Presenting the Path — DB Presenting the Path 1

Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this 125-minute teaching, Ven Jamyang introduces the “Presenting the Path” module, the first in Buddha House’s systematic Discovering Buddhism course. Using an intuitive travel analogy—journeying from Adelaide to Bhutan—she maps out three Buddhist paths: the Hīnayāna (individual liberation), the Mahāyāna Sūtrayāna (gradual enlightenment while serving all beings), and the Mahāyāna Tantrayāna (a faster tantric approach). She then anchors the teaching in the Buddha’s First Noble Truth, exploring in concrete detail how life is inherently dissatisfactory: the suffering of pain (illness, aging, death), the suffering of change (pleasures that fade), pervasive suffering (the subtle dissatisfaction underlying existence), and the suffering of uncontrolled mind. The talk culminates in a guided meditation on these three types of suffering, designed to generate compassion for oneself and all beings.

File metadata (for organising)

File: DB Presenting the Path 1.mp3

UUID: 7166de8f-5948-462f-9e1a-488849234d7e

Teacher: Ven Jamyang

Collection: Presenting the Path (Ven Jamyang)

Date: 2009 (exact day not recorded)

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Duration: 125.7 minutes

Words: ~14,981

Alright. Is that alright? No? Higher? Better?

Needs more? You need more? Yeah. You would like to have it louder? Yes.

Is that good? Okay. If I go to soft, let me know. Or we just turn it up. Okay.

Okay. Welcome, everybody. I see some people that I think I haven’t seen before. You are haven’t seen before, have I? Or have I?

Couple of ago. Couple of years ago. I only have been here for two years. So then you came. And you I was here at.

Grade. Alright. Good. My name is Jamyang, for those who don’t know yet. I’m restarting today a new module on presenting the path.

So you all have the required reading. Mhmm. Yep. You all have the completion card for those who want to do the module as a study. You don’t have that?

It’s in the in the look on the table. There should be a form. Maybe you go and have a look. Yep. Are you doing the first module or did you do how to meditate?

I did the first one. You did the first one and you are joining now? Yeah. Discovering Buddhism is a two year course that is divided into fourteen modules of four to six weeks each and each module has a video night and each module has one or two meditation days and the purpose of that is that you really learn how to engage in practice. It’s not just sitting here and listening, it’s not just reading, it’s actually putting it into practice either by doing sitting meditation when you’re home, once or twice a day for, you know, you start however short you can can do it.

But also during the day you can use all the information that you get to put it into practice right there. You know when we talk about Buddhism, we talk about is about the mind and how our mind works. And if at the moment we have no control, basically, we are under the control of our delusions, isn’t it? Whatever comes in our mind and we like, we follow that. And whatever comes in our mind that we don’t like, we try to get rid of that.

That’s basically how we behave. But if we say, can I stop my mind doing that? No. We do not know how to do that. So meditation is Buddhism is about learning to control these habits that we have, these tendencies that we have to follow whatever we like and to push away whatever that we do not like.

Right? So this is focused on practice. I would like you to think about this every day somehow, you know. And either you can do it by maybe it happens automatically, you know, sometimes you get such a deep feeling that then every day you can’t stop thinking about it and you can’t stop trying to apply it in your daily life. And sometimes you can make yourself a little note that you would like to think about that day and you put it somewhere where you can see it, you know, either in your office on the computer or at home in the fridge or something like that, you remind yourself again and again: That’s what is important for me.

That’s what is important. And if you do that at a certain point your mind starts to take it on, starts to do it by itself. Because whatever we practice the result of that will be less tension in the mind, being more relaxed, being more happy, feeling more peaceful. Any good feeling can come from that. So the mind will ask for that because the mind likes to feel good, you know.

We like to feel good, we just do it in the wrong way, we look for it in the wrong way. So when we find the right way the mind immediately recognizes and starts to apply it whenever it can. So that’s a little bit the purpose. So if you do this course, you can do this course per module, you can do the whole course, whatever you like. If you want to do it as a study, you can get like a certification for that.

And if you want to do it like that, you you have the completion cards and you you fill them in and at the end you let me sign them and you keep them with you and then after two years when you have them all ready then you can get a diploma from FPMT saying saying that you did it. And, you know, if you really like doing this and this appeals to you, then you can, you know, we might help ask you to help leading meditations or helping in other ways. So what are we gonna do today with this course? Oh, my eyes are getting so bad that I can’t even read these big letters anymore. I’ll print this out a little bit bigger, but since Monday, I can’t read it anymore.

Where are your glasses? Yeah. Here are my red glasses, but I try to print as bigger so that I don’t need them to read as well. Now I have to put them on. So when we look into our mind, you know we talk about presenting the path, when we look into our mind then I know that I had it for a long time, know, whatever I tried I was not happy and I felt miserable and I thought what’s wrong with me?

You know because somehow it appears that most people they’re quite happy and satisfied with whatever they’re doing and I thought I don’t have that feeling you know. Must be something wrong with me. But then when you study Buddhism you learn like well actually everything is in the nature of suffering. We all suffer. We all have that, that we feel that things do not go in the way we want and even if they go in the way we want we don’t have the feeling that we wished for or that is completely normal unfortunately at the moment, with the state of mind that we have in the moment.

That sounds very depressing, maybe, you know. We all suffer and we all do not know how to get rid of that. Thanks God there was somebody who gave a presentation of the path how to get rid of that. So the Buddha says that you can get rid of all your suffering, everything. Not only suffering, also dissatisfaction, also unrealistic unrealistic expectations, also discomfort.

He even says, well you can actually achieve a state where you where you experience perfect bliss in every moment of your life. Possibility. That’s what he says. So what we’re going to do in this course is we’re going to talk about the path towards that. And by merely thinking about, oh, this is where we are now and this is where we can go, that somehow can inspire.

That also can make some imprints that, you know, every time that you think about it, I’m here right now but I want to go there. I’m here but I want to go there. That makes imprints. It’s like you create a habit in your mind that you know that there is somewhere to go, where you can go and you’re actually on your way there where you’re going to achieve everlasting happiness. That also means that when suffering occurs on that path you can say oh that’s okay because I know where I’m going.

You know, so I won’t demand instant happiness right now. I can postpone that a little bit. I know that sometimes that happens on the path and I just can work through that and when that is going on I actually have a freedom from that and I will feel much happier and it helps me to progress on the path. Are we expecting it in this lifetime? We’ll talk about that.

It’s possible. It’s possible. I don’t know whether I’ll be a a an animal or a human. That is true. So that I want to be as much as possible in life in lifetime.

Yes, that’s very good. That’s very good. That’s very good. We talk about that, about the path. And what is a path?

It took me ages to understand what they were talking about in Buddhism, the path. What is the path, you know? I think now I have a slight idea. But I think, you know, for instance, we’re living here in Adelaide, and maybe the climate is not so good for your health, you know. It’s too hot, it’s too dry.

And you feel that because of that your aging goes much faster, you get earlier wrinkles and your bones are really hurting from that and you feel like, oh, you know, actually, this is so much suffering, I actually don’t want that. And then you hear about Hervey Bay, you know, Harvey Bay on the sea and where it’s really nice and there was always this cool wind and even, you know, there’s lots of sun at the same time and there are other many, many beautiful things to do and you think, wow, that’s fantastic. I wanna go there. So you look on the map and you make a path. How you go?

So then you go there and you’re there and then you hear about Byron Bay. That’s even better because there are all these saunas, So then you think, oh wow, I actually maybe have taken the wrong path. But then still you can quite easily go to Byron Bay. But then you’re there and then you hear, but there is something that is much, much, much better. For instance, Bhutan, there is not only this beautiful weather, but what there is very important that everybody in that country is happy, not just you experiencing, you know, the happiness of the Byron Bay and all the the beautiful weather and the beautiful saunas and whatever kind of nice treatments that people can give you there.

