Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 63-minute session, Ven Jamyang teaches precious human rebirth, weaving striking metaphors—a blind turtle surfacing once per hundred years through a golden ring, grain stuck to glass—throughout to convey its utter rarity. He guides students through the eight freedoms and ten endowments that make human life suitable for Dharma practice. He then pivots to the crucial question: why do we squander this on worldly pleasures? Jamyang explains that both ethics and generosity are essential (neither alone suffices) to generate such a rebirth, and that wasting this life exceeds losing infinite universes of jewels. He addresses the eight worldly concerns to avoid. For practitioners with some Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: session 3 precious human rebirth.mp3
UUID: 3030283b-c4c2-4cf6-bb91-8fd3cf4662da
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Presenting the Path (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 63.0 minutes
Words: ~3,552
So after lunch, we might have a little bit problem with staying awake. That’s okay. That’s just what happens when the stomach is full. So if you feel that you drift a little bit off, you can you can you have to judge yourself. Sometimes it’s helpful to just allow it to happen knowing that within a few minutes that will be gone.
If you start fighting it, it might be that you will have to fight for fifteen minutes instead of going away for two minutes. But if you know that when you fight it, it’s much better for you. You you fight it. Okay? So I’m gonna leave that to you.
I’m not checking if you’re sleeping or not. Unless you’re snoring, we might have to shake you. Just feel at ease with whatever happens, know, it’s not really. If I fall asleep, please wake me up. So make yourself comfortable.
Make sure that your back is straight and at the same time relaxed. Your hands are either on your knees or your lap. Your head is a little bit bent forward. Your toes are relaxed. Your tongue is touching the palate just behind the teeth.
And your eyes are closed, but allow a little bit of light to come in. Be aware of your body. Try to bring all your energy to your body, all your mind energy, all your thoughts. Try to pull them away of their object and bring that energy to your body. Letting it come to rest.
Observe your breath going in and out. You can do that by observing the rising and falling of your abdomen. Breathe naturally. And enjoy how your mind is coming to rest. And then think from time without beginning until the present, In all anomalous previous lives, we have been dying and being reborn in the cycle of Samsāra, the six realms of suffering.
Now we have received perfect human rebirth, which has eighteen attributes, the eight freedoms and the ten endowments or richnesses. So we can use this rebirth to free ourselves from saṃsāra by attaining enlightenment or by becoming a bodhisattva or an arhat. At least we should be fully confident of avoiding a lower rebirth. So now we have the eight freedoms, which are the conditions of existence free of the eight unfavourable states, in which beings do not have the chance to practice Dharma. We are free of these eight unfavorable states.
And normally we do not real realize that freedom because we take so for granted that we have this human body. We don’t realize how easy it is to have another body and that there were many lifetimes where we did have another body. And there will be in the future many lifetimes where we will have another body. But by having a human rebirth, by having a human body, we have the freedom from birth in the hell realms. We have freedom from birth as a hungry ghost and as an animal.
If we are born in the three lower realms, the hell realm, the preta realm and the animal realm, we have no freedom to practice Dharma, because of the unimaginable suffering and deep ignorance that we continuously experience. And it can be helpful to imagine that we do have the body of a hell being or a hungry ghost or an animal. And by imagining that, feeling that there is no opportunity to practice Dharma because the suffering is so unimaginable, because there is so much ignorance. So you can first think that you have such a body and then rejoice that you have freedom from that in this lifetime. We also have freedom from birth as a long-life god.
If we are born in the realm of the long-life gods, we have no freedom to practice Dharma, because we are constantly distracted by objects of the senses and high samsaric pleasures. Or if we would be born as a god in the formless realms, we would be unconscious from birth until death. We are born human. And being born human, we have freedoms. Freedom from being a barbarian in a irreligious country.
And you can think about countries where there is no religion, where there is no Buddhism, where people are just following their self-cherishing mind. Where there is not even idea that you can do something else with your life. We are free from that. If we would be reborn in a as a barbarian, we have no opportunity to meet a Dharma. We have freedom from being deaf.
