Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 65-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub guides practitioners through a foundational meditation on precious human rebirth, the opening topic of his regular Sunday teaching series on the stages of the path. After calming the mind through breath awareness, he leads a structured analytical meditation on why this particular human life—free from major obstacles to spiritual practice and abundant in conditions that support it—is exceptionally rare and valuable. He illustrates this through concrete contrasts: the millions of animals for every human, the vast numbers born into poverty, war, or religious repression, and those blessed with freedom yet squandering it through distraction. He emphasizes the difficulty of creating the causes for such a rebirth and the brevity of life, then concludes with teachings from Lama Tsongkhapa on the preciousness of the human form and the urgency of using this opportunity meaningfully. Suitable for both newcomers and returning practitioners in this weekly series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2016 04 10 DB Retreat Day Part 1 10142016.mp3
UUID: 4b350983-6fa6-4504-a5fd-295ff24c2c2d
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Presenting the Path (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2016-04-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 65.5 minutes
Words: ~3,377
So I I normally on Sundays, by week, go through the stages of the path meditation teachings. I don’t know where you’re up to, but I’m sorry, we’re going to go back to the beginning today and do some simple meditation on the precious human rebirth. But of course, as most people know, this one hour session is divided into two segments. So in the first segment we do some breathing meditation as a way to help us calm our mind, to focus and concentrate our mind. And the purpose of that, in the Buddhist context, of course, is to be able to gain mastery of our mind so that we can subdue the disturbing thoughts, create the space to be able to cultivate the positive potentials of our mind, and especially not just for the benefit of this life or even to get out of cyclic existence, but especially for the sake of all sentient beings.
So at the end of that segment, we begin the segment by doing a couple of traditional prayers of taking refuge, generating the right motivation, and at the end of that segment I’ll ring the bell and we’ll take a three minute silent break, and then in the second segment we’ll do some analytical meditation on the precious human rebirth. So we can begin by sitting comfortably in the correct posture as much as possible, paying particular attention to the positioning of our spine, trying to have the vertebrae really straight and the upper body positioned, the vertebrae well aligned and straight, the upper body positioned so that we’re not leaning forwards or backwards or to either side, and placing the right hand on top of the left with the thumbs lightly touching, having our hands resting in our lap close to our body, but so that our elbows and upper arms are just a little bit away from the sides of the body. So by straightening the shoulders and also straightening the head, tucking the chin in slightly, one can position the head so that it’s not tilted down or lifted too high. So having the mouth lightly closed and the tip of your tongue resting at the back of the top row of teeth at the palate.
So one can meditate with one’s eyes closed, but, ultimately, it’s much better to train to meditate with your eyes just a little bit open, just very slightly, directing your gaze a short distance in front of you but without actively looking. So then just spend a few moments just checking your posture by moving your awareness from the crown of your head down through the full length of your body. Having prepared the mind, it’s really important to prepare the body, it’s really important to prepare the mind by cultivating the right motivation and making it as strong and sincere as possible. And we can do this by just becoming aware right now that it is our own mind, which is the source of all our experience. It is our mind that gives rise to the sense of self, or it gives rise to the awareness of our body, our body interacting in this world.
And with each moment of experience there’s a feeling of either pleasure or pain, happiness or suffering. And the more we become aware of that, that fundamental truth, it becomes obvious that if we want less suffering in our life, more happiness, contentment and well-being, then we really need to take care of our mind. That is the vital thing. And if we begin to understand that our mind goes on beyond this life, it never ceases, never ever ceases. It’s always giving rise to experience of either pleasure or pain, or can do so.
So understanding this, it becomes obvious that in taking care of our mind we need a method which is complete, perfect, unbetrayable. Such a perfect method can only come from a perfect source, which we recognize as the enlightened mind of the Buddha. So this is why we entrust ourselves or take refuge in the Buddha, in the Buddha’s teachings and the great practitioners of those teachings. To help us do that, we think of the Buddha appearing in front of us right now, seated on an incredibly beautiful lion throne, lotus, sun and moon, all the nature of light, the Buddha himself having a hollow body of golden light in the aspect of a pure monk holding the deep blue begging bowl in his left hand, full of wisdom nectar. So think of the Buddha as the very embodiment of all the Three Jewels of refuge, and think the Buddha appears to remind you of your Buddha nature and to inspire you to realize it.
And from our side we can then generate the wish to realize our Buddha nature by recognizing right now as strongly as we can our interconnection with all beings, how we are dependent on them day by day, year by year, life after life, directly and indirectly. Everything about us depends on them, and we particularly depend on their kindness, which we’ve received in every way, times, from each sentient being in beginningless Samsāra. And all these beings are trapped in cyclic existence, like myself, but the vast majority have much more suffering than myself right now, with far less freedom to overcome their suffering, to reduce it, transform it, eliminate completely helpless. So try and have a sense of all these kinds of suffering beings surrounding you right now, starting with your mother of this life on your left, father on your right, then the rest of your family, all your friends and helpers behind you, harmers in front, and then as much as possible, all other sentient beings, all other living beings. And think no matter what, must use this and all future lives to free my mind of all negativities that harm myself and harm others, awaken all the positive qualities that benefit myself, and especially enable me to repay the kindness of all these suffering beings by helping them to become free of causes of suffering, helping them to achieve peerless, everlasting happiness.