But in Bhutan, actually the purpose of of the government there is that everybody is as happy as possible. So when you’re there, it’s not just you, your happiness that is important, but everybody’s radiating happiness and that can radiate towards you and it can inspire you and, you know, if you hear people who have been there, they all feel just happy by being there. So then you think, oh, wow, that is even much better, you know? So you know that are already on the coast in Harvey Bay or Byron Bay. So you take the boat and you go towards India and when you arrive there you take the train and you have all these.

And then the last bit you have to walk over the mountains and then finally you’re there. And then when you’re there then somehow people, you know, there are these iron birds flying through the sky and you think, what’s that?’ So there are people who could do that in one day they could fly from Adelaide to Bhutan, you know, but you didn’t know that planes existed, so you took a very, very long way. Alright? So in Buddhism it’s very similar. So I’ll write you down which path there are in Buddhism so we can take different paths.

And you want to have the one with a plane, isn’t it? So if we stay in Australia and no, I would say if we are only concerned about our own happiness, then the path that we take is called the Hīnayāna path. Hīnayāna path is you want to be free of suffering. And this path describes certain trainings that you have to do in order to get there. Alright?

And that’s called the three higher trainings. I will talk about that later a little bit. And then there’s another path, the Mahāyāna path. And when you are on the Mahāyāna path you’re not only concerned about your own happiness but you’re concerned about the happiness of all sentient beings. Yes, so you want happiness for all sentient beings.

You want all sentient beings to be free of suffering. These are sentient beings. So this is the way to Bhutan. Right, that’s the Mahāyāna path. And in Mahāyāna path there are two vehicles that you can take.

One is the boat and the train and by foot over the mountains which is called the Sūtrayāna or Sūtra path. When you start to engage in Buddhism you normally you listen to the sutras. For instance, if you hear the teachings on mind training that Geshe-la is giving at the moment on Tuesday night, this is the sūtra path. If you hear for instance, we can read the Heart Sūtra, which is a Sūtra. It’s like there are words from the Buddha that you hear and you contemplate on them and you try to realize them.

And then there is a tantra, tantric path. And on the tantric path this is like the plane that you take. This goes very quick. In the tantra path practice. You do certain practices where you create causes to become a Buddha very, very quickly.

To become enlightened or to become free of suffering and have the ability to lead to free all sentient beings from suffering, you do that very, very quickly. And I will explain later why that is. The Tantric Path. So they say that when you practice the Tantric Path, they say this path takes three countless eons. Not sure how long that is, but it’s very long.

This you can do in one short lifetime and degenerate age. So when I say degenerate age that means that you live in a time that the delusions are just flourishing. You know, if we look into our own country and our own society everything is around desire, attachment. Everything is focused on, you know, it looks like how can you become happy, but it’s all done by attachment. So your attachment is constantly triggered.

That means that your mind is constantly clouded. That means that you can’t see clearly reality. So then practicing something where you have to see clearly reality is very difficult. So even in this time where it is very, very difficult you can do it in one short lifetime. Right, that’s what they promise.

I think you do need some imprints from previous lives in order to do that quickly, you know, but you all being here must mean we have awesome imprints from previous lives. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here. To use that analogy though, if you take the tantric path and you get there quickly, The end result might be what you want. But by taking the slow journey Yeah. You have many more experiences along the way.

And that journey can be beneficial. Yeah. Why? What you want, what you want, you’re motivated by a compassion for all sentient beings. You want them to be free of suffering quickly as possible but at the moment you realize: Hey, I can’t even take care of myself, you know.

I’m full of suffering all the time myself. How can I ever show anybody the way out of suffering when I don’t know how to do it myself? So the quicker I can do it, the quicker I can show somebody else to do it. So out of compassion I choose this path. This path, when we take the sūtra path, you know, you have the map, you know where you have to go, but you can only see your next step, you know, you walk like this.

You know where to go but it goes very slow. With the Tantrayāna path, you know, you go onto Google and you have the street view. You can say, Oh, this is how it looks like. And it’s like you can already imagine how it is when you walk there and then it’s much easier when you arrive recognize it and it’s there. Right?

So you have the street views already and you already have practiced that in your mind how to do it. So it’s like, at the moment at six o’clock we’re doing that, but we practice like we visualize the Buddha above us. But you can even visualize that you already are the Buddha. How does it feel when you are the Buddha? And by imagining that is, some people call it, you fake it till you make it.

You know, it’s like you take the result as the path, you take the result onto the path. Where you want to go, you put it already onto your path and that makes that you go really, really quickly. So that’s the Tantrayāna path. So these are the options that we have. Everything that we do in the Mahāyāna is also in the Hīnayāna.

So it’s not necessarily that this is not a good path. This, if you can do this, it’s fantastic. You know, you are a really highly realized being. Everything what they practice you also have to practice here. Accept motivation because they have the motivation to do it only for their own freedom of suffering.

So that is what you do not practice. You include all sentient beings in your motivation. When you do the three higher trainings I’m just going to name them. You practice in ethics, you practice concentration and you practice wisdom. So, very good path for this is for instance that you become ethics means that you decide that you stop harming others, that you practice virtue.

So, a very fast way for that is when you become ordained, when you take vows of what they call individual liberation. You want to be free of suffering, the vows of individual liberation. And you don’t have to become a monk or a nun. You can also the refuge vows are vows of individual liberation. Did Geshe la talk about that last Sunday?

Think I won’t say today. Sunday. On Sunday? When When he gave refuge? Yeah?

Did he talk about the vows of individual liberation? Not yet. Yeah. So these are the five lay vows. Yeah.

And then then you have to obtain vows. vows is just a vehicle that makes you go faster. That’s all. Then if you are on the Mahāyāna path, you also can take vows. For instance, if you are on the sūtra path, on both actually, but you can take them yeah, you can take them on both.

You can take the Bodhisattva vows. These are vows wherein you promise not to harm sentient beings but instead you cherish them more than yourself. So here’s you do not harm but here’s their happiness is more important than your happiness. So if you can practice that you go very fast on that path, which is included in this path. So you can go fast on the tantric path by taking the tantric vows.

And when you take tantric vows you already practice that you see everything that happens to you and in your environment as a Buddha would see it. So it’s like, you know, you have the street view already of the Buddha and that’s how you try to see everything that happens. So they’re all ways of practicing ethics to make yourself going faster. When you practice concentration you practice single point concentration of what is called calm abiding. And when we practice mindfulness meditation, where we bring our mind back and focus and refocus, that is like the preliminary of the calm abiding.

The wisdom that you practice is you wanna achieve the wisdom realizing emptiness. In order to do that you need calm abiding. Without calm abiding you can’t realize emptiness. So these are the three steps that you have to do in order to free yourself from suffering. These steps are included in both the sūtra and the tantra path.

You need to do all that in order to get enlightened. Yeah? So if you are a Hīnayāna practitioner and you want to achieve liberation for yourself you call that I want to become enlightened. So I’m going to give you these terms so that when you read that you don’t get confused. Right?

Because So the result or your goal you call enlightened. If you’re on the Mahāyāna path you say: I want to become enlightened because you call your goal enlightened. Enlightened means that you have removed everything remove, that you think you can remove from your mind stream and you have developed all the qualities that you think you can develop. So the person on here, he thinks you cannot do anything more than this. That’s the only thing you can do.

You can’t free other sentient beings from suffering. How can you? Right, so for them this is the highest state. When they have liberation from their own suffering that is the highest state that they can achieve. That is their enlightenment.

In the Mahāyāna Buddhism exactly the same. They achieve the highest state that they can achieve which is called enlightenment. I don’t know, yesterday this worked really well. I’m not sure. Oh, no.

I think I put it in the in the office. Could it’s on my on my desk. Yeah. Yeah. And, otherwise, in my drawer, there are a few more.