If we are deaf, we cannot communicate with others properly. We cannot hear the teachings, and we cannot be ordained. And when you have a sense of that freedom, rejoice and think how wonderful that we have freedom from that. We have freedom from holding on to wrong views. If we hold wrong views, we have no belief in the dharma.
We would not believe in the existence of past and future lives. We would not believe in karma. We would not believe that there was an absolute and relative truth. We wouldn’t believe that emptiness exists. And we would have no faith in the Three Jewels.
So if we would have these wrong views, practicing Dharma is impossible. The thought of wanting to listening to these teachings would not even occur in your mind. And you can think about those that you know, who have no belief in any of that. And we have freedom from being born during a time when the teachings of the Buddha are not known, when Buddha has not descended. If born in a period without the Buddha or his teachings, there is no freedom to practice Dharma, because we would not be able to find it.
And imagine how a time like that would look like. And then rejoice that we are free of that. So these eight freedoms give us the opportunity to practice Dharma. And then we also have ten endowments. And these endowments are the chances we have received, that give us the opportunity to practice the Dharma perfectly.
And the first endowment is that we are born as a human being. The second one is that we are born in the center of a religious country. And that means that we are born in a place where practicing the Dharma is possible. We are born with perfect organs. We can hear, we can see, we can communicate.
Our body is functioning well. We have avoided creating or having others create the five extreme negative actions, which are killing our mother, killing our father and an arhat, wounding a Buddha, or causing disunity amongst the Sangha. That is extremely heavy negative karma, which makes it very difficult to practice Dharma. Another endowment that we have is that we believe in the practice of Dharma. We are born during a non-dark period.
Which means a period where the Buddha has descended and where he has taught. We have been shown the teachings of the Buddha or his followers, as there are still people existing who have experienced or realized the teachings. The still living realizations of the Buddha himself. And we can think of the Dalai Lama, Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Lama Chöden Rinpoche, Khensur Rinpoche. These beings show what it means to have real ised the teachings, how it looks like to be or become a Buddha.
So we can see that the teachings are more than just words. And in this life with all its endowments, we are following the path of the Buddha’s teachings. And if you just realize how many people come in contact with the Dalai Lama, see a realized being, but have no idea of wanting to follow that same path. These two things do not come together. We need different causes for them to arise in our mind.
And we have these different causes. And we are receiving the kindness and compassion of others, such as help for our Dharma practice, or help with our temporal needs such as food or robes. And we receive kindness and compassion from our teacher giving us the teachings. Having this perfect human rebirth is extremely useful, because it gives us the chance to achieve both ultimate and temporal goals. It allows us to create much merit in a very short time.
So we have now the perfect chance, definitely to end the continuous, beginningless suffering of the bondage to the will of life and to achieve enlightenment. This perfect human rebirth makes enlightenment possible, by completing the collection of merits. It gives the opportunity to develop develop perfect skills to help others. And it can also result in worldly benefits, such as becoming the richest man or woman in the world, through having created good karma generous and giving lavishly to others. So this life has many opportunities.
Many, many causes conditions came together. We have all the freedoms, we have all the endowments. And only because we have all of them, this life can become so useful. So think about the chance that all these causes and conditions come together. Wasting this very precious human rebirth is many millions of times worse than losing universes full of jewels.
Because it wastes the numberless lives spent trying to gain this precious human rebirth, which has resulted from good karma, created by morality and charity. These virtues have been practiced mainly in the human realm during several previous lives, each of which was the result of many others. So think about all these lifetimes that we needed, in order to have these causes and conditions coming together. By not using this lifetime, we would waste all the lifetimes in which we created the causes and conditions for this one. If we would waste this very precious human rebirth, we would waste the present opportunity of attaining enlightenment and achieving all other realizations.
