Ilia Seminars

Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this 140-minute inaugural seminar of a three-part series on Je Tsongkhapa’s Three Principles of the Path, Ilya — a Western scholar trained under the Dalai Lama and Khensur Rinpoche — focuses on the first principle: definite emergence (authentic renunciation). He establishes Tsongkhapa’s extraordinary life and accomplishments, then teaches Buddhist instruction as genuine mind transformation rather than intellectual learning. He unpacks definite emergence through the Four Noble Truths, the threefold nature of suffering, and the five aggregates, distinguishing between renouncing this life alone and abandoning all cyclic existence—both are necessary for authentic practice. Extensive Q&A addresses karma, the death process, fatalism, and how to link abstract teachings to direct lived experience. Aimed at serious practitioners.

File metadata (for organising)

File: Ilia Three Principles of the Path Lecture 1 – KR.mp3

UUID: 8befaa4e-fc81-4233-8011-93b751b290a2

Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche

Collection: Ilia Seminars

Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide

Words: ~15,770

As the last one or two people are taking their seats I’d just like to say it’s a great honor once again to welcome you to another of Ilya’s seminars. This is the first in a series of three. For those of you who haven’t met Ilya, Ilya is a an independent scholar who for the past three decades has studied Buddhist philosophy and engaged in Buddhist practice under the tutelage of some of the leading exemplars of Tibetan of the Tibetan tradition, including His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, Jeffrey Hopkins. He’s an accomplished translator of Buddhist texts and oral teachings. Ilya is extremely well versed in Western philosophy and science.

But even more than that, he is a devoted and dedicated student of Khensur Rinpoche. And so it’s a great honor to be able to hand over to Ilya. Thank you. So thank you very much for coming today. It’s an honor to see all of you again for conferences of a slightly different tenor.

So we have had a series at TBI of general conferences whose goal was very much to bridge the gap between Western philosophy, Western history of religions and Buddhism. These three conferences, starting with this one, are specifically Buddhist, and I will make occasional, but only occasional reference to Western culture. So I hope to have built up enough that it is possible for us to go in that direction. As a preliminary, since these are Buddhist teachings, in keeping with Khensur Rinpoche’s tradition, we should try to generate a good motivation to listen to these teachings, since from a Buddhist perspective the motivation is what gives its ethical connotation to whatever we do. The motivation should be a motivation of kindness, a wish to help all conscious beings, not just human beings, animals, insects, bacteria perhaps, all living beings which we can envision, to try to help them, to put them in a state of definite peace and happiness and to commit ourselves to do this.

With this as a motivation, and the commitment to do this and with this as a motivation, and not the motivation to increase our learning or in the monasteries to debate fine points, but with this as a motivation to listen to this explanation of the Buddhist teachings. So we’ll meditate for one or two minutes on this. Thank you very much. And then, before starting this explanation of the Dharma, since these are no longer general conferences, but these are Buddhist teachings, we have to address the issue of our relationship, myself as a person explaining the Dharma, yourselves as people attending an explanation of the Dharma. So, from my standpoint, I lack the qualities to be a teacher in the full Buddhist sense of the term.

I do not have the 10, the five or the three qualities of Kalyana Mitra. On the other hand, I have had, over the last thirty years, extraordinary teachers, 11 teachers who were among the most highly realized beings in the Tibetan tradition, the latest of whom is Khensur Rinpoche. So I see my function as being a loudspeaker for them. In other words, I will try to summarize what I have understood of their teachings, the key points they make, and as Khensur Rinpoche told me, teach from my own experience, which is limited, but I will try to function, if you want, as a loudspeaker for them, as a Western loudspeaker. So Western loudspeaker translates the teachings into English that helps.

And then, hopefully, this will be of some benefit. From my own side, I received these teachings of the three principles of the path four times. I received them three times from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, two times in India, in Dharmasala, one time in Lausanne, where I was the adjunct translator, and I have received partially the elaborate commentary on the three principles of the path which Khensur Rinpoche gave here at TBI over a year and a half. So the foundation for these talks on the Dharma will be, first and foremost, the root text, the three principles of the path, which I have translated anew for you. It’s one of the free handouts.

And it will also be Khensur Rinpoche’s commentary on the three principles of the path. Now, we will print them out incrementally. In other words, I have translated one third of Je Tsongkhapa’s Three Principles of the Path, only the section and pronunciation, and I have tried to do it very carefully so that the verse order in Tibetan is respected. And then we have reprinted Khensur Rinpoche’s teachings of the three principles of the path, exclusively the section of renunciation. We have also reprinted his teachings on the life of Je Tsongkhapa, but this will be of relevance to our talk today.

In keeping with the Kadampa tradition of presenting the Buddhist teachings, I will be presenting first an exposition of the greatness of the author of these teachings, which is Je Tsongkhapa himself, the author of the three principles of the path. And secondly, an exposition of the greatness of the teachings. Thirdly, a short explanation of how to listen to the teachings. Many of you have heard this many times before, but it is important for us to try to go beyond the words and to try to actually live this. Teachings are not, and I think it’s a very common Western misconception, teachings are not conferences.

And the spiritual teacher like Khensur Rinpoche is not someone who gives conferences. A conference is for one’s intellectual satisfaction, one’s amusement, one’s entertainment. Buddhist teachings are to transform the mind. The transformation of the mind occurs if these three preliminaries are there. If one is aware of the greatness of the author, in other words, one has a deep felt faith in the qualities of the author, if one is aware of the greatness of the teaching for ourselves, not just in the abstract, and if one is aware of the faults within ourselves to avoid so the teachings bear fruit.

The first point, the greatness of the author of the three principles of the path, perhaps for us in the West is very difficult to understand. When we read the life of Je Tsongkhapa, it is actually quite difficult to believe that someone at Je Tsongkhapa ever lived. Je Tsongkhapa’s lifespan stretched from 1357 to 1419. In terms of Western history we’re at the very end of the high Middle Ages, just before one century before the Reformation. The figure of Je Tsongkhapa, however, is an extraordinary one, I think perhaps unique in the history of religions.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that if you read the life of Je Tsongkhapa for the start point of his studies, you have the impression all he did was study. Then when you look at the retreats he did, you have the impression that all he ever did was meditate. Then when you look at his deeds, in other words, his social activities, you have the impression that all he ever did was build monasteries and create temples. Yet he performed all three deeds in what was a very short life, a life of a mere sixty two years. In the context in which Je Tsongkhapa was born is when we have to understand the transmission of the teachings to Tibet was an incremental one, which started basically in the seventh century with cycles of translations, three major cycles of translations stretching up to the eleventh century.

The dedication and care the Tibetans put to the translation of the Buddhist sutras and tantras is something which beggars the imagination. If you take the case of the Eight Thousand Lines Perfection of Wisdom sūtra, which is one of the fundamental Buddhist sutras, perhaps the fundamental sūtra on emptiness, It was translated and verified eight different times. What this meant was it was translated from Sanskrit Indo Tibetan by one translator for one cycle of translation, checked in Tibetan, then retranslated back into Sanskrit and submitted to a separate Sanskrit pandit for verification in Sanskrit. And when the team which is responsible for this one cycle of translation was satisfied, and at that point alone was a sūtra published, this process occurred eight consecutive times. For this reason, our translations in Tibetan are unique in terms of accuracy.

By the time of the great Sakya polymath, Buton Rinpoche, the totality of the translation work had been completed. Buton Rinpoche then tackled a very delicate task of establishing the canon, what we call the Tripitaka in Sanskrit or the Kangyur and the Tengyur in Tibetan. In other words, the Kangyur contains what the Buddha taught. The task facing Buton, who is nicknamed in Tibetan the omniscient, because it was widely believed at the period there was nothing he had not studied, was in the thirteenth century to try to ascertain what of the translations were authentic and which were not. To do this, he used a criterion of astonishing stringency modern scholars would probably not use it.

He considered authentic translations whose Sanskrit originally he had seen with his own eyes. This is a much stricter standard than the one adopted in modern scholarship, where as long as by hearsay you have heard of the translation being made by reputable scholars, it is considered authentic. As a result, by the time Je Tsongkhapa was born in 1357, the complete and as far as we know authentic corpus, both of the Buddha Sutras in 108 volumes and of all the Sanskrit commentaries on the Buddhist Sutras in some two twenty three or 27 volumes, depending on the recensions, was available. The problem which then arose in Tibet was how to get a grasp on this gigantic amount of material. And this was Jetsün Tsongkhapa’s unique contribution.

His background is one which one meets to this day. He was an ordinary peasant boy from Amdo, the Far East of Tibet on the Chinese border, who traveled by foot to study in the greatest monasteries of his age, the Sakya monasteries, the monastery of Sakya itself, under the guidance of the great Sakya scholar, Rendawa. Under his direction, Je Tsongkhapa very quickly revealed the full scale of his mastery of the totality of Buddhist philosophy. So much so that at the age of 33, and as I said, it’s something which would be incredible if it were not attested historically, Je Tsongkhapa taught during three months simultaneously 17 major Buddhist treatises in 15 sessions per day. I made a list of the treatises to give you a sense of what Je Tsongkhapa taught.

