Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 89-minute teaching, Ven Thubten Dondrub leads students through the foundational stages of the Buddhist path to enlightenment, emphasizing bodhicitta motivation and the cultivation of renunciation. He begins by establishing proper intention: developing a heartfelt wish to achieve enlightenment in order to benefit all sentient beings. The core of the session focuses on the graduated path—first renouncing obsession with this life by recognizing the preciousness and rarity of human rebirth, then contemplating impermanence and death to motivate renunciation of cyclic existence itself. Dondrub walks through the eight sufferings of human life (birth, sickness, aging, death, meeting the unwanted, separation from the desired, dissatisfaction, and the contaminated body-mind itself), the six broader sufferings of saṃsāra, and the three subtle kinds of dukkha—suffering, change, and the all-pervasive suffering of being under the control of delusion and karma. He illustrates why even superior samsaric rebirths (gods, demigods) remain unsatisfying, using vivid analogies of imprisonment and concentration camps. Throughout, he emphasizes the law of cause and effect and the centrality of mind in determining experience, and he concludes by teaching how ignorance—the false appearance of inherent existence—underlies anger, desire, and attachment. The teaching is aimed at serious practitioners seeking to understand the logical foundations for renouncing saṃsāra and generating genuine bodhicitta.
File metadata (for organising)
File: DB Presenting The Path Week 5.mp3
UUID: 4982885a-94c1-4f11-b0b6-a9f257ae942a
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Presenting the Path (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2016 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 89.1 minutes
Words: ~9,834
So as much as possible, trying to have the bodhicitta motivation, which is that wish, that determination to realize one’s Buddha nature, achieve enlightenment so that one is in a position to perfectly repay the kindness of other sentient beings. So that wish arises, that determination arises from recognizing our connection with all beings, how immensely kind they are, how everyone has been our mother many, many times, and recognizing that all these kind beings are suffering helplessly in saṃsāra, so if I don’t help them, who is going to help them? If I, the child of the mother, doesn’t help the mother who is suffering, who is going to do it? So by thinking about these things more and more deeply, and also recognizing this is the most meaningful thing that I can possibly do with my life, with any life, the most rewarding, the most satisfying, the most beneficial, then we can try and generate that bodhicitta motivation. So to help us generate it, we think of the Buddha in front of us, someone who has realized their Buddha potential, and can think of the Buddha appearing to remind us of our Buddha nature and inspiring us to realize it, and to help us motivate ourselves to do this, we think of all beings surrounding us, starting with our parents on either side, then family, friends, and helpers behind us, those who harm us in front, and then as much as possible, all other living beings.
Trying to be aware that, in essence, all of these beings are only kind, but only suffering. So to achieve enlightenment, I have to follow the path, to be able to follow the path, I have to understand the path, and to be able to understand the path, I have to study the path. So for this reason, I will study this path, these teachings on the path to enlightenment. I go for refuge until I’m 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 think to the Buddha and being pleased with our motivation shows this by coming to the crown of our head, And then when directly above our crown, the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light so that that light can then pour down into us, blessing our mind.
And then we can reinforce that positive state of mind by just for a brief time doing the nine round breathing exercise to help our mind become a little bit more calm, clear, and concentrated in order to be able to use that level of mind to listen to and think about the teachings tonight. So the Mahāyāna path to enlightenment has three fundamental stages whereby we cultivate, develop three essential qualities. So the first essential quality to develop is renunciation. And that has that itself has two stages actually, that first major stage and developing the first major quality has two stages. Firstly, renouncing this life and then renouncing saṃsāra.
Once we’ve done that, we can then generate bodhicitta, which is the second quality we need to develop, and then we can develop the wisdom that will not only free us from cyclic existence, but enable us to achieve enlightenment. So there are the three qualities of renunciation, wisdom, and bodhicitta, and the three stages we have to travel up the path are developing, firstly renouncing this life, then renouncing cyclic existence, and then renouncing nirvana in order to generate bodhicitta in order to achieve enlightenment. So to renounce this life, to renounce the obsessions with this life, the obsessions with pleasant things which we’re attached to, the unpleasant things which we have aversion to, we need to recognize more and more that not only are we a human being, but we have a very rare, precious human rebirth, sometimes called the perfect human rebirth. It’s not absolutely perfect, but it’s the perfect opportunity to practice the Dharma. That’s also why it’s said to be precious.
It’s extremely rare to have not just a human rebirth, but a human rebirth where one has met the Dharma, has faith in it, and has the ability and freedom to practice it, so very, very, very, very few human beings are in that situation. That’s why that kind of human rebirth is said to be perfect or precious, incredibly precious, because there are people with billions of dollars, but they’re still suffering and creating the causes of suffering, and they don’t know the method to stop that, whereas someone can be quite poor, but if they have a precious human rebirth, then they have all the opportunities to become completely free of suffering and be a vast benefit to others. So that’s a really precious lie. Okay, so that will motivate if we recognize that we’ve got such a rebirth, that will motivate us to practice. What will motivate us even more on that basis is understanding that everything we’re obsessed with, the waste of this life is impermanent, doesn’t last, and we ourselves are going to die, and then that leads us to realize that not only are we going to die, but when we die, we’re going to be reborn, and it’s so incredibly easy to be reborn, to have a horrible rebirth, either as a human being, or even worse, in the lower realms of animals and pretas and hell beings and so on.
