Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 98-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub introduces the path to enlightenment as taught in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, emphasising the three principal qualities disciples must cultivate: renunciation, bodhicitta, and wisdom. He begins by setting motivation with the bodhicitta prayer—the commitment to achieve enlightenment in order to benefit all sentient beings—before walking through the foundational elements of practice. He explains the three levels of spiritual capacity, starting with renouncing attachment to this life alone, moving to renouncing all cyclic existence, and culminating in the aspiration to enlightenment for others’ sake. The core topics include guru devotion (why a qualified teacher is essential, how to develop trust and view them as a Buddha), recognising a precious human rebirth (the rare combination of freedoms and conditions that make spiritual practice possible), impermanence and death (how everything decays moment by moment and how our lifespan is uncertain), and the suffering of lower realms. Throughout, Dondrub emphasises that true renunciation is not rejection but the development of genuine love for oneself—recognising that cyclic existence, however pleasant it seems, cannot provide lasting happiness. Aimed at newer practitioners beginning a structured study program.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Presenting the path week 2.mp3
UUID: 42cf7171-856a-440a-a72e-6679edf13f91
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Presenting the Path (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2018 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 97.8 minutes
Words: ~12,062
Overview of the path to enlightenment. Actually, some of the topics that we’re covering in this course, there’s a whole module devoted to them as well in this program of discovering Buddhism anyway. So since the path that’s being presented is the path to enlightenment, then it’s really important that from our side, in studying that, have a motivation that fits the whole purpose of the program. So And the motivation that fits best of all, of course, is the bodhicitta motivation, which is that thought wanting to realise the full potential of one’s mind and achieve the enlightened state so that one is in a perfect position to be able to benefit others and particularly repay their kindness. And this comes from recognising how much kindness we have received, how much help and support and love and protection and encouragement and so on that we’ve received from every sentient being countless times in beginningless, cyclic existence.
And also from recognising that all these beings who have been so kind to me and have been, you know, necessary for my well-being, all of these beings are trapped in cyclic existence. Like myself, they are suffering, the vast majority are experiencing far more suffering than myself at the present moment. And unfortunately, the vast majority of sentient beings have less ability to understand their situation right now or do anything about it, whereas I myself, I mean, all of us here, although we’re in cyclic existence, we have the freedoms, opportunity to understand our situation and become free of cyclic existence, and not only that, achieve enlightenment. So but whereas the vast majority of others are completely unaware of their situation and have no freedom to do anything about their suffering situation anyway. So there’s this incredible need for us to become enlightened so that we can help all these beings.
So to help them we have to be free of all faults, awaken all our good qualities so that they’re operating one hundred percent of the time and operating completely all the time, perfectly all the time. So we have to become Buddhas, and we can become Buddhas because we have Buddha nature. So thinking along these lines, can try and generate the effort for bodhicitta motivation as we If you would like to join in the prayer, the traditional prayer, which is on page Roman eleven XI. So as we say this prayer to make it more meaningful, more powerful, more effective, especially for those of us who have taken refuge, then it’s very useful, helpful to visualise or imagine Śākyamūni Buddha in front of us as the source of refuge, inspiration and guidance, someone who has realised fully what we have just the potential for at the moment, that is the enlightened state. And as we think of the Buddha in front of us, we can be motivated to realise what the Buddha achieved by thinking about oneself being surrounded by all sentient beings, particularly those that we’re most connected to in this life, so our mother on our left, father on our right, then the rest of our family and all our friends and helpers behind us, enemies in front, and then as much as possible all other sentient beings, trying to have that awareness that they are only kind but only suffering.
So no matter what, I need to use this in all future lives to achieve enlightenment, to do that I have to follow the path to enlightenment, and in order to be able to follow the path successfully, I have to know about the path. So for this reason, I will study this course which is presenting the path to enlightenment. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, and 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 now we can imagine the Buddha pleased with our motivation to benefit others, and the Buddha shows this by now coming towards the crown of our head.
And then when directly above our crown we imagine the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light so that that light can then pour down into us, blessing our mind to be able to understand the teachings on the path to enlightenment, blessing our mind to be able to put them into practice correctly, and blessing our mind to be able to eventually gain the unmistaken, undeceiving realisations of all the stages of the path to enlightenment. So then briefly we can reinforce or enhance that positive state of mind by doing the nine round breathing exercise just for a short time, to enable the mind to become just a little bit more calm, clear, concentrated, so that we can use that mind to listen to and think about the Buddhist teachings tonight. Okay, thank you. So path to enlightenment as it is taught in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, originating from the great Indian masters, as systematised by Lama Tsongkhapa. It sets out the path to enlightenment from the point of view of three principal qualities which we have to develop, or what are called the three principal paths to enlightenment.
So this is developing renunciation, developing bodhicitta and developing wisdom. So these are the three principal qualities that one needs to cultivate on the path to enlightenment. And this is done through what are called leading the mind through these three levels of motivation. Don’t worry that it’s in the book. It actually is set out somewhere, but I’m just presenting it.
Actually, if you really want to know, I’ll find it for you. It’s where is it? I probably won’t be able to find it, I never can find these things. It’s on twenty three, Roman numeral twenty three, The Graduated Path to Enlightenment, The Three Principles and The Three Capacities. So these are the three qualities or principal qualities that we need to develop of renunciation, which is really about renouncing and many people hate this term and think about it as it means giving up good stuff, but renunciation is really about giving up suffering and its causes, recognising developing a much broader understanding of what suffering actually is rather than just thinking it’s just simple, obvious pain.
But anyway, these are the three qualities we need to develop renunciation. This is the first essential one we have to develop that, then one can develop wisdom and then bodhicitta. But in the Tibetan tradition, what is emphasised is the, in general, for the average person, it’s much more important to be able to cultivate bodhicitta, which is this motivation to achieve enlightenment, before developing wisdom. The reason for this is because if we develop wisdom or, you know, fully develop wisdom before developing bodhicitta, we will we are more likely to be inclined to just follow the path to nirvana and become an arhat, which is very good for ourselves. As I think I was explaining last week, it benefits ourselves, but as an arhat, one can be of limited benefit while one is alive on the earth.
But when an arhat dies, their mind abides forever, more or less, into the blissful state of nirvana. The mind is just focused on that bliss, totally unaware of anything else. So such a being then is no longer of any benefit to others. So from the Mahāyāna point of view, we need to avoid that as much as possible. So it’s much better to try to cultivate bodhicitta first, because that is the mind about developing great compassion and great love for all sentient beings and cultivating the mind that is dedicated to cherishing others and benefiting others rather than just oneself.