Alright. Thank you. So then sometimes when you read certain texts they talk about the Hīnayāna practitioner. He achieves there are two different kinds of types of practitioners. One one achieves small enlightenment and the other one can achieve middle enlightenment.

And then they say on this path you achieve great enlightenment. Because your motivation includes here one sentient being, the depth of your experience of emptiness is not so big. Because here your motivation includes all sentient beings, the depth of your experience of emptiness is much, much bigger. It’s much more powerful. The motivation is like the motor behind whatever we’re doing.

Yeah, The motor of a boat is not as strong as the motor of a plane. Thank you. Yeah. Does that make sense somehow or not? Yeah.

Questions about this? No? Everybody’s in silence? Why would you choose to take the Sūtra path rather than the Tantric path? Because you have no in this you think what’s that?

For instance I’ll talk about that next time. I’ll talk about that next time. Because you have no faith. For instance in the Tantric path there are things that you practice that when you look through sūtra eyes and you do not completely understand what they are doing you think, Oh, that’s so wrong. I have to break my vows in order to do that.

So if you judge wrong what really is happening you say, I have to break my vows in order to do that. I can’t do that. I want to be on the pure path. So sometimes you have tantric practitioners who drink alcohol. Alcohol is one that not drinking alcohol is one of the lay vows.

So they say, no, never can do this because I have the vows that I can’t drink alcohol.’ Right, like that. Come they’re different? What? How come the tantric one can’t drink alcohol? Different in alcohol?

Did you say that on the tantric one you could drink alcohol? Yeah. I can’t but you can. No, I’ll have to talk about that next week because that’s a whole story, you know, and how you bring both together because both are at the same time the same, you know. They’re different and they are the same.

To see them as the same is very difficult. You need some intelligence to do that. So I have to prepare that properly before I’m going to tell that to you. Well, I would have thought about the vow and the Yeah, exactly. That’s what people think, you know, but the Buddha has the vow not to kill.

But there are stories of the Buddha where he was on a boat and there were the captain had a plan to kill all his five hundred passengers and the Buddha, because he had clairvoyance, he could see that. So he decided to kill the captain because he could see that, you know, out of his compassion not only for these five hundred people who were going to be killed but especially for the captain who were going to create a lot of negative karma, he killed the captain. With that you can say, Oh, but he had the vow not to kill, especially not a human being. Yes, that is true. But because he did it out of his great compassion, he was prepared to go to hell if needed in order to purify that karma instead of the captain.

And because he has this fantastic motivation he goes to hell one second and he jumps out straight away. Right? We’ll say we’re there forever. We will be there forever without motivation. Not forever.

No, no, no. That’s Catholicism. We get out. It takes a long time though but we can get out. We’re longer than a second.

We’re longer than a second. Yeah. Yeah. Second’s unbearable. What happened over ten minutes of the loop?

There are hell beings in the lower realms. Yeah. Yeah, the suffering realms. Yeah. Yeah.

Can’t the Buddha just disable the captain instead of killing him? I don’t know. That’s a long story. I don’t know. Can I wrap this up?

Yeah. Okay. I mean, I’ve read stuff like that before that yeah. There’s a bowel that’s once he’s killed. However, I think the motivation is good.

Yeah. For us, it’s very difficult, you know, because only when you can see the future you know what is more beneficial and you know why. But we, you know, I don’t know you but I cannot see next moment. I cannot see what’s going to happen in five seconds. I can’t.

So for me, you know, what do I know what’s more beneficial? I don’t. So I am very careful with that. That’s the same when, you for instance you have the choice. Do I let my dogs do I give my dog how do say that?

When my dog is almost dying? Do I help the dog to die? Euthanasia. Or do I let the dog go through that suffering? Only when you can see where the dog is going to end up, if you do this action or that action, can you really make a decision on the basis of knowledge.

You know? It’s very difficult. Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna. So we’re trying to generate a Mahāyāna motivation. Buddha house is part of this tradition, Mahāyāna tradition.

And what we do, you know, you have the teachings of the Buddha and next time I’ll talk a little bit more about that. They went to Tibet at a certain stage and in Tibet there are different very highly realized beings that are seen as emanations of the Buddha who have somehow not, they have broader teachings in way that it’s more accessible to more sentient beings. And one of them was Lama Tsongkhapa and he lived in the fifteenth century in Tibet and his special feature is that he brought Sutta and Tantra together. These two kinds of practices. He showed in Tibet there were many people who either practice the sūtra and said oh we really want to walk this pure path or they were practicing tantra and said oh we do not have to keep our vows because we practice tantra.

They went into the other direction. So Lama Tsongkhapa brought his teachings together to show that they are exactly the same. It’s like they are on top of each other. So you have to learn to distinguish what is pure and what is not pure and what is keeping your vows and what is not keeping your vows. He is the founder of the Gelukpa tradition.

I give you many words but just you will will hear them sometimes. Sometimes they call them the yellow hats. You know, if you have seen monks on television or maybe somewhere else, the ones with the yellow hats, these are from the Gelugpa tradition. They follow the teachings of Lama Tsongkhapa. Buddha House is we’re doing the Gelugpa.

We are from the Gelugpa tradition following the teachings of Lama Tsongkhapa. But then we have Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa who give the teachings of Lama Tsongkhapa a very special taste. And that’s what we’re doing here. Tradition different from Mahāyāna? So the Kadampa tradition, I don’t know if you guys have heard from that.

The new Kedampas, isn’t it? They call themselves the New Kadampas. They try to establish themselves in their life. Yeah. So, they also are a Gelugpa, they’re from the Gelugpa tradition.

They follow the teachings of Lama Tsongkhapa. What they do not follow is the leader of the Gelugpa tradition which is the Dalai Lama. So they’re doing a kind of practice, a kind of spirit practice which the Dalai Lama and many high Lamas have observed that here it’s actually a very harmful effect for the harmony in Tibet, for his own long life, for your own life, you know. So he has asked people please do not practice this. And they say, but we want to do that, you know.

So they are creating I don’t know what they are creating. The Chinese quite like this, you know, because the Chinese are always looking for people who are opposing the Dalai Lama. So they are happy to support whoever does that. So if you see this, this can be quite harmful for yourself if you do that. Their teachings are very nice but you get something in the package with it that you can’t see.

There are people who say I feel very uncomfortable when I’m there. So you might feel it but you might not feel it. You can, if you just had the teachings, you know there is nothing wrong with the teachings but at a certain point and quite quickly when you go there you get an initiation in Shukden, they call that a protector, protector practice. When you get that then you are in trouble. So if you go for teachings that’s not a problem.

But you might make friends and think oh yeah this is really great and then think oh what’s the problem and so. Clear? Just be careful. I’ve met people who do it, I’ve met people who try to get out of it and it’s they have really especially when get out, you know, then it’s like the spirit starts to harm you and people have months, nightmares and need help from Hailamas to purify their karma or to get separated from that. Nice.

Sorry? Sorry, I just said I met one. Yeah. It was interesting but I had a sense of shallow. Can’t explain their own.

When the Dalai Lama was in Sydney last year, was that in Sydney? Were outside, don’t know, I think you saw it on television, these people screaming, The Dalai Lama gave us religious freedom or something. They are dressed as monks and nuns, I’m not sure if they are monks and nuns, but they were quite aggressive. They were the Kadampa practitioners. And I think the main thing in Buddhism is that you do not harm other sentient beings.

So when you are among another and you start screaming on the street, you know, would feel a little bit strange when I had to do that. Enough about that. Okay. So now I’m gonna ask, you know, because I saw the feedback sheets from Mind and It’s Potential and there were some people who said: Too many questions when you’re teaching. So I’m going to ask that I can keep on talking for a certain amount of time and if you have questions write them down because I do think the questions should be answered so that we have a time where we do that.

