Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A story sets the tone: Dromtönpa watches a monk meditate, then prostrate, then recite prayers — and each time tells him to practice Dharma. Punchline: “Relinquish this life,” repeated three times. In this 99-minute commentary, Khensur Rinpoche uses that exchange to define what separates pure Dharma from its counterfeit. He unpacks the eight worldly dharmas — gain/loss, praise/blame, pleasant/unpleasant speech, well-being — showing how attachment and aversion to each generate the karma that fuels saṃsāra. These eight condense into three: food, clothing, and reputation, with Rinpoche noting wryly that reputation proved hardest even for cave-dwelling meditators. He clarifies that relinquishing this life means equanimity, not abandoning possessions, and argues that craving binds practitioners to rebirth more tightly than ignorance alone. The session closes with a sketch of the Kadampa lineage and a Q&A on cooking and eating without attachment.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 3PA 2001 07 03.mp3
UUID: 7efe79a2-e307-4442-be2b-cf2111827af3
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: 3 Principle Aspects of the Path (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 2001-07-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 99.0 minutes
Words: ~7,386
We’re at the point where we’re talking about the distinction between that which is Dharma and that which is not Dharma and the question is where do we draw the line and how do we define that which is correct or pure dharma and that which is not? This is a quite interesting question. Now, for ordinary things as well, we have to understand that there are different types and different qualities. They are good, you can get the best quality, you can get a medium quality, you can get a bad quality in any given thing. Generally, we all tend to agree on the fact that if you get the best quality of what is available, usually there is greater benefit.
So, for example, you buy something, you try to buy something which is of the best quality. When it comes to food, usually we know that food which is of good quality tends to be more tasteful and usually it’s more beneficial for our bodies as well. We always have the tendency to go for that which is of best quality and we should look for that when we are looking at the Dharma that we practice. There are a lot of things that we can rely upon that are not actually the most pure, the most perfect, the most reliable Dharma and for that reason we should always try to make the distinction. The Dharma that we should practice, the Dharma that we should rely upon should be the most perfect, the most pure, the most authentic and the best quality Dharma that exists.
Now, really giving different examples of certain practices that we can do and although one might think that they are pure Dharma, actually they might not be so. So, for example, if you were to do your prayers and your daily recitations and you do that and you say, I’m doing all this so that in this life I don’t have any problems, don’t have any difficulties, I don’t have any sickness and so on and so forth, you see that all you do is you’re concentrating really on this life and that, on one hand you have a practice which is almost by definition a Dharma practice which is your prayers but on the other hand you see that it is something that is one hundred percent evolving around this very life. Now we have to stick into the definition. If it is a pure Dharma, then it is something that relinquishes, something that sacrifices this life. And we see that in this example of making prayers just to be healthy and without any problems in this life, what we do is we are preoccupied with the mundane rather than the pure dharma.
So what the text said is this is an example where prayers and worldly things mix together. They don’t seem to be contradictory. But the pure dharma is the one that relinquishes this life and therefore pure dharma never mixes with the mundane. Now, in order to demonstrate this point, we have another anecdote, another story that happened in Tibet. There was an ordained person who was actually seriously engaged in different dharmic practices and he would spend most of his time in meditation.
Dromtönpa happened to be passing by and he made a comment on this person’s practice. Now, it is important to keep in mind that when we talk about Geshe Dromtönpa, this is a very important figure in the Lam Rim lineage. He comes right after the Lord Atisha himself. He was the first and main disciple who was holding the Lam Rim lineage in Tibet. So, when you get a comment by Geshe Dromtönpa, it’s a serious one.
So there is the meditator sitting there meditating and there comes Geshe Dromtönpa and says, Oh, I see you meditating, I rejoice but I really think you should practice Dharma. So the meditator thought, well, I was meditating and he told me to practice Dharma, what should I do? Well, maybe I should do some prostrations. So he started with his prostrations and here comes Geshe Dromtönpa. And he says, Ah, I see you’re prostrating now.
