Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Margaret McAndrew’s teaching in this 44-minute talk challenges the intensity trap in Dharma practice. She contrasts the Arhat path (individual liberation) with the Bodhisattva path, using Thai forest monk Ajahn Mun as her example. She then addresses the Eight Worldly Dharmas—the eight worldly concerns (gain and loss, praise and blame, pleasure and displeasure, reputation and notoriety) that distract from genuine practice. Crucially, she teaches that spiritual practice need not exclude rest, music, or social time, provided motivation stays anchored in Dharma. She cautions against Lung, a condition arising from over-intense practice. The talk moves into meditation on death (its certainty, the uncertainty of timing, and that only Dharma can help at the final moment) before concluding with refuge in the Three Jewels as the path to liberation from cyclic existence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 DwP 1998 02 11.mp3
UUID: 3c3b3281-e075-4624-8a03-0a52bb0c98f9
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-02-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.5 minutes
Words: ~6,162
Away from being drawn back into rebirth under the compulsion of delusion and karma. And having achieved the the power of being free of that, having achieved liberation, then that being doesn’t then get drawn back into rebirth, but remains after the death of that particular body, the mind remains in a state of blissful meditation, very, very peaceful meditation, and has gone completely away from the control of karma and delusion. And so at that stage they’re not in a position to communicate with other beings, and so they no longer guide disciples, they’re no longer able to help. And so it’s only while they’re actually still in the body in which they achieve their realization, that they continue to guide others. So there’s another way of going about it, is the Bodhisattva path.
And the Bodhisattva has followed the Mahāyāna teachings on the development of compassion and the thought of enlightenment for the welfare of all. And there are different kinds of bodhisattvas. We’re talking now about somebody who’s followed the Mahāyāna path right from the beginning. This bodhisattva would, right from the beginning, before they achieve the higher levels of meditation, be working to develop compassion and love very strongly. And so when they achieve the higher levels of the path, they’re not just aiming at liberation, they’re aiming at full enlightenment.
And when they develop that motivation very strongly, so that it becomes the driving force in their consciousness, then they become called a bodhisattva. So we can actually think about this motivation and start to develop it now. And sometimes you can get it quite strongly for a little while, but you have to keep on working at it, because it’s still artificial, it’s still an artifact that we’re producing in ourselves. And after this has been done fully, and it becomes very fully embedded in the consciousness, so that it doesn’t have to be worked on, at that stage the person actually becomes a Bodhisattva. And that’s a high realization, even though the bodhisattva at that stage might not have realized emptiness and some of these other important realizations.
But still, it’s a very big jump from being an ordinary person to being a bodhisattva. And that person, then when they do go on and achieve the realizations which remove the obscurations, the imprints of karma and delusion, the grosser level of obscuration, when they’ve achieved that, they’re not compelled to take rebirth under the force of delusion and karma, but they continue to take rebirth under the force of their great compassion. And at this stage they haven’t received Buddhahood yet, because Buddhahood is a more advanced state, which also requires the removal of some subtle obscurations. And these subtle obscurations don’t prevent liberation, but they prevent full omniscience, which is the quality of the enlightened mind. And so the bodhisattva keeps on working life after life, developing greater and greater qualities, and eventually achieves full Buddhahood.
Is that clear? That’s really just explaining it in a few words, and it’s a very profound topic, so there’s a lot of technicalities in there that would need to be explained if you’re going to study that topic in detail. So obviously it’s not something that’s going to be understood in full in just a few words, but that’s just sketching the outline of it. His Holiness would be a Buddha actually. No, no, no, that’s fine.
I mean, yes, he’d be a perfect example of mean, from our point of view, when we’re ordinary people, when we meet a bodhisattva and a Buddha, we can’t tell them apart because the qualities of a bodhisattva are so wonderful that they seem just like a Buddha to us. And in fact if we were to meet an Arhat, the Arhat would seem just like a Buddha to us because of their wonderful qualities. So these are really very high levels of the path that we’re talking about. And I don’t want to give the idea that the Arahat is a selfish being, because compared to ordinary people, the Arahat has very great qualities of loving-kindness and compassion, but they just can’t equal those of the bodhisattva. So Arhats will be prepared to go to a great deal of trouble and discomfort themselves in order to help others.
I was reading a very interesting biography of a Thai monk, I think it was Ajahn Mun. Has anybody read that? He actually became an Arhat. I think he became an Arhat either in his life or at the time of his death. Anyway, but his story was that one aspect of his story was that at one stage they were meditating in the forests, in a very backwards part of Thailand, where the people were very, very poor.
