Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 84-minute teaching, Venerable Thubten Dondrub guides students through week three of a Mahāyāna path curriculum, focusing on foundational motivations and the Buddhist understanding of cyclic existence. He opens by establishing bodhicitta, the determination to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, and leads the group through a detailed visualization of Śākyamūni Buddha. Dondrub then explains why suffering in saṃsāra is unavoidable without the spiritual path, walking through how easy it is to create negative karma and difficult to create causes of good rebirth. He emphasizes the urgency of recognizing our precious human rebirth before exploring the doctrine of the three jewels of refuge, arguing that since mind is beginningless and has Buddha-nature, enlightenment is genuinely possible. The teaching culminates in an introduction to karma as the law of cause and effect: everything we experience depends on causes our mind has created, illustrated through concrete examples like boiling water and the relation between our mind and perceived reality. The session includes visualisation practice, discussion groups, and fielded questions about rebirth and animal karma. Pitched at mixed experience levels within a structured Buddhist study programme.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 08 27 DB Presenting the Path Week 3 270813.mp3
UUID: 0fb1c9d1-4173-432c-837e-4be49e15ce14
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Presenting the Path (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-08-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 84.6 minutes
Words: ~8,353
Is it too hot in here? It’s cooled down since Oh, yeah. For previous We could be on Anyway, anyway, welcome, everyone, to our third class of presenting the path. So the path that’s been presented is the path to enlightenment. So this is the Mahāyāna teachings that talks about how all sentient beings have, because of the very nature of our mind, we have Buddha potential.
So we all have the potential to achieve enlightenment. So Mahāyāna path or the teachings about the path to enlightenment encourage us to follow that path because if we do so it’s a path that leads us away from suffering in all its causes and leads us to able to achieve peace, everlasting happiness for ourselves. But more than that, it enables us to repay the kindness that we have received from all sentient beings life after life in the beginning of saṃsāra by helping them to become free of all suffering and its causes and helping them to realize their own Buddha nature and achieve their own enlightenment. Since this is the purpose of the teachings, when we listen to them from our side, can try and generate the wish to not only free ourselves from suffering but because we’ve got the potential to do so to be able to help all sentient beings become free of suffering and we can develop the wish not only just for ourselves to achieve enlightenment but for all sentient beings to do so. So this is the bodhicitta mind determined to realize our Buddha potential to achieve enlightenment in order to be in a position to perfectly benefit all sentient beings.
So there is a traditional prayer that expresses all this so that’s on page nine of our student material. So this is what I’m going to recite. So you’re most welcome to join in or if not as I do so then at least try and generate the best motivation you can for being here tonight and to make this prayer as meaningful as possible especially from a Buddhist point of view as we recite it we try and have a strong sense of the presence of Śākyamūni Buddha in front of us, trying to visualize the Buddha as the embodiment of all perfect qualities, and at the same time trying to think of ourselves being surrounded by all sentient beings starting with our mother of this life on our left, father on our right, then behind us we imagine the rest of our family, all our friends, all the people who have helped us in this life, and then in front we put those people who may have harmed us or disliked us. At least try to focus on those beings but as much as possible then try to have an awareness concern for all the other beings of the different realms of cyclic existence.
At least having some thought for the human beings of this world and having that thought that these beings are our own kind, but they’re unfortunately, they’re only suffering. So no matter what, I must use this precious human rebirth I’ve found, which is so rare. I must use this precious human rebirth or my future rebirths to free my mind of all limitations, achieve enlightenment for the sake of all kind suffering mother sentient beings. And so for this reason, to achieve enlightenment I have to follow the path. To be able to follow the path successfully, I have to understand the path.
And so that’s why I will study this subject tonight. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the supreme assembly. By the merits I create through teaching the Dharma may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So Just for a short time we can do the Śākyamūni Buddha meditation. So just imagine that we will focus a little bit more strongly now on trying to visualize the Buddha in front of us.
So imagine that just an arm’s length away from you, as though you could reach out and touch, and appearing at about the height of your forehead, in the space in front of you, there appears an incredibly beautiful lotus in the nature of light. Nothing solid. It’s appearing, but it’s completely translucent light. The petals are different colors, incredibly beautiful. Then floating above that that lotus, there appears, a golden sun disc floating horizontally above the lotus, a little bit smaller in diameter.
Then appearing above that, again a little bit smaller in diameter still, is a white moon disc. So the the lotus symbolizes renunciation, the sun symbolizes wisdom, the moon disc symbolizes the mind of bodhicitta. And now imagine that seated just above the center of the moon disc is the the magnificent form of Śākyamūni Buddha, a hollow body of golden light. So imagine that the Buddha legs are crossed in the vajra position. His holy body is adorned with the saffron robes of a monk.
