Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute talk from 1985, Geshe Nawang Dhargyey uses vivid classical Buddhist analogies—a precious vase filled with waste, Buddha renouncing his kingdom at twenty-nine—to awaken listeners to the rarity and fragility of human life. He moves systematically through impermanence (cemeteries, aging, death), the six universal sufferings of cyclic existence, and the critical importance of renunciation and aversion to saṃsāra as the foundation for genuine compassion and enlightenment. The teaching covers the true meaning of Dharma practice: not temple rituals, but correcting wrong attitudes toward wealth and worldly affairs, and purifying negative actions of body, speech, and mind. He culminates with the essential Buddhist path—cultivating method (the highest altruism developed through compassion) and wisdom (understanding emptiness)—as the two wings needed to reach enlightenment. Pitched at practitioners new to serious Buddhist contemplation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 CE 1985 05 01.mp3
UUID: e70d8173-beeb-43ae-898a-53c32250abe6
Teacher: Geshe Nawang Dhargyey
Collection: The Nature of Cyclic Existence (Geshe Nawang Dhargyey)
Date: 1985-05-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.6 minutes
Words: ~5,537
The compassionate Indian master called Ārya Nāgārjuna has said, if a person possesses a golden vase or golden container which is heavily studded with priceless precious stones as the diamond and turquoise and other precious stones. And if he misuses that priceless container in terms of vomiting in it and then also And if he misuses the precious container in terms of urinating and vomiting in it. So what will people around call him? Would he be called a wise person or a foolish person? Certainly, all people that know of him will certainly call him a fool, a great fool.
And now the master says, a greater fool than that person would be. We humans who, although have obtained a very precious human life human life, which is precious on account of the hidden precious qualities. If we now, after having obtained such an invaluable human life, misuse this human life only in terms of fulfilling the mere ends of this lifetime, so the master says we humans would be greater fools than the otherwise great fools who misuse only a precious vase or a precious container. Another Buddhist master, an Indian Buddhist master, Acharya Śāntideva, has said, When I have found or obtained such a wonderful life as this human life, if I do not apply myself towards the practice of spiritual values. Nothing would be more ignorant than I, and nothing would be more deceptive than wasting my life in fulfilling worldly ends.
Now, great Tibetan master, great Lama Tsongkhapa, says, This life, called the precious human life, is many more times more many more times precious than the otherwise precious wish-fulfilling jewel because all that precious wish-fulfilling jewel can do is to accomplish accomplish certain worthless ends in terms of fulfilling your worthless wishes. Apart from this, that precious wish fulfilling jewel cannot do anything in terms of accomplishing future happiness. Whereas, this human life that we have obtained is more precious than jewel because it can accomplish temporary happiness happiness and ultimate happiness. It’s just this time he says that we have obtained this kind of human life. Because we have obtained it just for this time, we must make best use of this life in terms of applying ourselves to the practice of spiritual teachings or spiritual values.
The Buddha has himself said regarding this aspect of human life. Although one may have wardrobes full of clothes lasting for one hundred years for one’s entire lifetime, but one dies and goes to the next life, one goes naked. And although one may have food lasting for for for a century or for one’s lifetime, but one go but when one goes to the next world or to the to the next life, so one goes empty stomach. So if by obtaining a human life, a person does not engage in the practice of the Dharma or the spiritual teachings, then it was as though it was pointless on its part to the human. Now, as Buddhists, when we follow Buddha’s practice, we must also follow his lifestyle or his teachings.
On the part of Buddha, as you know, he was born in a very great royal family. Even as a child, soothsayer, when he was taken to the soothsayer, the soothsayer or the sorcerer predicted that if he lived in the palace, he would be what we call a universal universal monarch. And whereas if he lived if he abandoned or renounced the worldly life, and got and ordained himself, then he would become the teacher of living beings. And Buddha, until the age of twenty nine, lived a very comfortable, glorious royal life. But when it was but when he reached the age of twenty nine years old, then he saw pointlessness in the world affairs, in the royal affairs so that he renounced completely world affairs and royal life and then, you know, sought an ascetic life and apply himself to various practices.
