Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session from a weekend teaching, Ven Robina Courtin uses visceral contemplations on animal suffering—lions and prey, creatures in paranoia—to help practitioners understand *why* the first scope of Buddhist practice matters. Rather than abstractions, she grounds everything in vivid examples: a monk meditating in a Himalayan cave twenty-five years without food or sleep, the constant fear animals live in, the cultural divides between Western and Asian attitudes toward rest and respect. She covers how analytical meditation actually works (turning intellectual ideas into felt truth through repeated contemplation), the stages of death and how consciousness leaves the body, refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and Śākyamūni Buddha’s life story. A concluding Q&A addresses supporting monastics in Western centers, where generosity and respect for ordained practitioners clash with cultural assumptions.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 2002 01 19 BYT.mp3
UUID: ee1acc88-17e1-445e-80a9-9bdbceaeeb85
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Be Your Own Therapist (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2002-01-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~10,196
Rinpoche, the lama of this center, the main lama of this center. Here’s Ribur Rinpoche. We have another lama here, but he’s the the spiritual director of this center. He is he he’s one of these people who since a little boy, he was known as he’s a Rinpoche. It’s a term used out of respect for the people who’ve been recognised as reincarnated lamas.
Okay? So obviously, even in his past life, he’s said to have realisations, and he was discovered and so on and so forth. And that’s what happens at the time of death, I’ll talk about that in a minute, for holy beings. It’s different for them. So the the they what they are able to do, they’re you know, because okay.
First, because of their huge compassion, which is at a level that is way beyond what we think is possible, and we’ll talk about that. That’s the third scope. Just the the implications of this level of real compassion for others. But it’s actually as as one this Australian monk who’s Lama Zopa’s attendant has, he said, sleep, for Rinpoche, is a disgusting waste of time. So the real energy that caused him not to want to sleep is is to have is compassion.
It’s a waste of time to sleep. You wanna benefit others somehow. But the other one is they have no need because they’ve come to certain physical levels where they’re able to do to do the meditations, go to a subtle level anyway, where their their physical level has ceased. And but there’s they’re conscious subtly. You know.
That’s all. But it’s really the one of compassion, just this huge energy to practice. I mean, there’s a recently, lama at our monastery in Nepal when I was there last year. He passed away. He’s maybe seventy something.
And he’s well known of of having for having been in meditation in a cave up in the mountains in Nepal for twenty five years. Right? And then I was interviewing his attendant and getting some kind of life story about him. And then the details are kind of interesting. This is also very common, you know.
He for the first seven years, in one place up in the mountains where it’s six foot of snow in the winter, right up high in the jungle, in the desert in the jungle in Nepal near the border of Tibet. For the first seven years, he trained himself in the very beginning just to live on nettles and eventually to not have anything. So for seven years, he there’s certain practices they do where they talk about they call it taking the essence. It’s like it’s like they learn to mix the subtle essences of flowers and rocks into, like, a little pill which you eat. But they call this chulen, taking the essence.
Well, he even what they he lived on what they call wind chulen. He didn’t even eat the pills. He simply lived on the essence of the energy of the air. He kinda ate the air, if you think about it. It sounds ridiculous for us.
So for seven years, he didn’t eat. The attendant said also for that seven years, he practiced his meditations from two in the morning until eight PM. And then from eight PM until two in in the morning, he would do certain physical ones like these prostration practices for seven, eight hours. You know? So he didn’t sleep for seven years.
So I mean, that normal I mean, just it makes me exhausted just thinking about it, you know? So you gotta you think, well, what on earth motivates a person like that? Well, you can’t even imagine the levels of compassion and whatever. This this aspiration to achieve their realizations as quickly as possible for the sake of others, which is said to be this main aspiration. It just almost sounds like a joke to us, you know, or to me it does anyway.
So they say it’s capable. There’s all these other things that motivate you to do it. So, you know, we have this view in our culture. I mean, we have an entire culture around sleep. I mean, look at our bedrooms.
They’re the best places in the in the in the in the house half the time, you know, aren’t they? We spend so much energy and money on making our bedrooms so beautiful, you know, just to be unconscious in. Oh, okay. We have sex in there too. I agree.
So you’ve got to make it nice. But you get my point. So, you know and we will absolutely tend to think, well, you can’t have less than eight hours, we have all these sicknesses because we get sick and we get we’ll get people with I’m reading recently in The New Yorker the various drugs they’re trying to find now that don’t know, like like one of the ones that keep you awake but get all the side effects. You know, speed ones. Know?
Pseudoephedrine. Thank you. All those ones. Whatever. But then they have this pill now where they say there’s no side effects.
Because and they because because all this incredible what’s all that the disease when people keep falling asleep? Narcolepsy or something? Who? Narcolepsy. Narcolepsy.
Thank you very much, that one. So we can see it’s really chronic if you don’t get your sleep together. So we of course concretise all this, that’s just how it is, but actually Buddhism would say you can go beyond anything, you know, as a change in your mind. Mean, you can even know when we’re younger and you’re in love with somebody, you go out a party, you go all night without sleep. In the morning, you go to work, you’re so blissful, even though you’re exhausted, you’re so happy.
But your mind’s happy, right? So it’s clear that being for example, being tired we tend to think being tired caused you to be depressed and anxious. It’s not true. It’s a question of your attitude towards it. We can see there’s the proof.
Know? So by changing out this is the point in Buddhism. You’re changing your mind. You change even your relationship to sleep. You can become you can have less sleep.
You know? You learn to do without less sleep by training your mind, right, and by making your mind happy. That’s the point. Anyway, that’s just that one. Long answer to a short question.
