Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 28-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche addresses two core obstacles to practice: the belief that one cannot develop, and attachment to present-life concerns at the expense of preparation for future lives. He teaches meditation on death and impermanence as direct antidotes, then moves to practical guidance: how to plant seeds now for better conditions to practice in future lives. Faith in Dharma, listening to teachings, effort, ethical conduct, generous offerings, and correct relationship with a spiritual teacher all create the foundation for sustained practice across lifetimes. He then introduces the three inseparables—keeping speech, body, and mind never separated from Dharma—and closes with an urgent reminder: practice now while you have all conducive conditions. For serious practitioners already engaged with the path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1990-05-08 – 11B – KR.mp3
UUID: 478c8672-18c8-417c-98ef-e703e43c7b09
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1990-05-08
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~1,754
If if one were afflicted with with the attitude of of well, if one were always afflicted with the the major attitude of not-knowing. That one simply felt that one couldn’t know anything. That I don’t know anything. And held to this very strongly. And this is a type of self grasping.
You know, thinking that one cannot develop. And thinking that I’ve always been like this, and I’m always going to be like this. No matter how many years go by, this is the way I always am. And holding on to a permanent type of self, then one shouldn’t meditate on impermanence. On the other hand, thinking that that the younger generation.
On the other hand, if one was completely caught up in the plans of the for the immediate future, for the immediate present, one made no, had no concern whatsoever for preparing for a future existence. And one exerted all of one’s efforts, went through so much, a great deal of trouble, simply directed toward one’s immediate present life. And then, we should think, what would happen if I suddenly died? What a great loss that would be? And therefore, thinking to reverse this trend, to meditate on impermanence of death.
And being mindful of death is very beneficial to one’s Dharma practice. So we should look at what is our greatest fault and thinking in the with respect to our spiritual practice, understanding what, in carrying on my practice, what would be of most benefit? What would bring me the most happiness? What is the most meaningful thing that I could do? And on the other hand, what is, thinking in that along those lines, what is preventing me from doing that?
And this is what you should begin to cease first. And in this way, is the gradual manner with which our practice will progress. If reflecting upon impermanence and impermanence with respect to death will help us to overcome our various attachments to, and our various attachment to all of the present things that we are constantly involved in. That not knowing when death could come. It could come next month, it could come next year.
We simply don’t know. And that when it does come, there’s nothing that we can do to turn it aside. We can’t, no amount of talking, we can’t out talk death. We can’t bribe it. That we simply, there’s no way we can turn it away.
Anyway, you’ve achieved this human life and it’s extremely precious. But but we have to understand that that we simply cannot remain in this present human life no matter how precious it might be. That in fact we’re going to die and we should we should think of our future existences. So it said, you know, we question what can what can I do for my future life? If we develop faith in the Dharma, it is said that this will help us to bring about an even improved possibility of practicing in future lives.
That our practice will be even that much better than it is now. So we have have to make preparations for our practice, to carry on our practice in the future lives. In order to ensure that we can practice in the future lives, that in our present life we should seek to generate faith in the Dharma. And this will ensure that we can carry on our practice in the future lives. But additionally, we need for example wisdom.
So, to ensure that we will have wisdom in the future lives, we should engage in the activity of listening to the teachings in this life. Again, we need other qualities such as effort. And making effort in this life ensures that we will have effort, perseverance in future lives. So all of these qualities of faith, wisdom, and perseverance practice now will bring about these same qualities in a future existence. And also said that, you know, to carry on our practice of Dharma, we need a a and again, a uninterrupted series of rebirths as humans.
And in order to take this continual rebirth as humans, it’s necessary to practice ethics. Therefore, it’s necessary that we engage ethics to ensure that we can carry on our practice by, again, attaining human rebirth. Additionally, that to carry on our practice, we need to meet with the spiritual teacher, the lama. And to we need to, again in the future, meet with a lama. And again, after that future life, to meet with a spiritual teacher.
And the spiritual teacher after that. So how can we ensure this unbroken series of meeting with the spiritual teacher in future lives? That this is brought about by the way we relate with the spiritual teacher of this life. That we should relate with him with faith and respect. Respect.
