Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 69-minute talk, Venerable Thubten Dondrub guides students through the four immeasurable thoughts—a foundational Buddhist practice that cultivates equanimity, love, compassion, and the commitment to help all beings. He emphasizes the Mahāyāna distinction: not merely wishing others happiness and freedom from suffering, but determining that “I myself will help them.” The core teaching focuses on understanding the three types of suffering, with particular attention to the “suffering of change”—the insight that what ordinary people call happiness (sitting after standing, acquiring wealth, worldly success) is actually subtle suffering because it doesn’t last and inevitably disappoints. Using the standing-and-sitting analogy, he explains how the mind mistakes cessation of gross pain for actual happiness, and how recognizing this applies to everyone in cyclic existence, from the poor to the powerful, generating genuine compassion for all. He closes with practical reflection: understanding that saṃsāra contains no real happiness motivates both self-compassion (renunciation) and the determination to help others discover what actually liberates. Suited for practitioners with some Buddhist background, or anyone seeking to understand why Buddhist teaching emphasizes renunciation not as denial but as love.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2014 09 04 Four Immeasurable Thoughts week 4 04-09-2014.mp3
UUID: 6c080727-cb6d-46d5-9e1b-d632d876579c
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Four Immeasurable Thoughts (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2014-09-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 69.0 minutes
Words: ~7,097
Welcome everyone to our Thursday night class which is on the four immeasurable thoughts. We tried to explain last week and in the e news that tonight there will be a shorter talk tonight because there is Tsok Day. So after the break there will be the torma offering. So people, if they are most welcome to stay for the torma offering, but if they feel uncomfortable about that, then they can run away or go home at the break time. You’re still allowed to have a cup of tea or coffee though.
Okay. We traditionally start with the prayer to the Lion-Faced Dakini which is a prayer to help overcome hindrances to ourselves understanding and being able to practice the teachings. So this is on page five. I prostrate to the gathering of dakinis and the three places who abide in the holy yoga of using space by your powers of clairvoyance and magical emanation. Look after practitioners like a mother, her child.
By the teachings of the three supreme jewels possessing the power of truth, may inner and outer hindrances be transformed. May they be dispelled. May they be pacified. May they be completely pacified. May all negative forces opposed to dharma be completely pacified, may the host of eighty thousand obstacles be pacified, may we be separated from problems and harmful conditions to dharma, may all enjoyments be in accord with the Dharma, and may there be auspiciousness and perfect happiness here right now.
So then we make a mandala offering of the whole universe as a ritual way to request the teachings, to reduce our attachment and so on which are obstacles to being able to understand and practice the teachings and by making this offering sincerely as possible then this helps to accumulate the merit which is the basis, one of the bases for being able to understand the teachings properly, practice them and gain at some point the authentic realizations. So then as we continue to visualize the Buddha in front of us, we also particularly think of all sentient beings surrounding us, as we think of them, to generate the bodhicitta motivation, wishing to achieve enlightenment so that we can perfectly repay the kindness of mother sentient beings. And of course that wish arises from bringing to mind as strongly as possible an awareness of how kind sentient beings are right now in this life, how much we are dependent on them. But by understanding our dependence on sentient beings in this life, for our survival, for all good experiences, for all good qualities that we develop, we can understand that this is true for all our past lives and while we remain in saṃsāra it is true while we remain in saṃsāra we are dependent on others.
But also to get a good rebirth, to get out of saṃsāra we depend on others. There is no way we achieve it just by ourselves. It’s totally dependent on the help and support and kindness of others. So that’s an important element in generating bodhicitta. And the other aspect is recognizing that all these beings who are so immensely kind and particularly have been one’s mother and father many times in saṃsāra, or because they’re in saṃsāra, they are suffering and unfortunately being controlled by ignorance and self-cherishing keep creating the causes of suffering over and over and over again.
