Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 97-minute session, Khensur Rinpoche opens with a striking image: Prince Siddhartha, having fled his palace, sifting through a rubbish heap for scraps of cloth to cover himself — the Kadampa tradition’s archetype of being expelled from the ranks of humans. The commentary works through the ten inner jewels of the Kadampa masters: the four entrustments (directing the core mind to Dharma, accepting poverty, dying alone in a cave), the three vajras illustrated by Atisha’s defiance of his royal family and Milarepa’s indifference to being called crazy, and the final triad descending to dog-like austerity before ascending to enlightenment. Rinpoche then unpacks Lama Tsongkhapa’s two lines on leisure and endowment, arguing that meditating on both the rarity and brevity of human life creates genuine urgency to practice now. Practical guidance on food, clothing, and furniture closes: use each just enough to sustain practice, no more.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 3PA 2001 07 04.mp3
UUID: 1ad06fc3-fcd1-4135-9f4a-531f86c5e821
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: 3 Principle Aspects of the Path (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 2001-07-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 97.0 minutes
Words: ~7,454
Now, last time we reached the point where we talked about how important it is to practice proper Dharma and proper Dharma was defined as the practices that relinquish this life. And then we moved on in what is called the precious advice that comes from Kadampa lamas which is called the ten jewels, the ten inner jewels of the Kadampa. Now going into the ten jewels of the Kadampa, said that the list of ten includes four entrustments, three vajras and then expelling or being expelled actually, pursuing and attaining the remaining three. So all this makes a list of ten. And this is the way that the practice of the Kadampa are.
Now, if we look at the examples of all these Kadampa lamas and their practitioners, they’re considered great practitioners and we have a lot to learn from the way they practice. Actually, we could be quite inspired and try to follow their own example because through the practices they did we can see that they accumulated the necessary accumulation. They purified whatever stains and negativity they have and they reached enlightenment. So we have quite a lot to aspire, we have quite a lot to follow by looking at their example. So we start with the first four ones.
They are called the four entrustments. And we see that the first one is talking about the way that we should entrust the mind and the words have particular meaning. Each one of the words of those titles, let’s say, subdivisions has a particular meaning. So it talks about the inner mind and trusting or directing the inner mind to the dharma. Now it is interesting to see that it talks about not just the mind but the inner mind.
In a sense, the core of the mind has to turn, has to be directed, it has to rely on the Dharma. And then the second one says entrust the core of the Dharma, the inner Dharma, to the life of a beggar. Which means that for the sake of practicing Dharma, you might become a beggar, you might have to live the life of a beggar and you should not worry about that. It is absolutely alright. You should trust that this is okay.
And then it says, Entrust the life of a beggar to death, which means eventually you’re going to die as a beggar. And then it says, Entrust death to having very few friends, very few companions, which in other words means that not only are you going to die as a beggar but you’re going to die alone, isolated, in a remote place without people or comfort around you. You’re going to die in a place like a cave, isolated. We see already from the brief presentation of the four entrustments that it would take a very strong practitioner, it would take quite a lot of courage and determination to proceed like that. And definitely it implies that one would have the mind of a hero in order to engage in such sort of practices.
We spoke a little bit about the first one yesterday where we talked about the meaning of entrusting the core of the mind to the Dharma. And we said that this is a subject that is also discussed in the Lamrim. When we talk about death, there are three things that we contemplate. We think that death is inevitable, will definitely come. The particular time of death is something that we have no certainty about.
And then the third point is that at the time of death, there’s very little thing that can be of benefit to us. Our friends cannot benefit us, our wealth cannot benefit us, not even our body can be of any benefit at the time of death because even the body has to be left behind. And the only thing that can be of any benefit at the time of death is dharma. And for that reason, here we have the same advice just phrased in a slightly different way where it says entrust the core of your mind to the dharma because at the time of death this is the only thing that can have any benefit on you. We see that within the world, you know, what we consider most beneficial is money and if you consider money as being something of great benefit then you can understand why so much energy is spent in order to accumulate the causes of wealth and why people night and day, they work towards accumulating money.