At 33, the age of most of us in Australia are going to the beach. He taught every day at the same time one session of Dharmakīrti’s Pramānavārttika one session on Paramita one session on Maitreya’s Abhisamayālamkāra, which presents the totality of the path one session on Asaṇga’s Abhidharmasamuccaya, one session on monastic discipline, the Vinaya sūtra, as well as four of Maitreya’s five treatises every day, five of Nāgārjuna’s six treatises, Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra, Āryadeva’s 400, and Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, every day, in addition to his commitments and to his practice as a meditator. Now, the key, I would say, in this list of treatises is that the very first is a treatise of Buddhist logic. This is, I would say, central to Je Tsongkhapa’s vision of Buddhist Dharma. As Je Tsongkhapa famously said, and I think it encapsulates his project in the prologue to Nowadays the yogis who put great effort are poor in hearing.

As for the learned, they do not understand the key points of practice. This was the situation in Tibet when Je Tsongkhapa came. There was a complete split between scholarship on the one side and practice on the others. The scholars did not understand how to practice. The practitioners, on the other hand, were not learned and despite putting great effort practiced often in a very helter skelter way.

The goal of Je Tsongkhapa was to unify practice and theory. This is explicitly stated in his greatest work, the Lamrim Chenmo, and to unify them under the aegis of logic. This is why the first treatise Je Tsongkhapa taught was a treatise on Buddhist logic. So a premise of all of Je Tsongkhapa’s work is that the world is rational, that it is possible through analysis to understand the ultimate nature of phenomena. This is difficult, very difficult, but it is a path which is offered to us.

And then if this was all Je Tsongkhapa had done, we would think that he was an extraordinary scholar, the likes of which the West has perhaps not known. And yet there’s an entirely different dimension to Je Tsongkhapa. Those of you who are interested, Khensur Rinpoche gave a magnificent teaching on the secret life of Je Tsongkhapa, we have some copies in the back. Because Je Tsongkhapa was an extraordinary mystic who, having gone as far as he could go with the cutting edge of scholarship, came to a point where he felt his understanding of the Buddhist view of emptiness was inadequate. This is a component of Je Tsongkhapa’s life which is perhaps very alien to Westerners, because Je Tsongkhapa then searched for direct communication with the bodhisattva of wisdom, with Mañjuśrī. He was unable to gain that communication at first.

He had to work through an intermediary, the great Tibetan yogi, Lama Umapa, who had clear visions of black Mañjuśrī when he was in Amdo. Now, Lama Umapa’s origins are debated. All my Kampa teachers, like Khensur Rinpoche, say he’s from Kham. Then my Amdo teachers say he’s from Amdo, so perhaps he’s from the border between the two. But if anyway, Lama Umapa, we would say nowadays, channeled Mañjuśrī for Je Tsongkhapa.

This is actually what happened. Je Tsongkhapa asked Mañjuśrī questions through Lama Umapa, not questions about his future, the sort of questions people in the New Age tradition ask when they have some sort of spirit channeled, questions about Buddhist philosophy. There is something which is very alien to us. Lama Tsongkhapa got answers to these questions. What Mañjuśrī suggested to Lama Tsongkhapa was to return to the sources, It is in this aspect that Tsongkhapa’s Reformation shares a common denominator with all of the great religious reformations, whether they are Martin Luther’s Reformation in Christianity, or let’s say the Wahabite Reformation in Islam.

There’s a desire to return to the purity of the authentic tradition. This is very clear in Je Tsongkhapa. He returned to the sources, and not just to any sources, he returned directly to Nāgārjuna’s works, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, and to the commentary which had been recommended by Mañjuśrī, Buddhapālita’s commentary, which is very difficult. Reading again and again Buddhapālita’s commentary, eventually, from reading the eighteenth chapter of Buddhapālita’s commentary, Je Tsongkhapa gained direct realization of emptiness. In other words, Je Tsongkhapa’s innermost mystical experience, the time when Je Tsongkhapa became a bodhisattva on the path of seeing on the first ground, is intimately connected both with the vision of Mañjuśrī and with study.

When Je Tsongkhapa then asked Mañjuśrī how to practice, Mañjuśrī gave him advice which is valid to this day. It is, I would say, the core advice which is followed in the Gelug tradition. The first which Rinpoche emphasized, Khensur Rinpoche emphasized very strongly in Singapore, is to practice through seeing the spiritual teacher as completely inseparable from whatever tutelary deity one is practicing. This is very difficult. Typically, those of us who are practitioners tend to have the spiritual teacher here and whatever tutelary deity we practice here, and the spiritual teacher gives explanations on the technology of practice.

This is non practice. Authentic practice is practice where there is no distinction between the two, where the spiritual teacher is actually seen as the tutelary deity, manifesting in that form, a manifestation of the omniscient mind in bodily form for the benefit of the disciples. Therefore, those of us who are disciples of Khensur Rinpoche should train to see Khensur Rinpoche himself as Je Tsongkhapa, as Mañjuśrī. Whatever our core practice, whether we practice Tārā or Avalokiteśvara, some here practice Yamāntaka, some practice Yamāntaka. Yamāntaka and Khensur Rinpoche must be one.

Yamāntaka and Khensur Rinpoche must be one. This is why the great Tibetan practitioners, when they refer to their teacher, always put the name of whichever deity they practiced next to the name of their teacher. For instance, Khensur Rinpoche is known as the de facto lineage holder of Vajrayoginī in the Gelug tradition. We don’t have a lineage, but a de facto lineage coming from Trijang Rinpoche. At Sera Je, many practitioners refer to Rinpoche as Vajrayoginī Khensur Rinpoche.

They see him as one, they train in seeing him as one. The greater this connection, the greater this fusion between the tutelary deity and the spiritual teacher, the greater the connection one has with the spiritual teacher and the more we will take on board the instructions he gives us. In other words, the greater the blessing. This is what blessings are. Blessings are that openness of the student’s mind which makes the teachings able to penetrate.

Otherwise, if the mind is sealed, the teachings do not enter. This is the first item of advice for Mañjuśrī. The second is to engage in purification. The third is to accumulate merit. And the fourth is to study in-depth, not any treatises, the great treatises.

This is a piece of advice His Holiness has carried on to this day. His Holiness encourages his students to go back to the root, not to secondary commentaries on commentaries which are glosses and other commentaries on a root text, but to go back to the root, to the text of Nāgārjuna, to the text of Buddhapālita, Bhāvaviveka, Candrakīrti, and only from them to move down to the commentaries. This is difficult, but this has a much greater impact on the mind. The two other items, purification and accumulation of merit, I wanted to cover separately, because they’re connected with the retreat Je Tsongkhapa did at Olkha Cholung. Here we have this great scholar, the greatest scholar of his age, who, with eight disciples, basically leaves everything and goes on an open ended retreat in the Tibetan wastes.

Olkha Cholung was literally in the wastes in the desert of Tibet. And they go with nothing. These are not Westerners going on retreat. I was at one point going to do a retreat at the Land Of The Medicine Buddha in California. I asked them, you know, and they were very nice.

They wrote me back and they said, we have chuts at $70, but the chuts at $90 have satin sheets. Then, to be honest with you, I didn’t go. I I felt embarrassed. There’s no other word for it. And when one thinks of what Jetsongkhapa did, you know, the the level of hardship is something which I think Westerners cannot practice.

Je Tsongkhapa and his disciples donated everything they had to renovate one of the great temples, the Temple Of Maitreya, and then went literally in the desert. Je Tsongkhapa offered three and a half million prostrations. 100,000 prostrations is hard for us. I mean, those who do prostrations know, I mean, I used to do them. 1,000 a day is not easy.

Tibetans make it up to 3,000. A friend of mine who is Tibetan, they have another level of strength than we do, was joking with me when I was prostrating. He said, so how many do you do? And I said, do 300 a session. And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. He said, when I was in Tibet, I offered prostration. I said, oh. I said, how many did you do? He said, oh, I prostrated until I started vomiting.

That was his standard. He prostrated until he started vomiting. It wasn’t until the heart started basically being in difficulty. Je Tsongkhapa himself offered three and a half million prostrations to the 35 Confession Buddhas, gaining eventually a vision of the 35 Buddhas of confession. Let alone this, he offered mandala, in other words, a symbolic offering of the totality of the universe, 10,000,000 times.

We offer it a 100,000 times. 10,000,000 times on the rock surface, on a plate of rock, he had no money here now. So much so that his forearm, his entire forearm, became wounded and torn. Then, on the basis of this, Je Tsongkhapa, during this retreat, Olkha Cholung got a vision of Yamāntaka, through the power of purification. After this retreat, Je Tsongkhapa composed what is the seminal work in the Gelug tradition, and it’s perhaps a very strong statement, but one of the seminal works, perhaps in my opinion, seminal work in the totality of the Tibetan traditions, is Lamrim Chenmo in 1402, which comprises the totality of the path.