I really rejoice but I think you should rather practice some Dharma instead. And the ex meditator said, I was meditating, that was not Dharma, I was doing prostrations, that was not Dharma, what should I do? Well, maybe I should do some recitations and some prayers. So he sits down and he starts doing recitations and prayers. Geshe Dromtönpa comes along and says, Well, it’s great you’re doing your prayers but I think you’d be better off if you were to practice some Dharma.
The practitioner was totally confused and he said, Whatever I seem to be doing, all these dharmic activities, you don’t consider them to be Dharma. You keep telling me you should practice some Dharma. So what is it that I should do? And Geshe Dromtönpa says, I have three things for you. First, you should relinquish this life.
Second, you should relinquish this life. And third, you should relinquish this life. He repeated that three times and by that he made it very clear that if you really want to practise pure dharma, you have to do one thing and that is to relinquish this life. It’s not all these other activities. There was another story actually related to that point and there was this great Geshe who was a great scholar actually, his name was Geshe Shangtönpa, Shangtön Chöbar.
He was a very well known teacher, a very well known Geshe and he actually was around at the time of Atisha and he requested a teaching from Atisha and said, How should we practice Dharma? And of course, himself being a great scholar and a great practitioner, he had certain expectations. In a sense, he was expecting to hear certain things. But what the great master Atisha taught him, he just said three or four words, he said, Relinquish this life. This is how you practice Dharma.
And this Geshe was actually quite dissatisfied with the answer that he got. He went around saying that, Well, I asked the great Lord Atisha for some advice and he only told me to relinquish this life. He didn’t have anything else to comment upon. I was expecting to hear something about how to develop compassion and bodhicitta and how to practice these things. But I’m not quite settled and he was going around saying all that and it was pretty obvious he was not satisfied.
Now, Dromtönpa happened to hear about the whole thing, how this geshe was going around. He made the comment that this geshe, although he has this position and he has spent many years practicing and studying, it seems that he really does not he’s not in a position to practice proper Dharma because he’s not in a position to appreciate the advice that was given to him by Lord Atisha. Eventually, is said that this geshe made the time to sit down and meditate and finally he came to the conclusion that, yes, what one had to do was to relinquish this life. So, later on changed his opinion about great lord Atisha and he said, well, after all, it was a good advice. When we’re at this point we’re actually talking about relinquishing this life in order to practice proper Dharma, it’s important to understand what we mean by that and this is the point where it becomes relevant to introduce what is called the eight worldly dharmas.
When we say that one needs to relinquish one’s life, one wants to give up this life, what we really need to give up is concern for these eight worldly dharmas. Now, the eight worldly dharmas are presented by Āryadeva where he is saying that now there are eight of them: there is gain, there is loss, there is pleasant and unpleasant talk, there there is praise, there is blame, there is well-being and there is lack of being well. Now these eight are the eight worldly dharmas. These should not be objects which your mind should entertain. Remain even-headed in relation to those.
So we have an introduction of those eight worldly dharmas and as you see, as a matter of fact, there are four pairs. Now the first part of every pair is things that we consider to be pleasant and if they happen to us we are quite pleased, we are quite happy with them. If they don’t occur or if the opposite of what we consider to be nice occurs then we generate a lot of dissatisfaction. So if we start examining each one of them, each pair of them, the first one is talking about gain and loss. When we talk about gain, we talk about being in a situation where we receive certain things.
It could be money, it could be a position, it could be any material, it could be wealth, it could be status, but just things that we receive and it makes us feel that we are better off if we have them. This is a situation of gain and if we feel that we are receiving all those things then of course we feel pleased, we think that things are going along. If we do not receive or if we lose that we had, we feel generally that we are in a situation where we are at loss and we don’t like that. Now the second one is, as we say, pleasant and unpleasant speech. Everybody likes to hear interesting, pleasant, well presented things, right?
