Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute Lamrim commentary, Ven Jampa Ignyen opens with a piercing question: should compassion guide us to end a dying person’s life? His answer—wisdom, not compassion alone, must decide; prematurely ending life disrupts karma and risks worse rebirth—frames his deeper exploration of suffering. He covers the four major human sufferings (birth, sickness, old age, death), the suffering of separation and unwanted company, and the pervasive suffering of unfulfilled desire affecting everyone from billionaires to beggars. Moving through higher realms, he shows gods and demigods also suffer, then addresses three types of suffering across all realms. He concludes by examining genuine renunciation and bodhicitta. For serious practitioners studying the Lamrim path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 2001 05 17 LR.mp3
UUID: f376e270-ea04-4a66-8afe-578b001cfeef
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Lam Rim 2001 Month 04-06 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-05-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~4,415
Turning off the switch or, you know, stopping the life support or or whatever of a person in a terminal situation is actually gonna be of benefit to them or not. Because what they’re experiencing at present is due to a certain karma. In fact, by allowing them to live as long as possible, it may exhaust that karma for them. And then they can die and possibly, you know, take a better rebirth because of that. Whereas if we intervene and cut short their life, that particular karma may not be exhausted, and it may cause them a future rebirth in in a worse situation.
So really wisdom is required in acting here, and compassion is not enough. And many people say that it’s compassionate to, you know, to help in such a situation. And to act compassionately means you help a person die earlier. But if it’s not coupled with wisdom, then in fact, it might be the worst thing one can do for that person. As I say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
And sometimes with the best of intentions, people can act but actually cause great problems for another. So here, really, is not an end of suffering. Death is not the, you know, that thing which stops suffering. If it were, then committing suicide may be a, you know, a positive thing to do. Right.
So then we those are the four major sufferings of a human being, and we should be aware of those and we should think about them often because it’s their current nature. It’s our nature as a human being. That’s where we are. We are. We’ve finished with the suffering of birth, but we’re actually at present going through the suffering of sickness and old age.
And that will be followed by the suffering of death. And every human being we see around us is in exactly our situation. It’s just a question of degree, are facing just what we face. Then similarly, we also have the suffering of being separated from the beautiful. So we also experience the suffering of being, you know, like being separated from our friends or those that we wanna be with.
When we’re separated, that’s a great that’s a hassle. That’s a problem for us. And also the suffering of meeting with the ugly, we also experience this suffering of, again and again, being in situations we don’t wanna be in or being associated with people we don’t wanna be with, such as people we think are our enemies and so on. This is a problem for us. So these occur in various ways, being associated with what we don’t wanna be associated with or being not associated with what we want to be associated with.
Then another one, the third one here is the suffering of seeking the things we desire but not finding them. So again, this is a great suffering that we experience. And in fact, everywhere in society throughout all human existence, this is a suffering that is pervasive. And all humans experience it. There’s no human that doesn’t experience it.
It may seem as if there are some people that have got everything, but they’re just like us. They are seeking certain things and have not found them. So no matter whether it’s the richest person on earth or the poorest person on earth, that’s just how it is. Sometimes it appears to us, you know, we go through drive through a nice suburb and we look in and, oh, there’s a really nice house, you know, it’s nice grounds, you know, a couple of nice cars, couple of nice kids. Oh, I think they got everything on.
They got a pretty nice bank balance to be there. You know, we think they’ve got it made. They’re not like me. You know, here I am. I’m out.
You know, I can’t can’t even afford, you know, to, you know, being for one of those plants in my front yard, let alone, you know, have a house like that or and we think, oh, they’ve got it made. They couldn’t be like me. But, actually, everyone, every human being, every ordinary human being is just like me. They’re seeking for things and not finding them, and that’s a type of suffering. So, therefore, we shouldn’t be too impressed by the wealth and the signs of success that occur everywhere in our society.
Even though the person is, you know, the the CEO of the the biggest company in Australia or whatever, you know, it appears to us, oh, they couldn’t be seeking anything more. They’ve got it made. Oh, if only I could have been like that, Then I wouldn’t want anything more. You know, I’m pretty modest in my in my aspirations. That’d do me, you know, I’d have a I’d have an office on the forty sixth floor, I’d have a chauffeur driven car, and a nice little three story, you know, bungalow out in the suburbs somewhere, and that would do me.