Unfortunately they are doing this helplessly. The vast majority of sentient beings, unlike ourselves, haven’t found an authentic, perfect, complete, unbetrayable method that helps them make sense of their suffering, helps them modify it, transform it, and especially eliminate it. So they are really completely helpless. So thinking along these lines we can generate the thought that no matter what I have to use this life and all future lives. Not just to get a good rebirth or get out of saṃsāra but to realize the full potential of my mind so that I can perfectly repay mother sentient beings kindness.
So to do that I have to follow the path that depends on understanding the path, that depends on studying the teachings, listening to the teachings over and over again. And an essential part of the teachings and path that the Buddha set out is developing a good heart which is based on loving kindness and compassion. And this is what the four immeasurable thoughts are all about. So for this reason, for the sake of all sentient beings, I will study this practice. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and the Supreme Assembly.
By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So then we can imagine the Buddha being very pleased with our motivation to benefit others. Because of that the Buddha now comes to the crown of our head. And then when directly above our crown we imagine that the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light that pours down into us blessing our mind. And then just for a short time we can enhance that positive state of mind by doing some breathing meditation such as the nine round breathing exercise to help our mind become just that much calmer, clearer, more concentrated.
So that we can use that level of mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. So as I mentioned before the four immeasurable thoughts are a fundamental teaching and practice in the Buddhist tradition, common to both the Theravāda tradition and the Mahāyāna. Really distinguishes Mahāyāna version of the four immeasurable thoughts from the Theravāda view is that, at least as far as I understand, in the Theravāda tradition the four immeasurable thoughts are mainly expressed as the thought how wonderful it would be if all sentient beings could have happiness and may they have happiness. There is that wish for sentient beings to have equanimity, happiness, to be free of suffering and to abide and to experience joy. So there’s that wish for oneself and sentient beings to experience these four states.
Whereas in the Mahāyāna tradition it takes at a stage further in the fourth line of the prayer, sorry the third line of the prayer where it says, what does it say, may I myself cause these things to happen. So this is the particular Mahāyāna aspect which is not just wishing people to be happy and free of suffering but determining that I myself am going to help them do that. So this is what the Mahāyāna tradition encourages us to develop that courageous mind that goes beyond just wanting others, wishing others to be happy and to be free of suffering, but committing to really dedicating oneself to that. So then it becomes not just the immeasurable thought of love and compassion but it helps by reflecting in that way that may I cause these things to happen then this is tending us in the direction of great love and great compassion which are unique features of the Mahāyāna tradition. Although there is some very complicated technical debate about what distinguishes the Mahāyāna from the Theravāda traditions, whether it’s actually bodhicitta or great love and great compassion.
But I don’t want to get into that complicated argument now. So in developing the four immeasurable thoughts the basic one, the fundamental one is developing equanimity, the immeasurable thought of equanimity including trying to include all sentient beings in one’s thought not excluding anyone. And then on the basis of that one can then really begin to develop the immeasurable thought of love wishing others happiness by seeing that they are devoid of real happiness and not only devoid and totally lacking genuine happiness but sadly what is worse the vast majority of sentient beings aren’t even creating the causes for it. So they not only don’t have it now, but because they’re not dedicating their lives to actually creating the actual causes of happiness, they won’t have happiness in the future either. So then one develops that wish how wonderful it would be if sentient beings could have happiness.
Then wishing them happiness, may they have it, but then especially I’m going to help them, I have to help them because they’re just not doing it. Somehow I have to help them. But to help them that requires an immense amount of skill and an immense amount of time and patience etc. So then this leads into the next of the immeasurable thoughts which is the immeasurable thought of compassion. But of course love and compassion always go together.
If you develop genuine love for someone, you will have compassion for them. If you develop compassion for someone, you will develop love for them. You will want them to be happy. But they are different to some extent, but they always go together, the real things. Compassion is defined as that mental factor wanting self and others to be free of suffering.
That’s the basic compassion of not wanting suffering, wanting self and others to experience suffering. In the case of ourself, if we recognize that we have, we’re experiencing some suffering, then our little bit of compassion towards our self will not want that suffering so we will do something about it. So if we have a headache, since we don’t want the pain of a headache, we have the suffering of a headache, we take an aspirin or something like that. If we have some other sickness we will go to a doctor and try and follow the instructions of the doctor. But it is interesting to check out how much even we don’t follow those things.