But of course by cherishing others and benefiting others, this in fact is also the best way to benefit ourselves. More about that later, In case you’re not convinced that that works, but it actually does. Otherwise the Buddha wouldn’t have taught it. So, the way the path to enlightenment is set out in our tradition is there’s the emphasis on first developing renunciation, because that is vital, that’s the very essential thing, because one cannot develop bodhicitta or wisdom without having the mind of renunciation, it’s just impossible. So one needs to first develop renunciation, then bodhicitta and then wisdom.
But actually the way the path to enlightenment works, one tries to develop a little bit of each, you know, all the time. The path to enlightenment is one could think of it as like a line going straight up, but actually it’s more like a spiral going up, because one needs to try to cultivate all the different aspects that bring about enlightenment. And there is a graduate sorry, there’s a graduated sequence by which, you know, you need to develop this realisation, then the next one, then the next one. There is a sort of sequence, but also one needs to try and cultivate all of them at the same time, because they’re all interconnected and they’re all interdependent. And the more one understands, you know, this part of the path to enlightenment, the more it helps you understand and develop the other parts.
Right? So although, you know, the way the Lamrim teachings or the Path to Enlightenment teachings are set out, wisdom is the last thing that one develops, we also try to need to Sorry, my English. We also need to try to develop wisdom at the very beginning. You know, put imprints of it in our mind, try to intellectually understand it at the very beginning. We need to try and understand and practice all the aspects of the path at the very beginning, but we get bit you know, but the the first one flourishes first, then the second one, then the third one, like that.
Am I making some sense? Yeah? Okay. Great. Before going on, I meant to ask this at the very beginning because I mentioned that we I was asking people to do the nine round breathing meditation.
So especially for the people who are new to this discovering Buddhism, because I never really explained it, it was just written out. Are there are there any questions about how to do that that meditation, that in the nine round breathing. I hope everyone did it as their part of their homework. It was part it was all set out. It’s in the material.
Well, there was I’m painting through it each night, but because there were other terms that I didn’t understand, I found I found myself looking up a whole lot of things on the first go through, wherever I know it’s not. Yeah. Sure. That’s fine. Yeah.
But otherwise, it was all clear, everyone’s clear on that? Great, okay, good. Okay, so there are these three qualities we need to develop: renunciation, bodhicitta and wisdom. And the way we develop them is by guiding our mind in this graduated psychological process, which is termed the three scopes or the three levels of spiritual capacity. So the first so assuming the mind of all of us, whether we like it or not, we have a worldly generally speaking, unless one’s quite a good practitioner, advanced practitioner, whatever, we have a mind that is just thinking about this life and really kind of stuck, attached to this life and the things of this life.
Yeah. So this is not a good situation to be in, this just is will perpetuate more cyclic existence, more suffering. So that’s the starting point. So we need to work on that mind to be able to let go of that mind that is stuck only about thinking of this life, mainly thinking about me in a very limited way. So the being of initial spiritual capacity is the person who is developing the first level of renunciation, which is letting go of the things of this life, Giving letting go of our attachment to our obsession with the things of this life or overestimating how important the things of this life are, like, you know, the pleasures of this life, the sufferings of this life and so on.
We need to put all of that in perspective and realise that our involvement with all of those things is really not going to bring us lasting happiness and it’s a great obstacle to following the spiritual path, it leads us to cultivate you know, activate our disturbing thoughts which lead to engaging in negative actions which are, you know, not going to bring about a good rebirth but more likely a bad rebirth. So we need to develop this initial level of renunciation. And so that’s what I’m going to be talking about tonight when I stop this introductory bit. And then the next phase of the next level of spiritual capacity, of spiritual practice, which is quite leap on from the first one, is realising that even getting a good rebirth again and again and again doesn’t free us from suffering. Even if we’re able to achieve being Even if we are able to be reborn as a human being, again and again, human beings experience all sorts of suffering, you know, which we are mostly protected from.
Most of us here, I think, you know, don’t experience the incredible sufferings that most human beings on in this world are subject to when you think of the poverty and starvation in many parts of the world and the incredible violence in other parts of the world and the incredible just economic confusion and mess in some other places and just the absolute brutality of some government systems that exist in the world. You know, we have such an incredibly fortunate life here in this country. No, lost What was my point there? Yes, even if we’re born human, we still have a lot of suffering. And I don’t know if you know about the god realms that the Buddhists talk about or whether you believe in them, but according to the Buddhist teachings, saṃsāra also includes or the possibilities of rebirth within cyclic existence include being reborn in various god realms, which where the lifespan lasts an enormously long time and one experiences incredible bliss, but it doesn’t last.
You know, one is gets then that karma runs out, then one is reborn back as a human being or as an animal or a hungry ghost or even in the hell realms. So there’s no point really getting having those rebirths. There’s that pleasure, but then it stops and the obvious suffering starts again and again and again and again. So we have to real by realising the incredible suffering of cyclic existence, then we can develop complete renunciation, being determined to free our mind of all limitations. And then that becomes the basis of developing the highest spiritual aspiration or developing the highest spiritual capacity, which is the bodhicitta motivation of seeking enlightenment in order to benefit all sentient beings, to be able to repay the kindness of mother sentient beings.
So that higher scope practice includes developing bodhicitta and wisdom. So this is the path to enlightenment that we’re going to go through. So the first step in that path of becoming a Buddha is that we have to renounce this life. So the basis of that is firstly well, it’s a little bit misleading, but the very first topic that is taught in the traditional presentation of the path to enlightenment, certainly in the Gelugpa tradition that we follow here, is recognising the importance of devoting to a qualified teacher. This is put at the very beginning to emphasise how important it is if one wants to follow the spiritual path completely, not just dabble in it, because if we’re honest, most people in in all religions only dabble in their religion.
They don’t follow it completely. Christians just dabble in Christianity, most Buddhists dabble in Buddhism, yeah, like that. So, yeah, most people use their religion to just make this life a bit better, which is okay, but that’s not its purpose and it’s certainly not the purpose of Buddhism. I mean, when I became a Buddhist or when I became interested in it, or like fell into it by mistake in a way, trying to rescue a friend from Buddhism. And so then I got a bit interested in it and started to practise.
Of course my motivation was just to make this life better, because I didn’t believe in I had no idea about future lives at that time or belief in them. But then by hearing the teachings and meeting the Lamas, then I came to believe about that my mind went on forever and there were future lives and all sorts of things to consider, good and bad. So But still the mind is habituated to think just of this life and how important it is and so on. But this is the mind that we have to change because this life is incredibly short. Anyway, so and I’ve lost my point.