Now if you can direct all this energy, if you take it away from money and you start looking at dharma, if you are convinced that dharma is the one that can benefit you at the time of death, you can see how some people can actually make the choice to seek Dharma, to listen to the Dharma, to look for opportunities for Dharma day and night and devote their lives to study and practice. Now, it will follow from that, but if you were to redirect your attention from making money to practicing Dharma And if you were to spend most of your time into practicing and studying the Dharma, you would see that there wouldn’t be much time left for making money. Right? And you could very easily see how you could end up in a situation where you would be described as a beggar. Why?
Because you wouldn’t be generating enough wealth. But the advice here is that there is nothing wrong with that. If you can actually use your body, if you can use your life, if you can use your energy to practice and study Dharma, you’re actually making the best of this opportunity. There is nothing wrong with being poor. There is nothing wrong to be living the life of a beggar.
Instead, you’re actually using your life at at you know, in the best beneficial way. So there’s nothing to be ashamed of. There’s nothing wrong with that. Eventually, if you continue such a life, we know that at the end of the life there will be death, but it is not that you’re actually that the death that will occur to you will be due to the Dharma. Now, are no accounts whatsoever of somebody who died, let’s say, from hunger or somebody who died out of freezing to death because they practiced Dharma.
Such accounts do not exist in the past and such events will not happen in the future. So there’s there shouldn’t be any worry about that either. On the contrary, you hear about many people who die of starvation and they are not practicing Dharma. There is a story actually of somebody who was called Geshe Pan, and this person, in the first part of their life, they seemed to be engaging in quite, you know, what shall we say, illegal activities. Had first of all, they had a field.
This person had a field. And they were cultivating the field. Cultivating the field and of course they were expecting to have some crop come out of the field. They were not satisfied with what was within reach for them. So this person said, In the morning, I would go out and I would try to captivate whichever person was coming around and steal whatever possessions they had on them.
And at night when it was getting dark, again I could hide in different places, I could rob and steal from people. So not only was I cultivating my place, but I was engaging night and day into all these different acts of robbery. Later on, of course, this person came to understand that this livelihood would not take them very far and eventually regretted all this negativity they have done. They took ordination and they decided to completely dedicate their life to the dharma. But they said they could see how difficult it was.
They could see all this result of robbing other people and taking resources from other people. And the person said I can see actually with what great difficulty any food or any resources come anywhere near And it was said that he experienced all sorts of different types of suffering, they seem to be coming, all sorts of troubles coming towards his way. We see how once one can come to have to live a life of a beggar when one is practicing Dharma. But then if we look at what follows from that is to die as a beggar. And as we say again, there should be no reason for concern if something like that happens.
First of all, because we are all going to die. Now death is a common experience for everybody. And you have to consider that if you die at the end of the life that you have spent practicing the Dharma, there is nothing to regret about that. There are many people who die eventually everybody dies and there are many people who come to the end of their lives without having practiced the Dharma. At the end, in a sense there will be no difference with regards to the fact that everybody will die but there will be a difference as to the way you have spent your life up to the time of death.
And there will be other people that you see that after death they will proceed in falling into the hells and unfortunate migrations due to the fact that they have not practiced Dharma during their life. But you can say that you would have no reason to worry because after death you can again attain a human body, a divine body and so forth, a fortunate migration as a result of your practice of Dharma. You can say that if you are lacking wealth, if you are lacking the means to properly support yourself, there’s always the danger of being sick or falling sick. And eventually, you start worrying what will happen when you get older and whether there will be somebody to take care of your body when you die and perform the necessary ceremonies and activities. But if it comes when you reach a state where you are reduced to a corpse, whether you have somebody to take care of that corpse or not, it’s irrelevant.
