Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Jampa Ignyen explores why mind-training is urgent now, during an era when our minds are untrained and chasing happiness while generating suffering. He introduces a foundational text presented as a diamond, the sun, and a medicinal plant — metaphors for its transformative power. He covers six daily preliminary practices: cleaning and arranging sacred symbols, making offerings, adopting meditation posture, requesting blessings, the seven-limb prayer, and dedicating merit. He then guides listeners through the primary contemplation — recognizing the rarity and privilege of human birth, with its opportunities and leisure. He details the eight conditions that lack this leisure and the ten beneficial circumstances we possess, building genuine gratitude as the foundation for practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 Rays 2001 10 31.mp3
UUID: 59e2c9b1-86c3-46ab-97e2-21cb4c04e6d4
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Like Rays of the Sun (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-10-31
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~5,066
Mind itself needs training. It’s pretty much untrained in the present. It’s pretty unwieldy. It does what it wants to do, untamed, untrained. It’s almost as if it’s got a mind of its own.
When we want it to do one thing, it will do another. We want to be happy. For some reason, it’s not happy. We want it to be just pleasant, and it gets annoyed. We want to be relaxed, but it’s uptight.
It’s tense about something. We wanna go to sleep at night. It keeps thinking and thinking and thinking. We wanna relax it. Very hard for it to relax.
Even on a day to day level, we can see the mind is not tamed. It’s not trained. It’s unruly. But also from a more long term perspective. Even within the current mind, we’re still whether we’ve established even the beginning causes and conditions for our future liberation, enlightenment, and so forth.
If we examine whether we’ve established those causes, it’s not easy to see whether we have or not. So our long term purpose and our short term purpose are still not established within the mind. Definitely, we haven’t attained liberation yet. Otherwise, in attaining liberation, one overcomes all suffering, all mental suffering. All unsuitable mental states are the ones that we currently have.
So we can easily see that we haven’t attained liberation. But even at day to day states are not that suitable. So this is a sign that our mind is not tamed, is not trained. So we do need, to train the mind. So this particular text is mind training like the rays of the sun.
And last week, we talked a little bit about the beginning sections of the text. And in the beginning, it talks about initially, it says and we glossed over a little bit last week, so I’ll just go over this section again. You should understand the significance of this instruction is like a diamond, the sun, and a medicinal plant. So this instruction on the training of the mind or in Tibetan, in one sense it’s like a diamond, because even a little bit of this instruction, like a little bit of diamond, has value and can potentially establish the causes of our, temporary and long term goals. And also this instruction is like the sun because it removes the darkness of ignorance and so forth.
So for that reason, it’s also like the rays of the sun. And it’s also like a medicinal plant or a medicinal tree, because a medicinal tree, is generally one which if you take anything from the roots or the from the stem, the bark, the leaves, the twigs, or whatever, there’s medicinal value, some benefit for curing the four hundred and twenty four diseases that afflict humans. Four four hundred and twenty four, that’s a new that’s a number often given in the Tibetan treatises, but there’s probably many more than that. And that also means that, this type of text is like a medicine, and it has the potential of curing not only, physical disease, but also the eighty four thousand afflictions, which manifest for for us. So therefore it’s likened to a diamond, a the sun or the rays of the sun and a medicinal tree.
Then last week we also now before we go into that, there’s another section. This time of the five degenerations will then be transformed into the path of the fully awakened state. Firstly, right at the very introduction of the text, it’s saying that, we should understand this text to be valuable, and it’s especially valuable in this particular time, which is the time of the five degenerations, because we are able to transform even the mind, which is completely pervaded by the five degenerations, into the path itself. So the five degenerations that exist at present, I thought I’d just quickly list them. The degeneration of time, is the first one.
So time is degenerate at present, and that means that, there’s a lot of dispute in the world, little harmony and a lot of dispute. So the time itself is degenerate. Degeneration of lifespan, the second one, the current lifespan of beings on earth is maybe seventy five, eighty years. It said in previous times, the lifespan was much longer. The degeneration of view.
At present, there’s difficulty in transforming wrong view or overcoming wrong view. Wrong view is very strong, pervasive, and it’s difficult to overcome it. Then the degeneration of affliction itself, and that refers to it in the world today, people in general have a very strong sense of I. And the fifth one is the degeneration of beings. The beings of this particular time are difficult to attain.
So this is a period of the five new generations. But this particular teaching on mind training is especially beneficial at this time. So also last week, we talked a little bit about some of the preliminary practices because the text then goes on to say, First, the preliminary practices, love. First, the preliminary practices, which, of course, makes great sense. So there there is a series of six preliminary practices called the jorchö.