The point was the real purpose of Buddhist teachings is not just to make this life make this life okay and happy and jolly, which it will of course, the Buddhist teachings aren’t designed to make this life miserable, but the purpose of these teachings is to show us the whole situation that we’re in saṃsāra. saṃsāra is terrible, we’ve got to get out of it, and everyone else is trapped in saṃsāra, and we have to get them out as well, and that we all have this amazing Buddha potential and we have to awaken it because that’s needed, enlightened quality is needed to benefit others who are trapped in suffering. So if we really want to take if we really start to believe these things, then in order to fulfil what and follow the Buddhist path, then we really need to rely on a qualified teacher. If we just want to dabble in the teachings and so on, we don’t need a teacher so much. But if we really want to take it to heart and really do what the Buddha did and what the Buddha wants us to do, then we need to connect with a truly qualified teacher and devote to that teacher wholeheartedly.
And so the important thing is to discover, to connect with a really qualified spiritual master, someone who not only intellectually understands the teachings but has genuine authentic experience, inner experience of them, of those teachings. And of course, the more qualified the teacher is in the sense of not only having a very profound understanding of the teachings but also genuine inner experience of them, the more qualified the teacher is, the better off we will be. Because the less qualified the teacher, the more mistakes they can make and the less they can help us. But a truly qualified spiritual master can really, really help us. And ideally, of course, since the ultimate aim in Tibetan Buddhism is to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible by following, eventually following the tantric path, then we it’s best to be able to find a qualified teacher who is not only qualified intellectually and experientially in the general Sūtra teachings but also in the Tantric teachings as well.
Someone like Lama Zopa Rinpoche or his holiness, the Dalai Lama. So maybe at the beginning of our practice, maybe I’ll This is maybe contrary to what my guru would say, my teacher would say, but anyway, I think, like at the very beginning of our practice, maybe having a super qualified teacher and devoting to them is not so important. But certainly, if we really want to progress on the path, at some point we really need to connect with a qualified teacher and devote to them. And what that devotion means is, especially what is emphasised in being able to achieve enlightenment, we have to train to develop this very pure view of our teacher, someone who is not only qualified, but we feel a strong connection with them. My other main teacher have twenty gurus, but I have three main ones I suppose, which is Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who’s my main teacher, and who’s depicted there and up there, and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and Lama Yeshe.
So Lama Yeshe once said, that when he lived at Sera Monastery in Tibet, which had well over three thousand monks at the time and many, many great, highly realised Lamas there, he said that he knew that there were very great Lamas there, but he didn’t have any particular connection with them. I mean, he did have with some, but it’s just point he was making is just because someone is highly qualified, highly realised, one personally may not have a connection with them. You just don’t feel very strongly related to them. So there’s not much point taking such a person as your teacher, as your guru, you need to recognise someone as, oh, this person has incredible qualities, but you also feel this, you know, this strong connection with them. Right?
That you feel this devotion and affection for them. You can’t call it love because love is wanting someone to be happy. And one shouldn’t think that the guru needs to be happy, one should feel that the guru is someone who’s achieved it. Alright? But one needs to feel this incredible devotion, and the more devotion, the more one’s mind can receive the blessings of the Gurus and Buddhas, which is something really vital to achieve in following the path, in gaining realisations.
So what devoting to the Guru means, what devoting to the teacher means is, at its very highest level, and this is one of the most difficult things to do, actually properly, is to be able to see the qualified guru as a Buddha. I won’t go into this, but this is a very big topic because we’ll never get anywhere if I go into all the details, but this is really what guru devotion is about, is seeing the guru as a Buddha. And because if one can do that or lead one’s mind more, higher the view you have of your teacher, the more you will benefit. And also, it’s affecting your mind. In the teachings it says, if you think your teacher is an ordinary person, you’ll get the benefit.
Your mind will be benefited by of you’ll get the benefit of being taught by an ordinary person. If you think your that your teacher is a special person, you’ll get the benefit of being taught by a special person. If you think your guru is a bodhisattva, you’ll get the benefit of being taught by a bodhisattva. And if you really think your guru is a Buddha, you’ll be you’ll get the benefit of being taught by a Buddha. It all depends on our mind, of purifying our mind, having pure view.
And of course this doesn’t it’s not a simple thing like going around saying, oh my Guru’s a Buddha. That’s just, you know, words, you know. It’s one has to really sincerely believe it and have reasons for believing it. And when if one is able to develop that and there are valid reasons for developing that view, then it’s immensely beneficial for the mind. But of course, it’s a very dangerous practice because if the guru isn’t qualified, if the guru doesn’t have a good heart and wisdom, etcetera, it can be very dangerous for the guru and very dangerous for the disciple.
Yeah. So many people are incredibly impressed by you know, it’s very easy to impress people when you sit up here. People are impressed by me, you know, and I’m just a ding a ling, total ding a ling, you know. But, yes. And just be one can develop, you know, I don’t have any, but some people develop various qualities, but those qualities, like for example, reading another person’s mind doesn’t mean you’re a holy being.
I mean, holy beings can do it or some, you know, but that in itself is not a good guide that that person is reliable. So there is a list of all the qualities which is you’ve got. The first of your handouts is a meditation on the devoting to the spiritual master. So I have no time there’s no time to go through it all, but I’d like you to meditate on that as much as you can, at least some of the basic things about why we need a teacher, why, you know, what are the qualities of the teacher, what are the benefits of having one. These are certainly those parts of that I would encourage people to meditate on, to think about.
Why do we need a teacher? Because even to intellectually understand the Buddhadharma properly is not easy, especially with our background. We have so much other you know, so many filters in our mind. But also, the Buddha, you know, we’re working with our mind and we don’t even know what our mind is, we can’t see it. You know, even you know, if body goes wrong, we need a doctor.
Even though we can see and touch our body, we still know very, you know, a little bit very little that, you know, we ourselves, not being doctors, know very little about how our body works and how we can fix it. But our mind is something we can’t even see. Yeah? So we need someone who is an expert on the mind to help us work with our mind. And the more expert they are, the better it is for us.
Yeah. So we need a qualified master who following the tradition, not making up the tradition or changing the tradition because you have such people who do that. So it’s very important that the person is not only qualified but they are teaching according to the tradition. And of course they have a good heart, which is one of the most important things. But also they’ve got the right knowledge as well.
