Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 106-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub teaches the first noble truth—that ordinary existence in saṃsāra is suffering—within a two-week course on saṃsāra and nirvana. Rather than presenting suffering as pessimism, he frames it as the psychological key that motivates spiritual practice and reveals our capacity for change. He systematically explores eight types of suffering universal to humans: birth, sickness, old age, death, meeting what we dislike, failing to obtain what we want, being separated from what we cherish, and simply having a contaminated body subject to these conditions. Through everyday examples—from the illusion of consumer culture to the hidden suffering of wealth, beauty, and fame—he shows how attachment to external things guarantees frustration in saṃsāra. He emphasizes that recognizing suffering is liberating because it reveals we control its causes through our own delusions and karma, not through external gods or luck. Intended for practitioners new to Buddhism or returning to formal study of the dharma path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 04 30 DB Samsāra week2 Dondrub 300413.mp3
UUID: e72859bd-1330-4a98-bbd8-9cd155a7e32e
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Samsāra & Nirvāṇa (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-04-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 106.6 minutes
Words: ~13,716
Okay. So welcome everyone to our second class on saṃsāra nirvana. Most of the course is gonna be on saṃsāra, not nirvana, but it will be on on both. So this course on saṃsāra nirvana is taught in the context of the the Mahāyāna tradition. So the the Mahāyāna tradition encourages us to to follow the the the Mahāyāna path, which is all about realizing the full potential of our mind.
And and we’re encouraged to realize the full potential of our mind for the sake of others. Because if we realize the full potential of our mind and achieve the enlightened state, we will not only be totally free of suffering and enjoy perfect happiness ourselves, which is what deep down we all want all the time, whether we’re conscious of it or not. But as as an enlightened being, we we will have all the qualities that enable us to help repay the kindness that we’ve received from all sentient beings by helping them become free of all the causes of suffering, helping them to realize their Buddha potential and achieve blissful everlasting happiness. So, again, so developing cultivating this wish to achieve enlightenment for the sake of others, that is the most virtuous, positive, meaningful, powerful, all encompassing, best state of mind we can possibly be in. So the moment our mind enters that state, it is the most beneficial state for ourselves, but and the most beneficial state for others, let alone the actual result of getting into that state, which is enlightenment.
But it just even generating that state is something amazing to actually generate authentic that wish to achieve enlightenment, which is called bodhicitta. That is something very takes a lot of time and effort, but even trying to generate that mindset is also immensely powerful and beneficial. And and the the main ways the the main there are very specific ways to generate that mind, but the main ingredients are having a belief in one’s mind and the belief in one’s Buddha potential and recognizing that one has the the perfect chance to work with one’s mind in this life as a human being with a healthy body and mind, having met the Buddha’s teachings, having some faith in them, and all the supporting things in the environment that enable us to to practice if we if we want. So there’s that, and then that’s what from one side, our own person from the the personal things we need. But then what we also need is to recognize how our huge debt to others, that we have this huge debt to all sentient beings because they’ve they’ve they’ve every one of them, without exception, has been immensely helpful to us many, many times.
We just couldn’t survive without them. So, of course, this doesn’t necessarily apply in this life, but some people have been immensely helpful to us in this life. Most people aren’t. But in previous lives, they were. And in future lives, they will be.
Because our previous lives are beginningless, our future lives are endless. So sentient beings have been have been are, will be immensely kind to us. We totally depend on them, but the sad fact is they are suffering. They are in saṃsāra like like ourselves. But the vast majority of beings are experiencing a much worse kind of saṃsāra than we we are with less ability to recognize their situation, to modify it, transform it, or eliminate it.
So their suffering is that that in you know, makes their suffering even worse in a sense, their situation worse. And what compounds it is that in their confusion, they try to be free of suffering, sentient beings, which actually includes ourselves, much of the time are creating the cause for more suffering. But once one has met the Dharma, one can start to realize what actions to avoid and what actions to engage in. But the the most beings in saṃsāra haven’t met the teachings, don’t have any faith in them, so they don’t use the right methods to be happy. They use all the wrong ones, and the result is more suffering, more saṃsāra.
So if we think about that situation, it’s really unbearable. Great compassion can arise. And from that great compassion can arise the thought of bodhicitta, the determination to achieve enlightenment, realizing this is the only way I will be able to repay the kindness of sentient beings, the only way to really help them to become free of suffering. I I myself have to become free of suffering before I can achieve enlightenment. And to become free of suffering, I have to develop the wish to do so, and that comes from understanding saṃsāra.
And but also it comes from understanding that there’s the the totality of existence is not just saṃsāra. There’s also another possibility, which is nirvana. So the more we understand these the reality of saṃsāra, the reality of nirvana, then this is a a very profound basis to to be inspired, to follow the path to enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. So with that kind of motivation or try and generate that kind of motivation for being here tonight, doing the the class tonight and and the rest of the course. So if you’d like to join in, there’s the traditional prayer that I have to say.
