Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A prisoner who shifts from cell to cell is still in prison — Khensur Rinpoche uses this analogy to define liberation in this 49-minute commentary on the Three Fundamentals of the Path. He opens with a verse on reversing attachment to future-life appearances (wealth, companions, environment) and outlines two means: meditating on karma and its results, and — more directly — contemplating the nature of suffering. Drawing on Śāntideva, he identifies three benefits of that contemplation: reduced pride, compassion for others caught in the same predicament, and clearer discrimination between what to adopt and avoid. He then grounds the argument in vivid everyday examples — sitting, standing, eating, socialising, accumulating wealth — to show that even pleasurable feelings are inherently unstable and therefore suffering in nature.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 27 3PA 1993 09 14.mp3
UUID: 9e43513e-79ed-4041-b81f-fe3616c36316
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: 3 Principal Aspects of the Path (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1993-09-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 49.0 minutes
Words: ~2,622
So we’re we’re presently looking at a verse from the the text, the three Fundamentals of the Path, reads as follows: If you think again and again about their deeds and inevitable effects and the sufferings of cyclic existence, the emphasis on the appearance of this future life of future lives will be reversed. So in reversing our priorities in terms of future lives, there are two stages. The first in terms of contemplation of karma as actions and their results. And the second is contemplation of the nature of suffering. And we have to, all intents and purposes, finish the our explanation of the first stage, karma as actions and and their results.
So when it speaks here about the priorities of future lives and reversing them, what are these priorities that are being mentioned here, are being referred to here? They are the type of embodiment that we take in the future, various possessions, the companions, our environment. So we have generally a great deal of attachment toward all of these and or a tremendous clinging toward them. So when it talks about reversing our priorities, it’s speaking about reducing our attachment, bringing it in to our clinging to these these various appearances of future lives. Appearances of future lives.
So how are we to go about reversing these priorities, that is to say reducing our attachment toward these various appearances? Firstly, means of karma as actions and the results. If we’re contemplating this and meditating upon it and putting into practice well. If we do this, then through that practice we will begin to reverse or let us say to bring to an end to diminish our attachment toward these ends. So how are we to reverse our attachment toward these various appearances of future lives in terms of the operation of our karma as actions and their results?
If if we we involve ourselves in a practice of of the law of cause and effect in terms of actions and and as causes and the results, then we will begin to abandon negative or unskillful actions. We will cultivate skillful actions. That is to say, we will begin to practice ethics. And this involves the higher training in ethics. And in dependence upon a higher training in ethics, we can go on to achieve meditative stabilizations through a higher training, in dependence on meditative stabilizations, we go on to develop wisdom through the practice of the higher training in wisdom.
And through that we can gain realizations in the various subjects such as impermanence, selflessness, emptiness. And it is through the wisdom understanding these various subjects that we can see that cyclic existence has no essence and that we can begin to cease our attachment to cyclic existence. That way to reduce our attachment through the practice and meditating on karma as actions and their results. But mainly it is through the way that we we begin to cease our attachment toward these various future appearances is meditation on the sufferings of cyclic existence. It is in dependence upon this contemplation that we can reverse our attachment toward these ends mainly.
So it’s quite possible that when we consider meditating on suffering, that we don’t we’re not pleased. We don’t like suffering. Therefore, think about suffering is not pleasant. Then why do we involve ourselves in the meditation on suffering? In general, why do we meditate?
What use of it is to ourselves? It is in order to develop healthy states of mind. This is the purpose of meditating to rid the mind of its various defects and to cultivate its excellent qualities. So therefore, if necessary, something is useful to us, if it’s beneficial for ourselves, that you meditate on it. If if what we meditate on does not possess the capacity to transform our mind, that is to say to to turn negative states into positive states, then we can’t expect much results from such a type of meditation.
And it is because our meditation on suffering is able to help us to rid ourselves of negative states. It’s help it helps us as a as a means to generate positive states that it’s useful to meditate on it. Identify true sufferings. We are we are to abandon true sources. We are to actualize true cessation.