And I think this was in the early years of this century, maybe before the Second World War. They didn’t get any food from these people because these people were very superstitious. And when they saw these forest monks coming and camping in their area, They would just sort of come and build themselves. They’d go into the forest and they carry big umbrellas with them and they would just build themselves bamboo platforms so as to give themselves some sort of minimal protection from tigers. And then they would just sit there and meditate with the tigers strolling around and roaring underneath.
And this was part of their This teacher used to deliberately take his disciples there, because he felt that being surrounded by these tigers and so on was a real spur to their practice, because they would be so frightened that the only way they could deal with their fright was if they weren’t going to run away, the only way they could stay there was to go into deep meditation, so they wouldn’t be thinking about the tigers. But apparently it worked. Anyway, in this village they weren’t getting any food from the villagers, because the villagers saw them doing this and thought they must be demons. They were apparently so reckless they knew nothing about monks. They must have been hill tribes or something like that.
Because it’s a bit hard to imagine that Thai people didn’t know about monks, but there were some sort of very remote people who didn’t. And he saw that if they were to just get up and go away, they would leave these people with this negative view of them, which would be an obstacle to these people meeting the Dharma and practicing the Dharma and sort of going on from life to life. And so he really wanted these people to make contact with the Dharma teachings, and so they stayed there. And although they were very hungry for a couple of weeks or so, they gradually overcame the resistance of the local people and reassured them and overcame their fear that local people had of them. And then eventually the local people were receptive to come along and listen to some simple dharma instruction.
And he did this purely out of his love and concern for these people. But another part of the book also tells about how, at another point in his progress, he had to choose between following the path of a bodhisattva or following the path of an Arhat. And he realized that this at one stage he had thought of becoming a bodhisattva. But when he realized that he had it within his power to become an Arhat, to achieve liberation in that lifetime, pull of liberation was so strong that he said, I just don’t see any point in following the Bodhisattva ideal. Now I’m going to become an Arhat.
I’m going to go for liberation. Yes. It is actually said that after many many eons, the Buddhas are sending messages to them all the time, calling them back to work for sentient beings. And it will take many many many eons before they become receptive to that, but eventually that message will penetrate. Okay, so that’s one way of looking at the precious human rebirth.
And another way is looking at its rarity, and that is, we can look at the causes, which are moral conduct and generosity. So we would have had to have created these causes in previous lifetimes, and unless we’re in a human life already, it’s very, very hard to create these causes. It’s very hard for animals or hungry ghosts or whatever to engage in the practice of moral conduct and generosity. It’s not always easy even as human beings, so at least we have the opportunity in the human realm understanding these things and following them, so that we can create the cause for human rebirth. So we can think that it’s just by some very, very fortunate chance that in our previous lifetimes we were able to create these causes and we’re born here now.
The reason for thinking this is to realize that if we lose this opportunity in this lifetime, we won’t get it again easily. We should realize that. And so we have to make good use of it in this life. Another example is the blind turtle one. Some of you might have heard this one before.
It’s just an illustration. We can think that we’re like a blind turtle who spends about a hundred years at the bottom of the ocean, and then once in one hundred years comes up to the surface and pokes its neck up, and at the same time there’s a golden ring floating around on the surface of the ocean. And if the turtle happens to come up at just the same time as the golden ring is in the right spot, and its neck goes through the golden ring, then that’s about the same chance that we have of getting a human rebirth once we slip out of the human realm and fall to the lower realms. And the other one is by numbers, so it’s just explaining a lot of different similes, like if you were to throw a lot of grains of rice at a pin and one of them was to stand on the point of the pin, or throw grains of rice at a glass wall and one of them is to stick on the glass wall or something like that, you know, so there’s different examples of how it’s how difficult it is. So So then, we’ve got this perfect human rebirth, and we have to look at how we’re going to make good use of it.
And at this point, there comes a reflection on the Eight Worldly Dharmas, which is how not to make good use of it. So what we’re needing to do is understand what it means to be wasting our precious human rebirth. So if we’re going to make good use of it, we have to follow the Dharma, the teachings of Buddha. And that’s in English usually spelled with a big d, and the eight worldly dharmas are spelled with a small d. So if the word Dharma is confusing anybody, Dharma has many different meanings in Sanskrit.
