at your life. When wewere born, everybody was a stranger. Now, in themidst of that, we felt a lot of apathy. Then somepeople began to be kind to us and we had friends. Andwe felt attached. But then some of those friends lateron became strangers again. We lost touch with them.

Others maybe even have become enemies. Peoplewho were once very kind to us, we don’t get alongwith them now.

Similarly, we might have lost touch with people

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whom we used to not get along with, and so nowthey’ve become strangers. Or some of them haveeven become friends. So all these three categories—strangers becoming friends or enemies, enemiesbecoming strangers or friends, friends becomingstrangers or enemies—all these relationships are in astate of constant flux. When we don’t see that allthese things are in constant flux, when we don’trealize that everybody has been everything to us atone time or another in all of our beginningless lives,then we will just take the superficial appearance. Wewill take how somebody is relating to me now as aconcrete reality and as a reason to either cling to themor have aversion towards them or be indifferenttowards them.

Questions and answers

[Audience:] If we aren’t attached to our friends,won’t we feel not as close and involved with them?We’ll be disengaged in some way.

Actually, what we’re getting at here is the attitude ofattachment. We want to let go of the attitude ofattachment. Being attached to somebody is verydifferent than appreciating or feeling close or gratefulto them. We can still feel close to some people, stillfeel grateful to them, but not be attached to them.With attachment, we’re exaggerating their goodqualities and then clinging to them. Attachment hasthis quality of “I need to be with this person. I want tobe with this person. I’ve got to possess this person.They’re mine.” Like all the love songs, “I can’t live

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without you.” [Laughter.]By freeing the mind of that clinging, it doesn’t

mean that you disengage from the person. Rather, Ithink it means that the mind is much more balanced,so that we can still feel close to that person, but wecan also recognize that they have some faults, thatthey may not always fulfill our expectations or bethere when we want them to be. That is not becausethey mean any harm but because that’s the nature oflife.

So we let go of the expectations and the clinging,but we can still feel involved and engaged.

[Audience:] So you’re saying that the nature ofrelationships is that they do not remain static, they’reconstantly changing?

Yes, continually changing. Relationships continuallychange. Holding onto anybody at any particular timeor pushing anybody away with aversion at anyparticular time—both of those are unrealistic becauseas you can see, they change automatically. Whatwe’re really hammering away here is our assumptionthat we know who somebody else is and we knowwho they are and how they’re always going to relateto us. We can bank our nickels on that. We don’trealize that that’s totally false. The fact is, we don’tknow.

[Audience:] So our perception of relationships isvery closed-minded, very myopic?

Right. One reason is because we’re only looking at it

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from the very narrow view of how they relate to me.And second of all, we’re only looking at how thisrelationship is right now at this very moment, notrecognizing in previous lives, that person has beenvery kind to us, and also sometimes, they’ve harmedus. And also realizing in the future, it could be thesame.

I think this meditation is quite powerful in breakingdown a lot of our preconceptions and a lot of our veryrigid mind that thinks we know who somebody else is.The mind likes to put people in nice, neat littlecategories and decide who we’re going to hate for aslong as we live because we know who they are.[Laughter.]

There’s a lot of this, isn’t there? To tell a story. Iremember as a kid, my family had a summer propertywhere everybody went for the summer. But one sideof the family didn’t speak to the other side of thefamily. They all came to the summer house onsummer vacation—one’s living upstairs, the otherone’s living downstairs—but they didn’t talk to eachother. That was when I was a kid. Now, my generationis older, and not only do the adults not speak to eachother, but some of the kids also don’t speak to eachother. You talk about taking vows, “I vow I will hateyou for as long as I live.” [Laughter.] And familieskeep these kinds of vows. It’s so outrageous. It’s sucha tragedy. You look at what’s going on in Bosnia. It’sthe same thing. People taking precepts to hate eachother and destroy each other because they think theyknow who somebody else is, because of the way theirancestors have acted towards each other.

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[Audience:] Don’t we categorize people so that wecan feel secure knowing who they are and how theyrelate to us?

