Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ilia Durovic uses poetry and Buddhist philosophy to challenge Western cultural assumptions about desire, happiness, and the human body. Opening with William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus” as an unexpected resonance with Buddhist teaching on personal responsibility, he argues that ignoring death and impermanence leaves people mentally unprepared for life’s inevitable tragedies. He then pivots to the core problem: Western society teaches that satisfying artificial desires leads to happiness, yet mental illness and dissatisfaction remain high despite prosperity. Drawing on neurobiology, he shows how sexual desire (studied as a model for all desire) creates a false perception of its object, leading invariably to disappointment. The bulk of the session is devoted to two guided meditations taught by Khensur Rinpoche—visualizing the body’s interior filth and organs, then visualizing oneself and all beings as skeletons—followed by analytical meditation on the three roots of death (death is certain, its timing unknown, only spiritual practice helps at death) and three resolutions to practice. Durovic concludes that these meditations are not Buddhist dogma but reflections of biological reality, offering any practitioner a radical reorientation toward mind rather than external objects.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Ilia Ugliness, Death and Transcience.mp3
UUID: 4d19d917-56a4-4489-a1f6-4c0a9ae8d202
Teacher: Ilia S. Durovic
Collection: Ilia Seminars
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~12,157
Faced with these horrific circumstances, keep in mind that in the late nineteenth century, anesthesia was still something very recent, not necessarily used. He wrote this famous poem. Out of the night that covers me, black as a pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how straight to the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. This poem which was composed by someone who had no connection whatsoever with the Buddhist teachings, who may not have known for that matter the very name of Buddha Śākyamūni, resonates very powerfully for a Buddhist.
Very powerfully because it is in keeping with the core Buddhist understanding of our predicament, which is that we are completely alone. And we and we alone are fundamentally responsible for our present situation and whatever future situation we may hope to have. As our foremost teacher here, Khensur Rinpoche said several times now over the last couple of weeks, we do not keep enough in mind the famous passage from Buddha Śākyamūni which says, I am my master and I am the lord of my destiny. And it’s after hearing that that I felt I really had to quote this poem to you because it is almost as if from two different mental universes, the same realization has arisen. Now precisely because as Buddhists especially, we are completely alone with our own efforts.
And whatever results we can hope to attain are purely contingent on the work we do. It is very important to analyze carefully our situation to understand where we stand at present, what our problems are, and then to do whatever it takes to overcome them. From a Buddhist perspective, prayer is a very limited benefit. There are fully enlightened beings who are aware of our prayers. If they could have helped us more than they have, they would have.
It hasn’t happened. So then, ours is a situation of great solitude. And in the situation of great solitude, we must understand our predicament. The Western understanding of the human lot is basically one marked by despair. We are not really sure where we come from.
We have no clear idea of where we are going. And the best we can hope for in between is to play and be merry because that is pretty much all there is. And that’s why in this talk, I have chosen to connect two topics which are slightly different in the Buddhist tradition, which is the presentation of ugliness or the foulness of the human body and the presentation of death and impermanence. Because the two together, I think, offer a radical critique of some core premises of the Western worldview. The in the best case scenario, the most spiritually inclined Westerners will say that there is something before this life, and they go into some sort of light or some nebulous state of happiness after this life.
I was asking a friend at ANU last week what most Australians believe, and he told me this is basically the standard set of belief. Nobody’s terribly sure where we come from or why we are here. And people don’t want to think too much about what’s coming after, but they assume everything should be okay. And in the meantime, one just enjoys life. Well, this can work when one is young and when one lives in a very happy and safe society like this one.
You can get away with that for ten, twenty, thirty years. Then at a certain point, it stops working. When it stops working, you would like not to be so old that it is too late to find any sensible answer. And that is why it makes sense even when we are young to ask these fundamental and unpleasant questions. The human situation is an unpleasant one.
It can only be called pleasant in rich and prosperous countries like this one. And the rest of the world, being a human biz being is a grim business, grim business indeed. And this is why the Buddhists from the beginning and the Buddha from the beginning ask the core question, the question of suffering. Suffering was evident to the Buddha, and then the Buddha asked whether there was a cause to suffering and how to eliminate it. Now this is not just an abstract question which a great Indian thinker asked twenty five centuries ago.
Every one of us is in exactly the same situation. Whether you are young or old, each one of you, each one of us has his own particular brand of suffering. If you are young, you may not have the relationships you want, you may not have the looks you want, you may not be as successful in your studies as you want. If you are aging, you have the memories of the relationships, the memories of professional success, and the prospect of ever dwindling worldly success until what? Until a death, which is inevitable, but which is carefully occulted by our society.
It is hidden. It is hidden because the prospect of death would cause much of the foundations of our society to totter if people reflected on it carefully. Carefully. If we stop this frenetic rush we are in and ask ourselves, what happens after death? My death is certain.
What happens after? I think many of us would stop living the way we live. So it’s precisely to avoid this that death is shunted away. In all Western countries, the moment disease and death sets in, one is exiled into special hospitals, special institutions, obviously, the welfare of the person, but it is also very convenient from the standpoint of society. The age, my parents age, my parents are very elderly, in which people died at home is over.
When people died at home, there was no way for the child to avoid asking the core questions. Now this never happens. So our society has created a breed of man and woman who lives in complete oblivion, having fun while it lasts until suddenly the bell tolls, as John Donne said. And when the bell tolls, panic sets in because there has been no preparation of any type. This is when people go to the churches, when they come to Buddhist centers, when they go to whatever other centers there are desperately and under pressure trying to find not an authentic answer, but any answer.
Because when you’re drowning, anything will do the job. Now that is precisely the wrong approach because then you are noncritical. Instead of rushing into something at the last minute and finding an answer for the sake of an answer, a structure for the sake of a structure because the personality is destructured and facing extinction. Instead, early on, one should ask the core question, and there is only one question in the human life which is worth asking. That is a question of meaning.
Why are we here? Where do we go? That alone can enable us to lead meaningful lives. If that question is not asked, the life has been wasted. So I gave him the bibliography, the reference of a Russian novel by Goncharov called Oblomov.
I suspect most of you have not read it. It’s an exquisite Russian novel which depicts a wasted human life. Oblomov is a nineteenth century Russian nobleman whose only major preoccupation in the morning is, should I rise or not? Then, you know, the the novel is articulated around Goncharov’s worries for lunch and for supper and whether he should meet or not meet with friends. It is a caricature.
It’s a caricature of the life of a wealthy Russian nobleman of the nineteenth century. But I think it’s a caricature which cuts very close to the bone because I think many of us in the West live in the same way. And my personal feeling is that this goes a long way to explaining the amount of mental suffering in the West. It is quite surprising to see how the proportion of mental disturbance is high here. When basically ours are very happy and prosperous societies, and the level of medicine is very high.