Because what happens is our self-cherishing gets in the way. There always wants to take the easy way out. Even if taking some medicine we know this is really beneficial for us but it doesn’t taste nice or it’s too complicated to do it, then there’s a lot of resistance. What the first time? Yes, think it was no, it wasn’t the first time.
Anyway, one time when I went to Taiwan, I lived there for three years but before that I visited went there twice to visit and I was with Lama Ösel Rinpoche and we were taken to this sorry I’m off on a sidetrack already. We were taken to this place where these people were trying to treat people with cancer with all sorts of alternate medicines and natural foods and blah blah blah. But of course these natural foods that they were offering for these people were nothing like traditional Chinese food, which is extremely delicious. So this was quite boring food. Although these people were more or less convinced that this was an actual cure for cancer, I’m not sure if it really was, but many of the people left this clinic because they just didn’t like the taste of it.
Even though they had very serious cases of cancer. Know a friend when I was living in Perth and I used to teach in Bunbury, one of the women there was a nurse and she was saying how it was just amazing that there would be people in hospital with incredibly serious cases of cancer needing operations and you know they had this list of things they shouldn’t do but they would like go out and puff away, you know. Yes, well you probably know this, yes, yeah, Yeah. So it’s amazing how even we don’t even have that, you know, proper compassion for ourselves. But if we do, then we will, take the necessary measures even though they may be unpleasant and difficult.
But then if we understand that there is more to suffering than just headaches and cancers and this and that, then if we study the Buddha’s teachings and there is the possibility of dying and taking really bad rebirths, if we if we have understood that and believe that, then our compassion will lead us to renounce this life and make sure that we create the causes that lead to a good rebirth and that we don’t use this life to create the causes that can lead to a bad rebirth. And then if our understanding of our potential for suffering increases then we start to realise that actually even good rebirths in saṃsāra are still in the nature of suffering. We will develop so when we renounce this life, we develop that mind that is genuinely renouncing this life, this is developing really genuine basic compassion for ourselves. Many people don’t like this word. Some clever Buddhists think about all sorts of other nice terms for this.
I can’t be bothered. I’m okay with the word renunciation. But many people dislike it and think it sounds horrible and it’s very boring and horrible and sounds really miserable and you know kind of beating yourself or something like that. But really what renunciation is, basic renunciation, renouncing this life, is developing genuine love for oneself and genuine compassion for oneself. Basic love and basic compassion for oneself.
Starting to replace our self-cherishing with genuine love and genuine compassion. Genuine love meaning I want real happiness, not just a little entertainment, and I really don’t want suffering. So then when we start to understand that we are really trapped in saṃsāra, and saṃsāra actually is a pretty nasty thing to be in, then we can develop great compassion, can develop great renunciation, the great renunciation, renouncing cyclic existence altogether, which is like developing really deep compassion for ourselves which will lead us to understand that in order to avoid the suffering of saṃsāra we have to stop creating the causes of it and that means giving up our delusions and the only way we can do that is to get rid of ignorance. So that our great compassion for us or our really deep compassion for ourselves will motivate us to really put effort into doing all the things necessary to destroy, you know, to develop the wisdom that will destroy suffering, the causes of suffering, is ignorance. So that will cause us to live a life of pure morality so that we can develop a deep meditative concentration that will be able to transform an intellectual understanding of the nature of reality into a direct experience.
I’ve left out a key point of my big argument. I’ve forgotten what it was now. Oh yes, yes. Yes, I want to go back. I should have said this first of all.
I think I’ve already said this in the class before but I’d just like to repeat it because it took my tiny mind a long time to realize it. You’ve probably realized it straight away as soon as you met the Buddhadharma. But I think many people tend to think that developing why we need to develop compassion is because it is compassion which will eliminate suffering. But of course it won’t. Compassion isn’t the direct antidote to suffering.