I probably don’t have to say it, but I guess the director says I do. So, I guess, I do have to do that. So you’re most welcome to join in. I encourage you to join in loudly. Don’t be shy.
But if you feel uncomfortable, sort of feel you’re you’re being sort of what’s what’s the word? Indoctrinated into this strange Buddhist path and you don’t want to be, then that’s fine. Just gently as it’s being done, just try and generate your own good motivation. But you could also, if you’re interested, to make the motivation more powerful, one can think of the Buddha in front of you as the as a source of inspiration, guidance, and refuge, thinking of the Buddha as the very embodiment of all perfect qualities, free of all faults forever. So we think of the Buddha seated on a a lotus which symbolizes renunciation.
All above the lotus is a moon disc which symbolizes bodhicitta and great compassion. Sorry. Missed one. Above the sun the lotus is a sun disc which symbolizes wisdom and insight. Above that is the moon disc which symbolizes great compassion and bodhicitta.
And then we think of the Buddha seated above the moon disc with a hollow body of golden light wearing the saffron robes of a monk and holding a deep blue begging bowl in his left hand that’s full of wisdom nectar that overcomes the causes of all suffering. And as we think of the Buddha in front of us, thinking the Buddha is there to remind us of our Buddha nature, to inspire us to realize it, we can think of all try and think of all sentient beings around us to motivate us to practice and to make so so since it’s incredibly difficult to visualize or think of all sentient beings, to make it realistic, at at least we think of the people that we’re connected to strongly in this life. So we think of our mother on our left, our father on our right, the rest of our family, all our friends and helpers behind us. We think of those who may dislike us or who’ve harmed us in front, not to in order to feel compassion for them, not to generate aversion. And then as much as possible, our hearts and minds to an awareness and concern for all other beings in saṃsāra, at least trying to think of the human beings of this world.
So then if you’d like to join in the prayer, it’s it’s on page page nine. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, 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 if you find it helpful, imagine the Buddha very pleased with your motivation and think that the Buddha shows this by now coming to the crown of your head. And when directly above your crown, imagine that the Buddha then dissolves the lotus, sun, moon, the Buddha’s body all dissolve into a massive blissful golden light.
And that golden light then pours down into you, blessing your mind in such a way that one is able to understand the teachings correctly, put them into practice properly so that one can eventually gain the authentic transformative realizations that lead us away from suffering to blissful everlasting happiness. So then we can enhance that positive state of mind by doing the nine round breathing exercise just for a short time, one or two rounds. So you start focusing you’re breathing through both nostrils, but you start by just focusing as you breathe in, focusing on the breath coming in the left left nostril As you breathe out, focusing on the breath going out the right nostril. So you do that for three breaths. Then for the next three breaths, you breathe in, focusing on the breath coming in the right nostril and out the left for three breaths.
And the final three breaths of the cycle, focusing on the breath coming in both nostrils and out both nostrils. Okay. Alright. So when the the Buddha or the being who became the Buddha achieved enlightenment, the very first teaching he gave was the teaching which is now called the teaching of the four noble truths or the truths. More accurately, it could be said called the four truths of noble beings or ārya beings.
So an ārya is someone who has directly perceived the the true nature of themselves and all phenomena. So their mind is free of all obscuration. So they are able to actually perceive what is actually true. So the four the four very simply, the four truths of noble beings are that there is the truth of suffering, there is the truth of the cause of suffering, there is the truth of that that there is a definite cessation of suffering, and then there is the truth that there is a a path that one can follow that leads to this true cessation of of of all suffering. So everything the Buddha taught after that first teaching is can be related to those four noble truths because everything the Buddha taught was for the purpose of freeing us from helping us to be free of suffering and so that we can achieve real happiness.
So many people who say when you know, that Buddhism is a very kind of pessimistic religion, depressing religion or philosophy because it talks so much about suffering. And it’s true. It does. But it talks about it for a particular reason, which is the psychology of the four noble truths. The more we understand that we are suffering, that will cause us, it will lead us to to work out, to question why are we suffering.
Is why? And then we can discover that there is a cause for our suffering, and and this can lead us to then check, is it possible to eliminate the causes of suffering? And then we can discover through the Buddhist teachings that it is possible to eliminate these causes and that there is an actual path which one follows to do that, where one step by step eliminates the causes of suffering. So and in fact, the Buddhist teachings are not pessimistic at all. They in in my opinion, the Buddhist teachings are the most optimistic sort of religion, religious teachings or philosophy or psychology, whatever you want to call it, in the world.