Wanting to put people in boxes so that we know whoour permanent friends are and who our permanentenemies are. You just look at the world politicalsituation. When we were kids growing up, SovietUnion is this incredible enemy. Now, we’re pouringmoney into them: “It’s great!” Politically, there’s nosecurity in any of this. Friends and enemies change allthe time, just look at US foreign policy. [Laughter.]

So what we’re getting at is how unrealistic theseattitudes of attachment and aversion are. What thismeditation is directing us towards is a feeling ofequanimity towards others. Equanimity doesn’t meanindifference. There’s a big difference betweenequanimity and indifference. Indifference is you’redisengaged, you’re uninvolved, you don’t care, you’rewithdrawn. That’s not what equanimity is. Equanimityis you’re open, you’re receptive, but equally, toeverybody. The mind’s free of partiality andprejudice. The equanimous mind is a mind that isinvolved with others in a very open-hearted way. Andthat’s what we’re aiming at by freeing ourselves fromthe clinging attachment, the aversion and the apathy.That would be a nice state of mind to have, wouldn’tit? Where everybody you saw, you can have somekind of equal-hearted openness towards them insteadof feeling fear or suspicion or need or something else.

This meditation is actually quite powerful,something we can do again and again and again. Andeach time you do it, you use different examples. You

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will really begin to see how the mind works.

[Audience:] Our mind may be equal and impartialtowards everybody, but externally, we may stillbehave differently with different people, isn’t it?

Yes. What we’re aiming at is a mind that’s equal andimpartial towards others. That doesn’t necessarilymean we act the same way towards everybody.Because obviously you have to treat a childdifferently than you treat an adult. So having an equalinternal attitude doesn’t mean that externally ourbehavior is the same with everybody. Because wehave to treat people according to social convention,according to what’s appropriate. You speak one wayto a child, another way to an adult, another way to anolder person. We treat people in different ways. Youmight speak one way to a boss and another way to acolleague, but inside in your mind, you have equalfeeling towards all of them, a heart of equal opennesstowards all of them, even though externally ourbehavior might be somewhat different.

In the same way, if there’s a dog who’s wagging itstail and there’s a dog who is growling, you treat themdifferently but that doesn’t mean in your heart thatyou have to be attached to one and hate the other. Wecan still have an equal feeling towards all of them,recognizing that both the dogs are living beings thatwant happiness and share common qualities. We canrecognize that on an internal level, and yet externallydeal with the dogs as appropriate.

It’s the same with human beings. We’re working atan internal change in our perception here. So you can

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still have friends. We’re not saying, “Get rid offriends, get rid of relatives, move out, go hometonight, pack up, say ‘Look, I’m supposed to beequal, so this is it.’ [Laughter.] We’re not saying that.You still have people that maybe you’re in closercontact with, that you have more common interestswith. There’s no problem with that. It’s theattachment that makes the problem. That’s whatwe’re trying to work with.

Let’s sit quietly for a few minutes to absorb this.

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CHAPTER 2Seven Points of Cause and Effect

We’re on the section on developing bodhicitta. Forthis, your outline is important. The outline was madefor a purpose, so that you’d have all the main pointslisted. We’d know what they are and be able tomeditate on them. The outline will help you follow theteachings, and it’ll also help you to remember theorder in which to do the meditation when you’re athome. All these things that we’re talking about inclass are for the purpose of meditation. It’s not justinformation gathering, and it’s not just knowledge.But they are things that we really have to think aboutrepeatedly, over and over and over again so that itseeps into our mind at some level or another.Whatever you hear in class, try and think about itwhen you go home, really apply it to your life, and getsome taste from it.

We’re at “The Actual Stages of How to Cultivatethe Altruistic Intention”. If you can remember thedifferent steps of the bodhicitta meditation, go overthem. Cause and effect works, and if you go overthese again and again, you will develop bodhicitta. Ifyou create the cause, you get the result.

It’s important also to think of the advantages ofbodhicitta, not just the ones listed here in the outline,but also the additional ones I went over about howbodhicitta is our best friend, and how it’s a good anti-depressant. It’s good for loneliness, and these things.To really think about that in order to get an

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understanding of how it works in your life. The morewe can see the benefit of something, then the morekeen we are to practice it.