The the right side of his body is bare, and the the right arm is outstretched with the hand resting on the right knee with the the fingers touching the moon disc underneath him. The left hand is resting in his lap in the meditation posture, supporting a a deep blue begging bowl, which we imagine is filled with wisdom nectar, symbolic of the wisdom that eliminates the causes of all suffering. So imagine that the Buddha is looking at you intensely with great love and compassion but at the same time totally aware, equally aware of all sentient beings. So imagine the Buddha’s face is or his whole appearance is incredibly beautiful, very youthful. His face is smiling.
The lips are a deep red color. The ear lobes of his ears are very long. The the the his eyes, also the shape of the eyes is a little bit long, a little bit narrow. The eyes themselves are deep blue color with very long black eyelashes. And his hair is a very deep blue color.
Each hair individually curling to the right, separate from the other. Appearing above at the crown of his head above the hair is a golden crowning top knot, the uṣṇīṣa. So there as we recite the mantra a little bit out loud for just a short time, then imagine that this blissful white light comes out from every pore of the Buddha’s body, purifying our mind of all suffering and all its causes. So there as we recite them continue reciting the mantra, imagine now the golden light and nectar pours out from every part of the Buddha’s body pouring into us. And this time imagine this blesses our mind, awakens all the positive potentials of our mind, especially of wisdom, compassion, loving kindness, and so on.
Imagining the mind becoming very joyful, blissful, clear, very bright, very light. Imagine that the Buddha comes to the crown of your head, turns facing the same direction as yourself, and then the lotus, sun, moon, and the Buddha’s body, they all dissolve into blissful golden light, and that pours down into you, blessing your body, speech, mind. Particularly try to imagine that due to the blessings of the Buddha entering you, you experience your mind as no longer just confined to this body, but imagine your mind as something completely vast, like the sky, like space, without any boundaries, without any limitations, incredibly clear, still, peaceful, pervaded by great wisdom and compassion. Okay. Thank you very much.
So Can we just close that door so we can get rid of all that? If you look at coffee Oh, yeah. Okay. What? Okay.
So the path to enlightenment is presented in the context of the Buddhist understanding that we have a mind, that our mind is beginless and endless. It and while the mind, although it has this in in in its nature is pure, perfect, has this Buddha quality, this Buddha nature, Buddha potential, the mind has always been obscured and the obscured mind controlled by delusion and karma cycles in various kinds of rebirth which is then so this is saṃsāra the mind controlled by delusion and karma taking rebirth again and again uncontrollably. So because rebirths can there are very suffering forms of rebirth in the lower realms and as an animal, as a preta, as in hell realms and even the human realm there there’s a lot of suffering. The idea and even the the the pleasures of the the the upper realms of the gods and demigods, these pleasures, although they can last an incredibly long time, are far more amazing than any pleasure that our human mind can give rise to. These pleasures also don’t last.
So the Buddha appeared in the world to encourage us to renounce our attachment to cyclic existence and to free ourselves from saṃsāra and more than that achieve enlightenment so that we can help everyone become free of suffering and achieve peerless everlasting bliss. So to do all of this, to move away from suffering, have to follow the path. Right? And the first major stage in the path is to change the mind we have now, to bring about a revolution in our mind so that instead of just thinking about this life and only this life and the problems and pleasures of this life, we use this life to ensure that we don’t create the causes of the lower realms, which are so easy to create but we make sure that we get a good rebirth particularly with the intention so that we can not just have a good rebirth but we can use that rebirth to follow the spiritual path away from suffering towards greater and greater well-being. So this is the first stage in the spiritual path and what encourages us to really follow the spiritual path is well firstly we have to know about it and develop some faith in it, But once we know something about the spiritual path and have some faith that it’s possible, that it’s true, that we we ourselves are capable of it, then what really can set us on that path is meeting the qualified spiritual master.
So this is why this topic is emphasized in the presentation of the path to enlightenment. It is emphasized how important it is to connect with a genuinely qualified spiritual master, to devote oneself to that person as much as possible, having as pure a view of that person as possible, particularly training to see that person as a Buddha because there are valid reasons to do so. There to also recognize that one has the precious human rebirth which is the optimum chance to be able to follow and succeed in practicing the path to enlightenment. So if we can recognize that we have most of the eight freedoms and ten endowments, that means we’ve got the precious, perfect, optimum rebirth, the best chance to free ourselves from suffering. And so the more we we recognize that, how how meaningful the precious human rebirth is and how difficult it is to get, this will encourage us to follow the spiritual path.
