Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Kyabje Rinpoche explores why human rebirth is extraordinarily precious. In this 47-minute talk, he walks through the eight freedoms from adverse conditions—not being born when no Buddhas have appeared, not in a borderland, not as a long-lived god in unconscious sleep—using vivid examples: lightning illuminating darkness, beings composed of butter on other continents, a cosmic voice announcing death. He then details the five personal endowments that constitute human fortune: being born human on the Southern Continent, in a central land where teachings have spread, with complete sense faculties, untainted by heinous actions, and possessing faith in karma. Because karma ripens in a single lifetime on this continent, both sūtra and tantra practice can reach completion within one life—a possibility unique to human birth here.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1989-05-23 – Side 1 – Sun's Radiance – KR.MP3
UUID: 50b9ae03-d939-4711-a046-e9a1a9ebceb9
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1989-05-23
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,336
And the fifth of the eight freedoms or non-leisure, lack of respite, to be born at a time when there is no Buddhist. In this world there are many occasions when there are no Buddhas present, and therefore if there are no Buddhas present there are no teachings of the Buddhas present. That is to say there is no Dharma, and if there is no Dharma then there is no practice of Dharma. So to be reborn at such a time is an adverse condition to the practice, and therefore this represents the freedom from that adverse condition. So Śāntideva compares the rarity of the Buddhadharma with that of a lightning on a dark night.
That during the during the pitch black of night that just for a moment the sky is lit up by a flash of lightning. And the flash of lightning is analogous to a Buddha giving his or her teachings. And the darkness is the absence of these teachings. So we can understand that in the course of a night there is a tremendous preponderance of darkness. That usually the night is long and therefore these times when the Buddhist teachings are absent are long and very rarely will flash of lightning light up the sky.
And therefore, and likewise, very rarely are the teachings of the Buddha present. Without the teachings of the Buddha, there is no practice of Dharma. But a matter where we may have been born that in fact we have met with the teachings and this is a very rare and auspicious occurrence. But then the sixth respite is even though the teacher, a Buddha, has appeared in the world and teaches that we ourselves are born in a borderland and therefore as a barbarian. That we are not in a position that even though the teacher, a Buddha, is teaching the Dharma that we live in such an area that we are out of reach of the teachings.
And then to be born as a long-life god. And then when we studied Opening the Eye of New Awareness, we studied that there were three realms: the desire realm, the form realm, the formless realm. And within, for example, the formless realm one is born as the formless realm God, as they are called. And that in such a realm one simply takes birth and one thinks I have taken birth in the form realm.
And then upon that it’s as if one goes to sleep. One does not experience any suffering, one does not even experience the feeling of bliss. One experiences the feeling of equanimity, which is similar to simply unconsciousness or sleep. Only upon the exhaustion the potency of the karma which holds you in that state will one awaken, and then one realizes, I’m about to die, and pass from that state. So there’s this extremely long eons and eons and eons of time spent in almost a sleep like state.
So in such a state in the formless realm there is no possibility to practice Dharma. So having not taken rebirth in such a position is a cause for rejoicing? And then the the last of the respites, the freedom from adverse conditions is being reborn I don’t know, the word maybe one of them is stupid and the other is dumb. Something like mentally, intellectually retarded. That’s nice, intellectually retarded.
In the first case, when I say stupid, know, whatever you say, Yes, that’s right, they agree with you. That person agrees with you. They don’t grasp what you’re saying, they just accept what you’re saying. In the second case, whatever you try to say to them, they don’t understand it at all. It’s being intellectually insufficient.
Freedom from mental retardation or freedom from intellectual handicap: these represent the fortune of not having been born intellectually handicapped or retarded. So those are the types of births within adverse conditions and that we are free of all these adverse conditions. So there should be a sense of rejoicing that we have these freedoms from adverse conditions or we have these eight respites. And then there’s the 10 Fortunes, or sometimes termed the 10 Endowments. And there are five personal endowments and five impersonal endowments.
So the 10 fortunes or endowments, there are the five personal and five impersonal. And by impersonal by personal we mean the conducive conditions from one’s own side, the inner internal conditions, inner conducive conditions for practice of Dharma. These were set out by Asaṇga in a text called The Bodhisattva Grounds. And he says that among the six types of migrators or six types of beings in the world that human is the best of all of these, is supreme in order to practice the Dharma. According to Buddhist cosmology, the universe is made up of four continents, and it is only the beings on the Southern Continent, that is our world, who are able to carry on a complete practice of Dharma.
That this is to say that in order to carry on a complete practice that is of both discourses or sūtra and tantra or mantra. That in order to carry on the Sūtra practice that we are as a human being, that only the human beings on the Southern Continent are able to generate vows such as novice vows or fully ordained vows. And that also, in order to carry on a practice of tantra, that it’s necessary to have a human body in order to carry on a complete practice of tantra, that is to say, to be able to engage in the generation stage and the completion stage practices of tantra. And this situation is found, these complete conducive conditions of such a type of body are found nowhere else except on the Southern Continent and within the Southern Continent among human beings. So there are these four continents that make our universe.
Sharlupack, Lüpakpo, Balangchö, and Draminyan. And we call our world the Southern Continent and you can see that, but he’s wondering if any of you accept the existence of these three other continents, these three other worlds. So Rinpoche says that on the on the continent of there are butter people. Really? So in Jambudvipa, the Southern Continent where we live, there are people of flesh, meat of flesh.