As we had said, by the time Je Tsongkhapa was born, all the Buddhist Sutras and the Śāstras, the commentaries, had been translated. But the problem was how to make sense of these 300 volumes of material. What Je Tsongkhapa did was to take the model of the graduated stages of the path, which is basically created by Atisha in his Bodhipathapradīpa, the lamp of the path, which was developed by some of the great Kadampa Geshes in what was called the tenrims, the stages of the teachings. To take that as a template, to take the model of the three categories of beings, beings of small, middling and great scope as a template, and then to take the totality of these 300 volumes and fit whatever was essential within this template, within 1,000 pages. This is Lamrim Chenmo.

So this is why when my teachers traveled in Tibet, never traveled without Lamrim Chenmo. Geshe Rapten fled Tibet with a copy of Lamrim Chenmo. It is this foundational for the Gelug tradition. I think we have covered to a degree the greatness of the teaching. Those of you who are interested in more can read either the biography of Je Tsongkhapa, which Khensur Rinpoche gave, or there’s a magnificent text in French, if anyone reads French, which I have put in the bibliography.

As for the greatness of the teaching, this teaching on the three principles of the path is actually in verse form, in two three pages, a presentation of the sum total of the Sūtrayāna. In other words, a sum total of the non tantric path of Buddhism. Geshe Rapten famously said, The teachings of Je Tsongkhapa are nothing else but the three principles of the path plus tantra. In other words, it is not the three principles of the path alone and it is not tantra alone. It is the three principles of the path plus tantra.

The three principles of the path, as we will see later on, are what is commonly called renunciation, but should be better called definite emergence, we will see why a bit later on. bodhicitta and the view of emptiness. Now, three principles of the path are present in the Buddhist teaching implicitly, but what Je Tsongkhapa did was to use them as an organizing template for the totality of the teachings. It’s my private opinion that perhaps he did this relying on the famed Sakya transmission, Parting from the Four Attachments, which may very well have been in the background of Je Tsongkhapa’s mind. This is also a transmission revealed by Mañjuśrī to one of the founders of the Sakya tradition, Sachen Kunga Nyingpo, in which Mañjuśrī said, If you think of this life, you are not a dharma practitioner.

If you think of future lives, you do not have renunciation. If you think of yourself, you do not have bodhicitta. And if you think of the nature of phenomena, you lack the view of emptiness. So this very powerful teaching may actually have been rephrased by Je Tsongkhapa as the three principles of the path. For myself, I have always found the first aspect of parting from the Four Attachments very powerful.

When Mañjuśrī says to Sachen Kunga Nyingpo, If you think of this life, you are not a Dharma practitioner. How many of us qualify as Dharma practitioners in that case? Since this life tends to be the overwhelming dominant of our preoccupations. Yet, as Atisha famously said to one of his disciples who was asking him whether if he practiced there would be benefit for this life, he said, For future lives, yes. For this life, he said, I couldn’t say.

So the goal of Buddhist practice starts with the next life. Then there’s benefit for this life. There’s no debate about that. If we engage in the Buddhist practices of meditation, the mind is pacified, then this mental pacification enables us to live in a more harmonious way. As Āryadeva famously said in the 400, The high suffer in their minds, the low suffer in their bodies.

Day by day the world is overcome by these two. The high means people like us, Australians who have enough to eat, who have universal medical coverage, benefits coming out their ears, and yet the level of mental suffering is horrific. The low are people I used to meet in India. We have no universal health coverage, no benefits of any type, no rights of any type. In this country, if you go to the police, you work on the assumption that the police is at your service.

In India, your main goal is not to get beaten up by the police. It’s a very different universe. So the high those in this country suffer mentally, the low suffer in their bodies, but the reality of suffering is universal. And then, moving onwards to how to listen to the teachings. As we said, the goal of the teachings is not to increase one’s learning, it is not a way of pleasantly passing an afternoon, it is to transform the mind, and the mind has to be assessed in the light of the teaching.

So attending teachings is a form of meditation, it is a form of analytical meditation. Now this can only occur if the mind is open to the teachings. Specifically, is said that the recipient must not be like an upside down vase, the recipient must not be like a vase which is contaminated, and the recipient, in other words, the person listening to the teachings, must not be like a hollow vase. What is meant by this is a vase which is upside down is a vase in which water cannot penetrate. So it is very possible to attend Buddhist teachings with a state of mind, which is one I’m going to go to check, they say this is interesting and queer, sit there and nothing actually has penetrated the mind.

There has not been an assessment of the mind in relation to the teachings, then perhaps it’s better to go to the movies. It’s more entertaining. Then the contaminated vessel is a mind which attends a teaching with a wrong motivation. This unfortunately is extremely easy for us to have. It’s very easy to attend, especially in the great monasteries, teachings with the wish to become more learned than other monks who has to pass the exams better.

This is a wrong motivation. It’s very easy to attend teachings to make friends, it’s the wrong motivation. It’s very easy to attend teachings with perhaps the motivation to criticize the teacher. Again, this prevents the mind from connecting with the teaching. There has to be an initial critical stance, but eventually the goal of the teachings is to transform the mind.

If the mind is not open to what the teacher says, that transformation cannot occur. Finally, our biggest problem is being like an upside down vase. In other words, it comes in one ear, it goes out through the other. Westerners in particular have a very poorly developed auditory memory. We have an excellent visual memory, which is why I have given you charts.

We tend to have, by Asian standards, a pathetic auditory memory. I remember when I was at Sera Je that my teacher would give quotes from texts or definitions, whole paragraphs, and he would recite them verbally three times, and we were expected to have them memorized. All my classmates did. I was that busy. I mean, they are very kind to me, you know, but I could just sense, you know, a mixture of compassion and pity.

I think for Westerners we have to take notes. Then, we will now address having covered the greatness of the teacher, the greatness of the teaching, and how to listen to these teachings, the intended trainee for whom the three principles of the path was pronounced. The three principles of the path is a rather uncommon teaching of Je Tsongkhapa. To be frank with you, it wasn’t intended for everybody. Lamrim Chenmo was written with the general trainees in mind, and then Je Tsongkhapa came up with shorter versions, the middling Lamrim and the abbreviated Lamrim for students who had less time.

But the three principles of the path were written for one specific student of Jetsün Tsongkhapa, who was called Tsako, the lord of Tsako, Ngawang Drakpa, a layperson who accompanied Je Tsongkhapa throughout much of his life. By all accounts an extraordinary practitioner and a Tibetan aristocrat, who it is said reached the state of Yogananda, full enlightenment, the following life. Because Je Tsongkhapa composed the Three Principles of the Path, the Tsako Ngawang Drakpa, the presentation of the Three Principles of the Path is somewhat different from the presentation in Lamrim. His Holiness has pointed out, and I think it is a very sharp and acute comment, that it is to do a little bit of an injustice to the three principles of the path, to present them by forcing them into the Lamrim framework. The Lamrim framework is implicit, but if you read the three principles of the path, it is striking to see how little coverage is given to the path, what we call the path of the being of small scope.

It’s addressed in a couple lines. Great coverage is given to the development of definite emergence, which is the practice of the being of middling scope. And most of the treaties is dedicated to the practices of bodhicitta and of the mind which realizes the view. His Holiness feels, and I think it is it is probably a reflection of reality, because Tsako Ngawang Drakpa had already reached the level of a being of the middling scope, and therefore there was no benefit for him in emphasizing greatly the purposes of the being of small scope. They’re present in the preliminaries, they’re present, but they are not emphasized strongly.

And then one issue we will address in the last conference is the uncommon presentation of emptiness within the three principles of the path. Uncommon because it actually is from the beginning the Prāsaṇgika presentation of emptiness, where appearance refutes the extreme of existence and where emptiness refutes the extreme of non existence. Whereas in all of the other Lamrim treatises of Je Tsongkhapa, it is the opposite. Again, this is something we will address in the last conference. I will go with it fairly lightly, because it’s a difficult point.

It was specifically addressed to who was at that level of practice. For us it is not easy to understand. And now, I would like to start directly with the text, and we will take a tea break in a couple of minutes. So if you could pass to your text of the three principles of the path, which is one of the handouts. So what I have done is I have newly translated this text, the emphasis on accuracy, not on fluent style in English, and what I have also done is I have interwoven it with the outline from His Holiness’s commentary on the three principles of the path, which is a magnificent commentary, unfortunately untranslated as yet in English.

It was a cycle of oral teachings the Dalai Lama gave in Russia, to the Buryat, Kalamuks and Mongols, where he really drew very much from his own experience to present a few principles of the path. Now in the Tibetan tradition, all four Tibetan traditions, are given an importance which are not given in the West. Typically monk from one of the Buddhist monasteries, before receiving teachings in a text, will memorize the text completely. If he’s incapable to do so, he would memorize the outline. So I don’t think there’s a single westerner who, if as Richard when studying law in England, would memorize the outline of his law textbook.

