Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 100-minute teaching, Ven Jampa Ignyen focuses on the Three Principal Aspects—a distilled text on enlightenment’s essential path—with particular attention to renunciation, the first aspect. Rather than monasticism, he reframes renunciation as internal: a loosening of attachment, which he identifies as the source of mental suffering. He walks through how attachment pervades daily life invisibly (we catch perhaps five percent), then anchors practice in concrete contemplations: how rare human birth with leisure for practice truly is, the imminence of death and impermanence, and the eight worldly dharmas—the paired mental traps (gain/loss, pleasure/pain, fame/disgrace, praise/blame) that drive reactivity. Drawing on early Tibetan practitioners, he includes the ten inner jewels. Pitched for both newcomers and serious practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 2011 07 21 3PA.mp3
UUID: 11f7ea9b-9d0c-49f9-af17-4cd2c583347c
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Three Principle Aspects (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2011-07-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 100.5 minutes
Words: ~10,655
And here what we’re doing is, they were on the table with it. Or do you want to hand them out? Thanks. So we’ll just start with a little meditation. And initially, very good to put our mind into a positive space, virtuous positive space.
It takes a little bit of effort but everything that’s worthwhile depends on effort. So we need to generate a positive frame of mind. And one of the easiest ways of doing that is just thinking about benefiting other beings. So, benefiting others without limit, creating the conditions for others’ happiness as much as we can, So then with that as our frame of mind, then we can simply focus on the breath. We’ll just do some breath meditation for a few minutes.
So as before this is just watching the breath as we breathe in and out. We can watch it anywhere at the tip of our nose, at the top of our lungs, the bottom of our lungs, our chest, our belly, wherever the breath is easily followed. And then what we’re doing is we’re just relaxing physically and mentally and letting go of thoughts that arise. So we’ll do this for a few minutes. I would just relax for a few moments.
Did everyone get a copy of the text? Right, so what we’re doing is we’re just going through this text and this text is about the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment, so the three essential ingredients that we need. And it was a text written in the fifteenth century by one Tibetan on the request of a local, I don’t know, local governor of the Tsako region. The minister of Tsako, Ngawang Drakpa who wanted — he’s busy, he’s a businessman, he runs a large area and so he wants something, you know, just something he can practice in a nutshell, not too complicated, not too wordy. He just wants the essence in a few words, something easily practiced.
Tsongkhapa then composed these verses, all fourteen verses. So they do condense down the teachings of the Buddha in just a few words really. So this is useful for us because we’re busy and if we want to incorporate something of the path to enlightenment in our own life then we need to follow something like this because we just don’t have time to go out and read generally huge lengthy discourses on what enlightenment is and how to get there. So this is quite useful for us. Now we’ve covered I think the first three verses, so we’ll just read those.
The heart meaning of all the discourses of the conquerors, the conquerors there meaning the Buddhas. The Buddhas are called conquerors because they conquer the afflictive emotions, they defeat the afflictive emotions so that they never re arise. So anyone that conquers their negative emotions is really a Buddha, is someone, a victor, the winner. Buddha, what does Buddha mean? Buddha means someone who’s awakened, awakened from the tyranny of the afflictions.
What are the afflictions? Afflictions are the afflictive emotions that we so well know. So the heart meaning of all the discourses of the conquerors, so the essential meaning, the heart pith meaning of all the instructions given by those that have achieved enlightenment and the path praised by the pure sons and daughters of the conquerors. What’s the son or daughter of a conqueror really refers to the bodhisattvas. And what’s a bodhisattva?
A bodhisattva is someone that takes on as their aim in life to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings. And such a person then becomes the son or the daughter of a conqueror or a Buddha. That ford of fortunate beings who desire freedom, that ford of fortunate beings who desire freedom is the path to enlightenment is here. It’s called like a ford, meaning a bridge or something that gets from this side that we’re on to the other side, the side of liberation. So the ford of fortunate beings who desire freedom, I would explain in whatever way I can.
So Tsongkhapa is saying, Well, don’t know that much but okay, I will put down whatever I can in this regard. Those whose minds are not attached to the pleasure of existence. Now we fall into the category of those who are attached to the pleasures of existence. We have a lot of attachment. But those whose minds are not attached to the pleasure of existence, who strive to make this life with leisure and endowment meaningful are fortunate students with confidence in Dharma or Dharma here means just the facts as they are.
Who listen with a clear mind to the path pleasing to the Buddhas or the conquerors. Okay, even though we’re not free of attachment to life and other beings and nice things and possessions of this life cars and clothing and music and good food and all of these things. Even though we’re not beyond being attached to the pleasures that we can find everywhere, still we understand that there is some problem with that attachment. So that’s a start for us. And we have this life that has leisure and endowment and we want to make this meaningful.
Well that’s reasonable, we want to make our life meaningful. We want to actually be successful not only in a material sense but in an inner sense, a spiritual sense or a long term sense beyond this short life. So we want success. We want to have meaning. We want to extract the meaning from this life.
Because we do have leisure and endowment. Now these are said to be ten leisures or freedoms or eight freedoms and ten endowments that we possess at present. So that’s really what they refer to is that we just have a certain amount of free time, basically. And we’re unencumbered by other things. So we do have open a certain amount of free time and space for us to practice.
And having that leisure and freedom then it’s in our interest, in our own self interest, to really think about what is meaningful. If we don’t do it now it’s going to be difficult to find the time to do it later. We’re urged, Tsongkhapa here is urging us. We should strive to make this life with a certain amount of freedom that we have at present meaningful. And those that do strive to make it meaningful, not only in a temporary way, like materially, but in a more extensive way that deals with the most fundamental issues of life are fortunate with confidence in the Dharma.
