Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Śāntideva’s image of a blind turtle surfacing from the ocean floor once every hundred years — seeking to thread its head through a single floating golden yoke — opens this 40-minute commentary by Khensur Rinpoche on the rarity of precious human rebirth. He then unpacks the yoke’s single hole as a symbol for refuge in the Three Jewels: the one doorway through which all Buddhist practice, including compassion meditation and mantra, must pass to be genuinely Buddhist. A Tibetan lama’s verse on how past ethical discipline as a monk produced his present human life grounds the point personally. The session closes with Q&A covering how craving acts as the activating condition ripening karmic seeds into a particular rebirth, the twelve links of dependent origination, and how present suffering can purify far greater future negative karma.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 3PA 1993 07 27.mp3
UUID: 93028eff-96c1-45f3-b7c9-674f82d78d7c
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: 3 Principal Aspects of the Path (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1993-07-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.0 minutes
Words: ~2,057
Sakura. Yeah. It’s a great turtle. To continue with the analogy, there is in this vast ocean a turtle, which is ourselves. And this turtle stays on the bottom of the ocean for a hundred years at a time.
And it rises to the surface once every hundred years. And we said that the ocean is analogous to cyclic existence. And within cyclic existence there are overall two categories of migrations or rebirths that we can take, either bad migrations or fortunate migrations or happy migrations. The time on the bottom of the ocean of cyclic existence is symbolic that we have accumulated a great deal of negative karma and most of the time we are spent in bad migrations, just as in the case of this turtle. But once in a while, due to having accumulated some positive karma in the past, we rise up out of our bad migrations and are able to achieve the level of a human life.
And this is analogous to this turtle once every hundred years rising to the surface of the ocean. And moreover this turtle is blind. And it being blind is analogous to, is symbolic of, the fact that we lack wisdom — the wisdom of what is to be adopted and what is to be rejected. And the golden yoke is floating here and there upon the water. Now this turtle only rises up from the bottom once every hundred years.
If it had eyes, it could look to the spot where the yoke is floating and be able to rise up and put its head through the yoke. But putting its head through the yoke is meeting the teachings of the Dharma. But in fact it’s blind. So, if we put all of these symbolisms together we can see that the turtle only rises once every hundred years. Moreover, it’s blind.
Moreover, the teachings never remain in one place for long. They’re always moving here and there. We can’t say that it’s impossible for this turtle to rise to the surface and put its head through the hole of this yoke, of this golden yoke, but it’s extremely difficult. And that is the analogy of the rarity, of the difficulty of finding such a human embodiment which we possess. It’s almost impossible.
And this golden yoke which is floating upon the surface of the ocean — it only has one hole in it. It doesn’t have many holes where the turtle can stick its head up through. So, the symbolism of the fact that this golden yoke, which is symbolic of the Buddhadharma, having only one hole is that there is only one entry way into the Buddhadharma and that is the going for refuge — the going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, the Three Jewels. This hole, this single hole, is symbolic of the one entry point into the Buddhadharma. This is why such great importance is placed upon refuge in our practice of Dharma.
That one takes a vow of refuge and this represents the entryway into the Buddhadharma. We can cultivate, we can meditate on impermanence, but without having entered into the Buddhadharma through refuge, it’s not a practice of Buddhism. We can meditate on emptiness, but unless we’ve gone for refuge, then it’s not a Buddhist practice. There are many practices of the cultivation of compassion. But unless one has combined that with having gone for refuge, then it was a meditation on compassion, cultivation of compassion.
It’s not a Buddhist practice. There is but this single entryway into Buddhist practice or doorway, just as in the case of a room — one has to, in order to get into the room, come in through the door. There is only one entryway into Buddhism or the practice of Buddhadharma — that of going for refuge. So there are many non-Buddhist practitioners of secret mantra.
So having gone for refuge to the Three Jewels, then engaging in its various practices — abandoning unskillful actions, engaging in what is to be adopted, rejecting what is to be rejected — cultivating love, compassion, the awakening heart, the awakening mind, meditating on secret mantra — having once gone for refuge, they all become a practice of the Buddhadharma. So, the fact of this blind turtle rising to the surface of the ocean once every hundred years and putting its head through the golden yoke — we can’t say that it’s impossible. It is possible, but we can begin to get some conception of how very difficult it would be. Chuck, I would do it.
Did you think it would be difficult? So our present human embodiment possessing these eighteen characteristics is not something which is simply found, but is in fact something which is extremely difficult to obtain. If we reflect in this manner, we can begin to appreciate that in our previous rebirth, what a wonderful person we must have been. How wise we were to have brought about our present human life with these eighteen characteristics. Oh.
Very, very good. Making use of this analogy we can begin to appreciate what a wonderful person we were, what great work, what a great practice we carried out in the past. But now we have to consider, well, are we creating the situation where we’re going to attain this again in the future? We have to look and see what is our situation. We can even do better in terms of our present human life.
