Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 42-minute session on mind training, Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen uses the analogy of preparing for a trip to India to explain why Dharma practice is essential preparation for future lives. He establishes motivation through causal reasoning: ethics lead to human rebirth, patience to physical beauty, generosity to wealth, and wisdom training to intelligence. He then investigates whether practitioners actually possess the ability to engage in Dharma, identifying the precious human life, spiritual guidance, sacred texts, and supportive companions as conditions that confirm capacity. He directly addresses procrastination, emphasizing the unpredictability of death across all ages and the rarity of obtaining human rebirth with conducive circumstances. The teaching concludes with a framework of three types of practitioners—those of great, middling, and limited capacity—based on the motivation animating meditation on leisure and fortune. The session includes spirited Q&A on attachment, criticism, and the distinction between apparent happiness and genuine happiness arising from negative actions.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1997 – Side 2 – #4 – KR.mp3
UUID: 97943476-b001-4324-9e48-fc3662d68fb3
Teacher: Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen
Collection: Mind Training
Date: 1997 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,327
So, I mean, if you were going to you know, you would have to make some kind of preparations even if you were on a simple matter of going for a holiday to India. If you if you went without any money, you wouldn’t even be able to find any get any food for yourself. So it’s very much like Dharma would be very much analogous to money in the case of when we were going to India to to be able to ensure that we got what we wanted once we got there. The Dharma is like a way of preparing to for ourselves that we that where we’re going, we get what we want. So this is the essence of why we practice the Dharma.
Why do we practice the Dharma? Because we want to be happy, we don’t want to suffer. And it is only the Dharma which is able to eliminate our suffering and bring us happiness. So how can we, you know, ensure that we’re making preparations for the future to get what it is that we want? Well, we can begin by observing ethics that we can abandon the unskillful abandon the 10 unskillful actions and thereby ensure that we at least achieve a human life in the future.
Not only just to achieve a human life, but we go on and practice tolerance or patience. This ensures that we will not only have a human embodiment, but that we will have a beautiful body as well. We were very good. People people will look at us and say, uh-uh. So some we we, you know, we see for ourselves that there are some who are very attractive.
And this this quality is a result of them having practiced tolerance or patience in past lives. On the on the contrary, those who aren’t very attractive, this is a result of them having been intolerant in the past lives. Then to go further and to ensure that we get what we want in the future, we go on to practice generosity. A generosity with a beneficial intention, know, to benefiting whoever it might be through through our our practice of giving. This will ensure that we all have that we have wealth in the future.
There’s you know, some people, money just comes to them. They really have to make very little effort in order to to get to get it. And this is a result of them having practiced generosity in the past. On on the other hand, there there are those who are born as beggars and though no matter how much how much they try, they never able to lift themselves out of that state. And this is a result of their lack of practicing generosity in the past.
And there are those who are very intelligent, have great wisdom. And this is the result of them having trained in the Dharma in the past, having developed their wisdom, developed their intelligence through their practice. There are, on the contrary to this, there are those who who are very stupid. You know, you if you teach them a, they may learn that. But when they go on when you teach them b, they forget a.
And so then you have to go back to a, and by that time they forgot b. So this is indicative that they didn’t they had not trained their mind in the past, that they did not try to practice mind training. They did not try to practice the Dharma. They used their mind as if in the same way that an animal uses theirs. All of it we all that we have at present that we we find as pleasant that we that brings us our about that brings our well-being is a result of the positive actions that we’ve created in a past life.
And the All results whatsoever arise in dependence upon a cause. Results rely upon a cause for their existence. If something is of a hot tasting quality, it must it must have come from a cause which had the same quality. If something is of sweet variety, it comes from a cause which was of a sweet variety, that things don’t arise haphazardly nor do they arise with no cause. So why are we to practice Dharma?
Because we want happiness and we don’t want to suffer. Suffer. I want to be happy. But we may go on to question, given that I I definitely should practice, am I able to practice? Do I have the the ability or not?
We have to go on to investigate whether we do or not. So we have to involve ourselves in some investigation. You know, really meditation. Can you hear me? Meditation is a process of analysis.
Just just sitting there, just just merely sitting with the mind fixed is really really doesn’t empower ourselves. It’s it’s not a particularly powerful way to meditate. We want to develop wisdom. Wisdom is mainly in terms of discriminative awareness. We we reflect.
We try to analyze, investigate. What is this? What is what is it not? We develop a discrimination, especially with regard to what is to be practiced, what is to be adopted, what is to be gotten rid of, what is to be abandoned, trying to discriminate between those. So we are investigating as to whether I though I may though I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to practice, can I actually practice?
Do do I actually have the ability? And we we we the Buddha Dharma is very much based upon a process of reasoning. It should everything should be reasoned out. So considering whether I have the ability or not, what are the what reasons can I supply for myself? Well, I have I found I have this wonderful human life.
And and moreover, I have a a come in contact with a a the spiritual guide who who is teaching me the Dharma. That I have I have necessary books which I can study. I have companions who who assist me in my practice. I have all the complete conditions whereby to carry on a practice. You know, when when all of the conducive supportive conditions come together, then we can be assured that there is the the ability is there.