Compassion, especially if we develop compassion for others, our compassion for others will help us, enable us to help people to modify their suffering so that they may be able to deal with their suffering and problems and difficulties more effectively and so on. But our compassion, even for ourselves, won’t stop our suffering. Our compassion for others won’t stop, directly stop the suffering of others. But what compassion does, it is the motivating force. It is the motivating force to stop our suffering.
It becomes the motivating force to stop the suffering of others. The stronger our compassion, the greater that motivating force is. The more we understand how we ourselves are suffering or have the potential for suffering, the more our compassion will motivate us not just to dabble around in the Dharma but really take it to heart and practice it intensely and therefore renounce this life and eventually completely renounce all attachment to cyclic existence. If we don’t have that compassion for ourselves we won’t develop that motivation. It’s only when we have that compassion for ourselves that we will really develop that motivation to stop the causes of our suffering.
And then finally, the more we work on ourselves, developing genuine compassion for ourselves, then we will be able to extend that more and more to compassion for the suffering of others. Because that’s what compassion is, the mind not wanting suffering. So we will be motivated the more we feel the suffering of others, we will be motivated to help them stop creating the causes of it. We can’t stop the suffering of others, but what we can do is help them know what are the causes of their suffering, that in fact each person is in reality creating their own causes for their own suffering. It’s not coming that’s the great message of the Buddhadharma.
It’s not other people creating the causes of our suffering. It’s not something out there. It’s our own crazy mind, our own uncontrolled mind that is creating the causes of our suffering. That is a message that many people do not want to hear. They would much prefer to believe it is other people that are creating the causes of our suffering.
So in order to able that message in a way to anyone, in a way that they will come to believe it, will take a lot of time and skill and energy and patience and perseverance and tolerance and acceptance that this person just doesn’t get it yet so I have to try again and again and again and again. So it involves a huge commitment just to be able to even help people understand that but then if our compassion is really strong then we will also want to help them practice avoiding the causes of suffering, creating the causes of happiness. But again, to do that we have to know how to do that. We have to have been doing it ourselves. Right?
So compassion is an immense thing. It’s really something immensely powerful. Oh, did I bring Yes. Right. Yeah.
So the more, yeah, we we open our hearts and to feel this and to just even recognize the suffering that others people are suffering and then to open our hearts to really feel it, then that will motivate us to help them stop creating the causes for it. And the commitment to do that is really great compassion. But that’s the most meaningful thing that we can possibly do. And of course, the more we develop that great compassion which is motivated to help not only ourselves but all sentient beings stop creating the causes of suffering, the more that will lead eventually to being able to generate bodhicitta. Which is coming to the realization that the only way I’m actually going to be really able to help sentient beings stop creating the causes of suffering and create the causes of genuine happiness.
The only way I can really do it is to become a Buddha. So I will. Simple. It all sounds so very simple, doesn’t it? In one way it is just unfortunate.
Simple but hard to do. But as Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, it all comes down to making the decision. Just making the decision to do it. Then it apparently becomes quite easy. Compassion is that mental factor, that state of mind that is open to knowing the suffering of ourselves and others and opening our heart to feel that suffering more and more so that we develop that wish to be free of suffering and all its causes.
So in developing compassion or our potential for compassion, it depends on understanding what suffering is or how many types of suffering there are. And in the Lamrim teachings it talks about the eight sufferings, the six sufferings, the eight major kinds of sufferings, the six main kinds of sufferings and the three kinds of sufferings. So I would like to talk about those three types of suffering tonight and particularly the middle one. So most of you know about this before and probably I can’t say it in any more original way, but it’s something we just have to hear over and over again and reflect on it over and over again. I always kind of feel guilty that I feel somehow a bit obliged that I should I suppose to come up with something new to talk about.
But there isn’t anything new to talk about. It’s kind of very arrogant of me I suppose to even think that but sometimes I feel oh you know. But it’s like when Śāntideva, when all the monks ganged up against Śāntideva and asked him to teach in order to embarrass him. Then he took much to their shock. He said, okay, sure, I’ll teach.