It’s sometimes translated as phenomenon or it can mean like just any sort of thing that holds its literal meaning is that which holds its own identity. And so here it just has the implication of being something which is like an object of our interest or our aspiration. And so, in actual fact, there’s a teaching on the Eight Worldly Dharmas, which is in the Graduated Path text, but I’m going to give one that I’ve come across in some other texts, which you particularly find a lot in the Theravadin presentation. Find myself a very interesting presentation. It’s in terms of the four pairs of opposites.
It’s almost the same in the Tibetan, but there’s just a slight difference in the standard graduated past text. The four pairs of opposites are pleasure and displeasure, or pleasure and the unpleasant. Then I think gain and loss might be next. Or praise and blame, I forget the exact order. Praise and blame, perhaps gain and loss, good reputation and bad reputation or notoriety.
So what we’ve got here is attachment and aversion. When we’re following the eight worldly dharmas, we’re either following attachment or we’re following aversion. And we tend to go to these extremes all the time. So what we’re trying to do is to balance these out. So try to have less attachment to the objects of attachment, less aversion to the objects that upset us, whether those objects are praise and blame, gain and loss or whatever.
So those eight different things pretty much cover all our worldly concerns. So actually it’s often translated as the eight worldly concerns. And it’s not that the things that we need and enjoy in our everyday life are bad. It’s important to understand that the good things that we go for are not bad in themselves. In fact, most of the things we go for are quite good in themselves.
For instance, if we go for good foods, that’s something that keeps us healthy, and if we go for good jobs and so on, all these things are helpful to us in our ordinary life. So they’re all right in themselves. But what is harmful is not the thing itself, and it’s not the enjoyment of things which do no harm to anybody, but it’s the attachment which leads to mental disturbance, which leads to us giving undue importance to these things and distracting us from the really important things, which are the spiritual practice. So on the other hand, we also have strong aversion to certain things, certain people, certain situations, And this is a deluded mental state. So also we get very caught up in being trying to avoid the objects of our aversion, or trying to harm or destroy objects of our aversion.
And this also is a worldly concern which is harmful to our practice. So what we can do is start to balance these out and we can try to find a middle point where we’re not sort of going up and down like a yo yo, or not sort of swinging from one side to the other like a pendulum all the time, but just sort of reaching a state of equilibrium where we can approach the things of daily life more calmly, in a more balanced sort of way. And in particular, keeping our main focus where it really matters, which is on spiritual things, on the Dharma. And if we do this, then our daily activities can be worldly or dharma according to our attitude, according to our motivation. So exactly the same actions, such as going to work, cooking meals, cleaning the house, looking after our family, all these things that we do all the time, even relaxing.
We can do them with a dharma attitude or we can do them with just purely self centered, short term wish for gratification. If we’re doing it with just the short term grasping for gratification, it’s a worldly concern and it doesn’t get us anywhere. But if we’re doing it with the thought that we have to look after our bodies, that we have to take care of ourselves and give ourselves the things that we need for our Dharma practice, And if we try to bring our Dharma practice, our Dharma motivation into all these activities, then they become Dharma. Because Dharma doesn’t depend on the external appearance, it depends on the motivation. And that’s why it’s important to motivate in the mornings when we get up, that we’re going to spend the day engaged in dharma, and particularly motivating for bodhicitta in the mornings.
First thing, as soon as we wake up, the best thing to do is to quietly sit there and just set our thought on our intention to bring dharma into our day’s activities and to strengthen the thought of bodhicitta, and at the end of the day also to dedicate our merits so that they don’t get expended. If we don’t dedicate our merits, might just ripen in some sort of worldly good such as being reborn in the God Realms. So the end of the day, we should dedicate our merits for precious human rebirth or whatever of rebirth is conducive for our ongoing Dharma practice and to achieve the realizations of the path. And in this way, then we can bring our whole daily activity into the Dharma. Well look at it this way, you might be attached to the Vivaldi, but listening to a little bit of the Vivaldi isn’t going to hurt anybody, is it?
And if you don’t listen to the you’re not a saint I shouldn’t say you’re not, but some people who would be listening to Vivaldi would not be saints. They might be careful of getting bad tempered. If they listen to Vivaldi, they might feel happy and relaxed and they’d be very mellow with their family and friends. And if they don’t listen to the Vivaldi, then they might get cranky and short-tempered, so it’s better to listen to the Vivaldi. In the same way, you know, it might be good to go out and let off a bit of steam by doing some dancing or playing sport or whatever.
All these things can be very beneficial for us. We have to be balanced. If we’re not ready to do it, then we can’t spend all our time meditating and studying. If we’re too intense, that can be a big mistake. On the other hand, you know yourself when you spend too much time in these activities, so that it becomes a distraction.
