Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Khensur Rinpoche examines what makes human life capable of awakening: the eight leisures and ten fortunes—the foundational conditions for spiritual practice. In this 48-minute talk, he begins with boundless karma and its purification, then shows how to compress meditation topics into single-session practice. He systematically unfolds the five impersonal fortunes: the Buddha’s appearance, continuing teachings, the practicing lineage, sangha community, and supporting patrons. Human birth with these conditions is rarer than precious gems, he emphasizes, capable of achieving Buddhahood in one lifetime (as Milarepa did) or liberation. Even a moment of faith or ethical action carries profound meaning. For practitioners beginning foundational study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1989-05-23 – Side 2 – Sun's Radiance – KR.MP3
UUID: 9196e6f8-9e07-4164-a2db-7f70f9840d75
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1989-05-23
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,616
So the the the karma or the action created out of the five boundless actions is exhausted upon experiencing the result of other actions. Now what do we mean by boundless actions? It’s the normally in upon the, for example, having killed one’s father, upon one’s death, dying, normally there occurs an intermediate period called the in between period before taking rebirth. But in the case of the result of the boundless action, there is no interval that one immediately takes rebirth in this case.
Upon death, immediately one takes through this. There’s there’s no interval period there. On the other side, if it’s boundless, there is no interval. There’s no space, no interval in this. Therefore, it’s called boundless.
Borderless. Not You could say borderless, boundless, borderless. It’s just like when you if you drop the stone, it immediately falls. It doesn’t stop it doesn’t stay there for a while and then go down. It immediately starts falling.
And so immediately upon death we fall. That’s why it’s called down. From the point of view of the great vehicle, that even the borderless action, boundless action, by means of the four opponent powers can be purified if they’re laid bare or that if they confess, they can be purified. On the other hand, if one does not confess then this situation where immediately. Ideally, would meditate, at least four preliminaries, would meditate on leisures and fortunes until one day of experience.
And then one would, after having great experience of leisures and fortunes, one would move on to meditate on permanent death and gain that experience and move on. But we have a short life. Can’t meditate in that space ideally. So we have to, but we ask for meditation systems to be constructed such that most of the, distinct, the most important would be placed upon the first meditation topic is important and then one would pass on to the other three in that same meditation setting very briefly in order to implant some kind of disposition, implant some kind of disposition latency for the development of those other later meditations. The prime, the greatest emphasis would be placed on the first and then having meditated on that, one would reclaim and contemplate the remaining topics in order to create these latencies.
When you were young, you didn’t listen to your parents. And then now you think as an adult, imagine that you have that ability to listen. And this would have one. And we generate a sense of regret, thinking how this wasn’t a very good way to act, wasn’t skillful. And then making a determination that in that same situation again in the future, I hope to very much to have the ability to listen to others, listen to my teachers, listen to my parents and making prayers or wishes or intentions to be able to do that in the future.
This will benefit your ability even as a small child to have the ability to, the disposition to listen to your parents, making determination, So if one’s parents aren’t living, then developing a sense of regret or having not having not listened to their advice, making this determination and this careful intention to For the sake of all sentient beings equal to space to establish in complete perfect happiness I must attain complete perfect Buddhahood. And as a means to do that I am going to listen to this profound teaching on the great vehicle. Therefore thinking in such a way, develop a kind heart as a motivation for listening to this teaching. We’re discussing the the life endowed with leisures and fortunes. And we in the our last talk, we discussed we’re discussing the 10 fortunes.
And amongst those, there were the five personal and five impersonal. And we finished the five personal fortunes, and now we’re going to discuss the five impersonal fortunes. You know, we can say that generally that all the people in the world are extremely fortunate to live in such a world as a human being. But even but amongst all these propitious, all these good good types of people that inhabit the world, among them one of the most precious are those who seek to practice Dharma. Especially those who are seeking to understand to put into practice the Vajrayāna, the great vehicle, that we were discussing the various conditions necessary to engage in such a situation, such a type of practice.