So we might conclude from this process of investigation that I I do I do have the ability to carry on a practice of Dharma. But I’ve got a lot of work to do. I I I’m really too busy. Maybe I can practice in some future life. So if we were to think in that way, we are very much mistaken in our way of thinking.
That we we have to understand that this human life that we all possess, possessing having all of these conducive conditions whereby to practice is brought about by a rare constellation of causes and conditions. It has been very difficult to have brought this about and it will be very difficult to bring it about again. To think that to simply think that you can put off your practice to a future life is very much mistaken. But even if they, well, okay, I can I can go along with that? It it will be difficult to attain it again in the future.
So I will practice, but not just right now. I’m young. I’ve got lots of other things to do. You know, I have a lot of pleasures to take advantage of. By you know, when I get old, then I’ll get around to practicing Dharma by and by.
When I’ve gotten all the material things that I want to get out of life altogether and I’ve gotten up I’ve got plenty of money saved up. Then then I’ll practice the Dharma when I get very old. That way of thinking is also very much mistaken that we simply don’t know how long we’re going to live. There’s no definite span to our life. We, because of simply the impermanence in terms of death.
That the impermanence in terms of death can come quickly, it can come at any age. We simply don’t know that the children, even the fetuses die in the womb. Die as children, people die as infants, as young people in their 20s and 30s. They die at any age. We simply cannot be sure.
Sometimes parents outlive their children. We’re not sure if we’re even going to be alive tomorrow. We don’t know. We when when when death comes to ourselves, we can’t put it off even for five minutes. So we not knowing at the time of not not knowing when the time of our death is going to arrive, we have to come to some kind of determination with our mind.
I have to begin to practice now. We’ve all seen this for ourselves that that there was someone who we may have seen yesterday who was well, but grew sick overnight, and today they were no longer with us, they died. Or the case may be that someone amongst us now who appears well may grow ill and be dead tomorrow. We we simply don’t know. We we we see this directly for ourselves that that we cannot be sure that we’re even going to live until tomorrow.
That there’s no there’s no assurity about it. So if we think well in this way, upon these this process and reasoning, this method of investigation, then we will we will feel an urgency in in our in our wish to practice Dharma that we have to get on with our practice. So the reason that we meditate is to bring benefit to ourselves. We have to be assured that what we meditate on is going to help us. Merely meditating on the breath or merely imagining different colored lights.
There’s no there’s no certainty that there’s going to be any beneficial effect for you. But these types of meditations that we’re outlining here, these are included in what is called the lam rim or the graduated path. We said that there were these four preliminary contemplations, and beginning with the contemplation on leisure and fortune. These, we can be assured if we meditate on them, there will be great benefit. If we were to meditate on leisure and fortune motivated by the awakened heart, then our practice would be that of the being of great capacity.
If we meditated as on the the same subject, the leisure, the our human life possessing leisures and fortune within the motivation of renunciation of cyclic existence, then we are our practice would be included within the being of middling capacity. If if we use if we meditated upon the same subject with a lack of attachment to the present life and seeking to benefit future lives, then our practice our our meditation would be included within the practice of a being of small or limited capacity. Okay. Yeah. So we’re going to stop there for the evening.
If you have some questions, we’ll take time for that. Yes? So what you have pointed out as an example is there’s no fault in them, in in in those ambitions or desires. So so you desire to for pleasure. And once you get the pleasure, you want to hang you want to hold on to the pleasure.
So the we are we are trying to seek happiness. We we we aren’t trying to forego our own happiness. That we but in our our practice is very much directed at achieving happiness of both ourselves and others. So it’s not a matter of just trying to make others happy. We are trying to make both ourselves and others happy.
For example, by way of analogy, if you were going to prepare a meal for your family, say there were five people five people in the family, You prepare them. You don’t leave yourself out. You also cook for yourself. Right? But you’re you’re cooking for five people including yourself.
I don’t is it is it? What does your what kind of food does your wife eat? [unclear] Uh-huh. [unclear]
So that’s due to, you know, individual tastes of food. Yeah. So maybe what what are you attached to when you say the person? Pardon? Are you attached to you you just wanna say the person?
Are you attached to their body or their mind or both? Money. I mean, you have to look at what condition is causing the arising of attachment. Maybe what you’re talking about is not a matter of any any bodily, any physical condition, you know, it’s not a matter of of this person’s shape or their complexion or their their their touch, you know, maybe so what is it that what is it for you? What is the condition which is acting to provoke the attachment?
And looking at that in terms of criticizing them, you know, what is the condition that provokes you to criticize them and not and looking at on the contrary of what they do right as opposed to what they what you see them as doing wrong. If if for if you were to maybe you should meditate on them as in the form of a skeleton. Yes. So the the the what it what it what appears what arises from what did you call it? Negative action, a type of happiness that you say that arises from negative actions.
Appear only appears as happiness. It is not happiness. It it cannot it doesn’t remain in the nature of happiness. If if it were, then however much one were to experience it, what it should one should only experience it as happiness. It it only gives an appearance of happiness, but it’s in fact not real happiness.
Okay. Thank you.