Yep. What would you say karma-wise about somebody who had a near-death experience? Just means that you had the karma to leave the body, your karma wasn’t over yet, so you went back. Body. Same body.
Yeah. I mean, you had this accident, let’s say, and it caused your consciousness to leave the body, so it’s like death was coming, but all the conditions for death didn’t come. And people all say they have to I’ve got to go back again, know. They say like that. So the karma hasn’t finished.
That’s all. Well, mean, it depends on the person, isn’t it? If a person’s using their life to kill others every day, it’s a very bad thing to go back into their body because they’re creating more negative karma. If the person’s going back into their body, they’re making use of their life, then it’s a good thing. There’s nothing inherently good about living long.
It’s a question of what you do with your life, isn’t it? So, anyway, let’s talk a bit more about why the oh, yeah. Go on, please. You you contemplate these very things. These words I just said so, okay.
Some of the words I’ve just said, have they made sense? So all you do, you you use you you get you know, you you hear the teachings. This is the structure. You’d have a book probably or you’d hear the teaching. You get it more down.
You’d have more structure for yourself in front of you with a book. Then you sit down and you’d literally sit down and you do an analytical meditation using these ideas. And how it works is this, you hear it once. Even let’s say some of these words you’ve heard already this morning, and it was not even the first time. Doesn’t matter.
Would someone would you say something that you sort of go like, yeah. Yeah. Okay. That’s an insight. So all you do is you wanna develop those insights bigger and deeper and deeper and bigger until eventually they’re completely what you feel.
They’re they’re right now, we hear it once, we go, wow, and then we forget about it, and all the other default mode of grasping it permanently comes back. Well, by meditating every day, literally analyzing it, just like we you know, I’m sort of saying it now, but having a tape of it or doing it in a more formal way yourself, which is the best way, that use your own imagination, use your own creative experiences to to to be to sort of flesh out the basic points. Death is definite. Time of death is uncertain. That’s what analytical meditation is.
It’s nothing it’s something sort of secret. You just sit down and you contemplate it all, and you get another insight. One day you get another insight, then you get more insight. You go do a retreat on it, you get even more insights until eventually you’ve got such insight into it that you don’t forget that you’re impermanent, you live according to it. Okay.
That’s a very good point. No. It in terms of how you realize these things, you realize them one step at a time. You have to realize the first scope before you realize the second. Just like you have to get grade two before you can accomplish grade three.
But you can practise all of them. You must practise all. You must it’s good to have the overview, which is what I want to do this whole weekend, give the overview. So you practise all, but you accomplish them at different stages. And sometimes you can go off and do a retreat on the lower scope for, you know, a month.
Sometimes some of these lamas you hear about go off for seven years and meditate just on the first scope. Well, no. The focus you’ve got down. You’re learning to meditate on these things by contemplating, analysing them. The focus is the first mode of meditation.
Once you’ve accomplished that to whatever degree, you then do the second mode, is the analysis in meditation. Like this. You’re like this. You You’ve the things in impermanence in your mind. You’ve got a really good focus, really intelligent, really clear mind, and you’ve got all the outline in your mind.
So you’re bringing you’re actually doing this analysis in your mind. It’s a very sophisticated way of using your conceptual mind. That’s all. That’s why I’m a meditation. Do understand what I mean?
Yeah. Well, I mean, you can spend years just learning focus. Oh, you could. But you but yeah. You could, and there are there are some methods for doing yeah.
You could. You could, and you need to at some point. Well, you would make progress because you’d get you’d you’d single point of concentration, and then you can really start to work on the meditations. But you don’t do it like that. You don’t wait till you perfect that.
I mean, you need to perfect single pointed concentration to realize emptiness. But you don’t need to to perfect it to realize all these other things because they’re conceptual. You know? So very often when people go into meditation retreats, they will do they’ll have a period when it’s just their concentration, pitch, and then they’ll do their other parts in the afternoon or something. You share.
You You do both. You get realizations in the first and the second kinds of meditation. Yeah. After the for the first four stages of air, the breath has left the body. Is that right?
Mhmm. And then the next four stages? Yes. Very clean and active. K. Up to two days.
That’s right. Exactly. Is it a real reason to miss the body? If the consciousness is there. That’s why it’s so important.
If the consciousness is there and there are indications the way they talk of when the consciousness does leave, then it’s really important if the consciousness is there not to disturb the body. What are the indications? Well, the way they talk is there’s one is which seems a bit subtle for most people to see it, think, there’s certain subtle liquid energies. There’s a pinkish one that would come out. They call it the red kundalini, and that comes out through the nose.
So when that’s left the body, it’s like a little liquid here, like sort of pinkish fluid, and then a white sort of whitish pink fluid comes out the sex organ. It’s hard to see because they’re probably messy anyway. Depends. That’s one sign. But even at one time when one lama died, there were people with him, and he was supposedly what they call meditating.
Because when you the holy beings, when they die, they have complete control. This is very common in the Tibetan tradition. They have complete control of the death process, and they are able to go through these stages without ever losing consciousness. They even then eventually do their and then when their mind is when the gross level has completely ceased, they’re at the clear light consciousness stage, is a subtle one, and they’re able to meditate very deeply at that stage, and they can stay there for several days if they want to. And then when they can choose to leave their body, when they choose well, one, this old lama was was meditating, like, looking like dead but meditating, and all his students around him.
And one of the students said he thought he saw lama’s head move slightly. And he said, no. No. It’s just hallucination. But then the other lama who was with him, he turned to him and he said, Lama Yeshe’s meditation has now ceased.