Previously we’ve talked about the eight leisures and the eight leisures are presented from the point of view of freedom from the eight contradictory conditions or non conducive conditions for the practice of Dharma. Whereas the 10 fortunes are the possession of 10 conducive conditions to practice Dharma. And amongst the 10 conditions there were the conducive conditions from one’s own side And then there were the those are the personal fortunes. And then there were the five conditions from the point of view of other than oneself. That is the impersonal five conducive conditions or five fortunes.
In order to practice the Buddha Dharma, there must be an appearance in the world of a Buddha. And so this is the very first of these five impersonal endowments or fortunes. Before we can practice we have to listen to the teachings. In order to listen to teachings, they must appear in the world of Buddha. So the first of these impersonal conditions is the appearance of a Buddha in the world.
So in general, we can say that the Buddha appeared at Bodh Gaya. In general, we can make that statement though we may not be living at the time of his actual appearance but in general he has appeared in this world. Though we might have not directly perceived the Buddha, we but the Buddha has in fact appeared and it is said that the representative of the Buddha for for us is our individual lama, our individual spiritual master. Though the Buddha previously taught the Dharma and it appeared and taught the Dharma, we were not able to listen directly to his teachings on the Dharma. And the second of the the impersonal endowments or fortunes is that he having taught the Dharma, that the Buddha taught the Dharma, not only did it appear but he taught the Dharma.
And though we may not have the fortune to listen directly to the teachings of the Dharma from the Buddha himself but in fact his representative that is our individual spiritual master, our Lama teaches only that which is in accordance with the Buddhadharma as taught by the Buddha himself. The same practices mainly consisting of teachings on what is to be adopted and what is to be rejected. This is completely in accordance with the Buddhist teaching and the Lama or the spiritual master presents them as a representative. He teaches in the same way that the Buddha himself would have taught. So the the the spiritual master the teachings of the spiritual master and the teachings of the Buddha are no way different.
Therefore, if we practice in accordance with the teachings of the Lama, the spiritual master is as if we’re practicing in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha himself. If we were to meet directly with the Buddha himself, he would simply present various types of teachings on on the what are the various faults of what are what are various types of faults and therefore what are to be what is to be abandoned, whether what are various types of excellent qualities, skillful methods, skillful types of actions, therefore what is to be adopted. This is the type of teaching that he himself would give and and this is the same teaching that the lama himself gives. So the third impersonal fortune is the teachings remain. The teachings are still extant.
And as the great master Vasubandhu said that two teachings of the Buddha, and these two teachings of the Buddha are the verbal doctrine and the insight doctrine. The verbal doctrine and the insight doctrine. The first of these two types of doctrines, that is the verbal doctrine. That is the actual words that the Buddha himself spoke and that what is to the types of practices that he actually described in his verbal teaching.
And that these are still extant that we can hear what is this verbal doctrine for ourselves, that we can understand what is to be practiced, what is to be abandoned and therefore practice in accordance with it. Therefore we can understand that the verbal doctrine still exists in the world even in Australia. So then the second of these two types of doctrine is the insight doctrine. That dependent upon reading the various texts that listening, reflecting and putting into practice, there arises within our mind various types of skillful states. These skillful states having the three higher trainings for example, ethics, mental state of stabilization, wisdom, the various types of vows that we can develop within our mind stream, the individual vows of liberation, lay person’s vows, those of an ordained person, the various types of tantric vows, etc.
That all of these various types of states are these productive, skillful states of mind are classified as insight doctrine. Insight as in realization, doctrine of realization. And the fourth of these five impersonal fortunes is that the there are followers there are followers of the teachings. There are followers of the teachings. That that is to say that there are there exists a spiritual community which seeks to put into practice the teachings of the Buddha.
In accordance with the teachings as were taught by the Buddha there are those who seek to implement them in their practice. That is they try to follow the teachings and this is the fourth impersonal fortune. And then the fifth of the five impersonal fortunes is that there are sincere patrons and benefactors. Sincere patrons and benefactors. And that is to say that there exists the conducive conditions for us to carry on our practices.
Are individuals who willingly assist us in our practices, who are out of the benevolence, out of their caring, provide us with the basic necessities such as food and clothing of a good type which gives us freedom to carry on our practice in full. So therefore we conducive conditions of sincere patrons and benefactors. So, you know, that we should take a great deal of joy and and when we begin to understand the unimaginably precious basis that a human life fulfills. That such a type of human life which is free from the eight contradictory conditions that is to say has the eight leisures and has the 10 conducive conditions that is to say the 10 fortunes can is an unimaginable basis for the practice of Dharma therefore it is unimaginably precious and we should rejoice in having found such a human life. There are there are many various types of people inhabiting the world.
But those who possess a complete set of these eight leisures and ten fortunes are extremely rare. Such a type of life, such a type of basis to practice on is extremely precious because it has the capacity to bring about whatever we desire. And dependent upon this body, we can bring about whatever we want. So, you know, this this such a type of human life is has possesses great meaning. We can, dependent upon it,, we can achieve our great purposes.
The ultimate purpose of such a type of life is of course Buddhahood and we can achieve that in this very life itself. Temporarily we can also achieve in dependence upon the basis of such a type of life, liberation. So this human life possesses, you know, this great meaning that it has. How can we manifest it? How can we achieve it?
in dependence upon this human life. If we were to cultivate love and compassion and finally develop the awakening heart And dependent upon that we enter into tantric practice and thereby engage in the practices of the two stages of Tantra, the generation stage and the completion stage, we can as Milarepa himself did achieve Buddhahood in one single lifetime. There is no difference whatsoever between our body, the capacity, the potency, the ability of of our of such a type of human life that we have in our body and that of Milarepa. Also, a temporal benefit of this human body, this human life that we possess, is that we can achieve liberation in this lifetime. That is to say a state where we no longer experience suffering, that we’re free from cyclic existence.
And dependence upon carrying out the practices of ethics, meditative stabilization, ultimately developing calm abiding, and then gaining special insight that we can free ourselves from cyclic existence and gain the state of liberation. So this human life that we possess is extremely precious. That, you know, the we we look at other people, you know, all the various types of people, not only in our own world, but the various systems of our universe. There are said to be four continents and it’s only in our particular system, world system, that we are able to achieve these great meanings and dependence upon a human life. That the beings in these other worlds cannot do this.
But even if we limit it to our world, there are there are various degrees of freedom, degrees of capacities to achieve these great meaningful ends. That without that to have in dependence upon having these eight leisures and fortunes then we can achieve these greatest at both ultimate and temporal ends. Just as in the case of various object materials around us there are different degrees of quality. There are different degrees of quality of capacities to achieve to bring to achieve the great meaning that such a type that a human life can afford, and that not everyone has this full capacity. So the the great master said there’s a verse which Rinpoche was referring to which in which he says that that even if we were not to achieve liberation and dependence upon our human life that we should at least plant the seeds of the attainment of liberation during our human life.
And then again even if we don’t achieve omniscience in this human life we should at least begin to plant the seeds for the achievement of omniscience during this human life. This human life is said to be of greater value than hundreds of wish fulfilling gems. And if we don’t take advantage of it, we waste this opportunity, if we don’t have any fruit whatsoever to show for our life, then it’s it’s extremely we’ve wasted our life. It’s an extreme extremely great fault. So, you know, this human life that we possess have all these varying degrees of capacity or potential abilities that we can at least try to seek to achieve another human life in the future existences.
Another type of excellent life again to practice. That in dependence upon if in this life we practice ethics, patience, generosity, and additionally make prayers of aspiration, then in dependence upon this body we can again achieve another human life in the future. So we can achieve great meaning in our life even from moment to moment. That this body has great importance, that it has such a capacity ability that in one even one moment the generation of for example the faith in the Buddha, the cultivation of love, abandonment of some type of unskillful action brings a great deal of meaning to our life even even from moment to moment.