And and what and and what really puts us on the path or who involves us in spiritual practice is recognizing that all the things of ordinary life are impermanent. All the things that we chase after believing they’re going to bring us some happiness, some security, and and some benefit, Actually, even if and it’s never sure whether we will ever get these things that we want, but even if we get them, they’re not going to last. They’re impermanent. Right? And we need to realize that we ourselves are going to die, could die at any moment.
And what the only thing that’s really going to help us as we die, the only thing that’s gonna help us get a good rebirth is our spiritual qualities. Right? So it really helps us to turn away our mind away from being completely obsessed with only this life. Yeah? Because why we’re only obsessed with this life, we only believe in this life, only think about the pleasures and problems of this life.
That is the condition that activates all of our disturbing thoughts. No attachment to the pleasures of this life, aversion and anger to the problems of this life and the, you know, unpleasant people we meet in this life. It act it becomes the condition to develop pride and jealousy, fear, worry, and all these things. And though we those disturbing thoughts bring suffering into our life, but they also create negative imprints that can bring about more suffering rebirths. And by activating our disturbing thoughts again and again and again these keep us trapped in the cyclic existence.
So the first stage in freeing ourselves from cyclic existence is realizing how everything is impermanent and oneself is going to die. Yeah. So that’s what we got up to, isn’t it? Right. So tonight so if we start to realize how we’re going to die and we could die at any time, What we then need to understand is that rebirth is just definitely going to happen.
Know, that that just happens. There’s nothing we have to do about that. Just like while we’re lot when while we’re alive, there’s nothing we have to do to wake up in the morning. It just happens. Right?
There’s no effort or maybe some well, just actually getting out of bed maybe, but just waking up doesn’t you know, maybe we don’t want to wake up, but at some point, we do. It just happens. And in the same way rebirth occurs. It doesn’t involve any conscious wish in any way from our side. It’s just what happens.
But what kind of rebirth we wake up to, that depends on what we’ve done with our mind. And there’s only two kinds of rebirth one can have. It’s a good one or a bad one, a suffering one or a pleasant one, rather in saṃsāra. So we’re either gonna be reborn in the lower realms or as a human being or in the god realms. There’s not nothing else possible.
That is, believe it or not, from a Buddhist point of view, this is definitely what’s going to happen. And what we should try to understand, which we can begin to understand from reflecting meditating on the precious human rebirth is that it is so easy to create the causes of a negative rebirth And and much, much more difficult to create the causes of a good rebirth. And so throughout throughout our lives, not just this life, but all our previous lives, we have been engaging in negative actions and the good actions too, but it’s always easier to engage in negative actions than in positive ones. So this implies, the logic follows, that we have far more negative imprints in our mind that can cause a bad rebirth when we die than a good rebirth. We shouldn’t be complacent and think, Oh, for sure I will get a good rebirth.
That’s not guaranteed at all in any way. Since that’s the case we should think about what it would be like, what the Buddha encourages us to do is to think about the sufferings that one would experience if one after this life gets a bad rebirth. One, you know, such as being reborn as an animal, being reborn as what is called a preta or a hungry ghost, or being born in the hell realms. I know all these things are very difficult to believe, and, of course, no one wants to believe them. I don’t want to believe that these realms exist or that I could be reborn in them, but, unfortunately, I do have some belief because it makes a lot of sense that this happens.
Yeah? That these exist. Because as I try to say briefly, I’ll only briefly again, if you can see that animals have minds because they have some intelligence, feelings, the ability to think and analyze and organize things to some extent, then it means they’ve got a mind. Then you have to ask why is this mind trapped in that kind of body rather than in a human body. Or at least it’s indicating that since all minds are in the nature the same, my mind has the potential to have that experience in the future.
Just as that just as that animal has the potential to be reborn, a human being in the future. That does follow. All cultures talk about different kinds of ghosts, beings, and spirit beings. Of course this is all dismissed by modern science and there’s all explanations for it but the Buddha taught this, Buddha saw this, you know, with unmistaken mind. And some people dismiss this as, oh, the Buddha taught this.
He didn’t because he didn’t really believe it. He just taught it to scare us. But why does he want to scare us unnecessarily when the Buddha is the embodiment of perfect compassion. And if we look at our own mind in this life, one can see that sometimes we behave like human beings. You know?
Sometimes. We live up to our human potential by being kind and compassionate and a little bit selfless and and we we use this ability to be able to think of others, to put ourself in the place of others. So this is our, you know, real human potential. But at other times, we we behave like animals in all sorts of ways. I won’t elaborate.