Meaning his consciousness did leave and it left through the it leaves through different parts of the body. Could be through the top chakra, the crown chakra or something. And that there’s that slight shift, that slight movement. I mean, you wouldn’t notice that necessarily. Wouldn’t be watching all the time.
But another way to check is if there’s warmth. Because they talk about all this energy that’s absorbing comes all into the heart chakra. And as long as there’s warmth still here, you put your hand over. If you can feel warmth, the person’s still there. And I’ve heard many people, nurses, who don’t have all this idea, but they say you just know when a person’s gone, you know.
You know when a person’s still there. It is a feeling. Okay. That’s bit subtle. Yeah.
So then okay. Then you meditate. The next after meditating about death, on death, and this is the main one, the first one, how I described about death impermanent, you know, death is definite, time of death uncertain, all that, you contemplate those things again and again. Just like the words I’m using, these are the words that I use, roughly speaking, you know, when I’m thinking about it. But one can find one’s own way of describing according to these points, you know.
So you you as I said, you bay basically beef up the bare bones of these ideas with your own experiences. That’s what you use as the basis of these kinds of contemplations. It’s it’s analytical contemplation. But it can be very focused, and that’s the point. That’s when the more insights come.
The more focused it is, the more your concentration, the more likely you are to have strong insights into the truth of these things that touch your heart. You know? And you just build those up until eventually they become your default mode in place of the other one, you know, the the the grasping at permanently. And how you do it also, you don’t just think of it in meditation. You think of every minute of your life.
There’s constantly things out there staring you in the face that are reminding you of impermanence, but we don’t we don’t they don’t touch us because it’s not us. So every time you read the obituaries you know, I love to read the obituary pages. It’s like having it’s like reading it’s like reading about it’s like reading a death meditation. Because you all gotta do is link with this is this could be me. You know?
But we don’t think that way because we’re so separate from it. But it’s really important to think this will be me. You You read about that person, how they were young, you get the you see photos of them back in the thirties or something, you know, that they’re young and you can just know they’re all full of hope and real, they’re living real person, you know, with their life ahead of them like we all feel. All everything’s exciting and fantastic in this big bubble we’ve created. Nothing mean, you know, it’s how we are.
And then life goes through, and then husband dies, they get divorced, another one comes in the dramas, and then so they grow up and the kids get old, then boom, they’re dead now, wrinkled and old and dead, you know, gone like a dream. You read it all, boom, it’s in front of you. It’s a powerful way to meditate on death and impermanence, and you realize this will be me, you know, it’s gone like a dream. When my mother died and I was thirty something, I remember in a flash of a moment when she was thirty something, when she was a little kid. And just in that period, thirty years had gone and my mother was dead.
This thirty year old woman was dead, you know. I mean, she was seventy, but it just went like a flash. You think of it like this. It’s much more real for you when you think when you read the obituaries, when you read about famous people dying. It’s not just in terms of gossip, which is how it is now.
You know? Oh, Frank Sinatra is so amazing. The mafia, this, that, fantastic. It’s all gossip. No.
Think of this person who was a real human being who felt like you, you know, who believed he was so real, lived his life like this invulnerable, real person. You know? Now suddenly he’s old and decrepit and senile, and he’s dying. Can you only imagine the fear and suffering in his mind? You know?
That’s the way to think about it. So therefore, what’s important? All the creatures who die every day, you know, with the same kind of grasping at their self, boom, they’re dead too. So death comes. You know?
Death is real. So it’s insane not to think about it. Not to get us depressed is to get us less depressed, actually. That’s the irony. To wake us up, to not waste this precious life.
That’s the idea. So then you increase that. Like I said, you increase that wish by contemplating, and this is this context here. And this is all taken, again, from Buddha’s very extensive teachings about the different realms of existence and Buddha’s view of reality, basically. You know?
So by contemplating just the the the suffering of these lower realms and even just to contemplate you know? Because it really means for us maybe it’s a bit much for us to think about spirits and hell beings, but we can certainly see animals. It’s very clear. Well, the first leap of imagination for us in the West is to even imagine that our consciousness can become a lion. There’s already a leap for us.
It’s outrageous concept. You know? I mean, it is an outrageous concept. But if we can even make that leap, then to get some sense of it’s sort like when you see a person who’s suffering, it’s hard enough to relate to that that could be me. We don’t think that.
It’s sort like a relief when we see a smelly old homeless person, which is a relief that it’s not me, aren’t we? We don’t care. You know? But to have a sense that that could be me, due to karma. Or as you say, as a Christian, but for the grace of God, I.
Same idea. You know? It you a sense of connectedness. So to see animals in this way. And then what’s interesting is, Buddhist psychology refers to all living beings, not just to humans.
So Buddhist psychology refers to animals. So if you use the same understanding, we’re gonna be discussing it all, Buddha’s view of the mind, we have these delusions, have anger and violence and aggression and peace and kindness and love and generosity, the whole deal. Right? You just have to look at animals. You don’t have to be too clairvoyant to observe their behavior, and that indicates pretty much what’s going on in their little mind.
You have to be too clairvoyant to see a lion has plenty of aggression and attachment when she’s ripping the guts out of that buffalo. Come on, come on, excuse me. You just have to you know, and that’s what suffering is. I mean, this is the gross level of suffering. Being an animal who’s misused by humans, let’s say, the sheep, you know, the chickens.
That’s one level of suffering. But then there’s the other level of suffering, which is all animals, which is the suffering of their minds being locked into this ignorant being, you know, who lives in fear and paranoia. We watch all those you you watch all those animal shows, and we’re so fascinated. We we how interesting this fascination, how there’s all this is nature, so wonderful in the wild, blah blah blah. Look how they kill each other.