And if Buddha knew that leading a royal a worldly and a royal life was something worth worthy and worthwhile and something worthy, then he wouldn’t have abandoned that glorious royal life. But seeing no point and no meaning in that, so he abandoned such a glorious royal life and then applied himself to intensive practices performed, the deed of attaining the state of Buddhahood, and he has become one of the famous spiritual teachers in the world. So famous that even the places that he visited, places like Bodh Gaya and so on, they have also become so well known popular places in the world that hundreds of thousands of people thronged to those places to get blessings from these places. From this, we will know that if royal and wealth affairs had some meaning and some essence, Buddha wouldn’t suddenly abandon his royal love. But then he did abandon, seeing no meaning or no point in such world affairs.
And now, as human, we must use our thinking power and then come to think whether we will remain as humans forever in the world, and whether we as young people will remain ever young in the world or not. Naturally, we won’t remain young forever after the passage of few years, so we as young people would be old people. Whereas if one had studied and practiced spiritual values or teachings to the best of one’s ability while one was young. So even you know, then what happens is one, while becoming an old person, will enjoy greater and greater peace of mind. When we don’t remain young forever and when we become old and after becoming old, then what is obvious that we won’t live forever in this world and inevitably so we will we will have to meet with that or we’ll that will stare us down.
Sometimes when we pass through big cities, we also come across big cemeteries, you know, a huge sometimes huge cemeteries here and there. And the cemeteries are full of tombs. And these tombs should remind us of the impermanence of our own life and the the dead buried in those cemeteries. While once humans are born humans and thus meeting with death, so they were buried. And, you know, similarly, so we all have been reborn, and the only thing that is left for us is not to meet with the inevitable end of our life.
In the world, I have got so distracted and so carried away by wealth affairs that when they see old people, the young people think that old people old age is something particular to old people and will not befall them. Old age will not befall them. And when we when people in the world when distracted people in the world see the death and dying people, and they think that death is only particular and some specific misfortune that the dying people are suffering and not that they will die one day. So, thus, people are carried away by distractions of world affairs and not realize that these misfortunes will sooner or later befall them too. Buddha, on his part, one day while he was going for a stroll, then he saw an old an old man, and then he looked what it presented a very strong contrast between his body and the the body of old man.
And then he looked at his own body and came to realize that although right now, I have a beautiful, a healthy young body, but sooner or later, I will be reduced to such a miserable figure. Okay. And the next thing he saw during that stroll was that he saw a sick person, a patient. And like that, he also deduced that although at the time, right now, I’m quite healthy, so strong and so robust, but, inevitably, I that misfortune will befall me one day. Then that day’s stroll was not at all a happy sort of a a walk for him.
It was an eye opening walk for him, and the last thing he saw during that that day was death as of a a dead person. And then he thought, although I’m a living being, and one day I will be reduced to such a dead figure, a corpse. And being disillusioned by the disillusioned by worldly life, by apparent beautiful worldly life, then he renounced his royal life and then applied, as said earlier, to ascetic life and practices. Therefore, following suit Buddhist practice is important or it would be useful indeed to reflect on recollect the fact that the end of life is before us or to reflect on the impermanence of our own life or the short lived nature of our own human life. And the purpose of reflecting on impermanence of life, which is death, is not so much to make us miserable and feel depressed, but to realize, to make us realize how important and how precious and how valuable this human life is, and therefore how we must extract essence out of this human life.
Otherwise, if we don’t recollect on impermanence, so we will be under the misconception that we will live incredibly long in this world. And falling under the miss falling under the sway of this misconception, so we will be preoccupied with the preparations for a long life, and we would waste our time in pursuing worldly affairs. In the same way as when a person decides to live in this city, so he will never make any sort of preparations to leave. Instead, he will try to buy a house. And after he has bought bought a house, then he’ll be quite busy in the first of all, filling the house with proper furniture and so on.
