Lam Rim — 2015-10-03

Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. The Dalai Lama fields wide-ranging questions on the Four Noble Truths, moving between rigorous philosophical terrain and practical application in a 48-minute Q&A. A questioner uses the death of a young person as a springboard for compassion practice, prompting His Holiness to discuss integrating teachings with lived experience—including an anecdote about a Christian monk friend who meditates on impermanence while burying people. He then unpacks the relationship between Buddhist science, philosophy and religion, arguing that as neuroscience and rebirth research advance, elements of the Four Noble Truths may migrate out of dharma proper into empirical fact. The session moves through physical versus mental suffering, ultimate versus conventional phenomena across different schools of Buddhist logic, and a philosophical tussle over the contaminated nature of aggregates in arhats—touching on Pure Lands, the Hīnayāna-Mahāyāna split, and Avalokiteśvara’s compassion in hell realms. Toward the end, His Holiness reflects on modernity, materialism, and Western decline in mental training, drawing on Camus and Buddhist philosophers to argue that without meditation, material comfort brings no lasting freedom. He closes with precise etymological notes on Tibetan-Sanskrit translation, especially the term “definite emergence.”

File metadata (for organising)

File: compendium-of-valid-cognition-2015-10-03-kr

Teacher: HH Dalai Lama

Collection: Compendium of Valid Cognition

Date: 2003-10-15

Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide

Words: ~6,175

Then, I’m open to your questions only on topic. In other words, on the four noble truths preferably what we covered this morning but otherwise more generally on the path of the being of the middling scope. I’m sorry. Forbearance? And, well that’s my question mark.

As in his question was talking about meditating with respect to arhats meditating on forbearance and You’ll have to check your notes or the notes of someone else perhaps. Forbearance and patience was it. They’re synonyms. Tibetan’s term is often translated in English as patience but it’s a mistranslation. Has a much broader meaning.

It really means the ability to take on hardship. Hence, forbearance. Yes, Susan. Can you use the method of, you know, when you see some big event happening, you know, someone die and then you feel, you know, that person is so young and hasn’t lived through and that sort of event does put a big impact on you and to use that as a, you know, like practice for being nice to people, you know, even in a short, you know, when you do you know, even that your enemy to, you know, be with them, you know, like friendship again? That’s absolutely excellent.

That’s exactly how one should practice. One should blend what teachings one receives with what one lives. I have an old old friend. I’ve known him more than twenty five years now. He’s a Christian monk.

Then in Christianity as you know, there are no teachings about meditation really. There are some isolated traditions with some practices in the Christian Orthodox Church and in some of the Catholic traditions but it’s nominal. And he as a part of his job has to bury a lot of people. Then he was very interested in Buddhist teachings and I told him there are elements you can integrate with your practice and the foremost is meditation on death and impermanence. So he was very enthusiastic and now he told me whenever I bury somebody, I meditate on death and impermanence according to Je Tsongkhapa but I keep quiet about it.

And that’s exactly the way to practice this. That’s exactly it. But when you think about other people that die so young and not live anything and now your mind, you know, suddenly, you know, change. It’s like changing. If we analyze clearly what is known as the disintegrating collection, what we are in other words, these aggregates which are disintegrating constantly, changing constantly, then there is no justification either for ordinary love or for ordinary anger.

There’s just no justification at all. Yes, are there other questions? Geshe-la made the comment that the first and second noble truth may not even be considered dharma because it’s just the way things are, which I thought in itself was one definition of dharma, namely the way things are. I am very glad you asked that question. I was hoping somebody would bring it up.

Obviously, what you see here is a top Geshe who is thinking. Then nothing is off limits and this analysis is made very much in keeping with the distinction His Holiness made between Buddhist science, Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist religion. Now if much of the Four Noble Truths is eventually scientifically demonstratable, then those elements are no longer really religious or even philosophical. They are scientific and there is one element when I talked here about the Four Noble Truths, I mentioned the work of an American neurologist on the nature of pain and what was very striking was that in his analysis and he was not Buddhist at all, he pointed out that one could basically understand all happiness as variations in the levels of pain. Now this is a profoundly Buddhist outlook.