People usually do not keep corpses for a very long time. They try to dispose them as quickly as possible. So, it wouldn’t be much problem if you were considerate enough and take your body once you were still alive and die quietly, isolated in a cave. There won’t be any problem. And as for being sick, there are a lot of people who have said that I see no problem with being sick.
As a matter of fact, I rejoice for being sick because this manifestation of sickness indicates that now previous negativity, previous faults and negativity are now purified by this disease. So there’s nothing to worry about whether I’m sick or whether I die, what will happen to my body. I don’t have worry about those things. So, with that we have completed actually the presentation of the four entrustments. Now we come into the following three which is a list of the three vajras.
Now, the first one is actually when we talk about the three vajras, there are three: the vajra which proceeds, the vajra which follows, and the vajra which always accompanies one. The first one, which is called the vajra which proceeds, is one advice and that is not succumbing. And you have to understand, if you are somebody who will make the decision to dedicate your life to the dharma, now, first of all your family, but also a few friends are going to be upset and they will come towards your way to rescue you with as much advice as possible. And there are many examples of that. If we look, for example, at the life of Lord Atisha, now he was somebody who was, again, he was a prince, he was born in a royal family, a very good family, extremely wealthy, extremely renowned.
And of course, as a prince, you know, there were certain expectations about the role he would take upon his shoulders. But Atisha was somebody who, from a very early age, started receiving different messages. Now, would hear voices of humans, of divine beings who would tell him that he would have to dedicate his life to the Dharma and himself generated a very intense interest in the dharma. So one day he went, he stepped into the palace and he made the grand announcement that I renounce my status as a prince and from now on I am going to live the life of a dharma practitioner and I’m going to seek ordination. And of course everybody was very upset.
The king, the queen, the brothers, the sisters, other friends, different people who were there to give advice. They all told him that please don’t do that. Please don’t follow the life of a dharma practitioner. It is very hard, it is very difficult, it is questionable what you will achieve at the end. You’re going to lose this great opportunity.
But Lord GerAtisha remained very stable with his decision, not succumbing to all this advice and whatever, all this request that came from his family and his friends. And in a sense this is something, some attitude that we have to develop. Once you make up your mind that this is the type practice that you want to do, you have to be determined to follow that path. No matter what others say, no matter if they beg, no matter if they threaten you, no matter if they tell you all these horror stories about how difficult it is to do it, and everybody advises you not to do it, you have to remain there as the vajra, you know, very stable in your decision. Now, if we look at the results of this decision of Lord Atisha, he relinquished the ordinary life, he practiced the Dharma, he received ordination, he took the bodhisattva vows and he spent a great number of years studying and meditating.
And he became such a great scholar who was just his presence was so beneficial for India. Not only that, he left India at a great age and he visited Tibet where again he taught for a number of years. And don’t forget that the very text that we are studying I mean, it’s a lum rim type of text the lum rim was composed by a teacher. He was the source of this very, very useful type of text that we have. So these sorts of benefits came from these decisions.
We’ve completed the presentation of the first vajra, the vajra of which proceeds, and now we’re going for the second one which is the vajra or the state, the vajra state that follows. And this is called non consideration, having non consideration. Because the reason we use this term is because as soon as, of course, you will make the announcement and you will say, I’m heading for a life of Dharma. I’m leaving everything behind and I’m going to practice the Dharma. The immediate response you’re going to get from people is usually a negative response and you have to show lack of consideration for what people are going to say about you.
Now, there is this term in Tibetan that describes would very commonly, you know, let’s say, summarise the response that or the way that people would describe somebody who would give up everything to practise dharma. And that term is a beggar who is just wandering around aimlessly. And Rinpoche was saying, I think it’s the equivalent of the word hippie. And this whole generation of people who went off, you know, went off to India, for example, to practice Dharma. And they were, you know, they were living like beggars and they were wandering endlessly around.
