Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. This guided meditation introduces the first stage of the Lamrim (graduated path) by cultivating appreciation for the precious human rebirth. Valham begins by establishing a calm, spacious mind through visualization of Śākyamūni Buddha and breathing practice, then guides the listener through a systematic reflection on the rarity and value of human life: freedom from the worst sufferings of lower realms, freedom from addictive attachment to divine pleasures, possession of a workable body and mind, and access to authentic spiritual teachers. He emphasizes that this human life contains all conditions needed to practise Dharma, to generate bodhicitta, and ultimately to achieve liberation—a value vastly exceeding material wealth. The teaching concludes by contrasting the worldly mind (oscillating between attachment and aversion, hope and fear) with the dharmic mind (equanimous toward gain and loss, praise and blame), showing how this precious rebirth is squandered on endless pursuit of temporary gain unless we redirect our energy toward spiritual practice. Suitable for practitioners new to the Lamrim framework.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 The precious human rebirth.mp3
UUID: 0bf0213c-b183-45c7-ac95-c41e343fc457
Teacher: Valham
Collection: Guided LR Meditation (Valham)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~2,164
So now as a preliminary practice to begin with, we visualize Śākyamūni Buddha in space in front of us. You can think, first of all, imagine yourself seated on top of a hill or right here on top of the hill, gazing into the horizon on a cloudless day. Try to create this spacious panoramic vision around you, and relax your body and mind. When you think spontaneously of the sun rising in the horizon in the morning. The image of a Śākyamūni Buddha’s magnificent body appears in space in front of us.
Seated on a brilliant white lotus flower on top of a sun and a moon. Buddha’s body surrounded by an aura of radiating light, And he wears the saffron robes of a monk, right hand on his right knee and left hand holding a begging bowl filled with nectar. And that nectar has the power to cure, you know, any disease, overcome any suffering in saṃsāra, even the contaminated aggregates, you know, the body and mind. So you think Buddha’s face is very gently smiling. And when you visualize it, it just about put a smile on your own face.
Light smile on your own face. And you think that Buddha communicates with you through the light rays emanating from his body, especially his heart that enters your body, speech, and mind. So now that when we practice the breathing meditation, you imagine every breath you take, you inhale the qualities of Buddha’s body, speech, and mind is universal compassion, you know, great wisdom, understanding reality, and the powers of the Buddhas in the form of light, like rays of the sunlight pouring into your nostrils, filling your body and mind with light. As you exhale, you think you exhale your negativities, The hindrances and obstacles goes out in a form of darkness, darkness shadow completely disappearing. So to begin with, let’s focus on this breathing meditation for a while.
And when you slowly find yourself more light, more spacious, and also focus on the nature of your mind, that natural state, that natural state of clarity. Now to meditate on the preciousness of our human life. Let’s think. Let a day in life only become as meaningful, you know, as we make it ourselves. But our precious human life certainly have the full potential, you know, for us to make our our human life truly meaningful.
This time around, if we contemplate on it exactly, this time around, we are completely free from all the sufferings of the lower realms of existence, all the heavy sufferings of the lower realms of existence. Also, we are free from the addictions to pleasures, the obsessions of the god realms of existence. Think to yourself, each of us, we have a workable, useful body and mind, human brain, human intelligence. And also the most precious thing of all is actually having met with compassionate, wise, spiritual masters. All this, you know, coming together is what makes our human life, precious human life.
Where we can achieve our goals, we can use it to be successful in temporary happinesses, goals, or we can use it for liberation, for awakening, or even moment by moment in such profound ways. In in any one moment, we have the potential to awaken the bodhicitta. You know, the universal compassionate thought dedicated to the happiness of others. This most sublime rare thought in the world. With a precious human life, any moment has the full potential for generating bodhicitta day and night.
So you try to think of your human life like that. So fortunate. It’s like we have everything it takes, you know, to accomplish our goals. Or think like this, nothing is missing from our life this time. For a moment, let’s just contemplate on this.
Think for yourself. You know, relate your own life to the meaning of the precious human rebirth and see if it’s true. Try to feel whether it is true or not that we have all these conditions that we never thought were important before. But when you put them all together, you know, think of them all together one by one, it makes you feel that this human life is, like, ready made to practice Dharma. You know, when we really start to generate a feeling for the preciousness of our human life, it’s it’s like the experience of having a million dollar dropped into our lap.
You know, if that would happen to us, we would instantly feel, now all my wishes can be fulfilled. Or, you know, for the rest of my life, I’m safe. But the value of our precious human life is much more incomparable to a million dollars. Because, you know, with precious human life, we can look after not only this life, but all the future lives as well. With a precious human life, we can create the causes for happiness in this and all future lives.
You know, with the precious human life, we can purify our negativities, confusion, ignorance, and go beyond suffering completely. With a precious human life, we can learn to develop genuine compassion, you know, loving kindness for others, you know, or for ourselves and others. All those things that that money and temporary, see, powers, wealth cannot achieve. That which can only be achieved by our mind, you know. With a precious human life, we have the perfect conditions.
Conditions. So you should try to generate that feeling, that same feeling, you know, of a million dollars in your lap. And now as a conclusion and dedication, let’s think. By the merits of meditating and whatever good energy we generate, May we be able to take full advantage of our precious human life, especially today as we have such perfect conditions, you know, to meditate on the graduated path. May we be able to follow the advice of our gentle masters, And particularly, you know, to cultivate the most precious thought.
