Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching, Ven Margaret McAndrew clears common misconceptions about the Third Noble Truth through interactive dialogue with her students. She opens by asking what cessation is, then systematically addresses two widespread misunderstandings: that enlightenment means extinction of the self, or conversely, merger into a cosmic consciousness. Instead, cessation is a mental state in which disturbing emotions dissolve while individual continuity persists and awareness expands. She traces this back to the root cause: ignorance of true existence, a subtle distortion projected constantly onto all perception. Samsāra, she explains, is not a place but this mental state itself. The session clarifies technical distinctions between cessation, nirvana, and enlightenment, contrasts arhats with Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, and offers practical motivation for beginning the path now. For practitioners with Buddhist study experience.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 4NT 1000 07 15.mp3
UUID: 1b67e8d5-8360-415c-96c5-1173f9d31956
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Four Noble Truths (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~4,903
The motivation is so in in actual fact, the progress that we’re looking at these few weeks really belongs to the medium scope, the medium scope section of the graduated path. So we set this into the thought on how to attain individual liberation. And as you know, all of these practices have to be taken together and taken into the Mahāyāna motivation. So I have a few questions prepared tonight and and I haven’t got very many people to answer them. So what’s your name, right?
Yes, Micah. Right. Sorry. Yes. I couldn’t remember without you looking for your hair up.
Yes. So we’re going to anyway, yeah, look at the third of the four noble truths tonight. Does anybody remember which one that is? Mhmm. Good.
I’ll probably remember how to do that. Extinction? Does it does it mean extinct the individual continuum? What have you got, or what haven’t you got? Mhmm.
So that’s good. That’s one that’s one. It’s hard to get exactly how it translates, but it’s something to do with extinction. So some find it as if it means the end of the continuity of our continuum, that you just switch off, like somehow you manage to turn yourself off. That’s one mistaken view.
Another conception that a lot of people have about nirvana or pure cessation is that it means the loss of personal identity, that there’s some sort of merging into some sort of cosmic ocean of consciousness. But it doesn’t seem to be really like that either. It seems like that’s not as far off the mark as the first viewpoints. In a sense, when we attain nirvana, our boundaries expand immensely, but there isn’t a loss of personal identity. There’s still the continuity of the individual being.
Yes. Mhmm. Yes. The lamas say that they say that that enlightened beings still have their individual continuum. So these things are not very easy to understand from where we are.
It’s difficult to really understand these things because we’re really stuck in a very limited way of thinking, which really simply can’t grasp some of these concepts. And even when we grasp those concepts, they’re so beyond our experience that actually understanding is quite different from just being able to play with the words correctly. So we’ve looked anyway over the last two weeks at suffering and origin true origin true suffering and true origin. And These are things that we can understand pretty well from our own experience. Particularly the gross level of suffering is something that we have experience of all the time, so we can understand this very well.
Our only problem with that is that we tend to be in a state of denial and always think that whatever we might be suffering at the moment is not going to last and everything is going to be wonderful soon. We have to understand that this is the nature of saṃsāra. And also, the more subtle kinds of suffering of change, we can understand pretty well through examination, understanding that the nature of happiness is that it always changes into suffering sooner or later, usually sooner. In actual fact, at least the understanding that even our samsaric pleasures and happiness are really a form of suffering, they’re really in the nature of suffering. But there’s another form of suffering, pervasive suffering, is much more difficult to comprehend because it’s much more subtle, but still we can understand these other kinds of sufferings pretty well.
Then when we look at the cause of suffering, we might not understand karma very thoroughly, because if we did, we actually would be totally scrupulous about avoiding any sort of bad karma. But in fact, the other aspect of suffering, the disturbing emotions, can see pretty easily. We can understand how much control these do have over our minds, how much we can see, even if we can’t see the mechanism of karma, because that involves seeing from life to life. We can’t see cause and result in that way because we can’t see what we’ve done in our past lives, but we can see how suffering our disturbing emotions bring into our lives just directly, and how much control they have over us. All of these things are fairly much part of our daily experience.
When we’re getting on to cessation, this is something that is beyond our experience. If we’d ever experienced true cessation, then we wouldn’t have to be sitting here now learning about these things. And so what we have to do is try to get some sort of comprehension now by starting to examine into this subject. We that the cause of suffering is karma and disturbing emotions or disturbing mental states or delusions, but they have an underlying cause. Do you know what this underlying cause is?
Very good. Very good. Right. So, yes. So there’s many different kinds of ignorance.