I’d be happy with just that. But it’s not true. If we had that, we would still be seeking and not finding what we sought. So in fact, everyone, whether it’s from Bill Gates down to ourselves or down to the lowliest beggar in the streets of Calcutta, we’re all the same because we’re seeking things in the material world and not finding them. So this we need to so also we need to have compassion for others, all other human beings, because they’re all undergoing this type of suffering.
Then we may think, well, wait a minute. Okay. The humans, there’s a lot of limitations for humans. But what about the gods? Do we accept the existence of gods?
K. Can we absolutely refute that they exist? Okay. So it’s asserted that there’s two levels above a human, the demi gods and the gods. And these all all these six types of being exist in the desire realm.
So above the humans, we have the demi demigods, and they’re superior to humans but inferior to the gods. They exist, according to this text here, at the foot of Mount Meru, well, they exist in another part of the they tend to exist in certain parts of the universe, not far from the human realms, but beyond our immediate immediate perception. And the gods tend to exist not far from the anti from the demigods. And the demigods are consumed with jealousy of the gods. And in a way, this is born out in, you know, Greek mythology or Indian mythology, even Chinese mythology.
This idea of you have divine, you have heaven and the beings in heaven. Then you have others that are almost in heaven, but they don’t quite have the capacity to to be in heaven and are jealous and want to and they make war on the on divine beings in order to capture the the nectar of the divine and so forth, the wealth of the divine. Now it’s true. From our perspective, we it’s difficult for us to say whether they exist or not. But even those beings are said to have suffering.
For instance for the gods, the gods also, especially those in the desire realm, suffer from suffering from knowing that they’re gonna die from a god realm. That one week before they pass away, their bodies start to accumulate dust, and they begin to smell a bit, and they start to lose their radiance, And other gods start to avoid them, and they have a premonition of where they’re gonna they’re gonna die and where they’re gonna be reborn. And in general, because the gods experience very much higher bliss than a human can experience, they tend to burn up good karma, positive karma at a much higher rate. And when they do exhaust that karma, it generally means they gonna take a lower rebirth. Maybe as a human, but quite probably as an animal or even lower.
And they have a premonition of this. So this occurs in the last week of their life. And so in that life, they experience intense suffering. Suffering. Prior to that, as divine beings, especially those in the desire realm, although they have some, you know, there’s some suffering, there’s some limitations for these beings.
In general, their existence is quite happy, joyous, blissful. They’re very radiant. Generally, things that they want are established almost automatically for them because of the intensity of their positive karma. There’s divine music, you know, there’s jewels encrusted in the ground, and the water is very pleasant. Everything smells fragrantly.
And it’s just if we can imagine the earth, but many, many times more beautiful, more harmonious, and so forth. And there’s many levels of God. There’s six levels of God realm within a desire realm. And each of those is each of those six is of increasing an increasing level of bliss and happiness. And I’d say that it’s sometimes even possible for humans to hear the, you know, the music of the divine realms and and so on.
But in general, it’s we’re not aware of these things. But for ourselves, if we were born there, we would tend to think that we were liberated. Course, we’re in heaven. And we tend to think, well, that’s it. We’re made.
We’ve got there. How we got there? We got there. We don’t know, but we’re there. We’re made.
And that’s how the gods are. They are reborn there, and they see the merit by which they’re reborn there. And, you know, they walk around, there’s vast radiance, everything just works fine. Very blissful and joyful and so on. Then in that last week, they’re gonna die, and so it completely changes their avoid other gods avoid them.
They smell. They have dust on their bodies. They have sweat. Their clothes are getting dirty. They’re gonna pass away.
So they experience incredible suffering. The demigods who are lower but are aware of the gods, they have greater suffering than that. In fact, they can even die in battle against the gods. And so on anyway, the descriptions of these these realms are given in brief by Pabongka Rinpoche. But the point of contemplating this is to understand that even a rebirth as a god has limitations.