He says confidence in the Dharma. Dharma means really it has many different meanings but the meaning we’re interested here is the meaning of the path to enlightenment is the Dharma we’re interested in. Dharma just refers to the nature of things. Has many different meanings. It can mean just things as they are, reality, the reality of our situation, the reality of the world, the deeper levels of reality.
Also it means virtue. For fortunate students with confidence in virtue is how we can read this. And also ultimate virtue. We have confidence in the ultimate levels of virtue and the ultimate levels of virtue are here more like emptiness, Shamatha and so on. Our fortunate students with confidence in Dharma who listen with a clear mind to the path pleasing to the conquerors.
So with pure renunciation there is no way; without pure renunciation there is no means to pacify the mind that searches for resultant pleasure within the ocean of existence. Right, now the first of the three principal aspects is renunciation and that comes up in the third verse. And renunciation — even the word renunciation can have a little bit of a sour, a little bit of a bitter or sour taste to it. It’s like it’s, Oh, you know, it’s going to keep me from what I really want to do or I’m going to lose something in renunciation. Going to renunciation doesn’t have good press, it doesn’t have, you know, a good reputation.
And why? It’s because our attachment is so strong that even the thought of renunciation doesn’t sit easily with our attachment. In a way the renunciation is the medicine for our attachment. It’s like the bitter pill that will oppose our attachment. But we’re attached to our attachments.
We’re attached to so many objects in our lives. But the first principle of attaining enlightenment is to deal with our attachments. It’s not that they look after themselves. Just having attachment means that we’re susceptible to emotional what? Problems.
Much of the disturbance that we experience in our lives is due to attachment. But it’s often difficult for us to work out that attachment is such a problem. And often we don’t think we’re very attached anyway, you know, we’re prettywe have quite refinedyou know, we are attached to a few things but they’re not really problematic. I can stop doing this and I can give up that if I have to. Food can be a problem from time to time.
I probably eat too much but okay, can sort of keep that attachment down. Sex can be a bit of a problem but I can sort of keep that in some sort of a, you know, within certain boundaries. And my attachment, well attachment to physical objects around me, you know, houses, nice things and so forth. Okay. But actually we don’t really see the full extent of our attachment and much of the emotional turbulence that we experience is really from attachment.
It’s quite the opposite. We get the impression that it’s our attachment that brings variety and experience to our life. But this is something we need to investigate. Without pure renunciation there is no means to pacify the mind. So Tsongkhapa has been quite clear without pure renunciation there is no means to pacify the mind.
The reason why the mind is not peaceful in the present is that it lacks detachment. That it hasn’t developed an understanding of the faults of attachment. So there’s no means to pacify without renunciation the mind that searches for the resultant pleasures within this ocean of existence. So it’s as if we live in an ocean of existence and with everyone else. And people are legitimately pursuing their attachments everywhere.
We have to be careful we don’t stand in the road of someone who’s pursuing their attachments so they get annoyed with us. Actually for us the two fundamental emotional problems that we have is repulsion and attraction where the external world is either attracting us or repelling us. But probably the initial instance is the attraction and then from the attraction then repulsion arises. In a sense everything comes from attraction and attachment. Right.
This may sound like a difficult or rather a harsh judgment on attachment. True? Are we being too hard on attachment? Do we recognize attachment when it arises? Sometimes, yeah.
Much do we percentage wise, how much of the attachment that arises do we actually become aware of? Five percent? Of course, yeah, comfortable. Oh, we’re attached to so many things, aren’t we? The way this body works.
Yep, we’re attached to a physical body. It’s like we’re so attached to our physical body and we spend so much time and effort trying to maintain it. We’re so shocked by its deterioration. Because the body is a problem for us because we’re attached to it, isn’t it? True.
Certain things we do need to eat and we do need shelter, we need a house, we need a car, we need various things. And to actually find a balance there is extremely necessary for us. Because otherwise just the normal things that we do need then become a burden. Really the things become a burden through attachment. The burden, you know, the burden of life which is like us carrying around this huge weight on our shoulders day after day is through attachment.
We just have so much, attachments are unlimited. We don’t know how to check our attachment. We don’t know how to counter it. And the attachment arises because of positive feeling. You know when we look at things and a positive feeling arises we tend to think the positive feeling is coming from the object itself.
And then we want to keep the positive feeling so we want to own the object. Oh, that’s right. If you think that anger is giving you an advantage in a situation or a and so on. It may seem attractive, you know, like, you know, a scowling face and, you know, people will stand back from me or, it has a certain threat that might be attractive to us, then we become, can become attached to that. Which is not necessarily a good thing.
We can become attached to just about anything. But this process of attachment is very, very pervasive in our lives. And we because we don’t see the fault in it we don’t oppose it, we don’t counter it. But the attachment itself is not a neutral thing, it actually is something that undermines our well-being. Positive feeling is a good thing.
Yes, we need positive feeling, we need to be happy. The question is whether the positive feeling is coming from external objects, right? Now we tend to think it does come from external objects, right? We walk past the shop and we look inside, there’s a new jacket or something there. And we look at it and think, Oh, that’s nice.
And we think, Yeah, maybe I’ll buy that, you know. We look at it, we have athe positive feeling seems to be coming from theis caused by the object itself. So we go and buy it. But that jacket is not the cause of positive feeling. Otherwise that jacket would always be.
If something is the cause of something, it always is the cause of that. For instance, you know, fire is the cause of smoke and so on. You know, we can find, you know, milk comes from cows and so forth. When we can understand a causal relationship, when we establish a causal relationship, then we know that we have to generate that cause to produce this result. That object, whatever it is, if it is the cause of the happy feeling then no matter how long we have that it should produce a happy feeling for us.
But it doesn’t, right? After a time it’s out of fashion, you know, fashion moved on five years ago or whatever. We might not like it any longer or it gets a rip in it or it starts to sag or it And then at that point we look at it and we have a negative feeling arise. And we start to develop dislike for it. Sorry?