And as we went through before, the one that really causes our suffering is the ignorance of self, because this causes us to create karma, a cause of suffering, particularly gross suffering. But the most basic cause of all our problems is a particular kind of ignorance which is very subtle, and this is the ignorance of the of seeing things as being truly existent or the the the wrong view of true existence or self existence. And this is in itself not something that causes us suffering, but it sets off a mechanism that causes us various kinds of suffering. So for instance, there are some beings, the formless gods, who aren’t really experiencing suffering at all during the course of their lifetime, lifetime, but they are still under the power of suffering because they haven’t achieved the liberation. And so once they finish that lifetime as formless gods, they have to come back into another rebirth state where they’re again subject to suffering.
But it’s possible for them for some considerable period of time to actually be free of suffering in their god state. But they’re not rid of it because they’ve still got the seed there. And that’s because they haven’t practiced this wisdom of understanding selflessness, and they haven’t achieved this understanding of selflessness. So all saṃsāra is basically having the state of mind that grasps at things as having truly existent. It grasps as things being true.
That grasps at certain things that are not true and which sees it as being true and grasps at them. So basically, what it means is that we’ve got a mental state that’s continually projecting distortions, projecting a distorted view onto all our perceptions, all our consciousnesses. And this is what Samsāra is. Samsāra isn’t somewhere else. It’s not a place where we happen to be and that we can go off to some other sort of place called nirvana or anything like that.
But it’s simply this wrong view, this wrong way of viewing reality, a distorted way of viewing reality. So what we see really isn’t reality. So if we can overcome this, then we’ll overcome all this grasping at these wrong mistaken projections, which are the cause of our suffering. So it’s this grasping at true existence that leads us to this idea then that these objects of our six senses are the objects which bring about our happiness and suffering and this leads to attachment and aversion and through that we have these various different creations of karma and so on. And all of these mechanisms come into place then that bring about disturbing emotions and our karma, as we saw last week.
So this is the underlying problem we have to overcome. Now do you know how we can overcome this? Mhmm. What sort of meditation? Right.
Good. Mhmm. Okay, so meditation on emptiness is the solution, the remedy to this problem. So, now we’re looking at the third truth which is true cessation. And I didn’t actually go through all the parts of the third truth last week.
I could have brought in all sorts of things there, particularly the twelve links of interdependent origination, which explains the mechanism by which we actually, under the force of karma and disturbing emotions, get reborn into saṃsāra. So, of course, I didn’t have enough time to talk about that last week, but I thought I would bring that in this week because that comes up again anyway in the Graduated Path topics which I’m going to be going through next. It comes up in the Intermediate Scope as one of the topics there, and so I’ll go into it in detail there a little bit. So tonight we’re going on to cessation. In a way it’s a bit hard to say anything much about cessation because it’s simply cessation.
So there’s a lot to be said about the path and how to attain true cessation. So cessation is the the cessation of disturbing emotions, it’s the cessation of suffering, and it’s the cessation of saṃsāra. So what we’re going to do is to understand how this true cessation is a state that’s available. So in the twelve interdependent origination, you actually You actually have a little picture of Buddha standing up in one corner and pointing, and he’s pointing outside the wheel. So what we have to do is to to get outside the wheel.
Can you see him? He’s up one yes. Oh, yes. That’s right. So there’s one in every every realm because Buddha is in some of them, I think you see him actually up in one corner, but in that one, he’s in every realm.
So the point of that is that Buddha is working in whatever way possible for all sentient beings. So sometimes yes. Anyway, Buddha is pointing the way out of out of saṃsāra for us, and what he’s pointing to us is attainment of true cessation. And that’s symbolized by being outside the wheel, but in actual fact, it’s not a place, of course. It’s simply a mental state that we can achieve.
And we need to understand that this state of mind is possible to us because of the intrinsic nature of our mind not being mixed with the disturbing emotions. So when we do these practices, we can actually remove the impurities, the disturbing emotions, and then with the purity of our mind, can experience through cessation, we can attain liberation or enlightenment. So essentially, what what happens really is that we just have to see through this illusion that is causing all our problems. Once we see the truth, the truth overcomes the falsity. And the once the the truth is perceived, then that simply cuts away the foundation on which we base our clinging attachment, greed, aversion and hatred and anger and so forth.