That leads us to consider the need to protect ourselves from all this suffering, and that leads us perhaps to take refuge in the Buddha, recognizing the Buddha as the perfect, peerless refuge, the mind free of all thoughts, having all good qualities, particularly the wisdom, realizing the actual nature of all things, and at the heart of refuge is the teachings, practicing the teachings, that is what is going to protect us from suffering and bring us happiness, and at the very heart of all the Buddhist teachings is the law of cause and effect. This is what we really have to reflect on, develop an understanding of, so that we will develop the mind that realizes that day by day, throughout my life, the essential thing is to live according to the law of cause and effect. Avoiding the causes of suffering, creating the causes of happiness, because this will not only benefit this life, but it is creating the causes to have a good death, have a good rebirth, have all the causes follow the spiritual path. The subject of the law of cause and effect is very profound and very, very important, but unfortunately I haven’t talked very much about it, And it all comes down to understanding the nature of our mind and how the more we can understand the wisdom teachings of the Buddha that are emphasizing that the external world that we live in is not so separate from ourselves as it appears, that it’s not something just completely, independently out there unconnected with ourselves, but really the way yeah.
It all depends on our mind. If we start to understand that, then the law of cause and effect can make much more sense, that even the environment we’re born into, that we experience, the kind of body we have, all the experiences we have in our life and all the conditions that bring about those experiences are not something independently out there, but are related to our mind, and the law of cause and effect is explaining how our mind works to give rise to experiences of pleasure and pain and all the conditions for that. So the more we develop faith in the law of cause and effect, and the very essential teaching is that every effect has a cause, it has to have a cause. Everything we’re experiencing has a cause. Since we’re experiencing it with our mind, the real cause lies within our mind.
Just like in the ordinary world, a flower, you can say that is an effect, and the cause of that effect is the seed of the flower, and the seed actually, the flower emerges from the seed. The effect comes from the seed itself. It’s not something separate from the seed. This flower is not, I mean, now it’s separate from the seed, but it emerged directly from the seed. So in a similar way, the effects we experience, the effect of having this body in this particular world, in this particular part of the world, in this particular time, that has to have emerged, it has to have a cause, and it has to have emerged from the cause, in a sense.
Since the effect is being created by our mind, the cause, the only thing that the mind is emerging from, is the mind itself, a previous continuum of the mind. That’s a little bit of an explanation, don’t know if it’s one hundred percent correct, but it gives hopefully some idea. Anyway, the point is external stuff isn’t the real cause of our experience. It’s something within our mind that is triggering these experiences. Anyway, this is what the Buddha teaches.
We we can try and check out this. Not easy, but this is something to think about for a very long time. Because really, there are only three major explanations of why things happen that human beings have come up with. I’m not saying that the Buddhist explanation has been made up by human beings, maybe I should put it this way, that human beings only have three understandings of why things exist. One is, of course, has dominated most cultures at most times is the theistic view that there is a creator that has created everything and controls everything.
The other view is the materialist view, basically boils down to there are no causes for anything, things just happen. Either of those may be true, but if they’re true, it means we have no control over anything. We just have to sit here and happiness comes, and then suddenly it’s taken from us because things have no reason to happen, or God decides to make you miserable, or put you in hell, whatever, there’s absolutely no control. Then the third view is the Buddhist view, that there is a cause for everything, and the cause is coming from oneself, which also means that we have some control. We don’t have much control now, but we can gain control of our mind.
This is what the Buddha was teaching, that he did that, the Buddha did that, and we can do that. We can control our mind step by step, gain a little bit more and more and more understanding and control of our mind, and working with our mind skillfully, compassionately, wisely, we can reduce the causes of our suffering, increase the causes of happiness. And the best way to do that, the fundamental way to do that, is to observe, practice the avoiding of the ten non virtuous actions: the three of body, the four of speech, the three of mind, because there are many more non virtuous actions than these, but these are the main ones to avoid. If we engage in these with all the four factors, the four determining factors of the conscious motivation, the object, doing the action, rejoicing in the action, these cause incredibly powerful negative imprints that can never ripen to bring the effect of a good rebirth. They only bring the effect of a terrible, lower rebirth.
And so if you think about it, to practice the law of cause and effect really well, we have to renounce our obsession with the things of this life, thinking, getting the stuff of this life is so important. But the most important thing in this life is to protect our mind, and the way to protect it is to observe the law of cause and effect as much as we can. So if we do these things, we can begin and actually renounce this life, and then there’s so much more freedom to work with our mind to progress along the path. Then, leaving that aside now, we can go into the next stage, which is developing renunciation of cyclic existence. And this is done by basically recognizing that even the good rebirths in cyclic existence, being reborn as a human being, even having a precious human rebirth, or being reborn, you may find it hard to believe that the teachings say that one can be reborn as what is called a demigod, or in Sanskrit terms, a deva, or no, that’s not right an asura, as a demigod, and then there are these gods, these long life gods that having bodies of light, are incredibly beautiful, live for millions of years, have this incredible bliss and enjoyment for millions of years.
One could be born like that in saṃsāra, still saṃsāra, meaning it’s still a situation of the mind is giving rise to that, but the mind that is giving rise to that experience is still controlled by delusion and karma. By understanding the teachings more and more and how our mind works, we can come to the understanding that even these good rebirths in the upper realms as a human, demi-god or as a deva, still one doesn’t escape suffering. As a human being, even with a precious human rebirth, we suffer. The demigods suffer with incredible jealousy. The gods have incredible bliss and enjoyment for a very long time, but those rebirths don’t last.