If you hear something that is not pleasant, that is not well presented, that you do not find according to your wishes, well, the opposite sense of feeling dissatisfied arises. The other one we talked about was being happy or a sense of well-being or lacking that. Of course, it’s quite obvious, everybody wants to be happy. It makes one being satisfied and if you like that, if you are unhappy, if your happiness, the conditions of happiness are taken away, of course you feel dissatisfied. And the last pair of them is praise and blame.
Everybody of course likes to be praised. It is very nice if people come along and say, Oh, have such good qualities, you have such a stable character, your mind is so clear, you are such a hero, you are doing so well! Everybody likes that. But if somebody comes along and starts criticising and saying, You didn’t do this well and you have this mistake and you are a bad person, we all generate dislike. Now, having presented those worldly dharmas, we all know, it’s pretty clear, if the first set of those occur, we are pretty satisfied.
If the second of every pair occurs, then we have reasons to be unsettled and unhappy about it. Now, the advice that Āryadeva gives is that these are not objects for your mind to engage in, so don’t be preoccupied with those eight worldly dharmas and keep your head level about those things. What it means by that is that we should try to equalize those things, we should try to equalize our reaction towards those things. So, if people praise you, don’t get too excited and if you’ve been blamed, don’t get too dissatisfied. They are the same.
If you have gain, don’t get too happy about it. If you get lost, don’t be too upset about it and so on and so forth. Try to equalize these two sets of a pair. We have to be clear also here, when we talk about the eight worldly dharmas and avoiding those, we’re talking about perfect Dharma, we’re talking about the practices of the perfect yogis And we might not be as perfect as these yogis, right? This is not very easy to completely let go of the worldly dharmas.
But on the other hand, it’s important to see that this is the perfect practice. This is the practice as it should be done. Whether we are capable or not of doing it, that’s another thing. But we should always aspire and say, May I be capable of doing that? It is very easy to become disheartened and say, I will never be capable of doing that.
This is far beyond my capacity, therefore I’m going to be depressed about it, I’m going to give up my practice of Dharma. This is not the idea, the idea is perhaps I’m not capable of doing it now but I know this is the best I should be aspiring towards so may I be capable of doing it quickly? It’s very important to understand properly what is the Dharma that you should be practicing. Quite often we don’t understand the quality of the practices or the standard of the practices that we should maintain. And later on you come to understand and you see in a sense how many faults have found their way into your practice.
It’s very important to know correctly how you should do it and aspire to do the best you can do. It’s good to know the faults that can come into your practice if you’re not aware of this situation of the eight worldly dharmas and it’s important to look at this process of how faults eventually come into one’s practice. Now, as we say, when we look at these eight worldly dharmas, we look at the first set of every pair and we see that if these conditions or if these situations are experienced, we generate some sense of happiness. What happens is that the mind is quite satisfied, the mind is in a state of feeling quite happy, it’s experiencing this sensation of well-being. What happens is that we generate, of course, attachment and craving for that mental state of happiness, this sensation of well-being.
But the thing is that what we are experiencing at this point is contaminated happiness. The sensation is the sensation of contaminated happiness. And because we get attached to it, what we do is that we engage in various means and methods but we try to multiply this experience, make it last longer, make it happen more and more. And as we try to do that, we engage in negative karma, right? And then this negative karma, of course, is the fault itself.
So this is how we get attached to something that seems to be pleasurable and seems to be happiness but it is contaminated and therefore that leads to negative actions. The result from that is that we will need to experience suffering and nobody likes to experience suffering but without knowing it, we create the causes for all this suffering due to all this attachment for contaminated pleasure. So that is the main fault, that we create causes for further suffering. Also, if we examine the reaction that we have if the second set of those four pairs is experienced, we see that in general it’s a reaction of being displeased and we feel unhappy, we feel unsatisfied. If we experience loss, if we experience unpleasant words, if we are blamed for something, if we don’t experience a situation where we feel comfortable and happy, then of course we feel dissatisfied.