It’s a presentation of the suffering of change. But it’s a presentation from someone who has no connection at all with Buddhism. Then if such a presentation were to became mainstream, we would probably say that the suffering of change, is a scientific fact, then whether that can extend to the noble truth of the path and of cessation, I don’t know. But I think for certain the truth of suffering may eventually become more part of science than Buddhism. Then Stevenson’s research shows some type of correlation between the afflictions in a previous life and rebirth in future lives and the type of rebirth, if that were confirmed, parts of the truth of the origin of suffering could be moved out really of dharma.

Dharma is very difficult to translate. It does not only mean religion, it means law, it means universal order. It can simply mean phenomena. Do you have other questions? Seems incredibly difficult to distinguish between physical and mental suffering or what the difference is there, that we get hungry and there’s something that’s happening in the body, but then the mind takes over and it can yeah, and I mean that’s a very coarse example, but I I would my question is how do we really distinguish between physical and mental suffering?

Physical suffering arises in dependence on input from the five sensory organs. Then as that physical suffering is mentally elaborated upon through conceptuality for instance, it turns into an experience of mental suffering. If you make that distinction, it’s pretty straightforward. It’s easy in theory but the actual experience of it within, you know, you’re distinguishing between what’s actually happening in my body and what’s actually happening in my mind, I find that distinction difficult. You should practice Satipatthana meditation.

In Satipatthana it becomes very clear. When you engage in Satipatthana or Anapanasati, you know, then you just notice the movement of the breath, right? And then the first thing which happens within a matter of minutes is an overwhelming increase in the amount of suffering you experience. Like typically your whole body will be crawling, you know. Then you will notice pains in parts of your body you didn’t know you had.

Then that pain is not newly arisen. That pain occurs because the threshold of attention has increased. You are more aware of what is happening. That is physical pain. Then your mental reaction to that will be mental pain and there’s a very big difference in Satipatthana practitioners between those who are able to take their distance from the pain and there is no mental suffering and those who are unable to do so and then they are unable to do the long eight to ten hour sessions which Satipatthana calls for.

So the difference is very very striking in that context. Does that make sense? Explain the what’s the difference between the ultimate and conventional phenomenon? Well, it depends on the schools of tenets. So we would spend probably weeks going through it.

School of tenets by school of tenets. Basically, ultimate truths from a Buddhist standpoint are true. Conventional truths are deceptive. Then it is through meditation on ultimate truth specifically selflessness, the selflessness of persons in the lower schools of tenets and emptiness in the higher schools of tenets that we gain liberation or full enlightenment. Now it is not always true but again I won’t enter into that here that for all schools of tenets, emptiness is not necessarily ultimate truth.

There’s one subschool the Sautrāntika Madhyamaka which is a very particular position for which emptiness is a conventional truth precisely because of the way the Sautrāntika Madhyamaka path is structured. But ultimately I’d say from a Buddhist standpoint, all of the Buddhist schools of tenets say that things exist differently from the way they appear. Then that difference is the root of our suffering. The way things actually exist is an ultimate truth broadly speaking. The way things appear to us to exist again broadly speaking is a conventional truth.

This is the fundamental Buddhist understanding of reality which is for instance totally different from that in the monotheistic religions for which things actually exist in the way they appear to us to exist. If you speak to Christians, Muslims or Jews, the physical world basically exists the way it appears to us to exist and this creates very great problems or has created very great problems with the advances in physics. Do you have other questions? I’m trying to get to grips with the definition, the first definition in the noble truth of suffering in your outline, in the outline, it’s saying that I presume that this is a truth, this noble truth of suffering, that this is a truth which is approached from the standpoint of of me as a thoroughly afflicted person. And my approach in relation to this truth, I’m just trying to understand it, is from four different points of view.

