Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 48-minute talk, Kyabje Rinpoche introduces karma and rebirth through an unforgettable image: we change embodied forms like an actor changing costumes, with the quality of our future costume determined entirely by our mental and moral choices now. He argues that human life is uniquely precious—only humans possess the intelligence required to understand and practice dharma—and warns that squandering it through destructive actions condemns us to animal rebirth with no possibility of continued spiritual progress. Drawing on memory as evidence of continuous mind across lifetimes, he maps how specific actions shape our future circumstances: generosity creates wealth but not necessarily human birth; mental discipline and compassion are the foundations of liberation. He concludes by inviting listeners to examine rather than blindly accept his claims.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1991-04-07 – 1B – Public Talk Path of Liberation – KR.mp3
UUID: c90f4d67-4f23-442f-812d-01d8920d0de0
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks
Date: 1991-04-07
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,506
Destructive qualities within our mind, and developing the constructive qualities of our mind, which will lead to various types of constructive verbal and physical actions. Thereby, all our various actions of body, speech, mind will become constructive. That is to say, that they will be able to they will be skillful in creating the causes of happiness. And we can thereby create the causes of happiness and not have the causes of suffering. So through cessation of creating the causes suffering, then we neither experience physical nor mental suffering, that we only experience happiness in this state of realization of emptiness.
And this this state, which is the elimination of suffering, is such that we only experience happiness. Whatever we see makes us happy. Whatever we hear is pleasant to the ear. It only makes us happy. That we don’t even hear a word which displeases us.
That everything and everyone is a condition which continually brings us happiness. There’s not even the thought of any suffering. So this wonderful result which we can achieve is achieved on the basis of a human life. That various types of other beings, of the various of all the numerous types of varieties such as animals, horses, dogs, etcetera, cannot achieve this. It’s only in terms on the basis of a human life which can achieve this end.
So humans possess a very powerful intellect, and it represents a tremendous potential. Other beings don’t have such a potential. For example, if you were to recite the ABCs to a dog for a year, they would never learn it. If they can’t learn the ABCs, to say nothing of practicing the Dharma and realizing emptiness? So human life possesses a tremendous capacity through the potential of its intellect and our intelligence.
And we have to ensure that we make use of it while we possess it. If we can do this, make use of our intellect by promoting constructive ways of thinking, and beginning to decrease destructive ones, then life has become meaningful. But not only meaningful, we will be happier. We should appreciate this wonderful opportunity which our human life presents to us, and make use of our life. In order to achieve a final type of happiness, which is completely bereft of any suffering that many practitioners in the past have done this in the past.
Those of India, Tibet, but also the practitioners of Burma, through cultivating their intelligence and making use of the path, that they were able to achieve happiness completely bereft of any suffering. And there’s no reason that we can’t do as they did, that we have the same capacity just as they did. We’re not going to remain forever. That our life is transitory. That it’s impermanent.
And if we don’t make use of this life, then it’s in the end, it’s simply have gone to waste. Compassion, through practices such as generosity, ethics, and tolerance, and ultimately developing the realization of emptiness. In dependence upon those various practices, which constitute the path, then we can achieve the bliss of liberation without these paths there is no liberation. So, in dependence upon listening to the actual state of affairs in which we’re involved in, and reading books on the various subjects, then we can come to an understanding of our situation. And out of this will come an aspiration in the making of effort in order to implement to to as a method to solve our problem.
If we don’t make effort in implementing a method whereby to eliminate the destructive factors within our mind, presently bind us to suffering, then we’re going to experience a continual reoccurrence cycles of suffering. Our the body which we now possess will eventually have to be given up, but the mind will continue on. And where would our mind take us? in dependence upon constructive types of actions created during the course of our lives, we can expect to take a human life again in the future. On the other hand, in dependence upon destructive types of actions created during the course of our lives, we can take the we can take the embodiment of an animal such as a horse or a dog.
And we’re we’re with respect to embodiments. It’s very much like an actor on a stage who goes off and puts on new costume and comes back on and plays another part, and then goes back off and puts on another costume and comes back on and plays another part. So presently we’re wearing the costume of a human being. And when we die, we’re not we’re not quite sure what costume we’re going to put on again. Baby.
Baby. Baby. We might take it, we might put on the costume of it. We might put we might put on the costume of it of a dog or a snake or or a cow. And with such a type of costume, things would be very difficult for us.
So our parents helped us design this costume that we’re now wearing. But but that we that we have this costume of human being, just like any type of clothing it’s going to wear out. It’s it’s going to become old. And then what? And just like old clothing, we we simply throw them out and get new ones.
So it’s it’s extremely important that we think in terms of what our future is going to bring us. The quality of our future costume is very dependent upon the quality of our mind. If we implement, if we develop constructive states of mind, then we’re going to take on a wonderful costume in the future. On the other hand, the destructive states of mind will bring us undesirable costume in the future. So now that we have some control over our future costume, it’s it’s necessary that we consider this.
If we don’t take control, if we don’t exercise our present freedom, then it’s quite unsure what type of costume we’re going to have. And there’s a danger that we would take a type of costume that we wouldn’t like to wear. So, you know, you have you have listened to a few words that I’ve spoken, and it’s important for you to reflect upon what has been said. That I’m not asking you to accept anything that I’ve said, but it is important that you reflect, that you examine, investigate all that has been been said, and upon examination that you find it, do you find it convincing? Then put what the various methods to achieve these into practice.