My personal opinion, and I think this is perhaps a consensus Buddhist opinion, is that this comes because the fundamental questions are never asked. And because the fundamental questions are never asked, when the person is face to face with the tragedies of life, of which we can say with 100% certainty that they will come, That person has no inner strength, has no answers, and is at a complete loss. And then we have depression, all the variants of mental disease, even, you know, some people take their own life. So this prelude is given to explain the Buddhist perspective. The core Buddhist perspective is that we are alone.
To be happy, we must conform our minds to the way things actually exist, not to the way we think they exist or the way we would like them to exist. And to understand how things actually exist, we have to rely on experience and reasoning. Based on experience and reasoning, we can go a very long way towards understanding what the actual state of life is and then changing ourselves because our suffering comes from the fact that we see the world in this way, and the world actually exists in this way. Now the world is not gonna change. So what happens at a certain point is the world crushes our own fancied imagination of the world.
Hence the topic of this talk, because ugliness
Death and transience are the three features of the world, which in a Buddhist perspective can be established merely through experience and through reasoning. This is the way things are. It’s not a fantasy. It’s actually not a particularly Buddhist perspective. I would be giving quoting the work of some great poets.
Poets are, you know, the visionaries of their age. So often poets see further than further than other beings and they encapsulate the tragedies of their culture. So I would like to quote from some major western poets. And then if it is the case that ugliness, death, and transience are actually the way things are, then we must adapt our minds to this. And this is why we meditate.
Meditation is nothing else but this mental adaptation, this mental change performed through concentration, which leads the mind to conform with reality. A mind which conforms with reality will be the least unhappy of all possible minds. It may even be happy. The Buddhists believe it will be happy, but you have to see for yourselves. Then if we look at it in this light, we have to ask ourselves what according to Western society, contemporary Western society, is the main cause of happiness?
I mean, in other words, most of us here, most of you, most of us are Westerners. What has society told you will make you happy? What have we all brought in? The broad message of twenty first century western society is that desire makes man happy. The creation of legitimate legal desires and the satisfaction of their desires is a road to happiness.
And this is such a bedrock of Western culture that it is unchallenged, uncontested. Wherever you are, whether you go on the Internet, you read the papers, you go to a coffee shop, you go to Downtown Adelaide, that you are bombarded with this. Generate a desire, satisfy a desire. Generate another desire, satisfy another desire. The life of the ordinary westerner is this constant process of transition from giving rise to a desire, generally a very artificial one, and satisfying that very artificial desire.
And we have whole sectors of western industry like the advertising industry whose sole goal is to create totally artificial desires by connecting the desire for something you don’t need, such as a car, with a desire for something we are biologically conditioned to need, such as sexual relationships. And you will see, for instance, it’s astonishing how the advertising industry links traveling, cars. In France, it’s coffee. For men to pretty ladies, for women to handsome men, what is done is the creation of artificial desires. And all of us have bought into this system.
The system where we believe that there’s nothing wrong in allowing these artificial desires to arise in our minds. There’s nothing wrong with actually allowing desire in general to increase in our minds, and that this process of satisfaction of desire will actually lead us to happiness. Then the proof is in the pudding, isn’t it? So certainly, I think one of the societies where people are the most unhappy mentally is contemporary Western society. People are far more unhappy than they should be.
If the system worked, if it was true that this process of creating desires and satisfying them was a road to happiness in the motor of the modern economy, then we should all be blissfully happy. We are not. We have inordinately high levels of crime for societies in which no one is hungry. I lived in India. There’s very little crime in India considering the misery.
In Australia, there’s a huge amount of crime. Everyone has basically a government guaranteed income, a government guaranteed roof, government guaranteed food and education. There should be no crime worth talking about. So this is a clear pointer that the model, contemporary Western model of creation of artificial desires and satisfaction of these desires does not work. Then we have to ask a more fundamental question.
The Buddhist perspective, can desire itself, fundamental desire, the desire for which we are biologically conditioned, the desire for food and forgive me for the term for sex, can those desires make us happy? Well, certainly if we look at the animal realm, the evidence is that animals are not happy and live in a constant state of fear oscillating between the fear of being devoured by others and the fear of not being able to devour enough themselves in a function of whether they are herbivores or carnivores. But if we analyze within ourselves, and I will take here since all of us are lay people, it is not inappropriate, the example of sexual desire. To show precisely why the path of desire, which has been erected into a system of thought in the West does not work. And I would like to do this carefully because it is often skipped over in presentations of Buddhism, and you get long term Buddhist who do not understand this core point, this core critique.
So it is self evident that anger, for instance, is problematical. There’s no debate about that. People who are angry are people who are unpopular with others, and they themselves suffer. But it’s a widespread misconception, and it’s really been erected in a system in the West that there’s nothing wrong with desire. And especially the fundamental desires must be satisfied.
One of the messages of Freudian psychology is very much that the unsatisfied core desires, which in Freud’s case was sex, but for a poor society would also be the desire for food, that these unsatisfied fundamental desires lead to suffering, to repression, and to greater problems than they are satisfied. This is a misrepresentation of Freudian thought to start with since Freud himself asserted very clearly civilization arises through oppression. But this misrepresentation of Freudian thought is now dominant in the West. And if we analyze the process of generation of desire, we can see philosophically the root problem. What is the core characteristic of all desire?
The core characteristic of all desire is the misrepresentation of the desired phenomenon. And this is shared with all forms of desire, whether it is sexual desire, desire for food, desire for a car, desire for a house, desire for money. It’s shared in all of these states of mind. So the Buddhist critique of desire is not the critique of desire for a certain object, and this is fundamental. Monotheistic critique of desire, which is shared in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is a critique of illegitimate or excessive desires for a certain category of object.
Thou shalt not lust after the wife of another man. It is not the desire which is a problem. It is a desire for an inappropriate object or all of the various sexual strictures which we find in the old and the New Testament. The Buddhist critique is much more radical, much more fundamental. It is not a critique which establishes a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate desire.
It is a critique which addresses desire as a state of mind, which misrepresents fundamentally its object. Whether its object be a woman, a man, a car, a steak, money, a house, or traveling to Fiji. In every single case, that mind exaggerates the qualities the object may have from its own side. The object may or may not have the qualities, some basic qualities, but a desirous mind systematically reifies. It exaggerates these qualities tremendously.