They come to an end, and even the gods and goddesses fall back and take rebirth as humans or as animals, even in the hell realms, and then they can get reborn in the god realms again. It just circles, saṃsāra, cyclic existence, go up and down, up and down, around and around, here and there, without any control, because we have many positive and negative imprints in our mind, so at the end of one life, positive imprint ripens, good rebirth, but then at the end of another life, bad imprint ripens down in those terrible rebirth because we have, until we gain some real control over our mind at the time of death, we have no control of what kind of rebirth we will have. This is saṃsāra. It’s very unsatisfying. First noble truth, first thing the Buddha taught that cyclic existence, ordinary existence, is in its very nature suffering.
So the more we understand this, the more we will get fed up with it and decide it’s not good enough just to have a good rebirth in saṃsāra for a while and then fall to the lower realms again, I have to get out of cyclic existence. Or to put it in a very simple way, if you’re in jail, or even worse, you’re in a concentration camp, where people are tortured and thrown into fires and burned to death and poisoned to death or something, and that’s your lot, you start to realize after some time, there’s no point if someone gives you, spend out years or days and weeks and months and years trying to get a new pillow for your bed in a concentration camp, or get a nice new room to yourself in a concentration camp. What’s the point of having a nice new room in a concentration camp if you’re going to end up getting gassed to death and burned or tortured. That’s the point. Putting all your energy into getting a nice pillow, or a nice new chair, or a nice new room, and painting it, putting all that when, at some point, you’re just going to be tortured to death.
What is the point? Wouldn’t it be better to put your energy into trying to get out of the concentration camp? And even better would be to try and help everyone get out, if you could, but at least try and get yourself out rather than spending the time getting a fluffy new pillow. But that’s what we’re doing. We’re spending our life trying to get a fluffy new pillow, a new room, paint the new room, whereas all the time, death is coming closer and closer, day by day, and we don’t know what’s next.
We really don’t know. And that fluffy pillow isn’t gonna help at the dime of death. I’m mixing a few metaphors here, I think, but this is the basic point. We need to realize that staying in saṃsāra is not so great. Even the best place in saṃsāra isn’t very terrific.
That’s the Buddha’s message. It’s pretty grim, but he didn’t make this up to tell you, the Buddha’s saying, the Buddha didn’t create saṃsāra, right? The Buddha was in saṃsāra, and he got out because he perceived the truth of us, but realized there’s a way to get out of it. Just like people in prison, even in, what do they call them anyway, inescapable prisons. Some people escape out of inescapable prisons because they work away, they work out, Oh, I can get out this way.
And the Buddha worked out how to get out of saṃsāra, because he realized it’s all the creation of one’s mind. It all depends on one’s mind, and it all depends, yeah, anyway. So he’s worked out the plan how to escape. We’re in the same prison, and there’s only one way to get out, and he found that what amaze and he’s presented it to us, the path to enlightenment, the path out of saṃsāra, and even beyond to this amazing experience of enlightenment. And it all starts with realizing there’s no point staying here.
You can’t make the concentration fantastic. For a little time, yes, the fluffy pillow, the nice room, nice curtains, just like people in Nazi Germany in the concentration camps, some of them were given a little bit of nicer food because they were doing something that was useful for the people there, so they got a bit of nicer room, nicer food, maybe an extra shirt sometimes, but they were going to be killed eventually, like the people who helped, the actual Jewish people who helped the people go into the gas chambers. They helped, and they got a bit of extra food and things, but eventually they were taken in as well, and they knew that. Anyway, that we’re like that now. So we need to realize so this is very, I’m getting pretty, yeah.
But this is it. The Buddha is saying, We have to force ourselves, because we don’t want to know this, but the Buddha says, You have to think about this. You have to realize that all this nice stuff is an illusion because it’s impermanent. It doesn’t last, and you can’t make this last. You can’t make it last.
The pharaohs built these gigantic pyramids to preserve and keep their bodies intact so that they could live forever, depending on having their body intact. After a few years, some little guy buried it, got in there and stole everything, or a few guys, maybe a few ladies as well, I don’t know, but all that effort, all that solid, hundreds of tons, thousands of tons of solid rock can’t protect you. It’s all an illusion. It’s all impermanent. We can’t make it permanent.
So there is a handout. Chris, would you maybe some people have got it. Some people don’t have the handout, there’s a handout there. So I’ll just briefly go through these. What motivates us to get out of cyclic existence is understanding the suffering nature of our existence, while we have delusion and karma.
So in the Lam Rim Teachings, the teachings on the graduated path to enlightenment, it talks about the eight types of suffering that we so this is particularly related to what human beings experience. Some of these sufferings are not unique to human beings, but particularly this is what we experience. Just briefly, the way to reflect on these things is that even if we remain in While we remain in saṃsāra, even if we’re born as a human being again and again and again, which is highly unlikely, extremely difficult, but even if that happened, we would still have to experience the suffering of being born again and again. Some people could argue, and I’ll accept this, that being born is not always suffering for baby. I think usually for the mother, yes, maybe not so much for the baby, but plenty of times it is also for the baby.
They do come out screaming or they don’t get hit anymore, do they? I was in the generation where I think you got hit on the bum straight away and everything just, yeah. It is said there is the suffering of being in the womb, the child experiences the little fetus, experiences all sorts of things in the womb, when the mother runs and so on, jogged up and down, this is painful for this little, tiny, sensitive being, and so one experiences all sorts of suffering, the suffering of coming out, then the suffering of being born into this suffering world, and this is going to happen if we remain in saṃsāra over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then when we come out, we’re going to experience inevitably the suffering of getting sick. And if we remain in saṃsāra, there is time for us to experience every kind of sickness, sooner or later, and not just one time, but many times.