I think you can recognize this. Sometimes we act like hungry ghosts, always craving stuff. At some times, we put ourselves in hell when we get really angry or really depressed. And sometimes we bliss out, you know, and just oblivious to everything else, we just focus on our own self pleasure. You know?
That’s it. Like the gods. So this kind of indicates that we have these potentials in our mind for these these whole, you know, whole lifetimes to experience this. But as I said before, if you find it difficult to believe in these realms, you can see versions of them in among human beings, oneself. So if if one has some belief and one can investigate this more and more in the different realms, In in there’s a meditation on meditating on the sufferings, trying to imagine being born as an animal, a hungry ghost, or being in the hell realms.
And the reason is to develop a wise fear, not a neurotic fear, but a wise fear of experiencing that suffering, and that will encourage us to avoid creating the causes of it. If we don’t fear something we won’t have any if we don’t fear a particular situation we won’t avoid the causes of experiencing that situation. But you know if we fear a fire then we’ll naturally avoid getting close to fires and that fear is a useful fear. It’s not a neurotic fear, it’s an intelligent fear that’s useful to have because it helps us avoid that suffering. But if we don’t have any fear of fire at all, we don’t see it as in the slightest bit as dangerous, what would stop us walking into one?
Oh, it’s very cute. It’s very pretty. It looks really nice. Could look really interesting standing in a fire. That could be a lot of fun.
You know, different from just standing in some boring air. Why not stand in a fire? Because it’s not dangerous. It’s not gonna hurt me. I’ll do it.
But if you fear it, you won’t. That’s very helpful fear because standing in fires is not a lot of fun. Yeah. So that’s why the Buddha taught these things because they exist, they are suffering and the Buddha taught us to think about these things ourselves so that it will inspire us, it will motivate us to avoid the causes. So I’m not going to elaborate.
In all sutras it gives horrific descriptions of the sufferings of animals, the hungry ghosts, and there’s many many there’s eight kinds of hot hells, eight kinds of cold hells, There there’s occasional hells. And what else are there? Neighboring hells. Yes. There’s all sorts.
Gruesome, gruesome descriptions. Very similar to Dante’s description in in, what’s it called? The inferno. Dante’s inferno. Yes.
Very similar. And worse. But one other thing you can think about is if you have some belief in mind and therefore its potential to reincarnate in another body and even if you think I might you know I’ll you know, if I’m going to be reborn for sure, I’ll be reborn as a human being. They’ll just imagine that one could be born as a human being like oneself with same kind of body, same kind of mind and abilities. But imagine that you one was born in a place, the the actual environment, much more horrible than what we live in, such as being born in Syria at the moment or anywhere in the, you know, many countries in the Middle East or in Africa.
Yeah. Do would we want to be born in the there? Not go and visit, like, in the UN, you know, or be a a volunteer for a couple of months or whatever, but be born into that situation. Imagine what that would be like or some of the really horrible slums of the world. Yeah.
Would we like that? Would that be great? And it’s a very, you know, it’s very easy to be born in that environment. Most people have to endure that where there’s incredible poverty violence or just a place where there’s just incredible poverty or lots of disease. Right?
Or, yeah, or political repression. Peaceful? Kind of peaceful, but just very brutal political repression so that if you do anything wrong, you’re really in trouble. Yeah. Such as being born in North Korea, that truly must be an absolute nightmare to live there just as an ordinary citizen who does nothing wrong because you’d be terrified.
Because if you do anything wrong, even if you don’t use the honorific term for the the the glorious chairman, whatever he’s called, if you forget to use that, you can be put in prison quite literally and all your family because you forgot forgot to say glorious. Yeah. And also, I could dob you in for not saying that. You know? Many people have had to live through that in communist blocks where there’s spies everywhere and people turn you in for not being politically correct.
This must produce incredible mental tension and sickness. You know? So there’s millions and millions of human beings like us experiencing that right now. That that is you know, that’s real. That’s an undeniable reality.
We won’t want to deny the reality of being reborn an animal and so on, but these kinds of existences are real for hundreds of millions of people right now. Oh, you know, and dare I say it. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but one could be reborn a woman in many countries in the world where your life’s not worth five cents, where women get raped all the time. You know, there’s particularly in East Africa, Northeast Africa? Where is it?
Anyway, telling horrible stories. So that’s the reality. You know? So that’s one kind of rebirth. But there I could think the world could be reborn with a a far more suffering body than we have right now.
To say things, you know, how this body could be, you know, born with so much more sickness, physical deformities, and so on. Right? Or just even if being a born, not as nice looking, you as, you know, professionally believed to be ugly or whatever. A lot of suffering. Yeah.