So we experience this sensation, this feeling of being dissatisfied, of being unhappy. And of course this is a feeling of suffering, it is not a pleasant feeling. And on the basis of that what happens is we generate anger. And then because of this anger that we have generated, we engage in actions that are negative. And again, those negative actions, they create the cause for future suffering.
What we fear after that again will be experiences of suffering. Exactly because we don’t like to experience suffering, the advice that is given to us is don’t get too upset if the second group of the eight worldly dharmas occur to you. So don’t generate this strong dissatisfaction, this strong sense of being unhappy with them. Remember them as the eight worldly dharmas but there is another alternative presentation which is more condensed. So this eight they can actually come down into three things and those three things have to do with food, clothing and reputation.
When we talk about food, of course we talk about both solids and drinks and when we talk about clothing, it’s pretty obvious. We are talking about different clothes that we would like to wear. When we talk about one’s reputation, that should be clear as well. Now, it is obvious that we are longing for those things and that we spend a lot of energy trying to experience the best of those things and maintain the best of those things. This is just another way of talking about being preoccupied with the eight worldly dharmas.
So, again, there’s another story. Geshe Dromtönpa asked a question to the great lord Atisha and he wanted to find out what would be the result if somebody in this life was very much attached to food. What would be the result of that? He asked. And the answer to that question was actually covering not only this life but the future life.
So the question was what will happen if we’re really preoccupied with just getting food, if we’re greatly attached to food? The answer to that was if you spent all your time trying to get the best food that you want, as a matter of fact, the result that you get is, you know, sometimes you might get that food that you’re looking for, but you also know that a result that you will experience is hunger. And if you want to talk about next life, there are three types of results. You can end up in a hell, you can end up as a hungry ghost, you can end up as an animal. So you see that actually the results are quite grave and there are such great results, grave, sort of like scary results because in one aspect is trying to get, due to the great attachment that one has for food, one is looking for satisfaction through food.
Now you look for this satisfaction and when you get the food you actually experience this sense of pleasure. And it is because you are craving to generate again that sensation of satisfaction from food that will make you too engaged in negative actions. And the results of those negative actions, according to the heaviness of your negativity, are going to be rebirths in the health, in the hungry ghosts, or in the animal realms. And then Rinpoche was saying: myself, I thought when I first read this story, why should it be like that? I thought that I needed to consider that, I needed to contemplate that.
Yes, you know, I stopped and I thought about it and I observed what was happening and I think I completely agree with that advice, with that answer. Results in this life results in a future life of that degree, yeah. Now there’s another thing, another quotation that we actually need to consider where it says: Make sure you don’t generate non virtue. Don’t generate non-virtue through attachment, aversion or confusion. And don’t generate non virtue through going under the influence of the three types of sensations or three types of feelings.
Now, the first three should be straightforward. When we talk about attachment, aversion and confusion, it’s pretty straightforward that if we engage in actions being under the influence of those three, of course we’re going to engage in non virtue. Now, the other one where he talks about not falling under the influence of these three types of sensations. Now, the first one is sensation of happiness, the second one is sensation of unhappiness, and the third one are neutral sensations. Now, if you generate the sensation of happiness or pleasure, because this is going to be contaminated, you’re going to develop aversion.
You’re going to develop attachment. And by developing attachment, of course you’re going to engage in non virtue. If you generate the feeling or the sensation of non pleasure, the displeasure, then you’re going to generate aversion and due to aversion you’re going to engage in non virtue. The interesting one is the third one which is the neutral feeling. Why should you not even go under the influence of neutral feelings?
And it is said that in the case of neutral feelings there is quite a lot of true grasping or self grasping. So again, you’re going to generate non virtue. So for that reason, it is said we have to avoid falling under the influence of the three types of sensations and we have to avoid falling under the influence of the three poisons, right? Because if we do, we just create more causes for us to remain within cyclic existence. It is said actually in Tibet that there was quite a lot of talk about those three, the food, the clothes and the reputation.