This tremendous exaggeration of the quality qualities lead to an uncontrolled impulse towards the acquisition of the object. Now precisely because these qualities have been exaggerated, the acquisition of the object cannot provide any satisfaction. It can only provide sadness and disappointment. So the mind of desire, because it is a mind which exaggerates the attractiveness of its object, is a mind which necessarily, inevitably generates suffering. This is something one has to check for oneself through experience.
Check-in your own mind whatever the main objects of desire in your own life have been. Have you ever been satisfied? You have either faced a situation where you desired an object and didn’t get it, which caused suffering, or you desired an object and got it, which also caused the suffering of disappointment. Those are the two situations one faces. One faces them because of the very nature of the mind involved.
The mind involved is a mind which does not assess or represent reality correctly. Such a mind, such a mistaken mind, unavoidably generates suffering. But don’t take my word for it. Look look in your own lives when you’re back home. Check.
You know? Those of you who are young have probably been in relationship after relationship. It never works, does it? You just go from the one to the other until you get old, and nobody wants to be with you anymore. Those of you who are poor have been trying to get money again and again.
It doesn’t work. Either you don’t get it and keep trying to get it, or you get it and you go crazy. Those of you who are in ill health keep trying to get healthy. Those of you who are healthy keep trying not to become sick. If you analyze your minds and how the mind functions, you will see that this generation of desire in the mind is a generation of a state of mind which it is impossible to satisfy.
And then the Buddhist response has been that the key to happiness and suffering does not lie in addressing the outside world. This is the standard Western response. But instead, in addressing the mind and in eliminating those states of mind which necessarily lead to suffering. In other words, all of the states of mind which do not assess their object as their object actually exists. Now how do we know how the object actually exists?
Through analysis and through reasoning. Everything else is meaningless. And therefore, in a Buddhist perspective, one engages in these three analyses. First, the analysis of the human body, which is the foremost source of desire of human beings, lust for the body of another person. Whether you are straight or gay, there’s no difference in the lust.
The problem is not the object. The problem is the mind. So first, we have an assessment of the nature of the body. The goal of this assessment is to see whether desire for this body is realistic or not. Does the body exist in the way it is desired or not?
Then we have an assessment of the human condition. Does the human condition exist in the way we think it does or not? For this, we engage in meditation on this. Then we have an assessment of the totality existence. Does the totality of existence, what we perceive, in other words, exist in the way we think it does or not?
This leads to the meditations on subtle impermanence, what we call transience. So that is what we will cover today, and I will perhaps cover briefly some of the biological background for desire before we pass directly to the meditations on ugliness. I will cover them because all of us are very highly sensitized to scientific argumentation. So it makes sense to bring this in the picture and to see whether what we are saying corresponds with what neurobiology tells us or not. So it’s been very interesting to me to see that there has been very little research on the neurobiological basis of desire.
And there is among neurobiologists, it seems a complete unawareness of the fact that all modalities of desire are identical. It is something which modern biology has not connected with. So when desire is studied, it’s mainly sexual desire which is studied. And the studies are very interesting. Clearly, sexual desire is the most powerful form of desire.
We all know it involves all five senses. The visual sense, hearing, the olfactory sense, taste sense, and most importantly, the bodily sense. So to start with, the person is swamped with sensory stimuli. But what is very interesting is that a study was made excuse me. As said, we were all laypersons, and we’re trying to progress.
I I bring up this issue. The study was made of orgasm inside inside a PET scanner at the University of Groningen. And it is very striking to see what happens neurobiologically during orgasm. In males and females, there are different responses. In males during sexual climax, Gert Holstege who did this research, notes an activation of the brain’s reward circuitry equal in intensity to that produced by heroin.
So the experience of orgasm triggers mental experiences of a level of addiction comparable to that of the most addictive drug available. Secondly, and this is very interesting from a Buddhist standpoint, the brain’s seat of vigilance, that part of the brain which is wary, which is fundamental for our survival archaically, which is known as the amygdala. The brain’s seat of vigilance shows a collapse of activity during orgasm. In other words, at the time of orgasm, all of the control mechanisms, the wariness disappears. Finally, the levels of a neurotransmitter known as oxytocin, which seems to function to enhance bonding between couples and more importantly, bonding between parents and children, jumps fourfold.
This is in males. In females, the mechanism is similar with one exception according to Gert Holstege again. Much of the cortex, in other words, the frontal part of the brain which is involved in analytical activity goes completely silent. So if we resume this data, what we have here is an experience, the experience of orgasm, which leads to a collapse of conceptual activity, a collapse of vigilance, very high levels of addiction, and which seems to be designed to trigger irrational bonding. In other words, we are manipulated.
And this is why His Holiness the Dalai Lama has explicitly suggested to practicing Buddhists to reduce this experience as much as possible. So this experience, which is, you could say perhaps the goal of our society, this experience is a fundamentally flawed experience. And I would even put it to you, it is perhaps a destructive experience. So a bit provocatively, I would say to you this goes a long way to explain without even entering in the meditations we’re going to enter into, that from a Buddhist standpoint, celibacy is the road to happiness. I think provocatively because I know this flies completely in the face of Western culture.
All Westerners believe, whether they say so or not, that relationships are the road to happiness. Interestingly enough, when you start examining, I certainly examine among the people I know. I don’t know one single happy relationship. So then I asked an old friend of mine who’s a priest.
Knows tons of people in Switzerland. He told me in his entire career he hasn’t known one. You know? Then since he has known thousands of people, I think perhaps he’s onto something. You know?
But we are misled by this fantasy, which is culturally induced that all it takes is that meaningful other to lead our life to a state of unalloyed happiness and then biological mechanisms, which are not in the slightest design for our own happiness, but merely for the furtherance of the species kick in. The goal of these mechanisms is to create an irrational attraction between the two partners long enough for the offspring to be raised and to eliminate to the maximum any mental vigilance. Mental vigilance is the enemy of procreation. Anyone who thought half a second would be very hesitant about having children. Then the races human race would extinguish, wouldn’t it?
So you’ve got to get people drunk. It’s not a surprise that the first step in the ritual of seduction is alcohol, which is a famous disinhibitor. And nowadays, we throw in drugs. And how many of us have done things which we have come to bitterly regret because of these disinhibitors? It’s fun for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, and then a life is spoken for.
If you have children and you break up with a person, one of the two partners’ life is spoken for for twenty, thirty years. If vigilance was functioning, who would even get close to this sort of nightmarish scenario? Right? So the whole goal of the process is to eliminate vigilance. And while I don’t endorse completely his thesis, I think Richard Dawkins has a major point in the selfish gene when he says that the whole mechanisms of biology are designed for the genes to transmit themselves and that we are just merely the involuntary vehicle for this transmission.
