Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 50-minute session, Kyabje Rinpoche opens with refuge and bodhicitta practices, then teaches the Four Noble Truths—described as the foundation of Buddhist practice. The primary focus is the First Noble Truth: understanding suffering. Walking through the classical sufferings—birth, aging, sickness, death, encountering the unpleasant, separation from loved ones, not obtaining what we desire, and the unsatisfactory nature of even pleasant experiences—he uses vivid, grounded language to break through denial and cultivate genuine disenchantment with cyclic existence. He explores the causes of suffering through karma, mental afflictions, and ego-grasping, before addressing cessation through understanding emptiness. Meditation instructions on breath awareness and analytical exercises on attachment and selflessness are woven throughout. Suited for practitioners beginning serious study of Buddhist fundamentals.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2011-04-24 – KR.mp3
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Calm Abiding
Date: 2024-04-11
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~3,393
Can you hear me now? It’s a lovely day to die. Sorry, that wasn’t meant to be a joke. The retreat and our lives move on. So let’s just orientate ourselves to our practice this morning.
I’m just checking our posture as Rinpoche has explained. The inner posture being the most important. Reflecting how rare and precious this opportunity is that we have. Marveling at our karma, dependent on precious Mother sentient beings that we have created to connect with such a highly realized lama. Not being sure which will come first, our next breath or our next life.
Looking into our mind and seeing that if we died right now, our afflictions would be like having concrete boots and jumping off a ship into a deep ocean. Once we’re in the lower realms, it’s extremely difficult to get out. Being terrified of suffering, we seek a reliable refuge. Then we reflect there’s no place that we can hide, nowhere within saṃsāra that we can depend upon. Everything is in the nature of suffering.
However, we have met the Dharma, the Triple Gem which is the only reliable refuge. But to put an end to suffering just for ourselves is extremely limited and narrowing, especially given our interconnectedness and dependence upon all Precious Mother sentient beings who have been suffering since beginningless time, just as we have. Therefore motivated by great compassion and love, we think that we must do all that we can to bring to fruition all our positive qualities, rid ourselves of all our negative afflictions of body, speech and mind. To become what is the personification of the highest that we can conceive in terms of love, compassion and wisdom, a Buddha. Understanding the laws of karma, we can know that from a small acorn, a huge oak tree arises.
In the same way, if we create the causes and conditions and dependence upon a spiritual friend, it is possible to achieve our goal. So we will just reflect on our vast motivation for the benefit of a vast number of beings for a minute. And so, to help habituate our mind to these noble thoughts, we will recite the Refuge and bodhicitta Prayer, page two, verse 1a, and then the four immeasurables, and then the three principal aspects of the path. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. By the merit of practicing generosity and so on, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. By the merit of practicing generosity and so on, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and its causes. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and its causes. May all sentient beings never be separated from happiness and be free of suffering.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment and anger, holding some close and others distant. We are just taking three principal aspects of the path. Homage to all the foremost holy Lamas. I will explain as best I can the essential meaning of all the conqueror’s teachings, path praised by his noble children, a crossing for the fortunate seeking liberation. Listen with clear minds those fortunate of you, who, unattached to the pleasures of conditioned existence and striving that your life of freedom and richness will find meaning, entrust yourselves to paths pleasing to the conquerors.
Without real renunciation, there is no way to stop struggling for sought pleasures in the seas of conditioned existence, and addiction to such existence utterly enslaves you. Thus, at the outset, seek the will to awaken. Freedoms and richesness are hard to find and life does not last long. Keeping this in mind will alter the priority you give to this life. Thinking again and again about the unvarying relation between actions and their effects.
And the sufferings of samsaric existence will alter the priority you give to future lives. Meditating in this way, when your thoughts are turned night and day towards liberation, and not even for a moment do you entertain a wish for the splendours of cyclic existence, then you have given birth to the will to awaken. But even such a will, if not conjoined with the complete opening of your heart, does not serve as cause for the perfect bliss of highest awakening. Thus, those of you who truly understand go on to develop the Supreme Awakened Heart. Think about what is happening to your mothers, how they are swept along in the currents of four raging rivers, abound by the near unbreakable chains of compulsive actions and held in the iron grip of self grasping.