And we are to realize true paths. So with respect to these this first that we are to identify, we are to recognize true sufferings. And you know these are difficult subjects to to come to recognize, to identify. It’s not it’s not an obvious object. You know, we can for example with a flower, we can readily recognize identify the flower.
It’s very easy. We can just see it with our eye or we can recognize objects with hearing them with our ear. We don’t need to contemplate or meditate on these subjects. For more difficult subjects, which are difficult to identify and recognize, it’s necessary to meditate, to contemplate on them. Further, Śāntideva said that there are three benefits which are are derived from our contemplation of suffering.
The first is that it reduces our pride. Secondly, it helps us to develop compassion for living beings who are in cyclic existence. And thirdly, it helps us to develop a discrimination as to what is to be adopted and what is to be avoided. When we come to understand that we are under control of karma and afflictive emotions, that we aren’t free, that we don’t have control over the various processes, then understanding understanding this will help us to reduce our pride. That anything which arises out of such a process, is under the influence of karma and afflictive emotions, is in the nature of suffering.
And we we we cannot take we cannot hold ourselves to be so powerful. We cannot think how how beautiful we are. We cannot have such inflated attitudes about ourselves that and this is what reduces our pride in terms of all of these things about ourselves, understanding that these are all in the nature of suffering because they’re under the control of karma and afflictive emotions. Reducing pride will bring will facilitate the development of excellent qualities. As long as there is pride, it’s difficult to develop one’s own excellent qualities.
Further considering the situation of others, that they are under the control of karma and afflictive emotions and continually undergoing suffering. Through such contemplation one will develop compassion toward them. And when one sees that both oneself and others, because we are under the control of karma and afflictive emotions, are continually experiencing suffering, we will begin to cease creating unskillful actions destructive actions and begin to implement constructive actions. And proceeding in this way we can come to recognize well the nature of suffering. Understand the nature of suffering, we’re able to recognize its nature, then we’re going to develop a longing to be free from suffering.
We’re going to develop a longing to be liberated from cyclic existence. So what do what do we mean by liberation? We’re talking about liberation from cyclic existence. And to be liberated from cyclic existence means to to be freed from one’s bonds. So we we are saying that liberation is freedom from one’s bonds.
Analogy would be if if if someone tied you up, your legs up, and you weren’t you weren’t allowed to to go to go, that these the rope would be like some bonds. So here, when we say that liberation is freedom from bonds, what are the what what is it that binds us? It is actions and afflictive emotions, karma and afflictive emotions. So who is it that’s bound? It is sentient beings, ordinary living beings.
They are that which is bound. What are the bonds? The bonds are actions, let’s say karma and afflictive emotions. Where is this binding taking place? This is taking place within the three realms.
The six levels of migrations within cyclic existence. We can look at it in terms of happy migrations and unfortunate migrations. That we are continually taking recurrent rebirths. In happy migrations, then dying away from happy migrations due to the force of afflictive actions and afflictive emotions taking rebirth in unfortunate migrations. Dying away from that migration, we continue to cycle and we take rebirth within a happy migration under the influence of actions and afflictive emotions.
Again, dying away from that rebirth. So there’s this continual cyclic process of taking rebirth one to the other. Represent an analogy to explain what we have just discussed, then if we take a person who commits murder, then they’re sentenced to prison. Now, are put into a prison. And their situation is such that within that prison, they’re continually shifted to different cells within the prison.
First, they live in one cell and then they move to another cell and then they move to another cell. So that person who is imprisoned is the prisoner. And that which keeps them imprisoned is the force of their harmful act that they’ve they involved themselves in. The harmful act of killing them previously. That’s why they’re there.
And that they are continually and the place that they’re imprisoned, they are they is the prison itself. But within this prison they are continually moving from one cell to another. So applying this to ourselves, we are as if a prisoner within cyclic existence due to having accrued due to the force of our actions and afflictive emotions. We are forced to be in our present situation. And within this prison of cyclic existence, we are continually moving from the state of happy migrations, then moving down to unfortunate migrations, moving back to the state of happy migrations to the state of unfortunate migrations.