Every physical sickness, every mental sickness that human beings experience, we will experience in the future, many times if we stay here, if we remain in saṃsāra. Just like if someone remains in a concentration camp, sooner or later, they’ll experience all the horrors, the longer you stay. saṃsāra goes on forever if you don’t do anything about it, so there’s an enormous time to experience every horrible disease many times, sickness, and there’s some very gruesome ones to experience. Then there’s the suffering of growing old, just getting gradually older, then the suffering of really old age, extreme old age. Of course, some people die young, of course there are people who live to very old age but remain really quite physically okay and mentally alert.
Definitely that happens, of course, not denying that, but if we don’t get out of saṃsāra and it goes on forever, there is time to experience what every suffering of growing old and being extremely old over and over and over again, the fear of being. I visit my ninety six year old sister-in-law, who’s an old, what do they call them, I don’t know what the nice name is, anyway, what are they called? Nursing Home. Nursing Home, yeah. So now her body is completely skin and bone, and her skin is like tissue paper and it’s full of bruises and she has cancer in her brain and she’s had several operations, and it’s just really, even her good days, it’s just kind of really depressing to see her there because her mind is really still quite clear of it getting less and less.
And all she has to look forward to is to die, actually. There’s all these little petty things she has to put up with and no control over them. She’s at the complete mercy. It’s supposed to be a very good place that she’s at, but it’s really, really horrible. But she has lots of relatives and friends who visit her, but one of the great sufferings of growing old is the longer you live, it guarantees that your friends and family will die before you, so you end up very, very lonely.
Just when you really need people to help you, none of the people of your generation who think like you, who know you, who care for you, they’re not around. They’re not around. And there’s all these strangers, if you’re lucky, taking care of you, if they are actually taking care of you. And as you lose control of your body and your mind and your senses, Difficult to stand up, difficult to get up, and in our culture, no one wants to be around old people. They’re funny and disgusting, so there’s incredible suffering, mental and physical suffering, of growing really old.
Or even in our culture, even before one is really old, there’s so much fear and avert. No, people don’t even like to say how old they are in our culture. It’s kind of like something disgusting to admit that you’re more than thirty years old or something now. But really, it’s really sad, and the more people are caught into that, the more suffering there is that you’re attached to being young and good looking and blah blah blah, which is what our culture is about now, being young and beautiful and sexy is it. Looking sexy, whatever that is.
So when all that’s gone, what is there? But all of that stuff can go away for a very long time, and you can live for many years when you’re no longer young, good looking, and sexy. So that would be very depressing. Don’t laugh. I’m trying to make you miserable.
No, it’s true, you know, really. And then there’s death, and we have to die, even as a human being, we’re going to die over and over and over and over again. And of course, some people die well, but there’s time in endless saṃsāra to have every horrible kind of death, to be murdered in every kind of way, run over by a bus, but die with horrible diseases, all sorts of deaths over and over again. And in addition to that, those very basic ones, there is the suffering of, as a human being, meeting with all sorts of people and experiences that we don’t want to have because we’ve created the negative karma, we have to experience meeting with all sorts of things we don’t want to have to go through, but then there’s the suffering of not having the experiences that we want to have. We crave to meet a particular kind of person, have this kind of possessions and blah blah blah, but we haven’t created the good karma for it, so we don’t get the result.
And that goes on and on and on throughout cyclic existence. Then there’s the suffering separating from the things that we don’t want to separate from, which definitely happens at death, but even before we die, throughout our life, we are separated from things that we don’t want to separate from. But we have the delusion of desire and attachment, and the more we have that, the more that experience of separating becomes more painful. But that’s saṃsāra. So these are the eight sufferings, and then there’s the suffering of just having this human body, which just like summarizes the whole lot in one way.
It’s not really a separate suffering, it’s just a package deal of all the others. So then there are, on top of that, there are what are called the six sufferings, which refers to the sufferings that are experienced throughout cyclic existence, not just a human being, but in all the different realms. Just very briefly, there’s what is said to be the suffering of uncertainty, where in cycle of existence, everything is uncertain because everything’s impermanent, everything can change, and it can change very, very suddenly, totally unexpectedly, friends become enemies, just like that. But so many other things can happen, so many changes occur, so much uncertainty, therefore so much fear, worry, suffering. There’s the suffering of dissatisfaction, which is a really good one to meditate on.
I don’t know, when I first heard this, this sort of blew my mind. If you think about it, it logically follows that our mind is beginningless, saṃsāra is beginningless, therefore it logically follows that there has been time in past lives for us to experience all the conventionally good things in cyclic existence that are possible, we have experienced them before. All the things that we crave for now, thinking, If only I could have this, if only I could be like this, if only I could do this, I’d be happy, I’d be really, really happy. And the point is, we have had all these things, been all these things, done all these things, not just once, but infinite numbers of times, and yet we’re still dissatisfied. We have been the richest person in the world billions of times.
We’ve been the most beautiful, desirable person in the world. They have these magazines, the ten sexiest men and women in the world. We’ve been top of that list countless times in the past. We’ve been the most famous person in the world, the most powerful person in the world, the richest person in the world, the most intelligent person in the world, billions of times. We’ve been kings and queens billions of times.
Emperors of the universe countless times, and still, look, we’re still miserable. So what’s the point craving this stuff again? Same thing, same old. Same old, same old or something. Just the suffering of dissatisfaction.