Or one could be born with all sorts of or just having a body with, you know, there’s not only prone to sickness, but just not much energy. Yeah. And on top of that, one could be born with a mind much worse than we’ve got now. Our mind gives us lots of problems already, but we could be born with our delusions much more active, much more anger, much more pride, jealousy, fear, worry, paranoia, depression, and we could be born, like, with serious mental problems or brain damaged. And we could be born sorry.
This is all true. You know? Possible. We could be born with one of those the bad environment, bad body, worse mind. We could be born with two of those conditions or all three.
Born in a horrible environment with a horrible body and a horrible mind as a human being. And it’s so easy to create the causes because everything is a has a cause. Things don’t just happen arbitrarily or controlled by someone else or some other force. Everything that we experience, our that our mind experiences, our mind created the cause for. So the only thing about the potential for suffering that our mind can give rise to because whatever suffering you see any human being experience or has ever experienced in the past, it means quite literally that we have the potential to experience that suffering at some time.
And in fact, we will while we’re in saṃsāra. So the reason to think about this, to meditate on this, not just once but many times to get some real insight into this, is to this leads us into the next topic in the path, the stages of the path, which is the topic of refuge. Because one thinks, is there no hope? Is it kind of how I do it to have such terrible rebirths? And the Buddhist answer is no.
That even if we’ve created the cause to have such terrible rebirths in the future, there is a way we can avoid experiencing those results by taking refuge the Buddha. So in our ordinary life, a smart child onwards, whenever we experience some suffering, we always look for a refuge, something to protect us from that suffering. And as a small child, it’s usually our mother. And our mom usually is able to protect us to some extent from the all the little problems of a kid. But as we grow older, we become aware of more problems and we become aware that our mom is also an ordinary being who can’t protect us from everything.
And so we look for other protection in friends and, of course, the wonderful wonderful protection called money. You’re thinking if I have enough of this stuff, this will protect me from every problem and bring every kind of happiness. But if we start to understand that we are subject to far more suffering than just the problems of this life, we start to realize that we need a much greater protection than any human being or that money and stuff can provide us. And if we start to realize the source of our suffering is our mind, and our mind is never going to cease, and our mind can give rise to more suffering than just what’s happened in this life, we start to understand that the key to having less suffering and more happiness is taking care of our mind. This is the essential Buddhist message is that I have to take care of my mind.
I have to learn to gain some control over my mind. So to do that, I need a method. Right? I need a method to work with my mind to reduce the causes of suffering and to increase the causes of happiness. And as I said, the more we realize our mind is something that is going to go on forever, it will never cease, it will always give rise to experiences, then we start to understand that we need a method that is complete and perfect and unbetrayable.
There’s no use just relying on a method that looks good, sounds good, that is is some people are attracted to things simply because they’re new. If it’s new, it must be good. But that doesn’t follow at all. What we need is a method that is not just based on is is just not a nice theory, but is actually based on authentic unmistaken experience. So we need a method that is complete and perfect and unbetrayable.
So such a perfect method can only come from a perfect source. Buddhism, of course, recognizes that perfect or we can ask ourselves, is there such a perfect method, a perfect source? And in Buddhism, of course, what we recognize as the perfect source of a perfect method is the enlightened mind. Buddha. So we take refuge in the Buddha to help us protect ourselves from suffering and its causes, to help us experience more and more genuine happiness.
So the question arises, does Buddha exist? Does the enlightened mind exist? So this is the really big question which I will try to answer in three seconds. The answer really depends on whether we believe that mind exists or not. It all comes down to that.
In a sense, if one can understand that if mind exists then enlightened mind exists. If mind doesn’t exist then of course Buddhas don’t exist. If there’s just the brain and not the mind then there’s no Buddhas. But if there is a mind, if one starts to come to an understanding and experience that one has a mind that is not the brain and not a product of the brain then one can start to get a feeling that enlightened mind exists because if if we take the example of our own mind, our mind, every mind, no matter how obscured and confused and suffering it is, it still has the potential of every good quality. All of us have some ability to be kind and compassionate and intelligent, etc, etc.
And this shows that we have the potential for these things. So what is blocking that potential is all these different obscurations in our mind. But, you know, imagine if there was nothing obscuring our mind. These disturbing thoughts that we all have weren’t operating at all. There was nothing interfering with these potentials of our mind of love, compassion, generosity, intelligence, wisdom, etcetera.
Then those those qualities of mind would be able to function perfectly, totally, all the time. Nothing would stop them. And, basically, what the mind does is it knows. But right now our mind is prevented from knowing properly. If that is removed, what is stopping?