It seems seems improbable. But this is a very powerful approach, because the outline is then used in meditation to structure the meditation. So if one meditates on the three principles of the path, and if one did it in the traditional Tibetan way, one would not only memorize the text, one would memorize the outline, and one would use the outline and the text to perform this alternative analytical and concentration meditation, which we are taught to do. So if we now take the root text, the name of the treatise is the root of the three principles of the path uttered by the noble Lama Tsongkhapa. The very fact that there is no passage after this, no verse after this, giving the Sanskrit name indicates that this is an indigenous Tibetan treatise.

This is not a treatise which goes back to India before the transmission of Buddhism to Tibet. The second outline is the homage in the pledge to compose. These are uttered for karmic reasons. The homage generally indicates the category of text to which the text belongs. Does it belong to the Sūtrayāna, does it belong to the Abhidharma teachings or does it belong to the connection of Vinaya?

Here, general homage is paid to the Gurus in general. It’s not a text which belongs to any of those three specific categories, it actually encompasses all three. The pledge to compose is specifically made for comic reasons, to eliminate interferences to the composition of the text. By making this pledge one creates a dependent origination for the text to actually be completed. Now the homage, I think, is very important for us.

I prostrate to the noble gurus clearly indicates that Je Tsongkhapa sees himself not as an originator, but as a transmitter. This is very alien to the western mindset, where the value of a scholar or an academic is seen in the degree of innovation of his work. I remember I used to have these exquisite conversations with geishes at Seraje, and there’s this very elegant Tibetan way of damning someone by faint praise. The way it’s done in Tibetan is when you’re looking at someone who has meteoric success in the monasteries and has started publishing, to start by saying, Yes, he writes a lot. Everyone looks at you, Yes, he does publish a lot.

You look the pause, and then you’re saying, it’s new. Yes. It’s new. Then you’re saying, maybe it’s not what his teachers taught you. And then they all say, oh, we cannot say that.

Now this is very common. It’s a different outlook on creation. Creation in the Buddhist perspective, especially in the Tibetan approach, occurs within a tradition. So by paying homage to the noble Gurus, Je Tsongkhapa is affirming very clearly, he is merely transmitting something. And then the following verse is actually very elegantly defined by Geshe-la Nayantarai Lama as a recapitulation of the three principles of the path.

The term recapitulation is mine, actually. We have three verses, each of which gives the context of the three principles of the path. The first verse, verse 2.3.1, the meaning of the essence of all the teachings of the conquerors refers to definite emergence, to what is commonly called renunciation. The second verse, bodhicitta, the path praised by the holy children of the conquerors, and the third verse refers to emptiness and that gateway for the fortunate desiring liberation. These three verses are the three principles of the past, you actually do not have to recite it when you have recited these three verses.

The first verse states that definite emergence is the meaning of the essence of all the teachings of the conquerors. In other words, the sum total of the Buddhist teachings is rooted in renunciation, is rooted in definite emergence. Without definite emergence there is no liberation, since the motivation for liberation is absent. There is no full enlightenment, since it is on the basis of definite emergence that compassion for others can arise, and therefore there is, as Rinpoche said magnificently last Wednesday, neither Hīnayāna nor Mahāyāna. So for this reason Je Tsongkhapa says the meaning of the essence of all the teachings of the conqueror.

Both the Hīnayāna teachings and the Mahāyāna teachings and the Tantric teachings are rooted in renunciation. A practice of tantra which is not rooted in renunciation is not a practice of Buddhist tantra. It is a destructive practice, which causes the increase, the enhancement of the delusions, which does not cause the elimination of the delusions. Therefore an understanding of what definite emergence, what renunciation is, is what we will focus upon today. Then I will address quickly the two other verses, that path the path praised by the holy children of the conquerors.

There’s a debate regarding this verse, it is generally considered to refer to bodhicitta, but Gyaltsab Je, Je Tsongkhapa’s foremost disciple, according to some, considered that it referred to the view of emptiness. He is unique in that viewpoint. I actually have not traced the source in Gyaltsab Je, I do not know what his reasoning is. Otherwise, the totality of the Gelug tradition views his second verse, the path praised by the holy children of the conquerors, as referring to bodhicitta. Since bodhicitta, the mind wishing to attain full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, is the only gateway to the Mahāyāna.

It is the only way, the only motivation which actually can impel us to full enlightenment. None of the other motivations do. And finally, the view of emptiness and that gateway for the fortunate desiring liberation. This actually refers to the fact that this treatise is written from the Prāsaṇgika viewpoint. The Prāsaṇgika viewpoint, realization of the praPrasangikaka view, the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka view, is indispensable even for liberation.

It is not possible according to Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka to gain liberation based on any of the lower views of the selflessness of persons or phenomena. It is probable that Je Tsongkhapa is explicitly here intimating that he’s following the Prāsaṇgika view because of the intended trinity of the three principles of the path. Tsako Ngawang Drakpa almost certainly was a Prāsaṇgika, and Je Tsongkhapa is clearly addressing these treaties to him and saying, without the Prāsaṇgika view, let alone full enlightenment, liberation is not possible. Now, this is not, for instance, the viewpoint of the other Mādhyamika schools, let’s say Svatāntrika Mādhyamika, let alone of the Cittamātra school. The final verse in the homage and pledge to compose is a statement of humility, which I personally find very powerful.

I will explain as best I can. This is the foremost scholar of his age, and perhaps one of the foremost meditators of that age, the founder of a Ganden monastery, who very clearly expresses his own incapacity in explaining the full depth of the teachings. Again, this is very alien for us as westerners. Instead of promoting himself, Je Tsongkhapa deprecates himself. That attitude is an attitude which guarantees that the three principles of the past will be of benefit to others.

Then I would propose to you that we take a short tea break, maybe ten minutes, and when we will come back we will complete the presentation of this section of the text and give a more general presentation of the path from the standpoint of Basis, Path and Fruit. Thank you very much. So we will move onwards with the third outline of the three principles of the path in your translation, and then we will try to cover briefly a bit the background in which renunciation is generated to try to understand what definite emergence of renunciation is. So the third outline is beseeching suitable vessels to listen. This is a request by the author, Je Tsongkhapa, for his students, those who are recipients of this teaching.

In other words, himself and those like him, to listen. Those who do not lust after the happiness of existence. The Tibetan here is very strong. It’s It is the happiness happiness not of the samsaric existence or life, of existence, of actual existence seen as identical with cyclic existence. It’s obviously a poetic expression.

And by putting effort into making a life of leisure and endowment meaningful, the life of leisure and endowment here refers to what is commonly called the precious human rebirth. A life which has a human life which has the eight freedoms and the 10 endowments. This is not an ordinary human rebirth. Among the sum total of living beings in this world of ours, a very small minority are mammals. Within that, an even smaller minority are human.

Within human within human beings, those who actually have some of the eight and some of the 10 qualities are rare. To have what is called a fully qualified precious human rebirth with all of the eight freedoms and all of the 10 qualities is perhaps in this day and age, if not impossible, difficult, very difficult, because a Buddha is no longer in existence. So one of the 10 endowments already cannot be satisfied. Then, certainly in our case as Westerners, we are not born in a central land. A central land is a land in which the Buddha’s teachings are widespread, and widespread here refers to the presence of the Buddha’s teachings from the standpoint of sūtra, where it is the presence of monasteries with a quorum technically of at least 10 monks, which indicates that the Buddhist teachings are present from the standpoint of Sutrayama.

And from the standpoint of tantra it is the presence of the transmission of the Guhyasamāja tantra. Now, it is not clear that most Western countries would qualify as central lands under these criteria. Perhaps Australia has monasteries, perhaps it would be a central land from the standpoint of Sūtrayāna, certainly not from the standpoint of Tantrayāna. India would be a central land to this day, because in India we have both the great monasteries and we have the Tantric College of Gyume and Gyuto, where the Guhyasamāja tantra is transmitted, the actual lineage is present, it is recited and the commentaries are transmitted. So such a human rebirth with the eight freedoms and the 10 endamas is rare.

This is a perfect basis for Dharma practice. In our case we have a partial basis, we have a connection with the teachings, otherwise we would not be here. We have an interest. Then we have to try to create this perfect basis for the future. From a Buddhist standpoint, as Khensur Rinpoche magnificently explained, every single element of a human rebirth of freedom and endowment has its own specific causes.

Rebirth as a human being is rooted in practice of ethics in a previous life. If we want rebirth as a human being in a future life, we must practice a form of ethics in this life. The minimum being abstention from the 10 non virtuous deeds or perhaps, as Rinpoche suggested on Wednesday, abstention from one non virtuous deed might lead to a human rebirth, not a precious human rebirth by any means, but a human rebirth. Then a much sounder basis of ethics is actually the abandonment of non virtuous deeds, which occurs with the various levels of vows, either lay vows or novice vows or the vows of one who is fully ordained, a bhikṣu, or the transmission is lost but in the old days a bhikṣu ni. These are the soundest basis for ethics.