I think he has a major point. To put it bluntly, we are conned by biology. Now from a Buddhist standpoint, one actually meditates on ugliness or actually on the very nature of the body of another person to see whether this body corresponds to the way we think it exists or not. And then if it does so much better, we’ve been desiring the right thing. There’s a correspondence between mind and object.
But if it doesn’t, then as we’ve seen, it’s very much to our advantage to change our mind so that our mind corresponds to the object. And at this point, before entering in an explanation of the actual meditation on ugliness, in the next fifteen minutes maybe, I would like to explain to you briefly what meditation is. So you have a handout, what is meditation? On one side, you have what is meditation, on the other side, how to meditate. Generally speaking, meditation in Tibetan is gompa.
The verb means exactly the same thing as to become accustomed to. Meditation is nothing else but a process where we habituate our mind to a certain way of looking at things. We habituate our mind to looking at things in the way they actually are. And then as a result of this habituation, our minds change. That’s all that meditation is.
Meditation is not some funny bodily posture. You can meditate in a chair. Meditation does not refer to meditating on inappropriate topics and changing the mind in the wrong way. That defeats completely the purpose. Meditation is a transformation of our mind from its present condition where it misapprehends reality to a state where it sees reality as it is.
So for this, there are three activities. Traditionally, they are known as hearing, thinking, and meditating. They occur in sequence. Hearing means actually all the activities of informing oneself, attending teachings, reading books, and receiving oral instructions. Through this, we progressively start to understand the actual way in which things are.
As we said initially, we must analytically understand reality before we change our mind to fit it. And then hearing itself gives rise to the activity of thinking. Thinking means reflecting on the teachings, the books, or the experiences we have had. Meditation, which is not connected with experience, is like a castrate. It’s powerless.
It has no impact. Meditation must be linked with our inner experience, our life to change our mind. So as you can see already, if thinking is part of the meditation process, then clearly a very new age fantasy that meditation means blissing out or going in some sort of vacuous state with one’s legs in full lotus posture has nothing to do with meditation as we understand it. I’m not even sure it’s comfortable. But and then the actual process of meditation is covered here and has two components, analytical meditation and fixative meditation.
Analytical meditation is rational investigation. So there is a crossover between analytical meditation and thinking. An activity errs on the side of thinking or analytical meditation in function of the degree of concentration involved. Fixative meditation is to concentrate the mind on one topic so as to change the mind. Now both analytical meditation and fixative meditation change our mind through habituation.
They change it much more powerfully than just listening about something or thinking about something does. If we attend the teaching, our mind changes, but for the duration of the teaching. Reading a book, the same thing. If we think carefully about something, then our mind changes already quite a bit more. If we meditate, which always involves a component of sensory isolation, the mind is transformed the most.
And how we meditate is, I’ll try to make clear on the back of the page. And here I have relied a little bit on the Tibetan tradition. One meditates first by memorizing the outline of the meditation. So I’ve distributed a couple outlines to you. We will cover this in the second part of the hour.
This is your road map. You don’t start meditating without having an an idea of where you are, where you want to go, and how you plan on getting there. It’s like a road trip. Memorizing the outline means that you don’t have to meditate or peeking at the book every thirty seconds to see what you should be doing next. Because if you do that, you cannot generate decent concentration.
So you have to meditate on something which already is in your mind and your framework, your outline must be mentally present. And then one meditates through alternating analytical meditation and fixative meditation. So one chooses a topic of meditation. Today, our first topic will be the ugliness of the human body, and one analyzes it. In other words, one checks mentally.
Is the body ugly or not? It’s always very important to have the or not option. Is it in ugly or not? If it is ugly, why is it ugly? What are its uglinesses?
You think. You think. You think. Then when you have generated some sort of a sense of the ugliness of the body and only at that point, you engage in fixative meditation, you concentrate on this without thinking, without analyzing. You just focus on this sense of the ugliness or the dirtiness of the human body.
At a certain point, this will fade. It will lose its strength. Then you go back to analyzing, and you analyze the body. I thought it was ugly, but now my sense of its ugliness has faded. Is it ugly or not?
Why is it ugly? So for this, you need your outline of meditation. Then when the topic is clear again, you go back to fixative meditation. So meditation is a process of a circular process of alternates. You start with analytical meditation, you go on to fixative meditation, you go back to analytical meditation, you go back to fixative meditation, and this continues ideally until through analytical meditation, you have generated an understanding of the topic.
Understanding means you actually intellectually, you really understand that the body is ugly. And fixative meditation should continue until you generate a realization, an experience. An experience is much more than an understanding. It’s a gut feeling. For instance, in the case of let’s take the case of ugliness meditation.
There’s a Theravāda monk, western Theravāda monk, very fine monk I heard about. They are very ascetic, much more than us in the Tibetan tradition. So he was meditating on the ugliness of the human body in an oven. They have these old ovens in Thailand, which are no longer used. You go inside, you close the door.
And he did this for a month and some in the darkened oven. And one day when he came out of the oven, he met a Thai monk, and he looked at him with such a mixture of disgust and revulsion that the Thai monk said to him, you really have to meditate on love and compassion now. So he had realization. He had realization. Realization, you can see in an anecdote which is recounted in the Visuddhimagga, this magnificent treatise of meditation of the Theravāda tradition.
A very great Theravāda monk who was coming to a a river crossing. This was in India. It was 1,000 ago, one thousand five hundred. And he saw a very beautiful woman on the other side. And in those days, in India, walked around bare breasted.
So obviously, the level of stimulation was very high. And she smiled at him. And while smiling, she opened her lips, and he saw her teeth. And at that instant, because he had engaged in bone meditation, the sight of her teeth immediately gave rise to the awareness of the woman as a skeleton and desire was eliminated. This is realization or experience in that case.
In other words, at that point, the antidotes click in automatically. So I think we have covered what I wanted to cover on meditation, and then I would suggest we take an early tea break, and then when we come back, we will start doing some practical work.
So we will now engage in some practical applications. We will start with those of you who can adopting the posture for meditation. Those of you who cannot, please stay in your chairs comfortably. This posture has certain reasons. The key elements is traditionally seven or eight elements.
The key elements of the posture are first, ideally, legs in the lotus or Vajrasana. So most of us are not able to do it. Those of you who are, it entails folding. I do it this way because of my age. But some of you, if you are able and if you are young, can do it with the other leg on top.
You know, that’s the best way. Now, obviously, if it’s a source of considerable pain, then it defeats the purpose. The goal of the posture was to guarantee stability in meditation. Then you would put something under this knee to block positions called a bandha in Sanskrit. Then, obviously, I cannot do it for a long time without my mind ending in single point of concentration on my knees and my hips.