Nothing in saṃsāra really satisfies us. And then if we remain in saṃsāra, have to experience the suffering of having to leave the body, which we get so incredibly attached to. Even a cockroach is attached to its body, so then when it dies, there’s the suffering of having to leave that body, and we’ll have to do that again and again. And then there’s the suffering of taking another body over and over again. And there’s what is said to be the suffering of rising and falling, that one becomes very rich, but then one can become very poor.
One becomes very powerful, and then very weak. One becomes very healthy, but very unhealthy. Very good looking, ugly. Successful, unsuccessful. Popular, unpopular.
It’s rising and falling, going up and down all the time. We’ve seen this very recently with case people like Saddam Hussein, who’s so rich and powerful and terrified America out of its wits, terrified Mr. Bush out of its wits, and then he dies in a gutter somewhere, virtually. No, no, he was hum, wasn’t he? Who am I thinking of?
Gaddafi, he was butchered in a hole in the ground or something. He was hiding in a somewhere in a way. So these people, they were very rich, very powerful, terrified everyone they controlled, and then they lost it. Also, like the guy, the president of, what was his name, of Romania, they were just shot in front of beating everybody, had, you know, dominated Romania for I don’t know how many years, made everyone’s life miserable, made themselves incredibly rich and powerful, and then suddenly, overnight, gone. And mister Bond, not James Bond.
What was the name? Alan Bond. Yeah. And then the yeah. Then the guy who fell off the yacht.
Who was that? The Australian guy who fell off the yacht. Anyway, yeah. Robert somebody. Holmes no, wasn’t Holmes was it?
Anyway, some guy very rich and then lost it all, so he jumped off his yacht or something, didn’t he? Something like that? Hello, his yacht, anyway. And then there’s the suffering of being low in saṃsāra, which has two interpretations. The obvious one is that, as one saying goes, that we are born alone, and we die alone, and in between, we are just alone.
Even though we are social animals and we like to be with people, we’re always trying to find the one person who will love us and we can be with forever and live happily ever after, Even if we find such a person, because we have an ego and self-cherishing, there is always a barrier. There’s always a barrier to some extent. No one can experience what we experience. No one can completely understand what we are experiencing. There can be a lot of suffering with that.
There are situations where people do feel very close to others, but if we could stay in saṃsāra forever, there’s the time for us to experience the really horrible aspects of being alone, feeling completely alone, completely misunderstood and not understood, etcetera. The other interpretation of that, which in a sense is even worse, the suffering of being alone, is that is being reborn again and again in cyclic existence, never meeting the dharma, never meeting the method that can protect us from suffering. So that is real loneliness. That is being really alone, when one has no protection whatsoever from suffering, and most sentient beings are experiencing that. To have the precious human rebirth means we have found that protection.
But we can never guarantee that this will last. If we don’t create the causes to meet the dharma again and again, we won’t do it, so we will be completely alone. So much suffering, but nothing to protect us from it, to help us make sense of it, and in many ways, I feel that that is one of the very worst sufferings that is possible, that mental suffering, a feeling, believing that there is no point to being alive, because there’s all this suffering, but there’s no meaning to it, no way to make sense of it, and many people get in that position in their life. They don’t find any way to make meaning of it. That is that is really horrible.
Talking about these things can be very depressing, but the purpose, reason to think about these things, to listen to teachings on them and then meditate on oneself, is not to become depressed, but to motivate oneself, right? To motivate, not just to get into, Oh, how terrible, how terrible, I’m miserable, but it’s to motivate oneself to stop creating the causes for such suffering and to create the causes to avoid the suffering, because we can. We can create the causes to get out of cyclic existence. Other people did it, we can do it. But we have to be motivated because it’s not easy to get out of cyclic existence.
It takes a lot of time and hard work, so we have to motivate ourselves to apply that effort. Just like ordinary people in the world, if they find a goal that they believe is worthwhile, the more they believe in that goal, the more they’re willing to sacrifice and put incredible time and hard work into it, like people who want to become really rich or really famous, or Olympic athletes who put so much time and effort and sacrifice just to get with the hope that they’ll get this little round disc of gold. It becomes everything to them, and they’re willing to do practically anything together. Mean, but those goals are pretty nothing. Who knows who won the gold medal for whatever in the last Olympic games?
Don’t remember. Jumping hurdles, who won the hundred yard jumping hurdle gold medal? Who remembers? Nobody, a person who won it, he knows, but nobody else remembers. But if we put that effort into achieving liberation, we could, and the goal is much better than a little gold medal, the result so much better.
And then just very quickly, there’s more suffering. There are what are called the three sufferings. The term suffering, we only have this word in English to translate this very interesting Sanskrit word dukkha, which in Tibetan has been translated as dungal, and we have the word suffering. And when we hear the word suffering, we associate it with obvious, horrible pain. But the Buddha, when he says ordinary existence is dukkha, is not saying that existence is, in its nature, obvious, horrible suffering, pain all the time, but that is one kind of suffering, the first kind of suffering, the most obvious, it is the suffering of suffering, the suffering of pain.
But a much more subtle kind of suffering is called the suffering of change, the dukkha of change. This is what we, as ordinary people, think of as happiness. The Buddha says every form of happiness that we, as ordinary people, every kind of experience that we, as ordinary people, label happiness is really an example of the suffering of change. It’s not real happiness, because what is real happiness is something that is perfect. The Buddha says the only thing worthy of the label happiness is an experience that is complete, perfect, undeclining, and everlasting.