Look how they do this. But, I mean, excuse me. It’s like a nightmare when you watch it. What you gotta do is replace yourself with them. And When you observe that lion stalking the buffalo, then getting it, ripping its guts out for breakfast and feeding her babies around like a leisurely way.
Can you imagine if you were so hungry one morning, you had no choice but to go stalk your neighbor and then rip their guts out and eat it on the street. Can you only imagine the intensity of your mind? Can you only imagine the intensity of your attachment and your aggression and your lack of choice? I mean, that is unbelievable suffering. Excuse me.
Know? To be caught up in that mode of operation. How intense. How incredible. Just to try and think like this.
You know? When you watch those, especially the fishes and everything, all the little creatures, I mean, it is like a hell realm. They’re killing or being killed. There is no other choice. Even the affection most animals give each other in the wild is so surreptitious because you can’t afford to be relaxed, because you’re constantly in paranoia being threatened.
You know, you’re constantly threatened. I mean, just compare even the worst humans. I mean, some humans, suffering is pretty terrible. It’s so true. But there’s a mental space sometimes, you know, even a little bit.
But for animals, there’s no mental space. And then they’re living they’re they’re food for each other, basically. I mean, it’s just inconceivable to think of such a war a war a war zone, you know. I mean, that’s suffering. If that’s not suffering, I don’t know what is.
So just thinking freshly, looking differently at animals. You know? This is the Buddhist view. And having, of course, a strong wish, thank you very much. Whatever it is that caused that little mosquito to be a mosquito or a rat to be a rat or a, you know, whatever it is, thank you.
I don’t wanna do that. Whatever it is, you know. I don’t wanna be that way. Thank you. And when you think of the karma of a rat because one of the ways karma rises, which we’ll talk about, is in all in terms of how people see you, how you are treated.
Well, look how rats are treated by humans. Just the sight of a rat fills us with horror, doesn’t it? True real disgust and the wish to immediately annihilate it. Can you imagine being treated like that by somebody? Can you imagine if that’s not suffering, can you imagine what it does to that mind of that rat?
Absolute paranoia all the time. It’s hideous, you know. Just horrible. Think about it. Animals can’t obviously, feel about it and so animals can’t do much about their karma.
That’s that’s the tragedy of being an animal. That’s right. Exactly. When they last passed Yeah. I understand.
How it is is like this, that a rat, just like you and me, according to Buddha, has countless lives. Okay? So it’s created countless negative and positive karmic imprints. So in that rat’s consciousness are infinite numbers of virtuous imprints as well. Huge ones.
Like I said before, that garden of the animal energy is completely what that’s what’s ripening, and all the other seeds are buried right now. So they’re there. And so then it it’s well, as long as it’s in the animal or the rat mode, you know, it’s got that life which brings to another one, brings to another, have many, many, many lives of suffering. But eventually, that karma runs out too. It’s a petrol tank runs out.
And then eventually, like a miracle, it could be an animal type of form like a lot of our dogs and cats who have good owners, who love them and take care, who prevent them from killing, and who buy let’s say they’re a practitioner, they’re sort of doing practices around them, so whatever they’re hearing goes into their mind stream that can activate one of their virtuous karmas. And if you if you allow if you give it a peaceful death and do many prayers and stuff for it, Buddhism would say, you can encourage that virtuous karma to ripen and get a decent life again. They had this story of I always quote this story about this little bird that used to live on the windowsill of some great yogi in India. And because it would every day, we’d hear all the different texts being recited in the prayers of the yogi. So the Buddha’s view would be that every single thing we hear or see, it leaves an imprint in our consciousness.
It leaves it it leaves an imprint. Right? So he got born as one of his students’ next life. That’s what they say. Because of the power just of the power of those imprints all the time.
And I’ve been with Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Whenever he’s around animals, he’s kind of famous for this. He never misses an opportunity. You know? So, I mean, he he sort of lets the lets the fleas live in his socks, and he feeds the he feeds the cockroaches the scorpions.
He used to feed the scorpions, trying to work out what they liked, you know. He used to feed them milky little kind of tiny things on the ground. He would when I was at the zoo with him in Singapore one time, he kind of was having this picture taken of this big ape, and he’s sort of shouting all these mantras into the ape’s ear. Right? Then there’s this porcupine that he was bending over and giving all these saying all these prayers to, the porcupine was completely mesmerized like this.
That. Stories like that all the time because you don’t waste an opportunity. That’s what they say. So, anyway, thinking about the suffering of the animals is a very helpful one. And and, of course, it takes a lot of leaps of imagination to do And the the real point of it here is not so much to have compassion.
And, of course, you can’t help but have compassion. But that isn’t the main point here. The main point is to have this sense of horror at the thought of their suffering and that you don’t want it. Thank you. Just like and we know this perfectly well.
You know, what prevents you from staying away from fire is the horror of being burned. So don’t sort of get all superior about we shouldn’t have fear, you know. I mean, it’s healthy to have a reasonable fear. The reason most of us don’t drive like complete maniacs on the road apart from wanting not wanting a ticket, We don’t wanna turn into sort of into a mangled mess of bones and blood, you know? So, you know, if you’re driving on the freeway, you see this mangled car, and you see bodies, you immediately panic, and you start slowing down and driving better.
Why? Because you don’t wanna be like that. It’s perfectly reasonable, you know. So this is this is the approach here, which is the most unusual one. We don’t think like this normally, but it’s very practical.