And that wish to attain the full awakened state, you know, the fully qualified awakened state. In order to relieve all living beings from suffering, and may we remember it moment by moment. That that is the ultimate, you know, purpose of our human life. And now as a motivation, let’s think. That we have a very, very fortunate life, very fortunate human life.
And not particularly because, you know, we are westerners or because we are wealthy, but simply because we have a workable body and mind, free from heavy obstacles. And you know we have our human right and freedom, not simply that we can go anywhere we like, but we have the ability to meet and practice on the spiritual path. We are not suppressed by outside governments or, you know, or our own wrong views, narrow mind, obsessive, you see, mind. Having barbaric outlook on life or clinging to wrong views, this kind of We are free from that. Also, being able to meet, you see, with great spiritual guides.
So all this gives our human life, you know, a preciousness that is extremely rare in this world. Much more valuable than any kind of possession, you know, or wealth. Possession and wealth can only give us temporary benefits, whereas the precious human life can give us lasting value, can give lasting value to our life. Lasting meaning. You see, even if we don’t own one single dollar, even if we don’t have one single dollar to our name, and just like Milarepa, you know.
We still have the value of our precious human life and can create, you know, causes for happiness. Just having a precious human life, you see, is much more valuable than any other wealth. Because this can give us you see, if we use our precious human life meaningfully, we will gain lasting benefits. So most of the time we forget about the value of the precious human life. Because our life is so busy.
Or else we get involved with their worldly concerns. Like most people, most people feel that the value of their life, the quality of their life, the happiness depends on receiving things, being praised, you know, admired, having comforts, good reputation, all these things. And when they don’t receive that affirmation from others, then feeling lonely, you know, unhappy, depressed. So living in this way, mind goes up and down, up and down all day. And another moment’s peace, always the mind is filled with expectations, you know, demands, or worry, fear.
So mind fluctuates between hope and fear. Attachment and aversion. So usually we recognize when we feel aversion. We recognize that as a negative, painful state of mind. But we don’t always recognize the attachment as also being painful.
But you know, as much as we are attached to the comforts, pleasures, you see, being accepted, admired, As much as we are attached to that side, we have that much aversion, you know, fear and worry for the negative side. Losing, not getting, pain. These two come together. The more attachment, the more aversion. The more hopes, the more fears.
So while our mind is in that state, it’s very difficult to practice Dharma. That mind is opposite to Dharma, you know. We call worldly concerns. So let’s look now, let’s practice meditation. Let’s check, analyze how it is in life.
So usually it’s easier to look into first the general way of life. So you can one can imagine oneself actually gazing into the your own hometown. Imagine yourself floating on a fluffy cloud in over your own hometown, and gaze on the life. You know, what’s going on? What consumes the time and energy of most people, and how we end up using our, you know, fortunate human life.
In the endless works of only this life. So first you try to see how it is. Try to get a true picture as much as possible. And then turn that analyzing mind onto yourself and think, how is it in my own life? How has it been so far?
Is my life and my mind, you know, enmeshed in the worldly concerns? Worry and fear, you know, hope and fear. And look at it, how it uses up, you know, so much of our time and energy that we tend to forget about the real value of the precious human life. So do this in a very relaxed way, you know, and not stressing yourself out. Just try to look at it as it is, and then turn and try to be honest with yourself.
Yeah. It’s quite it’s quite easy to see how much energy goes into acquiring things, what we want, and striving to get rid of what we don’t like. It’s a whole kind of lifestyle. Both in the East and in the West, it’s the same thing. The lifestyle of clinging for pleasure, comfort, gain, reputation, admiration, being afraid of and rejecting, you know, pain, loss, you see, blame, criticism.
And we become so involved that we think of these. We are concerned with these two sides of our life. You know, sometimes all day long, twenty four hours, even in our dreams even in our dreams, we are concerned with the worldly affairs. And sometimes it seems that there’s no way out, you know, that there’s no other way. But we need to learn how to equalize these two, you know, to feel indifferent, in other words.
To try to win back time and energy for Dharma practice, for more important things in life than just the constant ups and downs, the constant changes. The yo yo mind, like Lama Yeshe used to call it. The yo yo mind. To control that state of mind that makes us constantly either attached or involved with aversion, you know, makes the mind negative. To transform that, to make our mind into dharma.
To transform our mind into dharma, we need to equalize or put ourselves in, indifference — that is not ignoring, but feeling indifferent towards gain and loss. Having the attitude that if I gain, it’s good. If I lose, it’s also good. If I have comforts, it’s good. If I have pain, it’s also good.
Feeling indifferent. If I’m praised, it’s good. If I’m criticized, it’s also good. Cultivating an even mind. Then we are not concerned with the ups and downs.
And that mind is very clear, is very calm in the natural dharma. And such a mind that is very clear and calm is also more capable of dealing with the ups and downs, you know, of saṃsāra, with the ups and downs of our own mind, and with the ups and downs of the minds of others. So this is the difference between a worldly mind and the mind of dharma. Whether one is concerned with the worldly gain and loss, whether one can remain, you see, indifferent.