If happiness doesn’t last, then it’s not real happiness. If it can’t last, it’s not really satisfying. If it’s not perfect, it’s not satisfying, and nothing we experience is perfect. With our imperfect mind, in our imperfect world, there’s nothing that we can experience which is perfect and lasting. All our experiences of happiness are dependent on some external thing, in our relationships, in our possessions, and so on, seeing things, hearing things, smelling, tasting, touching things, thinking about things, and so on, and all those things are impermanent, so impermanent things can’t be the basis of lasting happiness.
They can only give rise to something that lasts a short time, so all the things that we label happiness is just the illusion of happiness. It’s pleasurable, it’s better, of course, than obvious pain, but it’s not real happiness. This is one of the most important teachings, I think, for us to really understand, to get our heads around. To be motivated by obvious suffering is one thing, but to realize that we create so much negative karma knowingly and unknowingly in order to get something which we think is happiness. We create all this negative karma to get something which we think is happiness, but is just a more subtle form of dissatisfaction, and we have to pay for it with creating the cause for obvious suffering.
And all the while losing the chance to create the cause for real happiness. What a disaster is that? It’s like someone I don’t know. What’s a really expensive car? Porsches.
How much do they cost? A couple hundred thousand? Imagine someone steals a Porsche because they think, Oh, if I get this Porsche, I’ll be super happy. I’ll be able to impress everyone, get a terrific girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever, drive around everywhere very fast, have a terrific life, be loved and admired by everyone, so they steal this Porsche and cause a lot of disaster in the process, get arrested, thrown in jail, and the Porsche they stole was only a plastic imitation Porsche anyway, and then they end up in jail for how long, and they didn’t even get a Porsche. They got a plastic one that wouldn’t even go.
It just looked like a Porsche in the shop. That’s what we’re doing. Oh, this is happiness. It’s not happiness. It’s just plastic happiness, and we end up in jail again for it in saṃsāra, more saṃsāra.
How dumb is that Are we being robbed? Yeah. So there’s the suffering of change to think about, that All the pleasures and happiness of our life, the pleasures and happiness that we’ve experienced in the past, they are just that, in the past. They couldn’t last, which also means whatever pleasure and happiness we’re experiencing now can come to an end. It can’t sustain itself.
It’s not completely satisfying. And the most subtle kind of suffering is just simply the fact that we have a body and mind which is the product of delusion and karma, and is controlled by delusion and karma, which means that suffering is inevitable. Sorry, this is very grim, but this is the Buddha’s teachings, and it’s taught out of great compassion by the Buddha to motivate ourselves. We need to recognize this in order to give it up, because it can be given up, we can become free of it, because the Buddha discovered that this suffering just doesn’t happen because it’s controlled by some outside force. It doesn’t happen for no reason.
There are causes. And we can understand those causes and we can work to reduce and eliminate those causes. So what are the causes of suffering that the Buddha identified? The immediate cause of our suffering, the Buddha says, is the ripening of our negative karmic imprints. It’s when the conditions come together and then the imprint, the negative imprint ripens and then the suffering occurs.
But what is the cause of those karmic imprints in our mind? Those imprints are the result of following our disturbing thoughts. We have both positive thoughts and feelings and negative ones, and it is by following those negative thoughts, those disturbing thoughts, that we create these karmic imprints that ripen the suffering. There are many disturbing thoughts, but the main ones are our anger, afflicted desire and attachment, and these are, okay, just leave it at those two for the time. Yes?
They say they’re cursed because lots of terrible things happen to them. Yeah, from Well, it’s of terrible things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. That really impacted, and if it does, and you Well, certainly if they are, a lot of terrible things happening to them, unwanted, unpleasant things happen to them, this is the ripening of negative karma, and that’s the point. There are people who have rainfalls of negative karma, ripening horrible things happening.
Other people have terrific things happening in their life, one after the other because they created the cause of how many good things happen in their life. Most people have a mixture of both, or good and bad things. Well, can feel like that because, yes, because it feels like, What did I do to deserve this in this life? And this is the point about, look, karma, things don’t happen to us because we’re bad people as such. It’s just that even as a good person, negative karma will arrive, and if the conditions are there, sooner or later.
Of course, if one gets into a negative state of mind and does negative things, this is creating the conditions for lots of negative karma to ripen, and if we get into a practice of the Dharma or leading just generally a good life, that situation tends to make it more difficult for the karmic imprints to ripen, but even so, if a karmic imprint is really strong and hasn’t been purified, eventually the conditions will come together, and even someone very virtuous, holy, can experience the ripening of negative karma. Some negative karma’s still there and suffering comes, so it’s not punishment and whatever, but for someone who doesn’t understand that, when suffering comes, it can feel like, Oh, this is a curse, I’m cursed by someone, or I’m a helpless victim. I almost made it tonight. Anyway well, I haven’t even started, have I? The causes.
Just very quickly, just very quickly. If you, this is very important to check, there are states of mind which are naturally good, to use a boring word, naturally good, naturally virtuous, because they are reflections of the true nature of our mind, such as when we are in a state of experiencing love, genuine love, not compassion, kindness, generosity, and so on. These are naturally virtuous, positive, creative states of good states of mind, naturally, but there are other states of mind which are naturally negative, destructive, non virtuous, because they are not reflections of the true nature of our mind, but reflections of our obscured mind. They are functions of our obscured mind. Are having the effect of negating the positive qualities of our mind.