Not necessarily. It’s just we can recognize that our positive feeling arose at this point. That’s fine, just leave it at that. Here the issue is where did the positive feeling come from? Is it coming from an external object?
From a Buddhist point of view the feelings are not coming from external objects. But this is a subtle investigation. Possibly, at least for a period of time, but you know, you fight at them. Yes, yeah, being attached to opinions, to views. True, that can be another form of attachment.
And so all of this needs to be investigated like we might be attached to communism and fight tooth and nail anyone that doesn’t like communism or the views of Marx or Lenin and so on. Religion, we could be attached to a particular religion like Buddhism, we could be attached. For that reason it’s said that Buddhism is like a ship that enables us to get from this shore to the further shore of Samsāra. But when we get to the further shore, the ship is left at the bank. It’s no longer needed.
And that’s true, even something positive we shouldn’t be attached to. It has maybe has a purpose at a particular time and then So anyway, here we’re looking at renunciation. Inevitably when we look at renunciation we look at our attachments. And when we look at our attachments we’re looking at the current state of our mind and what attachment is. And it’s not easy for us to recognize attachment but one thing that we should investigate is our positive feeling.
When positive feelings arise our attachments are rising in the wake of those positive feelings. Attachment is very subtle, very pervasive and it’s said to be something that we have to give up in order to attain enlightenment. But in order to give it up we have to recognize it as attachment. And we have to and not only then recognizing what attachment is then we have to find a fault in it. Finding the fault in attachment we have a lot of resistance to that.
Because at present for most of us we think that all our happiness is pretty much coming from attachment. And if we’re not attached there’s nothing left. It’s a pretty bare cupboard that’s left over. But this is a mistake on our side of not understanding attachment and not properly understanding the faults of attachment because we can live much better without attachment. This is what he’s saying here: Without pure renunciation there is no means to pacify the mind.
We can’t pacify this current mind that we have which is un pacified. It’s what can one say? It has issues. It’s not just naturally happy, purely happy. It hasn’t naturally entered a state of pristine, pure happiness that would never divert from that state.
So in other words, our current mind has not found peace, so to speak. And peace, say the peace of liberation which is often described as something cool because it’s what? It’s removed from the heat of the attachment. Attachment is a bit like fire. Let’s say in the Fire Sermon by the Buddha, the Buddha talked about the whole world is consumed by the flames of attachment.
The physical forms are consumed by the flames of attachment, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the physical contact. It’s completely consumed by the fires of attachment. Maybe that’s going too far. Is that being unfair on attachment? We should give attachment a fair go here, you know it’s not.
If attachment has something positive to say, a good word to put on its behalf then we should listen. We should be fair. Now Tsongkhapa here is saying the pure renunciation. Without pure renunciation there is no means, there’s no possible way whatsoever to pacify the mind which is looking, which is seeking for some sort of pleasure and happiness within this current level of existence that we’re in. For that reason, for the reason that embodied beings are completely bound by longing for existence, I must first seek renunciation.
So that’s the first three verses. Right. Are there any issues with the first three verses? So what the author is trying to do here is just describe the mind. All of this is just describing the mind, you know, the mind that we’ve had all along.
And everyone’s mind is somewhat similar. You know, we all have afflictive emotions and we’re all trying to deal with afflictive emotions. Enlightenment doesn’t exist outside the mind so potentially enlightenment is just established in the mind in the present moment. Okay. So we’ll read on to the fourth verse.
Okay. So the fourth verse is the method for generating renunciation. So this verse is divided actually into two parts. So now here we’re talking about how we generate renunciation of what. Okay, there’s two things that we’re trying to generate renunciation.
Two ways we’re trying to generate renunciation. And the first two lines are the method of stopping the appeal of this life. And the second two lines are the method for stopping the appeal of future lives. So here we’re assuming reincarnation, we’re assuming that we go on life after life, that there are this life is just one of a whole series of lives that we have. So the first two parts of the fourth verse are: Leisure and endowment are difficult to find and life is brief.
By contemplating this we stop the appeal of this life. Okay, leisure and endowment are difficult to find. We’ve talked a little bit about that. Okay, look, leisure and endowment here, freedom’s there, it means that leisure and endowment refers to the fact that we’re born human, that we’re not born in a, say, an animal realm, we’re not born in a ghost realm or a hell realm or a realm of long life gods, that we have all our sense faculties, we are actually we live a very privileged existence. Not only that, we live in an era where are teachings on the path to enlightenment such as for instance the Buddha’s teachings.
There are and there are those that are practicing those teachings, they still extend. The teachings still exist. There are friends that there are spiritual friends out in the world that will help us in our quest to attain enlightenment and so forth. To find a situation like this is very difficult. You know, we live in a country where there’s no war.
We’re not engulfed in famine or any of the other conditions that could arise. But these conditions are rare. I mean even in the world we can look at various countries wherethat have been overtaken by war or famine or various other conditions earthquakes and so on. Now we just have a brief window of opportunity where we can sit and actually direct our attention to this issue of enlightenment. So this is very rare.
To find this sort of opportunity is very, very rare. And life itself is very brief. And even if we have this opportunity over an extended period, say, you know, say for forty or fifty years we live in a place where there’s no war, there’s no famine, where food is plentiful, we can get a good job, we can, you know, find a place to live, you know, we have the necessities of life and on top of that we have enough leisure that we can actually engage in contemplating these fundamental issues is incredibly rare. But this we have and who knows when it will come again. You know, looking at it from the point of view of reincarnation this occurs quite rarely that we have all these conditions come together.