One is from the point of view of impermanence, Secondly, suffering. Thirdly, emptiness and fourthly, selflessness of persons. Is that how is that the interpretation? Broadly speaking, yes. I mean, Geshe-la will enter into it as much as he wishes to this afternoon.

I just these are notes I took for Geshe-la’s teachings on the four truths just to enable me to translate in a more consistent fashion. There is an awful lot which is not here. This is just summary notes. This definition is followed by a couple pages of debates on each term. So a truth truth from the standpoint of the thoroughly afflicted actually is not a truth technically speaking.

It’s a truth from the standpoint of the thoroughly afflicted. The thoroughly afflicted refers to samsaric existence. So the first two truths, the truth of suffering and the origin of suffering are truths from the standpoint of the thoroughly afflicted and they are both parts of samsaric existence. The last two truths are truths from the standpoint of the thoroughly purified and neither is part of samsaric existence. Both are either part or lead to nirvana.

Then the definition just nirvana. nirvana gives includes the four characteristics of the first noble truth. So that Geshe-la will enter into this afternoon. The one thing I would say you want to keep in mind, those of you who have some done some tenets will probably latch on to this, is that this definition is clearly in the light of points three and four rooted in one system of tenets and not another. So the mere fact of talking of the emptiness of a self of other objects, the emptiness in other words of phenomena means that this definition is only valid for the Mahāyāna School of Tenets.

And actually these definitions in the section on Paramita are all presented from the standpoint of the Svatāntrika Madhyamaka School. The treatise one studies as a foundation of Paramita is Haribhādra’s Abhisamayālamkāra Aloka clarifying the meaning of the commentary on Maitreya’s Abhisamayālamkāra. Then all the presentation of the perfections is done from the standpoint of Sautrāntika Madhyamaka. If you were to try to posit a definition of the noble truth of suffering from the standpoint of the Vaibashika School of Tenets, this definition would be invalid. You’d have to modify it.

But there’s lots of debates about this, lots of debates. I think Geshe-la will talk as much as can be talked about this afternoon. Do you have other questions? I haven’t thought this through completely, but it seems to me that the aggregates of themselves how you say this are not contaminated. It’s the mind that causes the aggregates to be contaminated.

The aggregates of an aria or arhat or an enlightened being still aggregates, but it’s the mind that’s changed. Is that Well, you have to distinguish between the physical aggregate, the form aggregate and the four mental aggregates. So the four mental aggregates of an arhat after he has attained liberation are obviously uncontaminated. The form aggregate he brings with him from birth. Then then you can debate.

But clearly that form aggregate was contaminated. Then this is where there are major problems between the Hīnayāna and the Mahāyāna as Geshele explained this morning. So in as much as the Arhat has basically eliminated all impelling karma, then at the arhat’s death there is no rebirth. There can be no rebirth. Karma cannot mature.

Then in that case what happens? So Vaibhashikha and Sattrantika say that the mind literally ceases and this is really the view of the Theravāda at present. So this has led to Śāntideva’s famous rejoinder in Bodhicaryāvatāra then if the continuum of the Buddha was interrupted upon his attainment of parinirvāṇa to whom do you pray? Then on the other hand if as a Mahāyāna one says that the continuum is not interrupted then since rebirth no longer occurs under the power of common affliction after renouncing these aggregates after dying in other words, where does the aggregate go? And this is why the pure lands are illogical necessity as Sylvia was asking.

Without the pure lands, it is not possible to present the attainment of liberation without a severance of the mental continuum. Because from the Buddhist standpoint, the mental continuum is a causal process, right? So everything basically holds together, doesn’t it? Do you have other questions? I don’t really understand how mental suffering and karma leads to the physical aggregates?

Our mental suffering leads to physical, did you say? Yeah. Well mental suffering in and of itself does not but the afflictions in other words, if we take desire or anger when they arise within our mind stream, they lead us to engage eventually in non virtuous deeds. For instance, out of anger we might be very spiteful and say something very hurtful to someone else. Then we accumulate a non virtuous karma of speech.