So if you check yourself, and this is what we’re encouraged to do, if we check our mind, if we meditate, look into our mind, there are states of mind that when they arise, they are uncomfortable, they are painful, they are suffering in their very nature when they arise. So following the Buddhist teachings, perceptions on the law of cause and effect, such a negative state of mind, not only is it suffering now, but it’s creating the cause for future suffering. It cannot, by following that disturbing thought, it cannot become a cause for any kind of genuine happiness and well-being. It can only have the actual effect of suffering. So if you check your anger, I think we all agree when we are angry, the anger itself is painful.
Anger is a thought, but with that thought is a painful feeling. So even if we feel justified to be angry, the feeling is painful, so it’s never going to bring a good result. Never, the Buddha said, never. The painful feeling is showing it as a negative thought, so it is only creating a negative result. It will only create a suffering result.
People argue that one should be angry about injustice, but being angry about injustice is creating the cause for more suffering, which doesn’t mean you should go along with injustice, one should just deal with it without anger. Injustice and blah blah is terrible. One should try and stop it, but not by being angry about it. And what is more important is that afflicted desire is also painful. Sorry I was talking about all this yesterday, but some of you weren’t most of you weren’t here yesterday, so just very briefly, the nature of afflicted desire, there is desire to practice the Dharma, that there is desire to be a more loving person.
There is the desire or wish to develop more kindness, all these things. So that is not an afflicted desire. That doesn’t bring a painful feeling. The disturbing thought of afflicted desire, its object, is itself an ordinary, from a dharma point of view, said to be a contaminated phenomenon. A contaminated phenomenon is anything that is the product of delusion and karma.
What is an example of a product of delusion and karma? Anything in our world, everything in our world. This is a contaminated phenomenon. This is a contaminated phenomenon. This is a contaminated phenomenon.
This is a contaminated phenomenon. Something just ordinary, contaminated phenomenon. Doesn’t mean it’s radioactive, it’s produced by delusion and karma, and it’s a conventionally pleasant object, because there are conventionally unpleasant objects, so desire sees this contaminated phenomena, which is conventionally pleasant and likes it, but the nature of afflicted desire, an ordinary person can see a pleasant object, this is a conventionally pleasant object, or collection of pleasant objects, and think, Oh, that’s a nice object, and go away. But someone else, for some karmic reason, will look at this conventionally pleasant object and think, That is just fantastic. Isn’t that amazing?
Gotta hang out to her because they’re not just appreciating something pleasant, their desire has taken over, And what desire does, it exaggerates how good it is beyond what is there and sees it as permanent. Oh, it’s just amazing. I’ll be happy forever if I have that. You don’t necessarily consciously think that, because delusions don’t really think too much, even though they’re thoughts, they’re not very rational thoughts. Of course, what goes with desire is attachment, because you get the object and then you can’t let go of it because it’s so fantastic.
It’s permanent happiness. You’re stuck with it. You become dependent on it. You become obsessed with it. So we associate that with something good, having this desire and attachment is good because we get all these good things, experiences, but actually, if you check, when we desire something and we don’t get it, what is that state of mind?
Is that a happy, peaceful mind or not? No, it is a completely freaked out state of mind. And the more you desire it, the more freaked out you are because you can’t get it. But that is the actual nature of the desire, because we associate meeting the object with desire with desire. But that’s different.
The desire itself is a completely agitated mind, a painful, suffering mind. So it doesn’t bring happiness. It’s creating an imprint for suffering. This is what the Buddha perceived, didn’t make up. This is what the Buddha perceived.
We should check our own experience. Then, in five seconds, will now explain the most profound subject in the entire universe, why do we have anger and afflicted desire and attachment? Because of the most profound basis of all suffering, the cause of cyclic existence, which is ignorance, which is this mental factor that prevents our mind perceiving directly how oneself and all things exist, distorts that appearance and creates an illusion that things somehow exist out there from their own side under their own power. As though they are substantially, truly existing there from their own side, under their own power. When we see something, it appears pleasant.
The beauty of this flower doesn’t appear, or it appears to be there from its side. It is beautiful from its side. It is a flower from its side. Nothing related to me, connected to me at all. That’s how it appears to us, and it’s only because of that appearance that we crave it, because it’s something out there separate.
The beauty is out there separate from me, and similarly we see something ugly as though it’s really bad from its side, not dependent on my mind. But if you check on, if this was, the technical term for this false appearance is called the appearance of true existence, which means it’s false. It’s the appearance of something truly existing or inherently existing, but if I believe this object is really beautiful, truly beautiful, inherently beautiful, if it actually did exist that way, then everyone, every mind, would perceive it as beautiful, because it is. If it is beautiful from its side, meaning it wouldn’t depend on anything, If the beauty is there from its own side, under its own power, it wouldn’t depend on anything. And because it didn’t depend on everything, everyone would be able to see instantly that that is absolutely beautiful.
Probably most of us will agree that these are nice flowers, right? But not everyone would. Not everyone. And some cultures, I don’t know, probably don’t even think of flowers as particularly beautiful. And there are some flowers that were brought from England because they were flowers and therefore considered beautiful, grew in Australia and became just, what was the word, noxious weeds.
Farmers, when they see them, do not see beautiful flowers. Little lady in England one hundred years ago thought, Beautiful flower. Country wife in Australia sees this thing, Is it weed? They do not see beautiful flower, but if it was an inherently existing flower, this lady who’s got all the weeds growing in her garden patch out back of Bourke would see beautiful flowers, but she doesn’t. If we see a kangaroo in a zoo, we think, Oh, how cute, how lovable, but a farmer out in the back of Bourke with twenty thousand kangaroos on their farm just sees vermin, does not see a cute kangaroo, just sees vermin like a large rat.