And sometimes while I’m talking your questions get answered, you know, so I can be more focused and you can maybe follow more the story. If you get completely lost, please ask, you know, I don’t want you to sit there and say: No idea what she’s talking about. Is that alright? Yep. So you can imagine that if we start practicing Mahāyāna Buddhism are not able to generate a Mahāyāna motivation.

I don’t know about you guys but I’m still here because I want to be happy and I want to be happy now, you know. If I tell that to Geshe-la and he looks at me and says: Oh my God, you know, you’re still doing that. And he feels very sorry for me when Don’t tell him. What Lama Tsongkhapa did is he put the whole path for where we are now, like in a line until we are enlightened.

Enlightened. Like this? ED, enlightenment. So we’re here now. Developing this motivation is very difficult.

So where we normally start is I want to have happiness right now, right? That is before the path. That’s not I can’t put it in my schedule, right? But then when you start entering the path you somehow can let go happiness of this life. You’re not focused on your happiness right now.

You can somehow postpone that. So when you can do that you are, they say you are somebody of small capacity. When you have the motivation of somebody of small capacity you can generate the motivation like I want to achieve happiness in my future lives. I don’t necessarily have to have it now. I’m happy if it comes in my future life.

Right? That’s the first step, isn’t it? We first have to let go of this life before we can even think about enlightenment. Because, yes, I might want to achieve enlightenment in this life, but it might take me many lifetimes, you know, and I have to somehow keep on going. So first of all I can focus, well if I can make it to my next life, if I could have a human rebirth in my next life, at least I can keep on practicing.

So let me start there. And then, so there are some practices that you do in order to get that realization. This is a realization, right? When you really can feel I want to have happiness in my future life, you need to realize different kind of things before that feeling can arise. This is not just a thought, this is coming from deep, from within.

If I have that then I can think about, well if I have happiness in my future lives I still cycle in saṃsāra we call. I still go from birth to death, from birth to death and I keep on repeating the same kind of things and even if I’m in the happy realms as a human being there’s still a lot of suffering that I have to go through and actually I’m sick of all that. I want to get out of that. Then you become a being of intermediate capacity. Does everybody know what saṃsāra is?

The cycle of rebirth where we can go from life to life to life and we do that involuntarily. We have no control over that. So what you say here, I want to get out of that cycle. It’s not that you say, I don’t want to have a human body anymore. It’s like I want to get out of that uncontrolled rebirth that happens to me again and again and again.

So you want to achieve freedom from saṃsāra. This is what the Hīnayāna practitioner does. So in order to get there you have to realize emptiness. And then if you want to achieve Then after this you can say, Hey, but just as I’m suffering in saṃsāra, all sentient beings are suffering in Samsāra and Lama Tsongkhapa says they are all my family, you know, we have a connection with all of them. So it will be selfish if I stay in this position.

I want to actually free all of them from their suffering. Then you become a being of great capacity. And in order to do this you have to generate bodhicitta or what is called the mind of enlightenment. When we practice, we try to set a motivation of enlightenment. So, the more you know this path, the more when you set a motivation you can reflect on this.

We cannot jump, you know. We have to go from this to this to this. In all this and I’ll talk about that in the third week and after that there are many stages here that we have to realize, many realizations that we have to These are called the stages of the path to enlightenment or sometimes it’s called the Lamrim in Tibetan. There are many Lamrim books in the library that you can find or the Path to Enlightenment. It’s all the same.

You can sometimes have some realization here. This basis for that, it’s the basis for that. Sometimes you have a moment, Wow, here, a moment. But this moment cannot last if we do not have a strong basis in these realizations. Right?

But, you know, sometimes you focus on this and then you focus on that and then you go back to this and then you progress and, you know, Lama Tsongkhapa says you just go through the whole path in a period of month and then you start again. And then you start again and you keep on doing that. And the realizations that you have, they deepen and they deepen. And then you go around. Yeah, Yeah.

Yeah. I made it I I make it linear. They presented linear, but that’s it’s coming from Linear. Yes. I don’t know.

I have to think about that, the spiral. So realizing emptiness we also have to do in order to become enlightened and, you know, wishing the freedom from saṃsāra is called renunciation. So sometimes you hear the three principal aspects of the path. Have you ever heard of that? So renunciation is the first aspect, bodhicitta or the mind of enlightenment is the second and the correct view or realizing emptiness is the third.

The three principal aspects of the path that’s yeah, that talks about these stages that you go through and what you need to do in order to achieve a state and where you go from there. These are all terms to give you an idea on the map, you know, where are we, where do we want to go. In the beginning it can be quite dry, you know, but if you get a feel for it, it’s like it’s it’s it can be actually very inspiring to listen to listen to that, and I hope it’s gonna be the last one for you. So then I go to where the teachings came from to the Buddha. So we have this in mind.

I’m gonna talk about this from this third teaching. We talk about specific on the Lamrim or the stages of the path. Everybody has this? So the Buddha didn’t present the teachings in this way. The Buddha didn’t talk about the stages of the path to enlightenment.

That’s something that came about in Tibet already before Lama Tsongkhapa, but I’ll go into that in the third class. When the Buddha got enlightened, you know, Buddha got enlightened out of suffering, out of compassion. He saw the suffering of all sentient beings and he was so touched by that that he tried to find a way to be free of that. And first he practiced for six years in the ascetic path where he depleted his body from all nutrition and did a lot of meditation and he saw, you know, this this is not going anywhere. I still although my mind might feel better, I still in I’m still going through the same kind of things.

I’m still in saṃsāra. I’m still in a state where I cannot control where I’m not free of my delusions, where I’m not free of my attachment, where I’m not still can’t see reality it is. So he decided to go more a middle path to take care of his body. And then then he decided to sit down and not get up until he had found an answer that would help all sentient beings. And so he sat down in Bodh Gaya under the Bodhi tree, that’s the story, and there he achieved enlightenment.

And when he got enlightened he was, you know, that was so big didn’t know how to talk about that. He felt like if I start talking about this ordinary human beings they never understand what I’m talking about because the realization of enlightenment is far beyond words and concepts and it is about you know something that you cannot put into words. Even if I would talk about a state of enlightenment, the words never convey the realization. The words never convey what you realize when you realize when you achieve enlightenment. So even when I would use words, if you guys only have words then you cannot, the words cannot bridge the difference in where we are.

Can you see that? Because I’m talking about something completely different, a completely different reality that you cannot put into words. That has nothing to do with words. So the Buddha decided I’m not going to teach because, you know, I don’t think anybody will understand. So for seven weeks he was quiet and he was in the forest and he experienced his own bliss and he had five disciples who were very to him and they kept on requesting, Please, please tell us what’s going on for you, you know, we like this, we want to know what you did, we want to So, after seven weeks he decided to teach and his first teaching he gave in Sarnath, which is very close to Varanasi in India and in Deer Park.

Has anybody heard of that? And there he gave what is called the first turning of the wheel. So when he taught this, his five disciples were present. In the first turning the wheel he talked about the Four Noble Truths.

He talked about life and he said life is, I’ll say it like this, by nature dissatisfactory or suffering. Or in Sanskrit it’s called dukkha. I’m not sure if I spelled that right. Maybe the h is here. I’m not sure.

I think the h is here. Dukkha. D u double k h a r d u. Yeah. There are different spellings.

Well, how do you spell it? D u double k h a. Dukha. Dukha means dissatisfaction but it’s most of the time translated as suffering. Dissatisfaction means no matter what I do I will never be satisfied.

And if we look into our own life, that’s true, isn’t it? No matter how we try to find happiness, the dissatisfaction is always around the corner. Even if we have moments of happiness straight after that there is this feeling of what is it? Where is it? Oh, it’s gone.