Devoting to the Guru, one does this in thought and action. So the main way of devoting to the guru in thought is by training to see the guru as Buddha. But of course, that’s on the basis of believing, checking that the guru does have qualities, you know, really has good qualities that one can trust and so on. And one devotes, one enhances that devotion of seeing the guru as Buddha by recalling the kindness of the guru. Because in one way, the guru who was actually teaching us the path to enlightenment, not like me just saying words, but actually teaching from inner experience the path to enlightenment, you know, that person is actually guiding us on the path to enlightenment.
That person one can it’s valid to think that person is kinder than all the Buddhas, is kinder you know, Śākyamūni Buddha is kinder than all the other Buddhas because many other Buddhas existed but they’ve all, you know, gone to parinirvana, they’ve all left. You know, we can’t And even the Buddha, Śākyamūni, manifested dying. But our guru is here teaching us in a way that fits our mind. So that person, it is valid to think that person is kinder than all the Buddhas and kinder than Śākyamūni who is kinder than all the other ones because they all left a long time ago. Because the Śākyamūni Buddha made this particular vow that in the really degenerate times he would appear and teach the dregs of the dregs, that’s us.
All the ones who didn’t get enlightened years and millions of eons ago, Śākyamūni said, I would appear for those. But now he’s gone, and who is left is the person who appears to be an ordinary human being teaching us the Dharma. So that person is incredibly kind. And also one tries to think about the qualities of the guru, yeah, so that helps develop that devotion. So the other aspect of devoting, on the basis of that, one devotes to the guru in action by making offerings to the guru, because that creates huge merit and purifies the mind, Yeah.
And also serving the guru, you know, offering cups of tea. In the teachings, says you offer one glass of water to the guru, seeing the guru as Buddha. This is the same as offering to Śākyamūni Buddha, so it creates skies of merit. And we’re just getting quite long, this is only the first. So And and the third way, the most important way to serve the guru is to practice the teachings that the guru gives, because that’s why a real guru exists.
You know, for His without going into lots of details, there’s a number of occasions when His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, has said to the Tibetan people, you are not following my advice, so I’m leaving the planet. He said, I don’t have to be here. I’m not doing this for my sake. If you don’t follow me, then, you know, you’ve claimed, you know, you’re devoted to me. I I advise you, you don’t follow.
Bye bye. Because he’s not interested in hanging around if he’s not needed. Because a real guru is only here to teach the Dharma, and if there’s no one practicing it, there’s no point teaching it. That’s the real ones. So the, you know, the best way to serve the guru is to practise what the guru teaches and also to follow the advice of the guru.
And as my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, says, the most the best thing you can possibly do, which brings about the greatest merit, greatest purification, the greatest blessings, and the greatest progress, is to to follow the difficult advice of the guru. Cause the Guru can advise things that are easy to do, but also the Guru can advise very difficult things to do. And if one tries to do those, then that is the best of all. Even if you’re not able to do it, it’s not so important if you can do it or not, is to try and do it. So if you try to follow the advice, especially the difficult advice of the guru, that is the greatest.
And of course, the gurus come up with really difficult things to do, especially things difficult for oneself. They may be very easy for other people, but very difficult for oneself. So if you can do those things, or try to do them with a happy mind, then that’s the greatest of all. Anyway, that’s enough on guru devotion. That’s the basis, yeah?
But it’s also a very tricky thing. One has to be really, really careful about who one commits to because once you make the connection with a guru and accept that person as the as one of your teachers and see them as a Buddha or make that commitment to do that, one has then established the the strongest karmic connection you can possibly have with another person. And so the you know, so what the good you do is, you know, inconceivably vast, but the negative karma one creates with the guru is just, you know, horrendous. So anyway, the next basis of following the path is recognising that we have a precious human rebirth, not just so the term ‘precious human rebirth’, the term ‘precious’ is not an adjective describing all human rebirths. Very, very, very, very few human beings have a precious human rebirth, because a precious human rebirth is referring to a human being who has eight freedoms and ten endowments, which is in your second handout about the precious human rebirth.
And basically what the precious human rebirth is, is it is the optimum situation, it’s the optimum rebirth whereby one can follow the spiritual path, not only get a good rebirth, liberation, but complete enlightenment. So it’s really important to be able to recognise whether one has one or not, because, you know, the traditional analogy that is given is that if you imagine a beggar who’s completely, you know, miserable and starving and hungry and filthy and dressed in rags, but he discovers a diamond, a huge diamond, but he has no idea what it is, and he carries it around with him for years and years and years. You know, it’s worth billions of dollars, know, this diamond. But so he remains a beggar because he’s got this incredible diamond but he hasn’t recognised what it can do, how valuable it is. So for us to have a precious human rebirth and not recognise that we’ve got one is like even greater tragedy than the beggar with a diamond.
Because this is what, you know, this is because if we don’t recognise what we can do with our life, we waste it on doing ordinary things, which we may think are fantastic, you know, I’ve climbed Mount Everest or I’ve got a PhD or I’m this or I’m that or I’ve got a million dollars, we may think this is really fantastic, but it’s really nothing, it’s just nothing. We’re going to die and lose it all. But with a precious human rebirth, we can not only get a good rebirth, we can get out of saṃsāra, we can become a Buddha. And one needs that. And it’s incredibly So a precious human rebirth means one’s free of being reborn in the lower realms but being free of all the difficulties that most human beings have.
You know, many human beings are born with all sorts of physical and mental limitations, Many human beings are born with really heavy wrong views, but they just simply reject out of hand any possibility of future lives of something, you know, things like that, the karma and so on, completely reject all of that. That can be incredibly educated, super intelligent people that reject all of that. So they reject the possibility of following a spiritual path. It just doesn’t exist. Right?
Yeah. And the vast majority of human beings on this planet probably have never heard the word Buddha and won’t hear it in their entire life. And of course, like there’s many people who walk past this place every day, they will never come in here, never, never come in. Or in other words, there are people who, you know, know about Buddhism, but they don’t take it seriously. So to actually even meet the teachings, come in contact with them at all is unbelievably rare on this earth.
But what is even more rare, the rarest thing of all, is to actually believe the Buddhist teachings, to have some belief in them. As I often say, there are people who earn, you know, their income at universities teaching Buddhism, and they write, you know, PhDs about, you know, abstract, you know, very abstract aspects of Buddhism. But these people, the vast majority of them, don’t believe in Buddhism. It’s just, you know, another idea. It’s just an interesting idea.