And these are practices that are recommended to do every day. For instance, the six are cleaning one’s room and arranging symbols of the body, speech, and mind of awakened beings, and then obtaining offerings and making offerings to, those symbols. In a way, why are we doing that? In fact, if we have symbols of body, speech, and mind in front of us see, the symbols of body, speech, and mind of a Buddha are symbol of the body is a statue. When we say statue, it’s a symbol of the body of a Buddha.
Then we have a text. That’s a symbol of the speech. And then a stupa like this one over here, which is a symbol of the mind, a fully awakened mind. So one puts those in front of one and makes offerings to them. So it’s necessary to understand why this is done.
It’s not we understand that these objects themselves are simply symbols of something else. They’re the external representation of the states that one internally wants to manifest. One oneself wants to become a fully awakened being and have the omniscient mind of a fully awakened being. But to make offerings to that, it’s easy to do it if it’s externalized. And by making simple offerings to offer prostrations and so forth to those objects, it is a condition.
It creates the conditions for attaining those in future. Is that possible? Does that make sense? It seems a little here, in fact, what we need are practical methods that are that are going to change the mind in the present. All that Dharma is are those means to change the mind in a practical positive direction.
So here it’s recommended that we can, practice on this external level, but that has an effect on the mind itself by practicing this way. For instance, first, cleaning the room, that also has an effect internally. By cleaning the room, it creates the conditions for cleaning the mind. It’d be nice just to clean the mind itself and forget about the external world because but for for us, we often need practical external measures to act as a basis for working on ourselves internally. So we clean the room first, and we we arrange symbols of those states we want to achieve internally, and they’re outside.
Those states we have a regard for, we want to become that. We want to attain the state of a fully awakened being. How we attain that goal is by respecting that goal. If we don’t respect it, then no way we would ever attain it. Gradually, as one’s practice becomes internalized, one doesn’t need any external objects.
But in the beginning, it’s very important, to have external objects. Otherwise, we forget. Very easy for us to forget that we we have a goal that we’re trying to attain. We remember it in the first few minutes, and then we forget about it for the next ten hours or the next week. And then, oh, wait a minute.
Maybe I should, I suppose I was trying to do that thing so many days ago. We like that. If unless we see external representations of things, we forget. We get caught up in all manner of things. And then with luck at some later stage, remember again.
So having an external representation is very useful for us. We see it every day. Oh, okay. Even when we see these things, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s gonna connect with us. We buy a a nice painting.
We put it on the wall. We only remember it a week later that it’s there. And what does it represent? But at least if it’s there, we have a chance of seeing it at some point. So these external representations are very important.
Important. And then making offerings, paying respect, making offerings, and so forth is an indication that we are serious in seeking those goals. In the past, practitioners have given up their lives in order to get one verse of teaching, made great sacrifices. In Tibet, practitioners have prostrated from one side of Tibet to the other. Just walk down the road, get a nice thick apron, maybe, and you get a couple of wooden gloves.
Just, you know, bits of wood, and you sew a bit of leather or cotton on the other side and clap them together. And then you have knee pads, good set of shoes, And you just start walking. Well, you don’t actually walk. You prostrate. You just clap up here, body, speech, mind.
And then you prostrate down on the gravel, full length prostration. Get up again and walk to the way you prostrated, and then prostrate again. So even today, people do this in Tibet. They’ll prostrate thousands of kilometers Because of their dedication to the goal, they really wish to achieve this goal. Then the third preparation, was adopting the sevenfold Vairochana position or this meditation position.
And this is basically that we’re we sit in a way our posture makes a difference when we’re seeking to meditate. It’s good that our back is straight, and our head is positioned properly. We can sit cross legged, it’s good. If not, we sit on a seat, but we’re comfortable. Feet are firmly on the on the floor, and then our hands are in a in a good position that’s conducive to bringing the mind to a point, concentrating the mind.
And that the back is straight. Head is slightly forward. Tanya’s resting up against the back back of the teeth. Eyes are slightly open, gazing down, and the nose sort of focused at the end of the nose. One’s breathing evenly.
Shoulders are level. We’re not sitting at an angle. Twist it around one way. One of the reasons we’re doing that also is because of the yoga itself, that we have a gross physical body. Also, have a subtler physical body.
We have three levels of physical body. We have the gross, the intermediate, the very subtle. The very subtle really doesn’t do much work until the point of death. The gross one at present is always doing things. The subtler one, the intermediate one, really consists of these channels and chakras and so forth, central channel and so forth.