Are there are there people of flesh or not? So if if the the people I think if the people on that continent who these butter people, if they were to hear about flesh people, they would think they would be just as surprised as we are about hearing about butter people. So, you know, when we hear about butter people, ah, there’s no there’s not really such a place. And even if there were, all the people would melt. But they have a very cold sun there, so they don’t have that problem.
And they the people the butter people would when they hear about the flesh people, say, oh, they would rot. So the those beings on, the butter people. They’re there by the force of their karma and they cannot be killed. They live five hundred years exactly. Before that there’s nowhere they can die.
Exactly at five hundred years, their karma is exhausted and they die. So if we were to translate the name of this continent, it’s the continent of unpleasing sound. And the reason is called yeah, unpleasing sound. And the reason is that at the end of five hundred years there comes a sound out of space saying, it’s time for you to die, and this is very unpleasing to hear. And no one else can hear it just down.
And this is how the the continent gets its name, this the continent of unpleasing sound. So that the first continent was in the North, in It’s called Sharlupack. Shar means east, Lu means body, and means measure, I think. And so the reason they call it the measure of the body is because these people are twice as tall as people as we are, people in the Southern Continent. So our particular continent, the Southern Continent, is the only place, the only continent amongst these four in which tantra has been taught.
The human body is especially suited for tantra because of its exceptional channels and winds, which are necessary to make use of in the practice of tantra. Also it has the quality that unlike the other three continents that the karma created in the Southern Continent is such that it can ripen in the same lifetime. That practice karma which is done early can ripen in the same time as late, which is not the case with the other three continents. The karma does not ripen in the same lifetime. Therefore a tantra in which one is seeking to attain Buddhahood in one lifetime is specifically adaptable to our Southern continent.
We can achieve the various paths and even Buddhahood by practicing in this same life. So, you know, we can see for ourselves that the case where karma ripens in the same lifetime, just in the sense of a child who is very kind to their parents of this life, who benefits them, helps them, or is kind to one’s spiritual teacher, Lama, that they have beneficial effects in that same lifetime. Of course the other case also operates that those who are extremely unkind to their parents, harmful to their parents, harmful to their teachers, etc, will experience the results of that karma in same lifetime. So this is an extremely fortunate position to be in to be that we’re able having been born in on the Southern Continent as a means of practicing the Dharma. Then the second of the personal fortunes or endowments.
This is to be born in a central land. And it is said that a central land is defined from the point of view of the practice of Dharma. From the point of view of Dharma a central land is defined as that place to which the four retinues of a Buddha have come. And by retinues the circles it’s meant the female and male lay vow holders and female and male ordained. So the four are the female and male lay vow holders, and the female and male ordained.
Wherever they have come, this is considered a central land. Whether they have not come, then it’s not a central land. So the actual center of the Buddhist world is Bodh Gaya in India. This is said to be where all the 1,000 Buddhas will first come. That is Bodhgaya.
But from the point of view of Dharma, central land as was said, wherever there have been male and female lay vow holders and the male and female ordained. In the case of Australia, then there are male and female lay vow holders and both male and female fully ordained monks and nuns. So Australia, people have, there are both male and female lay vow holders, both male and female fully ordained monks and nuns, and therefore those who are born in Australia are born in a central land, and this is the best place to be born in such a place. And the third, to be born with complete faculties, to be born with complete faculties. You know, we’ve been born with sense faculties such as the eyes, ears, all the various faculties.
Without eyes we would have a very difficult time to study, to read, without ears to listen to the teaching, etc. So it’s a great fortune to have complete faculties. And the fourth person of fortune is not to have not to have created any of the five boundless actions. Sometimes they are called heinous crimes, boundless action. For example, having killed one’s mother, one’s father, having killed a drawn blood from a Buddha, killed an arhat, etc.
These actions, this karma is so heavy that it prevents one from generating the various paths and realizations. And the fifth is having faith in the Dharma. Faith. And amongst the three categories of the teachings, that is to say the disciplines, the discourses, and the knowledge, This would be primarily with faith in the discipline or Vinaya. And the main teaching of Vinaya is the law of cause and effect, that is karma, and having faith in karma.
So we have the personal fortunes or endowments to have been born as a human in a central land with complete faculties having not committed the boundless actions and with faith. And then considering that we have all our complete personal endowments and how fortunate they are and rare that if we didn’t have these that we couldn’t carry on a complete practice of Dharma and cultivating a sense of joy and through this developing this exertion to practice. So we’ve run out of time. With respect to the 18 Leisures and Fortunes, we’ve completed 13, that is the eight Respites or the eight Leisures and the five personal endowments, the five personal fortunes. And the next teaching will continue with the five impersonal fortunes.
So we’ll take some time to answer questions. Yeah. Yeah, Australia is a very vast country, so there are probably areas which are not central areas. Just like in Tibet, there are areas which were not considered central land, central areas. So in general we can talk about two types of meditation.
One is stabilizing meditation, the other is analytic meditation. When we talk about analytic meditation we’re actually making an examination of the subject, thinking about it, and this could be synonymous with the term contemplation. Whereas in stabilizing meditation we simply fix the mind on an object without allowing it to focus on another object. So the mind is fixed without thinking of any others but this particular single object. And so there are these two types of meditation and we could say that contemplation would be synonymous with the analytic meditation.