What would you like to hear? Something something the Buddhas already taught or something something completely new. And the monks were completely horrified and they said, Oh, we’ll teach us something new. And he said, Well, you should know that the Buddhas taught everything. There’s nothing new to hear.
So if Śāntideva can get away with that I should be able to. Anyway, in the teaching on the three types of suffering it talks about there is the suffering of suffering which is obvious physical and mental pain that we all know about. In the teachings it always makes the point that even animals understand this. One doesn’t have to be a human being to be able to recognise the suffering of suffering, the suffering of pain. But then there is a much more subtle kind of suffering which is called the suffering of change.
And this is what we as ordinary people think of as happiness. And I think understanding this point is one of the key things to understand in the Buddhadharma, really, to really get that. Because all of the Buddhadharma is condensed into three essential renunciation, wisdom and bodhicitta. And for wisdom and bodhicitta to develop one first has to develop renunciation. Renunciation comes from understanding that ordinary, you know, the first noble truth, that ordinary existence meaning existence being controlled when our mind is controlled by delusion and karma is in the nature of suffering.
So we can understand the obvious, everyone can understand that there is ordinary suffering and pain in existence. But most people don’t get that what we think of as happiness, the Buddhas also see as suffering. And that’s what we have to get to really develop renunciation and to develop real compassion for ourselves and others. That even the people who look tremendously happy and successful are suffering. Even their happiness is a type of suffering.
And so there are three ways to understand that. The obvious, simplest, grossest way to understand that everything that we think of as happiness is a type of suffering in the sense that it’s incomplete, frustrating, unsatisfying, not totally fulfilling, is that every type of happiness that we as ordinary people can think of, it doesn’t last. It just simply doesn’t last. All the happy experiences we’ve had in the past are exactly that. They’re in the past.
All the success and great experiences we had had past tense we had them, they finished, they stopped. Which also means whatever good sorry I shouldn’t say this properly but all the nice things that are happening to us now will become something in the past. And even if we are lucky enough, some people are lucky enough lucky, excuse me, have the good karma to have a completely successful life all their life. Things go basically fine, not much sickness, everyone likes them, they’re happy throughout their life, but death comes, finished. So it comes to an end sooner or later.
Even the bliss of the God realms which apparently goes on for not just thousands of years but millions and billions of years. Lifetime in some of the god realms goes on for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lifetime. Well, what’s called the peak of cyclic existence in the formless realm when you get up there that rebirth last, I should have brought it with me, I can’t remember, but something like an eon, just around an eon, the rebirth up in that one lifetime. An eon of incredible bliss. But then, finished.
Then it stops. As it somewhere it says in the teachings if you’ve had happiness for a minute, happiness for an eon, when it’s finished, it’s finished. Whether it lasted for a second, a minute, an eon, it’s gone, never to come back. That that experience. So all all happiness in saṃsāra is is it samsaric happiness is a type of suffering.
It’s unsatisfying because it doesn’t last. And as I’ve also often mentioned, if you think about it, if one could have some incredibly blissful experience, mind blowingly blissful experience, as you’re experiencing it, because we all grasp a permanence we think is going to go on forever, and then it stops, it must be excruciatingly depressing. In some ways it would be better not to have it because the disappointment of having such an amazing experience that then just finishes comes to an end. I’ve also sorry, I have to get out of the habit. I don’t think I will ever get out of the habit of apologizing that I’ve said things before.
But in the teachings it says that the worst suffering in saṃsāra is not being born in the lower realms, the Avicii hell which is supposed to be the very most horrible, unbearable suffering, it has actually been born in the god realms where at the end of that life the gods become, or those beings become aware that this bliss that they experienced, which they believed was permanent, is coming to an end. And they can see, they have this clairvoyance to see that they will, because they’ve burnt up so much good karma, the only good karma left is a whole pile of bad stuff, so they’re going to take rebirth in the lower realms. So before they’re actually reborn in the actual hell realms, they’re aware of that, and that suffering is even worse than being in the hell realms. That’s what it says. Anyway, that’s an extreme point just to say that we can have all these wonderful experiences but then when they cease it can be very depressing.