Yeah? But it doesn’t benefit them. It gives them an income, but it doesn’t transform their mind. They can lecture on it, more than know more about many actually believing Buddhists, but it doesn’t do anything for their well-being. So to have some faith in the Buddhadharma is incredibly rare.
And then that opens up the possibility of freedom from suffering. So there’s all that freedoms that most people don’t have, we have to recognise, I’ve got them, and there’s also all these encouraging factors that we have a healthy body and mind so that we can understand the Dharma and we’ve got all these encouraging factors, we’ve met it, we have faith, we you know, there are Dharma centres, we have Dharma friends, we have teachers, you know, we know how to make contact with teachers. You know? So we need to recognize these things and take advantage of them, just like we need the beggar needs to recognise he’s got a diamond so he can sell it and buy some food and some nice clothes or clean clothes and get a wash and things. But we can do so much more with a precious human rebirth.
As it says, you know, we can guarantee with a precious human rebirth if we use it, we can get a good rebirth, we can get out of cyclic existence, we can achieve enlightenment. We need to recognise that, take advantage of it, not waste it on just doing ordinary stuff. Because also the precious human rebirth doesn’t come just because one is born. We get reborn all the time, but to have a precious human rebirth, the causes are not simply that our mother and father, you know, did something one night or afternoon or morning or whatever, but the real causes of having a precious human rebirth are practising pure morality and generosity in past lives. And this is extremely difficult.
And not only that, it is said that one has to have consciously dedicated the merit of those actions to getting a good rebirth. So somehow in past lives, in many, many past lives, we did little actions here and there over many, many past lives and we’ve accumulated merit for this short life. And in the teaching on the meditation on the precious human and rebirth, it gives various analogies, one of which I find very effective, which is if you compare the number of human beings on this planet with the number of beings in the animal realm, which means all kinds of two legged animals, four legged animals, birds, fish, insects, everything under the earth, you know, all of that, all these sentient beings trapped in animal bodies. There are for every human being, there is probably millions, at least one million, beings in the animal realm for every human being. But it’s probably much more than that, because we have sentient beings living on our body right now.
We have sentient beings living in our body. And I don’t mean big things like tapeworms. There are all sorts of sentient beings in our body right now. Sentient beings, yeah, with Buddha nature like ourselves. Yeah.
And and why is that? That for every human being, there’s at least a million beings in the animal realm? Because it’s very easy to create the negative causes to be born an animal compared to being born a human being. But then if you take, I don’t know how many there’s, what, seven over seven billion human beings on this planet. Yeah.
And, again, the number of of among those, the number that have a a precious human rebirth is hardly any hardly any at all. So we may be some of them. So this is really unbelievable, which doesn’t make us better than any other human being. It just means that temporarily, we are in a more fortunate position. We are in the optimum position to work with our mind, to free our mind, to get out of cyclic existence and to become a Buddha.
So how can we waste that? This is what we have to recognise, yeah, to realise that, not just to intellectually understand it, but really we have to let it grab us by the guts. It also should make you very happy realising that, how lucky I am. So that is the basis for following the spiritual path, those two things having a guru and recognising one’s precious human rebirth. Then, especially having recognised the precious human rebirth, what starts to then even that should start helping develop renunciation of this life.
Because we realise most of the stuff I’m doing is just is just ridiculous. It’s either pointless or it’s, you know, it’s pretty meaningless or it’s negative. It’s a complete waste of time. And I don’t even have to be a human being to do much of what I do. I mean, television is dominated by fancy food shows now, you know, and, you know, food has become this thing where you know, I like eating food, by the way, but too much, but you have these huge plates with all these fancy decorations and things and, you know, enormous, a great expense.
And that seems to be like the meaning of life, you know, and this makes you something very special if you can make this or eat it or go to a restaurant and afford to spend hundreds of dollars on this little pile of stuff, it’s got little green things on top. But it’s just eating, you know. It’s no different Ultimately, it’s no different than a pig rooting in the mud. It’s just eating. And as what as Lama Zopa Rinpoche tells the story from another lama, you know, the tastes last from here to here.
It’s all about all of that experience last from here to here. You put it in your mouth and you taste it and then yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it does recognising that we’ve got a precious human rebirth is the beginning of being able to renounce our obsession with this life.
But what really helps is recognizing the next handout is about the fact that everything that we are obsessed with, good and bad, is impermanent. It doesn’t last. It changes, it seems permanent. But everything everything in our existence, our body, everything that we wear, everything we use, the natural world itself, all of it arises depending on causes and conditions. It’s what is called technically a compounded phenomena.
It’s compounded coming into existence. It comes together depending on many things, many causes, many conditions. And the Buddha said, everything, anything and everything that comes into comes into existence depending on causes and conditions is impermanent. It changes moment by literally moment by moment. It decays, it ages moment by moment, and a moment is very short.
And in every moment things are changing, decaying, they cannot last. And why is this? Why is it that things depending on causes and conditions are impermanent? There is a very amazing, wonderful, simple, mind boggling answer, and the answer is simply because they depend on causes and conditions. There is no other reason.
Simply because something comes into existence depending on causes and conditions, that is the reason they are impermanent and change and decay and age and grow old and die. And my my proof of this is this, I will now create a something that is not existing, I will create it depending on causes and conditions, and you just observe what happens to it. I created a sound depending on causes and conditions, and this sound does not exist anymore, and nothing extraneous to the creation of the sound stop that sound. It’s just that that sound has no power to sustain itself beyond the first moment. In the first moment, there is a sound, and in the next moment, there’s there’s a lesser sound, lesser, lesser, lesser, because it can’t sustain itself.
And everything everything is like that. Yeah? These these walls, which seem to be so solid and permanent are decaying just like this sound. And like the metal chairs and the wooden floor and this material and the flowers, everything. It’s all changing.
And the point is it’s irreversible. You can’t bring that sound back. You can’t stop this process. Another example is sort of like a candle and a candle flame. The flame only exists because, you know, each moment’s existing, it’s using up what’s creating it.
And so it’s guaranteed to go out. So everything is like that. All the things we’re attached to because they are like this is an illusion. They’re not like that, they are changing all the time. All the bad things that upset us which we get upset because they seem so permanent, they’re changing, they can’t last.
And we waste our time on all these things trying to hold on to them. And we create negative karma in relation because of it. And of course, you know, this body is also created by causes and conditions, so it is decaying, you know, it is ageing, and the end result is death. The very fact that we are born proves we will die. So this whole life is just so illusory, it’s so short, and we have this incredible opportunity, this precious human rebirth, but it’s so short and it can end at any time.