In addition to this, the practice of the other perfections is necessary as cooperating conditions, the practice of generosity, to have a modicum of material facility. If we in this room eat to our hunger, it is because we practice generosity in past lives. If we want to eat to our hunger in the future, let alone have the benefits the Australian government gives you, then one has to practice generosity in this life. Then the practice of forbearance, of patience, is necessary to have a peaceful mind, an untroubled mind. It is quite easy to recognize those who have not practiced forbearance in past lives.

The mind is disturbed, the mind is rough. And then the mean, the face. Physical beauty is a direct corollary of the practice of patients in past lives. So if we want not only a human rebirth in the future, but a human rebirth with wealth or a molecule of material facility, and with a good physical appearance, we have to practice generosity and patience. Then, on top of this, if we want a precious human rebirth, we must practice the causes for each of the eight freedoms and each of the 10 endowments.

For instance, to take only one example, if we want to be free from rebirth as someone who is dumb or who is mute. In other words, someone who cannot communicate, whatever the cause of this might be, a physical or mental impairment, then we must not create the causes for that. Typical causes would be, for instance, making jokes about people who have mental difficulties or cannot express themselves clearly. This creates the karma for oneself to experience this. Likewise, within the 10 endowments, if we want to be reborn in a central land, in other words, in a land where the Buddhist teachings are present, then from our side we have to create the causes for this.

The causes are typically to create in this life some type of connection with the Buddhist teachings of whatever nature it might be. If we analyze carefully, we can see that it is not an easy thing to create the collection of causes for a human rebirth of freedom and endowments, and we must engage in karmic strategies to do this. It is not enough to just figure, I come to the center and I’m a pretty decent person, it’s going to take care of itself. It doesn’t. We must create karmic strategies, and to create karmic strategies we must understand how karma works.

And then if we analyze what is the cause of a human rebirth, what is the cause of each of the eight freedoms, seeing that clearly, what is the cause of each of the 10 endowments, the five for oneself, the five from the standpoint of the environment, then strategically we create these, and as Rinpoche explained very clearly, on top of this creation of a collection of 19 causes, 18 causes for the freedoms and endowments and one for just the basis of the physical human rebirth, the body, on top of these 19 separate causes, we must have the power of intention. What is called in Tibet in the power of prayer, but prayer is not understood here in the monotheistic sense of the term. Prayer is understood as a powerful aspiration for this. Then we’re in exactly the situation of someone whose car has gasoline and whose steering wheel works. The gasoline of the eight the 19 causes.

The steering wheel is the intention. If you’ve got gasoline in the car and your steering wheel works, you can start the car and you can roll in the direction you choose. If you have no gasoline, if the causes are not there, you can pray as much as you want. There’s no gasoline. And if the steering wheel works beautifully, you’ve just had the car revised and you haven’t filled her up, You can turn it on you want, staying where you are.

It does not work. You need the gasoline, need the causes, the karmic causes. So we have to engage from our standpoint in karmic strategies, and for this, we must understand karma. To understand karma, we have to study. Then when one starts seeing one’s life in this way, one’s outlook on existence changes.

One becomes very careful in what one does, because what we do has weight. One becomes more energetic because one realizes that time is short. These causes must be accumulated. It’s very easy to accumulate a completely different set of causes. It’s very easy casually to create the causes for an animal rebirth, casually.

It’s very easy through delighting in the company of animals or imitating the bodily postures of animals without any intent to be reborn as an animal to nonetheless partially create some of the causes. For this reason, we have to be wary. We have to be careful. Because karma is often misunderstood by Westerners who come to Buddhism as an Indian or Asian equivalent of the Judeo Christian system of ethics. You are good, you are rewarded, you are bad, you are punished.

Reward and punishment are absent from the notion of karma. There’s no there’s no such thing as reward or punishment. Karma is a physical law, or should I say a mental law, connects the mind with the body. It’s precisely for this reason that Westerners tend to reject the statements by great Tibetan masters, as statements bowed in Tibetan culture, that habituation to certain behavior creates a comma for a certain rebirth. For instance, when we make prostrations, it’s extremely important to make them correctly because prostrations are done to accumulate merit.

There’s a strong motivation, and in addition, it’s a deed which which is repeated many times. Then all of the great teachers, and it’s rooted in which is liberation in the palm of your hand and can can be traced further back, say that when one prostrates, one should insplay one’s fingers. I remember it was in the first teachings I translated by a marvelous old Geshe from Kham, Geshe Rabten’s brother, Geshe Buge. And he explained quite seriously to an audience audience of Swiss academics and Beauvoirs that if you prostrate it in this way, you created the color to be reborn as a spider. So I was in something akin to panic as I was translating these books.

I was not quite sure I had fully understood. And the audience went from shock to hilarious laughter. Because for them, karma was something linked to morality. And this was a deal which was done with no intent to be reborn as a spider. Then how could it cause that?

It was just an accident, you know. Yet it is habituation to a certain type of behavior. So it is very important for us to be aware of the baggage we bring with us in an attempt to understand Buddhism, and leave that baggage behind, and try to understand the teachings purely on their own terms, then we see if we can accept or not. So we have covered at present the request. And before broaching on page two, the minor definite emergence, I would actually like to cover briefly some core concepts in terms of basis, path, result, which will be of help to us.

Many of you know these already, I apologize, but I think it will be useful to all of us. It’s a standard Buddhist presentation to present the path in the broadest sense of terms of the terms, in terms of the basis, in other words, the condition we are in at present, the path, which is the mental training, between the road we travel, and the result of the fruit, which is the goal we are aiming for. This is very beneficial because we understand exactly our situation and where we intend to go. Now the basis for all of us is the five aggregates. This is an arbitrary division of beings.

The Buddha could perfectly have taught a division of beings into six or three. Five was very convenient. Of these five, the first, the so called form aggregate, is matter. It’s our physical body. Most, but by no means all beings in cyclic existence have physical bodies, coarse physical bodies.

Then the remaining four are mental. And they are listed on your sheet concepts in terms of basis, path, and result. We have the aggregate of feeling, the aggregate of discrimination, the aggregate of compositional factors, and of consciousness. They are divided in this way mainly because of the importance they play. Feelings play an extremely important role in our life, and therefore, they are grouped as one of the categories of the aggregates.

The aggregates of the feeling divided into happy, neutral and unhappy feelings. Discrimination is that set of mental factors which ascertains nature of things, which names things, for instance, which recognizes a chair as a chair, a friend as a friend. The fourth aggregate, compositional factors, is the disgraceful aggregate of the five. It’s the if forgive you me for the term, it’s a dustbin where everything which doesn’t fit in the remaining four goes. So karma goes there, karmic imprints goes there.

Anything we can’t fit anywhere else is a compositional factor. Compositional simply means it is composed of parts. It’s a factor which is impermanent. And the fifth factor is consciousness. Now all four are consciousnesses, but the fifth is pure consciousness.

Why is this presentation in aggregates adopted? Why was it adopted by the Buddha? To point out implicitly the lack of existence of a self. By indicating that beings are composed of five aggregates, and aggregates just mean collections. In Tibetan, the term is, means just a heap.

Not a structured heap, but like a heap of sand. It’s just a massive things with no particular connection. By teaching that beings are composed of five aggregates, what Buddha taught implicitly is that beings have no inherently existing self, no ātman, in other words. You just have multiple causal streams of matter, which is our body. The causal stream of my body goes from birth to death.

Then our feelings, which are constantly changing from one to the other, from happy to neutral to unhappy and back. Then streams of discrimination, of compositional factors, and of consciousness. There is nothing else but that. So this is the raison d’etre of the Buddhist teachings of beings as being constituted of five aggregates. And this leads us to a definition of cyclic existence.

We talk of saṃsāra, cyclic existence all the time. It’s sort of a part of the Buddhist jargon and centers. What is saṃsāra? So I remember when I visited the Khensur Rinpoche’s master at Sera Je, who was my teacher, Khensur Ugyen Tseten, who has regrettably left us. Was an extraordinary teacher, very powerful in his manner of teaching.

And he must have sensed that something was wrong with my own understanding of saṃsāra, because one day when I went to see him, we were having tea, and he said, So this saṃsāra you’re working so hard to escape from, what is it? He said, is it this? He put it at the table. I said, no. He said, is it that?

Is it the walls? I said, no. I said, what is it? And then I gave him the debate definition, which I gave you here. It’s a continuum of the five contaminated aggregates.

And said, yes. In other words, it’s this. So saṃsāra is nothing else but these five aggregates in their contaminated states. So when we speak of path, basis, path, result, We’re speaking of a process where we move from the contaminated five aggregates by means of the path, which is a totality of practices, to the uncontaminated five aggregates of an enlightened being. This is the totality of the Buddhist teachings.

It’s a process of transition from all five contaminated aggregates contaminated form, contaminated feeding, contaminated discrimination, contaminated composition of factors, and contaminated consciousness, to the five uncontaminated aggregates of a Buddha. The uncontaminated form body of the Buddha, the uncontaminated feeling aggregate of the Buddha, the uncontaminated aggregate of discrimination of compositional factors, and the uncontaminated aggregate of consciousness. So if one understands this well, the basis for Tantric practice are quite soundly laid. And then, cyclic existence can be seen as twofold. Our individual cyclic existence and cyclic existence in general.