But if it was an inherently existing cute kangaroo, that farmer would just be sort of cuddling all those kangaroos all the time. I mean, check out, really. But the point is what we see depends on our mind. And as I’ve said a million times before, this object There’s all these things on this table, and here’s this thing, and we call it, when we look at it, it appears instantly there is no question that this is a flower. It is not a jar of water, it is not a bell, it’s not a clock, it’s not a whatever this is, it’s not a packet of tissues, a pair of glasses.
This is obviously a flower, but isn’t it? It’s not a book. Is it a book? It’s a leaf. This is a leaf.
But no, it’s not a book. It’s obviously a flower, right? But just consider, this object actually has no ability from its side to make you know it’s a flower. It has no ability to say, I am a flower. Now I don’t mean that literally in those words.
This thing has no ability to make you think this is a flower. None whatsoever. It all depends on our mind deciding this is a flower. This is a jar of water. This is a bell.
And what’s that? What’s that? Container. What? What?
What? Some rice. This is for blessing me. That’s what it’s for. Everything depends on our mind.
So not only this object as a flower can only exist as a flower depending on our mind, but what kind of flower? This can’t tell us what kind of flower it is. We label that. Maybe. Yeah.
Yeah, no, right. Well, yeah, and then you can’t, so it can’t appear as a particular flower if you don’t know what it’s normally labeled as, because you could say, Oh, it’s a lily, and everyone said, No, it’s not, you idiot. But also, but this is where it starts to get really significant is that once we start labeling all this good or bad, beautiful or ugly, that is where the problem is, because we think, Oh, this is really good, this is really bad, really beautiful, really ugly, and we’re convinced this is the truth, because it’s truly existing, and also the problem is it’s mine, not yours, it’s mine. It’s inherently mine. Anyway, that’s a little bit about ignorance.
It’s only because of that, that we have this wrong view of self and the wrong view of everything, and we label everything, but we are labeling stuff, but then it appears back so it’s really that from its own side. But we can change that. That’s the beauty in it. Because all of that itself depends on many things. That ignorance itself doesn’t truly exist independently.
It arises dependently, and so it can be removed. But we have to be motivated to do the removing. We can’t hire a removalist to do it. Even the Buddha can’t do it. The Buddha knows how to do it and can teach us we have to learn and do it.
But to do all that, we have to be motivated, and what motivates us is realizing more and more that if I don’t do this, I’m going to continue to suffer, but also, as I’m suffering, I will harm others, whether I want to or not. I will bring misery to other people, sooner or later, whereas I could be benefiting them more and more. Thank you. When we say contaminated phenomena, does that mean all phenomena contaminated without people in view of self existence? No, it means, yes, that, but it’s really saying that everything that exists in our universe is the product of our obscured mind.
Delusion and karma, sometimes good karma, sometimes bad karma, But even the good things are still produced by ordinary mind. So just very simply, what it means is that in our see, here, this is a why it’s here is because we’ve labeled this as some beautiful object, beautiful decorative object. But because it’s a contaminated beautiful object, it can act as a condition for disturbing thoughts to arise of desire. I want this. Tonight, when they all go home, I’m going to come back and rip this off.
And other things can act as a condition for anger or jealousy or pride, whereas an uncontaminated phenomena cannot do that. That’s why there are pure lands, We are born in pure lands, where one can be born into a pure land created by the mind of the Buddha. Everything there is incredibly beautiful, but it doesn’t activate one’s delusions. It actually pacifies them and encourages the virtue. Yeah, stop, sorry.
We can now have a contaminated cup of tea or coffee and biscuit. Don’t forget to collect your homework, collect the next lot of homework. Actually, maybe in future, we could combine the tea break with the discussion group. Would that work? Because then that would give me a bit more time to blah blah.
Yeah? It’s only taking us three years to work that out. Further. How many would that be? Just one.
We’re going to do oh, that’s the plan, isn’t it? Although actually it could be two, but I don’t think we can change now. Yes, the dates are. But we’re only extending it one week, aren’t we? Yeah, to no, can’t change it, can we?
No, It’s finishing Tuesday night, the fifth of April, and so the retreat day will be Sunday the tenth from nine o’clock to four o’clock. Some people may get confused because normally on Sundays at nine o’clock there is a meditation here, but we cleverly combine on these DB retreats the usual Sunday meditation and the retreat. So if you’re coming for the retreat, please, if you can, come for the nine o’clock. It starts at nine That’s the usual Sunday meditation is incorporated into our retreat. I would encourage people to come to the retreat because we get a chance to meditate on the topic because unfortunately, I just don’t find time to teach on the topic, have discussion group and meditate.
It would be good if we could do all those things, but I can’t keep it any simpler. I just don’t like teaching the Dharma in a super simple way that this is it, then there’s this, then there’s that. I just can’t do that. I have to try and explain things a bit anyway. That’s something I think. Is that enough?
I’m behind, yeah, kind of, well, yeah. No, I’m kind of caught up. I explained ignorance in five seconds. I’m sorry, I don’t leave much time for questions also. Do you have any questions that I can try and answer?
I don’t have a question, Chris. No? No? Okay. All right, then we can finish.
We can dedicate the positive imprints that we’ve generated tonight for these to become a cause for us to be able to follow the path to enlightenment, not only for our own sake, but especially for the benefit of all kind suffering mother sentient beings. So the dedication is: Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious bodhicitta not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore.
Okay, thank you very much. So we can finish with prostrations to the triple gem for those people who feel the connection.