We can attain even better embodiments in the future. We can, through our meditation and our practice, achieve the final happiness of liberation in terms of our present human life. We can experience real happiness in the future. To see whether we’re actually bringing about such possibilities for the future, we have to look to our minds. What is the state of our mind?
Is it positive or negative? Out of our positive intentions we engage in positive ways of acting, then we can attain such a type of rebirth in future embodiments. On the other hand, through our negative intentions, out of our negative intentions we simply are creating more negative actions, then we simply don’t have the possibility. We don’t have the ability to create possibilities for such ways of rebirth in the future. A Tibetan lama once said that, Previously I was a precious monk and observed ethics, and in dependence upon that I have achieved this human life.
Now in dependence upon again being a precious monk, I will not have to experience rebirth in the bad migrations. So I think I can translate that better than I did. Through being a precious monk in the past, I have achieved this precious human life. That is to say, the kindness of my precious monk in the past — in dependence upon that precious kindness of a precious monk of the past — I have achieved this precious human life. Now, in dependence upon this present precious monk, another person will not have to go to be reborn in the bad migrations.
It’s a little bit better. So, if we reflect well upon this analogy which Śāntideva has set forth in demonstrating the difficulty of finding such a human life as all now possess, then we will develop a very strong intention to make use of our precious human life — a human life whereby we can eliminate all our various faults and bring to consummation all our excellent qualities. We will think, I must do something. I have to use this human life.
So there’s still a little bit left to explain in this regard but we’re going to stop there. But we’ll take five minutes if you have some questions. Yes. So, it’s possible to move from bad migrations into taking rebirth in happy migrations. It’s extremely difficult to create positive karma in bad migrations, but previous to having taken rebirth in these bad migrations, one would have generated, one would have accumulated, the positive karma to be born in a happier migration.
So, though having taken rebirth in a bad migration, once that karma is exhausted, the karma necessary to take rebirth in a bad migration will then ripen and one will go on to take rebirth in a happy migration. Now, with this in this respect, every living being will eventually achieve Buddhahood, including those in bad migrations. Yeah. If we have had limitless rebirths, that must mean we’ve accumulated karma for good or bad migrations. So what sort of mechanism comes to fruition for this migration.
Why would people in this room have taken birth as a human and not in some other migration when you’ve got all the possible karmas? I got that out. So it would be very much like if there were many different seeds spread out, but only one of those seeds became wet. And it would be only that seed which became wet which would eventually sprout. If there are many seeds spread out in the earth, not all of them became wet; if only one became wet, then it would only be that particular seed which became wet which would sprout.
Though they all have the potential, it was necessary that there would be that cooperative condition which would activate the potential for the sprout to grow. And likewise, we have various types of karma — which are like the seeds — and we have karma to take rebirth as a human. In our case, the activating condition, just as in the case of wetness, was present; that is to say, a craving to be reborn as a human. And this craving acts as an activating condition whereby to ripen this karma to take rebirth as a human.
So it is in dependence upon the activating condition — the karma plus the activating condition coming together — that we have taken rebirth in a particular realm as a human being. So this is described in the twelve links of dependent origination, which is initiated with basic ignorance. Out of ignorance we accumulate actions. These action potentials are implanted upon the consciousness. So now we have a consciousness with various karma implanted upon it.
And then further along in the twelve links, there takes place the process of activating these karmic potentials which are implanted upon the consciousness through the power of the condition of craving. The craving initiates the activating of these potencies, and when the forcefulness of this is increased, it becomes grasping. And then finally it becomes coming to be, which results in rebirth. And to life seems meaningless because of the suffering — to persuade them that, in fact, they are enjoying the eighteen leisures of fortune? Someone who has a precious human life possessing these eighteen characteristics undergoes suffering simply because we have not abandoned unskillful actions.
But though we undergo suffering, this suffering — by means of even a slight suffering in the course of this life — we’re able to purify the karmic consequences which would be experienced in future migrations as tremendous sufferings for long periods of time. We’re able to eliminate those possible future results by even insignificant suffering such as a headache or a toothache, so that we can purify great negativities by what amounts to insignificant sufferings. So appreciating the fact of that suffering as a means of eliminating the possible greater future sufferings is a way to appreciate our suffering. In terms of helping them to recognize the fact that they possess these eighteen characteristics, then that would be simply as we have explained previously. They would have to reflect upon these eight Leisures and ten Fortunes just as we have proceeded in the explanation.
If someone is involved in the practice of thought transformation or mind training, then when that individual is experiencing some suffering, they can have the attitude that they’re experiencing it for the sake of all sentient beings. May those who have similar sufferings such as this — may I be able to take upon their suffering. And through this attitude of mind, one accumulates tremendous creative potential or merit. Yes? What do you mean by what controls?
Yeah. It wouldn’t sprout. And it’s probably not a poor translation. The cooperative condition, the activating force, is the craving.