And we would waste the possibility of better future lives, in which we could have achieved realizations and attained enlightenment, stopping all suffering. And then imagine numberless jewels, filling countless universes. All these jewels together, they could never have the value of this precious human rebirth. If all the jewels that we have possessed in all our past lives could fill infinite space, what good would do that? And if we really think deeply about it, we can see that no real happiness would come from that because it is of no use in controlling our negative mind.
We must check up on our own past experiences, or put ourselves in the position of a wealthy man to see how material possessions cannot help us put an end to suffering. And it is important to deeply see and feel our own experience of such situations. So try to really imagine that you are rich, that you are rich in many lifetimes, and what all that money really has brought you. That all that money in no way helps us to control our negative mind. So all that money cannot buy real happiness.
And then if you feel that you need a stretch, we can do that now. If you wanna keep on meditating, that’s fine too. And then if you feel ready to go back to the meditation. First, find your posture. And then we keep on reflecting on not wasting this human rebirth.
So we should not waste this precious human rebirth by clinging to the eight worldly dharmas, are craving for pleasures of the six senses, craving to be free of the unpleasant. Craving to hear sweet, ego pleasing sounds or words. Craving to not hear the ugly, displeasing words or sounds. Craving to acquire material things. Craving to avoid losing or not obtaining material things.
Craving for personal praise and admiration. Craving to If we use this precious human rebirth only to gain the eight worldly dharmas or higher samsaric pleasures with the self-cherishing thought, we shall circle continuously in the six samsaric realms of unimaginable suffering, as we have circled since beginningless time in all our previous lives. And this is what we normally do most moments of the day, having the eight worldly concerns. The beginning of our lives, of all lives, is not even seen by the Buddha’s omniscient mind, let alone by the mind of ordinary beings. And if we continue to work for these things, for the eight worldly dharmas, we shall suffer in the circle of saṃsāra.
Usually we are afraid of the slightest temporary physical sicknesses, such as colds or headaches, or suffering from heat or cold, or of the pain of a too full or empty stomach. We find these things really unbearable and try to stop them by all kinds of temporal means. On the other hand, we are not at all afraid of the greatest sufferings we have experienced in past lives. Those as rebirth and death, and the many other unspeakable sufferings of the six samsaric realms that are caused by greed, ignorance, and hatred. Neither do we think or worry about these sufferings.
We merely try to stop those sufferings of the moment. And this only causes, creates the causes for more future suffering. Try to see that we are mainly concerned with the small picture, the picture of how we feel in this moment, that we hardly ever think about the big picture in which death and rebirth occurs again and again. While we are in the middle of a life, we do not think, how can I stop the suffering of death? How can I stop the suffering of birth?
But we do try to stop the sufferings of the moment. Pain that we feel in our body while we’re sitting so long. The suffering of hunger and thirst. And such actions are extremely foolish and non sensical, like those of a crazy person. Lama Zopa says about this: We can have human thoughts and actions, yet we behave as a dumb animal.
If we care so much about any momentary suffering and sickness, why do we not care about the tremendous continuous suffering of our future lives? Why do we not worry about and try to eliminate the true cause of suffering? Spending this perfect human rebirth, desiring only the eight worldly dharmas and working for the enjoyment of samsaric pleasures. It’s like trading universes full of jewels for kaka. The more we desire and enjoy the eight worldly dharmas and high samsaric pleasures, the more we create confusion and remain ignorant.
This perfect human rebirth is extremely difficult to find. Because the causes that bring this result, the practice of ethics and generosity, is extremely difficult to create. It is almost impossible to practice ethics and generosity if we are not human. And even if we are human, it is not easy. First of all, we need to be sensitive in order to see suffering.
And then there are many other factors involved in the creation of ethics and generosity. For instance, if we hold wrong views and believe that there is no such thing as the law of karma, we make no effort to collect merit. If we are physically handicapped, for example by missing a limb or being a deaf mute or mentally retarded, we are unable to practice these two virtuous actions perfectly. To effectively bring about the perfect human rebirth, we should understand that there is a cause for it and what the cause of it is. We must understand karma and its result.