There’s a, in one Sūtra it says it’s like a blind tortoise every hundred years who rises to the top of the ocean and there’s a golden yoke floating on the ocean. The chance for that blind turtle to rise from the bottom of the ocean and stick its head, its neck through the golden yoke is similar to the chance we have in all our rebirths to actually come across these types of condition, these conducive conditions for contemplating these issues. It is very rare. So if we think about the rarity of our current opportunity then this helps a little bit, it focuses us a little bit. Normally we don’t think about this.
We think: Oh well, you know, things will continue. Absolutely we don’t know. And we’re in such a privileged position at present. And from the point of view of rebirth actually this privileged position that we’re in has come about through a vast amount of hard work for each of us in the past. Actually to be reborn human, to be, you know, healthy, to have all our faculties, to have education, you know, to be living in a comfortable place like Adelaide and so on, on and on and on.
If we list all the good elements in our life there are many, many. All of them have come from a lot of hard work, the causes that we put in place in our past lives generating this positive karma to be reborn in our current state. So we need to reflect on this. It just hasn’t arisen without a cause. So having put all that work together and now we have an interest in enlightenment and that is exceptional because it just doesn’t naturally arise for everyone.
Not everyone is interested in enlightenment. We can go out in street and talk about it and who knows, ninety five percent of the people will just walk by and think, My words, there’s someone’s What are they talking about? What’s enlightenment got to do with anything? You know, get a life, whatever. Not everyone has an interest in these issues.
Not having an interest is not a good thing. It’s like, you know, the fundamental issues of this life which are recognized by everyone and the main one is we’re going to have to die and we need towe have a certain period of time in which to work out what death iseveryone actually understands that we’ll die. But then to sit back and think, I can’t do anything about it, can’t actually develop wisdom about that. I can’t approach it intelligently. I can’t actually maybe eventually even overcome death and so on.
The fact that we are in a position where we’re even contemplating these issues is a sign of a vast amount of merit in our past lives, the fact that these issues are relevant to us now. And if they’re not relevant to us now then who knows when they’re going be relevant to us again in future. Because either there’s just two scenarios: either at the end of this life, you know, when our heart stops and when the brain eventually comes to a halt. Either we enter oblivion at that point and there is nothing more. The other alternative is that the mind does continue.
Right. Now the first scenario, well if it is like that then there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s that will be our history, that will be our fate. The other alternative is the mind continues. So what we’re looking at at present is what can we do in the present to benefit that continuum?
What, you know, what is it possibly? What’s it possible for us in the present moment that’s going to be a benefit through that transitional process into our next life? And what’s going to be a benefit when we get to the next life? What do we want? The fact that we have an interest in this life is due to causes and conditions that we’ve put in place.
So if we don’t do something in this life then we’re not going to have perhaps even this opportunity in our next life or the lives after that. So anyway, we need to think on this. Leisure and endowment are difficult to find and life is brief. By contemplating this we stop the appeal of this life. Stopping the appeal of this life doesn’t mean that we’re not engaged in this life and we’re not happy in this life and so on.
Not that we don’t have relationships with other beings, we don’t eat healthy food, we don’t go out to movies, we don’t do all of these things, everything that we like doing. All it means is what we’re doing is we’re paring down the attachment we have so that our focus on just being unskillfully engaged in objects of attachment in this life is all that we’re worried about. We’re not going to overcome our attachment straight away, absolutely not. What we’re trying to do is gradually minimize our attachment so that we havethe mind by itself will become calmer through having less attachment. But also we’re trying to bring into our lives the whole issue of enlightenment which will extend far beyond this one life.
So as it’s said in the by Pabongka in his commentary, The appeal of this life is the desire for bliss and happiness, victory, fame and so forth where you think, may I have excellent food, clothing that is superior to others? And so on and so forth. So those who wish to attain the path of enlightenment must stop the appeal of this life. To stop it we must contemplate both the great purpose of having some leisure in this life and also to contemplate how difficult it is to find this opportunity. And then also we must contemplate our death and impermanence.
So we think about death and impermanence and the opportunity we have. We have an opportunity and death and impermanence are imminent realities for us. We’re already impermanent, we’re changing moment to moment and this subtle impermanence will manifest as death at any point. So we have to act in the present as strongly as we can. You know this is not to create, you know, like unskillful fear in us of, you know, to be, I don’t know, not to create further problems for us.
But what we need to do is order our priorities because our future lives are far more than our present life. It’s true isn’t it? We’ve got we’ve got countless lives ahead of us and if we’re not thinking about those lives in the present there’s not much use thinking about them when we’re there already. The life that we will be reborn into is now determined. It’s being determined moment by moment in this life.
Really that what we the life we have in future is will tend to be reflected by the strong habits that we have in the present. So we have to be careful with our habitual thinking. And if we’re consumed by the attachment to this life that will not bring a positive rebirth. Or even if it’s a positive human rebirth it will having strong attachment in this life will create many issues for us in our future lives. And the issues that we have in this life are coming from attachment.
So as much as possible we should try and minimize our attachment. Does that sound feasible? Sorry? Extremely hard. As they say, enlightenment is the most difficult thing for us to achieve.
And that’s one reason why we’ll appreciate it when we attain enlightenment. We’ll be able to sit back and say, That was difficult. You know, That was really incredibly hard. And we’ll appreciate just how much work went into it, even if it’s three countless eons of practice. Now there’s another text called the mind training free from the four longings.
We should practice this as well. And it says that if we long for this life we’re not a practitioner. If we long for this life and we just have this ongoing longing for this life. And we have that. We have this longing for this life.
We’re so attached to it. Our life, this life, my life. If we long for it, we’re not a spiritual practitioner. We’re not a dharma practitioner. We only become a spiritual practitioner when we give up this life, when we think about our next life.
If we long for the three realms of existence, existence in general, we don’t have renunciation. If we long for existence, in other words. Here it’s said the kham gsum, kham gsum la shen pa las ‘byung min. If we long for the three levels of existence, that is the desire realm, the form realm and the formless realm. If we desire to take rebirth in any of those we don’t have renunciation.