We’re still not beyond birth and death even when we’re reborn as a god. But the descriptions that are given so far are just for the desire realm gods. Above that then there’s the form realm, divine beings. And in the form realm, there’s not even a negative feeling of of suffering that can occur, and the signs of death and so forth don’t occur there. In that realm, there’s really only there’s the suffering of change and the suffering of pervasiveness up to a certain level.
But beyond the fourth absorption in the form realm, there’s not even a suffering of change. It’s just the all pervasive suffering exists there. All pervasive or pervasive compounded suffering is something so subtle that we don’t even regard it as suffering. That is like, and actually to a hair on the palm of our hand, is likened in a way to pervasive compounded suffering. We wouldn’t regard it as suffering at all.
But when we go into what this type of suffering is, then it begins to become clear that that’s in fact is the fundamental ground of suffering itself. Upon that ground, all the other sufferings emerge. But as we ascend within the universe to the higher realms, to the higher levels of the universe, then the suffering also decreases. And in the formless realm or the fourth absorption and so forth, all they have there really is compounded pervasive suffering, which is really the suffering of having a mind body continuum, a contaminated mind body continuum. The purpose of thinking about this is to investigate whether suffering pervades the three realms.
Because unless we’re convinced that we have to overcome even this pervasive type suffering, then we tend to look at the higher realms as being like a refuge, as being like a place beyond suffering, where it just we’re reborn there, then we have crossed the ocean of Samsāra. Okay. We should just stop there. Boss is not here. Right.
Yeah. Oh, that’s there from memory oh, actually, what what I think is being spoken about there is that this third type of suffering, pervasive suffering or pervasive compounded suffering, pervades everything or pervades the experience of ordinary beings no matter where they are in the three realms throughout the universe. It’s easy for us to see that suffering pervades the feeling of suffering. When we have a feeling of suffering, whether it’s, like external or internal or whether it’s physical or mental, that feeling of suffering is easy to understand as suffering, as the truth of suffering. Generally, in the desire realm, the feelings of physical and mental suffering is quite pervasive.
It occurs, you know, especially for humans. It’s, you know, quite common. But even pleasant feelings, both physical and mental, are also the truth of suffering. And pleasant feelings exist, for instance, in the human realm to a degree in the animal realm, but they certainly certainly exist for the demigods and for the gods in the desire realm. Although even those gods also experience suffering.
Right? But certainly in the form realm, the first, second, and third level of the form realm, beings there experience pleasant feelings or neutral feelings. Those pleasant feelings there are also the second type of suffering, the suffering of change as they are in for us in the desire realm. Right? Our feelings of happiness are the suffering of change because they start off as happiness and they become after a while, they become neutral and negative.
But these feelings, positive feelings, only extend as far as the third absorption of the form realm or the first, second, and third levels of the form realm. Beyond that, there’s only neutral feeling. That neutral feeling in a sense is the subtlest, the highest feeling. And for beings that exist in the fourth level of the form realm and the four levels of the formless realm only experience neutral feeling. But even so, that neutral feeling is pervaded by the subtlest level of suffering, the pervasive compounded suffering.
I’m not sure if that answers your question. But the point of of making that observation is to say that whatever our experience, whether it’s a negative feeling, positive feeling, or neutral feeling within the universe, it’s pervaded by this subtlest level of suffering. The negative feeling itself is the suffering of suffering. The positive feeling is the suffering of change. The neutral feeling is pervaded also by subtlest level of suffering or just the subtlest level of suffering because in that, there’s no positive feeling or negative feeling.
Does that make any sense? Of the the word equanimity used before. Right. Equanimity there is often it can mean just neutral feeling, feeling of equanimity, but it depends on the context of of how it’s used. There’s different types of equanimity.
That’s right. Composite phenomena. Actually, it’s a term used here for a Tibetan word, du khe, or it sounds like it in Sanskrit. Actually, what it’s what it means is anything which is impermanent. It’s referring to impermanent entities that exist through things coming together and and disintegrating and so forth.
In Tibetan, the term is, which is pervasive compounded suffering or suffering pervading composite phenomena as it’s stated here in this text. Right? So it’s it’s just a term that’s used to say that for all beings such as ourselves, we experience this pervasive type suffering, which is very the subtlest level of suffering that pervades ourselves as compounded or impermanent beings, which is the suffering of having a contaminated mind body. But that term composite phenomenon just refers to impermanent. And, basically, what it’s referring to is the impermanent mind body continuum that’s derived from contaminated causes.