Many people talk about this, but they do not recognize the true nature of the mind and have gross misconceptions about the practice of ethics and generosity. And even those who have correct knowledge of karma, find these practices difficult to follow properly. So we must know how to practice them correctly. Many people for instance think that sacrificing other sentient beings to the gods is the right way to relieve their own suffering and find self happiness by being reborn in heaven. As in fact the result of such actions is rebirth in the lowest hell realms in as short a time as possible.
And you can think about your own situation and how it is difficult to practice ethics and generosity. What stops you from doing that? What triggers you to do the opposite? And it is essential that both ethics and generosity are created. Rebirth in the upper realms mainly depends on ethical discipline or moral conduct.
So if we would practice generosity alone, that cannot bring us the result of a perfect human rebirth. If we practice generosity without ethics, we might end up, if we are lucky, as a dog in a rich family. Likewise, it is insufficient to practice morality alone. The result would be poverty and difficulty in satisfying temporal needs. And if we have a human rebirth, but we have to constantly engage in finding our temporal needs that would hinder our Dharma practice greatly.
If we lack material enjoyments right now, that is because of our previously imperfect practice of generosity. And then think about the following lives. A life in which you are very rich and famous, but you’re avaricious and unable to be generous. And even if you would keep your morality, you would not be able to achieve a perfect human rebirth. Or imagine you have been born in the lower realms because of your lack of morality.
And at the same time of your generosity you enjoy the results of that. You have a good life. But then that good life you can never practice because you are too ignorant. I try to see that one of the two generosity or ethics is not enough. Having a perfect human rebirth is extremely rare.
If we can if we think about all the beings that are distributed through the six realms, realms. The vast majority of sentient beings are in the hell realms. Their number is unbelievably vast. And compared to their number, the beings in the hungry ghosts in the hungry ghost realm are less. And compared to them, the animal beings are less.
And compared to them, to human beings are less. So if we think about how many human beings there are, and then think about how many animals there are, including all the creatures and insects that live in the ground. The amount of animals is so much bigger than the amount of human beings. And in exactly the same way, the number of hungry ghosts is so much bigger than the number of animals. And the number of hell realm beings is so much bigger than the number of hungry ghosts.
And then from those who have a human rebirth, those who have a perfect human rebirth, that number is even smaller. I think that is how rare it is to have a body like the one I have. How amazing. We are told that the chance of gaining a precious human rebirth is that of a blind turtle swimming in a vast ocean and surfaces only once, every one hundred years. And then when it surfaces, it puts its head through a small golden ring floating somewhere on the surface.
So the chance of finding a perfect human rebirth is the chance of that turtle putting its head through the small golden ring. Finding a perfect human rebirth is more difficult than throwing grain so that it sticks to a glass wall or lands on the point of a needle. How amazing. So then come to the conclusion we want to make this rare opportunity of having a perfect human rebirth highly meaningful by using it to free ourselves from saṃsāra. And having done this meditation, may that become a cause for all sentient beings to have peace and happiness.
So we have a. Break. And if you feel that you want to stay inside with your awareness, just get yourself that space, you know, and if you want to communicate with somebody, just check if that person is wanting that or is turning away from you. Don’t feel that it is a personal thing. We’ll come back in half an hour to do another meditation.
Yeah. Did you get that meditation on a human rebirth? Oh, is that there? It’s in there. The eight worldly dharmas.
There is one thing there. When it says even the Buddha with his omniscient mind, The Buddha with his omniscient mind cannot see the beginning of our lifetimes. How come he can’t see the beginning? Because there is no beginning. If you think about it, you cannot trace the beginning.
So even the Buddha cannot see that. But can he see when he see when something is about to be born? But he cannot see the beginning of all rebirth. Oh, I see right from the very, very beginning. He can’t see that bit.
Find that bit. Because it’s not to be seen. Yeah. It can’t be seen. Yeah.
Under I understood because before that’s jumped out of me, didn’t quite get it. How can he not be able to see? He can see everything but not that. That’s what I thought, but I thought it meant that particular being through this.