Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this guided meditation, Thubten Chodron leads practitioners through a direct contemplation on the six difficulties of cyclic existence as a path to generating genuine determination for liberation. She methodically walks through each difficulty: the fundamental insecurity of samsaric life despite all our efforts at control; constant dissatisfaction with what we have, who we are, and what we do; repeated death and rebirth across countless lives; the unstable cycling through different life circumstances and statuses; and the profound aloneness of suffering and death. Throughout, she emphasizes grounding each reflection in personal experience and example, so the teachings become visceral rather than abstract. The practice culminates in a direct instruction to generate strong aspiration to eliminate the root causes—ignorance, disturbing attitudes, and karma—by walking the spiritual path. Suited for practitioners seeking to cultivate genuine renunciation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 26 GM.mp3
UUID: a62f36bd-ff36-4e2a-b29c-07d86fc80bab
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~561
Another way to meditate on the disadvantages of cyclic existence in order to generate the wish to attain liberation is by contemplating the six difficulties of cyclic existence. So after you contemplate each one, generate the strong determination and aspiration to attain liberation by eliminating the ignorance, the disturbing attitude, and the karma that cause it. So the first difficulty of cyclic existence is that there’s absolutely no certainty or security or stability in our lives. So even though we try very hard to control everything in our life, to find some kind of security, we want financial security, we want security in our relationships. We want job security.
We want health security. We try and control all these aspects of our life so that we never experience any unhappiness or harm, and yet we never succeed because the nature of our life is that there’s no final security or stability in cyclic existence. So really think about this in terms of your own life and make examples from your own life. And second, we’re never satisfied with what we have. We always want more and better no matter what we have.
We’re never satisfied with what we do because we’re very self critical and always feel we should be able to do more. We should do better. We’re never satisfied with who we are. I always feel like we should be able to be like somebody else. We’re never satisfied with the people around us or the possessions that we have.
So there’s this constant dissatisfaction in our lives. No matter how much we have, no matter who we are, whenever we attain something, we’re still dissatisfied. So this is the nature of cyclic existence. This is why we want to be free of it. Then the third one is that we die repeatedly.
And the fourth one is that we take rebirth repeatedly. So again and again, we die. We’re reborn. We keep going through all these transitions between our birth and our death of each life. There’s all these problems.
So there’s the suffering of death and then the suffering of birth. And again and again, this goes on since beginningless time, and it will continue without end unless we eliminate the ignorance that is the root of the problem. And then fifth is that we’re constantly changing status. Sometimes we’re born poor and other times rich. Sometimes we’re the master and sometimes we’re the slave.
Sometimes we’re the employee. Sometimes we’re the employer. Sometimes we’re the perpetrator of harm. Sometimes we’re the victim. So there’s this repeated change of status up and down within one life and from one life to the next because sometimes we’re born in an unfortunate rebirth.
Sometimes we’re born in a good one. Constant change in status up and down. No stability. And the sixth difficulty is that we undergo suffering alone. So we may be surrounded by loved ones, have so many good times with other people.
But when we suffer, that feeling of suffering is ours alone. When we die, we’re the one that dies. Nobody else comes with us. Nobody else can prevent it. And so contemplating these six difficulties of cyclic existence, understanding well the first noble truth, the truth of suffering, generate a strong determination to be free of it and its causes by practicing the path.