But if he has decided to leave the city, then all that he does will be several will be preparations, will be making preparations to leave the city and would never think of because he never thinks of living in the city. After one has to collect the impermanence of life or reflected on the impermanence of life and come to realize how one will meet with death one day, and at death, we know how we must try to die a peaceful death. Now, in order to die a peaceful death and in order to ensure future happiness, what we must do now is we must, to some extent, practice the spiritual teachings. And practice of spiritual values doesn’t necessarily sound very complicated and having to completely renounce our wealthy life. So without having to completely renounce, abandon the type of life, worldly life, or the life we are living now we are living now, still we can be quite religious person by simply by way of correcting our present wrong attitudes.
In order to correct our attitudes, we must first identify or we must know what wrong attitudes that we have. At present, we have the wrong attitude of attaching greater importance to this life than to the welfare of future life. And now we should correct that attitude and we should come to give greater importance the happiness of future lifetime and attach a bit less importance to welfare of this life. Quite easy that everybody can do this. Now the second wrong attitude that we have or habit is of two things, worldly affairs and religious affairs or religious practices.
We certainly are giving greater significance to worldly affairs. Correcting that misconception or this kind of wrong attitude, now of two things, worldly affairs and religious practices, which come to give greater significance to spiritual values. And again, it’s not at all difficult. After correcting these two wrong attitudes that we have, then we must engage in the practice of the Dharma. Dharma, as some of you know, is a Sanskrit word, and it means it has two meanings.
Basically, it means to to hold one’s to hold one’s identity. And now to hold one’s identity, the second meaning of Dharma means to save from. Now, the Tibetan word for Dharma is chö. Chit means correct, and therefore, Dharma practice means corrective measures. Corrective measures to undo our wrong actions of body, speech and mind and cultivate the correct actions of body, speech, and mind because if we cultivate the right actions of body, speech, and mind by correcting the wrong ones through the corrective means of our spiritual teachings.
So we through such a practice, we would be saved from falling into the three lower realms of existence, and we would and then also and from save from undergoing sufferings of world existence. Suppose one engages in the practice in the corrective nature as a practice of stopping killing. And that non killing or that stoppage of killing, abandonment of killing, will save the person from falling into the three lower realms and as as well as so it will also save the person from experiencing short lifespan, a a sickly short lifespan in in his next lifetime. So thus, Dharma practice means to to get rid of or to abandon wrong actions of body, speech, and mind and cultivate the right actions of body, speech, and mind by implement implementing the spiritual teachings. So that is the meaning of Dharma or or treatment, the application of the correct measures to one’s daily life.
In fact, there are different explanations of definition of the Dharma itself in different works. If not for longs of time, for years together, if not for many years, if you experiment applying the corrected measures of teachings into one’s day to day life for a year, then at the end of the year, so one will find that one is totally different from what one was the previous year. So the correct corrective measures of the teachings would have corrected one’s wrong actions of body, speech, and mind such that if one is a person one one was a person given to using harsh words, such as lying and dividing people through divisive speech, now through the the corrective measures of the teaching, we would have corrected the faults of speech such as such that one now speaks very kindly and never divides people or or one always speaks the truth. And physically speaking, if one is if one was given to killing, stealing, and and indulging in adultery, now all those physical wrong actions would have been corrected by the teachings, the correct measures, such that one now abstains from killing, abstains from stealing, and one now abstains from indulging in adultery.
And mentally speaking, if one was given to coveting others’ wealth and always harboring harmful intent or malicious thought and such mental faults. At the end of the year, one will find that one is totally different one has a totally different attitude mentally such that one doesn’t have harmful intention, one doesn’t out of attachment covets others’ wealth and so on. So if you experiment the if you experiment with the teachings by in practicing the teachings for a year, so I’m quite sure that at the end of the year, so you would be completely or one would be completely different person because if just in case, if one suffers from or if one suffered from these wrong actions of body, speech, and mind, so all of this would happen all the faults of body, speech, and mind would have been removed, and one would be a very cultured, civilized person. Now, practice of Dharma which is not as you said with going to a center or temple and then reciting some prayers, doing some prostrations, although these are virtuous actions. But practice of Dharma is more to do with correcting one’s attitude or one’s thinking and correcting one’s mind.