We’re definitely going to die, we could die at any time because we never know when the karma of being able to have this body, this rebirth is going to end. Because our life doesn’t depend on how much we eat, what we eat. I mean, little bit, but it’s not the real thing that’s, you know, depends determines how long we will live or how much exercise we do. All these things are good to do, whether we smoke or not. I mean, there are people who are a hundred and ten who, you know, smoke like chimneys, and there are other people who, you know anyway, it depends on karma.
You know, our lifespan depends on the good karma we created in the past. So we don’t know how much good karma we created to have this life, how long this life will be. So it can just stop like that. And of course, good and bad karma is ripening all the time, so we don’t know when some bad karma, when we’re gonna get run over by a bus, get murdered by some lunatic, you know, trip over a banana and, you know, kill ourselves. We never know when any of those karma’s going to ripen, and of course, they can ripen at any time.
And that leads us to understand that when we die, what is going to help us when we die to have a good rebirth because we will be reborn. Our mind never ceases. Our mind is formless, it’s indestructible. So the very subtle level of our mind goes on forever. And it can only go in two ways, we can only have a good rebirth or a bad rebirth.
So we all want a good rebirth. So the only way to get that is depending on what we’ve done with our mind. If we’ve taken care of our mind, we’ll have a good rebirth. If we haven’t taken care of our mind, we’ll have a bad rebirth. It’s that simple.
If we haven’t cultivated kindness and compassion and so on, and devotion to them, then these are the things that are going to help at the time of death. But if we haven’t cultivated them during our life because we’ve, you know, wasted our life, haven’t recognised the precious human rebirth and just wasted it on ordinary stuff, then and most of the stuff we waste our life on is not going to help us at the time of death. Our attachment to it will be a great, you know, obstacle. This is getting cheery, isn’t it? It’s not cheery, but ultimately, it’s liberating.
We have to understand this. It’s not taught to make us miserable, but this is the reality, and there’s something we can do about it. It’s there. We need to think about these things to motivate ourselves to do something beneficial, because we can, because we’ve got a precious human rebirth, and we’ve met met the dharma. Am I going for time?
I’ve got fourteen, twelve minutes. Right. So where are we? So next topic, which I’ll finish with for this, is this gets to the heaviest bit of all, is that we are definitely even though we have a precious human rebirth, is can be so beneficial for ourself and others, it’s taken us so many lifetimes to get because it’s so difficult to create the causes of, but it’s going to end and we can either have a good birth, a good rebirth, bad rebirth. And we would like to think, oh, I’m not basically a nice person, so I don’t have to worry, I will have a good rebirth.
But if we really think about it, it is so much easier to create negative karma than positive karma. And especially, it is very it’s so much easier to, when we engage in negative actions, to do it one hundred percent. Whereas when we do positive things, the energy is not so strong. And even if we haven’t engaged in a lot of negative actions in this life, I’m not sure whether we have or not, may even if we haven’t, saṃsāra is beginningless. We’ve been in cyclic existence for beginningless time, so there has been time for us to have been born in every possible horrible situation.
And in those horrible situations, then it’s very easy to engage in negative actions. We can think of ourselves as, I’m a really nice, kind, generous person’, and maybe we are, but this is mainly because we are in a very protected, encouraging environment. It’s very easy to be a nice person in a nice environment and where nothing is challenging us very much. And people are basically nice and polite to us and this and that. And everyone’s, you know, yeah, follows the law more or less.
So it’s easy to be a nice person. But imagine when things, you know, like in countries in recent times, like in Yugoslavia, when Yugoslavia fell apart. It was a very cultured country and of, you know, hundreds of years, thousands of years of culture. And and then then the war broke out because of the the insanity of a small group of political lunatics, basically. And then all of this brutality took over.
Because, you know, we all have the because of our ignorance, we all have delusions, we all have We all get angry, yeah? But we don’t get angry too much because the conditions aren’t there. But when the condition’s there, our anger can go insane. And when you’re surrounded by hatred and then you start to lose your family and friends that have been killed, then your hate for the people who killed them flares up that you didn’t know was there. Yeah.
And then it all, you know So it all happens. So the point I’m making is in past lives we’ve engaged in every kind of terrible action and the imprints are there. Many of them fortunately have already ripened, but many are still there. We don’t know what they are. Point is, when we die, generally speaking, if we haven’t practiced the Dharma, it’s more likely we will have a bad rebirth than a good one.
And once one falls into a bad rebirth, it’s very difficult to break out, to get a good rebirth again. It is possible, but very, very difficult. So the bad rebirth refers to being reborn as an animal or a hungry ghost or in the hell realms. Many people like don’t like to think about these, don’t want to believe them. Many Buddhists say, oh, the Buddha only taught that to scare us.
They don’t really exist. I don’t believe that. I don’t think the Buddha made things up to scare us. No need to make things up to scare us. But even if you find it difficult to believe in that one could be reborn as an animal or a hungry ghost or in the hell realms, just consider the vast majority of human beings on this planet.
Would you want to be born in Syria at the moment or Somalia? Many places on this earth, even many places in Australia, would you want to be born? As I mentioned a few weeks ago, maybe some class, I watched this movie called Snowtown, which I couldn’t watch most of it because it was so depressing and horrible, and that’s about life in Adelaide. The the the level of how those people were living, they were barely human. It was awful.
And I don’t mean the people who were just doing the murdering, I mean, the general way life was depicted was so depressing. So there are causes to be reborn in these horrible places, in, you know, in horrible situations, which millions and millions and millions of human beings are experiencing right now. So who would want that? That’s horrible enough. And of course, those people don’t have the dharma, they don’t have any religious beliefs, nothing to give life any kind of meaning or hope.
So it’s very easy to take that kind of rebirth. So we need to develop this understanding to accept that that that is a possibility, to motivate ourselves not to create those causes, not to use well, I mean, what a tragedy to use a precious human rebirth to create the causes to have a bad rebirth. Which is a tragedy for ourselves, but it’s also a great tragedy because each of us, this can sound very pretentious, but it’s not, shouldn’t be understood this way, but each of us, if we have a precious human rebirth, we can be so beneficial eventually for so many other people. So if we waste our precious human rebirth, it’s a disaster for ourselves, but it’s a disaster for many, many other people as well, the people that we could have helped. So anyway, in conclusion, there’s a bit more to go, but I’ll talk about that continuing next week.