That non virtuous karma of speech is deposited within our mind. Where the various schools of tenets disagree but somewhere within our mind it is deposited and that eventually at some point in the future will be activated by another affliction. It’s a bit like a time bomb or a bomb if you prefer which needs some exterior trigger, the exterior triggers the affliction. When it is triggered it leads to a rebirth with a body and that’s how an affliction in one, two, five, five hundred lives leads to a body to form aggregate in other words. Then that whole life is defined in that way.

So from the Buddhist standpoint, there is a dissymmetry between the afflictions and karma. Yes, it is karma which produces a future life but without the afflictions karma cannot mature. Karma is like the seed and the afflictions are like the conditions, water, sunlight, manure and so forth. So if you want to eliminate lower rebirths or even better all rebirths, you have two possible strategies. One which works and one which does not work.

The one which does not work is to purify all karma because as you keep purifying you keep accumulating more karma, it’s an endless process. But since to mature karma necessarily needs the afflictions, the strategy which works is to eliminate the afflictions. You eliminate the afflictions and even though let’s say the arhats have tremendous amounts of unpurified karma, but that karma never matures, it can never mature because the conditions for it to mature have been destroyed. This is why in practice for one’s own practice if one has to choose between applying the antidotes to the afflictions and practicing let’s say Vajrasattva mantra, one should focus on applying the antidotes to the afflictions because Vajrasattva mantra is very powerful practice but as you purify, you accumulate more negative karma. Right?

Life goes on. In the practice, no. But you your life goes on as you practice. So I did the 100,000 mantras once when I was studying at Sera, it took me more than a year because I get to tie it in with everything else. There’s a big difference in my mind, big difference but in one year I accumulated a lot of non virtuous karma as well.

So that may have been only partly purified whereas if you try to counter the afflictions as they decrease the capacity of the non virtuous karma you have to harm you dwindles as well. It’s a much better use of time. Please. Self grasping, why do they still experience self-cherishing? That’s an excellent question.

It’s a very difficult one. Basically, what is the arhats’s goal? The arhats’s goal is to attain liberation from suffering for himself or herself. Therefore, the arhats’s goal even though it’s a noble goal is an egotistical goal. Others are simply not part of the picture.

And then the arhat obviously gains depending on the system of tenets but let’s say in Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka direct realization of emptiness and then progresses through the grounds and the paths until he attains a path of no more learning. Then he will have attained, we would say the enlightenment of a hearer or a Pratyekabuddha, liberation. But self-cherishing is still present in the mind since actually it was his goal all along. And this is why it is said that it is preferable to enter directly in the Mahāyāna then to first become an arhats and then enter in the Mahāyāna because if one enters directly in the Mahāyāna, one has more empathy for others because of one’s own suffering. One thinks well I am experiencing these awful things and everyone else is basically going through the same experiences.

Then this enables compassion to arise easily. Whereas an Arhat, especially after being reborn in the Pure Lands has no experience of suffering whatsoever. Then it is very difficult to generate empathy, for an Arhat and they say that when the arhat enters the Mahāyāna, it takes him longer to attain full enlightenment than for an ordinary being who has entered directly the Mahāyāna for that reason. Egoism. I mean the Arhat is profoundly happy.

There’s no suffering. Then we are taught in the sutras that the Buddha’s manifest. It is taught in the sutras that the Arhat dwell in the pure lands in a lotus, which is probably a metaphor whose petals are closed. Then all the experiences the light inside the lotus. It’s an extraordinary state of meditative absorption.

Then there is no suffering of any sites of any type and the Buddha’s manifest and they say to the arhats, you have to leave this state and enter the Mahāyāna from the path of accumulation and work for sentient beings and the Arhat’s reaction is basically that you read in much of the Theravāda nowadays. A, why bother? They’re not interested. I’m not interested. B, it’s very difficult.