So therefore, it’s compounded. It’s composite. These words composite, compounded are exactly the same as impermanent. Conditioned is the same. Anything which is conditioned is impermanent.
Anything which is compounded, I mean, it’s made up of other it’s compounded of different causes and conditions, And so on all of these things refer to all of these terms refer to the same thing. It’s really being free of not so much conditioned from free of conditioned phenomena because we will never be free of conditioned phenomena. It’s just being free of the suffering of now has it stated in the text here? It’s pervasive compounded suffering. I think it’s here.
It’s pervasive composite suffering or something like that. Is it? Five zero one. Five zero one. Yep.
That the suffering of all conditioned phenomena there is really pervasive compounded suffering, or the suffering that occurs for any ordinary sentient being that pervades ordinary sentient beings. The suffering that’s pervading compounded sentient beings, let put it that way. We can get away from it. Yeah. We can separate ourselves from it.
Once we eliminate the causes of it, we can separate ourselves from it. But at present, we experience it because we have the causes of it exist within our mental continuum. The causes of pervasive suffering exist in our continuum. Yeah. So that’s the subtlest level of suffering, and what it is is that contaminated mind and body of the present moment.
If we just take our current mind and body fundamentally, it’s not really our body. It’s really our mind. If we can understand our mind in the present moment, then we’ll see that it’s within it is the source of this subtlest level of suffering. In other words, it’s talking about our ignorance that that we have. But our ignorance is not easy to see.
Our ignorance itself obscures our awareness from seeing. Well, it’s a bit of a paradox in a way because it’s our ignorance that is stopping us from seeing that we’re ignorant of those issues. But once we come to understand what that ignorance is, we’re able to recognize it, then it’s possible to to eliminate it. That’s right. One can that’s right.
Once we enter the path of seeing, then Yeah. Once we see the truth, then we’re able to stop sam sara. In the sense, we’re able to stop future saṃsāra. We’re still, in fact, experiencing the results of what went before, but we can stop ourselves from entering future. States.
Some may, some do. No. No. Renunciation or the thought of definitely emerging from from Samsāra is the gateway to entering the path. That’s the measure of entering the path, the first path, the path of accumulation.
But one’s still in Samsāra. It’s not until one reaches the patience level of the path of preparation where one is not thrown into the hells beyond one’s control. But even so, such a being is still a samsaric being. But they’re getting close to being an ārya being. Sorry?
But they but one is still an ordinary being up until the path of seeing. When we enter the path of seeing, then we’re no longer an ordinary being. We even we are completely transformed. Even our physical body is no longer an ordinary physical body. We have a body of the nature of the mind itself according to the perfection vehicle.
So if we can attain the path of seeing in this life, then we can really pat ourselves on the back and sit back and relax a little bit. If not that, then at least the path of preparation. Not the path of preparation and to attain the path of accumulation in this life. Very it’d be very good. Where one has earth like bodhicitta.
It’s bodhicitta which is like the ground. It’s the basis for one all one’s future development. Then one has sorry? Well, not just worms, of course, but all other creatures as well. But earth like bodhicitta is just the beginning.
Then after that comes gold like bodhicitta, and one should at least aspire to attaining gold like bodhicitta. Because gold like bodhicitta is immutable. It can never be lost. Whereas earth like bodhicitta, there is a possibility of one giving up that sort of bodhicitta. But one once once one reaches the the second level of the path of accumulation and achieves gold like bodhicitta, then that can never never degenerate.
It’s like gold card. Gold card bodhicitta. Yeah. One can still be reborn in hell. Yeah.
Yep. By the power of sorry? Sorry? It Yes. But because of having bodhicitta, you probably won’t stay there very long.
You won’t stay there very long. You may suffer to some degree, but because you have bodhicitta, it’s incompatible to have great compassion and bodhicitta and live long in the hells. Stay for a you tend to bounce out of the hells again very quickly. Could be some benefit. Yeah.
Absolutely. It could be. In fact, some bodhisattvas such as — don’t try and say it too quickly though —, which is a heart of the earth bodhisattva made a vow that he would remain in hells until every being was liberated from the hells. Yeah. Well, that’s sort of true as well.