But these are some of the these are some of the basic things to think about, to meditate on, to change our mind. Right? To think about the precious human rebirth, or or the importance of connecting with a qualified spiritual master, to think about recognizing that one’s got a precious human rebirth. But how one can lose that is everything is impermanent. I’m wasting my life on impermanent things and I am going to die.
I’m definitely going to die. Could die at any time. And when I die, I could have a terrible rebirth. So one needs to think about these things to and if we think about it properly, this will inspire us to practice the Dharma, to take care of our mind, so that we won’t have a bad rebirth, we will have a good rebirth, so we can continue to take care of our mind, to open our mind more and more for our own benefit, for the benefit of mother sentient beings. So I’ll stop there.
If you have some questions, I’m happy to try and answer. So so if you ever saw a blessed with a perfect human rebirth, I’m wondering how many or how few take full advantage of that and experience enlightenment or become arhats, that’s on a percentage basis. I have no idea. Well, see, that’s the thing, you know, there’s so many human beings and among those very few with a precious human rebirth, among those who’ve got a precious human rebirth, very few recognise it. And then even when if you recognise it, not many practice it.
That’s why Buddhism will never be a huge hit. Very few people have the karma to believe. Defines a precious rebirth? It’s in there. The eight freedoms is well, all human beings have some of the freedoms because they’re not born as animals in the hell realms as a hungry ghost.
And then oh, I should know these by heart, what is the then also not being born in the god realms, because in the god realms there’s too much pleasure to practise the dharma. In the lower realms there’s too much suffering, in the god realms there’s too much pleasure. So there’s those freedoms. And then so that’s how many That’s four freedoms. Then the other four freedoms relate to actually the human realm.
So there’s the freedom of not being born physically and mentally handicapped or even having serious physical handicaps that make it extremely difficult to like being born blind and deaf. I mean, there are people, of course, who do practise, can practise, but if one is born that way, it’s, you know, so incredibly difficult to be able to understand the dharma, to retain it and so on. What else is there? Being born with wrong views? Born as a barbarian, which is referring to being born in places that are where, you know, society is really violent and, you know, falling apart or where religious traditions of any kind barely exist or have been repressed or something like that.
And what else? I’m born at a time when the Buddhas haven’t appeared, know, really dark times. So we are free of all of those you know, if you’re free of those, then you at least have the eight freedoms. And then there are the ten endowments, which are the there’s the five human ones, which is the first one is just simply being born human, then born in a place where the Dharma exists, and then having a basically healthy body and mind, not having created any of the five extreme negative actions of killing your mother or father, killing an arhat, wounding a Buddha or causing a schism. And the fifth one is having faith in the Dharma, which is the best one, the rarest, most special one.
And then there’s the five environmental factors, which is what born during the fortunate eon, we’ve been born as a when a thousand Buddhas will appear and teach the Dharma, so we’ve been and we’ve been born in the super best time because Śākyamūni Buddha is what only one of four of the thousand Buddhas of this eon who teaches Tantra. So we have the chance to practice Tantra or at least put seeds of that in our mind. So we’ve been born in the fortunate eon, we’ve been born where the Dharma is still flourishing, where there are great spiritual masters, where the Sangha still exists and where we have Dharma friends. We know people practising the Dharma, which sounds not very important, but is actually incredibly important because as an individual meeting the Dharma and trying to practice by ourselves is impossible, unless one is a really exceptional person with exceptional imprints from the path. So to actually be able to have Dharma friends, just ordinary people who have an interest in the Dharma, who you can be with and get a little bit of, you know, basic support is incredible.
And of course, that can include at a bigger level, like the fact that one knows one is in a place where a dharma centre exists. I mean, dharma centres, you know Yeah. This is amazing for a dharma centre to exist in the West, in Adelaide. I mean, you can take this for granted but this is shouldn’t be you know, there’s they’re rare as hen’s teeth. And this is a good good one.
Nice people, really nice people. And we have holy images and library, and, you know, you can come and sit here and meditate, and you can hear people, you know, even me, blah blah. And so it’s I mean, yeah. And and some great masters come here from time to time. The the real Lama Zopa Rinpoche will be coming Saturday the twentieth of May.
Sunday the twentieth of May. Yeah. Oh yeah, I’ve gone over, got carried away as usual. Yeah. Yeah, okay.
So now let’s break, people I hope you know which discussion group you’re in. So discussion group one can stay here and discussion group two can be in the student lounge and change week after week like that. Okay, and there’s a few discussion points, but you don’t have to discuss only those things, you know, other things you want to talk about in relation to this topic, please bring up anything you want to discuss. But there’s just I’ve got some guidelines. So if you’d like to make tea or coffee first and then bring it to the discussion group.
Thank you. Any questions from the discussion group? Not enough Okay. So maybe just in conclusion, so the whole path to enlightenment is really about developing bodhicitta, so that starts from the very beginning. So to develop bodhicitta, which is this determination to achieve enlightenment, to repay the kindness of all mother sentient beings, the basis of that is developing great love and great compassion for all sentient beings without exception.
So the basis for being able to develop great compassion and great love for all sentient beings is firstly, of course, we have to develop love and compassion for ourselves. And we may think that we’ve do have love and compassion for ourselves and that may be true to some extent, but most of what we think of as love and compassion for ourselves is really self-cherishing, where we have a wrong view of self and we cherish ourselves in the completely false way by following afflicted desire, you know, craving external stuff, thinking that’s gonna make me happy, and following anger, trying to protect myself by getting angry with things I don’t like, thinking that’s gonna somehow help me, and developing pride when when when I I think I’m doing well, better than others and jealousy when others are doing better than myself. So that’s, you know, and we mistake that for love and compassion for ourselves. So I think it’s very helpful to understand that developing this basic renunciation of renouncing our obsession with this life, what that really boils down to is when we’re trying to understand, when we recognize we’ve got a precious human rebirth, that it’s impermanent, everything that we waste time with is impermanent, that we’re going to die, that we could fall into the lower realms and so on.
And this also leads to the next two topics in this developing basic renunciation, I didn’t have time to talk about, which I’ll talk about next week briefly, which is then developing the mind of refuge and that leads to the practice of basing our life on the law of cause and effect, avoiding negative actions of body, speech and mind and engaging in virtuous actions of body, speech and mind. So what all that comes down to, that this whole practice of renouncing this life, one way of looking at it is that it’s really about developing love for oneself. Love is the mind wanting happiness, happiness for oneself, happiness for others. And that happiness doesn’t refer to ordinary worldly superficial happiness, but the real thing, the genuine experience. Right?
