Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute talk, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen teaches the intermediate scope of the Lamrim path—for practitioners seeking complete liberation from cyclic existence. He starts with the preciousness and rarity of human rebirth, then develops the heart of practice: bodhicitta, the enlightenment mind, grounded in the reasoning that all beings have been one’s mother countless times. Using vivid examples—rebirths ascending to Indra’s celestial realm, then plummeting to animal and hell realms—he shows why temporary escape from lower rebirth fails; the entire cycle is driven by karma and delusion. Practitioners must see through saṃsāra’s deceptive pleasures entirely and commit instead to enlightenment for all beings’ sake. The teaching methodically unfolds the three scopes and their motives, emphasizing that intention determines the spiritual quality of any practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 LR 1995 02 12.mp3
UUID: 99836aec-d029-4f7f-9083-3f017f538974
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: Lam Rim 1995 Jan-Dec (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1995-02-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~4,087
The great teacher of around eleventh century says in one of his writings, the three corpus of teachings are the basis upon which a spiritual practitioner follows the three higher trainings. Through this, a person can also attain all fulfillment. In meaning, what it says is we can trace the format of spiritual practice called the practices of three types of scopes in the very teachings of the Buddha which can be categorized as the three corpus or the three pitaka, three pitaka, the three baskets of teachings. The three baskets of teachings taught by the Buddha are like in the preserved tradition of the late tenth century Kadam. The core oral instruction practice has been very much admired as if like a golden golden elixir which can turn any metal into whatever the craftsman wants to have the metal of the toughest quality.
How the example fits very well is because it is through the guidance of the three baskets or three corpus of teachings that person can attain all spiritual fulfillment even at the minimum a person can make oneself not fall into the three lower rebirths such as a bird as animals the next time. So that is how excellent the teachings can be guidance of spiritual fulfillment for the right practitioner. Now if we look that aspect in our own present situation, then we can relate its appreciation by thinking presently we are so fortunate to be born as human which form this system’s perspective is not only a birth as a human but a human rebirth complete with capability to follow spiritual path because we do have born as a human the ten leisures and eight eight leisures and ten endowments the eighteen qualities of resourcefulness to do spiritual practices. So if this is how our present rebirth is, then we can appreciate the need to make maximum use out of, it. And generally speaking, rebirth as a human complete with eighteen qualities of capability to follow our meaningful spiritual practice has been explained throughout the classical instructions as very rare and to be obtained only once once a while.
And how it is rare, there are explanations by three major points of reasoning that it is rare to be born as a human with these qualities from the point of example, from the point of number, and from the point of its very nature, meaning the course is required to be born as human. It wouldn’t be that what’s called time sufficient for us to go into all those three details. But if we look just one point, how to be born as human to with all those qualities is where from the point of number. We can just give one example to illustrate. Say, if on a tree, there are number of ants nested, then the number of ants on one single tree, if we are to count, we probably can say there are countless number of number of ants on that tree.
Yet, if we are to count the humans of the entire world, then not only it is countable, but even they can be so precise as how yearly the annual population increase can be determined by way of count. So that is one example. So if that is the case, then we can realize human rebirth is very rare with such quality. And if it is rare, then while we have obtained, we make it to maximum use by way of applying the Lamrim or the stages of the path to enlightenment instructions and practice as preserved in the late tenth century tradition of the Kadam lineage. So it seemed very wordy, but that was exact how it was.
Now with such realization of the preciousness of our present situation and the need to apply spiritual practice, we then do the additional part of developing altruism, the thought wanting to benefit all others. And that altruism can be developed by way of reasoning how there is not any being out there or there is not any sentient being who have not been my mother, my father, who have not been my sister, my brother, and dearest of friends. The reason for that is there was no beginning to my previous lives, so any sentient being at one stage would definitely have been a one type of relation to me or the other way. Not only that, even in in terms of one particular person or sentient being having been one’s mother would have been countless times, that one person alone would have for countless number of times been one’s mother. If we think that way, then we can relate if all beings have been one’s mother and not only been one’s mother but countless times then we can relate how in this life one’s mother generally speaking in that classical point of view generally speaking how one’s own mother in this life have been so kind such as looking after since the time of delivery and even before that taking every care not to hurt the baby inside the womb and all that.