It’s not satisfying. It’s not what we really want. So it’s a type of suffering. It’s not obvious. It’s not the suffering of suffering, but it is suffering in the sense that it’s incomplete, incomplete, frustrating, not what we really want because deep down we want a happiness that is perfect and lasting, that will never cease, never decline.
So another way of understanding that all the different experiences in saṃsāra that we think of associate with being happiness and wonderful and desirable is that they only appear that way to our mind because we have such a limited idea of what we can experience. That relative to something else, this seems terrific. Relative to what we’re experiencing, this other experience seems just amazing. And if I had that, I would really be happy. That would be just absolutely fantastic.
I can’t remember where I mentioned it. Anyway, there’s a story in the teaching somewhere about a monk who before he became ordained he was married and very attached to his wife who was very, very beautiful. But for some reason anyway he became a monk. But still as a monk he had this incredible desire for his very beautiful I told it last week somewhere didn’t I? For his wife.
So the Buddha somehow transported this monk to the god realms and showed him the goddesses there who were ten times more beautiful than any woman on this earth apparently. So in this way he completely cut his attachment to his wife and was cured of that. So this is an example of relativity that what looks very desirable, beautiful, happiness is simply because we don’t know that there is something better. For example probably most of us here, if not all of us here, have not developed single pointed concentration and calm abiding, Samatha. So when we do develop that, then one experiences what is called physical ecstasy and mental bliss, and that lasts for an incredibly long time.
You know, months and years and years. Something far, far greater than anything that any ordinary non practitioner or person who hasn’t achieved it can experience. And that itself, that experience of calm abiding, is still a samsaric experience. It’s something still being experienced by a mind controlled by delusion and karma. It’s nothing compared to the bliss of nirvana or enlightenment.
But because we haven’t had that experience, we think what we have or what other people are experiencing that is super fantastic. But it’s nothing compared to what even our ordinary mind could experience. And yet we spend so much time being attached to it. But the most important, the most subtle way to understand how what we think of as happiness is suffering is the following. And this is what is really, really important to try and understand.
It can be quite depressing at first to think about this, but very useful. It would be depressing if we think about it from the self-cherishing point of view and really wanting to remain in saṃsāra. But if we want to get out, if we have some belief in the Buddha’s teachings that saṃsāra is really the pits, this is kind of liberating. Again, I still haven’t thought of a terrifically new example of this teaching, but just to repeat for the millionth time. If we are standing up, we just happen to be standing up, While we’re standing up talking to other people everything’s fine, but maybe we stop talking and we just stand there and we stand there.
So after we’ve stood somewhere for a length of time, and you could try this out, highly recommend it, to see that it’s true after some time, just merely standing still becomes really quite painful, uncomfortable. So this is the suffering of suffering obvious pain or discomfort. So we then sit down. And so the suffering of standing ceases, and there seems to be the happiness of sitting. There’s this pleasant experience with the suffering of standing stops, and what immediately we start to experience is what seems to be the happiness that comes from sitting.
That’s why we sat down, to experience something pleasant. But as we continue to sit, then that happiness of sitting fades away gradually and becomes even a little bit uncomfortable. And we have to sort of move and readjust our position. So eventually we stand up and the discomfort of sitting ceases and now there’s the pleasant feeling of standing up. But if we continue to stand up, that pleasant feeling seems to turn into the suffering of standing up.
So we sit down. This of course is just an example, an analogy, for everything that happens in saṃsāra. The point is that if sitting down is the actual cause of the happiness of sitting, then if there is an actual happiness of sitting and sitting down is the cause of it, then according to the law of cause and effect, while that cause if sitting down is the cause of the pleasure, happiness of sitting down, the longer we continue to sit, then the pleasure, the happiness of sitting will continue. And in fact, to some extent, it would logically follow that the happiness should increase. But it doesn’t.