And then, of course, it can’t help but give us compassion because Buddhism would say that all these sentient beings, beginningless lives, all these worms and creatures, and have had countless lives, including human, and have potential to become a Buddha. But due to their negative karma ripening, because of their ignorance, they’re now in this suffering state, you know. So it brings compassion as well. So this leads us to the next point where you think, well, you know, whom whom can I turn to to give me methods to avoid this type of rebirth? And so here we talk about refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.
So there’s, you know, again, there’s ways of meditating on all of this. But the essential points that one would meditate upon are sort of getting some sense of the qualities of a being who is called a Buddha. In this case, mister Buddha, you know, of two and a half thousand years ago, his teachings that were which is like the medicine. They have this analogy like the the you know, when you’re sick when you’re not sick, You can hear some great doctor, let’s say, in Timbuktu somewhere. You can hear he’s got this amazing quality.
He’s gonna heal everybody. You go, that’s interesting. I’m very grateful, but I don’t need him, so who cares? You know? Because you wait till you get sick.
Suddenly, you’re completely focused on getting to Timbuktu. Don’t care how much it costs You have this incredible appreciation of this person’s qualities, don’t you? Because you need them now. So they say that that’s like what refuge is. So to hear about all the qualities of a Buddha sounds most fascinating, but you’re only gonna really have a sense of wanting to rely upon a Buddha if when you feel that you’re suffering and you need need some you need to change your ways, you know, if you like.
This idea of refuge is like relying upon a doctor. Then the Dharma, if which is simply the Buddha’s teachings, right, the methods that the Buddha used to become a Buddha, that’s the medicine that we’re going to be using. That’s the real refuge in a sense. You’re gonna have twenty two doctors in front of you, perfect doctors. But if you don’t take their medicine, if you don’t take their advice, you won’t get better.
So the real medicine is the doc is is the medicine. The real medicine is the Dharma, is the teachings. There’s this stuff that we’re discussing here for a person who considers himself a Buddhist who uses this stuff and uses it in their life as the medicine, you know, to transform their mind, change their karma. So there’s much there’s extensive discussion of the qualities of the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. You know?
So, basically, the Buddha yeah. Anyway, we’ll talk about that. Lunch. What time? Twelve o’clock.
Okay. Okay. Two minutes. Yeah. You know, what what’s a Buddha?
We’ve said already, really. Buddha says we all possess this potential to be a Buddha, but this mister Buddha of two thousand five hundred years ago, Śākyamūni Buddha, he’s this person who was originally a prince, seemed, born into a, you know, a very well-to-do family with all the good qualities and very revered and loved and very handsome and intelligent, just like Keanu Reeves, whoever played the part, probably. He he was very nice as Buddha, wasn’t I liked him. So then so then, you know, he started because he was and and the story the way they tell Buddha stories is like this. Because he it sort of sounds kinda cute, know, a bit like a kid’s story, but it’s interesting.
The king when he was born when Buddha was born, apparently, all these various signs, you know, to show that he was a special person, and some seer, some oracle came and said that he would either be a great a very famous and amazing king, or he’ll be a great spiritual practitioner, which in those days, of course, meant he’d leave his home and go off and be a sadhu, you know, a holy man. So the king didn’t want this. So he he tried to protect him from seeing the suffering of the world. He tried to give him absolutely everything he wanted. I mean, it had this story.
You know? So he lived in this kind of extraordinarily, I mean, luxurious richness, this vast kind of environment where he never saw suffering. So the father would always ensure that he only had young, beautiful people around, all these gorgeous girls, only young and only handsome and only beautiful Didn’t see suffering, didn’t see sickness, didn’t see any of this stuff. So the story goes that the the one time he wanted he started to feel a bit did a bit of dissatisfaction. He had all these gorgeous things, he was very happy, and he had a wife and a nice baby and all the rest, and the dancing girls, and blah blah blah.
But he started to sort of have this dissatisfaction. So I think he he wanted to go out and see all the people outside. So they made sure that the everything was beautiful. They got they got rid of all the dirty stuff and got rid of all the old people and the sick people and just showed them all the nice handsome young people. So somehow, though, he had a vision of a sick person in the crowd, and he got a real shock.
He’d never seen a person like this ever in his life. Know? This is how they told us tell the story. So he and there’s like a I think somebody manifested some whatever. And he got a really profound shock to to see this person who was sick, so he asked about it.
And so he thought deeply, is this sickness? You know? What’s the point of all this stuff? Then the story goes, went out two more times, and he’s next, he saw what’s the next one? Sick person.
Old person. Yeah. An old person. And he was completely shocked to see this old person, all the wrinkles and everything. And then the third time he went out, he he saw this dead person, like a a funeral pyre, you know, a funeral procession.
So all these things profoundly touched his mind, apparently, and started to think about the meaning of life. And what’s the point of all these gorgeous things if that’s all all all that happens to you is this. What’s the point of all this? Like a bubble, you know, it’s just ridiculous. So that’s when he ran away from home, you know, left in the middle of the night, and he went off and joined these various Hindu sadhus who at the time were using various methods, you know, ascetic practices to discover the nature of reality and go beyond suffering and blah blah.
So he cut his hair. You know, there’s a symbolic point at which he cut all his hair off, is why Buddhist monks and nuns have their head shaved. It’s a symbol of giving up the ordinary lifestyle. You know? So I think he meditated for many, many years trying different methods, trying to find the nature of reality, trying to the truth, blah blah blah.
And at some point after many years of these ascetic practices, he discovered that, this was, you know, it wasn’t getting where he had to get. He sort of got to Bodh Gaya by he crossed the river and found this tree and sat under the tree and determined to sort of sit there until he got all the realizations, and he became enlightened. That’s how they tell the story, something like that. I’m sure it has far more grind to it all. Sounds a bit like a fairy story.