So once this has been done, it’s a gradual process, once it’s been done, then there’s simply no basis anymore these things to function, and so they can’t function anymore. And we have to just begin by understanding these topics little by little. Whether we’re on the path to individual liberation or whether we’re on the Mahāyāna path, we need to understand the meaning of true cessation. And as I said already, it’s not easy because we’re dealing with something that’s beyond our experience. And even when we’re in the formless god realms, we we’ve been in the formless god realms ourselves time and time again, but we’ve never experienced true cessation before.
Because if we’d experienced true cessation, then we wouldn’t have to be here now starting we’d never have to come back and start all over again. Once we’ve got it, we’ve got it forever. So we wouldn’t have to be here now studying, unless there might possibly be somebody here who’s a higher bodhisattva or an arhat coming back perhaps for some purpose of their own to help us. No. But you wouldn’t be admitting it anyway, would you?
Okay. What do you what what No. I think I get what you’re saying. Yes. Yes.
That’s right. Yes. Okay. What what do what do you think, Fum? Well, it’s more than that because in actual effect, pain of losing your leg wouldn’t be bothering you.
The physical pain even. Yes. You’d be aware of the physical sensation, but it’s because of our grasping that we actually experience that as pain. You just experience it as a sensation. Yes.
In fact, probably all the for an enlightened being. I’m not sure how it is for an arhat. I’m not sure whether arhats experience it this way, but certainly for a bodhisattva, for an enlightened being, they say that actually even physical pains experiences bliss because their consciousness only experiences blissful sensations. Is this labeling? I’m not sure how it is for an arhat.
Yes. It’s labeling. Yes. Yes. This sounds pretty weird, but in actual fact, a lot of ordinary people have discovered this for themselves.
If they’ve had to experience a lot of pain, some people have actually discovered that it’s possible to go through the pain and experience the underlying and they’re not necessarily doing any sort of deliberate practice either. Sometimes it just comes to them through the fact that they’ve had all this suffering and had to deal with it. So they sometimes feel that their physical pain just becomes something else. And in actual fact, it’s said that physical pain is not nearly as bad as mental pain and not nearly as difficult to deal with. We tend to think of physical pain as being the worst kind of pain, but those who have a lot of experience with these matters say that mental pain is far worse, let alone the fact that, in fact, our physical pain is also, in a sense, created mentally.
So anyway, the whole teaching of Buddhism is that it’s all dependent on our mind. It’s all bound up with our mind, and it’s in our mind that the solution is found for all of these things. And we tend to draw a distinction between body and mind, but that’s an unreal distinction, except in the sense that we do have a physical body that’s going to be left behind when we go on to the next life and so on. But during our lifetime, our physical body and our mind are very much tied up together in one sort of system. So so the first two noble truths are to be abandoned.
So they’re actually afflictions, suffering, and the origin of suffering. And the next two noble truths are the ones that are to be attained, and that is true cessation and the path. So, again, we’ve got this idea that Buddha taught these things out of logical sequence because here, he taught the goal first. First of all, of course, we have to practice the path, and then we attain the goal. But Buddha taught the goal first the true cessation, and then he taught the path because we need to have an idea of true cessation and set our sights on the goal in order to practice the path.
And so having been inspired by the thought that true cessation is available, attainable, then we go on and do that practice. So true cessation, is peace and everlasting joy. It’s uncontaminated by the slightest suffering, And this is attained by totally overcoming and ridding the mind of the the kleshas or afflictions or deluded mental states. So, we went through all of those last week. I won’t ask anybody to list them.
If you want today, you can look them up in a book. Oh, if you really want to, really. Okay. So now, is there a difference between true cessation and enlightenment? It’s usually used in that sense.
Yes. Mhmm. Right. Okay. Yes.
So is there a difference between true true cessation and nirvana? No? That’s a different question. No. True cessation and nirvana.
Oh. Oh, yes. Okay. So this is quite a these are some technical questions. Yes.
Enlightenment and nirvana, not necessarily the same thing. And enlightenment. True cessation and nirvana. Yes. So if you really wanted to understand these things, you’d have to look up the definitions and everything.
But so, I mean, I’m not going to give you a definite answer here because I don’t know myself exactly. But generally generally, the way true true cessation can be used in I mean, there’s a number of different true cessation. There’s not just one true cessation. You can you gain a true cessation whenever you attain in your mind stream the cessation of something which, is to be abandoned. And that’s right.
So you’ve got a number of different, true cessation to attain. And, eventually, when you attain the true cessation of all the disturbing emotions, or the gross delusions, which are what keep us in Samsāra, then you have attained, the true cessation of suffering, which is this, Samsaric state. So, basically, somebody who has attained that, if they’re on the Hīnayāna path or the path of individual liberation, would be an Arahat. And, I’m not sure of all the technical usages of the term nirvana, but it’s usually used to mean the state which the arhat remains in when they pass out of their body, then they enter nirvana. And so they would have attained possibly except in case where they attain their true cessation on on the point of death.