By sitting, within those channels, winds flow and so forth. Therefore, sitting in a proper position, straight position helps the flow of these energy winds, these subtle energy winds within the body. So our posture is is important. Then the fourth preliminary here again is making requests to the merit field. Merit field is really awakened beings, Bodhisattvas.
Also, it can include all sentient beings, one’s father, one’s mother, even one’s friends. And where there’s sort of two merit fields there, there’s a transcendent merit field and the mundane merit field. The mundane merit field is really like our mother and father, is probably the most And so able to We’re completely due to them, isn’t it? We didn’t have a hand in making it, did we? So it’s due to the kindness of our parents that we have a physical body.
So they’re they’re a field of merit for us. In other words, if we treat them properly, we we gain positive potential from doing that because of their kindness to us, and also other beings in general. They’re a field by which we can generate positive potential. We need as much much positive potential as we can generate, and there are always opportunities. But the supreme field is that field of beings, those beings who are transcendent, who are transcendent beings, who have developed transcendent wisdom.
So also to those beings, one makes requests that one’s practice is is successful. You know, in other words, it’s making prayers. And this helps to helps in our development. And then the seven fifth one there is offering the seven-limb prayer. And the sixth one is then making further requests to our so that we maintain our mind and establish the practice of mind training.
And then having done the preliminary, the six preliminary practices, then we should engage, in the actual meditation session. And then when we do a meditation session so what this text is setting out in the beginning is just just a way by which we can practice meditation, say, a daily basis. So in the actual meditation session, we should reflect that from beginning this time, we have come under the power of the afflictive states. And these afflictive states are what have given rise to the actions that are at the very root of our existence, of our problematic existence. So in order to begin to turn away from the causes of of the afflictions, then we need to develop a very pliable and pliant state of mind.
So in in order to develop such a state of mind, we really have to overcome these two fundamental faults of the mind, which is sinking and agitation. Sinking and agitation are states that tend to be present for us. Sinking simply when in a way, it’s when the mind starts to dip down from an object. So it’s in a way it sinks from the object. As it when that starts to happen, there’s a danger of us going to sleep.
Here, talking about when we’re in meditation, we’re sitting in meditation, seeking to, settle the mind. There’s a danger first that the mind begins to sink, sink and we fall asleep. The other possibility is that through agitation, the mind, doesn’t settle on the object that we’re we’re holding the mind to and it becomes agitated. So these two, sinking and agitation are the two, obstacles that we need to overcome in our meditation. In fact, in one way, we’re always engaged in some sort of meditation.
In our day to day life, whether we’re sitting down, standing, walking, if we’re engaged in the four actions, lying, sitting, standing, or walking. In a way, we’re engaged in some sort of meditation because whatever the mind is becoming familiar with is is what the mind is meditating on. All meditation is is the mind becoming familiar with its object. If that’s what the term means. In Sanskrit, it’s, and in Tibetan, it’s.
So gom there in Tibetan has this implication of becoming familiar, just putting the mind on an object or thinking about an object. There we have placement meditation, where which is meditation that just puts the mind on the object and seeks to hold it there without it moving and doing nothing but that. And analytical meditation is putting the mind on the object, but thinking about it, analyzing it. So, basically, we’re engaged in these two either of these two activities. And during the course of the day, we think about many things, and we think around them and through them.
Really, in a broad sense, that’s a type of meditation. But often the topics of our meditation are not that, beneficial. How we overcome our enemies. We think about this a great deal. How do we overcome my present situation?
How do I these are types of meditation, but often they’re not very skillful and they don’t settle the mind. They don’t produce a good outcome. So then the second part there is then engaging meditation. The third part there is the conclusion. So at the conclusion of our meditation session, it could be any length of time.
It might take we put aside ten minutes. We do a very brief, preparation, say the six preparations, and a brief five minute meditation, then a two minute conclusion. The conclusion is really dedicating that merit and then making prayers that we develop. And here the author says we should actually engage in such such sessions three times during the day and three times during the night. So this is the way the yogis practiced in the past.
Probably not so easy for us, getting up at three in the morning, trying to meditate. So six sessions. So six, that’s every four hours one, engages in meditation. Actually, if one is practicing a lot of meditation, one needs less and less sleep because the mind finds rest in meditation. But yogis in the past have practiced yogis and yoginis.