If we can if we can interrupt this process of reoccurring rebirth under the force of afflictive emotions, that is say if we can cut the that which binds us, afflictive emotions and karma, then we are freed from this process. But but in order to to actualize, to bring about our liberation, initially we must have a longing to be free from our situation. And in order to develop a longing to be free from such a situation, we have to recognize all of the defects and troubles that we experience within such a situation. If we don’t recognize the defects and all of the troubles and difficulties which are present that situation entails, then we’re never going to be developed a longing to be free from it. So if we an analogy would be if we were experiencing the pain of thirst.
In order that we experience the happiness which is the absence of that pain of thirst, then we have to see the defects of that pain of thirst and thereby develop a longing to be free from that pain. Suffering involved. In order to develop a longing to be free from suffering we have to begin to recognize the faults of suffering. So in order to develop a longing to be free from suffering, we have to be able to recognize suffering. If we don’t recognize suffering, then we’re not going to long to be free from it.
Generally, both suffering and pleasure are feelings. So when our body or mind experiences pleasure, this is a feeling of pleasure and the that which is not pleasure, that which is the opposite, that when our experiences when our body or mind experiences displeasure, then this is the feeling of of suffering. But even animals can recognize feelings of suffering. When they are out in the hot sun, they experience a feeling of suffering and so they go into a cool place. If having been in that cool place they get cold then they go back out into a warm place.
They they can recognize various feelings of suffering which arise from hunger and thirst. Even animals even animals can recognize this type of suffering. So what we have to understand in coming to recognize suffering, the nature of suffering is to recognize that even pleasurable feelings are in the nature of suffering. So our our feelings of pleasure are are changeable. They they they fluctuate.
We we talked about this previously. We talked about when one is experiencing the suffering of heat, one goes to a cool place and initially there is this sense of pleasure. But that pleasure will eventually deteriorate into the suffering from cold. Initially, having experiencing the suffering of heat and then going to a cool place, there is experience of pleasure. But if we’re remaining in that cool place, that feeling will will degenerate or deteriorate into a feeling a suffering feeling of cold.
So the same holds true if while we’re sitting. After some time, after a period of sitting, it becomes troublesome. It becomes uncomfortable. So we get up. And initially we experience the pleasure of standing up.
But if we remain standing long enough, we’re going to experience the suffering of standing. Initially it’s very pleasurable, but we cannot remain laying down. There’s a point when it becomes uncomfortable to to stay in bed. We have to actually get up because of the displeasure. And we get up and then we we experience the pleasure in just getting up out of bed, but then we have to back go lay eventually to lay back down.
And immediately, initially upon laying down, it’s very pleasurable. But we cannot remain in that state because it will eventually degenerate into pain. And the same holds true for when we’re eating something delicious. Initially, it’s very pleasurable. But as we continue to eat, eventually we become full and to continue eating becomes painful.
And the same holds true when we when we get together with our friends. Initially, we’re quite glad to be with them. And it but if we spend a considerable length of time with them, eventually we’re glad to be rid of them. And if with when we don’t have money, we worry about the fact that we don’t have money. And then we get some money and then we begin to worry about losing our money, having to install them.
And then there’s the suffering of of of of being separated from that which we which we like. And this is suffering of meeting with that which we don’t like, for example, enemies. So and also that there’s the suffering of going from high places to low places. First, someone works with great trouble to get to achieve a high position and then they have to go through the suffering of falling from that position. For example, in the case of Indira Gandhi, who was extremely famous and admired by by many many people.
And she fell and she was imprisoned at one time. And also when we’re young, we have strong beautiful bodies. But as we age, our bodies begin to deteriorate and become weak. There is no stability our youth and beauty. So this is beginning to describe the nature of cyclic existence.
Gathering of wealth ends in exhaustion of our wealth. Our beautiful bodies deteriorate. Those who are on high, fall to low places, wherever we go, it is pleasures that we seek. They are all in the natures it are natures of suffering. Even those who are with great wealth are on high and have a high status have tremendous suffering of the mind.
And those who with no wealth have sufferings of physical sufferings, having to concern themselves with food, clothing, and shelter. They are constantly involved in some displeasures. If we consider the body, it is in the nature of suffering.