Apparently, are cases where that happens. But in general, if they attain their true cessation during their lifetime, then they would spend some time before they would actually enter nirvana on their death. So I’m not sure of that point myself actually, whether they could actually be said to have attained nirvana before they die. But, generally, the way the term is used is that they pass into nirvana, and Buddha is said to enter paranivana when when Buddha dies. Actually, it is said that.
That’s in the Mahāyāna teachings. If you’re looking at it from the point of view of the the individual liberation teachings, it doesn’t say anything about arhats coming back, but that comes from the Mahāyāna teachings. So although we’re following the Mahāyāna teachings, here we’re looking at it from the the medium scope point of view. So it’s always useful to keep in mind that they do come back, but here we’re looking at it from their point of view, so they don’t think they’re coming back. Because Buddha didn’t teach them that.
Or if they did hear the teaching, then they didn’t take it seriously. So the first so, anyway yes. So so, anyway, we have this arhat who is going to enter nirvana, but they’re not actually in nirvana, I don’t think, because they have to still fluctuate between meditative equipoise and the ordinary waking consciousness or post-meditative consciousness would be a better term, which, of course, for for somebody of that level is not ordinary in the sense that that we are, but they they still have some obscurations. So they have these they’re not able to totally remain in meditative equipoise in the post meditation period. Although, when they come out of their meditative equipoise, they see conventional reality very differently than we would because they know that the dualistic view or the view of self existence is mistaken.
They know that from their meditation, but there still is some appearance of self existence, both, in themselves and phenomena. And, although they don’t believe in it, they still see it. There’s still the appearance of it. Whereas for Buddhas, there isn’t any appearance at all of self existence. So the the No.
No. No. It’s not like that. No. It’s it’s just that this projection that we have, of things being self existent is is a lot lighter with them, and it but it’s still there.
But it’s not powerful enough to to create karma for them, to create any saṃsāra. So there are two levels of obscuration, and these are the the subtle level and the gross or the the the gross level or the delusions, which is, as we saw last week, that’s the deluded mental factors. And the other one, the subtle level, is the subtle dualistic view or subtle appearance of of self existence or true existence, which prevents the full realization of omniscience. So it doesn’t prevent this subtle obscuration doesn’t prevent omnis doesn’t prevent liberation, but it prevents attaining omniscience. And you have to attain omniscience to attain Buddhahood.
It’s the same the same thing. Buddhahood so in order to attain Buddhahood, the mind has to achieve total men we have to have total mental purity, not even a trace of subtle obscuration. That’s the quality of Buddha’s Buddha’s mind. And so when we’re looking at true cessation, we’re mainly concerned with the first level of obscuration because we’re looking at it from the point of view of individual liberation. By the way, the Hīnayāna practitioners also accept that there is this subtle level of obscuration to be removed.
They accept that there is Buddhahood and that this subtle level of obscuration has to be removed through following the Bodhisattva’s path. They they all accept that. They simply don’t follow it themselves. They they follow the practices for attaining individual liberation. So removing the first level, of obscuration or the grosser level is enough to attain liberation.
So, I was going to ask why I removed the others, but I’ve already told you. Do you do you still want an well, do do you want to have a go? Yes. Well, I’ll still ask you. Why do we, why is there a necessity to go on and remove the others?
Yes. Okay. So why do we want to attain full Buddhahood? Because. But the arhat doesn’t have to come back anymore.
They don’t have to come back if they don’t want to. The point is that they’re they reach a point where they want to when the Buddhas called them back. They never have to come back into Samsāra. When I say come back, they’re not coming back into saṃsāra. They’re out of saṃsāra forever and ever and ever.
But they have to, come back into embodied existence, which is a very different thing to saṃsāra. They they would still be, in total bliss and joy within their minds. Samsāra is, basically suffering, and suffering and saṃsāra are the same thing. When you have a mind which is under the control of suffering, and that suffering is brought about that by the disturbing emotions. So, the way to get rid of the suffering is to get rid of the disturbing emotions.
Once you’ve done that, no more suffering. It’s just impossible. That really is something. Yes. And you don’t have to be an arhat to do that.
No. Yeah. That’s that’s great. Yeah. Although, it’s not as easy as you think.