Think how they are enveloped in the thick darkness of ignorance, are reborn into limitless lives, and in those lives are relentlessly made to bear the three sufferings. In this way give birth to the highest of hearts. But even if you were to instill within you the will to awaken and the awakened heart, without the wisdom realizing reality, the awakened mind, still you have no way to cut the root of conditioned existence. Thus, work with the means of realizing dependent arising. Whoever sees the unvarying relation between a cause and its effect in all things of cyclic existence and beyond, and brings to an end holding them as real, has entered onto the path that pleases the Buddhas.
As long as the two, appearance as infallible dependent arising, and emptiness as freedom from assertion as true, appear distinct one from another, you have yet to realize the subduer’s intent. But when they are no longer alternate but coincide, such that, in the mere seeing of the infallibility of dependent arising, definite knowledge totally destroys the way you conceive of things as real, then your analysis of the view is complete. Moreover, an extreme of true existence is dispelled by appearance and that of non existence by emptiness. If you understand the way emptiness finds expression within the context of cause and effect, you no longer will be captivated by extreme views. Then, when you have realised, just as they are, these essentials of the three principal aspects of the path, resort to solitude, intensify your joyous effort and quickly, my child, fulfil your eternal dream.
So we will just allow a couple of minutes to settle the mind, resting it on the gentle rhythmical in and out flow of our own breath, resting our awareness at a point as the air enters and leaves the nostrils, or the rising and falling of the diaphragm. Being aware of the merit filled Buddha Śākyamūni in front or on the crown of your head. If it’s helpful initially, can count the breath. Breathing in, breathing out, one. Breathing in, breathing out two, etc.
Up to say five as we’re distracted. Thoughts, sounds, sensations, just say thinking, bring the mind back to the breath. When we have some stability, can drop the counting. So, into our analytical meditation. Just becoming aware of the body.
We already have awareness of the first of the Four Noble Truths, the Truth of Suffering, which is our topic this morning, the Four Noble Truths. Of all the 84,000 teachings that the Buddha gave two and a half thousand years ago, it is said they are encapsulated within these four truths. Which is probably why His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said, Although my own practice is very poor, very poor indeed, and although I recite mantras and visualize certain mandalas, even so, the main emphasis of my daily practice is the Four Noble Truths and bodhicitta. Śākyamūni Buddha awoke to the very nature of existence, actualizing his full potential, attaining full enlightenment, and therefore he is fully qualified to guide us in our quest for a lasting solution to our suffering. With great compassion he gave his first teaching at Deer Park in Sarnath, near Varanasi in Bihar State, India, the Four Noble or Ennobling Truths.
True because this is how an ārya being perceives things. One who has attained a direct realization of emptiness. In the teaching on the Four Noble Truths, Venerable Kyabje Khensur Rinpoche implored his students to understand and practice the Four Noble Truths, describing them as the backbone, the very foundation of our practice. None of these teachings were given for just academic or religious interest, but intended to address the very core dilemmas of our suffering existence. We are the very sick patient who requires a skilled physician to provide us with exactly the right medicine.
Our job, as Venerable Rinpoche keeps telling us, is to take the medicine. The Buddha said, Monks, that is the noble truth of suffering. That is the noble truth of the source of suffering. That is the noble truth of cessation. That is the noble truth of the path.
And again, recognize that you are ill, eliminate the cause of the illness, attain health, rely on a remedy. Likewise, you should recognize, eliminate, attain and rely upon suffering, its causes, its cessation and the path respectively. First we must become thoroughly disenchanted with cyclic existence. As Buddha Śākyamūni said: How can one who is not disenchanted with this world appreciate peace? cyclic existence like home is difficult to leave behind.
And again, the more you conceive all beings as happy, the more dense the darkness of your delusion becomes. The more you conceive all beings as suffering, the more the darkness of your delusion lessens. The more you contemplate what is pleasant, the more the flames of attachment spread. The more you contemplate what is unpleasant, the more the flames of attachment abate. The first noble truth of suffering.