This is to this day in Thailand when you read Theravāda presentations of the Mahāyāna, it’s very striking. They’re very logical. You know they say the Mahāyāna path exists. There are bodhisattvas but it is an incredibly difficult vocation. Why bother?

Most people don’t want liberation let alone for the enlightenment. Then it is makes much more sense to focus on one’s own practice and I think for all of us certainly for myself, it is very very strong in my mind stream. I mean, it is very difficult to work for people who don’t want not to drown. Right? Very difficult.

So that’s the problem you see. Nāgārjuna talks about the appeal of Nirvāṇa, it’s very striking. He’s very critical of arhats in the last verses. You know, but I have a lot of sympathy for arhat because you can really see where they come from, you know. Obviously, the arhat have only abandoned Kleśavarana, the afflictive obstructions.

They have not abandoned Jnaya Varana, the obstructions to omniscience. So even from their own side, their achievements are incomplete. But it is the temptation which beset Avalokiteśvara as you know. So Avalokiteśvara, the reason Avalokiteśvara has a large number of heads is because Avalokiteśvara descended in the hell realms to help beings and in the hell realms found that not only did not beings not want to be helped but I think it was Indra who manifested and asked Avalokiteśvara to give him his right arm and when Avalokiteśvara gave him his right arm, Indra then insulted him for giving him his right arm with his left arm which as you know in India is profoundly impolite. Then Avalokiteśvara renounced his bodhisattva vows and as a result, his head was shattered.

Then if this happens to great bodhisattvas, for us you can imagine. Do you have other questions? Just thinking about the arhats striving for liberation, realise it’s my own self-cherishing that makes me think, why would you want to aim for total obliteration? In other words, the sense that I will no longer suffer, but I will also no longer exist to know that I am not suffering. It just seems a rather nihilistic view but I guess I can think of that in terms of my own self-cherishing.

It’s because all of us were raised in incredibly comfortable worlds. I mean, this if you look at the history of the encounter of Buddhism with the West, this was the main critique addressed to Buddhism by the early French and German scholars when they came in contact with Buddhism for the first time. It’s very striking. Hegel brings it up but Saint-Hilaire, a French Buddhist scholar and Renan later has some incredibly harsh words for Buddhism. He calls, Renan calls Buddha the great Nihilist Christ of the East.

It was something which was totally alien. But you see, once you meditate on suffering, once you see the totality of existences of the nature of suffering, then cessation is something extraordinary. And in the dharmapada it’s explicit. So dharmapada is very much written from the standpoint of the Hīnayāna. You have those marvelous verses in which it is said just as a flame is extinguished such as nirvana.

Yes. But in effect, they they are not far off a a realization. Yes. And it was a big problem with Buddha’s early disciples. There was a spate of suicides.

And you read about it in the Vinaya and the Buddha banned suicide precisely because obviously suicide solves nothing, right? You’re just reborn again. You know, but I should point out that there are there is one very famous Western philosopher who has you know, proposed suicide as the option or the solution to all our problems and he really enjoyed life which I never could figure out. The French philosopher Camus in the myth of Sisyphus. Camus says that the only option man has faced with the absurdity of the universe is the rebellion of suicide.

Then Camus enjoyed wine and women and good food and I’m not quite sure how he conciliated the two. He died in an accident, a tragic accident. But there’s a whole school of western philosophers, Camus, then the Romanian French philosopher, Cioran. Very interesting. Philosophers of the absurd and obviously they neither believe in previous nor future lives but their analysis of this life from a Buddhist standpoint is very strong and the conclusion they draw is that life is not worth living.

Then one of France’s foremost living philosophers called Comte-Sponville, André Comte-Sponville very influenced by stoicism had an extraordinary line in a recent book, The Book of Atheist Spirituality that’s published five years ago in which he says, I think I can almost quote this one from memory if I try. No great religion has provided answers as cogent as Buddhism to the tragedy of human existence. Very striking. Very striking. I encourage you to read these philosophers.