Oh my God, how do I hold on to it? Or you feel this empty feeling of: It’s not completely real or something, we can’t hold it, we can’t grasp it. It’s just slipping through our fingers and it’s gone. That’s the happiness that we experience. So by nature whatever we experience there is dissatisfaction.

We all want to be so badly we want to be happy but we don’t make it. No matter what we’re doing we do not make it. True? Don’t get depressed. If this was our true nature it’s better that we do not talk about this.

It’s better that we go and have a, I don’t know, some alcohol or something to run away from this, right? But only because this is not our true nature we can talk about this. Only because there is something else that is more real we can talk about this. But this is what we experience in everyday life, dissatisfaction. So the second truth that he said there is a cause of suffering or dissatisfaction.

The third is: there is freedom from suffering. Freedom or you can say cessation of suffering is possible. Cessation means completely gone. The fourth truth is there is a path to that freedom. So what he said is, Life is by nature suffering and that suffering is real.

We like to deny that. We like to run away from that. We like not to know that. We do every time when we experience some suffering we try to get away from it. True?

You know how you do that, don’t you? You know how you try to escape. You know you can eat, you can drink, you can have drugs, you can go for drive, you can you know listen to music, you can read a book, you can distract yourself with and we have many many possibilities of distracting ourselves from our dissatisfaction or our suffering. Every time when suffering arises in the mind we have immediately aversion and we try to get away from it. So hearing that a Buddha talks about life is suffering it feels like, Oh, yuck!

You know? That’s actually not what I want to hear. I want to be happy. I do not want to talk about suffering. So why would he do that?

Why would he talk about before he starts talking about that you can be free of suffering? Because you might lose your students, isn’t it? If I talk too hard about suffering, people leave unless I give them something that they can see they can do something about that. So why would the Buddha do that? Why?

To wake us up? Yeah. To show you reality. What can you do when you know reality? Face it.

Face it. So if you go to the doctor and you say: You know, I really do not feel so happy. And the doctor says: Oh yeah, here’s the pill for to be happy. And as long as you take the pill, yeah, you feel quite alright but you think still there’s something You do not know how to be happy without a pill for instance. So when you go to the doctor and you say I don’t feel so well, first what a doctor does is he looks into you.

What is going on exactly? What is your suffering? Only when that is diagnosed properly only when he can diagnose the cause of that, he knows what kind of pill he has to give or what kind of medicine he has to give to make you free of suffering. Right? Only when you feel sick you go to the doctor.

Only when you know you are sick you go to the doctor. You can’t walk around with cancer and not know it. You don’t go to the doctor, you don’t have a remedy. Many people in life think: Oh, I’m quite happy. They never come to a place where they can be free of their dissatisfaction because they do not notice that they have dissatisfaction.

Right? Only when you know that you have that can you do something about it. Only when you know that you have it you can look for the cause of it. Looking for the cause means you have to dig deep sometimes with our suffering definitely. If we would not have to dig deep we would already know how to get happy and we don’t, you know, so we have to dig deeper than we have been doing so far.

Then when you really know the cause of suffering, if you really know it, then you also know the remedy, I think. As long as we do not know the real cause of cancer, we do not have the real remedy. And the real remedy means the remedy that remedies all kinds of cancer. Not just this one maybe and that one not. Right?

The real remedy is what remedies all cancer. Then you know really what cancer is. If I really know where my anger comes from then I can free myself from anger. True? Can you see that?

If you can see that that can make it interesting to look into your suffering. Where does it come from? And if you can go into it, you can find the remedy in the bottom of it. But it needs some courage and it needs some wisdom, you know, because we have the strong tendency that as soon as it comes up you run away. And then to say: No, today I’m going to sit with them.

It takes a long time. I’m still running away. Sometimes doing this in a group goes much easier, you know, because we all go down together. And then somehow your tendency to run away gets subdued by the energy of the group to go inside. The tendency we have to run away from our suffering creates actually a lot of suffering and the suffering that we really have is not as big as it appears to us, you know.

If you see how far we run away it appears like that’s huge, the suffering that is underneath. But if you’re actually going to look, you know, the biggest fight is to overcome the tendency to run away. And then the suffering that is really there, that’s actually not the problem to deal with. The biggest thing is to fight our tendency or to counteract. I shouldn’t say fight because if you fight it fights back, so we counteract.

So this is what he gave in the first teaching. I will go a little bit deeper later. Then, soon after that he gave the second teaching, which is called the Second Turning of the Wheel. And they say that was done in Rajgir, on Vulture’s Peak. And if we read the Heart Sūtra we say, Thus I’ve heard one time, you know, and then we go to Vulture’s Peak, Rajgir where the Buddha taught the Heart Sūtra and there he talked about the nature of reality which is called emptiness.

Reality. The nature of reality is empty of what we think reality is. We have a certain idea what reality is. We perceive something as real. Reality is actually empty of all that what we think is real.

All that what we think is there is actually all not there. Does that make sense? It’s only our perception. We create something as reality which is actually not real. That is very very subtle, you know.

So they say with these teachings there were many bodhisattvas. But I think also people who have already walked through the Hīnayāna path, they were also their arhats. They were there. So these beings have quite a high intelligence. So they could understand these teachings.

But not everybody can understand this because if you hear that nothing really exists in the way we perceive it you can think: Oh, that must be nothing exists, you know, so who cares? And I’ve heard people saying that, you know: Oh, so that means I can now drive with my car against the wall and nothing is going to happen. It’s not like that. I’ve heard people say this after these teachings. So, after this the Buddha thought I have to explain a little bit more.

Also he said some things in this. He said for instance: Life is really suffering. Life is in the nature of suffering. That’s real. The suffering that you feel is real.

Here he says: Suffering doesn’t exist. That sounds very contradictory. But it’s just as the doctor, you know, sometimes you have a disease and you get a pill at one stage, but the pill should not be given in another stage of the disease. The same with these teachings. Some teachings you have to hear in a certain stage in your life or when you have a certain capacity when other teachings are completely unsuitable.

And another stage other teachings are more suitable. So in order to clarify what looks contradictory to certain students he did a third turning of the wheel there he sorry, this is a second. Third. I’m doing a little bit Dutch in it. Third turning of the wheel.

And there he clarified himself. And there he said: When I talk like this you have to interpret my teachings. I don’t mean that literally. You have to take it in a different way. And when I talk about this then you have to take my teachings as being definitive, then I really mean what I’m saying.

You know, so he gave a whole explanation on that. In Buddhism, in Tibetan Buddhism then there are philosophical schools and some say: Well, the definite, the definitive teachings are given here. And other schools say: Oh no, no, they are given here. Yeah? So we are all beings from different capacities.

And all these teachings are there to think about. And when we think about the teachings our own wisdom starts to work, right? The teachings are not like: Oh yeah, I take the teachings and then I can repeat them. It’s not like that. You think about the teachings and you see what is true for me.

You have to fight your own truth. You have to go beyond the words in your own mind. And these teachings can take you there by hearing them, by thinking about them, by hearing that this school says that and that school says that and yeah well you know how it’s going to be and why is it like that and what does this mean and meditate on that and you know and then slowly slowly your mind starts to change. Yeah? In Buddhism, you know, just as the Buddha, he didn’t teach because he wanted to share his experience, you know, he said: Oh I have something so fantastic I want to tell you all.

He waited until people asked him. Only when people ask you they are ready to hear the answer. So in Buddhism we have taken that attitude. So we will never preach if you do not want to hear it. If you hear a Buddhist preaching what you don’t want to hear they haven’t heard that first teaching.

Right, that’s not the intent of Buddhism. You wait till the person asks a question. Only then will the person open their mind and to be prepared to hear the answer. Hearing all the teachings can be very overwhelming, you know, because it’s so much, it goes quite against our own the nature that we see as our own nature. Right?