There is nothing stopping the mind knowing. Therefore it follows that the mind has the potential to know everything and to know it correctly which means one would know everything with love and compassion etc. Not with hate, jealousy, fear, worry, pride etc etc. Which indicates that those qualities of pride, etcetera, anger, attachment, craving are not true aspects of the mind. Because when the mind is knowing things properly, it wouldn’t know them that way.
It wouldn’t experience things that way. So the question is, and this is very difficult to answer now, and I won’t really try, I don’t think. The question is, can the opt the things obscuring our mind be removed and permanently? That is the key key question. But of course, the Buddhist answer is yes because we have the example of the Buddha.
And of course you could say, well did this person called the Buddha? Did he really get all the obscurations removed from his mind? And we can only say we have faith in that but there is a valid basis for that faith. It’s not just blind faith because the heart teaching of the Buddha, the most profound essential teaching of the Buddha is the teachings about the nature of reality. So which is about how things don’t inherently exist but are actually empty of existing inherently.
If that teaching is true and if one studies it investigates it then one can come to some belief that it is true, it is valid, then one would not look good. Then if one understands the if one studies the teachings on emptiness, it what the teachings on emptiness mean, that what they that the implication of it, the consequences of it are that it follows that all the the obscurations in the mind can be removed because they are empty of inherent existence. Because things are empty of inherent existence, then many many things are possible. If if if if our attachment, our craving truly existed from its own side, there’s nothing we could do about it. It would be permanently there.
There was no way we could be we could remove it. But what the Buddha discovered is that all our delusions, but not just our delusions, everything doesn’t inherently exist from its own side. Everything arises dependently on many, many factors. And because of that, it means our delusions can not only be modified, pacified, it means that they can be removed totally and completely forever. That means that all those potentials of the mind can become fully, continuously, perfectly manifest.
And a mind that is continuously, perfectly manifesting all its perfect qualities is an enlightened mind. And there are people who’ve done that. We haven’t managed to purify our mind, but that doesn’t mean others haven’t. So just very quickly, I will leave the questions to a bit later because I will get distracted. So if an enlightened mind exists it means that it is omniscient, it is unmistaken and therefore what the the enlightened mind teaches is a reflection of that omniscient unmistaken mind.
Therefore, it is complete, perfect, and unbetrayable. It is a reflect the Buddha’s teachings are a reflection of the Buddha’s mind and by following those teachings, the methods to purify our mind, we can achieve what the Buddha achieved. That is freedom from suffering and enlightenment. So when we take when we entrust ourselves to the Buddha we do so to protect we entrust ourselves to the Buddha in order to protect our mind from suffering and to move towards happiness. So in taking refuge in the Buddha there are said to be three refuges.
There’s the Buddha, the Buddha’s teachings, and the great realized practitioners of those teachings. So these are said to be the three Three Jewels of refuge because a jewel is something very rare and precious. But the most rare precious things in the universe is the Buddha, the Buddha’s teachings and truly realized practitioners of these teachings. So the reason for taking refuge in the Buddha is to practice the Buddha’s teachings. So the real refuge from our side is the Dharma, the Buddha’s teachings.
And of all the Buddha’s teachings, although I was just saying that the most important one is the teachings on emptiness because these are the teachings if we experience them properly these will eliminate the causes of suffering from our mind. But since these teachings are to understand them takes a lot of time and effort, they’re very profound and subtle. Developing the wisdom that destroys the causes of our suffering is the end of the path. It’s not at the beginning. So to reach that point, the essential teaching for us is the teaching on the law of cause and effect, on karma, or action and results.
This is the essential teaching of the Buddha because I mentioned last week that all of the Buddha’s teachings can be condensed into the three principal paths to enlightenment of renunciation, wisdom and bodhicitta. Right. So the teaching about the law of cause and effect is the basis for developing renunciation, wisdom, and bodhicitta. It’s all connected. And basically what the teaching on the law of cause and effect is encouraging us to do is to by understanding it, come into a faith that it is true, it will encourage us to avoid negative actions because they bring suffering not only in this life, but suffering lower rebirths.
And it will encourage us to engage in virtuous actions because the results of those are some happiness in this life and they create the cause for better rebirths so that we can continue the spiritual path. So law of cause and effect is really at the heart of the Buddha’s teachings and it’s the greatest protection for our mind because if we develop an understanding and faith in the law of cause and effect it will lead us to avoid the causes of a lower rebirth. It will encourage us to purify our mind so that we don’t have bad rebirths in the future. It will enable us to create the causes, put the positive imprints in our mind that will bring good rebirths. It will also stop us harming others and encouraging us to benefit others.