Right? So the first thing that your parents are going to say if you say, I’m going to practice Dharma, they’re going to say, you’re not going to be like one of those hippies, are you? And then they say things like that, you just have to show no consideration. Then consideration. It doesn’t matter what they say.
There will be other people who will say, oh, it’s great. You you know, you’re divine. You know, your choice is divine. It doesn’t matter what they say. There will be others who will say, you are as bad as, you know, a demon.
You’re so bad. Again, show no consideration whatsoever. And definitely, there will be people who will call you a beggar, they will call you, you know, somebody who is wasting their time, who is just wandering around, they will call you a hippie, just don’t worry about it. There’s nothing to be ashamed of if you have made the choice to practice Dharma. So, let’s look at another example, you know.
Look at the life of Milarepa. Look at the star of Milarepa, I should say. He was going around completely naked, exhibiting strange behavior and living in a cave. And what did the world say about Milarepa? They said, Oh, he’s crazy.
He’s somebody who’s lost it. Like, you know, he’s going around naked, mumbling different things, living in a cave. He’s crazy. And what Milarepa thought about the rest of the world is that, Oh, they’re all crazy. Look at how they take care of their bodies.
And what is it that they’re obsessed with, these bodies? These bodies only attract suffering. They are a cause of suffering for them. And yet, all these people are obsessed about their bodies, the well-being of their bodies. They’re the crazy ones.
And the world you know, everybody but Melalepa would look at him and say, oh, he’s the crazy one. Now we come up to the third vajra, which is the state which should always accompany us and this one is called the vajra state of primordial awareness. What is meant by that is actually the promise that we do when we decide to practice Dharma. When we decide to practice Dharma we say that I am determined to clear away all my faults, to eliminate my faults, I’m determined to develop all good qualities and I will keep this promise with me until I die. It’s a very strong promise that should always be with us.
And Rinpoche was saying, it’s very interesting when we talk about promises and the strength or the duration of our promises. You see, the ordinary person usually makes a promise and is just forgotten the next day. It doesn’t stay there for long. If you are a Dharma practitioner, your promises and especially this promise that you will practice the Dharma should stay with you until you die. It should be something completely indestructible and it will be as if you engrave something on a stone.
If you engrave something on a stone, it will stay there for a very long time. It will not be destroyed instantly. Now the promises of ordinary people is like engraving something into water. It disappears before even you finish making the little sign there. So there are differences in the strength of one’s promise but as we say, this promise to practice the Dharma should be something that always is with you.
Now, having finished with the three vajras, we come to the last three and the last three are called being expelled, pursuing and attaining. Now, one is being expelled from the rungs of humans, right? One is pursuing the rungs of dogs and one is attaining the rungs of the divine. So we’re looking at the first one, what it means to be expelled from the rungs of humans. And we’re going to do that by looking at the example of the life of Buddha Śākyamūni himself.
Now, the being who became enlightened under the name Buddha Śākyamūni was somebody who before that was known as Prince Siddhartha. Being a prince, again, he was born in a royal family, very wealthy family. And his father, the king, of course, had great plans for the son, the prince. He thought that the prince was the one who was going to take care of all the wealth and all the affairs of the palace. The king had chosen a bride so the prince was going to be married to this bride and leave the ordinary life with the usual responsibilities of a prince.
Now, meanwhile, the prince himself was already considering the suffering of all sentient beings and was already generating strong renunciation. And despite living for some years the ordinary life of a prince, one night having agreed with one of his helpers, he actually disguised himself and both of them, they escaped from the palace. His friend, you know, his companion was actually the one who helped him to get the horse and was leading the horse and took him all the way to Bodh Gaya. And there, the being who was going to become enlightened under the name Buddha Śākyamūni actually cut off his own hair with his sword and obtained ordination in Bodh Gaya. And there he threw away all the royal clothes and all the different ornaments that he had on him and he started looking in a pile of rubbish for something to cover his body.