And there were quite a lot of people who said, well, to let go of food, let go of the attachment towards food, it’s easy. There were quite a few practitioners who were doing practices such as taking the essence of flowers. That means they didn’t have to rely on any other substances, any other food, just taking the essence of flowers. So they said we have no attachment for food. When it came to clothes, again they said there’s no reason to be attached.
You could see a lot of people meditating, great yogis, just having any ragged piece of clothes surrounded, any piece of, any part of the body and that was enough. No one barracked about that. It seemed that the last one, reputation, was the most difficult to deal with. Although people would actually proclaim that they were not attached to their reputation, as a matter of of fact, it seemed that there was some attachment to that. There were even great meditators who would live in isolation for many years.
They would just live in a cave with very few possessions, never meeting with ordinary people. Still, they had the need to put a sign, let’s say, on the door, on the cave saying, I’m a great meditator, I’m not going to meet any one of you. And that makes me think that the person inside the cave was sitting there thinking, oh, I think all of them are thinking that a great meditator is inside the cave, right? I’m sure you’re saying that it’s a very common thing, you sit there to meditate and actually after a while you find out that your mind has gone into a different direction and you have all these conceptions and all these thoughts. And you can just about imagine what these meditators were thinking, you know, Now my fame is increasing and so forth.
Now, it’s important to be aware of these conceptions because these are things that need to be recognised and eliminated. You need to need to sow no mercy for those conceptions that arise at the time of your meditation. You should be very quick and you should really hit them as hard as you can. Well, what is it actually meaning? When you say relinquish this life, what is it that we mean?
Do we mean that you should live in a house that is completely empty, doesn’t have any furniture, doesn’t have any food, doesn’t have any clothes? Do we mean that everybody has to live like Milarepa? Is this the actual meaning? Well, actually, no, it’s not. Let’s look at some examples, we can look at some of the successions in the line of the Dalai Lama or some of the Pänchen Lama such as Lo Sengeshi and so forth.
If we look at those, some of those names have gone down as people who completely, as blooms, as practitioners who completely relinquished Islamic. Yet, if you write a book at their possessions due to the status they had, They had very nice rooms, they had very nice clothes, they had very nice furniture and so forth, their food, everything that was provided for them, not to mention their service, their respect. They had plenty of that and yet they were taught to be beings who had completely relinquished this life. So really when we’re talking about this main advice, advice to relinquish this life, it’s not that we’re talking about situation where you would be living in an empty house with no furniture, no food and no clothing. We don’t talk about that.
What we say is that you should generate some equanimity when it comes to the eight worldly dharmas. What we mean by that is that you have to be aware that if you get very happy, if you do get quite excited about something, then usually attachment follows after that. Or if you get very unhappy about something, then anger follows after that. Then under the influence of attachment and anger, you engage in a lot of negative actions. The result of those negative actions is to take a rebirth in the hell realms and so forth.
So when we talk about relinquishing this life, what we say is try not to generate this sort of attachment, try not to generate this sort of anger. If you stop craving for this sense of happiness, if you stop longing for it, then it means that you will not strive for it, you will not put so much energy in trying to achieve those things again, right? And if you do that, then you stop engaging in those negative actions that bring the results, as a result, rebirth in the lower migrations. So it’s not that we’re giving the advice for everybody to live without food, clothing and without any reputation at all. This is not what we say.
What we say is try to develop this equanimity. Try not to get too excited, too happy or too unhappy if any of those things happen. There is another quotation that talks about attachment and says attachment is the lesser that binds us within cyclic existence. So in particular here we talk about the main cause of cyclic existence and this is identified identified as attachment. Attachment, it says, is like a rope that binds us in cyclic existence and how it actually works, it works the same way as a lasso.
It’s something that you throw or you cast from distance and then you get grasped into that particular object or animal that you want to catch and then you pull it closer. You know that the animal that is caught in your lasso, after a while does not have much room to move. Completely loses its freedom. So in the same way our attachment is this rope that forms the lasso that holds on into cyclic existence. It’s the thing that ties us there, binds us in cyclic existence.