Meditators in the past have practiced in this way. And if possible, it’s a it’s a recommended way of practicing. But for us, we probably need to modify that a a little bit. And as the text says, effort should be made to become become an unsleeping yogi, and you should know how use the period of sleep to develop calm abiding and special insight as taught by the, the great Asaṇga. So practitioners in the past actually practiced in this way.
They even gave up sleep. In Tibet, they would construct boxes in which to meditate in. And you had your own box and it had everything, you know, the text in front of you and, sides to it so you wouldn’t fall over. And you weren’t allowed to lie down at night. You just had to sit there.
But it was you could open it out so you could stretch your legs out. You don’t have to sit cross legged all the time. I don’t think you stayed there. Often one did what’s called a lo sum chok sum, a three year, three month retreat to start, just to start off. But you did that after you did the preliminary practices such as a hundred thousand prostrations, one hundred thousand, one hundred syllable Vajrasattva mantras, Guru yoga, and so on.
Having done many preliminary practices to generate merit, then one would start a long retreat. And if possible, not lie down at night, but try and practice during the night as well. So this we can aspire in our next life. Next life. Future life.
Some. Yes. Yeah. It’d be hard for us, wouldn’t it? I get to see us there.
Two in the morning. Oh, wow. You wanna lie down? I think because you get up in the morning. Well, of course, you get up and do a bit of exercise in the morning, and you get back to do some meditation.
It sounds difficult. In one sense, from the point of view of those yogis, those practitioners, male and female, it’s easy to do that than to live as we live. Actually, the reason for that is the the mind as it becomes more and more progressively trained becomes happier and happier. It’s far easier to put up with difficult physical conditions. The mind becomes lighter and happier.
The body becomes lighter and much more pliant and flexible. It appears difficult from the outside, but actually it’s easier. Our life appears easy from the outside, but actually it’s quite difficult from the inside. So even though it appears difficult, we shouldn’t be influenced or swayed by appearance on these topics. Some people spend many years in retreat, twenty years, thirty years, thirty five years.
Perhaps after a while, it becomes difficult to leave retreat. There are many stories in Tibet of people that practiced for many, many years. Even if they get walled up, they find a nice cave. They have a cave walled in so they can’t go out. A little window.
I just stay meditating. No TV, no radio, No books. Oh, except the text thingy. Not much good food. A bit of roasted barley flour.
A big sack of it maybe. You know? Bit of butter. Some don’t even take that. Some only live on pills through a tsolu, a tree.
They’re living on these pills made out of flower essences and minerals and so forth. And so, it’s a bit easier. No cooking? You just take a pill and a glass of water. One for breakfast, one for lunch, and a little bit like the, the astronauts, but not as much food, which is fine because after a while, don’t even have to, Going to the toilet, you know, excreting, this is out of the question.
So one’s life becomes very simple. I knew one meditator, And one’s mind becomes very light. I knew one practitioner. Losang Gyatso. He was a student at Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey in Dharmasala, and he spent nine months doing a pill retreat.
And, I was always amazed. Every now and again, he would he would turn up to ask questions of, this other lama. Of course, at that time he was eating, but I always used to admire him very much because he had done a nine month retreat on these pills and survived it. The reason why that’s done is that it’s it depends actually. You have to go to a Tibetan doctor first, and they do extensive examination, pulse diagnosis, to make sure you’re a suitable candidate to do a pill retreat.
On the other side, then you get a you can get issued with the sack of pills. Probably three for breakfast maybe. But it’s not easy for us because we’re so attached to food that the thought of living on pills is we’re attached to food. If we don’t get the food we we really crave for, you know, who knows what we’ll do. Absolutely.
Mice. Sorry? Oh, would. Definitely they’d eat the pills. Stories of the Dalai Lama used to when he was really young in the Potala, you know, the Potala, the winter palace.
At night and he’d big rats scratching around. And of course, they didn’t have any electricity. They just had butter lamps. And he’d see these big rats climbing across the walls up into the tables and drinking the butter out of the butter lamps. When he was young, about four years old, five years old, he’d quite scared.
They do exist there. But on the other hand, they don’t have many snakes. So here the author is recommending we do that every four hours. But, otherwise, we try and do it at least once. And then, also, we contemplate now our current status, our status, as having a precious human rebirth.
These topics we need to think about again and again because, we need to contemplate and pray them until they actually begin to make an effect on us, and this may take a long time. Now this initial topic is, contemplating our precious human rebirth. And so our precious human rebirth is one that that is marked by having a certain amount of leisure. We have the leisure to to do many things, And, therefore, we possess the eight states of leisure and the ten endowments or the ten beneficial circumstances. The eight leisures and the ten endowments we have.