But still, he made that vow and very interesting. If you can read his sūtra, it’s called the Kṣitigarbha Sūtra. It’s very, very interesting. Very, very inspiring. Renunciation is the uncontrived thought to leave Samsāra day and night.
It’s there all the time. It’s uncontrived, meaning it’s genuine, meaning we don’t have to put effort into it. It’s like spontaneous, uncontrived. At present, it’s contrived for us. We have to think about it.
We have to think about the sufferings of the hells and put a lot of effort into it, then we develop this, you know, some thought of it’ll be good to get beyond this current state. Actual renunciation is when it’s uncontrived. It’s, like, spontaneous, and it’s there all the time. That’s that alone without bodhicitta is entering a lower path. But if one is aspiring to enter the great vehicle, one along with that also wants bodhicitta.
They’re not they’re not that different in one respect. Yep. Well, in a sense, unless they get beyond saṃsāra themselves, they can’t really help really help. So they they need renunciation. Bodhisattvas need renunciation themselves.
It’s impossible to become a without renunciation, without the thought of definite emergence. Renunciation is, in a sense, is like wishing oneself gets beyond saṃsāra, and bodhicitta, in a sense, is like wishing all beings beyond saṃsāra. So in a a sense renunciation is just focused on oneself whereas if one extends that to all sentient beings, it becomes or it’s approaching bodhicitta. They really go together. You can’t aspire to have all beings leave saṃsāra without desiring of oneself to leave saṃsāra, which is like renunciation.
Oh, then that’s fine. There’s no saṃsāra left. What would become of the earth? Well, I mean, suddenly, could be filled by anything. Oh, well.
Well, it’s like it have an empty planet anyway. It wouldn’t be a if every sentient being became a Buddha, then that’d be fine. Doesn’t mean to say that they’d stop existing. Existing, but they’d just be no more saṃsāra. So, no more saṃsāra..
No. No. No way. Impossible. They’d be reborn elsewhere on other planets.
Yes. Probably possible to have it develop it and then lose it again in in the initial stages. See, in the path of accumulation, for instance. That oh, it would be impossible to get to the tenth level bodhisattva bhūmi. No.
Even it should be impossible for an ārya being to ever degenerate to an ordinary being. So we haven’t been become an ārya being in the past. Well, we’re ordinary beings in the past and we’re we’re still ordinary beings. We probably haven’t entered the path yet, ever, not once. And we probably haven’t generated bodhicitta before, which and then we probably haven’t yet generated great compassion, which means we probably yet haven’t generated great love for all sentient beings.
But this we have to examine. If one has great compassion for other beings, it you know, there are certain signs. You walk around and you look at other beings, and you just have this spontaneous sense of compassion for them. You don’t have to. You look at other beings and you just whichever ants, human beings, birds, fish, thought of the hell realms and so forth, you just are overcome with a feeling of sympathy, you know, and concern.
And you get goose pimples and tears start to stream from your eyes and things like that quite naturally without any effort. Now when we look into ourselves and we see, do I need any effort at present to generate compassion for other beings? If I’m walking down the street and I look at others, when I look at them, am I overcome with a sense of compassion for them? If we actually need to put effort into generating any compassion, we gotta sit there, god, this person’s been my mother in the past. They’ve been my mother.
They’ve been my mother. They’ve been my They’ve mother. My mother. Should generate some concern for them. Can I generate concern?
Okay. I can try. I’ll try. I’ll sit here for another half an hour. If we don’t have a spontaneous feeling of compassion for that being, it’s it’s probably indicating that we haven’t yet generated great compassion or great love for these these beings.
That’s in the sense of great love and great compassion. Not to say that we haven’t generated love and compassion towards them, that’s possible. But here in the sense of great compassion, that that we probably haven’t yet generated. This we need to examine. And in fact, if we require need to put effort into these states, then it’s an indication that they’re still not we’re still generating them.
We’re in the process of generating which is an indication that we haven’t entered the path yet. But this we have to examine ourselves. We know ourselves, you know, what states we experience and so on. Anyway, we should stop talking. We’ve gone out for a bit.