If I long for my own purpose I don’t have bodhicitta. This is actually the second of the three principles. If I long for my own purpose, then I’m not going to attain highest enlightenment. And If I am what? Completely attached to view, philosophic view and so forth then I will not achieve the correct view.
Tibetan it’s got a really nice ring to it. Anyway, so these are the four longings. Now at present we have all four quite a healthy measure of all four. We’ve perfected all four and in fact from beginning this time we have perfected all of the things that we shouldn’t have perfected. So that actually we’re not even a Dharma practitioner, we’re not even a practitioner of the path at present.
Mainly because we’ve perfected our attachment. And through perfecting our attachment we’ve perfected hatred and anger and so forth. All the afflictive emotions we are expert. We are not only are we expert at generating, we’re expert at concealing them, we’re expert at, you know, how to fully indulge ourselves in all the afflictive emotions. And actually weaning ourselves from that, you know, like we’re like again we’re like drug addicts who are so completely immersed in the experience of the hit, the rush, the, you know, whateverthat we can’t even see the problem.
Like a drug addict on the street that can’t even see there’s a problem. And the reason we can’t see is that it’s too close to us. We’re too much in the middle of it. Of our attachments and so on. So what we need to do is sober up a metaphorical bucket of cold water over our heads.
We need to stand back and just be an observer to what’s happening in our own mind day by day. Just check up regularly what is my mind doing. As I said, look to our current physical body to see the state of our past mind. Look at our current mind to see our future state. What we want to become is what we’re thinking about, what we’re activating in our mind in the present.
So we have to check regularly on where is my mind going? Is it going to something positive or is it going to something negative? So we have to check. Okay. So we have these, the three longings.
Right. So we need to practice. So how do we practice? We need to first practice or think about renunciation and so here we’re also thinking about the benefits of the life we have, all the advantages and so on and the brevity and impermanence of it at the same time. As the Buddha said, the two fundamental types of meditation are death meditation and breath meditation.
And really it’s meditating on our death that helps us to sober up. Because at present it’s as if we’re, you know, like at the line of cows at the slaughter yard and we’re not really shocked at our condition and our susceptibility and the fact that we are going to die. We should be shocked. We should be utterly appalled at this situation. It is.
And we don’t think about it very skillfully. We avoid thinking about it quite often until the point where we become so decrepit that we look forward to it just to get rid of our stench. So that is like the height of an unskillful approach to death because really while we have the leisure when we’re younger, when we’re you know, the mind is fresher and more agile, it’s educated, we should be applying it to understanding death and developing as much wisdom about death as we can so that we at least are not harmed by the process of death. Which aspects? That’s true in the West.
If someone dies, the ambulance arrives and they’re put in a plastic bag and we don’t see the corpse. And then at the wake or at the funeral it’s in fact I used to have a friend who was a monk who worked in a funeral parlor in San Francisco and he had all these stories about what they do to dress the body up and all the techniques with wire, you know, if the person had to sit up, you know, hey It was actually gone. Oh, jeez. But yeah, actually it’s so beneficial for us to see death because that’s our future. This body that we have at present at some point is going be a corpse.
And then all the attachment that we’ve cultivated in this life becomes meaningless. If we’re able to see death then it does sober us a little bit. We, you know, that’s one good thing about India. You go to India, you go to places like Varanasi and they have maybe thirteen, fifteen, seventeen burning ghats and you can go along and just watch as the bodies are put on top of the wooden pyre and the body is burnt. Often they’re in a shroud to begin with but the shroud burns off you can see the body burning.
And that’s so beneficial. In fact you sit there and you have all the busloads of Western tourists come in. You sit there and from Europe or wherever and they come and there. It’s fascinating, you know, you just you can sit there and watch the funeral. But we don’t see it in our culture.
It’s regarded as something, I don’t know, too disturbing for us to see. The fact that we’ve got to die is apparently not disturbing, but seeing death isit’s very unskillful. That’s why you know, for Buddhist monks and nuns and also Hindu monks and nuns and so forth, it’s recommended that they go to the cremation ground and just look at dead corpses, at bodies that are decomposing. And so there are like in sutras it’s described the ten stages of decomposition of a corpse. You know, when it’s first it looks quite fresh and then it starts to bloat and then it starts to crack and turns a little bit blue and then the flesh starts to peel away from the bones and so on.
Actually we need to see this because this is the physical body, this is what it becomes. And we’re so attached to the physical body to, you know, dress it, to make it smell nice, to clean it, to trim it all the time because there’s all sorts of hairs growing and all sorts of things going on all the time that we’ve got to try and deal with. And the wrinkles that come we’ve to try and iron them out and get a Botox injection or hair is turning grey, know, what can we do? Or the hair is all falling out, so it doesn’t matter, maybe it will all fall out before it all turns grey. And so on.
I mean we’re in a damage control from our early twenties probably, dealing. And it’s a full time job. God, every morning, you know, we’ve got tothere’s oneI remember one Tibetan lama in India once saying that it’s only because the aging process is gradual that we can tolerate it. We’d probably die of fright if it all happened overnight. If we, you know, woke up one morning and got to the mirror and we’d aged ten or twenty years we’d probably have a heart attack.
We right? It’ll be hard to bear. It’s hard to bear at present even though it’s gradual. You know, keep looking, Oh, okay. I’m still not too bad, not as bad as such and such and he’s the same age.
We probably have a list of, you know, the age of other people and we’re always asking, How old are you by the way? God, he’s older than me, looks ten years younger. How did he manage that? And you know, we spend so much time on this. How do they do it?
You know, is there an operation? Is there an injection? Is there a certain food? You know, there must be a combination of minerals and vitamins on the one hand, eating fruits on the other hand, or maybe there’s some sort of, know, some other massage technique or standing on my head for two hours in the morning every day or who knows what it will be. But this is an issue that we face day to day.