Everybody has to find this out for themselves. Everybody’s balance is different. And the thing is, the important thing is to allow some space in your life for the more formal type of activities, such as meditation and listening to teachings and reading Dharma books and so on. And when that feels like it’s getting too much and it’s feeling a bit heavy, then you go and do something else, watch television or whatever. And if you do that with a motivation that you’re doing it to relax your mind so that you can get back into a suitable frame of mind for Dharma practice, or to rest your body, and you’re looking after your body and your mind for the benefit of your Dharma practice, then it all becomes part of the one system of practice.
So most of us, we’re quite ordinary people, we have to allow space in our lives for a little bit of relaxation, little bit of pleasure, a little bit of enjoyment, little bit of socializing. All these things are something that we need to do. And we need to be on the watch if we let it get too much control of us, if we spend too much time, for instance, talking or watching television or something, so we feel that we really are wasting time, then we need to practice a little bit more of self discipline. But everybody has to work it out for self, and part of our growth of wisdom is through this process of working it out for ourselves. And what was right last year might not be right this year, so you just have to keep on practicing mindfulness and keep on practicing your discriminating wisdom to learn how to to tell the difference.
I’m not saying it’s easy, you know. It’s easy to get to sort of get a general idea of it, but to get all the details right, really, you know, we just have to you never get it all totally right, but you’re getting better at it all the time. I shouldn’t say never, because it does get a it does come a point where you get everything right. But we can’t expect that in the short term we’re going to get everything right, but just the fact that we’re trying is a development process for us. And you know sometimes we’re going to overindulge in something or rather and feel you know that they’re naughty Dharma students.
Other times we’re going to go too intensively about our practice and then we’ll realize that we’re being stupid in that respect too. So it’s getting it right. One thing you have to watch out for that affects a lot of Dharma students is a kind of complaint, an energy complaint that’s called Lung. Some of you might have heard of it. It affects people, A lot of Western students seem to get it when they go very intensively for their Dharma practice, and it can manifest in various different ways.
One is the pain in the center of your chest, and it’s a sign of too much stress, trying too hard, putting too much force into your Dharma practice and not allowing yourself enough space to relax. So it really is something that that you have to be careful. Try not to try not to get. And if you do get it, then immediately take the message and and relax a bit. I think it’s possibly because our way of life tends to be one that produces tension anyway.
So tension is something that we fall into very, very easily. Maybe somebody might want to say something about this. Maybe somebody has some experiences they want to share or tell us about? That’s right, yes. Always think that a good simile for Dharma practice is, it’s not like building a building, sort of like building a house or a skyscraper or something.
It’s like gardening, you know, you sort of have to prepare the ground and plant the seeds, then they’ll just come up at their own rate, and the only thing you can do is make it easy for them. If you try to attack like a building, you know, the faster you lay the bricks, the faster it’ll go up. That that’s when you start to get lung. So anyway, that’s the eight worldly dharmas. And they’re always lying in wait for us.
Outside the door, inside the door. We really we need a lot of energy to resist their pull, and we have to have some very a very powerful energizer to help us to keep focused on our spiritual practice, And that energizer is meditating on the certainty of death, and the uncertainty of the time of death. So, this isn’t meant to frighten us too much. It is meant to frighten us a little bit, but only to the extent that it’s salutary. So it’s not meant to make you all sort of terrified and depressed.
And if so, if it’s done in conjunction with faith in the Three Jewels in Buddhadharma and Sangha, then we won’t be over frightened. So it’s meant to be very very stimulating for us. And in fact, the Lamas always emphasize the great benefits of doing this meditation. And you find that not only in Buddhism, but also in other spiritual paths, find this awareness also of the very great benefits of thinking about the shortness of this life and the fact that death is coming to us. For instance, you know, here are some great Hindu yogis who were stimulated by this thought, and also many great Buddhist yogis.
Milarepa for example, always emphasized that his practice was very strong, because he had such a strong awareness of death at the time when he embarked on his practice. So There’s different ways to meditate on death, and one of the important ways is set out in terms of three contemplation a ninefold contemplation on death. There’s three main topics, and within that there’s sort of sub topics. But the three main topics is to contemplate on how death is definite. And if we contemplate on this, we can use our creativity in a lot of different ways, thinking about how we have we know that we’re going to die.