I mean, obviously you have to circumscribe what they say to this life. But you see, it’s a very strong counter to materialism because the materialist says, well there’s no previous life and no future life but as a materialist, is rational and logical for me to enjoy everything in this life. Somerset Maugham, the great British short story writer said, my philosophy of life is to do what I want with due regards for the policeman around the corner. Now this was Mogham’s viewpoint but both Cioran and Camus are saying even if you believe in neither previous nor future life this life is not worth bothering with. Very interesting.

Then if you have no other questions, I have one or two questions for you. Interesting. Yes. I just was interested that Geshe-la mentioned this morning that just even two hundred years ago, Nālānda would have had 500 arhats. That is approximate.

Approximate. Yes. Sure. Tibetans have a different relation to history than we do. Oh, okay.

So Tibetan time. In Tibetan time, been two hundred years ago. Okay. So, but even given that, you know, it seems that the world is degenerating at an incredibly fast pace. And, you know, is that the case?

It sort of seems to have like, it seems to be like on really fast speed mode of degeneration at the moment. I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been a practicing Buddhist a long time now. As a Buddhist, I would have to say yes. I think the world is involved or has been involved for three centuries, two and a half centuries in a huge experiment.

The experiment is to see whether through control of the exterior physical world we can attain happiness. So all of us are part of this experiment. We’re products, you know, our birth, our education, our worldview is that one whether we like it or not. So we are basically indoctrinated from early childhood in the belief that it is through the control of exterior stimuli. This is what science is all about that we will attain happiness and the jury is out, right?

Whether it is successful or not. Much of the evidence coming in indicates it is not very successful. Then before that as Geshe-la pointed out very sharply this morning precisely because one had no control or very little control over exterior circumstances, one had to engage in mental training. I had the most interesting conversation with my mother a couple days ago. So she is very close to death at present.

It’s a matter of probably a couple of weeks or months with repeated strokes and falls and you know, she has a very quiet and peaceful mind and everyone around her is profoundly perturbed. The doctors in particular are basically very perturbed because just as I saw when my father died, it’s seen as a failure of medicine when someone dies. You know. It’s a failure of the scientific project almost, you know. Then, obviously as long as this control of the exterior world works, we have almost no incentive for mind training and that’s the problem.

Right? I’m not saying we have to give up our cars and our planes and our computers. I’m saying we have to find a middle way. I mean, I am more for cars, planes and computers I have. Well, planes know but cars and computers, yes.

But we must train the mind also because at the end of the day, these material things they are transitory. It’s a mind which goes on and as Milarepa said, the mind goes on alone. Then for us as westerners, the problem is we’re raised to buy into the system to such a degree that by the time we realize that actually modern medicine is not going to be able to extend our lifespan beyond a certain point. There may be no guarantee that we will not have what basically is a shameful and pitiful death. Right?

Then there’s no guarantee regarding our relationships irrespective of the number of psychologists we go to see to, you know. When we realize that and we start wondering can I change the way I perceive phenomena, it is late? This is the problem. People typically come to Buddhist centers in their sixties. Late.

Serious study it’s late at 60. Meditation, it’s late ish. That’s why I think we’re living in the age of degeneration because the balance is not there. I mean the Tibetans needed modern science and development. People died from a lot of causes which we basically have cured in the Western Tibet.

Syphilis was rampant. Rampant. But precisely because exterior suffering was so great, there was this constant impetus for mental transformation. And that’s why I think we materially in comparison with the Tibetans, we are giants. I never waste my time talking to the Geshes about the physical world.

It’s a waste of time. We know much more than they do. Complete waste of time. On the other hand as far as mental development is concerned, we are pygmies and they are giants. There’s no point in bothering with what what westerners know about mental development that hasn’t been pursued.