So I sit in half lotus, which is perfectly appropriate too. Then the next key point is for the back to be straight, the head to be slightly inclined, the tip of the tongue touching the palate behind the teeth, the eyes slightly opened and focused somewhat in front of the nose. So as a Tibetan say or always said to me, you have a big nose for you. It’s no problem. And then both fingers must be resting upon each other, the right finger upon the left finger.
The right finger symbolizes method. The left finger symbolizes wisdom, and the two thumbs must be joined. In addition, the forearms and the shoulders must be spread out a little bit so that ventilation can occur. So this is a physical position. And now we’re going to work through one simple meditation on the ugliness of the human body, which was taught by Khensur Rinpoche, which is very simple and very effective.
We start with a purification of the breath. The main goal here is to reduce mental agitation. And for doing this, first we block the left nostril and inhale through the right nostril slowly. Then we exhale through the left nostril. We repeat this process three times.
Imagining our body is filled with white light and nectar, which is the blessings of the Buddhas. And that when we exhale, all of the mental agitation leaves through our left nostril as black light and smoke. So we do this three times. Now we change nostrils, and we do this with the left nostril, inhaling through the left nostril three times and exhaling three times through the right nostril. When we inhale through the left nostril, it’s light and nectar which enters the body.
When we exhale through the right nostril, it is dark smoke of the nature of the mental afflictions. Finally, we inhale through both nostrils, same visualization of white light and nectar. And when we exhale, we imagine the breath comes from the point between the two eyebrows and slightly above. We do this three times. At present, now that the mind is more calm, We visualize ourselves, our consciousness at the level of our mouth.
And we imagine it enters within our body through the mouth, examines everything within the mouth carefully, and then descends through the esophagus, always examining carefully the interior of the esophagus, descends into the stomach and we imagine that it can see the interior of the stomach, digestive fluids within, beyond that to the right, the liver, behind on both sides, the kidneys as two brownish organs. Above the heart, a massive reddish flesh trembling 70 times a minute and pumping blood throughout the body. We imagine from within the stomach, we can see both lungs, the right are larger and the left smaller as two flaps of viscous gray substance. Then beyond that, we can see the bones of the rib cage behind the bone of the spinal column stretching up to the skull, and beneath the pelvic bone. Then we imagine the consciousness descends into the intestines and moves downwards to the intestines through feces until it reaches the very end of the intestines and the rectum.
And we can see in front of us the bladder filled with urine. To our right and to our left, the thigh muscles. Behind and around the pelvic bone, and the male or female genitalia in front. So having examined the body like this, this is analytical meditation. Focus single pointedly on a sense of disgust.
When that rains, with your mind inside your body, examine the filth which constitutes the human body. Traveling up and down with your mind within the body, examine from the top of the hand to the toes, hair, skin, fat, muscle, the skull bone, brain. Generate a strong sense of the body as in blood and lymph. And the lower parts of the body, lower part of the intestine and the bladder as retaining feces, urine, and in the case of the males, semen in the testicles. In the case of the females, imagine the eggs in the ovaries.
And once again, give rise to a sense of revulsion. And focus single pointedly on this. Then the mind moves back upwards through the intestinal tract, still checking inside of the body, all the way up through the stomach and the esophagus, and ends up in front of the mouth. So we will leave this first meditation. And all of you can sense how this would transform one’s relation to one’s body.
And at present, we would engage in a second cycle of meditation, which connects meditation on ugliness with meditation on death. This is meditation on the human body as a skeleton. This is part of the oral transmission. It was taught by Khensur Rinpoche and Geshe Lhakdor. So visualizing your body clearly, imagine that a small dollar size piece of skin is peeled away from your forehead.
And imagine that you can clearly see the skull bone beneath, grayish white in color and completely dry. Then imagine that the skin around that area starts shrinking evermore and that the bone nature of the skull becomes manifest. First, the forehead is totally bone, then the top of the skull, then moving downwards, skin and flesh disappear. The eyes disappear, leaving orbits. The cheeks and the nose disappear, leaving a gap where the nose was.
Lips disappear, showing clearly the teeth in chaste and bone. And finally, you can see the whole skull on top of a fleshed body. Then move downwards, imagining as you move downwards with your visualization that flesh, muscle, and all of the inner organs disappear. All you are left with is bone, Shoulder bone, the two superior bones of the arm, inferior bones, the rib cage. As you move downwards, you can see
The spine, the flesh disappears. Eventually, the flesh from the pelvis disintegrates from the thighs, the calves, and finally, the feet. Visualize yourself clearly and forcefully as an animated skeleton of the dry nature of bone. And then focus single pointedly on the sense, this is me. This is who I am.
Visualize yourself clearly once again as a skeleton. And then within the visualization, the sense, I am of the nature of death. And at present, keeping the visualization as a skeleton, imagine that all of the people around you themselves are skeletons also. Sitting in meditation or on chairs are skeletons. Imagine that the entire temple is of the nature of bone.
And imagine that the bone nature spreads out from the temple. The earth is of the nature of bone and death. The trees are of the nature of bone and death. The birds and the trees are skeletons. Everything is made of a bone and is white and dusty.
Extend your visualization to the ocean and imagine the ocean as an abyss of death or the fish as bone. Allow your visualization to become limitless and see all of this world as bone. Keep throughout the visualization of yourself as a skeleton, all human beings as skeletons, all animals as skeletons, All insects as husks. All trees and plants as made of bone or as withered. Within this visualization, give rise to the thought, all is death.
Everything dies. I will die. And at present, keeping the bone like meditation, seeing yourself as a skeleton, We will engage in analytical meditation on death. Imagine it is your skeleton which is meditating and all of the skeletons around you meditating. And we will meditate on the three roots, the nine reasons, and the three resolutions.
As a skeleton think, my death is certain. To justify that think, before me, all have died. Therefore, I certainly will die. Generate a strong sense that there is no way you will not die. Or keeping the visualization of yourself as a skeleton.
Within this sense, there is no way I will not die. Generate the resolution. I must practice a spiritual path. Think again and again. Death is certain.
Therefore, I must practice a spiritual path. My death is certain. Therefore, I must practice a spiritual path. Then moving on to the second root or still visualizing oneself as a skeleton and all around us as skeletons. Think the time of my death is uncertain.
The human body is very fragile. Anything can destroy it. Bring examples to your mind. Car accidents, cancer, AIDS. Again, think, the time of my death is completely unknown.
And then within that sense, generate the resolution. I must practice now. The time of my death is completely unknown. Now is the time to practice. Still visualizing yourself as a skeleton and all those around you as skeletons as well as the entire universe of the nature of bone, Move on to the third reason.