There isn’t a single person in the world who hasn’t died yet. Even the strongest people that we know of in the past, in past centuries have died, even the most powerful people, even the wisest people, they’ve all passed away. We know that the same thing is going to happen even in this lifetime. We can see some people who look terribly strong and fit, but they died even while they were young sometimes. We can imagine, we can visualize to us how it will be our selves to die.
If we happen to be around somebody who’s dying, we know perhaps we might have some sort of vivid experience, or if we’ve seen a dead body, this can help make it much more real for us. Nowadays, even if we don’t get to see these things in reality, we still see them on television sometimes. Nowadays they show, you know, dead bodies on the news and that kind of thing. We can try to imagine our own death and think how it would be to be actually dying and to be surrounded by be in hospital perhaps, or surrounded by all our relatives hoping that we won’t die, or wondering whether they’re going to get anything in the will or whatever. You know, you can make it you can use creativity.
The whole purpose is to really bring it home to yourself. And the purpose of this aspect of the death contemplation is to realize that the only thing that really matters is to practice Dharma, that worldly things have no essence. The only thing that has essence with Dharma is the practice of Dharma. So we realize that we have to practice Dharma. Then we have to contemplate on the fact that the time of death is indefinite and again, you know, we can use our imagination.
We can think of people who have died young. We can think of people we know who are the same age as ourselves, or younger who have died recently, who people who didn’t expect to die, who died suddenly, people who at one stage thought they were going, made great plans for the future and then found that death or a terminal illness has intervened with their plans. So, yes, it’s not to get frightened, but to face reality. This is the reality. And in actual fact, if we think about it now, it’s going to really help us a lot when the actual time comes along.
If we’ve meditated on death consistently and developed a feeling for it, then we’re not going to be that surprised if we do find that we’re going to die or if we find that one of our loved ones is going to die or that the has died unexpectedly. It gives us preparation for it. We don’t sort of cling to the idea that anything or anybody is going to be lasting in this world, and although it can be unpleasant to have to think about these things, in the first case, we can be sure, it’s very definite, that it’s going to really help us to not be so upset or not to have extreme bereavement and grief when these situations do arise, and they do arise for everybody. So this is a very helpful aspect of our Dharma practice. So the point of meditating on this, the uncertainty of the time of death, is to realize that we not only have to practice Dharma, but we can’t put it off, we have to practice now.
Because we don’t know how much time is left to us. If we say, oh well I’ll enjoy myself now and live a wild life while I’m young, and then practice Dharma when I’m old, we might be missing the opportunity to practice Dharma because we might not live to be old. So it’s necessary that we should start right immediately. And the third contemplation is to contemplate on the fact that at the time of death, only thing that can help us is dharma. So then we think of the things that we’re attached to in this life.
In other words, the things that are the object, the worldly dharmas, the objects of our grasping. And this is fairly obvious, we all know the saying you can’t take it with you. And that’s just ordinary everyday wisdom. But on the other hand, we tend to ignore the fact that we might not be able to be with the things we’re attached to for a long time. We tend to feel that we can be with the things that we’re attached to and that we can be with them for a long time.
But in actual fact, we’re going to be separated from all these things, whether it’s people that we’re fond of, our friends, relatives. People are generally things we’re most attached to. Also things like our careers, perhaps our position in life, our money, our beautiful house, our enjoyment, all of these things. Sometimes it’s death, sometimes it’s other circumstances that intervene, but whatever it is we’re attached to, because things are changing all the time, we’re not going to stay with anything forever. And it’s inevitable that things are going to change, we’re going to be separated from the things that we enjoy.
And the only thing that’s really meaningful, the only thing that’s going to bring lasting happiness, the only thing that can bring us a contentment inside ourselves that doesn’t depend on outside circumstances, is our Dharma practice. So this isn’t to say that our relationships are not important, in fact relationships are very important aspect of life and love loving-kindness between people is a very important attitude. But what we have to do is to discriminate between the positive aspect of our love and the harmful aspect, which is the clinging attachment. So clinging attachment is a self centered viewpoint. It’s considering our own pleasure, own well-being, and not considering the other person’s, but just seeing them as being an object for our own gratification.
And to the extent, generally as ordinary people, have a mixture. We’re not totally self centered and we’re not totally unselfish. We are fluctuating all the time between one attitude and the other. And what we have to do is just learn to discriminate and to reduce the attachment, the clinging and grasping at other people and other objects, objects which are external. And at the same time, we want to be actually cultivating and developing the loving-kindness and compassion that we have for others.