With that, then we can relate how all sentient beings would have been so kind equally to my mother of this life. And this way, from one side, one then thinks it is appropriate if they have been if all sentiments, if they have been kind to me, then I must repay their kindness. And the time I repay their kindness should start from this very moment now because the very fact that I I am a human born with all the capability to follow meaningful spiritual path through which I can repay their kindness. It is appropriate we need to repay the kindness of all others because, generally speaking, if a person has a mother who is personally down and suffering from some types of sickness, then the person neglects. If the person neglects its mother or his or her mother, then from only societal convention point of view, a person would be considered very ill-mannered, mean, and all that.
Here the case is exactly similar but of much more enormity and of much more range because all beings have been one’s mother and they’ve been one’s mother countless times. So the reference to mother is in terms of someone who is dearest and has been most kind to oneself. So one can shift the referent person to whom everyone feels has been most kind to oneself. So presently, while all beings who had been my mother or had been dearest to me and kind, they’re suffering and being tormented by the mundane shortcomings of the mind. Here, as a spiritual person or aiming to be a spiritual person attaining enlightenment, if I tend to neglect their welfare, then I am a very mean person.
So through such way, one then need to get willingness to repay their kindness. And as regards how should we repay kindness, it should not be just a temporary relief of their their misery and so forth. It has to be a repayment of the supreme kind. And the repayment of supreme kind means to remove all others suffering once and for all and to bring them excellent, unchanging happiness. To do that, it is only possible if one has become a transcendent and fully enlightened person, or in other words, if one has become enlightened oneself, if one has become a Buddha oneself.
Because unless one has become enlightened or unless one has achieved Buddhahood, one is incapable of even fulfilling permanently a need to one person alone, let alone of all sentient beings. So out of such reasoning and way of thinking, one here personally builds up the motive to definitely, at any rate, I must attain enlightenment in order to benefit all beings. And then here, as usual, to connect with the present intention and state of mind by which one attain enlightenment teachings one relates by thinking. Therefore, to attain enlightenment to benefit others, I would take interest in attending to the talks and teachings concerning the present topic about the three scope practice or the three types of practitioners who have varying scopes of their fulfillment. And in essence, this exactly becomes the proper motive called the motive of precious mind of enlightenment.
Here, it would be especially pertinent in accordance with Lineage system to to direct one’s motive by thinking in order to achieve the sublime happiness for all beings. I will take interest in the instructions of the elder Kadampa teachers because that is the most relevant way of directing the motive at this point. And in our case, the individual motive determines how much one would achieve from the spiritual engagement one does. For example, let’s say here we’re all gathered in a session. Now say, supposedly, if we are doing a prayer concerning the request to female Buddhatara, and if we recited twenty one prays once, then each of us would probably have varying intention or motive.
And that very varying or difference in the motive would determine whether each of our practice becomes holistic or spiritually correct or meaningful or not. Therefore, please everyone for one minute, let’s do meditation on the motive. Here, as regards the teachings and the and the talks on the instructions of the spiritual path, I would say that most of you wouldn’t hear things which you have not heard in the past. So there isn’t anything particularly new that you would hear. The reason for that is not only it is a fact, it is something which even the great masters in the Buddhist tradition in the past have said, such as we come across the writings to interpret Śāntideva’s which says, I have not anything here to present which has not been presented in the past.
So that is how even in the past it has been emphasized. But still, it stands true that more one more one hears and learns, more one’s understanding will expand. For example, a person who had who has heard an instruction once and a person who have heard the instruction, twice, there would be enormous difference in the understanding because each time one hears or learns about even the same topic, the understanding next time would be something different. So there would be a new understanding to be formed. In accordance with the teachings of Buddha Śākyamūni, the method through which a spiritual practitioner makes way towards attaining liberation and enlightenment was presented in the format of the practices of the three types or the what is called three types practices of the practitioner of three different scopes.
And here, we shall look into the second one to interpret the first one having been finished last week. And this is the second one is the practitioner of the intermediate scope who whose main aim is to get rid of entire mundane or cyclic suffering together with their cause and to attain liberation or freedom from suffering and their cause. So to such a person, the Buddha’s teaching concerns firstly by explaining the transitory nature of everything, therefore, the Buddha has taught impermanence. That was followed by the teachings concerning the stark pervasiveness of suffering of our present existence as mundane beings. So in other words, the identification of our present mundane existence as something miserable and nothing really to grasp at as something pleasurable.