If you don’t find it convincing, then it’s of no problem, just set it aside. So it’s as if we’re at the fork of two roads, and one one road leads to a desirable end, the other leads to perhaps an undesirable end. And one road is consisted is constituted of love and compassion and the realization of emptiness, all of these. And by implementing these practices, we can travel that road to a desirable end. On the other hand, the other road leads to an undesirable end.
And these are simply the continuation of our present destructive actions of body, speech, and mind. So we’ll stop there, but if you have some questions, we may have some answers. So it’s not the what continues on is not the specific human mind which we now possess, but the continuum of our mind. And this continuum of the mind will will we associate with, for example, an animal. But it and that mind will be the the mind of an animal.
So, it’s not that the human mind goes on, but the continuum of the individual mind continues on. So animals aren’t very intelligent, can’t reason well as we can. In the case of the well off animal, for example, in Australia, cats and dogs have a they’re pretty well off. They usually have good food and a nice place to live. And why is that?
That’s the result of, in the past of having practiced generosity. And out of generosity one, the results of generosity are the various enjoyments that we, material enjoyments. But the fact, so they have food, nice shelter, etcetera, because they practice generosity, but they took a rebirth as an animal because they did not observe ethics. And when, in the case of the animal, once they exhausted all the results of the past past committed generosity in eating all that food, etcetera, then there the results are finished. And then they and in future, they won’t even have food anymore.
But there are many instances of humans who do not have food, and this is simply because they didn’t practice generosity in the past. But still they can, while they as being humans, being humans they can practice spiritual methods and there by they can achieve another human life, another human embodiment in the future, which have all the various complete conditions. So it depends upon practicing a spiritual method, then they can achieve a beneficial rebirth in the future. For example, you said that someone had a fault, something wrong with their mind? Cause of having some kind of fault with one’s mind, being mentally retarded, is not having used one’s mind properly in the past, not having thought in constructive ways, and therefore the the potential for thinking constructively is lost.
So, for example, there are many countries in the world which are going through starvation, where the people don’t have anything to eat. And the cause of that, these individuals having to undergo their experiences, because they were born in that particular country, and with those particular conditions. And this was created out of a cause of not practicing generosity in past lives. Other hand, as not on the other hand, but as you also mentioned that there are many people who have great attachments, greed, and this greed is created out of habituation to this particular state of mind from past lives.
The fact that they have affluence, that they have food, and all the necessities of life, is simply because they practice generosity in the past life. So there are many people who are extremely kind hearted, have good qualities, positive qualities of mind, but are starving. And this fact that they have these kind hearted attitudes, these positive states of mind, is a fact of having been habituated to these from previous lives. But the fact that they’re starving is a consequence of not having practiced generosity in past lives. Religious individuals are extremely spiritual minded, but experience great sicknesses, and many sufferings during the course of their life.
And this this their sufferings and their sicknesses didn’t come out of their spiritual life. The fact that they’re practicing their religion. That this came, that the cause of their sickness and suffering came from negative actions which they created in past lives. It didn’t come from their practicing their religion. And likewise, the situation which has occurred in Tibet, that didn’t arise from their practicing their religion, but it came from actions previously created, negative actions previously created in past lives.
So, tracing back the quality of knowing. We, at this very moment, our mind has a factor of knowing. And this present factor of knowing is in direct continuum with the factor of that we possessed this morning. And we can trace back that factor of knowing which the mind possesses all the way back to the moment of our birth in this life. How can we reason this out?
That we can, one of the ways that we can understand the nature of this continuum of mind is that presently we are able to remember various actions or work that we did this morning. What we did this morning, we can presently remember. So therefore there’s some continuity from the mind which did this work this morning to our present mind. Because we can remember actions or activities that we did this morning. Likewise, we can trace back and remember things that we did during our childhood.
Therefore there’s some continuity between the mind that was involved in the various activities during our childhood, and the mind that we presently have since we can remember the actions of our childhood. And there are many individuals who are actually able to remember their past lives, where they were born, who their parents were. If there did not exist this continuity from previous lives, then one would not have this remembrance of what one, where one was born and one’s parents in a previous life. I don’t remember what you did when you were a child,, and you don’t remember what I did when I was a child. The reason that you can’t we cannot remember each of those is because our our minds are separate.
So we can understand that there must be have our memory constitutes a reason which supports that there’s a continuity of mind from previous to the present. So we have a present quality of mind, that of knowing. And this this quality of knowing is in continuum with previous moments of knowing. And this this is in it always arises, the quality of knowing of our mind always arises from a previous moment of knowing. Now, we were to ask, where does the knowing quality of our mind come from?
If we were to say, well, we got this knowing quality from our our mother, for example. Or if we we this arose from material causes, then there would be many faults in this way of reasoning. If if if our minds were simply came from our parents, then we should share mental qualities with our parents. And for example, if our if our parents were extremely intelligent, then the child should be extremely intelligent since their since their mind is coming from their parents. Each moment of knowing of the mind arises in dependence upon a previous moment of knowing.
And this this is in beginning of this continuity that we can never identify a first moment of the knowing quality of mind. So I mean, there there are various reasons that religions do the things they do. There have been it’s not a matter of just Christianity, but in the past there have been, for example, religions in India, which which discounted the the existence of past and future lives. You know, one account was that there was one master who had a great attraction toward his daughter. So, he Which what?
His daughter? Yes. And he wanted to have sexual relationships with his daughter. So he he taught that there was the he asserted that past and future lives didn’t exist, therefore it didn’t matter what you did. Between yourself and others.
Yeah? Between others. Oh, I see. And then Okay. If you give an example where two people would have incompatible desires.
So one cannot one cannot fulfill their temporal desires simultaneously..