Looking in the pile of rubbish, he could find different bits and pieces of clothes, you know, ragged clothes, smelly clothes, and none of them had a proper length, you know. It would only be, let’s say, about an arm’s length. That was the biggest he could get. So he got all these different bits and pieces of ripe clothes that he retrieved from the rubbish heap and he stitched it together. And this is how he covered himself and he stayed under in the area of Bodh Gaya in order to practice and meditate.
And in that sense, you can see how he was expelled from the rank of ordinary beings, ordinary humans. Now, we know, Buddha Śākyamūni, as Prince Siddhartha at this stage, received ordination like that in the area of Bodh Gaya and dressed with different bits and pieces of cloth material that he found in the rubbish. And he was determined to stay and practice meditation properly. He remained in that area for about six years where he practiced severe austerities. We have to understand also the harshness of the environment.
Imagine sitting somewhere in India where you have no protection from the intense heat, you have no protection from the rain. There are all sorts of insects around. There is no one to come and offer you anything in terms of food and water and so forth. There he was, absolutely determined to sit there in meditation. You might have seen representations of the time of the Buddha when he was practicing austerity where he was literally reduced to skin and bones.
It almost looks like, you know, just a skeleton left there meditating. And you can see why we would talk about the second one of this group which is pursuing the ranks of the dogs. It’s as if you are trying to establish yourself amongst, you know, a very low status, right? You are looking for these difficult situations and you are determined to sit or to tolerate these difficulties in order to continue with your practice. Now, at the month of Saka Dawa, on the fourteenth of the month of Saka Dawa, Prince Siddhartha proceeded to Bodh Gaya and he sat under the Bodhi tree.
And he prepared a seat with kusha grass and he sat on that determined to continue uninterrupted in his meditation. It is said that he continued meditating and about twelve o’clock at night the different deities appeared in the sky above him and bestowed on him the four initiations in order for him to complete the path and reach enlightenment. And continuing to meditate after he received the full initiations, it is said that just as it was dawning on the fifteenth day of the month of Saka Dawa, he reached the state. So see that eventually when Buddha Śākyamūni reached the state of enlightenment, he actually attained the ranks of the divine. He became a divine being.
And he was not just an ordinary divine being, just not an ordinary being of the desire realm because we have all these, if you want, verses and all these accounts of how the gods of the desire or the higher realms, they all prostrate and they make offerings to the Buddhas. The Buddhas are described when they are described as divine beings, are described as the divine of the divine or that which is above all other divine because it’s a supreme state. And in the last three of those ten jewels we can see how things develop in a certain order. First of all, you fall out of the rung of the humans, you fall down into the level of the rung of the dogs, and then through your practice you actually reach the state of enlightenment which surpasses anything else that exists within the ordinary mundane world. So not only you become a god but you become the god of the gods.
We actually have quite a few examples of great practitioners who practice the one and very thing. You can see that there are common themes amongst their lives, their biographies. The main thing amongst them all is that those practitioners relinquished this life. If you want to look at the life of Milarepa, for example, he followed very, very similar steps. He fell from the rungs of the humans to the rungs of the dogs to become a fully enlightened being.
And many other lamas, many other great practitioners, they did exactly the same. They just relinquished this life. Now, we have another very interesting line that was said by Gyelwa Ensapa himself. Gyelwa Ensapa is a name and title that is given to the first of the Pänchen lamas, one of the greatest practitioners. His name is actually mentioned in the Lamrim prayers.
He’s one of the Lamrim lineage. So, he’s talking about his life and practice and he’s comparing that to the life and practice of Milarepa. And he says, There’s only one difference between myself and Milarepa. And that difference is that right now Milarepa is dead while myself is alive. And what it means by that is that actually the type of practice he was doing was exactly the type of practice that Milarepa did.
This complete determination to the Dharma, this relinquishing of the ordinary life. Now, we have the advice that was given by Buddha Śākyamūni himself and in a sense he’s actually defining what ordination is all about or what proper practice of Dharma is all about. What he says is you can eat food that is not of the best quality. You can be close in clothes that, again, are not of the best quality. When it comes to your seat or to the bed that you use, they should be of low quality as well.