Because we believe that there is happiness in life and that we can find that. Even if we do not have the experience that we ever found it, still we have the conviction that it is possible to find it. There’s just something wrong with me and I haven’t done it yet right and I just have to do this and all the advertising tell you that you haven’t done the right thing yet. You just do this, borrow this, put your money in this bank, buy that house, buy this, then you’re going to be really happy. You haven’t been able to do that so of course happiness is not coming.

Right? That’s what we get told. But if you can start to think well maybe that is just how reality is, maybe there is just dissatisfaction all the time. It’s very painful to experience that. But painful to experience that.

Lama Tsongkhapa said that pain is the pain on the path to enlightenment. That shows that you are on the path to enlightenment. If you are able, if you have the courage to feel that, after that when you start deepening that you can remove that, that pain will disappear. But if you never confront that pain, you never go there, it will always be there the surface, always, you know, making you dissatisfied and never giving you what you want. Is this alright?

Everybody with me? Yep. So I’ll leave these. Next time we’ll talk about the third and the fourth turning of the wheel. And today I want to go more into the first one.

Are there any questions so far? No? Are people getting depressed? Yeah? What’s the difference between the emptiness and the unhappiness?

The emptiness and unhappiness? That’s why I’m here. Oh, you feel empty and you feel unhappy? Yeah, so that emptiness that you feel there, yes, we all feel that empty feeling. Not everyone feels that, I don’t agree with that.

Because I talk to people about that and they go what have got with that? You know? Some people are not aware of that or they have covered that up or they have enough distraction to keep them going or, you know, if you have a lot of merit, merit gives also lots of happy experiences. You know, if you have that in this life then you just don’t touch that. And that is not necessarily a good thing because if you never touch that feeling of: Oh, actually I feel empty and it’s all meaningless and it’s never satisfaction.

You never get the idea there might be something else. So having a perfect, very happy life might not be the ideal that we strive for. A little bit of the suffering makes that we go look for something else, for something better. And that can bring you here so that you can start studying. Emptiness is not the same emptiness that I’m talking about.

No, I mean I You know that? I’m under that. Okay. So that empty feeling is because we get there. I’ll tell you that today.

I want to first dig into the suffering if you don’t mind. I won’t do that too long. People getting depressed or not? You okay? A little bit?

It shouldn’t make the pushing out. Well, looking into suffering is never, never nice. Never. Because we are habituated to the aversion of suffering. So as soon as we start looking, the aversion comes up, you know, and then you already feel like: Oh, no, I actually don’t want that.

Even if you think: But I would like to know it, because of the habit that might still be the aversion. Great. It’s just how it is. Fantastic. Fantastic.

When I first heard Life is Suffering, first read that, I felt relief. Uh-huh. Because I think for me, I was my delusion wasn’t so much, you you get the nice house and the nice car, oh, you haven’t bought the right car or you’re not happy enough. For me it was my delusion about, oh, it’s related to my childhood. Right?

That I’m not happy. So so that’s about me. So there’s something wrong with me. Yeah. So but that was back then, and I I can’t actually do anything about this.

So I was just miserable. Yeah. Right? So so for me to hear that life is suffering, yeah I had stuff to deal with but life is suffering. And even if you deal with all your stuff then the suffering is still there of life, isn’t it?

Yeah. I mean I think it’s not good or bad, just is, that’s the way it is. I thought it shouldn’t be depressing. It’s depressing? Initially, it’s depressing, but I feel the same.

I mean, once you accept that that’s That’s how it is. That’s how it is Yeah. You can’t do a thing about it. Yes. You can just then take every every day as it comes on what’s wrong with depressing anyway.

It can be hard to watch other people that are close to you suffering. What’s wrong with depressing? What’s wrong with attachment? You know, it’s like these are both delusions. A glib statement, I mean I just want everybody to, you know, feel it.

I want to progress with digging more on the suffering and I want everybody to be alright with that. Alright? Go on, go on, go on. So Buddhism, what Buddhism does is they contemplate a lot on suffering, a lot. Why?

Because if you know the suffering you can look at what is the cause of that suffering and then you can free yourself from that. If you think about suffering, your own suffering, the suffering of others, what arises is compassion in your mind. You do not want people to suffer. You do not want yourself to suffer. So you try to find methods or you generate a wish that people be free of suffering.

That is compassion, you know. And we want to have a lot of compassion because compassion is like the motor that is going to push us towards enlightenment. And the stronger our compassion the more sentient beings we can embrace in our compassion the faster we go. Right? So in order to generate that we have to contemplate on the suffering.

You all know that, I guess you all know that from life. If you get confronted with suffering and the first time you want to run away, you get angry, you deny it, then you accept it and then from there suddenly in this acceptance there is this compassion. Right? That’s fantastic when you get there, isn’t it? Even if you have a disease, a terminal disease, even if it’s something that you can never overcome, the moment you arrive at a stage of full acceptance, the compassion is there and there’s total peace with whatever is going on.

Then if you have experienced that, you can also feel what other people experience when you see them going through the same thing. And then you can go from your place of acceptance, you can be with them and you can give your compassion to them and they will feel that it is as if you take it away from them. Oh, after I talked to you I felt so much better. That is the power of compassion. If you listen without compassion the person keeps talking, can never stop.

And after you have to go to somebody else and tell again the story. If you have a doctor who can listen with compassion to your story you’re half cured when you walk out of his room. Right? It’s like you give your story away and then gone. That’s the power of compassion.

That is what we try to generate in our mind. And we all want others to be free of suffering. So that’s what we have to do to get there. So when we contemplate on suffering, we contemplate for instance with human beings on the fact that just being born, there is a lot of suffering in that. You know, we think about babies being born that’s very happy, very happy experience.

But if you really look what a baby and the mom go through, you know, maybe some stuff from the moment of conception. You saw mom start to vomit quite early, get sick, some moms have to lay down all the time, can’t drink, can’t eat hot spices, whatever. And then the baby inside the stomach has all these impressions of the food, of sound, of movement, of, you know, pressure, of if if you read Buddhism how to describe it horrible, horrible. And then you have the suffering of birth where you have to go through the birth channel which is for the mom incredibly painful and for the baby incredibly painful, you know. The mom is stretched up and the baby is completely compressed in order to make that happen.

And then you come out and then, you know, the baby normally cries and if it doesn’t cry we hit them on the in order to make it cry because then it’s good, then we know that it breathe. And then there’s this big line and there’s all these sounds and it’s terrible. And we think, Oh, how cute, how nice. Deny already completely the suffering. Their mum midwife friend says babies don’t know they’re being born.

They think they’re dying. Yeah, that could actually be. It is like dying actually. And they’re rejecting out of their being with mom and they separate their it’s very painful. We do not, you know, I took, I worked a lot with babies, and although they were all traumatized, I never thought about babies or at birth as painful until I met Buddhism and I thought: Oh, that’s not true.

It’s all very nice and beautiful. But now I must say it is, you know. The more you think about it, it’s like: Oh my God, where did we go through in order to get here? So then when we are born we know that one day we have to die. It’s like it’s part of the package.

It’s included in birth. We will have to die. Know, and birth is like a separation. And death is also like a separation. And then from birth to death there are constant separations.

We constantly separate it from whatever we want, suffering, you know, and if we have, or we can’t get what we want and then there is that separation. Painful, separation is painful. Separation is pain. Every separation is pain. Every saying goodbye is pain.

But we can only say goodbye when we come together, you know. So coming together is really nice, but again in that package is again the pain of separation. And in everything that is nice in life there is included in that is the package of the separation of that. Right? Experiences come and go, they’re transient.

They are not concrete, they have no substance, we can’t hold on to them. It’s like every good that arises in it is the opposite, present already. We will definitely experience that. And what we do is we deny that. And when the good arises we try to hold on.