It’s the main cause for it. There is another quotation that says that when we talk about the causes of cyclic existence usually identify ignorance and actions and afflictions as being the cause of that. But as a matter of fact, if we compare attachment to our ignorance and to our karma, attachment is more serious one. It burns more. Now what do we mean that attachment is more serious?
It is true that it is due to our ignorance that we generate contaminated actions. The actions are contaminated due to our afflictions, right? So afflictions and contaminated karma create the causes to remain within cyclic existence. In a sense, they create the causes for us to take another rebirth. But as a matter of fact, we do not take the rebirth unless we have craving for another set of aggregates.
So although we might, through ignorance, actions and afflictions, although we might have created the causes, unless the craving and the attachment is there, it’s as if you don’t reach out to get straight away another set of aggregates. So they say that the one which becomes the most crucial one, the most dangerous one, is exactly the craving, is exactly this attachment. Because due to attachment, straight away we are going to look for a new set of aggregates. Straight away we are to take another rebirth and we keep rotating within cyclic existence. It is true that ignorance will create the causes but with the cause alone we haven’t necessarily reached out to grasp for the next existence.
This immediate sense of urgency in rotating within samsaric existence comes from craving which is no other than attachment. Therefore attachment is the most dangerous one. You have mentioned a few times the term Kadampa Geshe, right? It’s important to know who is it that we actually mean, what is the lineage of lamas that we actually mean by that. If you start by considering the great Lord Atisha as being the head of the Kadampa lineage and then Dromtönpa and so forth and after Dromtönpa, Sharawa and so forth.
There’s a great lineage, a great group of the old Kadampa Geshe or the old Kadampa Lamas. And then when we start again with Jetsün Tsongkhapa, he is considered as the beginning of the new Kadampa lineage. So in a sense we have two groups within the Kadampa lamas. Now how do you take their names, how this name Kadampa comes around? The first syllable, the Ka, actually refers to the speech of the Buddha.
The second part of their name, dam, indicates that they are those who strongly hold the speech of the Buddha. In other words, they are the ones who have looked into the scriptures, they have found all the advice of the Buddha and they are practicing in the most sincere way. They are very faithful, are very truthful to the actual advice of the Buddha. So this is how the term Kadampa Lama has come about. So those who are practicing the essence very truly, very faithfully of what was taught by the Buddha.
And it’s very important the advice that they are following here. What they are trying to do as we say is to relinquish this life. Why they’re trying to do that is because they’re actually trying to stop attachment for things of this life. They try to eliminate as much as possible attachment towards food, towards clothing, towards reputation. If you stop this attachment then that means that you have given up concern for this life.
And if you have given up concern for this life then you don’t engage in negative actions anymore. So that means that you do not create any more causes for suffering. If you stop all the causes for suffering, you allow causes of well-being and happiness to be established instead. So this is the meaning of the effort towards this practice. It’s very important to make clear here that when we talk about relinquishing this life, the advice is not that you should give away all your possessions This is not what we’re talking about.
What we talk is about eliminating one’s attachment, eliminating craving or longing for things of this life. Having talked about the Kadampa lamas, we come at the point of the text where what is presented here is what is called the ten treasures of the Kadampa and Rinpoche was actually enumerating them and then he started laughing and then you started laughing and he commented, you don’t know what’s about to hit you. You’re laughing because it’s going to be enjoyable but actually just wait and see. Right, So, we’re talking about the ten riches or the ten jewels of the Kadampa. Just to give a brief outline, we have the first four of them, they are the four entrustments.
Then we have the three vajras and then we have expelling, searching and attaining, another three. So all this together they make the ten jewels of the Kadampa. No, wait, don’t worry, we’re going to go slowly and enumerate them. So first of all, it’s the four entrustment. The first one is the way they are presented in the text, it says, the inner practice of mind entrusting oneself to the Dharma.