The third root is at the time of death, only spiritual practice is of use. Or visualizing yourself as a skeleton meditating. Imagine that you are in your ordinary form and dying. You see yourself dying in your ordinary form, and you are surrounded by parents, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, they are crying, but they cannot do anything. Visualize yourself as heaving on the bed in an agony of fear and pain.
And then think, at the time of death, friends are of no use. And imagine in a corner all the money you have accumulated, all the possessions you have, and see yourself leaving them and think at the time of death, money and possessions are of no use. Finally, still visualizing yourself as a skeleton and all those around you as skeletons and imagining that the skeleton is looking at your dying body, shaking in agony, think at the time of death, that carcass, my body, is of no use. I will have to leave it behind. As soon as my breath ceases, it will start to putrefy.
Cover these three last reasons again. At the time of death, friends are of no use. Money is of no use. My body is of no use. I will have to leave it all and go forth alone.
Concentrate on the idea, I will be all alone. Then think, nobody will care. Concentrate on the fact that the mind alone will move on. And then generate the third resolution. I must practice purely.
Since friends are of no use, money is of no use, my body is of no use, I must practice purely. Returning to the visualization of yourself as a skeleton, cover the three roots and the three resolutions. Death is certain. Therefore, I must practice. The time of death is uncertain.
Therefore, I must practice now. At the time of death, only spiritual practice is useful. Therefore, I must practice purely. Keep the visualization of yourself as a skeleton and all those around you as skeletons with the awareness of those points. And now imagine that progressively substance covers the bone nature of the universe again, but the bone remains beneath.
The trees are covered in bark. Flesh covers the birds. The fish are covered in flesh. The earth becomes ordinary. The building of the temple once again becomes wood even though its inner nature is bone.
And flesh progressively consolidates on all the skeletons around you and on your own skeleton, moving from the bottom of the feet upwards, upwards to the crown. The forehead flushes out, and finally, the small dollar sized hole in your forehead is covered. And think to yourself, they look alive, but they are dead. And now progressively, we will come out of the meditation. You can relax your bodies.
So this is how one would meditate on death, on ugliness and death. As you can see, these are powerful meditations. And as you can see, if you were to do this every day, you would look at the world in a different way. Then, obviously, such a powerful transformation of one’s inner being must be done in keeping with reality. For that, we need study and experience and the guidance of experienced teachers.
The three have to be brought together. So I was gonna cover more material with you today, but I think perhaps this is enough. And then if you have any questions, I’m very happy to try to answer them. Practice purely means not to mix practice with worldly concerns. So if you look at the outline of you should have a demeditation on the three roots and nine reasons and the three conclusions.
What are the three the three reasons which lead to the conclusion to practice purely? They are that nothing which is worldly, in other words, friends, money, or the body is of any use. It is not of any use because we have to leave it away at the time of death. Now our present practice is impure because our present practice is intimately connected with worldly preoccupations. What friends or relatives think about us, regrettably whether we can earn money or not from the teachings, or for that matter whether our health will improve or not.
These are relatives, money, and the body. This has a life expectancy in my personal case of thirty years maximum. I am 47. By 80, I will be dead. So thirty years of friends, thirty years of money, thirty years of a body, which is transient.
If I my practice is focused on that, it is impure practice. If my practice is focused on the mind which goes beyond my body into the next life, then it begins to be pure practice. Does that go towards answering your question? Good. Are there other questions?
Yes. The first goal has to be the absence of suffering. I would put it to you that most of us don’t realize that we suffer. The first realization you get when you practice Vipassana Satipatthana meditation or mindfulness is that of suffering. When you actually practice mindfulness of the breath, I heartily encourage all of you to practice it authentically in the Theravāda tradition.
It’s very powerful because you suddenly realize that the only reason you weren’t aware of how much pain there was in your body is that you have this artificial threshold of inattentiveness which shuts it out. And when you just practice and you focus on mindfulness of the breath, you actually lower the threshold of inattentiveness. And suddenly, it’s as if the body is awash in itches and cramps and spasms and aches. And when one realizes that, one gets a sense of what the Buddha meant when he spoke of the first noble truth, the truth of suffering. One doesn’t begin to realize it and gets a sense.
Then one thinks being free of suffering would be a big thing. Happiness in our present state, we don’t know the meaning of. What we call happiness is suffering. If you examine very carefully, but you have to combine study and practice, study and experience for this to work. If you examine very carefully, peak experiences of happiness, you will find that actually they are a cessation of suffering.
A classic example, as I said, it’s a lay community here, so I just wanna speak freely, is the experience of orgasm where you have a buildup to a peak experience. Now if the peak experience was actually authentically happy, you would want the buildup to be almost indefinite. The buildup itself is painful, and people try to put an end to it. The experience itself is quasi instantaneous, and the aftermath is one of sadness. It’s very difficult to point at anything there which is happiness.
So I think us ordinary beings do not know what happiness is. Buddhists say that there are three categories of suffering. The first is the suffering of suffering. This is raw physical or mental pain, which all beings understand. Animals up to us.
When Buddha taught that life is suffering, that is not what he meant. Life is not raw physical pain. The second category of suffering is the suffering of change. The suffering of change actually is what we call happiness. What we call happiness is a slight decrease in the overall threshold of suffering, which gives an impression of relief.
When I stay seated for a long time, my back starts to hurt. When I rise, I feel happy. My back doesn’t hurt. That is not happiness. That’s a mere reduction of the overall level of suffering.
Then if I stay standing for a long time, pain once again increases. Suffering increases. If I sit at that point, I feel happy because, again, the threshold of suffering has decreased. This analysis you can imply apply to all of these so called experiences of happiness. So we do not know what happiness is.
We know what suffering is, the suffering of suffering we know. The suffering of change, we can train ourselves to understand through a combination of meditation and analysis. Then the all-pervasive suffering of cyclic existence, which is actually the first noble truth, which is that all cyclic existence is suffering because it can give rise to suffering. That we cannot understand in our present condition. We can accept.
We cannot understand. The elimination of that indicates in the case of the suffering, of cyclic existence that we have reached what’s called the level of an arhat. Then we have unalloyed happiness. Does that go towards answering your question? I would suspect, however, great your desire that if you imagined the woman you desire to be flayed alive, you would find it very difficult to consummate anything with her.
A friend of mine who’s a very fine Western monk said, there is only two millimeters of skin between beauty and a nightmare. It’s very powerful antidote to to lust. Whenever lust arises in your mind, mentally peel off the skin. It’s very difficult for lust to resist to that one. And then if that’s not enough, you peel off the flesh.