So the very the very basis of the law of cause and effect, the the essential point, is that everything that we experience is coming from our mind. Therefore, the and everything has to have a cause. Nothing happens, nothing exists without a cause. Nothing is arbitrary. Nothing just just simply happens, comes into existence.
For things to come into existence, for us to experience happiness, suffering, and the things that bring happiness and suffering, there has to be a cause. Yeah. I mean, this is a very, very profound subject. And remember, this is like a super quick, simple introduction to the whole path. It’s just introducing the basic ideas with the hope that you will investigate these things more.
And some of the core things I’m talking about such as guru devotion and karma and and impermanence and death. There are whole Discovering Buddhism modules devoted to those topics. So some of you have done some of those modules. So there are really only three explanations of why things happen and why we experience things. One is the scientific materialist view or versions of what is now the scientific materialist view is that basically there’s no reason why things happen.
They just do. There was a big bang, things coming into existence, and then people experience happiness and suffering. Some people are born beautiful. Some people are born ugly. Some people are born highly intelligent.
Some people are born very unintelligent. Some, yeah, some people are born good. Some people are born bad. There’s no reason other than all chemicals in the brain. That’s the reason.
That’s it. Nothing else. Full stop. Finished. Yeah.
That’s one reason. This this explanation is it’s got lots of complicated science and behind it and proof. What’s the word? Facts and stuff. It may be true.
If it’s true, it’s really, really depressing view of life because it basically means life has no meaning. We just come into existence for no reason. Out of nothing, we come into existence, bump into each other for a while, and die. Full stop.
And the only thing that has modified this the the you know, us bumping into each other too hardly, strongly and nastily is because we’ve stupidly believed in morality because of, you know, religion. But when that dies out, which it is more and more and more, wow, when there’s just the materialist view of life, life is going to be really grim. Truly, you know, North Korea stuff for everyone all the time. That may be the correct view of life. I don’t think it is.
Anyway, very depressing. Another view is of course the theistic view that there is a creator who has created everything and is in control of everything. This also may be true but it has some flaws from a Buddhist point of view. Anyway, difficult to understand why the creator created suffering. There are explanations.
I’m not very impressed with the explanations. But of course I could be wrong. I don’t yeah. And then there’s the Buddhist view which is which says that there are causes for things And why I’m suffering is because I created this cause, not because it’s just arbitrary or someone else. My mind is experiencing this.
My mind had to create the cause. Know, some of you may have already heard this analogy already before, so I’m just gonna repeat it because I can’t think of a better one. If here is some water, imagine this is a tin pot, not a glass. If you want to make this water hot, it it’s not you know, you you can’t just praying won’t make it hot. Just, you know, waiting won’t make it hot.
You have to have a cause, and you have to have not just any cause like, oh, I’ll hit it. That’s not the cause for making water hot. You have to have the appropriate cause, the actual proper cause, which is, guess what, heat! But if you have the cause here and the waters here, there’s no connection. You have to have a direct connection between the cause and the effect.
And then you get hot water. Nothing else. So if the only thing that has a direct connection with our mind when it’s experiencing something is, guess what, our mind. Nothing else. A previous moment of our mind.
And also so there’s happiness, and there’s the causes of happiness. We get some happiness because we look at something pretty, beautiful, and some happiness pleasure arises. So not only is the pleasure coming from my mind and therefore the cause must come from my mind but the condition for the pleasure which is this object. This object is the the immediate cause for the pleasure I’m experiencing. But for me to meet the object, the Buddha is saying, I have to have created the cause.
It’s just I can’t just arbitrarily bump into something that makes me happy. I have to have created the cause to come in contact with something that makes me happy. This of course is very hard to work out and believe how this is all happening, but it also depends on understanding the teachings on emptiness, which I’m not going to try and explain other than make one point. The way we as ordinary people experience the world is that everything is out there separate from us. It’s separate from our mind.
There’s this concrete world made of different stuff and it’s really there the way it appears. What the Buddha discovered and is that is not the case. Actually more philosophers have also come to a similar but not the same conclusion as the Buddha that forms aren’t out there the way we think they are. They are not as solid and concrete and independently out there. And what the Buddha discovered is actually everything out there depends on our mind.
It really does depend on our mind. It’s not like my mind creates you know, I’m the unique creator of these flowers. My mind creates them, and then I bump into them and get some pleasure. But for these flowers to exist in my world, it depends on my mind. One simple simple way that I can understand this or get some insight is that we all have people who have died So for those people, this world for those people, this world no longer exists because they’re dead.