And that is then followed by the instructions concerning the selflessness or the penetration into reality by recognize by recognizing that the self or the identity or the person does not concretely or solidly exist. So through that way, then the person can overcome all impure thoughts and the resultant sufferings and attain liberation. And following that, the Buddha taught about the nature of how everything, even not the self, but even everything outside phenomena have the non solidity or the lack of inherent existence by way of going through the three spheres of emptiness. The phenomena from its nature is lack of inherent existence or true existence, and it is and and it lacks true existence from the point of its cause as well from the point of its result. And that can be seen as the second stage in that format of teachings.
When the practices on that becomes improved, then the next part is to intensify the practice of altruism. Altruism perfecting to become the precious bodhicitta or precious mind to enlightenment. In other words, wishing and wanting to achieve enlightenment in order to benefit all others. And that perfection in the practice of altruism is combined with the very mind of that altruism realizing emptiness or reality. So inseparable unity of one’s practice of altruism with reality realization or emptiness realization.
And that would be seen as the next phase in the improved level of one’s spiritual practice. Let’s say if a person has made up to a level of that where the practice on altruism in the in the line of mind of enlightenment is combined with the realization of emptiness, then such a person is extremely on high level of mental purity because even the enlightened beings together offer great praise or admiration to a practitioner of that level, and the person also become to be called as the great sons of the victorious ones or the great offspring of the Buddhas. Generally generally, a person who follows the great vehicle path towards enlightenment can follow the path by two way of entry. One, by initially starting the practice in common with a practitioner of small scope and then making to intermediate, and finally the actual entrance into the great vehicle part. Or the other alternative is where a person can be extremely of vast merit and intelligent, therefore can straight away make the initial entry from the great vehicle part itself without the need to go in stage from the first two in this life.
So there is those two alternatives. Now if, let’s say, generally in the case of most practitioners, the first method is the manner how they would traverse on the path by firstly entering into the practice common with lower a person of lower scope, then it becomes understandable how we need to be aware of the three levels of motive motive common to the person or practitioner of lower scope, motive common to the intermediate person or practitioner of the intermediate scope, and the motive of great person or great practitioner. And then last week, we finished the discussion on the first type of motive, the motive common to the person or practitioner of the small scope. And this morning, we shall go into the second, specifically, the motive common to the practitioner of intermediate school. In the case of a practitioner or a person of small scope, the call of the person’s concern is not to fall into any of the three lower rebirths next time.
Therefore, the entire avenue of the person’s practice is aimed to that very sole aim, not to fall next time into three lower rebirths. And the person, no matter daily, no matter the person in daily life may do any type of spiritual practice of varying level, the aim itself determines the quality of the practice. Now if that is the case, let’s say, and in our entry, we are quite contained with that sort of motif and the practice, then we can question ourselves, would that be sufficient not to fall into lower rebirth rebirths next time? Well, that is not sufficient because although one may, in this life with such motive, may apply spiritual practice to not fall into lower rebirth next time, but when that next rebirth, when one is born in higher rebirth and if the time of karmic duration expires, then the rebirth after that would not be a guarantee not to fall into lower rebirth, more so if one had numerous definite karma from previous life to be born in the lower rebirth. So once the karmic residue from previous time to be definitely born in lower rebirth awakens awakens or is triggered then there is no control no option from one side one would be fallen or one would get born in lower rebirth so not to be born once in lower rebirth is not enough.
There is always the karmic certainty of being born there again and again. Unless we have purified our previous karma to be born in the lower rebirth, the guarantee would not be there that we won’t be born next time in the lower rebirth. So other phase or the other side of the case or the situation is where there is uncertainty that one might be born in the lower rebirth next time due to one’s previous doings or the previous karma. This point is very true because there have been countless times in the past from our beginningless life that at some time in the past, we had been born as high in the mundane within the mundane existence. We had been born as high as equal to the king of the celestial beings, such as Indra and others, where we have ruled over entire universes within the mundane realm.
But once the karmic time has expired, then we had been born in the lowest of the tormenting realms where the entire ground were always scorching and of intense heat, inseparable with one sensation of the torment of heat. And then there have been countless times where we have been born in the past as celestial beings who everyday enjoyed as a food on nourishing nectars. But then when the time had expired, we, at some stage in the past, had also been born in the lower tormenting realms where as food, we had no choice but to drink burning molten liquids through our thought and all that. So in that way, that is how in the past it had been due to karma. In the past, there had been so many times where we had been born as celestial boys and girls, courting in celestial gaze and pleasure and all that.