The happiness of sitting declines. So this actually shows that sitting down isn’t creating the cause of some pleasant feeling at all. Because if something is the cause of there is a certain thing that is a cause for a certain result, if you keep creating that cause, the result will continue. As I always say, if you hit your head, it hurts. Hitting your head is a cause for pain.
It is a valid cause of pain. And if you hit your head again, it hurts. And if you hit it again, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. It always hurts. And actually, you keep hitting it, it will start to hurt a lot more.
And you’ll probably eventually die. But the longer we see it, that pleasure, comfort doesn’t continue. So something’s wrong. And the point is also another point to consider is that if something is a particular thing and it is being generated by a particular cause, that thing, that experience, can’t turn into something else. If sitting down creates a certain pleasant feeling, that pleasant feeling cannot turn into suffering.
If the same cause is being generated, it can’t turn into suffering. If it could, practicing the Dharma which is supposed to, the Buddha says, is the cause of happiness could turn into suffering. If we meditate, meditation is a cause for subduing the mind and the subdued mind is a happy mind, a calm, peaceful, happy mind. Pleasant feeling is occurring. So if you continue to meditate properly, that experience won’t turn into suffering.
If one is meditating properly, if one is maintaining, creating the cause. Right? So this means that the happiness of sitting never turned into the suffering of sitting. It was the suffering of sitting from the very first moment we sat down. From the very first moment, the suffering of sitting was there.
Happiness of sitting can’t turn into the suffering of sitting. It was there from the very beginning. What has happened is that when we sit down, the gross obvious suffering of standing ceases and the subtle suffering of sitting begins. But what the mind notices, because our mind is kind of obscured and agitated, is that relative to the subtle suffering of sitting relative to the cessation of the gross suffering of standing that appears to be happiness, pleasant. Like, for example, if you really hit your head with something really heavy, when you stop it appears quite pleasant.
But if you hadn’t started in the first place it would be much better. I saw what do you call those things? These IMAX movies with these huge gigantic all around where it looks like you’re actually in the middle of it or something? I saw I think the only one I ever saw was one of the an expedition to Mount Everest, which included oh, it was a disastrous no. Was it?
Well, one of them was. Oh, is it anyway. And there was a Spanish woman on this expedition. She was the first Spanish woman to get to the top. Anyway, they interviewed various people, and someone was saying how the last part of when the last few, you know, hundred metres or something was just absolutely agonising, like every step was like their lungs were being ripped out of their body or something like that.
But this Spanish lady said that when she got to the top, the experience was so blissful. But of course, in my cynical mind thought, well of course if every step was like your lungs being ripped out when you got to the top, sure it would be nice. Better not to have had your lungs have the feeling of your lungs being ripped out in the first place. Anyway, So all our happiness is really like that compared to the cessation of something worse, you know, there’s some suffering which we are aware of and then something comes along and compared to that, this is happiness. And this is what our self-cherishing does to us.
That’s what self-cherishing does, as I tried to explain before. We have some suffering and what our self-cherishing does is always to distract ourselves from it. Not to deal with it, but to distract it. And if we can distract ourselves, our self-cherishing says, That is happiness. This is great.
This is terrific. This is wonderful. And we believe it. And that’s how we waste not just ordinary lives but a precious human rebirth that took so many lives to get. We waste it chasing after something which is just the suffering of change.
So if we understand that about saṃsāra, firstly we apply this to ourselves and develop compassion for ourselves, that even this happiness I’m experiencing is not going to last, it’s just really another example of the suffering of change. And this is also a way to really a very profound way to develop compassion for others. Because, it’s relatively easy to develop compassion for someone who’s experiencing obvious suffering, the suffering of pain, especially if they’re a nice person or okay. We can see that, but it’s very difficult to feel compassion for people who look successful and rich and powerful and appear to be happy. But if really understand, we really get the point that everyone in saṃsāra, even the happy people in saṃsāra, are not happy.