But the world hasn’t stopped for us. Right? But at some point, you know, for example, I will die. When I die, I will not be able to experience this world anymore, But the world won’t stop. You will and if you live after me, you’ll you’ll you’ll still experience this world, but I won’t be able to because this mind, the mind of this life has ceased.
Not the totality of my mind, but the gross mind of this life that experiences this world depending on these eyes and ears, body and brain, I can’t experience it. My mind won’t be able to experience it. This shows that this world depends on my mind. And it also shows that the world I’m experiencing is similar to yours, but it’s not the same one. You know, all of us have in our world Mr.
Rudd and Mr. Abbott and other various things like that, right? So we can all agree, but we all we’re all experiencing this this so called one world uniquely with our own mind. We’re all living in our own little bubble bubble world, which we think is the same as, you know, other people’s, but it’s not entirely the same. It’s all depending on our mind.
If we can start to see that a little bit, then karma makes much more sense. That just everything we experience, for us to experience it, our mind has to have somehow created the cause. No one else created my my bubble world. My mind did it. No one else.
So my mind is giving rise to this very quite nice world at the moment, but my mind suddenly can give rise to the experience of a world of animals, hungry ghosts, hell beings, god beings. So it’s the negative so oh, dear. Other bills run, isn’t it? What have I got to cover? Okay.
Question just before we break, questions. Yes. Yes. Just oh, it’s gotta be relevant to the topic. It suddenly became relevant.
A caste system? No, of course not. No. No. Right.
That’s easy. Questions? Yes Yes. you’d have to say yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Once you once we create a karmic imprint, once that karmic imprint ripens, you have to experience that that result. Yeah. More or less.
Yeah. I mean, just like now, we we we have this human life, which is a karmic result. So and how long are we going to live, you know, is a karmic result. But we could end this life, you know, the the length of our life can can suddenly become short because we decide to do something really stupid. So there are some other factors as well.
Yeah. Once you’re stuck there, there’s nothing much you can do except endure it. Yeah. This is also what’s implied in realizing the precious human rebirth is that as a human being with the eight freedoms and ten endowments, one has the greatest freedom to to change one’s life. Whereas, you know, progressively as an animal, the hungry ghost in the hell realm, there’s less and less freedom to do anything meaningful.
You’re completely trapped by that that that heavy negativity. Yes. Each animal dies so the karma to be reborn in one of the upper realms can occur. If you have a domestic pet. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. But you can put positive just like we put consciously put positive imprints in our own mind. We can put positive imprints in an animal’s mind. Yeah.
Allowing it to hear certain things and so on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
Hearing mantras and so on. Through the power of mantras and so on. The power of seeing holy images. But I I mean, it only has a certain effect, you know, small effect. An animal create its future life?
Well, see, the the theory is once one falls into the lower realms, all the conditions are there to create many negative actions for to be reborn in the lower realms again and again and again. But all of us have positive and negative imprints, and even someone in the lower realms when they die, one of those positive imprints created when they were a human being can ripen. I talked too much about some other things, and I haven’t gone into too much detail. Some of you have done a karma course. Others here haven’t may not be familiar with it all.
I haven’t been able to say too much about it, unfortunately, tonight. And this tea break. So I have to have our tea break. Thanks. People who I hope you realize that in this group, like with every Discovering Buddhism group, are some people who are committed Buddhists, who have been Buddhists for some years, there are some who are kind of familiar with Buddhism but may not be committed to it and then there are completely new people so it’s a bit tricky to try and cover everything.
I’m sorry because some of the homework is meditating on karma but I haven’t said too much about it. There is more time but what I’m trying to integrate in our Discovering Buddhism courses is some discussion groups where everyone gets into discussions with each other. I need to stick this up earlier, discussion group people’s names, so I have to do it now and then we’ll have discussion group where you just discuss everything I have said so far. Yes, now. None?
No, it is not. It is quite a two. No. Okay. Group one.
Group one. So, everybody’s got a different name. I don’t have to say you’ve got second names. You know, it’s just okay. Group one is Peter, Danny, Chris, Arnold, Moira and Margaret.
Group two is Kathy, Sheridan, Francine, Maggie, Richard, Rhett and Ilea. Group three is Fiona or maybe I should say where people ask because not everyone knows. So group one can gather over here at least for the time being. Group two over there. You can move and do meet elsewhere later on.
Group three, which could meet out outside at the table is Fiona, Judy, Bill, Leon, Adam, Elaine, and Cheryl. And group four who could meet in, I don’t know where. Oh, they’ll have to move move move meet in that corner over there. Group four is Annette, Sasha, Christina, Steve, Gerard, Michelle, and Anne. Okay.
So you can go to your groups now and just express your ideas.