And you should find joy in practicing the Dharma and in practicing abandoning all negativity. You should rejoice in meditating and abandoning. So in a sense this is the advice that is given of how we should practice. There are certain things that we should be satisfied with very low quality, very few. If we are to look at the things we were discussing last time, actually, were talking about the way that we behave when it comes to food, when it comes to clothes and when it comes to reputation.
And we explained how we have this incredible longing to have more or to have better than others have in these areas. And due to this longing for having more and for having better, of course we accumulate a lot of negativity. So the advice that is given to us is instead of generating this longing and attachment, instead of engaging in all this negativity, why don’t you practice relinquishing this life instead? Now, if we look at, for example, what happens with food, how we relate to food. If you experience or if you partake of some well prepared, some delicious food, usually what comes together with that is an experience or a feeling which is very pleasurable.
And the more pleasurable the feeling is, the greater the attachment towards the taste that generated that feeling. And the more you are attached to that pleasurable feeling, then the bigger the chances are for you engaging in negativity. Actually there seems to be a straight analogy between those things. So big attachment to big pleasure actually leads to big negativity. Middle sized attachment to middle sized pleasure is the one that will lead to middle sized negativity and small amount of attachment to a small pleasure will lead to a small amount of negativity.
So if we are actually aware of this relationship between the attachment we generate for something and the negativity that we follow in trying to bring about this experience again, then that gives us some sort of insight why we need to moderate the amount and the type of food that we take. Now, from one hand what we try to do is to eliminate as much as possible the attachment that we generate through taking food. On the other hand, of course, we have to sustain this body because we want to continue with our practice. So we must find a point of balance. Now, we must find the right amount of food that will allow us to sustain the body without allowing too much attachment to be generated.
And it was found, the advice that was given by the Buddha was that the best way to go about it is to have a main meal at lunchtime and then you can remain without food until the next day. Now, with this amount of food that you have taken at lunch, this is enough to sustain your body. But also, because you are not reproducing, let’s say, the experience of taking food or expecting to get food, you do not generate attachment. So you have the best of these two situations sustaining the body with the less possible attachment. It is very good actually, you know, if you can find the situation where you don’t encourage your cravings and your attachment to increase, but you still sustain yourself?
Well, Australian habits — they’re very good at generating more attachment. So, as we said, with the food, you know, the golden rule is to take enough in order to protect and maintain your body but without generating attachment. And the same rule has to be applied, of course, when it comes into clothes. We need clothes in order to protect our bodies but we should not use clothes as a means for showing off, right? And we should not use it so that it becomes another object towards which we have great attachment and we generate attachment for that.
So we use it to protect ourselves the same way we use the food to sustain the body, but it should stop to that point. It shouldn’t be for becoming, for beautifying ourselves, for showing off and so forth. Now, the same thing of course applies to everything else that we use, let’s say in terms of furniture such as one seat, maybe one’s bed and so on and so forth. The body actually doesn’t need that much, doesn’t need very sophisticated furniture or seats to support itself, right? And we should provide what is necessary without providing too much opportunity for generating attachment.
So it is actually very good when we come to the use of food, of clothing and of one’s furniture, one’s seat and so forth. When we come to all those things, if we can use them without generating any attachment, then this is great because lack of attachment, stopping the generation of attachment is said to be a great virtue. Now, also as we say, we have explained how we are to treat the first three, and then it talks about the things that we should enjoy. The two things that we should enjoy is abandonment and meditation. When we talk about abandonment, eventually we talk about the truth of cessation.
We talk about aspiring to reach the state of liberation, right? And this thing is going to be achieved through practising the path, and the path is practising meditation. So we should have this sincere interest in aspiring to reach liberation, which is something that is achieved through the practice of meditation and eventually it comes down, this practice comes down to the three trainings, which is training in ethics, training in concentration, training in wisdom. Rinpoche was actually commenting on the great amount of pages of commentary that we have covered in order to explain the first two lines of verse four, right? And there is an indication of the great skill of Lama Tsongkhapa.