Why is it there? Out of attachment. We’re just so attached to our body. And so lessening that attachment should be our prime objective because it’s making us so unhappy. It’s a burden.
It’s a weight. It doesn’t make us happy. Actually we should understand that it doesn’t make us happy from the beginning, but we don’t. And in a way we think that we can patch the body up and makewhen we’re younger it’s not so much of an issue and we look at old people and we think, Oh my word, God if I ever got to that state I think I’d kill myself for Oh my word, you know, and so on. We tend to think this.
But all of this comes from attachment to our body and we need as much as possible to minimize our attachment so that the aging process that we’re experiencing is not causing us is not a burden for us or more of a burden than it should be. And we need skillful and, you know, absolutely effective methods Because otherwise what can one say? Just being affected by that attachment is no use to us. So really the most important thing for us is in this scenario where we’re impermanent and life is progressively growing shorter, we should focus on the one thing that will produce happiness for us and that’s the practice of virtue. So we should at least spend as much time as we spend looking after the physical body, we should spend practicing virtue.
I mean that would be good if we can make a rule, you know, like time is however much time we spend in the bathroom. And then we go outside and we say, Okay, that much time I’m going to practice virtue. Absolutely, you know, I’mokay, was ten minutes, so now ten minutes of virtue. Now how do we practice ten minutes of virtue? How do we practice ten minutes of virtue?
How do we make the mind virtuous for ten minutes? Through a lot of hard work because the mind doesn’t naturally tend to just being virtuous. It’s like pushing that rock up the mountain. It’s a lot of hard work. But it’s the practice of virtue that’s going bring happiness, not the ten minutes grooming ourselves.
But also I should say that actually it’s a good thing that we do groom ourselves for the sake of other people. Otherwise, you know, we don’t want to inflict too much upon other people. Okay, so we’re dealing with the fourth verse and we’re looking at making the use of this life. Now, trying to minimize our attachment to this life is good. Now, in our life also we tend to be involved with the eight worldly dharmas.
So these are also things that are coming up day to day for us that affect us. It’s good to be aware of them in order to try and minimize their effect on us. In fact, what we’re in is damage control in terms of our mind. We’re trying to minimize the conditions that give rise to unhappiness and bolster and support the conditions that give rise to happiness and comfort and ease, the mind being in an easy, steady, comfortable, workable, pliable state, having a lot of pliability, a lot of flexibility, not being on edge, not beingyou know, people say one word to us and we’re, we get angry straight away. We need to have a mind that’s pliable and patient like the earth, absolutely patient, so that we’re not other people, what they say is not disturbing us, making us impatient.
And so forth. So we should know the eight worldly dharmas because in knowing these, these help us to minimize the conditions for the mind to be uncomfortable. So know the worldly states of gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and disgrace, praise and blame, for they constitute the eight worldly dharmas. But do not take them to heart but act indifferently towards them. And as one Tibetan yogi said, In the city of samsaric preconceptions roam the zombies of the eight worldly dharmas.
And we exist within this terrifying cemetery. If the highest practice is merging the taste, practice it now. Actually it’s So this was said by a Tibetan yogi called Lingrepa. In this city of samsaric preconceptions, we currently live in our environment, we’re full of ideas and preconceptions about how things are. Within the city of samsaric preconception roam the zombies of the eight worldly dharmas.
Okay. And they are liking gain of property and respect. So liking financial monetary gain, liking that and liking respect. Just liking it is a danger. Disliking loss of property on dislike disrespect.
Okay, there are two, okay? Just two: liking the gain of property and others respecting us. Big problem. Disliking loss of property and disrespect. So they’re like zombies roaming around in the Samsaric city.
Then the third one: liking pleasure. You know, liking pleasurable things. And disliking pain. That’s pretty hard actually. That’s hard.
Not to like pleasurable things and to dislike painful things. But that makes us susceptible really to because always, you know, for us, there are pleasurable things there, but to be here it’s really talking about not excessively liking them. Being aware that one likes them, but not overly pursuing them, not being a slave to them. Liking pleasure and disliking pain. Being overly worried if pain emerges, you know, we have a painful emotion.
And you know when especially on a mental level and a painful mental feeling arises, I’m being overly concerned by it. Not good. It just happens. Anyway, we’re susceptible. It happens from time to time like depression.
It’s like a painful mental feeling. Here not to dislike that. That’s hard as well but often there’s not much we can do. Disliking it doesn’t help. Taking a deep breath, reflecting on impermanencevery good.
Just the mind is impermanent. Is good at that point. So they’re the third and the fourth: liking pleasure, disliking pain. Liking gain of reputation is the fifth. To like one’s reputation expanding or danger there.
And we can easily be consumed by such things. And they don’t there’s no real benefit to us. It just liking the gain of reputation. If it happens, fine. If it doesn’t happen, fine.
Not to say that it may happen. Who knows? We might go out and win fifty million in the lottery and suddenly our reputation soars through the roof. Oh, But cultivating the liking of that is a problem. It’s a worldly dharma, a worldly attitude that doesn’t help us.
And disliking loss of reputation, also not good. I mean we should be concerned if there’s a loss of reputation because of our negative actions then that’s of course a signal that we’ve got to improve our game and make amends. But just out of the course of events, one day one is popular, the next day one is unpopular and nothing much has happened. We shouldn’t be too worried by that. Often there’s nothing much we can do about it.
And maybe there’s something we can do, okay, we can do that. But not to be overly concerned, not to cultivate liking and disliking in that regard. And the seventh is liking when others praise you. So not to cultivate that type of liking as good, not to be seeking it. And it happens all the time.