But it’s a very nice book, actually. It’s talking one of the books I wanna recommend that that is published by Shambala called The Awakened One, which is the life story of the Buddha. Taken from many, many sources, but it’s very nice. The Awakened One, published by Shambala. I don’t know if they sell it here, but it’s a very nice book.
It gives you his life story. We send it to all our prisoners. Yeah. So then Buddha’s basically, Buddha’s teaching and we’re discussing them here. Okay.
And we’re of course, we’re discussing them in the context of how they’ve been developed in Tibet, which is obviously a different way than the way you’re gonna hear them if you hear from some Taiwanese person or a Japanese person, but the essence is there. You know? And what Buddha is saying, as I’m saying here, what Buddha is saying, that we all possess this potential to become a Buddha. You know? And so to appreciate to take refuge in the Buddha, had to have some some sense of what the Buddha is, what the Buddha what the qualities of a Buddha, and the qualities of the Buddha’s Dharma, and then have a great appreciation even for the practitioners, for the Sangha, they say, or the spiritual community.
We we rely we rely upon this for our practice. You know? We rely. So at some point in a person’s life, when they say let’s say they decide they want to be a Buddhist, there’s a formal little ceremony that you do of going for refuge, as they say, for quite short, where you commit yourself to living according to Buddhist teachings, you know, and then to have to to live according to the Dharma, which is the teachings, the medicine, and then to have respect for the people who represent the existence of the Dharma in any one place, which is said to be the people who are monks and nuns. You know?
The presence of in Buddhist culture, since Buddha’s time, in Buddhist teachings, in fact, it says that the very presence of the living the living Dharma and it’s got to be a living thing, not just in books. You know? The presence of the living Dharma in any one place is indicated by the presence of of Sangha, at least four fully ordained monks or nuns in any one place. And, actually, there’s a story in Tibet at a time when they had one king. It was a bit like a period they’re going through now when the king was anti against the dharma.
He destroyed the dharma, destroyed the monasteries, killed the monks and nuns, and so on. And at some point, they only had about three monks left. I can’t remember exactly the number because I forget. And they were just on the border near China, and they wanted to get one more they needed one more monk in order to have the quota so they could have an ordination, so they could have ordained more, so they could keep it alive. And so they got this Chinese monk to come over the border, and they at that point, I think they wore blue or something.
As a respectful as out of respect, the Tibetans put this thing here, this blue strip on here, as a respect as a sign of respect to the Chinese monks at that time who wore blue for allowing them to keep the dharma alive in Tibet. I wonder if, in the last few minutes, you’d explain a little bit more about, the Western response to ordained people in terms of offerings and, you know, maintaining Sangha don’t work, don’t Well, some do. That what’s your name? Helen. Helen wanting me to talk a little bit about the importance of Sangha, I suppose, in a Buddhist community and And supporting how to support them and everything.
Well, it’s a bit difficult for me to talk about that, isn’t it? Because I am one. Would you mind just being able to take some moments and talk generally? Because we have a Geshe Mhmm. We have a monk that’s starting an intro to Buddhism on Monday night for seven weeks.
He’s my promo. And and those people really depend on us Mhmm. Their livelihood. I understand. Yeah.
Well, yeah, it’s interesting. It’s like it is a foreign thing in us for us in our culture. In our culture, it’s very self help and very independent and very democratic. We’re all equal. Know?
It almost seems shocking when when people see the way, let’s say even the way a person who’s called a lama, let’s say in Tibet, the Tibetan tradition, the person who’s a spiritual practitioner is known as a lama, let’s say they’re a monk as well. It’s it’s almost foreign to Westerners to give all this respect to this person. You know? It feels like, come on, excuse me. We’re all equal.
What’s all this about? That’s very common among Buddhists too. So really, of course of course, we have to interpret it. It is an Asian tradition, so there is something cultural there. But if a culture is a valid culture, then there is meaning to what you do.
So, you you know, we can see in our culture, like in Tibet, when you meet somebody, you bump heads with each other. It’s a common way of greeting, you you bump heads. I mean, excuse me, somebody’s walking around bumping their heads and think we’re nuts, right? But what do we do? We shake our right hands.
So, you know, for a person who’s not familiar with that, it’s a very weird thing to do. So we’re used to it. It has meaning, and we know there’s nothing inherent about two hands meeting. But we know it means greeting, we know it means friendship. So we can see everything.
Culture in itself, holding hands in that way has no meaning, but we know what it means because we understand So then that’s the same with, seeing the meaning behind, you know, what it is, and there’s some kind of logic behind this idea of so called respecting and supporting the Sangha, the monks and nuns, for example. Because according to Buddhist teachings, it’s their presence in any one place that is actual the living it keeps it is the the indication of the livingness of that thing. So, you know, in the Asian cultures, there’s no problem, especially in, say, countries like Tibet for sure, but also in Taiwan. Know? So Taiwan at the moment happens to be quite flourishing money wise.
Right? And everybody says there that when you go to the monasteries, there’s these amazing places, extraordinarily beautiful. Even recently, on the telly last night on on the news, the the newsreader maybe maybe they do this. The newsreader was in this amazing big monastery, this Chinese monastery in Sydney. Did you notice on the on the news last night?
Or the night before, maybe? Night before. And it was this extraordinarily beautiful, huge, big monastery with gorgeous grounds and beautiful lotus ponds. I mean, obviously, it it took a lot of money in Sydney. I mean, huge.
So, you know, where does all that come from? That comes from all the laypeople. And they they don’t have to do many fundraisers in the among the Taiwanese community because they all automatically understand. The job of the monks and nuns is to provide the spiritual teachings and and be and they and just do do their job. And the job of the laypeople is to support them.