Actually, in a sense in a sense yes. The arhat, in a sense, sort of sidestepped the whole process by getting out of saṃsāra because the bodhisattva still had to work with a lot of stuff. I think it sounds all very sort of clear cut and straightforward when you look at these teachings, but it’s not quite as clear cut in actual practice. The bodhisattvas still have some stuff to deal with, but there’s there’s different levels of bodhisattvas, you know, and some bodhisattvas are not arhats. Some I mean, some bodhisattvas haven’t reached that level of arhats.
Yes. That’s right. Yes. Yes. Well, you never yes.
We can I mean, we have to start now because the you know, we’ve got to do it one time or another, so there’s no time like the present? If you think it’s too too far off, then if you put it off, it’s either going to be further. It’s just common sense, you know. The more you put something off, the longer it’s going to take you to finish it. Well, you can.
I mean, you can be a yeah. You can sort of you can certainly sort your head out, and I think one the first thing we have to do is sort our head out, and and that’s what we have to do in this life, you know. Some of these other things we have to attain by gaining meditative equipoise, Samatha, and all of these things. So it’s not, something that we’re going to get all at once, but, we have to put in the groundwork. And in actual fact, just putting in that groundwork is, going to make such a vast difference, to our lives that, it can make all the difference from being, you know, wretchedly unhappy to being a basically happy, contented sort of person, which is really an amazing transformation.
And that’s only just from doing a little bit of work. So, you know, then you build on that so you can imagine what it’s like as you get further and further down the track. It’s and also, you don’t know how close you might be to realizing emptiness. You might think that you’re miles and miles off of you know, that it’s going to be lives and lives and lives away, but in actual fact, you don’t know what sort of karma you might be ripening. Not that it’s going to come in a flash, of course.
You have to do the work. But, once, once people really start, working at these things, it can come in a few years’ time. The point is that there’s no point doing this in sort of intensive effort until you’ve got the groundwork in. But once once you have got all the groundwork together, then the actual attainment of single point of concentration and so on, all these other things can come fairly quickly. You hear about people who, go off and meditate for a few years and gain all these attainments.
Ah sure. Sounds like a Zen practitioner. Oh, no. That was Naropa, but wasn’t it? Yes.
It was either Naropa or Tilopa or one of those people. I think it was must have been Tilopa because Naropa was the one that had a no. No. What are you talking about? That was with calluses on it.
No. Tilopa was Naropa’s guru, and he he told Naropa to make him a mandala, and then he’d give him some special teaching. So Naropa said, oh, I haven’t got a mandala plate and rings or or anything to do a mandala offering with. And Tilopa said, oh, that’s alright. He said, just piss on the sand and and then build it up into a a mandala.
Mandala. So Naropa did. And then as soon as he finished offering, Tilopa just picked up this mass of sand and threw it at him. And that was his initiation, and he he he sort of achieved all these realizations right at that moment. But, of course, he’d he’d done all his preparation beforehand, so he was ready for it.
So it can be yes. It can be it can be very quick when it does when the when the, you know, when the time is ready, but it’s only through doing this preparation first. So, yes, anyway, we have to start to study these things and start to understand them. So what we’re trying to do is to attain Buddhahood, remove these subtle obscurations as well, attain Buddhahood, because of the special qualities of Buddhahood. So as we’re always motivating, we’re in the Mahāyāna path, we’re not just concerned with individual liberation, but concerned with the welfare of all others.
We make our concern bringing about the everlasting happiness of all others, and that carries with it the understanding that you have to attain Buddhahood because nothing else but Buddhahood can enable you to to do this. But, Buddhas are the only beings who, have perfected the qualities that are going to be needed to, to be able to help all others. So Buddhas have these very special qualities, much more so than arhats have. In particular, the arhats pass into nirvana and are no longer able to communicate with other beings, and so their work for others stops when they enter nirvana. And so our hearts do help others.
It’d be wrong to think that our hearts don’t help others. In fact, arhats can guide others to arhatship. They can guide others to liberation, and they do guide their disciples while they’re alive, but not when they’re dead. So Buddhas never stopped working for others. They although they show the aspect of dying, leaving that body, but they continue to work for sentient beings in in countless different ways.
They’re always actually emanating more bodies and sending more bodies to all these different worlds and to all the beings in the different worlds. So and they have this omniscient wisdom that can see how how most skillfully to help all the others, and they have these powers these psychic powers and so on to to do that. And so they can do this for an uncountable number of beings. They can count they can help an uncountable number of beings in this way. So Bodhisattva is developing these.