Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen uses impermanence as the lens for transforming suffering. He distinguishes three types: the suffering of pain, the suffering of change (pleasure that turns to pain), and pervasive suffering (the contaminated body produced by karma and delusion). Rather than explain philosophically, he teaches meditation practice—starting with simple objects like a vase or plant, then applying it to your own body, seeing how it’s produced by karma and delusion. He directly addresses a common misunderstanding: when people fall ill, they blame external spirits rather than recognizing karmic cause. By meditating on impermanence, practitioners move toward the direct realization of selflessness, the ultimate antidote to suffering.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 CwC.mp3
UUID: f5b455e7-35f1-4393-ac4b-df31a469217c
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: Coping with Change (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1996 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.7 minutes
Words: ~2,022
And and the suffering of pain is mainly explained to the beings of the lower realms. So, but that doesn’t mean that in the human realm there’s no suffering of pain. They do have these sufferings like what you say, the pain on your kidney none of the examples. So for some might think that I’m healthy and I experience happiness. Geshe-la is telling me that the happiness that I experience is suffering.
How how it is possible that one might think like this? So this contaminated happiness is if you like the experience of contaminated happiness is a pleasure feeling. It’s a pleasure feeling, but it is not not happiness. It is a suffering. So we might think that it is not suffering because there’s no pain and so on.
But that’s not right because in dependence upon that, that feeling, one experience suffering or that ends with suffering. So as example that when you are when you are very cold, if you happen to move into a sunny place, then at the very beginning you have this pleasure feeling, feeling of pleasure. But then if you stay there a long time, then again you experience suffering of heat where you have to go to a shady place. So so then the third type of suffering, the the pervasive sufferings is is what is this body that he had. So how this body is known as pervasive suffering is because it has a cause which is a karma and a delusion.
So it’s produced or came into existence because of defiled karma and delusions. And defiled karma. So defiled karma which is known as the karma that is produced or done out of delusion. So the delusions or this contamination, there are six doors through which delusions or contamination arises. So the six, I wanna say, doors which increases the contaminations or the delusions.
There are six doors. Yeah. Six doors. So the first one is that having having the nature of contaminations or delusions. So so by nature being delusions or contamination, they are of are of six root delusions and twenty secondary delusions.
So so then second is that connected with with with contaminations or delusion. So, connected with contamination or delusion is those mental factors which are simultaneous with the other delusions. So then the third one is bound bound by contamination or delusions. So then the next one is having contaminations which is like being the basis of suffering now and that which again induces through the sufferings. And then next one is which is a similar being similar to the to contamination or dilution.
So so that is similar to contaminate being similar to contamination or delusion is that the object dependence upon those object, it increases delusions or contaminations. So then the sixth one, the last one is contaminated aggregates or the pervasive suffering. So this pervasive sufferings, contaminated body or the pervasive suffering which is meaning to our aggregates, is produced from So then next, the being on the great scope that they observe the impermanence of the other sentient beings. And meditating on the impermanence of other sentient beings, they come to see that other sentient beings are always the circle of these three types of sufferings. So so then by seeing the three types of sufferings within the sentient beings through meditating impermanence on them, that being on the great scope applies the antidote which is meditations on the selflessness of phenomena.
Through meditating on the selflessness of phenomena, come to get rid of the three types of suffering within oneself and also of those other sentient beings. And so that’s how this is the way or the order of how three scopes come to achieve their state of liberation through meditating on impermanence. So this very brief explanation how these three types of beings, the small, medium, and large, come to achieve the cessation or liberation. So so So now, how we should proceed or how we should look is that So we should look with the eye of impermanence. So for example, like when we look in the mirror, we we see the whole attraction, our body, like the the shape of our face or what clothes that we wear.
So, and that as an example, if we like open our eye of impermanence, if we open our eye of impermanence, then we will we will see the suffering or the form of suffering, the physical form of suffering. So so in other words, if you meditate on impermanence, then you come to see your sufferings. Through seeing the sufferings that one goes through or one experience like fear, fear of the sufferings. So then to become free from that type of fear of sufferings that one search for a method which one search for guide or Lama which can give the teaching. So so on the other hand, if you don’t meditate on impermanence, you won’t see the suffering.
If you don’t see the suffering, you won’t have the fear of suffering. And if you don’t have the fear of suffering, then on the selflessness which is antidote. And if you don’t meditate on selflessness, one doesn’t achieve the liberation. One won’t achieve So because of that, we need we need to meditate on impermanence. So then with impermanence, generally speaking, the close and the subtle impermanence.