My individual cyclic existence is my personal continuum of the five contaminated aggregates. It is the continuum of my contaminated bodily aggregate, which starts at conception, and from a standpoint, if we look at the subtle wind, beginningless. But from a Suriname standpoint, it starts at conception. And my four contaminated mental act. And this goes back infinitely in time.

It has no beginning and it has no end. There is nothing else in my own saṃsāra but those five aggregates. Your saṃsāra is those five contaminated aggregates. Everyone’s saṃsāra in this room is their own five contaminated aggregates. saṃsāra in general is a sum total of the five contaminated aggregates of all beings.

saṃsāra is not in any sense the physical world. So it is in this context that the translation of the Tibetan term by renunciation is very problematical. Renunciation in Tibetan is said I will write it in a very sort of coarse phonetic transliteration. Means definite or certain. Means to arise or to leave.

It is the definite arising from saṃsāra or the definite emergence from saṃsāra. In other words, the definite emergence from what? From our own five contaminated aggregates, nothing else. When we translate as renunciation, for Westerners this ties in with a very Christian perspective on renunciation, which is you take your knapsack and you go to that cave in the woods and you live in that cave in the woods, And that has no connection whatsoever to renunciation. So at present, on this basis, I would like to make a brief presentation of the four noble truths, the two first truths, and then define renunciation in terms of the four noble truths, and then we will return to Je Tsongkhapa’s root text.

So as you know, when the Buddha turned the first wheel of the law, he taught specifically the Four Noble Truths. This is the foundational teaching of the Buddha. And His Holiness for this reason, I have relied in this presentation heavily on His Holiness’s lamp on the three principles of the path, these untranslated teachings given to the Buryats, His Holiness relies heavily on the Four Noble Truths of this presentation, because it it has a particular connection with the direct experience of Buddha Śākyamūni. The Four Noble Truths are the first Noble Truths, the Noble Truth of suffering, The second noble truth on your concepts page, the noble truth of the origin of suffering. The third noble truth, the noble truth of the cessation of suffering.

And the fourth noble truth, the noble truth of the path. These four noble truths can be broadly understood in terms of two categories. Something which is to be abandoned and something which is to be realized. The first two noble truths are the object of abandonment. The last two noble truths are what is to be realized.

So the noble truth of suffering and the noble truth of the origin of suffering are what is to be abandoned. The noble truth of cessation and the noble truth of the path to cessation are what is to be realized. If we subdivide them more, the noble truth of suffering is Buddha’s analysis of the existential predicament of beings in the world. And here, it is very important to understand clearly what the Buddha meant by suffering and what he did not mean by suffering. This has led to many misunderstandings.

Suffering does not refer here to pain, physical pain. There is a threefold subdivision of suffering into the suffering of suffering, which is physical pain, the suffering of change and all pervasive suffering. Buddha’s understanding of our present state within cyclic existence, within saṃsāra, is that every single experience we have is of the nature of one of these three sufferings. Because you will see this if you turn to page two, the middle of page two. This threefold subdivision of suffering is directly connected to the three subdivisions of feeling, the feeling aggregate.

So the suffering of suffering is nothing else but the feeling of pain. The suffering of change is nothing else but the feeling of happiness. All pervasive suffering can be any of the three, but it’s mainly the neutral sensation. Now why is this the case? I mean, it’s self evident to us that with regard of regarding the first subdivision of suffering, the suffering of suffering, pain is pain.

We don’t need any particular explanations for this. It seems perverse, if you’re not a Buddhist, to be told that happiness is suffering too. That happiness is a suffering of change. What did the Buddha mean? What the Buddha meant in a nutshell is that the experience of happiness is nothing else but an increase in the threshold of perception of pain, of suffering, which gives a temporary sensation of relief.

Happiness, therefore, can be understood as relief. This is best understood to one’s own direct experience. I think it is if one engages in Satipatthana meditation that this becomes evident. Until then, it is very difficult. But when one engages in Satipatthana, one actually realizes that let alone the fact that we’re dealing with the normal suffering of the body, the joints and so forth, the moment the mind is focused on an object, in this case, the flow or the sensation of the flow of the breath at the tip of the nose, or Mahasi Sayadaw’s technique, which is easier for us, the movement of the abdomen.

At that moment, one becomes awash in an amazing amount of unpleasant sensations. The body is itching and scratching, and it is just like the whole thing is alive with all sorts of unpleasant sensations. And beginners in Satipatthana wonder what precisely is going on. They want to scratch, they want to stand up, they want to leave, they want to drink, want to stop drinking, they want to go to the loo, you know. What has happened in a nutshell is that the threshold for our noticing of pain has dropped because of concentration.

It’s not that suddenly we are itching more than usual. It is that all the itching which is automatically eliminated by mental filters is now evident. The more one practices, the more this experience becomes powerful. And then one can get, and I think it is one of the main goals, certainly from the Mahāyāna perspective, of the practice of the close placement of mindfulness, what is called Satipatthana in the Theravāda tradition. As one practices, it becomes very evident that what we call pleasurable sensations are nothing else but a reduction in the level of pain.

It is a source, for instance, of pleasure and happiness for me after sitting down quite a while to rise. Now there’s nothing in rising which causes happiness. What happens is a reduction in the level of pain which had reached above that threshold to be noticed. If I stay in exactly this position without doing anything, eventually the level of pain will rise above the threshold of my filters and I will notice it again, at which point I will sit again. My entire life in the quest for pleasure is bound up in this.

And you can extrapolate this to all of the pleasurable experience. I took the case of bodily pleasures. You can extrapolate it to relationships. Most of us in this room have had a fair amount of experience in this. You all know that you have great hopes at the beginning, great expectations, and you start and you peak, and it’s basically downhill from there, isn’t it?

Then there’s only one question: how far down do you go? Now, you would think that one time would do the job, wouldn’t it? It doesn’t. We start again. Great hopes, great fantasies, peak downhill.

We have the same experience in our relation to money, same experience in our relation to objects of consumption, and in this way a human life is wasted. The third category of suffering is all pervasive suffering, the suffering of compositional phenomenon, which is the fundamental Buddhist assertion. The fundamental assertion of the Buddha when he taught the first noble truth is that all of saṃsāra is pervaded by the potentiality for suffering. And this is what is understood by all pervasive suffering. Because the aggregates we have are contaminated, These aggregates function as a basis for suffering.

It is in their nature as contaminated aggregates to function as a basis for suffering. Then nothing can be hoped from them than suffering. The only question from our standpoint is, do we recognize this suffering as suffering or not? A non practitioner recognizes a suffering of suffering as suffering. A practitioner recognizes the suffering of change as suffering.

Only someone who is moving towards liberation recognizes all pervasive suffering as suffering. And this leads us to the definition which I would like to propose to you. We perhaps cover quickly the second noble truth, and then move on to this definition. So Buddha has formulated the noble truth of suffering, which is our situation. Now the noble truth of suffering is a result.

It’s an effect. You might wonder why precisely Buddha taught an effect before he taught the cause. Simply because through teaching the effect first, Buddha Śākyamūni instilled in his disciples a wish to try to find a way out of this situation. And it is for this reason that the Buddha’s teachings are not pessimistic, because the Buddha does not just teach the first noble truth, in which case indeed they would be terrifyingly pessimistic teachings. The Buddha also teaches the second noble truth, which is the cause of suffering, the cause of the first noble truth, the noble truth of origination.

If there is a cause, there is a means to eliminate suffering. If suffering is a result, there is a cause for suffering, we eliminate the cause, we eliminate the result. The cause is not to be searched for in this life. In this life we are experiencing results sown long ago. The cause, which is the second noble truth and noble truth of origination, is karma and klesha.

Karma which we bring with us from past lives. How far back we do not know. The seeds are infinite in our mind. Infinite. Just scattered.

Refers to the afflictions. The afflictions are the water which causes the seeds of karma to mature. The afflictions are in this life. When they arise in this life, they cause the karma to mature. If they arise at the time of death, they cause that karma maturing at that point to impel us into another life of the nature of that karma.

Hence, the importance of controlling the mind in the death process. It is the most important period for mind training we have. That, above anything else we have done in this life, determines where we are reborn in the next life. One can be a reprobate, a criminal in this life. If at the time of death, the mind is virtuous, whatever virtuous comma there is will mature.

The next life will be good. One can have been a saint in this life. If there is anger in the mind at death, then one will be reborn in the lower realms. In this context, is it okay if we go a little bit beyond 04:00? In this context, I would like to read you, because this is heavy going, a poem to give you a sense of precisely how the wrong relation to the death process can be nefarious, and also just how dominant this viewpoint is.