Thus practice of Dharma means constant awareness of the harms and harmful consequences of wrong actions and constant awareness of benef beneficial effects of right and right actions of body, speech, and mind, such that applying taking the instance of stopping killing. And the purpose of it would stopping killing would be a real purpose of dharma if one is constantly aware of how serious, you know, how serious is the non-virtue of killing and how if one indulge in the non-virtuous action of killing, one one will have to undergo four serious or four deadly consequences. And conversely, being aware of the advantages and the benefits of stopping killing, and how stopping killing is a virtuous action, and how by stopping that non virtue of killing, one would enjoy for beneficial results. Thus, being constantly aware of all virtuous actions, their results, and constantly aware of harmful effects of non virtuous actions and their results. If one stopped the non virtuous actions or performance of non virtuous actions and tried as best as one can practicing the virtue, that is real practice of Dharma.
That’s the real meaning and purpose of Dharma and not so much necessarily going to the temple and chanting and so on. Thus, practice of Dharma means abandonment of non-virtues of body, speech, and mind and accomplishment of virtues of body, speech, and mind. That’s abandonment of non-virtues of body, speech, and mind. Abandoning three non-virtues associated with the body, four with the speech, and three with mind. If one abandoned them, so one would have abandoned uncivilized actions, uncultured actions of body, speech, and mind.
And conversely or oppositely, if one accomplished three of body, four of speech, and three of mind. So one would have engaged in beneficial civilized actions of body, speech, and mind. And engaging in the practice of civilized or cultured or noble or right actions of body, mind is then called practice of virtue. I was talking to the public in that hall. Here, too, I must lay the same emphasis that because it’s something that we almost every one of us can do, if we abandoned wrong, harmful, un civilized actions of body, speech, and mind, we would have abandoned non-virtues of body, speech, and mind.
On the other hand, if we cultivated or performed beneficial to oneself, to serve and others, and cultured actions of body, speech, and mind. In other words, we would have accomplished the virtues of body, speech, and mind. So this is something, this being the real criterion, whether one is practicing Dharma or not. And also this being something that all of us can do, it will be very nice indeed if we can try our hand at practicing these. An introduction or general talk, and I’m quite sure this will prove very fruitful and useful if we if you keep kept in mind and made an attempt in implementing them to some extent in your daily life.
So that being a general talk. Now, the essence Although we have to practice the Dharma or religious values, there can be different levels of religious practices. Ultimately, all forms of religious practices or spiritual values or Dharma practices boil down to the practice of method and wisdom. The practice of method and wisdom is the essence of all practices of the teachings or spiritual teachings. Now, there are three things that we always we should keep in mind.
The first one is extensive and extensive as well as intensive studies of spiritual matters or values is the starting point of the practice of Dharma. And then the second thing is whether one’s practice of teachings becomes a real fully fledged practice or not, a genuine practice or not, is dependent on whether by engaging in this kind of practice one is averse to the affairs of this lifetime, to the worldly affairs of this lifetime. And then the essence of all practices is the practice of method and wisdom. And method refers to the generation or the development of the highest form of altruism. And that highest form of altruism is a keen desire to achieve a keen desire for achieving the state of highest enlightenment for the sake of all beings.
And wisdom refers to wisdom which understands that wisdom wisdom that we have to develop and which understands the ultimate reality, the underlying ultimate reality of all phenomena, that is emptiness of inherent existence. If we practice these two, so then we would have developed the two strong wings to fly to the state of enlightenment just as the airplane or the bird must fly with the two wings. In order to develop that highest form of the highest form of altruism, that strong desire to achieve the state of highest enlightenment, before such altruism develops in one, one must have developed the sense of great compassion. Without this, the highest form of altruism cannot be developed. The great compassion on its own can only be developed if the person or if you have or if one has developed strong aversion, strong feeling of disgust with worldly sufferings and worldly life.
Now, great compassion can only be developed when one feels averse to one’s suffering-ridden worldly life. And now, the sense of great compassion means a strong wish to separate sentient beings or to free sentient beings, all living beings, all suffering beings from their suffering and their causes. Such a sense, such an attitude is called sense of great compassion. And in order to wish to in order to want to separate or free beings from their suffering and their causes. So one must know oneself that one is a suffering person and one that one’s life and world’s existence is fraught with suffering.