Two weeks ago in this Gompa, Venerable Kyabje Khensur Rinpoche rammed home the point that unless we understand what the sufferings of cyclic existence are, we will have no wish to free ourselves from them. In fact, his exact words were: So, when we have no understanding of what the sufferings of cyclic existence are, it is ridiculous and pathetic for us to say that we have renunciation. What renunciation? Let alone bodhicitta, what bodhicitta? We do not understand anything about this.
No renunciation or the will to emerge from suffering and its causes means that we have no real compassion and love for ourselves. So how can we have compassion and love for others? All the sufferings of saṃsāra can be variously grouped into the eight, the six, the three. Being in the womb is described as held in the unclean of odor most unbearable. You live cramped in pitch darkness.
After entering this hellish place, the womb, you suffer greatly with your body all hunched up. Being born is not without pain, anguish and sometimes death. Aging begins the moment after birth. If we survive childhood and adolescence, at a certain point the signs of vitality and health give way to wrinkles, changing shape, failing senses and frailty. Buddha said, Age makes a beautiful body ugly.
Age takes radiance and strength. Age takes happiness and humiliates. Age kills and steals the complexion. Again, how good that old age comes bit by bit. It would be unbearable if it came all at once.
Even in the peak of health we can be struck down by a tiny virus and flattened, feeling all the grief and loss of independence, having to rely on others who may not be in tune with our needs. At death we lose everything: partner, family, pets, house, job, friends, dignity everything, in fact, that we normally rely upon for our happiness. Death is the time to depart. It separates forever from loved and caring ones. They will not come back.
There will be no reunion, like falling leaves or the flow of a stream. Even though we don’t want even the slightest discomfort, we nevertheless seem to constantly encounter unpleasant situations from sore legs from sitting too long to floods, fires and war. The pleasant experiences we enjoy always end. We become separated from people, things and events that we hold most dear. The things we desire seem to elude us.
Life is full of uncertainty, experiences of dissatisfaction, loneliness and pain. Our happiness is nothing but the suffering of change, trying to escape from one form of suffering by replacing it with another. We sit for a while then need to change our posture, stand then need to lay down, we’re too hot then too cold, hungry then too full. Our happiness soon reveals its true nature: suffering. The worst sufferings of the human realm, says Kyabje Khensur Rinpoche, is actually bliss for the beings of the lower realms.
Pretas, hungry ghosts, for instance, live five hundred years or more in bodies, which are thin as twigs and which crackle when they move. They can never find neither food nor water as sustenance. Gungthang Konchog Tenpai Dronme, the seventh Dalai Lama, said: The so called three realms of saṃsāra are a house of molten iron. Go in any of the 10 directions and you’ll be burned. Your heart frets that these are your surroundings.
You wander in this evil place and sad are your surroundings. Just having a body and mind contaminated by delusion and karma means we’re thrown uncontrollably from one terrifying, miserable or pervasive suffering existence to another forever. This is what we must renounce, Rinpoche said. The second Noble Truth of the cause of suffering. Suffering isn’t caused by bad luck, God, the devil, parents, the government, the weather, poverty, etc.
Nāgārjuna said, There are no phenomena that are not dependent arisings. The First Law of Karma states that actions are certain to produce similar results. Positive actions give rise to happiness negative, non virtuous actions suffer. The karmic seas of our non virtuous actions are ripening now, exponentially in the fertile soil of our mental afflictions, attachment, anger, etc. Or growing out of the taproot of ignorance, holding on to appearances as existing independently of causes and conditions inherently.
In turn, our mental afflictions give rise to non virtuous actions and so the wheel of suffering lives turns, or as if blown about uncontrollably like a leaf in the wind from one suffering existence to another. From grasping at an exaggerated sense of self which we cherish is more important than others, even our positive actions are contaminated by ego’s dictates, not to mention killing, stealing and the like. This selfish thought is the thief within who robs us and destroys our harvest of virtue. Bring to mind the things that give you pleasure. How much do you believe that your emotional well-being is deeply linked to having what you believe makes you happy?
Can you identify the components of attraction? Can you break these down into their parts? How does this attachment feel? Tight, constricted, spacious and free? There is nothing external to our own mind that has even one atom of happiness in it.