So the So the subtle impermanence is is the subtle impermanence is as hard to realize like like the selflessness of the person. So because subtle impermanence is very difficult to realize, it is difficult as realizing emptiness. The being or the follower of these two tenets, the Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika followers, those two followers, when they come to gain the wisdom understanding the selflessness, when they come to achieve that wisdom understanding selflessness, In their appearance, what what they what what they have is the what appearance that they have is the subtle subtle impermanence. So so the those two followers, the followers of Sautrāntika and the Vaibhāṣika tenet and Sautrāntika tenet that when they have a direct realization of selflessness, they to to have a direct realization of selflessness they have to have a direct object which is a direct object which is as the the subtle impermanence. It’s complicated which probably you won’t understand.
So so of these different tenets, of the four different tenets, the view on selflessness, differences, one being the most subtle than the other one. But then their view on subtle impermanence is same. There’s no no difference. So so we do need to meditate on on the subtle impermanence, but but at the beginning meditating on that level which which which I can see the nature of impermanence. So by seeing that one on that level too, one comes to see that level of sufferings.
So, we need to meditate on impermanence, and that one shouldn’t think that it is a subject which, one shouldn’t think that it is a subject which is meditated by those who don’t have much practice to do or one shouldn’t think also that it should be only done in the beginning, but one don’t need to do continuously continuously in the meantime. One shouldn’t one shouldn’t think in this way. Oh, yeah. But meditate continuously on impermanence. Not like meditating continuously on impermanence, bodhicitta, and and selflessness and so on.
So so how should we start meditating on impermanence? Is that from the very beginning that, let’s say, taking example as a vase or a plant or a sprout that are searching for its causes and conditions and how it is produced, its productions and its cessation and its disintegration. And, one should analyze or meditate in this way, like step by step. So then, gradually following this process, when one come to understand this, then the most important part meditate on impermanence is using one’s one’s body and meditating how it is impermanent. So, then, like how this aggregates or the body is impermanent.
And in the text it says that this body is impermanent because it is produced. Because it is produced, it is impermanent. So so then, on the other hand, if you if one is to think this body that we have, this aggregate, this collection of aggregate that we have is being pure and permanent which is not produced by its causes and conditions. If you think on this way, then it is wrong understanding of true suffering. So so if one is to meditate the impermanence on this body, one to one body, then you come to see the sufferings or as it is said in the very beginning, by meditating on impermanence you come to see the impermanence.
Not only that, but you also come to understand that it is produced by a cause, by its cause. So then seeing that it’s produced by its cause, so analyzing the cause of this contaminated body, because always a bad cause or a negative cause, and that is what one would recognize. So when you through meditating on impermanence that you come to know because of contaminated body being karma and delusions. Analyzing and also want to come to understand that it is impermanent and it disintegrates moment by moment. And plus knowing that this contaminated body brought suffering from past, and it is the one which induces to the sufferings.
So, for some people, when they, because of not understanding impermanence, that when they experience some physical pain or when they experience some physical pain then they come to Geshe la and say I’m feeling not good. I’m being harmed by some spirits and like say all those things. So so when this happens, then, know, as Geshe-la said, Geshe-la can’t do anything because the person have collected the karma and the karma has been ripened. So, that is what one had to experience. So but we tend to think that our body is pure and something very good, but when we experience sufferings or when one is feeling sick, the body itself is showing to one or telling one that I am like a product of common division.
And, So, and and, sorry, showing that the body is showing oneself that I am the product of common delusions and I am the one who, I would say, who from the past brought suffering and I’m the one who brings you through the sufferings. That is like the body itself is showing to one. So then when one is not feeling well, then one shouldn’t think that it is a harm which you receive from someone else. And also not feeling mentally, and also mentally not feeling mentally not feeling bad. So instead one should think that one is experiencing this physical pain or going through these sufferings.
And that is because one has created the cause or created the karma for that. Now what one should do is for one should engage in any kind of practice which better in the future next life that one doesn’t have to take again the same contaminated body. So, probably we’ll stop here for today and we have we do some questions as well. So the common common result, for example, if you if you happen to create karma in the past in one of your past life, doesn’t if if you happen to create a karma in your past life, doesn’t doesn’t like necessarily that it has to ripen in this very life next life, sorry. So so there are but there are karma which which are which are there that you have to experience in this life.
So if you have karma that you have experienced in this life, something very, the result might be very severe like disease that you have to go through. Even that common result that you can, that you don’t have to actually experience that severe suffering in a way that went through the, Through your practice on bodhicitta for example, make that karmic result something very small which that you don’t have to go through.