And unless one is disgusted and feels bored with this kind of suffering-ridden life, so one cannot develop aversion to it, and will want to be free from this suffering or from one’s own suffering. And without this feeling of wanting to be free from one’s own suffering, how can one appreciate? How can one understand that other beings are suffering? And how can one that one may develop a sense of great compassion, one must realize, one must develop a sense of renunciation or total aversion to one’s suffering written life. Therefore, in order to develop that renunciation so that one can develop the wish to separate the wish to free sentient beings from the suffering, in order to develop such a renunciation, one must reflect on various sufferings or miseries that one undergoes.
Because the great master Candrakīrti said, Without suffering, no renunciation. Renunciation comes only when one realizes that one has suffering. Just as the teacher has asked, may talk about sufferings of worldly existence or the faults of cyclic life or sufferings of cyclic existence, such a thing is in tune with deeds and in keeping with the practice started by the Buddha himself. When Buddha gave teachings, the first ever teaching that Buddha gave was the Four Noble Truths. And of the Four Noble Truths, the first truth is the Noble Truth of suffering.
And right from the outset, Buddha dealt with suffering and made realise that they were suffering beings and how then they should get averse to their suffering living life and by gaining total freedom from such a life. And also, this is in keeping with the Milarepa’s way of life. Milarepa, as you might have heard, was a great Tibetan yogi who extremely sinful in the beginning of his life. He was a black magician. The reason why he religious was because the benefactor of the teacher of black magic died, and this was a strong blow to Milarepa.
And then he realized how sinful he had been, and he wanted to purify himself of all sinful actions. Thus, he turned to his root master, Marpa. Then also, another eminent master of the Kagyu tradition called Gampopa. Here, too, in the beginning was a layperson. What happens to misfortunes, one after the other befell him?
First, there was death of his two children. Then soon after that, his wife died. And these were again stunning blows to him, and that he saw no reliability of wealth and he turned to religious life and began studying with the Kadam masters and later with the great Milarepa himself. Then Gampopa became one of the outstanding upholders of the Kagyu tradition. From this, we come to know that contemplation of sufferings that we experience or misfortunes or problems that we experience is extremely important to make us wish to be free forever from these sufferings or problems.
Now, thus appreciating the importance of contemplation in order to let us generate that wish to be totally free from these sufferings and not so much make us depressed and do nothing, Now we must know that all are migrating beings or all beings in world existence, from the top of world existence or from the peak of world existence to the lowest point of world existence, all beings undergo six sufferings, and these six sufferings are common to them. Even before Buddha’s teaching on the noble truth of suffering, in fact, beings had been undergoing suffering. And even the Buddha had not given teachings on the noble truth of suffering, we would still undergo the suffering. When Buddha gave teachings on the noble truth of suffering and the four noble truths, he only made us realize that we are suffering beings, and he removed the illusion that we are happy beings. First, suffering common to all beings in the worldly existence is the first is the suffering of lack of certainty in relationships among certain beings, in terms of poverty and richness, in terms of status in world existence.
There’s nothing that can have certainty also for reliability. Now, change of relationships among sentient beings not only in terms of lifetimes. Even in one lifetime, friendship and enmity can keep on changing, like people who are closest friends during the early part of life, then they turn out to be bitter enemies, and who were enemies in the early part of life become your closest friends. And then people who were extremely rich earlier, so they become so poor, miserable, and the poor then become quite well off. The reason why there are fluctuations is because of being in world existence.
Not only in terms of one’s life them, and even from day to day, friendship and enmity can fluctuate or can change. So your closest friends with whom you are having some conversation or some discussion, then something goes wrong in your conversation or misuse of a word, then it hurts your susceptibility and misunderstanding occurs. And then the friend becomes your closest friend, then that is turned into becomes your enemy the next day, and thus there is no reliability on friendship and or enmity in world existence. Let this be a very short explanation of the first suffering, suffering of lack of certainty. In fact, there are many accounts, and many teachings can be given here from various scriptural sources.
Listening to the spiritual teachings can also fluctuate can also can cause fluctuation in one’s mood. Sometimes you can be quite happy. At other times, while listening to the teachings, you can feel so sad. And the times when you can feel very happy while listening to the teachings is when the teacher speaks about highest form of altruism and the precious human life that we have and, you know, the self enlightenment which we can achieve and so on. When the when the master deals or touches on this optimistic topic, then we feel elated and the students or the listeners can be found smiling and laughing.