We like it when people praise us. They’re praising someone else and we’re there and thinking, Okay, and what about me? Come You know, now I’ve got a, you know, I’ve done something, I’ve, you know. Oh, you’re praising me as well. Because we like the praise.
We’re hanging out for it. We’re hanging out for the praise. And because we’re hanging out for the praise then we dislike when we’re blamed. So we’re susceptible then to being unhappy if we’re blamed for something. I mean there’s nothing much we can do.
It’s correct, if we’re blamed for something that we did do, then we did it. There’s nothing else to be said. We’ve no sense in liking or disliking it. And if we didn’t do it then there’s no sense in disliking it because it’s not even true. And we can’t control the external world.
We cannot manipulate the external world so that all these conditions can be eliminated. There’s just no you know, there’s examples in the past of very powerful people who could just about control millions. And my word, were dictators that they caught wind of someone actually denigrating the king or whatever would be put to death. But then, even then, what use? Because they’re going to be denigrated for putting to death people to denigrate.
And we simply cannot control the world in this way. Impossible. It’s like the story of the king who said to his minister, Cover the earth in leather so I don’t have thorns afflicting me. And the smart minister then went out and made a pair of shoes so that it achieved the same end. We cannot actually cover the world in leather to eliminate all the thorns.
Impossible. But we can guard the mind, our mind, in the middle of the world, the center of the world, whatever. And that we do by practicing along these lines. We minimize the eight worldly dharmas. We don’t dislike when others blame us.
We don’t dislike a loss of reputation. We don’t dislike loss of property. And so on. These things are so important for our well-being. What’s at stake in all of this is the most central thing to our existence, it’s our well-being.
So the eight worldly dharmas are things that we should be aware of and we should Right, so this is in the first two lines of the fourth verse. Leisure and endowment are difficult to find and life is brief. By contemplating this we stop the appeal of this life. Yeah, we did and we still haven’t got to the second half of that verse yet. Oh, you’ve left ahead?
That’s fine. I thought we knew that before we were leaving the next batch. Oh, no, no, I’m sorry. Look, okay, just want to do one other section here before we go into the second two lines. And that is the ten inner jewels of the Kadampa.
So this is also something that talks about renunciation. So we’re still dealing with renunciation. And so the early practitioners in Tibet were very strong practitioners like living in the wilderness and just practicing meditation on Dharma. So this is not possible for us but at some point it may become at present it’s not possible, but who knows in some time in the future we may have the leisure to practice on a more intensive level. So anyway I just thought to quickly go through these ten.
The ten inner jewels refer to the four entrustments, the three vajras, and the three designated as expelled, pursuing, obtaining. So the four entrustments are the inner mind of entrusting oneself to Dharma or a spiritual practice, the inner Dharma of entrusting yourself to becoming a beggar, to begging, the inner begging of entrusting yourself to death, the inner death of entrusting yourself to a dry ravine. So these are practices that meditators would engage in. And the three okay, we’ll get to that. And the three vajras, the vajra of not delaying that is practiced first.
The vajra of not being embarrassed that is practiced later. The vajra of pristine wisdom that assists us. And then the three designated as expelled, pursuing and obtaining are: expelled from the ranks of men, pursuing the ranks of dogs, obtaining the rank of a god. Oh, okay. So these are the ten inner jewels.
It’s useful that we know of these practices anyway. The inner mindnow the first one is the inner mind of entrusting oneself to the Dharma. And this is to practice a spiritual path by contemplating that this pure basis that we have, we have leisure at present and endowment has great potential. If we just employ it to make money we’re not using it to its full potential. And it’s difficult to find.
Having found it just this once it does not abide long and we will definitely die. And the time of death is uncertain, it could happen at any moment. Further, at the time of death no matter how much property or respect or fame or reputation, wealth or enjoyment, all of the worldly dharmas and so forth that we have, they’re not going to be of any benefit at all at the point of death. Only the pure Dharma and here meaning the pure techniques for purifying the mindare of benefit. Okay, so that’s the first one.
The inner mind of entrusting yourself to a spiritual practice. So one entrusts oneself to a spiritual practice because one reflects on death impermanence and those reasons are sufficient to push one to do something in the present. So the inner Dharma of entrusting oneself to begging, one may think, If I practice Dharma without accomplishing the means for happiness in this life, I will become a beggar who doesn’t possess anything. I’ll be like a beggar and I won’t have any of the conducive conditions for practicing Dharma. We may think that if I practice Dharma, if I practice a spiritual path now then I won’t be able to be happy in this life and I’ll be like a beggar.
I’ll, you know, I’ll be chastised, I’ll be looked down upon. We shouldn’t wait, Instead we should think for the purpose of Dharma I will endure difficulties even if it means becoming a beggar. I will be able to practice Dharma sustained by begging for even the meanest food and clothing. Now at present we have this fear that if we have a spiritual path that, Oh my word, you know, that would be a disaster. But actually that that is really just an indication of our attachments and how attachment has tended to order our priorities.
So here, the second one is not fearing, you know, not having the means to practice or money and so forth. So it is called the inner Dharma of entrusting yourself to begging. And then the inner begging or the inner Dharma of entrusting oneself to death. So we may think, if I practice Dharma, I practice the spiritual path in this way, like as a beggar, I won’t without accumulating any property or money and so forth. I cannot sustain this human life and I will die without any food and clothing.
So we shouldn’t think in that way either. Now it’s hard for us to think this way because of our attachment, but it’s useful for us just to reflect that present on this. Now we shouldn’t think in that way for practicing Dharma. We shouldn’t think that if I practice Dharma I have to become a beggar, and if I become a beggar I’m going to die of starvation. Instead we should think in this way.
For many past lives I have not devoted my life to the purpose of a spiritual path. Now it would be appropriate if I were to die while practicing a spiritual path. Moreover, the rich and the beggars all are alike in dying. The rich die after accumulating negative actions for their income. But if I die through practicing austerities for the purpose of a spiritual path, I will have accomplished a great purpose.