Now Lama Tsongkhapa, who composed this text, it only took him two lines to say, This life with leisure and endowment, which is difficult to find, is brief. By familiarizing the mind with this, we stop the allure of this life. It only took him two lines to convey this whole meaning. And this is actually, if you want, the essence of all the practice. Of course we had to go through a quite extensive and at times complicated commentary in order to understand the meaning of these two lines and to come to understand how there is just one thing to practice in that just to relinquish this life.
Rinpoche was actually commenting on this first line where it mentions the leisures and endowments. It says that if you can actually understand the great value of leisures and endowments, That thing on its own should be enough to stop all allure to this life, stop all attachment to mundane things. Because this opportunity that we have, that has characterized by this leisure and endowment, is indeed a very rare and in a sense a very meaningful situation. Why? Because on the basis of this opportunity we can actually practice.
And if we practice when we die, it is for sure we will not go to the hells. We will attain another human life. Not only a human life, let’s say, of the opportunity that we have now, but most probably a human life that is even better. Now, the proper human life, it actually gives you great opportunity. It gives you everything that you need in order to attain liberation or omniscience.
Having this set of leisure and endowments, having this human rebirth is the same as having a rebirth that has a great potency. And this potency has to be used in the right way. If you have something that contains this great potency and you let it go to waste, then you’re behaving as a fool. And Aumsho was saying it is the same as knowing that there is this one place where they are giving away hundred thousands of dollars and there is this other place where all they give, all they offer is one dollar, one single dollar. And what you do, you don’t go where they offer the hundred thousand dollars, you, for some reason, you are attached to this little place that will only give you one dollar and you remain there.
Right? Now if that was an actual situation in the world, everybody would say, my god, you know, this person is so stupid. There is no other way to describe it. Now you have the potential for something far greater and you remain attached and you remain satisfied with something which is pretty small. And it is not only that you don’t accomplish the great aims that are within reach with this human basis and the opportunity that we have, but indeed, instead of doing that, you engage in all sorts of petty activities, in all sorts of negative activities that will bring about a result of being reborn in lower migrations.
Not only you don’t make sure that you get another human rebirth, but you fall lower than that. And all this is happening whilst you have this great set of leisure and endowments, this great opportunity for achieving whatever you know, the highest possible achievement. So Rinpoche was saying, it’s great, Peter. You should always strive to achieve the highest possible thing. Don’t be satisfied with the minimum.
Now, once you understand that this life, this basis that we have that is endowed with leisures and endowments, once you realize how difficult it is, you start thinking of what would be the best way to use it. If you understand that something is very hard to find again, then you start thinking of how to best use this opportunity, that thing that you have right now, before it expires, before it is exhausted. Now, it is very difficult to get such an opportunity. For some reason, we are fortunate enough to have created the causes for it, so we have it right now. But there is no guarantee that another opportunity like this is going to come again in the future.
It’s very difficult to be in a situation like this. And once you realize this, then you definitely want to do things with this very life before this life is over. Then you have to make the best of it. And if you start thinking like this, you’ll actually find that your mind is never going to be completely at peace. You will always be wondering, am I doing the best I can in this situation?
How can I achieve the best? If you start thinking like that, almost automatically, almost naturally, you will never look at small goals, at small aims. You will always look at the best. You will always say, okay, I have this great opportunity. How can I make the best out of this basis that I have?
How can I achieve the best? It’s as if small goals, things that are indeed insignificant, they become non existent. You don’t even look at those things, you don’t consider those things. You want to achieve something great right now because this life is not going to last forever. This opportunity, once it is lost, is very difficult to find again.