The inner Dharma entrusting oneself to the life of a beggar. The inner practice of the life of a beggar which is entrusting oneself to death. And finally, the inner practice of death, entrusting oneself to life without companions. Those are the four things we entrust ourselves to. The first one, it says that in the practice of the mind which is entrusting oneself to the Dharma, it means that you actually direct, you entrust yourself to the Dharma.
Why? Because if you rely on Dharma you can eliminate suffering and you can also establish happiness. You can establish what you are looking for. If you don’t rely on the dharma you don’t have any chances for eliminating suffering or for achieving the happiness you looking for. Nobody wants to experience suffering.
Everybody wants to experience happiness. Therefore it makes sense to say that you will entrust your mind, the core of your mind, into Dharma. This is the first of the four entrustments. We have a mention of that under a different title, let’s say, in the long run. When we talk about impermanence, we do the meditation on death and on that we have three main points that we meditate.
First of all, that death is definite. The second is that the actual time of death is not definite, it’s not for sure. And finally the third point is that at the time of death only Dharma will be the thing that can be of any benefit. Now, in other words, what is stated there is that we need to entrust our mind to the dharma. Why?
Because at the time of death, nothing else can be of any benefit. Rinpoche is asking actually the question, Think for yourself. What is it that you entrust your mind to? What is it that you turn your mind towards? And maybe you recognise the answer because the word was money.
This is where we entrust our mind. If you have enough money, you feel secure. You feel happy. You feel things are going well. If you’re lacking money, you’re quite upset.
You don’t feel secure. You feel that you’re lacking something, right? Exactly because we have this sense of security and we appreciate money so much, exactly because we trust money, we think that our happiness is going to come through money. And therefore, we try all possible means to attain money which we think is the source of our happiness. And by engaging in all these various means, of course what we do is we are engaging in non virtuous actions.
And there is a great number of non virtuous actions, of negativity that we accumulate through this search for money. And then the results that we experience from that is a great range of unfortunate results. Anything, you know, from hunger, from thirst, from falling into lower states, everything comes from this search because we have trusted our minds to the wrong thing. As a matter of fact, you can say that there are two positions, like you can have a good position in the realm of mundane or you can have a good position, a good status in the realm of Dharma, Right? And they are great teachers of the mundane and they are great teachers of the Dharma.
So search out and see which one you need. So, it’s very good to do actually some analytical meditation on that. You do analytical meditation and you actually examine these two things, which one is that you need? Just examine the characteristics of those things. It’s very good to start thinking that as a matter of fact, in this life, it’s very beneficial to have food, to have clothing.
It’s not very enjoyable to experience hunger and thirst and deprivation from even the basics of this life. So think about that. Think what you want to establish. And it’s very important to actually look at the benefits in contrast to the harm that can be derived from situations like this according to what we’re striving for. Just concentrate on the harm that can come from food.
Think of all these types of food that are unsuitable to be consumed. Think of all the people who are consuming wrong types of food. People who are after they have eaten the food they feel very uncomfortable, they might even be poisoned by that particular food. They’re not benefited by it, they get sick from it, and so on and so forth. We talk about the benefits when we are attachment, but it’s important to look at the harm that can come through taking food as well.
I think that there will come a time eventually for each one of us where we will all die and when we die we have to leave behind the aggregates. Not only do we leave behind the aggregates but we cannot take any food with us, cannot take any clothes with us, we cannot take anything material with us. Just keep in mind that when you go, you will go completely empty handed no matter how much you have accumulated. But the one thing that would definitely follow you around as if it was a sack that you carry in your bag is the amount of negativity that you have accumulated in the process of trying to gather food and money and clothes and things like that. And because the karma follows you into the next life, it will be definite that you will experience the results of that karma that you have created.
Well, it is important to look what is that we entrust our minds to, like you can entrust your mind to the dharma, you can rely on the dharma or you can rely on other things. The thing is that if you entrust your mind to the dharma you can be sure that horrible things will not happen to you. You might go hungry a couple of times, right? You might have to face some difficulties but it’s for sure you will never die of starvation. Not only you will not die of starvation but in the future, you will experience good results due to the virtue that you will be accumulating.