Oh that’s a really nice relationship. And then we hold on no matter how horrible it’s going to be, but we know that once it was really nice and we hope that at night it’s going to come back one time. Right? We cannot let go of it, saying: Well it was good but now it’s not good anymore and I move on. It’s very difficult to do that, isn’t it?

To see that. When we are born, because of the nature of our life, suffering will come, you know, sickness will come. Our love is quite fragile, although we might appear as being strong and, you know, we can handle anything and nothing will happen to us. Our life is actually very very fragile. One virus can kill us.

We don’t see it, we don’t know why it happens, we just somewhere catch it and finish it. Right? Very very fragile. But somehow it appears as being strong. So thinking about how fragile our life is and that illness most likely will come, you know, there are not many people who make it till their death without getting ill.

So that’s part of life. And when we are ill, when things do not function well, suffer because we want to be healthy. When we’re healthy we’re happy. We want to be happy, you know. So contemplating on that.

And then death in itself is very painful, you know, saying goodbye to everything that you believed was yours, saying goodbye to your friends, your family, your loved ones, your possessions, your body, you know, your long term friend that was always with you through your whole life. You have to let it go and you have to move on and you don’t know where you’re going. Very painful. And then in dying there can be a lot of suffering, you know, for the body that is out of balance or the mental agony that you can feel. So by contemplating on that you try to realize that life is in the nature of suffering.

No matter what we’re doing, suffering is around the corner. What we also get in life, which can be a big suffering, is we get things that we do not want. Know, unapplied, all these unwished for things that arise. You know, your boss sacks you or somebody drives into your new car or, you know, your partner leaves you without you even having seen anything coming and all these things happen to us and we never asked for that, we never wanted that. And still we have to deal with that.

And we have no control over that. We don’t know when it’s going to happen. It’s just there one day. And it happens to everybody, you know. And then because we have these aggregates, because we have this body and mind that is under the control of our attachment and our anger.

We know that or do we speak some strange language when I say that? Every moment we are looking for comfort, every moment we try to make ourselves feel better, every moment when there is something that we do not like there is aversion in our mind and we try to adjust so that we go back to the comfort. Right? Every moment. And we cannot stop that.

No way that we can stop that. We don’t know how to do that. We are completely controlled by that habit of constantly looking for comfort. That control, being controlled by that habit means that in every moment we create the causes for more of the same. So because we are looking for constant happiness, what we do is we actually create the causes for suffering.

Why is that? The way we look for happiness doesn’t bring us happiness, does it? Somehow we get deceived on the way. Somehow we our view of reality is not really realistic and because of that if we want to have happiness that in itself is already, we do not know how to achieve that in a realistic way. So the way how we try to achieve happiness is unrealistic.

Will never bring us a result that we would like it to bring. True? Can you follow that? So when we want to be free of suffering, how do we do that? We run away from the suffering.

That doesn’t really free us from suffering. That just creates the illusion that a suffering is not there. The only way to be free of suffering is if we go to the bottom of the suffering and then it naturally subsides. So habitually we doing exactly the wrong thing to be happy and to be free of suffering. And we do that every moment.

And by doing that we create the cause for more of the same. When I want to be free of suffering what I normally do, you know for instance, I don’t know your name. Daniel. Daniel. Daniel punches me on the face.

In order for me, how do I think I’m to be free of suffering? By punching him back. Alright? But when I punch him back due to the law of karma one day in another life I meet Daniel in another form and the punch comes back. Right?

So when I follow my first instinct of wanting to be free of suffering I create the causes for more suffering in the future. So when he punches me I have to reflect, Oh my God, must mean I have done this in previous life to him. So if I punch him back now he will come back to me later. So I’ll try to hold my hand and don’t do that and maybe say, Oh, thank you so very much. Now my negative karma is purified.

If I can do that, completely accept it, suffering is gone. If I can completely let go of my aversion to the suffering which makes me retaliate, my suffering is gone. Yeah, maybe not in the instant but if you train your mind like that, that is what is going to happen. If I can do that, stop my first instinctive reaction and do actually completely the opposite, then I get out of the control of my uncontrolled mind. Then I can free myself from my suffering.

But at the moment, you know, we are not capable of doing that. Which means that every moment we create causes for more suffering. That in itself is a suffering. We can’t stop it. You know, we just slowly, slowly every day, slowly, slowly we build up more, more cause for suffering, more cause for suffering and we can’t stop it.

If you think about that each and every one of us is doing that all the time and not only we, everybody in LA, everybody in Australia, everybody in the whole world, everybody is doing that. And everybody wants to be free of that and we don’t know how to do it, you know. That in itself is huge suffering and if you contemplate on that that can generate a lot of compassion in your mind. Also if you can see that that, that is the real suffering. All the others are like peak experiences of suffering but that constant habit that we have that is the deepest level of suffering, the most subtle of suffering.

So, I have to finish that. So that is one division that we can look into suffering. Another division that we have is that we talk about we can experience the suffering of pain which means that everything that is unpleasant is called the suffering of pain. So when we feel literally pain, when we feel mental pain, when we have the separations, when we have the illness, when we die, when we that is the suffering of pain. And then the second suffering is called the suffering of change.

The suffering of change is all these present experiences we have that naturally will turn into unpleasantness, that naturally will change into something else. And we think that that is happiness. We grasp it as happiness. Right? And I always talk about the chocolate especially when Fiona see it.

When we see chocolate we think this is going to make me happy and we think that is real happiness, you know, so we start eating this chocolate. But the happiness of that piece will go, isn’t it? So then we eat more chocolate. If the happiness of chocolate is real happiness that will mean that the more chocolate I eat the happier I become. If something is real the more I get from it the happier I become.

Then you can say: Oh the happiness of chocolate is not real chocolate. It’s not real happiness. It’s real chocolate. It’s not real happiness. The happiness is transient.

It is coming and going. Right? The happiness of liberation from saṃsāra that is real happiness because the more you remove your delusions from your mind stream the level of happiness goes up, up, up, up, up. And if you have realized emptiness and you start to remove completely the happiness goes up and goes never down. That’s where we want to go.

And goes up till enlightenment and there, as soon as you realize emptiness the process is irreversible. You cannot go back. So you’re there, you always have this level of happiness. You can only go up, you go up until you achieve enlightenment. And that state is, you can’t change that state.

That happiness that you have there will never ever change till the end of time. You can never fall back to where we are here, never. As soon as you realize emptiness you’re already out of that and then you go only up. But on the path to emptiness we can slide backwards and forwards. Yes, yes, yes.

Some realizations you can lose them again. I talked about bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment. The first stage, if you have that, you can still lose that by getting angry at somebody because, you know, for whatever reason. But then after that, in the second stage of that, you also will not lose that kind of realization. And then as soon as you have realized emptiness you know.

They say that no matter what path you practice within sixteen lifetimes you will get enlightened. You know. So that’s where we try to go. Does that answer your question? Yes.

Say it again. You still have that empty feeling? Nothing’s right at the moment, no? No, but Do you know sixteen lifetimes is twelve hundred and ninety years? Uh-huh.

You can’t better that out. What? Maximum, maximum right? Maximum. Well if you contemplate that we have been existing since beginningless time Countless eons.

We existed before the earth came into existence. You know, if we trace we did it in the first module. We trace back where our mind comes from and we cannot trace back any beginning. So that goes back so far. Twelve and a year is nothing.

Mean dinosaurs definitely have been our mothers. We’ll talk about that in I’m not sure if I’m going to go further into the course of suffering today because it’s almost nine o’clock and I would like to do meditation. So I’ll do that next week. Suffering. So all our suffering, I can just give you this one, all our suffering comes from the aversion and to the things that we do not like and the attachment to the things that we like.

And both these delusions come from us not knowing reality, which is called ignorance. Or actually it’s not only that we do not know reality, we have a very distorted view of reality. We think that things are real that are not real. You know? I was at retreat with Lama Zopa and he kept on saying: We are constantly hallucinating.