Review of equanimity meditation

Last time, we went over the equanimity meditation.That’s where we imagine the friend and the enemy, orthe friend and the person you don’t get along with.Whenever it says “enemy” in the teachings, it doesn’tmean arch enemy, it just means whoever it is whobugs you at any particular moment. For that moment,they are a person you don’t get along with. A friend, aperson you don’t get along with, and a stranger—visualize these three, asking ourselves why we’reattached to one, have aversion to the other, andapathy towards the third. Recognize that thesefeelings come from a very self-centered viewpoint.We create our own friends, people we don’t get alongwith, and strangers. We create them in our mind andwe believe what we create.

Incredible, isn’t it? We make so many problems forourselves. A lot of Dharma is just the process ofundoing our hallucinations, stopping making problemsfor ourselves, allowing ourselves to be a little bithappier. Saying that these are creations of our mind isone way to meditate on it. Also, see that theserelationships are not fixed. They continually change.The person who is kind to us today isn’t kind to us thenext day. The person who is mean to us today is kindto us the next day. And so because everybody hasharmed us at some point, and everybody has helpedus at some point, then there’s no reason to cherish

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some beings over others, or hate some beings overothers. Everybody has done everything to us before.It is very helpful to think like this.

Freeing ourselves of the tendency to help ourfriends and harm our enemies

If we’re able to free ourselves from this attachment,aversion and apathy, then we automatically avoidsomething that most worldly people consume a wholelot of time in, which is helping their friends andharming their enemies. When you look back at yourlife, how much time did you spend helping yourfriends out of attachment, not out of genuine sincerelove, but out of attachment to get something back?How much time did we spend harming the people wedon’t like? We futilely spend so much time doing this!At a certain point we look at that and say, “This isstupid! This is what politicians do. I don’t need to doit. [Laughter.]”

This is also what animals do. Look at the animals.This is what they do—help their friends, harm theones they don’t like. There’s nothing particularlygracious or noble about being like that. I love teachingthis at Tushita. Those of you who were at Tushita—remember the little dogs and then the monkeyscoming? The monkeys would sit up high and the dogswould be underneath barking, “This is our property.You can’t come here!” They’re exactly like people,except maybe people take out their shotgun, or theyscream in a different language. Very similar! When it’slunch time, the dogs would come and sit on your lap.They’re nice and friendly. You feed them and they

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love you. That’s the same way people are.This whole thing of helping friends and harming

the ones we don’t like, even animals do this. Thiswhole mind of attachment and aversion just makes uswaste our life that way. It’s good to look back at yourpast and see how much time has been spent like that,and really make a determination to try and developthis equal feeling towards everybody so that we don’thave to waste time in that way. Remember that thisequal feeling is an equal openness. It’s an equalconcern. It’s not a withdrawal or detachment fromsentient beings.

Equanimity does not mean withdrawal fromsentient beings

And this is something, I think, that we Westernersoften go to the extreme of, when we get into Dharma.It’s that we become so aware of our attachments andall the problems that come with our attachments, thatwe then go to the extreme of, “Well, I’m just going towithdraw from everybody, because all the contact Ihave is out of attachment.” We eliminate any kind ofpositive feelings for others, confusing positive feelingswith attachment.

It is true. Sometimes, especially when our mindisn’t real astute, it’s very hard to discriminate betweenthese things. As soon as we have positive feelings, wevery easily generate attachment. But the way tocombat that isn’t to withdraw from society. It’s tobecome aware of how the attachment works, and thefutility and the un-reality of the attachment, and thento let that go. But to remember that care and concern

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for other people is very much a part of Buddhistpractice.

Especially at the beginning, a lot of ourrelationships might be really mixed with both love andattachment. Some might be definitely more towardsthe attachment side, and some mixed with love andattachment. What we need to do is work at freeingourselves from the attachment, and developing thelove. Remember that that love can be not just for thatone person, but for everybody, so that when you walkinto a room, you can feel that same affection you feelfor one person that’s really close to you, foreverybody in the room. That would be really nice,wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t