So does that answer your question? Then I keep hoping I can ask you my question but Well, so this morning Geshe-la said that if you take thoroughly afflicted phenomenon in other words samsaric existence and you develop samsaric existence you get the two truths. Truth of suffering and the truth of the origin of suffering. And then if you expand these even more you get the 12 limbs, right? So if you move backwards the same thing, you bring the 12 limbs back into the two truths and the two truths back into cyclic existence.

Which of the 12 limbs goes into which truth? You have 12 limbs from ignorance, compositional factors, etc, etc all the way to birth and aging and you have two truths, the two truths of suffering and the origin of suffering. Which of the 12 limbs is a truth of suffering and which of the 12 limbs is a truth of origin? You don’t have to answer at once. It might be fruitful sport.

And after this, there’s a subsidiary question. Which of the 12 limbs are afflictions and which of the 12 limbs are karma? Karma. And just think about it quietly, you know. Maybe tomorrow we’ll talk about it during the question and answer session.

This is how one has to link the two, you see. It’s very very helpful for oneself. And then if you have energy and dedication, then you can take this the next step, right? If the 12 limbs in the forward order, in other words, the process of generation of cyclic existence, Ignorance leads to compositional factors, leads to consciousness, name and form, six sources, etc. Can be regrouped in the two first truths of suffering and the origin of suffering.

Then obviously the 12 limbs in the reverse order. The cessation of ignorance leads to the cessation of the compositional factors, leads to the cessation of consciousness, to the cessation of name and form etc. Can be regrouped into the two last truths. the truth of the path and the truth of cessation. Which of the 12 limbs goes where?

How many go in the truth of the path? How many go in the truth of cessation? And before we break, do we, do you have any other questions? I think we have time for one question. The way this is translated as definite emergence.

Previously I’ve had translators who for certain teachers such as Kirti Chhab Rinpoche translated as definite exit. That’s very good. So what’s the difference? That’s very good. That’s very good.

I mean, I avoid the translation renunciation as much as I can. It’s a historic translation but at least a very misleading understanding. Leads to what? A very misleading understanding renunciation. It’s not renunciation as we understand it.

The Tibetan term is definite. Is to arise. Then it’s definite arising or why not definite exit, definite arising from what? From within cyclic existence. Now the reason that type of translation, that very precise transition is important is because you’ll find in the 16 characteristics of the Four Noble Truths a distinction between definite emergence and having definitely emerged.

So if you try, if one translates very closely like this, it’s possible to make the distinction. For Kirti Chhab Rinpoche, same thing it would be definite exit and having definitely exited. Both would be correct. I think just emergence is perhaps closer to the Tibetan verb because the verb itself means to become. To become.

So is it kind of more of an evolution? Yes, it could be. Yes, it could be. Whereas definite exit you would have in Tibetan near term, definite expulsion literally. Then obviously the Tibetan term is a translation of the meaning of the Sanskrit term.

It’s not a precise translation of the Sanskrit term. When that happens, we know that the pundits and the translator teams gave a commentary on the Sanskrit term in the Tibetan translation. So those translations are very interesting. They refer to the understanding of, in this case, definite emergence by the Tibet, the Sanskrit pandits around the ninth century. Whether that corresponds to what the Buddha intended 14 centuries earlier, that’s another question.

And then you have to go back to the Sanskrit and the Pāli. Right? The Pāli especially. But these early Tibetan translations because as you know, the work of the Lotsawa, the translator in Tibet was government funded. So here, unfortunately, the translator has to do his own thing.

Right? In Tibet, it would be like United Nations taking over then or UNESCO and there was a center for translations, translators, there were dictionaries with official translations. These official translations were settled after discussion and debate between the pundits who themselves were extraordinary scholars and the lotsawas who are bilingual in Tibetan and Sanskrit and generally were excellent scholars too. So these early Tibetan translations, I feel we have to translate in English as closely as possible precisely because there is a wealth of meaning inside. There’s a wealth of meaning.