So I dedicate this practice to that goal of achieving enlightenment for the sake of others. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, the Supreme Assembly. By my merit of giving and other perfections, may become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and the Supreme Assembly, by my merit of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from the happiness that is free from suffering. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for friends and hatred for enemies. So if you find it helpful, you think that the Buddha is very pleased with your motivation, and because of that the Buddha now comes to the crown of one’s head and then turns facing the same direction as oneself. And for the rest of the session, one can imagine that the Buddha remains above the crown of one’s head, creating a protective environment in which to meditate and constantly blessing one’s mind.
It’s not necessary to actively visualize the Buddha anymore, but just simply have a sense that the enlightened mind is present. Having prepared our body and mind in this way, we can now direct our mind to the object of meditation, which is our breath. So just place your mind on the awareness of the breath coming in and going out. You don’t need to change your breathing in any way. You’re just simply observing it and trying to observe in as precise a way as possible.
So letting everything else, which is not an awareness of your breath, fade away, all thoughts of the past and future. Just try forcing it, remain in the present moment of just simply staying with your breath, fully experience experiencing the breath coming in and going out. Particularly, one can focus on the subtle sensation in and around your nostrils as the breath comes and goes. And it may be helpful to count each in and out breath. You take one in and out breath as one breath, try to follow eleven or twenty one consecutive breaths.
But every time the mind gets distracted or experiences some other hindrance, then it’s important to start the count from the beginning and keep doing this throughout the session without any sense of expectation or disappointment. So in the meditation on the precious human rebirth, what we’re trying to do is recognize that we have a very particular kind of human rebirth, the rarest kind of all, the most fortunate of all, where we are free of the greatest obstacles to practicing, following the spiritual path of mental development. And not only that, we’re in a position where we have all the essential encouraging factors to follow the spiritual path. So we’re free of the greatest obstacles to overcoming our suffering, causes of suffering. We have all the greatest encouraging the most important encouraging factors that enable us to be free of suffering and achieve genuine happiness, and that be of great benefit to others.
So it’s not enough just to have such a situation. We have to recognize it. Because if we don’t recognize it, we waste it. Just doing ordinary things. So the whole purpose of this meditation is to help us recognize that we have a precious human rebirth so we don’t waste it on just doing ordinary things, meaningless things, negative non virtuous things, which are not going to bring the result of having another good rebirth in the future.
But we need to recognize this incredible opportunity so we can seize it and take advantage of it. But there’s not much time to cover all the aspects of the precious human rebirth, so we’ll just look at a few of them. So if you’d like, we can begin again just reestablishing a comfortable position And also just reaffirming our motivation, seeing this as part of the process of freeing our mind, awakening our mind, not only for our own sake, but especially for the benefit of others. And we can recall the Buddha on the crown of our head. So we can begin by reflecting that myself and and, in fact, all sentient beings have Buddha nature, the potential to achieve enlightenment.
And yet, during beginningless time, beginningless Samsāra, this Buddha nature has been obscured. So it’s only really when we achieve a human rebirth, and not just a human rebirth, but a precious human rebirth, that we have the optimum chance to recognize our Buddha potential and to eliminate everything obscuring it and awaken that incredible enlightened quality. So we can reflect that we try to recognize right now that despite whatever limitations we may be experiencing in our life, whatever suffering we may be experiencing in our life, whatever difficulties we have, this is nothing compared to the vast majority of human beings. And one can try and open one’s mind to the Buddhist teachings that the sentient beings exist not just as human beings, but one can take rebirth in the animal realm, in the realm of hungry ghosts, and even the experience of the hells where there is continuous mental torment. So these sufferings are really unimaginable.
But just if you look around in this world, so many human beings live a life that is not much different than animals, where their life is just trying to spend their precious life is spent just trying to keep alive with very little time or energy to do anything else. Imagine what it would be like to be born in such a situation or to think of the millions and millions of human beings on this earth right now who just don’t have enough to eat or really don’t have enough to eat. Their life is just so precarious the whole time. Imagine what it would be like to be born in such a situation, or to be born in so many places in the world which we’ve somehow turned into something like a hell realm where there is constant fighting and wars and brutality and violence, political repression. So imagine what it would be like to be born in any of those situations, and especially how incredibly difficult it would be to have the space, the ability, the freedom to work with one’s mind, to cultivate kindness, compassion in such difficult circumstances, and then recognize what incredible freedom one has right now.