Then the side of the skeleton does marvels, You know? It’s a powerful antidote. However, antidotes, this training must be engaged in before desire arises in the mind. When desire has arisen, it’s late. You’re in the situation of someone who is defending a fortress and the enemy is already within the walls.
Then it’s a it’s a toss whether you can actually still overcome the enemy or not. So before the enemy breaks in the fortress, you fortify the walls. You do these meditations. Then when you see an object of attraction, and they are all the same, whether it’s a woman’s body for a man, a man’s body for a woman, a car, a house, at that moment, because you’ve trained before, the antidotes kick in like that, then it’s very powerful. Normally, it should be possible to control.
Otherwise, there’s a friend of mine who had this problem. He’s very wealthy German businessman, a student of His Holiness, very close to His Holiness. And it’s one of the realities of life that if you’re very wealthy, you get very beautiful women. So he had a very beautiful girlfriend. He went to his holiness and he said, what do I do?
I cannot control my desire for this woman. And so when I said to him, oh, that’s very simple. You take a bottle full filled with formaldehyde, and you put her feces inside. And then you put this bottle with the woman’s feces on the metal piece of your chimney. Whenever desire arises, you look at the bottle and you think that is the nature of this woman.
That is the nature of this woman. There’s no debate or of this man. The moment you think like that, you realize that this mind of desire is a totally false mind. Śāntideva has a beautiful line where he says, why do not why do you not desire a beautiful wooden statue of sandalwood which does not have to be cleaned? Which is true.
A statue of sandalwood, you know, sandalwood is this wood which is naturally fragrant. You never have to clean it. Our bodies, you know, anyone of us in this room who doesn’t shower every day starts to smell. After a short week, we are offensive. We define social rank and social status in functions of hygiene.
In other words, in function of how much effort one puts to remain the filth to prevent the filth from accumulating on the body. It’s a clear indication that the human body’s nature is to be dirty. So that is why as an object of meditation, actually, human body is very powerful because our desire for the human body is so much in contradiction with the natural nature of the human body. Even my deep desire for Maserati cars, for instance, seldom resists to the sight of oil in the engine. You know?
But it’s the same thing, you see. Does that go to help? Are there more questions? There’s a very interesting thought experiment I would suggest that we try out. Why is it that when I look at my hand now, it’s actually, in my opinion, a rather nice hand, you know, well proportioned and, you know, not too ugly, you know.
And I look at it in a certain neutral feeling, perhaps even a pleasant feeling arises in my mind. And that if we were take to take one of Tenzin’s cleavers from the kitchen and cut it off and put it on the table, it would be an object of fear and disgust. The only difference between my hand here and my hand on the table cut off is attachment or nonattachment to the body. From the hand standpoint, there’s no difference. Exactly the same constituents are present.
However, when it’s attached to my body, it’s potentially a very nice hand. And when it’s not attached to my body, it’s something which is, I think, ninety nine point ninety nine percent of the people, an object of horror and revulsion. And then if you think the nature of the hand is clean, then you just cut it off and leave it on the table, and you come back within three days, and the temple will be a wash in a stench. That’s the nature of my hand. If I take my watch and I leave it on the table for three days, the temple doesn’t smell.
I’ve heard often from people in the medical profession. They don’t resonate well with these meditations on the strength of the human body because they see the human body as a marvel, the fact that it functions. The fact that it functions is a marvel that doesn’t prevent it from being very dirty. Do you know? Now the odd thing you see is when we start doing these thought experiments, we realize how much our attachment to the human body is profoundly irrational.
Why should there be an abyss in our relation to a hand which is attached to the body and a hand which is disattached to the body. There’s not an abbess in my relationship to the seed of a Maserati in the Maserati and out on the floor of the showroom. I don’t go from boundless attraction to revulsion because I don’t have that level of desire towards the seed of a Maserati. But in the case of my arm, because I impute self, we say we say impute self. I attribute a beam to this arm.
You know? I actually say this arm is part of myself, disconnected with my own being. As such, it becomes an object of tremendous attachment attachment. When I cut it off and I put it away, it’s an object of disgust. So does that that sort of line of reasoning goes towards helping?
Yes.
It’s not an object of disgust, why do all of us wash? Doctors, if as I understand correctly, are not convinced that washing once a day is the best thing for the skin. And we don’t wash once a day. What you put on the skin. Washing, brushing the teeth, perfuming.
But to to answer your question of the balance, because I think that’s what you’re trying to you’re you’re getting at. What is our what should be a a wholesome relation to the body? To start with, all of us value the body way too much. So that’s why I have always felt the meditation and the precious human rebirth are not beneficial for Westerners. I think Westerners should focus on death and impermanence, and then meditate on the precious human rebirth connected with death and impermanence.
Because what happens with precious human rebirth for Westerners is it comforts this attachment to a body. That does not happen with Tibetans, but it’s a very Western thing. Then how do we relate correctly to the body as a tool as a tool for the mind. And if you want a tool to do its work correctly, you take care of the tool. But it’s just a tool to be given away if need be, You know?
Then because we Westerners are so deeply rooted in the identification of our self with a body, then the meditations on ugliness, and even more importantly, the meditations on death and impermanence are what we need. Then after that, I think we can we can have a balanced approach to the body. You know? Does that make sense? Are there other questions?
And celibacy. That’s I think so. I have Well, the first answer I would give you is I don’t have the impression mankind has a lot of trouble reproducing. I mean, I have the impression that. You can’t don’t think you that.
Somebody’s in a job. I have the impression No. I I have the impression we have the other problem to start with. I mean, that’s what most economists would be saying. The problem is population control.
Then, obviously, the Buddhist worldview is not the biological worldview, is it? I mean, the biological reading is that sexual urge is there for the procreation of the species and therefore is a good thing. I perhaps should put this in very shocking terms, but from a Buddhist standpoint, the survival of the species is completely irrelevant. The species happen to be supports for the minds which transmigrate with within them. Should the minds be free of the material support of the species?
All the better. So imagine all human beings were able to generate a mind of rejection of desire, which means they would be really on the path of or on the road towards becoming an arhat of the Theravāda. Then they are on the road to no more reincarnating as human beings. Mankind would cease, which would be a very good thing. Well, in the case of once they reach it said, they are reborn in the pure lands.
They have non material bodies or some say bodies which are made of subtle matter. There are two two perspectives on this. I think it’s a very hypothetical question because I have strong doubts that we’ll ever convince one of mankind to meditate on the bone nature of their partners. You know? I what I would say is this.