It’s a poem which Dylan Thomas wrote two years before his his own death regarding his own father’s passing. And I’d like to read it to you because I think think it summarizes the Western attitude to the death process, what is seen as a worthy stance in the death process. And in the light of our discussion, you will see just how problematic such a viewpoint is. To give you a context, Dylan Thomas’ father had throat cancer, who was a militant atheist and died blind. But as hard a death as it gets, do not go gentle into that good night.

Not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. The wise men at their end know dark is right because their words had forked no lightning, they do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay.

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, and learned too late, they grieved it on its way. Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men near death, who see with blinding sight, blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. This is a dominant view of the culture. How many times have we heard of cancer patients being praised for fighting until the bitter end?

In other words, for struggling against the inevitable. What is being said is that indignation and anger are good within the death process. From a Buddhist standpoint, this is a complete aberration. It’s a complete aberration. So I wanted to read you Dylan Thomas’s poem because I feel poets sometimes express the spirit of the age better than most of us can.

And now having addressed the two noble truths, the two first noble truths, we are able to formulate some sort of a precise definition of definite emergence of renunciation. And this is actually when I drew from his holiness’s work, I have summarized it a little bit. You have it on page two of your text, your handout. Definite emergence is the aspiration to abandon the first two noble truths, noble truth of suffering and the cause of suffering, and to realize the third noble truth, the noble truth of cessation, the end of suffering, by means of the fourth noble truth, by means of the path. Anything else is not authentic definite emergence.

And then the remainder of this handout indicates the path to follow, as I pointed out. The path which is the fourth noble truth of the path and the result, the third noble truth of cessation. And at present we can now return to Je Tsongkhapa’s presentation of the mind of definite emergence, perhaps with a better understanding of what Je Tsongkhapa is saying in poetic terms. On page two of the translation of the three principles of the path. Je Tsongkhapa subdivides the presentation of the mind of definite emergence into three outlines.

The reason for generating the mind of definite emergence, the method for generating the mind of definite emergence, the measure of having generated definite emergence. The reason is an understanding of the two first noble truths. Noble truths of suffering and the cause of suffering. The method for generating definite emergence is nothing else but the fourth noble truth, the noble truth of the path. And the measure of having generated definite emergence is an indication of when or a criterion for when we have generated this mind of definite emergence from cyclic existence.

So if we work through the text of the three principles of the path, without pure definite emergence, there is no means to pacify the striving for the happy fruits of the ocean of existence. Inasmuch as the embodied are totally fettered by the desire for existence, Initially, you will search for definite emergence. The sonkapher makes or announces in this stanza a distinction which is to my knowledge unique to him, which is clarifying in the next stanza between contingent definite emergence and ultimate definite emergence. Contingent definite emergence is definite emergence from renunciation of this life. It is limited.

It is just renouncing the pleasures of the here and now. Definite, authentic definite emergence is that mind which we defined as the mind abandoning the first two noble truths and striving for the third noble truth by means of the fourth. It’s a mind which turns away from the totality of the cycle of reincarnations without exception. In the first verse of stanza 4.1, when Je Tsongkhapa says without pure definite emergence, he is referring to that second form of definite emergence. There is no means to pacify the striving for the happy fruits of the ocean of existence.

There is no means, in other words, to pacify the striving for happiness in future lives. In as much as the embodied refers to sentient beings here as the embodied in Tibetan. It is a poetic way of referring to the fact that the mind has taken corporality on, are totally fettered by the desire for existence. Throughout, Je Tsongkhapa uses the term existence again and again instead of speaking of cyclic existence to emphasize the radicality of the degree of disenchantment involved. We’re not talking of just giving up some minor things.

It is actually all five contaminated aggregates which are the problem. It is us in the fullest sense of the term. And us, life after life after life after life, which is this existence which is to be abandoned. Initially, you will search for definite emergence. So what is being taught here by Je Tsongkhapa is that this search for definite emergence is a foundation of the path, and that’s why this was the first verse in the homage, if you remember, when Je Tsongkhapa said, the meaning of the essence of all of the teachings of the conquerors, this refers to definite emergence.

The second stanza, the method for generating definite emergence, makes explicitly clear the distinction between the two forms of definite emergence, turning away from this life and turning away from future lives. This is very powerful. It’s quite easy to just speak in general of renunciation and of definite emergence and think, at some point in the future, renounce future lives, but right now, there’s no big rush. This is quite easy for us. But by this twofold division, is pointing out that both components of definite emergence are necessary.

A I use the term renunciation here. A renunciation to this life, as well as a renunciation to the totality of future lives which are on the horizon. And in turn, within the first two verses, presents the totality of the path of the being of small scope. This life of leisure and endowment is hard to find. This is teaching from the precious human rebirth of which we talked.

And life does not last. This teaches death and impermanence, which in the Lamrim context will be meditated upon through the three roots and the nine causes. Death is certain, the time of death is uncertain, at the time of death the only thing of benefit is Dharma practice. By habituating the mind, habituating His Holiness classes as meditating, turn away from the futilities of this life. So I’ve translated this futilities, a term which is in Tibetan reads nangshi.

In Tibetan, there’s no English equivalent, has two parts. Means appearance, means part. So these are fleeting partial appearances. Everything we experience in this life, everything we experience in future lives is just these fleeting appearances. People come in our lives, they go out.

Money comes in, it goes out. Health comes, it goes. Our bodies come, they go. The meaning is actually very close, I put in a footnote, to that of the term ‘valities’ in the book of Ecclesiastes. In Hebrew we have a term ‘hebel’ for ‘valities’.

It actually means a bubble in Hebrew. It’s exactly the meaning here. Our life is a bubble. It’s just something, you know, it’s fleeting appearance. There’s nothing less futilities.

For these futilities, we sacrifice our practice. So we must first turn away from the futilities of this life. And then in addition, Je Tsongkhapa, in the following two verses, presents the totality of the path of the being of small scope. So you can see the path of being of small and middling scope is presented in four verses. This is not exactly the main thrust of the three principles of the path.

Reflecting over and again on the infallibility of causality, this refers to the four main characteristics of karma, which are that karma is certain. Karma is magnifying, increasing other words. We do not encounter experiences of karma of which we have not created the cause. And the karma is or does not dissipate by its own power. These four general characteristics of karma are what Je Tsongkhapa refers to in the context of the infallibility of causality.

And on the sufferings of cyclic existence. This refers to the eight, the six and the three sufferings. Turn away from the futilities. Futilities here, it’s the same term as in the previous verse, nangshi, the ephemeral appearances of future lives. Instant.

It’s quite extraordinary, because Je Tsongkhapa is acknowledging that cyclic existence has marvels. I mean, how many of us travel the world to see the marvels of cyclic existence? To Fiji, to Haiti, to Hawaii, to Bali? Why do we travel if we don’t believe that there are marvels to cyclic existence? Someone who does not believe in the marvels of cyclic existence does not move from Adelaide.

So longing for the marvels of cyclic existence does not arise for even an instant. It is never present in the mind. If the mind striving for complete liberation arises day and night, at that point definite emergence has been born. So it is when this mind striving for the state of moksha, of liberation, from all three sufferings, the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, suffering, all pervasive suffering, arises spontaneously without effort from our part and continuously, day and night. When we awake and asleep, at that point and at that point alone, authentic definite emergence has been created.

Thank you very much. So we finished at 04:00 on the dot, and we have maybe ten minutes for some questions if there’s anything you would like me to try to answer. Depends what you’re meditating upon. Are you are you doing Satipatthana, are you doing śamatha, what is your focus, what is your practice? Visualization.

Then it should disappear. But if you do mindfulness meditation, then you are trying to generate mindfulness of the body, of the feelings, and of phenomena in general. And then you do this through focusing on one point, as you know, and noting what appears. So this, when I was young, was a very powerful set of meditations for me. My my root teacher, Geshe Rapten, received Mahasi Sayadaw in Switzerland.

You may know Mahasi Sayadaw had the reputation of being an arhat. So Geshe Rapten was extremely excited because it’s rare to receive refuge from an arhat. And he asked Mahasi Sayadaw, this great Burmese master, to come and give us refuge, and we had his teachings, his books in the library. It’s very helpful. His basic I think for us as Westerners, the combination of mindfulness practice and is the most powerful means to transform the mind.

Because teachings can be checked against the experience of Satipatthana. And then this realization that really it is not possible to give a human experience which is not of the nature suffering arises. And then, obviously, when one engages as you are in, practices of visualization, then the threshold would become very high. You wouldn’t notice. If you train, for instance, in which is basically related to what you were doing, you do not notice anything happening to the body, there’s no sensation.

But that sensation of happiness which arises through concentration is also contaminated. So it’s it’s big there’s a big debate between the Buddhist and the Hindu yogis. The Hindu yogis, the Sankhyas, the Vedantins, said that that experience of concentration is uncontaminated. Patanjali teaches in his Yoga Sutras that through the Dhyanas you can gain liberation from cyclic existence. The Buddhist rejoinder is that the experience of the Dhyanas is contaminated.

Through the dhyanas, you can gain rebirth in the formless realms. So the outlook of the dhyanas, the outlook on meditation is radically different. You could say in Hinduism meditation is a goal, in Buddhism it’s a means. Perhaps. Does that go towards answering your question?