This is not real happiness. Just not at all. It’s just a subtle kind of suffering. So everyone deserves our compassion. That’s how we can generate the immeasurable thought of compassion, because everyone is suffering, whether they know it or not, whether they’re conscious of it or not.
And people when you think about it, it’s even more sad that we ourselves and others get attached to the suffering of change. We are attached to the suffering of change. So how wonderful it would be if all sentient beings could be free of suffering and its causes. Would that be wonderful or not? This is what we should really reflect on again.
And then reflecting that hopefully coming to the conclusion that it would be wonderful if all human beings could be free of suffering, not just friends, not just strangers, but even unpleasant people. How wonderful it would be if they could be free of all suffering, all the causes of suffering. Then we can generate the wish the thought that wishing them to be free of suffering because everyone can be free of suffering. Although we have the causes, we can remove those causes. If we remove those causes, there’s no suffering.
So may they be free of suffering and its causes. And then the more we cultivate that thought, we can especially, most importantly, cultivate the thought that I myself will help all sentient beings to be free of suffering and its causes. And then the next thing to reflect on is under understanding that I alone can’t do that, especially as I am now. Then one makes a heartfelt request to the guru, the guru Buddha, for one’s mind to be blessed, to be able to do that, to have the courage, to to be able to dedicate one’s life, to working with one’s mind, freeing of all the negativities, and awakening all the positive qualities that can help us help all sentient beings to be free of suffering and its causes. So is that time?
It’s almost time. Or any well, a little bit a little any questions, comments, disagreements? I’ll talk more about this next I I just wanted to talk about that particular point tonight because I I really think that, you know, understanding the suffering of change is one of the key things. Okay. Everything is being merely labeled.
Yes. People use this term, I think, merely labelled mistakenly because the only way anything can exist is by being labelled. There is nothing wrong with being labelled. Things have to be labelled. But in the case of we ordinary sentient beings saying that this is happiness, that not being merely labelled, that is a wrong label.
I mean conventionally it’s correct. Yes, but that’s the wrong way of using it and that’s what I was trying to make. Many people say this thing, you know, like if you praise them they will say oh I’m merely labelled such and such’ and that’s a completely wrong use because everything is merely labelled, right? But people use the term merely labeled in saying, oh I don’t really deserve that label. Merely labeled doesn’t mean that in the dharma context.
It means that things can only exist depending on a label. There’s nothing more than the label. Well. Things are merely labeled on the base. There is a base.
To it. Yes, it’s a very conventional, conventionally existing, there are pleasant things. But those pleasant things at a deeper level are really just the suffering of change. No. I mean that makes it worse I think.
But The suffering of change itself is experienced because the deluded mind is not because of being constantly bombarded by disturbing thoughts and the ripening of karma, mind can’t mind that’s controlled by delusion and karma cannot maintain the experience of happiness continuously. Oh, that exacerbates it. When we experience this happiness, which is the suffering of change, we get attached to it because we think, oh, it’s going to last. So that makes it worse when it stops, which it inevitably will for sure. But the teaching says there is no real happiness in saṃsāra.
That’s a pretty scary thought. There is no real happiness at all in saṃsāra. Just the illusion of it. But of course, let’s not get too depressed by thinking that by practicing the Dharma we are experiencing something that is a little bit more satisfying. It’s still the suffering of change, but it’s a little bit more satisfying and fulfilling than just purely purely is not the best word total worldly happiness.
And through the practice of Dharma is this more satisfying experience, but it’s also leading to being able to experience ultimate, genuine happiness. Even that ultimate happiness is just merely labeled. Have I depressed everyone tonight? But if you look at me, you get really depressed. Yes.
Yes. Yes. No, no that’s really deliberate. Now that is definitely the suffering of change. You would say it’s merely labelled?
Is merely labelled. Good and bad is merely labelled. Buddha is merely labelled. Dharma is merely labelled. So on that point we’ll have a merely labelled break for a merely labelled cup of tea or coffee, a merely labelled biscuit, and then we will do a merely labelled tsok offering afterwards for those people who would like to merely labelledly stay in this