So that’s what it’s all about. It’s beginning to replace our self-cherishing with genuine concern for our well-being, wanting ourselves to have a more genuine, lasting happiness than what I’m experiencing, realizing that chasing after the things of this life is not the way to experience happiness. It’s just that it’s just all illusory, impermanent. And in fact, it involves creating the cause, in a negative karma, the causes of suffering and lower rebirths. So it’s a very positive way to look about what because if you think, oh, I have to develop renunciation of this life, oh, this is really terrible, this is really hard work, this is If one thinks it’s about developing love for oneself, that can give more energy and optimism, I think, because that’s what it really is.
Right? Okay? And so and then when we get into developing great renunciation, renouncing cyclic existence, that’s about developing real compassion for oneself, realising that it’s all suffering. I don’t want this suffering. I have to stop creating the causes of suffering.
Have to stop creating the causes of saṃsāra. So then that becomes the basis of being able when we’ve developed real love and real compassion for ourselves, that is the basis for being able to develop, you know, really develop our potential for love and compassion for others until it becomes great love, great compassion, and eventually this amazing mind of bodhicitta. Okay. So just briefly, about the homework, if you’ve got your homework sheet in front of you, I hope it’s all pretty well straightforward. So with the reading yeah.
So the first two articles are are in the student material, and the other one is that the book that was Wisdom Archive book, The Essence of Tibetan Buddhism. So if one could look at those and write down anything that puzzles you, you know, anything, any questions. So the daily meditation is firstly to sit in the correct posture as much as possible, the Vairochana posture according to the outline, then do the nine round breathing exercise for a few rounds. Because that breathing exercise is not meant to be a meditation in itself. It is a preliminary to reduce the gross agitation in the mind as a preliminary to then meditating on something else.
So then third point is to generate a good motivation. So if you feel comfortable to use the traditional prayer that we say, then that’s good, that’s set out. Then as last was the exercise last week, to first read on alternate days, just briefly go through The Foundation of All Good Qualities, and then on the next day, I replace it with the Glance Meditation. And then the main thing is to meditate on the following topics on the days indicated. So for I think I didn’t change it.
What’s happened? I knew I’d make mistakes. I know that’s right. Yes, so Wednesday and Thursday is to meditate on devoting to a qualified teacher. Right?
So one and two Wednesday is one, Thursday is two. So one and two, those two days is to meditate on devoting to a qualified teacher. Either you could go through the whole topic or you divide it into two bits and meditate on the first part on the first day, second part on the second day. Right? Okay?
And as I was saying, in handout on the meditation on the Guru devotion, I’ve set out a brief outline of the whole topic, but some of the second part about how to see the Guru as a Buddha, I think that needs more explanation. So you could leave that out. But the main part, I think, just for this introductory course, is to to reflect a little bit about the first part where it talks about why we need a guru, the qualities of the guru, the qualities of the disciple, and the benefits of devoting to a guru, the the the non benefits of not devoting, that section. So that’s the main part to reflect on, really, especially if you’re fairly new to the topic. If you have some familiarity with the whole topic, then that’s fine to go through the whole lot.
But am I making this too complicated, confusing? Is it Okay? Is it good? Right. So that’s the first two days, Wednesday and Thursday.
Then on Friday and Saturday, three and four, to meditate on the precious human rebirth. So again, maybe divide that into the whole meditation into two parts, and the first part on Thursday and the second part on Saturday, like that. And then Sunday, which is five and six Sunday and Monday is to meditate on impermanence and death. So maybe on Sunday you can do them there’s a meditation set out on impermanence. And then there’s also a separate meditation on death itself that you can do that Monday.
And then Tuesday, the fun meditation on the suffering of the lower realms. And the point about that one is not to try and think about it as something abstract, you know, like some foreign country, but this is what my mind can give rise to. My mind is right now giving rise to the experience of a human rebirth. I’ve got my mind is giving rise to the experience of this human body and a human level of experience. And my mind can give rise to the experience of the God realms, but it can also give rise to these suffering realms.
So try and see it that way and sort of imagine what that suffering would be like, that my mind has that potential. I’ve experienced that certainly in past lives, we all have. We’ve all been to, as my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, the lower realms are our permanent address. We’re just on a very short holiday, brief holiday, in the human realm. But with a precious human rebirth, if we use this precious human rebirth, we can make sure that we get another good rebirth and another and another.
We never go back to the lower realms. But the way not to go back is to motivate ourselves by making us get some sense that these realms are real. You know, they are real for other people and they could become real again for me because my mind can do this. And especially for me, the way to get some faith in these hard to believe realms is particularly to think about animals. If you can see that animals have mind, their mind is, of course, far more obscured than ours, but it is a mind, it is consciousness.
Animals have feeling, they have intelligence, you know, they can work things out, some quite clever things animals do. Actually, you watch, there’s some amazing stuff showing chimpanzees and whatever doing things on computers far faster than human beings can do them. You know, out these patterns. Have you ever seen any of that? It’s really scary in a way that these chimpanzees are far faster than very intelligent human beings at recognising patterns and they just click them.
Yeah. This this is a mind, you know, like ours. It’s no different. It has Buddha nature. So if a mind is trapped in an animal body, it means my mind could be trapped in a at some point in the future, be trapped in an animal body.
And if it can give rise to that experience, why not to the the the experience of hungry ghost realms and hell realms? Because all cultures talk about these realms. Right? This is not just something invented by Buddhism. It’s, you know, it’s it’s pretty much something common for all, you know, all people, all over the world, the belief in these kinds of beings.
And then just a little bit of mindfulness practice, trying to be mindful that one has a precious human rebirth. Am I using it well today? Am I living up to my precious human rebirth? Or am I acting like an animal? A nicely dressed animal, well behaved animal, but, you know, or am I really being a human being?
And also just trying to be mindful of impermanence. Impermanence. This is such an incredibly helpful thing to remember. Everything’s impermanent. Do I really need this thing if it’s impermanent?
Can I live without this beautiful thing? Look look at that one. Isn’t that amazing? But it’s impermanent. And a couple of days ago, you won’t want to look at it and it’ll stink.
It looks so nice now. So we can enjoy it, right? Enjoy it, but it was when the mind starts, oh, it’s gotta be there. It needs to be like that forever to make me happy. That mind is suffering.
That is the suffering mind. Because you can’t make it. Anyway, thank you very much. We can dedicate the merit. What it, thirteen?
I think they’re both the same. Anyway, doesn’t yeah. Through 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.
Bodhicitta, not yet born, arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore.