Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Khensur Rinpoche illustrates the inescapability of death through the Buddha’s metaphor of four collapsing mountains — representing aging, sickness, deprivation, and death. In this 48-minute talk, he explains that just as there is nowhere to flee from collapsing mountains or power to turn them aside, so too there is no escaping these four forces of deterioration. He develops this through three supporting reasons: everyone must eventually abandon their body; our lifespan continuously decreases with no addition forthcoming; and we spend only a fraction of our lives in genuine dharma practice — the rest consumed by sleep, eating, socializing, and the years when we feel ourselves too young or too old to begin. The analysis clarifies what actually motivates consistent practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1989-06-06 – Side 1 – Sun's Radiance – KR.MP3
UUID: 3e4adc1c-17c0-46b1-99dc-9d34efe7eb12
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1989-06-06
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,123
So, with respect to the third reason, the Buddha himself gave an example and then the meaning of this. So this was taught by the Buddha to a great king in India. So the Buddha said that no matter how that when death is seeking you out, one cannot run away fast enough. When death is seeking you out, there is no way to turn it aside. There is no power which is able to turn it aside, and there is no medicine which can alleviate it.
So by way of an analogy, this example that was mentioned, that if there were four great mountains in each of the four directions of north, south, east, and west were suddenly to collapse upon one another, that in such a situation, would be no matter how fast we might try to flee, there would be nowhere to run, that there would be no way to turn this great force aside and then no amount of medicine would alleviate it. But all would be destroyed, both the people and the environment would be destroyed within these collapsing mountains. So, just as in the case where the four great mountains were collapsing, there would be no way that we could flee or turn it aside and no medicine the difficulty. These four mountains are, what do you say, are metaphors of aging, sickness, death, and deprivation. So even we are born and after the second moment after our birth, aging begins.
So, upon the second moment after birth, aging begins, and it’s aging which destroys our youth. It’s said that there are four phases to one’s life. There’s the age of infancy, childhood, youth, middle age, and old age. So we pass through these various phases during the course of our life, from infancy to childhood, youth, middle age, and finally old age. And perhaps old age begins with the age of 55, and our hair turns white.
And the Tibetans usually don’t have much hair, so maybe And then they get lots of wrinkles. They begin to, the faculties begin to degenerate. They can’t hear as well as they did. They can’t, people can’t see as well as they did. To stand up is very difficult.
To sit down is very difficult. And this way, aging destroys our youth. So, when we were young, we have a flexible, healthy body, but slowly it is aging which destroys it and all these various occurrences, signs begin to appear. That this aging process begins even at the second moment after birth. So then, our youth having been destroyed by aging, our health is destroyed by sickness.
That is to say, the happiness of health is destroyed by sickness. When we’re young, we have very little illness. We have healthy bodies. But as we begin to grow older, we lose the happiness of having healthy body. And with this happiness is so destroyed until we when we’re old, we’re we’re usually sick and all the happiness of you of health is lost, is destroyed.
And it is our healthy body, all our fine possessions that we’ve gathered together, and all our enjoyments are destroyed by deprivation. And this is to say that as we grow older, this fine body that we once had becomes exhausted. It no longer brings us pleasure. And likewise, all the material possessions that we gather together, our wealth slowly are dissipated. They’re exhausted.
And likewise, the enjoyments that we once enjoyed, such as food, etcetera, are no longer be able to be enjoyed. This is all destroyed by deprivation. And it is death which destroys life. Each day of our life, our life isn’t exhausted day by day as the minutes and the hours creep onward. That just in the way that an hour is eaten away by minute after minute until there’s nothing left.
Likewise, even if we were to live fifty years, that after one year we only have forty nine years left. After two years we only have forty eight years left. And in this way slowly, continuously, second by moment, by minute, by hour, by day, our life is exhausting itself. Therefore, it’s said that death destroys life. Exhausting.
So these four: aging, sickness, deprivation and death are symbolized by the four mountains. And when these four mountains collapse, everything is destroyed. That there is nothing which can flee from it, There is no power which can turn it aside. There is no medicine to alleviate it. There is no material which is able to make it go away.
So these are the three reasons supporting the first root, that is the inevitability of death. The three reasons, the first being that whatever body we might have, that we’re going to have to leave it. The second is that there is nowhere, no place that we can go where death will not find us. And the third is by way of this example. So, in dependence upon contemplating these three reasons, one will arrive at a different conclusion.
Come to the decision that, yes, it’s definite I’m going to die. There’s no way. Everybody has to die. There’s nothing I can do about it. So we presented three reasons, didn’t we?
And those three reasons are combined into the first reason. That’s the very first reason. We have one root and three reasons. So everything that’s been given up to now was the first reason, supporting the first root. So, we have the first root is the inevitability of death, which is supported by three reasons.
And everything that has been said up to now was the first of these three reasons supporting that one root. So the quotation from Śāntideva explains that that just that the that constantly day and night that the day is continually the day and night is is made out of made up of twenty four hours. But these don’t remain. They’re constantly being exhausted moment by moment. Each moment there’s twenty four hours decreases that much more.
They’re not constant. And each moment exhausts the twenty four hours, finally until the daytime is exhausted, and then the nighttime is exhausted, and another twenty four hours, and then that daytime, and then that nighttime is exhausted. Likewise, you know, every moment, every moment, moment by moment by moment, our life is exhausting itself. So the second reason is that our lifespan is decreasing continually and there is no without addition. There is no addition.
Life span is decreasing continually without addition. So there’s it’s the our lifespan is indefinite. This perhaps I should add that to the translation. Your lifespan the second reason is our lifespan is indefinite and it’s decreasing and continue decreasing continually without addition. It’s indefinite and decreasing continually without addition.
Our lifespan is decreasing continually. It’s not definite how long it’s going to be. This is determined by the force of the karma that we have created. When we talk about our life, we’re talking about the conjoining of body and mind, bond between body and mind. While that bond remains, there is life.
The moment that bond is broken, then the life is finished. And this bond is not permanent. And it’s the quality of that bond is determined by the karma created. And that is, there is no, there will be no addition possible to be made to that. If we live, we can live fifty or sixty years, but sooner or later, because that bond isn’t permanent, is dependent upon karma, it will finally break and the life finishes.
And we can exemplify this quality of the of our life by way of if we had a water you know, we have a water tank. And there’s there’s into this water tank there’s no new supply of water being coming. And each day we use a little bit of the water and day day by day using a little bit more of the water a little bit more of the water a little bit more. Finally, since there’s no addition coming, that water will definitely there will reach a time when that water will be completely exhausted. Likewise, with respect to our life, moment by moment, day by day, our life is passing, and there is going to be no addition to our life.
And the moment there will there will definitely reach a moment when our life will be exhausted. If we had a purse or wallet and in there there’s $500 and each day we took a little bit of money out and bought something. And day by day we were buying more each day, day after day after day after day. There will reach a time when we look inside and it’s all gone. Likewise, this is the way our life is passing.
Each day we’re spending a little bit of our life and sooner or later it’s going to be exhausted. So this is the second reason supporting the first root that our lifespan is indefinite.
The lifespan is continually decreasing without any addition. The lifespan is indefinite and continually decreasing without any addition. Indefinite. Oh, it’s definitely decreasing. Then the third reason.
The our life. There is no time to practice time during our life to practice the Dharma will be exhausted. The time during our life to practice Dharma will be exhausted. I’ll get some good words later. So, spend little time during the course of our life in the practice of Dharma.
If we look at if if we take an example of someone who lives sixty years, he spends half he or she spends half his or her life sleeping. So that goes thirty years. Then we spend maybe five years eating, socializing, talking. Then the first ten years of our life, you know, we don’t we don’t even think about the Dharma, so that that whole period is gone. Then when we get to 50, we think, oh, I’m too old to practice, and we forget about it.
So that leaves us maybe five good years to practice. So there’s not much time to practice the Dharma. So, you know, the various even during that five years that we might practice with various intensities, a great deal of that time will even be spent half heartedly practicing. So in the course of a life there’s very little time that we actually make use of sincerely engage in the practice. And this is the understanding that there is the amount of time that we spend in the course of our lives is very little in the practice of Dharma.
And that time will be exhausted at the time of death. That opportunity will be finished at the time of death. So these are the three reasons supporting the first root. The first root being that death is inevitable. And the three reasons were that the first being everyone has to die, that everyone must give up their body.
And the second was that our lifespan is decreasing continually with no additions forthcoming. And the third is the amount of time spent in practicing and during the course of our life. The amount of time spent during our life to practice Dharma is very small. And then in dependence upon those three reasons through their contemplation, we come to a determination, a decision, thinking that I must practice the Dharma. And this determination gives us a great deal of power in our practice.
So time is finished. If you have spent some time answering questions. Yeah. We can see how a person so long as their life isn’t cut off short or something, how they progress and how they grow old and go through various stages like that, does maybe a person’s life mentally go through similar stages rather than So, with respect to the mind, does not go through the process of aging, but it does have it is transitory, that is to say, it’s changing from moment to moment. I remember I read one doctor, psychologist, something he was talking about.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just a Western thing to try and classify everything into a textbook kind of example. But he was talking about a young girl who had a disease and therefore she’d tried to become and have quite a short life. And through analysing the way she went, lived her life, things she wrote to him and stuff like that, he sort of attributed her short life to being like maybe a short version of a long life, you know, like various things she’s thought about and went through.