You know? I know this is very shocking for Westerners. So I’m just proposing this as an experiment to all of us. Try it out and see whether you are happier after engaging in these meditations over a couple of weeks than before or not. So if you’re more unhappy because there’s less desire in your mind, then please be my guest.
Do whatever it takes to increase desire in your mind. But try it out. I think you owe it to yourself to see whether more desire makes you more happy, or perhaps we’ve been all hammering at the wrong door for a long time, and less desire makes us more happy. It’s it’s a revolution, a mental revolution for Westerners. And then if less desire makes us less happy, to answer your question if less desire makes us more happy, sorry, to answer your question, then maybe no desire would make us very happy indeed.
We’ve got no way to know. But there’s nothing to say. You don’t have to become a Buddhist to try this out. These are meditations which are rooted actually in in the way things are. I mean, you ask a physiologist or a pathologist, this is the way the human body is.
It’s not a Buddhist dogmatic position. So if meditating on the way the body is helps your mind, then why not do it? You don’t have to be a Buddhist to do it. These the two first meditations, we didn’t cover the last one in detail. Meditation on ugliness and meditation on death.
I think you don’t have to be a religious person to engage in. You start, and then, obviously, I think after doing them well, I am quite sure you would have to become a religious person, but you don’t have to be to try them out. I think it is definitely possible to become enlightened as a lay person since Vimalakirti became enlightened as a lay person. Vimalakirti, they say was enlightened. He was a lay person.
The 84 Mahasiddas of India were all lay persons. Having said that, I had the privilege of being ordained myself. And when his holiness ordained me, he said to us, and I took it to heart personally, ordination is the main path of spiritual development. That’s a very powerful statement. In other words, it’s not the only path, but it’s the main path.
It’s actually the easiest path. Someone who is ordained has put all the conditions on his side. It’s easy because once one has generated the conviction that desire is a problem. And if you’re ordained, you are starting to work against that, and you are in a setting, a monastery, where everyone else is doing the same thing, and you help each other. That’s what the sangha means.
You help each other on the path. So I think if one is able to do so, ordination is the best route. I think it is perfectly possible to meditate, to attain all of the three enlightenments of a Pratyekabuddha and Bodhisattva as a lay person, but I think it is more difficult. It’s my private opinion. Yes.
We are fundamentally alone. That means that at the time of death, which is the boundary for all of us, we are alone. That doesn’t mean we should live as a social hermits. However, all of the Buddhist traditions, the Theravāda and the Mahāyāna emphasize very strongly the importance of having a good friend and the danger of the evil friends. So in the condition we’re in, basically, it’s extremely easy for us to move downwards.
Now moving downwards is immediately a cause of suffering for oneself. Right? If you have had any experience of your life of spiritual degeneration and you look back on it, you can see you also became probably much more unhappy. So we have to associate with people who at least are at our level, at least do not harm, but preferably are more than. And I personally feel a good approach is if you can find someone who helps you, then it is good to be around that person.
If you can find someone who doesn’t harm you, that’s okay. Otherwise, it’s better to be alone. Because none of us wants to move down. That’s really easy. So at least we want someone who does not interfere with the limited efforts we are making towards development.
But preferably, we would like someone who helps. You know? And that’s quite easy to it’s quite easy to think in that way. If you think, well, any companionship I have, you just take your own age, whatever it is, is only gonna be there for if I’m 47, let’s say you give me thirty, forty years, thirty, forty years. It won’t be for thirty, forty years.
No companionship lasts thirty, forty years now. Fifty percent of the marriages end in divorce. You know? Most of the relationships after a couple months, a couple years. The sacrifices people make are completely out of proportion with what they get out of it.
And then you have to think to yourself, and it’s a very Asian outlook. It’s it’s a bit blunt, I suppose. Do I benefit or not? If I benefit, then yes. If it’s neutral, okay.
If I don’t benefit, why bother? Does that help? Are there any more questions? Go ahead. Sure.
But there was a very it’s an old friend of mine. You know? He’s an old Geshe who was disciplinarian of Sera Je monastery. To give you an idea of the sort of practitioner he is, he was the head of the protector group at Sera Je. And once I was very sick, I had to go to a pooja.
I couldn’t go. It was just impossible for me. I had major case of the runs, you know. This pooja is twelve hours. I went to see him and he said, he said, you can’t come with a big shame.
Then he said, where does it hurt? I said, here. And I was bent double. He said, oh, okay. And he put his finger on like that.
He slapped his fingers and the pain vanished as if he had turned the light off. Now this old Geshe said to me once, you know, I would love to be an arhat but I don’t have the capacity. He said that. So an arhat is a great thing to be. I mean, we train on the Bodhisattva path.
We train that motivation, but we’re not on that path. Someone who is on the Bodhisattva path has uncontrived bodhicitta. We don’t have uncontrived bodhicitta. Some of you may, in which case I apologize, but I certainly do not. If you have a contrived bodhicitta, you are a totally transformed person.
They say the earth shakes when you generate a contrived bodhicitta for the first time. That’s, you know, uncommon. You know? That’s one of the reasons for which from my standpoint, I believe Jesus the Christ became a Bodhisattva on the cross because the earth shook. You know?
And I was speaking with. He said it’s possible. You know? That’s one of the reasons. But their bodies, as you put it bluntly, are bags of shit.
I mean, the thing is you have to keep two things together. The awareness of the fact that our bodies are really repulsive. I mean, if you just open them up, you know, it is revolting, you know. And then our minds are repulsive too. I mean, if we actually examine our mind, if you actually practice insight meditation, just check the thoughts which arise.
It’s exceptional for a virtuous thought to arise. You know, the Tibetans used to do this with a pile of black and of white stones, and they would put one white stone per virtuous thought and one black stone per non-virtuous thought. You always end up with a pile of black stones. So the body is filthy. The mind is filthy.
Both are, we say, contaminated phenomena. That doesn’t mean we don’t have compassion for that person. To the opposite. Because of that, we have we should have even greater compassion. Does that make sense?
Rebirth is not a problem. Is not a problem. We have to start very small. We we are all of us are are rank beginners. So we have to start by checking our own situation.
We want to be happy. We don’t want to be unhappy. We have to see what makes us happy. What can we do to avoid being unhappy? Then once we have started to work for ourselves, we realize that others are in the same mess we are in.
At that point, we can generate compassion. But at that point, we realize we’re all the same. We all have disgusting bodies and minds which are a mess. We are all suffering. We are all trying to be unhappy happy, and we are all feeling miserably at it.
Then if oneself one finds for oneself a road which enables oneself to become happier, then one wants to help others who are in the same situation. Then one enters the bodhisattva path. So I think perhaps that will be it for today. Thank you very much, and I hope it wasn’t too forceful.