Now, if we actually look at the line, it’s not only talking about leisures and endowments which are difficult to find, but then we have these last two words that they just say is brief. This life with leisure and endowments is brief. Now the first part of the sentence that is talking about how difficult it is to get this opportunity with leisure and endowments is the one that establishes that we should definitely practice whilst we still have this opportunity. But when you hear that it is brief as well, then that brings about this sense of urgency, The fact that we should practice right away. Yes, it is within this life that we have to practice whatever we do, but we have to start practicing it right away.
And the reason for that is because, as death is inevitable. Now there are very, very few people who live over one hundred years. Most of the people are going to die within the first one hundred years of their lives. And even if we have this, let’s say, maximum lifespan of one hundred years, it doesn’t mean that you have the full duration of one hundred years to live your life and establish the things that you want. Death will come and we’ll never know the time of death.
We don’t know what at which year it will come. We don’t know which month it will come. We don’t know which day it will come. Now death could come tomorrow. Death could actually come today.
And if death were to come today, you would actually see how grief this life of leisure and endowment becomes. And that should motivate all of us to decide that we have to start our practices straight away. We have to do something right now. This urgency needs to be established. And for that reason we say it is very important to generate comprehension, this realization of how difficult it is to find a life with leisure and endowment and then also to think about impermanence and to generate some realization.
And this type of realizations that we’re talking about is not external realization. It’s not that somebody comes to you and says, oh, well, you know, it’s very rare to find and you know you’re going to die one day. We’re not talking about this sort of understanding. We’re talking about internal realisation. Internal realisation is the result of meditation and being the result of meditation is something that is quite effective, something that is quite deep.
So we need to generate these two types of realizations: how difficult it is to find such a life and how short it is. And it is said that we need to actually generate both of these realizations. One supports the other. Each one enhances the other. You meditate on impermanence, it makes you realize how precious this opportunity with leisure and endowments is.
You concentrate on how rare leisure and endowments are, it makes you enhance your understanding of impermanence. So the two need to be combined like that. And if you can’t generate such a combined realization of the two, then it is for sure that allurement, attachment, craving for this life will automatically stop. Rinpoche was giving an example of somebody who has a bowel disorder. Let’s say you have hepatitis, right?
Hepatitis is usually a disease that when it’s manifested, it quite often comes with quite a lot of vomiting, right? So you might have very nice food in front of you, sometimes even just the smell of certain foods can cause you to vomit. That’s a very good example where you just even have to see from a distance something that usually you have great attachment to and you have this vomiting reaction towards it. Well, it is pretty you know, we should generate this vomiting reaction towards all those things that we are right now attached to saṃsāra. Generate the correct realization and it will bring up this sense of being disgusted with those things.
Rinpoche was talking about a great quality of the mind that actually is quite evident through the practice of meditation. Through the practice of meditation, especially, let’s say, analytical meditation, you can shape your mind, you can form your mind. The mind can become it’s something that can be very flexible. And once you have some control over the mind, once you understand the flexibility of the mind, then you can make it engage in whatever you like. It’s the same thing as having, let’s say, the equivalent of Play-Doh or plasticine, right, which you realize how soft and flexible it is.
You can make any sort of shape out of it. Now the same thing applies to the mind. The mind is equally flexible. There is something that is said about the mind from Geshe Chekawa, who is the one who composed actually commentary on the seven point mind training. And he is talking about the situation of the mind and he says: At present the mind is in a sense completely bound up with mental afflictions.
They completely cover the mind and in a sense they are the ones that govern the mind. But the mind has other possibilities. If the mind were to be free, to be separated, unraveled, you know, from those afflictions, you would then you would see the flexibility of the mind. Now, at the moment it might mean it might be that our mind is quite hard, it’s quite inflexible, and it is stiff like that because it is influenced by mental afflictions. Once you take away the mental afflictions, you will find out how soft and flexible the mind is and how many things you can make with the mind.
We will stop here for tonight. Thank you. I don’t think we’ll have time for questions.