Faith and respect. If we we act in this fashion, then in the future life, we’ll we’ll met we’ll meet with an even better teacher. And then after that, we’ll meet with an even better spiritual spiritual teacher and better and better until we our spiritual teachers will be such beings as Chenrezig, Mañjuśrī, and Tsongkhapa. So in in the future lives, we it’s necessary that we have a complete conditions to carry on our practice. If if we were, for example, to have to meet with a spiritual teacher, we had a human life and we met with the Dharma.
We additionally need to condition conditions to carry on a successful practice without even though we might have these three former factors. If we, if we did not have the complete conducive conditions, then we wouldn’t be able to carry on a successful practice. So in order to do that, it’s necessary to, to, practice generosity. Making offerings to, for example, the Three Jewels and to sentient beings in general in order to gather all the conducive conditions necessary. And in this way, you know, if we should try to create all the causes for the most successful practice possible in the future.
A complete practice with all the conducive conditions. And such that we have we have faith in the Dharma in the future. That we have we we have wisdom. That we have a precious human life. That not only do we have a precious human life, we have complete all of our complete senses.
That we meet with a spiritual master. That we have a beautiful body through, for example, the practice of patience. That we have the leisure, the freedom to carry on a practice. And we have the we’ve practiced generosity, so we now we have all the conducive conditions to carry on a successful practice. So it said that, you know, if we make these preparations for our future life while while still living in this life and we we were to complete all of these these conducive conditions that we ensure that we have a human human life where we are able to carry on a complete practice of the Dharma, then in dependence upon these complete sets of conducive conditions, we can gain all the various realizations necessary.
We can achieve the various stages and paths. We can develop the awakening heart, and we can quickly achieve Buddhahood. Then the next guideline is make the three inseparable. Make the three inseparable. And these three, the first of these three is one’s speech.
That our speech should never be separated from the Dharma. And for example, always involving one’s speech with the Dharma in spiritual practice even if only through recitation of various mantras whether it’s or just one speech is never far away from these practices. And then the third the second of these three inseparables should be that we should not allow the Dharma to be separated from our body. That we should always be physically involved in some manner with the Dharma. For example making offerings to the Three Jewels, making prostrations, circumambulation, in these various manners ensuring that our body is never separated from the Dharma.
So So with respect to inseparability of the body in a manner of prostration, prostration. We don’t have to go to all the trouble of getting up and prostrating on the floor in order to do a prostration. That simply bringing one’s hand together, hands together, or even raising one’s hand with faith, for example, with the Three Jewels or or just bowing one’s head is a prostration. And then the third and final part is the Dharma should not be separated from your mind. And this would be that in our meditation practice, engaging the mind in in the the states of of loving, caring, awakening heart, faith, renunciation.
The next guideline is this time practice the important points. This time, practice the important points. Maybe yeah. This time, practice the important points. It’s important to practice at this time.
That, you know, now today, it’s time to practice. You know, we have all of the conducive conditions. We have this precious human life. We have a teacher. We have spiritual friends to support us.
That we aren’t sick. If having all of these conducive conditions to practice at this time, if we don’t practice now, then we never will. We won’t be able to at any other time. Then this would be a great loss. This would be very sad.
Having all that we have now, if we can’t practice now, we never will. And it would be very, very sad if we never practiced. So Śāntideva has said, at this time when we have all of the conducive conditions to practice, that we are we have freedom from any conflicting conditions. If we were not to make use of this time in creating the bringing about the skillful completion of our practice, there could be nothing more stupid or ignorant. There’s there could be no worse situation.
So, anyway, we should take these precepts to heart that that the great master Atisha out of his his compassion motivated by the awakening heart, he presented us all of these advices Now that we have this golden opportunity which are composed of all the conducive conditions to practice. We are doing this to help ourselves, to benefit ourselves. If we don’t make use of of the Dharma by practicing, then it’s of no benefit. Yeah. I don’t think I would.
Very much. So we’re going to stop there for the for the night.