I mean, I don’t understand Tibetan language but in Tibetan language, my understanding is that things are extremely precise, like many different words for very specific things, whereas in English it’s quite different. Yes. It’s a big I don’t know another language like French. It’s big problem. Or Italian or German or Russian.

If it were to be translated, what would the difference be? Well for translating from Tibetan, the three best languages are English, German and Russian. These are all languages with huge vocabularies and German and Russian we can create words easily, very easily. Then English is very good to translate from Tibetan. French is very poor.

French vocabulary is much smaller than English creating words is complicated. It’s not possible to be as precise. And then there are, I talked about this once here, it’s a fascinating problem but very difficult to address. There are problems of denotation and connotation when we translate from Tibetan. For instance, I have never solved the problem of how to translate the Tibetan terms for the various aspects of mind in English.

Mind. Mind. It has a big difference in Tibetan. If you say a Tibetan hears many many different shades of meaning. We simply do not have an English.

Then we stick or in my case I stick to Jeffrey’s translations just because they are the closest I know but those shades of meaning do not exist in English. Well, Pamela asked a couple of weeks ago, you know, a question and I mentioned she was asking question about will. I mentioned that the term will does not exist in Tibetan. Willpower, will does not exist. I can translate it but I have to translate it by wishing for something, aspiring to something, striving, that’s not will.

So in that case, we have the Geist, the spirit of the language which is fundamentally different. Yes. Could you give us the long form of what you think? Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow then because it’s 02:15. It’s a difficult one like a rikpa for Tibetan really has a connotation of the fundamental mind.

Yeshe has a connotation of transcendental wisdom. Blo is mind as awareness. Sem is only mind qua mind whereas as opposed to mental factors, right? Then Namshi is something totally different. Namshi is a concatenation of the minds.

Then obviously you can translate this in English. It’s very different. Unborn awareness. Unborn awareness. Yeah, because he’s very influenced by Nyingma, right?

That’s Nyingma understanding. The term unborn comes from Nyingma. Then Jeffrey translates blo as awareness so I have stuck to that, you know. But the truth of the matter is that we all have the same problem which is that we don’t have these shades of meaning in English. And then I must apologize we have to stop here for today.

So please keep your questions for tomorrow and try to find an answer to the two questions I ask you. Thank you very much.

Key terms in this teaching

arhat dra chom pa (Tib)

The Tibetan translates as "foe destroyer." A person who has destroyed their inner enemy, the delusions, and attained liberation from cyclic existence. LYWA

conventional truth samvriti satya (Skt); kun dzob den pa (Tib)

As opposed to ultimate truth, which is the understanding of the ultimate nature of reality (emptiness), conventional truth is what is true to the valid conventional consciousness. LYWA

four noble truths denpa zhi (Tib)

The subject of the Buddha's first turning of the wheel of Dharma. The truths of suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path to the cessation of suffering as seen by an arya. LYWA

Madhyamaka u ma (Tib)

The Middle Way school, one of the two Mahayana (Great Vehicle) philosophical schools. The Middle Way school does not assert true establishment even conventionally. There are two divisions of the Middle Way school: 1) Autonomists and 2) Consequentialists. LYWA

Nyingma

The old translation school of Tibetan Buddhism, which traces its teachings back to the time of Padmasambhava... LYWA

Sautrantika do de pa (Tib)

The Sutra school, one of the two main Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle) philosophical schools. The Sutra school accepts both self-knowers and external objects. LYWA

Theravada Sthaviravada (Skt); nätenpa (Tib)

A tradition of Buddhism that upholds the Pali Canon and the noble eightfold path, which leads practitioners to liberation (nirvana), a state free from the suffering of conditioned existence. LYWA

two truths den pa nyi (Tib)

The two ways of relating to phenomena, as conventional or all-obscuring truth, the truth to a worldly mind, and ultimate truth, the truth to a mind engaged in ultimate analysis. LYWA

Definitions adapted from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive glossary, as taught in the Gelug tradition.