What’s most interesting also, the monks at the monasteries are also incredibly generous. There’s no concept of paying for the dharma. Mean, technically, even in the West, there’s not. Because it’s understood in the Eastern culture, there’s a natural understanding. First of all, the understanding of karma, that generosity is one of the most powerful qualities to be giving, is a guaranteed way to get for yourself, which is not the reason you do it, to understand the logic of karma.
Then they have this great appreciation of the presence of the dharma in their lives, and they know that those who uphold it are called the monks and nuns, so then they know it’s their job to support them. And they want to support them, as long as they’re not being forced to by this horrible, you know, horrible kind of autocratic monks and nuns. It’s a complete agreement in their culture, you know. So it’s very inspiring to see. So when you go to one of their monasteries, these magnificent, beautiful monasteries with so many gorgeous things and a very beautiful environment, everything is free.
Everything there’s no such there’s no concept of being charged. But, of course, you know that, so you of course, you give. So it’s kind of interesting, you know. And, actually, there’s one center I know in in America, one center only that that I know about that does things like that. They always say there’s no cost, but, of course, people know, and they always give a bit of a talk about generosity at the end.
They know there’s no charge, so you kinda feel good about that, and they always end up getting more. You know? But it’s very most most of us in the West, it’s very hard to think that way. Never like we we hear, know, the center hires this place, pays a fortune. To then just say to you, come along and it’s all free.
Well, usually in the West, it wouldn’t occur to us unless we were told that we ought to give something because we know that’s how the whole ball keeps rolling. Do you understand my point? And we but it’s interesting, this one of generosity, it’s very strong in the eastern cultures and very strong certainly one of the thing big things about supporting the monks and nuns. You know? But it’s not an interesting one.
I mean, it’s not an easy one for our minds when we think like this. But, also, the other one that’s very Asian is this one of like, you know, it’s almost a revolting word for us to you know, one of the best jobs in among the Tibetan lamas, the key job you’ve you’ve got you’ve got, like, the best job if you become and they use the word, the servant of the lama. I mean, that’s that’s so horrific to our mind. To think of being someone’s servant is so disgusting, you don’t wanna go on strike. But it’s it’s the most revered job because it’s the one that you wanna do most is to actually serve a person.
Mean, what a wonderful word. So, of course, we’ve so misused it in our culture, servants are people who become slaves, you know? Of course, it’s terrible that way. But when you when there’s this mutual relationship, like a a lama who has a person who sort of supports and takes care, You know, we do it all the time in the West, you know, we call it a paying job, that’s all. You know?
But it’s this attitude of enormous respect. When you have a great respect for somebody, then it’s a natural one that you would like to offer them something or give or take care or support. And so, again, in our culture, it’s quite hard because we have this view of all self serve. I mean, it’s a very interesting term. Self serve is interesting.
Not criticising. It’s really great because we like to be independent. And I know that Dalai Lama often talks about how it’s really when it’s very kind of entrenched, when when there’s always a negative and a positive to all the ways we are, you know. So he would always complain about how it was so stultifying in Tibet. He couldn’t move an inch because everyone was taking care of him and serving him and loving him and putting him on ten foot thrones, you know.
So he was so happy to be around the democratic west. We could be his own person and cut away all the rubbish. So you can see how it can get all kind of wrong, but the essence of it is very pure, you know. So how does it work at the centre? We’ve got Khen Rinpoche who’s retired, basically, isn’t he?
Retired. We support him, don’t we? The centre supports him. Right? Yeah.
No. Partially. Partially. Okay. He has an attendant who works for him, but there is still a cooking roster.
Oh, so people offer their services to cooking. Yeah. I see. We’ve done it quite difficult for all the reasons that Yes. That’s right.
Right. But I found that to be one of the most rewarding things that I ever did because I got to know the attendants who speak English. Right. And there was such a lot of fun around I understand. Yes.
And what I got back from Rinpoche, You know? And he’d always ask us about my family and Sure. Sure. Sure. Get the names wrong.
It was just a very rewarding experience. Absolutely. Makes sense. Really. The one also amongst nuns is not easy, even among us Western monks and nuns, know, because we’re so into when when they it’s lunchtime.
When they talk about refuge, know, there’s this formal ceremony, you go for refuge in the Buddha, when a person’s thought about all this stuff that we’re talking about and really begins to develop a practice and then commits themselves. And there’s certain commitments at each stage in terms of the Buddha. One of the commitments is to always have a very pure view towards all the objects, the Buddha’s statues. So not to see them so much in terms of, I prefer that because it’s gold, I don’t like that because it’s pink, you know? Or I put my green painting over there because it fits nicely with my green carpet.
So they say not to have this view of it just being decoration or art or value. You see it as actually something more than that. Even if it’s bad art, you still see it as representing all essential qualities that you want to develop. So there’s very pure view towards it. And they say the commitment towards the Sangha, taking refuge in the Sangha, for example, is that we would all have equal respect for each other as monks and nuns, or lay people would have respect for monks and nuns.
Not so you might like Fred, you know. You think you prefer Fred to Mary, but actually, you’d have some kind of part of your mind have respect for both of them because they’re upholding the Buddha’s teachings in any one place. And these are the ideas that I think that aren’t so comfortable sitting in our minds, you know. This is an attitude that takes time to develop. Certainly among even among the monks and nuns, you know, we’re just all into personalities.
If we like a person, we don’t care if they’re, you know, a murderer. I don’t mean like that. We we like people. We don’t we can’t so much appreciate a person as a position. It seems a bit odd for us.