So there was a text by Nāgārjuna for the Friendly Letter, and in that, he states what the eight states of non leisure are. And the eight states of non leisure are being born as one holding wrong views. Being born as one holding wrong views really means being born without any faith in the law of cause and effect, and specifically the internal law of cause and effect, the fact that the law of cause and effect pervades the mind itself. So in a sense, that’s referring to the law of rebirth or the law of action whereby our past actions give rise to current experience. If we don’t hold in a sense, we don’t accept karma, then from a Buddhist point of view, we’re holding a wrong view.
And that wrong view is the worst possible view that one can have. Because if we have although it’s interesting, many people don’t accept rebirth, but they hold a view similar to the one which accepts that we will inherit the results of our actions. At least in this life, whatever we do, we’ll tend to be judged by that in our next life or at the end of this life. So that’s good. But here, the wrong view is also extends to past lives, that what we experience in this life is coming from past lives.
Extends to past lives, that what we experience in this life is coming from past lives. If we don’t accept that, then really it’s a wrong view. So being born as one holding wrong view is the first state of non leisure. The second one is being born an animal. The third, a hungry ghost.
The fourth, a hell being. Or then the fifth is in a place where existing in a place where the Buddha’s word does not prevail. Then the sixth is as a barbarian in a remote in a remote region. Then the seventh is being stupid. And the eighth one is being dumb.
So this stupid means that one has specific obstacles to understanding what really should be understood. And then sorry. The eighth one there is stupid and dumb, included as one. Then or as a long lived god. Also, being reborn as a long lived god is the last of the eight is the eighth one.
These are states without leisure. Having found the opportunity of freedom from them, exert yourself to turn away birth. So because we don’t possess those eight states, then we should exert ourselves to stop rebirth. So that was stated by Nāgārjuna. Has anyone heard of Nāgārjuna?
Nāgārjuna was this being, the Tibetans hold that he lived for about seven hundred years. He’s born. Ah, yeah. That one on the left hand side. On the right hand side of.
Nāgārjuna. Nāgārjuna meaning snake. Arjuna. Naga Arjuna is his name. He was a great practitioner, monk, philosopher who wrote many treatises and is regarded as as the one of the foremost perhaps after the Buddha, the foremost Buddhist thinker in India.
Truly a remarkable being. And this is from, one of his texts. So these eight states without leisure fall into two categories, four pertaining to human and four to nonhuman life. So there are those eight states. And the reason why we contemplate them is in a way so that we understand the opportunity we have at present because there’s a tendency for us to forget just what opportunity, just how valuable our current time is that we have.
It’s very easy for us to become to forget that we are endowed with so much. And even at times to indulge ourselves in negative thoughts about what potential we have, which is really a fault of the mind. We should never become unhappy. Just thinking about what potential we have, the opportunities we have, the leisure that we have, thinking about that strongly should be enough to dispel our unhappiness in the present moment. Also, we can think about how many other beings don’t have these opportunity.
There are many for instance, the animals being born as an animal, they don’t have our opportunity to practice. Although some animals do practice, in general, it’s very difficult for an animal to even understand the purpose of a spiritual practice. But here at present, we have that opportunity, and we need to really rejoice in the opportunity we have. Then we have the ten beneficial circumstances or opportunities or endowments, and these are divided into two, five personal endowments, and they are being born as a human being, being born in a central place with all the sense organs, not holding wrong views, and having faith in the Buddhist doctrine. So here in the faith in teachings which lead to greater happiness.
And the five external endowments is that a Buddha having appeared and having taught in this particular era. And those teachings and the followers of those teachings still exist. And there are also others who help us in our practice and so on. So in fact, have external positive conditions. We have internal conducive conditions, five of each, and they also are something we need to rejoice in.
It’s so important that we rejoice because all of these conditions have come about through our own effort in the past. There’s nothing other than our own effort that can produce this. So we should rejoice in that, especially when we’re not feeling very happy. To think about the eight leisures and the ten endowments that we possess them, that we’ve put in the the work in previous lifetimes to generate them, to be reborn as a human. And our senses are complete.
We, you know, we’re not limited in our capacity to study. We’re in a place that’s not ravaged, you know, by famine and so forth. We have a certain amount of leisure at present. We take an interest in these subjects. That’s really something to rejoice in.
We want to develop as individuals. We want to find out about these issues. All of these are coming from our past effort. So we really need to rejoice in that. The more we rejoice in that, the happier we become.
It’s not just out of the blue that we suddenly take rebirth and we suddenly are here. Everything that exists has a cause. Our physical body