Constantly. It’s like we’re under the drugs and we don’t even realize that we’re under the drug. We think that’s all real, know. It’s all cool man. It’s all not real.

It’s very shocking. So we get constantly deceived by our own mind and whatever attempt we do to fix it, because it’s based on deception it can never give us what we want. You know? So unless we purify our mind and really start to see how reality is and address where the problem is, where we start to see why we see things not in the way they are, you know, what is the root cause of that, and I’ll talk about that next time. Our grasping at inherent existence of things, grasping that things exist the way they appear.

Grasping that I exist in the way it appears. You know, because and and because I think I exist in the way I appear, I want to be happy. And because of that I look for things that that I think are gonna make me happy and I grasp for them. And it’s all deception. So it will never get me where I wanna go.

What’s the between contemplation and meditation? What’s the difference? Yeah, I think contemplation just comes before meditation. And yeah, it’s a pity. You did the last module?

You didn’t. We had asked the Geshe to talk about about listening to the teachings and then reflecting, contemplating and then meditating. And that is normally the order that you do it. You first need to have the idea and the concept and you listen to that. And then you go home and then you you look it up and you you get a better idea and you try to understand and you reflect like, you know, is that true?

Is it not true? How does it work for me? And then when you get a feel like, yeah, you know, you can you can you can see that whole thing, then you contemplate, it goes a little bit deeper. So maybe during the day it keeps on going through your mind. You keep on contemplating.

And then when you meditate you actually go and sit down and you try it’s like you come to a conclusion. I come to the conclusion life is in the nature of suffering. I can see, I can completely feel that. Then I focus on that single pointedly. And then when I do that I can realize it in deeper in my mind.

And sometimes you know you concentrate and then suddenly you forget and you think: Oh, what was it again? So you contemplate again until you get it really clear and then you focus one pointedly on that until you get a realization. Realization means that you go beyond your words, that it becomes more than words, that it becomes a living experience. You cannot experience anything that doesn’t no, I shouldn’t say that. We experience constantly things that don’t exist.

If you meditate on these kind of things and you start experiencing that, that is what reality is. Then you start to reconnect with reality. Everybody happy? Relatively. Relatively.

It’s all relatively, isn’t it? Even when we are liberated from some sorrow, we’re still relatively happy. We can be more happy. And you’re happy to do a meditation on suffering? Brought two.

Did you all get the homework? Little piece of paper? Not yet. What do you mean not yet? You didn’t get the paper?

No. When we get on the way. Oh, is that right? Oh, that’s good. Don’t forget to take your homework paper.

And I also need to make a time with those who want to do exam for how to meditate and for mind and its potential. Shall we do that after the meditation that people who want to do that, that they stay? Yeah, and we try to find a time that we can do that. Okay. So, try to sit comfortably.

And what we’ll do is we just reflect on the three types of suffering. So you have listened to it. We don’t have we haven’t done really the reflection and the contemplation, but we can do that in the meditation. So then first of all, check your motivation. And try to think that we’re doing this meditation to learn to understand the nature of life.

We learn to understand what suffering is. So that we can recognize it better in ourselves and others which will help to generate more compassion for ourselves and others and which will help us to realize quicker our full potential, which is enlightenment. And only when we achieve that do we have the capacity to help each and every sentient being to become free from their suffering. So first of all, we reflect on the suffering of suffering, which can come in every physical or mental form that you can imagine. And when we go through the different examples, to really feel the suffering as if you experience it right now.

So first of all think of all the normal everyday problems that your body experiences. All the aches and pains, the heat and cold, hunger and thirst being overweight, being underweight, cuts and burns, fatigue. These things we experience every day. And then think of the more extreme physical suffering you have experienced in the past. And you see the possibility of it happening again.

There is no guarantee it will not. And then think of the physical experience that you will experience when you’re old. And you can picture yourself at the age of eighty or ninety. Your degenerated, wrinkled, not functioning properly anymore. And then finally, there was death.

Think of the different ways you could die and the suffering of the body then. And then contemplate the fact that like every other material thing, it is in the nature of the body to change, to meet with pain, to degenerate and eventually die. You cannot expect anything else than that. Therefore, it is unrealistic and unwise to be attached to the body, especially if you’re attached to a healthy young body. Or even at any age, the body will change tomorrow, next week, every day.

Bring your mind to your mental and emotional suffering. You can think of experiences of the past, of loneliness, depression, grief, frustrations, jealousy, anger, fear, confusion, anxiety. And if you go back in your life, you can see there was rarely any time when you were not experiencing at least some of these emotions. And then at your present state of mind. Are you anxious, depressed, angry, confused, agitated?

Think of the mental suffering that is likely to come in the future. When people close to you die or leave you. Or when you yourself die. Or when other things occur in your life that are likely to cause unhappiness to one degree or another. By contemplating like that, you see that every life has problems.

Every life has suffering. No matter how good a life, suffering is always part of it. And suffering can be more subtle than just the suffering of suffering. A more subtle level of suffering are those experiences that we normally think of as pleasure. And they are suffering because they do not last.

Every nice experience comes to an end without fully satisfying us. And Because it doesn’t fully satisfy us, we desire to repeat it. Because somehow we hope that we will find a satisfaction in it. We have this expectation that certain things will make us happy, permanently happy, stable happy. And when we don’t find that happiness the first time, we repeat the experience.

And you can think of any pleasurable experience that is true for each. A nice meal, sex, a day at the beach, music, a movie, a cigarette, even sitting comfortably in a chair. Eventually you will need to change the position because the comfort has turned into discomfort. Or sitting by a fire on a chilly day. At first it’s really pleasant, but soon you have to move away because it’s too hot.

Contemplate how everything changes. How experiences, no matter how pleasurable, do not last, but lead inevitably to dissatisfaction, irritation, boredom, or loneliness. And because of this, it is not reasonable to cling to any person or any object, as a means of finding lasting satisfaction. Clinging to persons or objects in an attempt to find lasting satisfaction brings in fact the opposite result. And then think about all pervading suffering, which is even more subtle than the suffering of change.

The fact that we lack a direct intuitive insight into the true nature of things. And because of this, we have no control over what we experience and what we create for the future. It’s like we are stuck in a cycle. A complex web of problems. No matter what we’re trying to do, there are always problems.

No matter how well we develop, there are always problems. I think that we’re not the only one, you know. With us, all beings in cyclic existence are caught up in the same web of problems. But then think, because this web of problems is based on a wrong view of reality. That means that we can change it.

If our web of problems was based on the right view of reality, we had no other choice, but it’s not. If we learn to understand the nature of reality and we can really see reality as it is, that will cut through confusion and our habit of following the ego’s tendencies, looking for pleasure, not wanting to have suffering. And as long as we haven’t realized the nature of reality yet, we can use our life and energy in positive ways. Like helping others with love and generosity. By counteracting harmful attitudes that we have.

And the more we do that, the more merit we have, the more we can learn to understand the nature of reality. And the more the web of confusion gradually untangles. And then try to come to the conclusion that until we stop running away from the reality of suffering and learn to deal honestly with the rough, unsubdued aspects of our mind, we will continue the circle in confusion. Awareness of suffering gives us the energy we need to penetrate the nature of reality. So that’s what we can use our life for.

And the more we understand reality, the more we can overcome suffering. And then dedicate your intentions and energy to the growth of insight into the nature of reality in yourself and all others. And thank you very much for coming. So next time we’ll talk about the rest of the four noble truths. And then after that, we’re gonna talk about the path, the stages of the path to enlightenment as described in the Lam Rim.

Thank you for coming and good luck in your week with contemplating the suffering of saṃsāra. I’ll do it with you. I’ll do my homework. And those who are gonna do the exam, I’m just gonna grab my diary. What?

Did you fall asleep?