The freedom from all of that suffering, all of those restrictions, all of those difficulties, all those problems. Problems? How can I waste that freedom doing meaningless or negative things? Also remember that this freedom is so brief. This life is so short.
It can end at any time. So how can I waste this incredibly precious freedom? But also consider that on the other hand, there are many human beings on planet right now who are free of all obvious suffering, have so many good conditions in their lives, so much wealth and power and influence and beauty, and yet they use that just in a completely self indulgent way, Completely wasting their life. Just completely self absorbed. So actually, we’re fortunate not to be born into such a situation as well.
And also reflect that there are places in this world where one could have been born, where religion has died out, where there’s no respect for it. People make fun of it, or it is completely repressed. On the other hand, there are places in the world where all sorts of religious beliefs are thriving, but there are many people born in such places who have incredibly cynical views of such things. Have no belief whatsoever in any kind of future existence. We could have been born in any of those situations, but we weren’t.
And because of that, we have so much freedom. The freedom to become liberated from suffering. So then consider not only have we been born into a situation where we are free of the greatest obstacles that hold us back from awakening our mind, we actually have been born into a situation which is really encouraging that, making it so really possible to awaken our mind, to become free of suffering. The mere fact that we’ve been born a human being, but also we’ve been born in a place where the Dharma exists. We’ve contacted it, maybe developed belief in it.
In the path, we’ve had so many rebirths where we were not human. Even if we were human, we’ve had so many human rebirths where we never came in contact with the Dharma. Even when we’ve had rebirths where we’ve come in contact with the dharma, we never developed any faith in it. But this one time, maybe it’s happened. Also, need to recognize that this one time in so many rebirths, we’ve met the Dharma and we have a basically healthy body and mind to be able to put it into practice.
Again, this situation isn’t going to last forever. Also try to recognize how fortunate it is that we’ve been born at a time when the Buddha’s teachings are still existing, they’re still flourishing, There are still great masters of the Buddha’s teachings existing in this world, whom we can make contact with, be guided by. The community of ordained monks and nuns still exist, who are able to act as a source of the preservation of the teachings. And also recognize the simple fact that we may take for granted that we have Dharma friends, like minded friends who can support us in our spiritual practice. For all of these things to come together in one life is incredibly rare.
We need to recognize that, take advantage of it. So then try and get some sense of how incredibly rare it is to have such a precious human rebirth. Understand that the causes are so incredibly difficult to create to have such a rebirth. Just we can do this by comparing the number of animals on this earth with a number of human beings. So for each human being, there are millions and millions of different kinds of animals.
Those on the earth, in the water, in this living in the in the sky, under the earth, tiny creatures. For every human being, there are millions of animals. This is because it’s so easy to create the cause to have the suffering existence of an animal. And so difficult to create the cause to be reborn a human being. And just as there is a huge difference between the number of animals compared to the number of humans, there’s a huge difference between the number of human beings compared to the number of human beings who have a precious, perfect human rebirth.
So then we can bring the meditation to a conclusion by making a strong determination to be more and more mindful in daily life that one has a precious human rebirth, not to waste it on meaningless, negative, non virtuous things, but to be more and more mindful and to seize this opportunity, which is so short lived, to make this life as meaningful as possible, recognizing that with this precious human rebirth, whatever good qualities I want to develop in this life to become more kind, compassionate, loving, and so on, I can achieve this with a precious human rebirth. I need to recognize that with this precious human rebirth, I can create the cause for another good rebirth. I can even create the causes to become completely free of saṃsāra from cyclic existence, and even more amazing with this precious human rebirth, I have the freedom, all the encouraging factors to achieve enlightenment for the sake of others. So then we can recall the Buddha on the crown of our head, imagining that the Buddha is very pleased with our meditation, our practice. Because of this, the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light.
That light pours down into us, blessing our mind to be able to gain that clear realization that one has a precious human rebirth, which is so incredibly meaningful and so incredibly rare. So then we can dedicate the merit, if you like, on page three. Through the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of the Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious bodhimind not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline but increase forevermore.
So the great Lama Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug tradition that we try to follow here at Buddha House, once said or wrote: All worldly things are brief like lightning flash in the sky. This life, you must know, is the tiny splash of a raindrop, a thing of beauty that disappears even as it comes into being. Therefore, set your goal, make use of every day and night to achieve it. He also said the human body at peace with itself is more precious than the rarest gem. Cherish your body.
It is yours this one time only. The human form is won with difficulty. It is easy to lose. He also said, sorry, I’ll let you go after this: if you knew how hard it is to acquire a precious human rebirth, living an average life would be meaningless, if you knew how hard it was to get a precious human rebirth, living an average life would be impossible.
If you saw its great benefits, you would be sorry if it stayed meaningless. If you thought about death, you would make preparations for your future life. If you thought about cause and effect, you would stop being reckless. Thanks. Have a good week.
We can finish with three prostrations for those people who would like to join in.