You know? It was almost interesting when when Western people, monks and nuns, are around, you know, say, in an Asian culture, because then you’re treated with unbelievable respect, having nothing to do with you but to do with what you represent, which is being a monk or nun. Know? So it’s interesting. So it is a very different approach.
And, also, it takes time for our mind to see if it’s meaningful. You know? Yeah. It’s interesting. Okay.
We’ve looked at just to reiterate and finish. We’ve looked at these various points. And I know it might all sound a bit kind of confusing. Where does all this fit in, how do you meditate on, and how do you change your mind by thinking I mean, basically, the one I’m trying to get at again and again and again, there’s there’s a whole level of Buddhism, which is the first main level, which is at the conceptual level. The Buddha is saying in our minds we have these misconceptions about how things are.
So what we’re doing is presenting Buddha’s views. So the way one integrates those into one’s life is by thinking about them. So slowly, thoughts trickle. We all know that. They trickle from here to here.
Just like when you first learn any kind of interesting theories, in the beginning, they’re just mere words, aren’t they? And you think, well, how am gonna make this real for me? Well, you keep thinking about it and thinking about it and studying it and thinking about it and discussing it until eventually those words, those theories, that as you know, that that, astronomy or that mathematics starts to become meaningful for you. So that is exactly the process here. You don’t call it meditation when you do mathematics, but it’s this internalizing of it until eventually it’s natural to you.
That’s the process of meditation. And in this context, at the initial stage, it’s called analytical meditation. By hearing about these views and thinking and thinking let’s say if you walk out of this room after this weekend and you’re interested in it, you wanna go further, then you keep thinking about it and memorizing it and hearing the teachings and and and getting a more deep and more fleshed out, you know, picture of all this until and then you meditate upon it in an analytical way, bringing it from your brain to your heart until eventually these become the way we see life. This is how it works. You know?
Something mysterious, this process. So we’ve looked at the first the main points, the one of how we do possess Buddha nature and how our mind is beginningless and not created and so on. Then we looked at how we need to look really, really contemplate how this this life is so precious. I’ll just take it for granted. And really, this gives us energy to not wanna waste it.
And then thinking about impermanence and death increases our wish not to waste it, realizing that death is so this life is so fragile. Death definitely can come at any time and will come at any time, and we don’t know when. And what’s important at the time of death is basically the the virtuous imprints on our mind because that’s what’s useful to us. It’s not a religious idea. It’s a practical one.
What’s of use to you on that journey from this life to the next? The only thing that’s of use to you at that transitional point is the virtuous imprints in your mind because they will ripen in the experiences that you actually want. And then we’re looking at the necessity to think about the suffering of the various other creatures, the other sentient beings in the universe. Buddha would say we have the potential to be born as them if we die with negative karma on our minds, so it increases our wish not to waste this life. Then we think, well, whom can I turn to to give me the methods to do this?
And so we we think about the qualities of the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, meditate on this, and get some sense of wanting to rely upon them. And then the next point, which we’ll begin after lunch, is where now we start the essence of this scope, which is putting our money where our mouth is, which is abiding by the laws of karma, which is Buddha’s actual explanations. Now we’re gonna rely upon the Buddha, and we’re now gonna listen to his view of what we should do and what we should not do in order to get what we want when we die. This is the first level of practice. Don’t be all holy.
Again, it’s got nothing to do with emptiness and nothing to do with compassion yet. It goes in stages. We’re the very first stage. Mean, impermanence up to here is the very first stage of practice. And so the essence of it, the heart of it is here.
We’re gonna begin to look at what karma is, what is negative karma, what is positive, what makes it this way, how does it ripen, how do you purify it, how do you change it, you know. This is where you really begin to practice. Put your money where your mouth is. So we can discuss that after lunch. So thank you very much.
Let’s dedicate. Again, just thinking dedicating means simply recognizing that every moment that we’ve been listening to all this is seeds that we’ve planted in our minds, and so rejoicing that we’ve done this, thinking that I’m not the same person that walked in the door, you know, at six this morning, eight this morning, whatever. All these imprints is like this gardening that I’ve done. So if I hadn’t planted these seeds, then the fruits won’t come. Now that I’ve planted them, may they ripen as quickly as possible in the development of all these marvelous fruits, which are my own experiences of of joy and happiness, my own fulfillment.
So then I can use that for the sake of others. Others. So, again, remembering how to have your lunch just if you wanna think about it first. Imagine that this food in front of you, you know, rather than say the usual grasping, oh, I like rice, oh, I don’t like beans, oh, this doesn’t look so good, this is really crummy food, or this is really delicious food, all the usual views we have, try and get more space from it. And imagine that it’s just radiant nectar, you know, Blissful, blissful.
Oceans of it. And then you imagine before you eat it, you imagine that you’re offering it to all the beings in the universe. Famous for his meditations on this. Sometimes he can go for three hours, you know, blessing the food. As one monk said, you never get a hot meal with Rinpoche.
So, you know, you can don’t be don’t be you have to be extreme. Just do it for a minute. But even for a minute, to get some space from it, to think that it’s not real, solid, delicious, ugly, very kind of spacious, blissful nectar, which you then imagine oceans of and you imagine offering to all the beings. And because the mind is the most important thing, then what you think completely transforms the action that you do. Because you face it, the usual reason we eat is for me, isn’t it?
It’s reasonable. Here, we’re trying to imagine doing it for all beings, imagine offering to all you know, that makes the action sublime because the mind transforms everything. So simple, remember a thing like that. Thank you very much, everybody. See you at what time?
What’s our next bit? O’clock. Two o’clock? Okay. Thank you.