But once after that, there had been times following that that we as well had been born in dense forest as a inferior wild animal constantly attacked by those of the stronger species. Similarly, we had in the past, been countless times, been born as, what is, interpretively called the universal monarch, a type of king who rules by way of a golden wheel, which precedes a king’s path. And wherever the will falls, the enemy side uncontrollably gets defeated. And in that way, the wheel leads the king or the monarch to entire realm of the universe, and the king becomes universal monarch. So there had been countless time we had been born as universal monarch ruling over entire realm of the mundane universes where we had countless number of large entourage as our food person, servants, and attendants, and all that.
But then following then, there had as well been countless time where we had been born as servant to a family, spending all our life looking after the sheeps and the cows and all that without any companion, depressed time and all of that. So in this way, there had been countless times of ups and down within the mundane existence from our previous lives. We had wondered in all ex to all extent of the mundane existence that we have wondered so much in all corners of saṃsāra of the cyclic misery. There isn’t any area where we had not been. As well, so far, our way of thinking and our point of direction had been where we wholly and completely been going for the pleasures of the mundane, pleasure of the cyclic, but it has not let us let us anywhere.
The saṃsāra pleasure and its attraction had proved to be deceptive, unreliable, and so forth. Therefore, now as a spiritual person on the path, we then need to have a strong awareness to not fall for the mundane pleasures and its clinging and so forth. But at this stage, one might think that I still will aspire next time to be born as a human human or as a celestial. Therefore, one may still have hangover attachment to be born as a human, thinking there isn’t any suffering with it or there isn’t any suffering with rebirth as a celestial. But that’s not the case because as a human, we do know that there are countless unbearable unbearable number and number and amount of suffering such as there is suffering of birth, which includes the entire suffering, which we don’t remember now in the womb at the time of delivery and all that.
And then the very next moment we are born starts the suffering of aging, which becomes more stark and stark as it goes ahead as the aging continues. Then there is the suffering of sickness constantly, suffering from physical and mental illness and all that. And finally, the suffering of death. Not only not on top not only these major four sufferings of human, we as well as suffering of not encountering with the wanted pleasant things we want to encounter with and not being able to shed off or be separate from the unwanted unpleasant things or or we don’t want to associate with and not being able to accomplish the project and wishes we want to achieve and all that. So there is unbearable amount of sufferings even with humans.
And then if we look up higher in the realms of mundane existence, there is as well unbearable suffering as a celestial being. For example, if one is born as a celestial being in the, what is so called, the desire realm, then there is the suffering of not being able to have spiritual awareness because of being overly indulged with the abundance of facilities and material things around oneself, which later on brings about immense depression for a long time at the time when a being, as lesser being, in that realm receives a prophecy in the sky in the form of voice predicting one’s one’s imminent death. The suffering, there is much more than the pleasure one had experienced whole life there. If we go up higher on the celestial realm, then as well they’re suffering with the celestial of the form realm, although celestial beings of the form realm may not have the two other types of suffering, the changeable suffering and suffering of suffering, but they are very much with the, what is called, all pervading suffering or interpretively, the karmically karmically definite suffering of being in the cyclic existence. Also, are those sufferings with celestial beings, and then we can look at the possible rebirth as a asura or warring celestials, what is interpretively called the demigods, the warring celestials.
For them, there is constant suffering of jealousy towards the celestial beings of their superior wealth and abundance of riches and all that. Therefore, there is incessant fightings against the celestial, which results in them. The warring celestials being defeated, their limbs being chopped, their body being pierced with all sorts of of weapons and all that. So there is all that suffering even with the warring celestials. So what is the cycle, the saṃsāra, or what interpretively called the cyclic existence?
So what is cyclic existence? The cycle, the saṃsāra. Well, it is the whole realm starting from the top, the peak of cyclic existence down to Avichi tormenting realm, or the tormenting realm called the moment without torment because there is incessant torment. So that whole realm covered in that extent, peak of cyclic existence down to Avichi is the cycle. Who is the one that is circling in the cycle?
It is the person, the mundane being. By what is the person caused to wander in that cycle? Well, it is the karma or the person’s own wrongdoings and the impure thoughts or the delusions which causes the person to engage in those karma. And what is the manner how the person circles to that way of force in that cycle? The response or the answer to that is the manner of circling is from one rebirth the aggregates joins to the next rebirth aggregates and that joins to next rebirth aggregates or in other words, the person’s mental consciousness plus all its of plus all its