And if we’re feeling possessive towards others, if we’re thinking of them as being mine, you know, I have sort of rights over them for their time and their company and to have them do what I want them to do and so on. This kind of attitude is what comes from clinging attachment. And the relationships that we have with others are going to end at best time. The good aspect of it is going to carry on in our karma, because when we do good to others, this is going to benefit our future lifetimes and it’s going to lead to happy and harmonious relationships with the beings that we connect with in future lives. And we tend to connect again and again with the same beings that we have strong karmic links with.
It’s very helpful to remember that if we feel very strong aversion and hatred to somebody and do them harm, we’re actually guaranteeing that we’re going to be drawn back into some sort of relationship with that person in the future, and that it will be a an unpleasant relationship. So this can be very helpful to us in remembering not to to succumb to that kind of attitude. So anyway, talking about death meditation I’ve gone on about it a bit long perhaps. So the next step is to realize that we need help. So we take refuge in realizing that nothing can help us but our Dharma practice.
Then we think of taking refuge in Buddha Dharma and Sangha. So now we’re actually getting into the practice of Dharma, and we have to appreciate the qualities of Three Jewels of refuge, Buddhadharma and Sangha, to realize, to understand that they do have this power to help us, that they do have the qualities that we’re looking for to be a suitable guide out of suffering into happiness. They can be effective. We have to rely on a guide out of saṃsāra, out of cyclic existence. And this guide has to be one that can be relied on totally.
And so it has to be one that has gone that way before, that knows the way. And it has to be one that has the skills to guide others and that can be relied on not to abandon us. And so Buddha has all these qualifications. So Buddha has these qualities of having achieved the path himself, has achieved the enlightened state and therefore has the ability, the omniscient mind, the power to guide others in whatever way is suitable to them. And so each one of us needs to be guided in a way that’s suitable to us.
Buddha has that power to give us that guidance. And the compassion of Buddha is total and equal to all beings, And so we can feel totally confident that we’ll receive the guidance of Buddha. So you might be thinking, Buddha passed away so many hundreds of years ago, two thousand years ago. So I’m not just talking about Śākyamūni Buddha here, but we’re talking about the omniscient mind of all the Buddhas, which is always guiding sentient beings, and which is for us can be manifesting through the the form of teachers who are following the the tradition of Buddha. And so through these teachers, the inspiration and guidance of Buddha is coming to us.
And that can be both in the sense that the original inspiration of Buddha is coming down through the lineage, And also the in the Mahāyāna teachings, it’s taught that the the Buddhas are continuing to guide us and to inspire us in in any number of different ways. So, also, the Dharma, the teachings of Buddha, are the actual refuge, because it’s the Dharma. It’s the teachings of Buddha that are the real thing that helps us to achieve liberation from cyclic existence. If Buddha had appeared in the world but not taught, wouldn’t have received terribly we wouldn’t coming at this time after Buddha, we wouldn’t have received the benefit from that. The people of his time might have received some sort of inspiration, but they wouldn’t have been able to achieve liberation because they wouldn’t have received the teaching.
So it’s the actual words, and it’s putting it into practice ourselves. There has to be something from the side of Buddha, and we need that guidance and inspiration, but the Buddhas can’t just pick us up out of cyclic existence and put us into a state of everlasting bliss. We have to contribute by following. So this is very very important. And the other jewel of refuge is the Sangha.
There’s the Three Jewels of refuge, and the Sangha, as I mentioned before, are the Ārya practitioners, although it’s important also to have the existence of the relative Sangha who are the monks and nuns communities. So the real purpose of refuge is to achieve the state of the Three Jewels within ourselves. We have this potential that we ourselves can become Buddhas, we can actualize the Dharma teachings within our minds, we can become Ārya Sangha ourselves. And so when we take refuge, we’re not only taking refuge in external Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, but we’re also taking refuge in our own potential. And it’s very important to take refuge in this way too, because otherwise, if we were to have great admiration Buddha and great admiration for the Dharma and great admiration for the Sangha, but if we were to say to ourselves I’m totally hopeless, I can never be like this, then we wouldn’t achieve the results of the path.
We wouldn’t be able to accomplish Buddha’s teachings. So we have to have confidence in our own inner nature to be able to achieve these things. So I think we’ll stop at that point, and next week we’ll be going on talking about the three scopes, and going on about how to put the Buddha’s teachings into practice, and the most basic practice of observing karma. And so just any quick questions before we stop? No questions?
Okay. Well then, I guess it’s time to go home so we can dedicate our merits for enlightenment.