And the times when the listeners can pull long faces can be when the master deals with the suffering of world existence and, in particular, the sufferings of the beings of the lower realm’s existence. At during those times, then they can become so dismal and so bleak and gloomy. The listeners get moves get so much moved by the teachings and, you know, like, teachings concerning renunciation and so on. So much so that the listeners become so much induced and they go so enthusiastic and, you know, they go so much so intensely enthusiastic that they want to leave the place and to seek solitude for intensive practice. Thus, the listeners can grow so strongly enthusiastic by the teachings that on the spur of the moment, they would like to leave the place and go to mountain caves for meditation.
It so happened in Tibet, in my native place, a great master gave teaching. Among the listeners, there was a man called Losang Namgyal. At the end of the teachings, he went to the master and said, Now I’ve come to realize the faulty, suffering-ridden life of worldly existence. I’ve got so much disgust now with the worldly life, and I think I’ve had enough of worldly life. I want to go the mountain caves for meditation.
And the master said, even if you go to the mountain caves, if you have not if you have not developed realizations of impermanence of life and the real sense of genuine sense of renunciation or strong urge to leave worldly existence. They would it’ll be pointless to go to the caves in the modern mountainous solitude. And still, the man insisted on going there, and the master allowed him. And after a month, then he he wrote a letter back to the master saying that although I have said so, may I can’t do it anymore on the mountain caves. May I be allowed to to return to the to the village?
So he had to return to the village. So such a kind of enthusiasm, such a kind of renunciation attached and conjoined with the strong enthusiasm in the beginning. Short lived enthusiasm in the beginning is called literally translating hairy renunciation, which means short lived or half hearted renunciation. And half hearted renunciation can then put one in embarrassing positions. The second suffering common to all beings in world existence existence is suffering more for lack of contentment or suffering of dissatisfaction or discontentment.
Now, this is again a suffering which afflicts people and all beings. Suppose one has only hundred dollars, then one is not contented with that, and one wants one thousand. After one thousand, hundred thousand, and after a hundred thousand, one million, and so on. So one never remains contented. Discontentment then only causes more suffering wanting more and more.
The same thing with regard to house. If a person has a house with only one room, then he would like to have two rooms, and then with the three rooms, and then he would have another house. Then, as he has now two houses, the number of houses keeps on growing, and he needs more and more houses to rent and earn living and rent and so on. That’s how people, even after having plenty of wealth, suffer great amount of wealth, remains extremely unhappy and discontented with their wealth. Most experienced masters have said or teachers have said that a person who lacks sense of contentment is the real poor person or is the real sort of beggar, whereas a person who has sense of contentment is the richest person.
There is an account regarding this dating back to Buddha’s own time. It was in Buddha’s time in India there was a beggar who was at the same time a bodhisattva and called Upagupta. Then that poor bodhisattva one day found a jewel from the rubbish or he found a jewel, and then he made a declaration or made an announcement that he was going to give the jewel to the poorest man in the country. And then as people were giving eye on who he was going to give the jewel to, then this beggar gave the jewel to King Prasenajit. And King Prasenajit happened to be the richest king in India in India at that time.
And people were so surprised by what he had done and asked why he gave and why and asked why he gave the jewel to king Sankal because he was the richest man in India. That doctor said, I gave it to him because to me he is the poorest because he always thinks that he does not have any and he doesn’t have much wealth. Therefore, he I gave the jewel to the poorest man, and that poorest man happened to be the king. The third suffering common to all beings is that having to having to abandon or having to leave behind our bodies again and again in the world when we go to the next world, and that is suffering of suffering of lack of reliability, of the life that we once attained, the body that once we obtain in world existence, but having to lose this body inevitably again and again. So that is one of the sufferings.
To the venerable Tārā who is who quickly bestows all the siddhis or all boons. And she is the heroine who who has conquered all types of fears like the eight external fears and eight internal fears, and, you know, she has conquered all obstructions to liberation and omniscience.