Now, there was no one who was known to die of starvation due to the fact that they entrusted themselves to Dharma practice. Now, if you actually make the right choice and you decide to practice Dharma and you practice it in a proper way, if you entrust your mind to the Dharma, then you have to be sure that not only in this life but also in future lives you will experience results that are worthy results and they are well accepted results. Great benefit. I haven’t missed the question and answer time twice? We were given five minutes today.
What type of actions can bring about as a result? Rebirth in hell or as a hungry ghost? Well, definitely has to be non virtuous actions. In particular, when we talk about non virtuous actions, need to look at the motivation that establishes the action as such. If your actions are influenced by attachment, by hatred, by confusion, then the actions themselves are going to be non virtuous actions.
These are the types of activities that bring about the result as a rebirth in the hell or as a hungry ghost. Now, if we look at the opposite of those motivations, so in other words, if you can turn that thing around or if you can eliminate it, then we are talking about the lack of attachment, the lack of hatred, the lack of confusion and those states are defined as being virtues. We talk about the virtue of non-attachment, the virtue of non-hatred, the virtue of non-confusion. Now if you can bring about these states, then the actions that you will be engaging in are described as virtuous actions. So they are the opposite of non virtue.
If we look at these texts, the three principal aspects of the path, what is taught in this context is actually the opposites or the antidotes to the three poisons because renunciation is the one who is dealing with attachment. bodhicitta is the one that nullifies anger and correct view is the one who is going to eliminate our confusion or our ignorance. So, if you are capable of dealing with the three poisons which are the three root afflictions, you will be capable of stopping all the other secondary afflictions as well. But if you cannot deal with the three root ones attachment, hatred and ignorance then there is no hope for you stopping or eliminating the remaining ones as well. Alright, so you have great attachment to preparing and then consuming the food.
So what would be the best? Like meditate on the spot as you are preparing or? Instead of that? Alright, so give up cooking and meditate instead or read more of Lamrim and so forth. So, what she is actually saying is that there is nothing wrong with the activities per se, There is nothing wrong with cooking food and there is nothing wrong with eating food.
The problem is being attached to those things. So if you can do the activity without the attachment, there is no problem. Now no one is going to suggest that you shouldn’t eat, you shouldn’t prepare food and things like that. What is suggested is that you should try to stop the attachment. Essentially, at that time it’s very beneficial to generate some compassion and consider all the different types of beings that are starving, they do not have access to food and just think that you’re offering, you’re preparing and you’re offering that food to all of them.
And also, the time when you’re eating the food, it’s quite useful to start thinking that you are not actually attached to eating the food for yourself, for your own sake. But just think that all these bacteria and organisms within your body, so you say, I’m not eating this food for myself, I’m eating it to support all of them, right? So it’s an offering to them. And not only that, but the only reason why I’m eating is because I want to sustain this body enough so that it will allow me to practice Dharma. That’s the reason why I ate, just to support my body.
Okay. What is this? What is this? Oh, it’s just pandas. Okay.
When you talked about the eight, I can’t remember what they were called, had pain and unhappiness, you asked us not to, let’s say, get too excited about having happiness and not to be too upset about sorrow and not also to be the neutral. I wonder where the position is. It’s a shade of grey. The question was, we talked about the eight worldly dharmas and we have them in pairs, in four pairs. Usually for the first part of the pair we get excited and happy when it happens, the second one we get disappointed and angry.
The advice there was to keep an even head, to have a bit more equanimity. Later on when we talked about the different types of sensations, we said make sure you don’t fall under any of the three sensations and that included also neutral sensations. Is there any contradiction in that or which way shall we deal with this? Well, it is true that actually when we presented the three types of sensations we said don’t generate attachment, don’t get attached to the pleasurable ones, Don’t generate anger towards the non pleasurable ones and try not to have too much of the neutral ones because those are the ones that are associated with ignorance. But when it comes to the eight worldly dharmas,