Can you bring to mind a personal situation that you have some aversion towards that makes you annoyed, frustrated or angry? What thoughts does this trigger? I am a terrible person, that personal thing is the cause of my misery, I can’t cope, I will throttle them. Notice the feelings that arise. Do these thoughts and feelings come from the outside, from the object, the person or the situation?
Even if we’re shackled in front of a firing squad, we still have the choice to practice love and compassion or hatred and anger. The third Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering. As we watch the breath, notice the thoughts, sensations and feelings giving rise to the next moment of experience and the next. Like dirt in a jar of water that is allowed to rest, disturbance of the mind may begin to settle, a tiny gap between the thoughts, the stillness between each breath. We can start to search: who or what is meditating?
Is there a solid independent permanent self or I sitting somewhere within the body watching or hiding among the feelings, the thoughts and sensations? Can you find your I, your true Self? Venerable Kyabje Khensur Rinpoche gave the following instruction on how to meditate on the emptiness of the Self that appears to exist by itself, thus becoming the engine room for all our afflictions, the basis for attachment and aversion. Take the subject cup, he said, it follows that it is not established inherently because it is a dependent arising. Think again and again of the cup being a dependent arising, interdependent arising in terms of its parts: top, bottom, sides, particles.
Everything which is a dependent arising cannot exist inherently is necessarily a non inherently existing phenomena. Realize for sure the cup is a non inherently existing phenomena because it is a dependent arising. Depending on its parts, causes, conditions, a mind that labels it so. The emptiness of the cup is thus established. Likewise, the subject, say your name.
It follows: I am not an inherently existing phenomena because I am a dependent arising, dependent on an egg and sperm, parent, society, the five aggregates. Take a reflection of a face in the mirror. Face is a mere appearance, contingent phenomena, a dependent arising. Everything is the same. The merely imputed eye onto the aggregates exists, but the eye appearing to arise from the side of the aggregates and to come towards us is a non existent phenomena.
Once we have correctly discerned the emptiness of the self and phenomena, suffering, this wretched cycle of lives ceases. Even if we still have some doubts about this teaching on emptiness, Venerable Kyabje Khensur Rinpoche says, It will nevertheless tear to shreds your grasping at inherent existence. It is like a hailstorm flattening crops. Letting go of the iron grip of attachment and aversion to a completely false sense of self and phenomena completely obliterates the delusions and karma like the sun eliminating darkness. We identify suffering for what it is and seek to understand its cause.
By relying upon a qualified spiritual friend, we can put an end to the cause by following the advice which is the path, the Fourth Noble Truth. Closing the door to the 10 non virtues of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, etc, upholding ethics and pledges and renouncing the causes of suffering, taking refuge, focusing on future lives, developing concentration and the wisdom realizing emptiness. We can put an end to suffering altogether. When combined with bodhicitta we can then progress onto full enlightenment. As the last verse of the final Lam Rim dedication prayer concludes: Whenever someone makes an effort to act in accordance with the tenfold Mahāyāna virtuous practices, may they always be assisted by the mighty ones and may oceans of prosperity spread everywhere.
Page 10. We dedicate like hitting the save button on a computer once we’ve done a project, dedicating our merit to the benefit of ourselves and all sentient beings, the aspirations of all holy beings. Verse nine: O holy and venerable Lama, from the clouds of compassion, you are the source for happiness and bliss, or powerful Tenzin Gyatso, so please remain till the end of existence. Should the situation arise where the Supreme Precious Teachings no longer pervade, although pervading should they degenerate, then through the mind being moved by great compassion, may the treasure of benefit and happiness be revealed. May the jewel of supreme bodhicitta which has not arisen arise, and may it never diminish but increase more and more.
May all father and mother sentient beings be happy and successful. May all the abodes of evil migration always be empty. May the prayers of all Bodhisattvas, wherever they are and wherever they reside, be quickly accomplished. And we will say verse 13, the tea offering. Do I know we say it in English?
Om Ah Hum, Om Ah Hum. The spiritual teacher is the Buddha, the Dharma, and the spiritual community. The spiritual teacher is the creator of all. To all spiritual teachers, I make this offering.