And even if I were to die for the purpose of Dharma or a spiritual path on an mountain, let me die there. If I were to die through starvation then let me die there. So this is the third inner Dharma of entrusting oneself to death, meaning that one would be prepared to practice even if it meant dying in some lonely mountain. Okay, so what we’re doing herethis is related to renunciation. Okay.
So this gives a little bit of an idea of the more traditional idea of renunciation as well. Not that we are, you know, in danger of going out and practicing on this level, of course, But we should know that this is how beings like us have practiced in the past. And the inner death of entrusting oneself to a dry ravine okay, this one. The thought, If I don’t have the least property when I’m sick or aged or dying I will still need an assistant or one to carry away my body. We have this thought, Oh gosh, you know, if I go off and practice somewhere in the wilderness then when I get sick no one’s going look after me and even worse when my body dies no one’s going to be there to take care of the body.
So that is longing sorry? Oh that thought may come up, That may come up. Right. Not only death though, but when I’m sick or aged, not having an assistant. He was talking about going off somewhere by oneself and practicing.
And then the final part is that there’ll be no one to carry away my body and bury it or cremate it or whatever. Then the author says, Pabongka Rinpoche then says, But since there is absolutely no certainty of you living long till old age, you should establish the practice now in an isolated mountain retreat without attachment to anything. Thinking, having accomplished Dharma, having accomplished the spiritual path, may I die like a dog without a companion in a dry ravine where the worms may eat my corpse. Right, so that was the the fourth, right? Okay, there’s much more on the fourth here but I think I’ll skip ahead to the fifth.
The vajra of not delaying that is practiced first. If you were to practice Dharma through relinquishing this life in that way, your parents, close relatives, dear friends and so on would try to delay you by any means. But your dear friends who are like your own heart and for whom you have great affection should not delay you though their tears fall in anguish. With your mind immutable like a badger, you must seek to practice the pure Dharma through going to an isolated mountain retreat, free of the mind of torment and attachment. So this is the fifth one here.
So again, in a way it’s an externalization of the mind of renunciation. And maybe something that, you know, in future we may have the possibility of practicing. And then the sixth one is the vajra of not being embarrassed that is practiced later. As you proceed having relinquished this life no matter what others do such as shamelessly abusing you and so on declaring you are a dirty wandering beggar and so on, You must relinquish this life instead thinking, let them say I am no good. Let them say that I am bad.
It makes no difference to me. The flattery of my friends of this life is the source of many faults. They are obstacles to establishing the path to liberation. Then the seventh, the vajra of the wisdom that assists us. So we should think, I will never in any way relinquish this pledge that I have taken.
I will always abandon all actions and plans that arise but are without essence, without meaning. Through the stable contemplation of Dharma I will be indifferent to this life and its accomplishments. Okay, so that’s it just extending a little bit beyond that. And then the eighth one: being expelled from the ranks of men. Those who view the allure of this illusory appearance of this life as an enemy and are like madmen who seek things differently from those of high or low status who seek the purpose of this life, are expelled from the ranks of humans in this life.
What that means is if we give up, if we renounce this life often we’re it’s not regarded as a good thing to renounce this life. And we may be regarded as being, you know, heretical or a little bit of, I don’t know, eccentric or whatever. But the fundamental purpose involved is not a small purpose, it’s for actually trying to discern the state of enlightenment. To become enlightened there’s no greater purpose than that. So one shouldn’t be too concerned about what other people say.
Anyway, can’t control what other people say. If the quest itself is valid, if attaining enlightenment is valid, then all criticism will fall away. Then there’s no problem. There’s no real issue. If that quest is valid.
Anyway, anyway we’ve done eight of those, that’s probably sufficient. I just wanted to bring these up just to show how renunciation is practiced by renunciates. And for us we’re not going to get to that level in an external sense. But if we can get to that level in an internal sense of really being renounced internally, meaning we’ve pared down the attachment to this life to a point where it’s not, you know, it’s something that we can what can one saycontrol or keep to a minimum, then that will be to our lasting benefit. We’re not going to overcome all the attachments straight away.
Not possible. But if we can begin to minimize it, then the mind quite naturally will become happier. If they’re ready, if it’s the best thing for them to do in the present and so on. It’s having the wisdom there, it depends on having the wisdom to be able to see what is best for a particular person at a particular time. Having that sword of wisdom is very difficult.
Oh, that’s good, that’s healthy. Mean, nettle soup is pretty healthy. Yeah, not everyone is ready to generate renunciation But that’s fine. We’re probably not that ready ourselves. Exactly.
And this is the one big difficulty of going into an isolated retreat is that we just take our current mind into that isolated retreat and unless the mind is ready, I mean having reallythrough having been trained for a long, long time and it is ready to really fundamentally give up objects of attachment, that’s incredibly difficult. We’re sitting there in some isolated place and I just wish I could talk to someone. Been six months I haven’t talked to anyone. I need to talk to someone. I wouldn’t mind going for a coffee.
I want to see this person, I want to see that person. You know, we’d be very unhappy because of our attachment. To actually get to that point means that we have to work really hard over a long period and then it will just come naturally. Entering this sort of retreat will just come naturally. It will just happen.
And there’s stories like that, you know, of people of this happening to people, you know, that occur. Anyway, we should stop there. Okay, we’re up to verse four and a half. Four? Half.
Four c. Yeah. Anyway, we’ll see how far we get next time. We left out a lot too. There’s so many issues that come up in this first part of the text, as not to mention the rest of it.
Anyway, just any positive potential that we may have generated. Very good to dedicate for our enlightenment, to dedicate it for us attaining enlightenment as quickly as possible for the benefit of other beings without exception.