Are there other questions? Yes. It’s incredibly difficult. I mean, we are saying is that there’s nothing within our experience which we can point at which is not of the nature of suffering. Very few people will accept this.

I mean, the first big obstacle is the suffering of change. It’s interesting that when Je Tsongkhapa presents the three sufferings in Lamrim Chenmo, he doesn’t present the suffering of suffering first, he presents the suffering of change first. It’s the most problematical one. Because it is very difficult for us to accept our happy experiences are suffering. And then to realize that all pervasive suffering, neutral feelings are of the nature of suffering, is very difficult.

I think the easiest way is to start with an understanding of the suffering of change. And to do that we have to examine pleasurable experiences, the peak pleasures in life, examine them analytically, try to understand what is happening. Is what we call pleasure pleasure or is it something else? I mean, if what we call pleasure is actually pleasure, then the eternal abiding in that state of pleasure should be very pleasant. It’s not necessarily the case.

So this calls for a lot of analyses and I think it is best done by combining the Lamrim teachings with one’s own direct experience. One of the big problems we have as Westerners and unfortunately the Tibetans too, is that we do not link the teachings with our experience. It remains a discipline we study on the outside. That does not help the mind. We have to check within ourselves, is it true?

Does my mind function in this way or not? We look at the cycle of imputation, what we would call in modern psychology fantasy, imputation, desire, satisfaction of desire and disappointment. It is a universal experience all of us have. I think there’s not a single thing any one of us has desired which has not been a source of disappointment. Then whether disappointment is acknowledged or not is another problem.

Our society discourages us from acknowledging disappointment in satisfaction. It’s discouraged. The foundations of our society like never before are built on an economy of desire. But if we analyze, we see it, whether it is desire for a car, desire for a camera, desire for a person, in every single case, the desire of the mind is the same. It is very difficult for us to get rid of this Judeo Christian heritage which sees some forms of desire as legitimate and other forms of desire as illegitimate.

And then we bring this with us in a Buddhist context. All forms of desire are illegitimate. Why? Because they do not see the object as it is. These are misleading minds, false minds, literally.

And whatever the object is is irrelevant. Whether it is desire, sexual desire for a man or a woman, whether it is desire for a car, desire for a house, desire for money, the object actually is is trite, it’s irrelevant. It is again and again this mind which sees much more there than actually is. Some philosophers have said this is motor of life. Berkson sent this in his theory of vitalism, this was motor of of life.

Buddhism, and perhaps one has to shock sometimes the audience to get a response, Buddhism is anti life. Is anti I think that’s what makes it so difficult. I have to analyse. I mean, I think, for Westerners, Buddhism is a tradition which only appeals to older persons who have life experience. We have enough life experience to have been disappointed again and again and again and again.

Then, at a certain point one wakes up and one realizes maybe maybe there’s something in the whole process which is flawed. I think it depends how you define fatalism. Buddhism is a is a middle road. I mean, our destiny is a bit akin to traveling on a road with very steep how do you say in English? You know Verges.

Verges. Very steep verges. So as long as we stay on the road, which is our comic destiny, if you want, it’s quite easy to travel there from point a to point b. As we try to move away from that, it gets ever more difficult. For instance, we take us in this room.

Every one of us was born a human being. We don’t realize it, but because of that birth we think a certain way. Animals think. Chimps, the evidence is in. Chimpanzees think.

Whales think. Dolphins think. They do not think the way we do by birth. So as human beings, we think a certain way. That is determined.

Then in this room, most of you were born in Australia. You think, maybe not all, but many, you think as Australians, the values of your culture are taken for granted. Now, some take all of them as granted, some take a large proportion. It’s a rare person who does not take any as granted. If you were born in another country, you would see things very differently.

I have Asian friends, and it’s quite interesting. Quite a few of them are trying to settle in Australia, and every single one of them has told told that they’ve noticed that their patience has dropped since they lived in Australia, they talk about it with each other. How living here has affected their sense of forbearance and patience, even though their life is much easier than let’s say in India, in Nepal or wherever. So to answer your question, I think you may be right that India perhaps has an excessively rigid view of calm and causality. I think the West has an excessively rigid view of freedom of choice.

And in some countries like The United States, freedom of choice is a cudgel used to beat those who do not measure up to an unrealistic standard. You know. Yes? I think if as you are doing so well one can connect the teachings to one’s experience, it is very powerful. I was lucky in my life, I had a tremendous amount of life experience and my father had yet more, you know.

I’m the son of refugees and the grandson of refugees, war refugees, you know. Then, I remember my father was not a religious man, and when I became a novice monk it was a source of considerable tension between us. But it was very amusing because when I talked to him about the Four Noble Truths, he looked at me in this typically Slavic way and said, No hot. It is evident. And it it was a very striking experience.

And I had the same experience with Russian friends in Estonia. You know? I had some Russian friends whose grandparents had, been in Estonia during the Nazi occupation, and other grandparents had been in Leningrad during the siege of Leningrad of Saint Petersburg. And they were talking about their experiences during the war, and you could see how it was self evident for them. These were very simple people, very simple.

I mean, the great specialty of one of the grannies was making myrtle flavored vodka. This was a sum total of her. But it was obvious for her and all these old ladies that life was an absolutely ghastly business, and that any reduction in the general level of suffering and pain was something to be grateful for. Now I think the curse in disguise of countries like Australia, which are very well off and very sheltered, is that you are protected from these realizations until basically, life springs on you from a darkened by alley with the axe. And you get told you have cancer, or the bank basically tells you you are bankrupt, or your partner leaves you.

And at this point, because a person has never come face to face with suffering and has bought into this whole fairy tale, it is a fairy tale, that this life is happiness and it’s just a matter of fine tuning it, if we fine tune it enough, it will be durably happy for all of us. The person goes to pieces. So oddly enough, have been struck over and again by the fact that Russians, whose society has been very harsh, take to the Buddhist teachings with a conviction to which most Westerners cannot. It’s been very interesting to see that. Of course it was an incredibly Buddhist perspective because the value of contentment, what it depends called chog she, is something which we Westerners suffer from the lack of.

Contentment means just accepting our lot in life. And to a degree Richard is right, I mean, there is an element of fatalism in Buddhism. Much of our lot in life is determined. I would not be who I am if my father had not had a heart attack at 13, when I was 13, you know. Then, you know, you think as a result of that, you know.

Then you would not be who you are if you didn’t have these experiences. We do not recollect. There’s a very interesting technique of meditation. I’ve never it has never been taught to me, so I don’t want to even formally recommend it, but I can find it very helpful for myself. You can want you might want to try it.

It is to start where you are at present. I am 48 years old, for instance. Then to take your present situation as a 40 year old or whatever your age might be, and to search for the cause one year ago of everything which led you to where you are now. So if I live in a certain house at present, what led me there one year ago? If I have health problems at present or don’t have health problems, what led me there from one year ago?

Then to move back another year, to move back in time using your memory year by year by year, as far back as you can go. So people can go back to age five, I can go back to age three, you know? And then if you do that, and then you go back forwards from age three to whatever your age is, or age five to whatever your age is, you suddenly realize that there’s a causal chain there. There’s actually very little margin of maneuver. We like to see of ourselves as free independent agents, something standing alone there inside the five aggregates.

But if you go down this causal chain backwards in time and then forwards, you realize that so much is determined that it is actually difficult to posit a free choice. If you do it carefully, it’s very, very difficult to posit one choice where you were completely free. Nothing influenced the choice between the two options. And I think that gives one an idea if one extrapolates it to the cycle of lives, of how the causal continuum of a being functions. That’s only in one life.

That’s where we have memory. We don’t have memory further back. It’s interesting how people often refer to black. Yeah. So I’m sorry we talked a lot today.

Are there any other questions? It will ripen somewhere down the line. But why cause the if that is with my hand, why do I have this anger? Normally, if you meditate regularly, you should not become angry at the time of death. Normally.

But our goal is to prepare for that moment because that last conceptual mind before we enter the full range of the death process, that last instant, that determines where we go. This is what basically Vasubandhu teaches in Abhidharmakośa. Then, the most important thing in the death process is to calm the mind. By whatever means are possible within the culture. It doesn’t have to be Buddhist.

If the person is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever. If they’re atheist, one does not expose them to religion. This will make them upset. If they are Jewish, one exposes them to the Jewish tradition. If they are Buddhist, one puts a picture of their teacher in front of them, if they have a good connection with their teacher.

Then if they don’t, one doesn’t. But the goal is that that mind be very smooth, calm, and peaceful. You’ve been a wonderful loudspeaker for your teachers and we thank you very much. And I’m sure that we have a lot to contemplate and to meditate upon, so thank you so much. And I just like to draw your attention to the next seminar.

The next is on the Saturday November 20, bodhicitta. And then the December 18, the view emptiness. So I’d like to the November 20 and the December 18. And so I’d just like you to join with me to thank Ilya for being a wonderful loudspeaker.