Because the Buddha’s teachings say that we have Buddha nature, that our nature is pure and perfect, and every being can realize that nature. Yet, yes, we have suffering, but that suffering can be totally eliminated in a way that it will never ever return. And when that suffering is removed, one can experience not only great bliss, but go beyond that just personal bliss to a state where one, out of great compassion and wisdom, is able to benefit everyone. That’s a pretty terrific philosophy. And it has a lot of backing.
It’s not it can sound very you know, what some people, of course, can say, oh, yeah. That sounds great, but is is there any truth to it? You know, you know, maybe it’s just a bit of pie in the sky fantasy. But I think if you check the Buddha’s teachings, one can start to see that there’s lots of reasons to believe that all of this is possible and that there are people actually doing this. And we have the amazing examples of great Lamas who are the living embodiments of of this practice.
So, anyway, what I’m trying to say is that because much of this course is going to emphasize the the first and second noble truths about suffering and its causes. This can get very depressing if we listen to it or from from the wrong perspective, from the wrong attitude. So the right attitude to try and listen to it if one has it is well, it’s it’s taught in the context that we have mind, that it is beginningless and endless, and it has this amazing potential, this pure quality, this perfect quality. So it’s taught from that perspective and one has to put the first noble truth which I’m going to talk about tonight in the context as I said that why the Buddha emphasized it is the more we understand our own suffering, it will cause us to look for the causes and then we can actually discover that the causes lie within ourself and we can realize that we have control over those causes. If there’s no causes for our suffering, of course, there’s nothing we can do.
We’re doomed. And if there are external causes for our suffering, like an external god, what can we do? We just pray he doesn’t strike us down. This isn’t sorry. I don’t mean to I’m probably doing this in a very disparaging way, but I’m not trying to disparage other religions.
But it seems to me this is kind of not very satisfying. It’s a bit of a hit and miss thing whether this being is going to strike you down with suffering or not. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Delete that from the record. Anyway, but but but what I’m trying to say in my inept way is that if the causes lie within us, it does mean we have control over them.
Not at first, but we can learn to control, to recognize and reduce and eventually eliminate the causes of suffering. This is what the Buddha taught. In fact, it’s possible. And he taught it because this is what the Buddha did. This is what the Buddha did.
And the point is that the Buddha started out being an ordinary being like us. Buddha has a mind. Buddha’s mind and our mind is no different. The nature of the Buddha’s mind, the nature of our mind is no different. If it was different, there wouldn’t be no point following the Buddha’s teachings.
Alright? It’s because the Buddha’s mind is exactly the same as ours, and what he did with our mind, what he did with his mind means we can do with our mind, and we can achieve what the Buddha achieved. Anyway, that’s the important thing. When when we hear about all this suffering, it’s not to make us miserable. It’s actually enlightening, you know, and leads to enlightenment.
It leads to liberation and enlightenment. But first, we do have to recognize our suffering. And the more we recognize it, the more we will be motivated to do something about it. Because we can look in the mirror and think, oh, I I look, you know, shiny and healthy. So but just because we look shiny and healthy doesn’t mean we are healthy.
We may have some horrible disease. But if we look just look and think just take a look at the superficial appearance, think shiny, then we won’t do anything about our health. Right? So we have to go beyond this, like the shine that we think is, you know, we as I tried to say last week, I think that, you know, we tend to look at the world with, you know, like the woman’s weekly attitude that if you, you know, if you whip out if you find the right man, woman, bake the right cake, you know, have the right you know, the right clothes, the right job, everything will be fine. We are you we will live happily ever after.
This is the basic message of, you know, a lot of stuff that we’ve been brought up with. Yeah? And the Buddha is saying rubbish, impossible, it will never ever work and it never has worked. You can’t find peace and happiness, you know, in the external world doing ordinary stuff. Right?
You just can’t. Total dogma, I’m saying there, it’s impossible. Yeah. Because the first noble truth is that the truth that existence is suffering. Yeah?
That’s the first noble truth. There’s there’s is the there is true suffering. Suffering is true. It is true. It is a fact that suffering exists.
Where did it exist? Within me, within us. And when it says existence is true suffering, that existence refer doesn’t refer to every kind of existence. It doesn’t refer to the existence of an Arhat or a Buddha. It’s referring to the existence of ordinary beings.
It’s referring to an existence where the mind is controlled by delusion and karma. And that is the definition of saṃsāra. As I said last week, saṃsāra isn’t a place, a thing. It’s not the world. saṃsāra is our mind controlled by delusion and karma.
So what the first noble truth actually is saying is that saṃsāra is suffering and is only suffering. It the the nature of saṃsāra, the nature of the mind controlled by delusion and and karma is suffering. It’s not happiness. It’s suffering. That’s the true nature of it.
Yeah. When we go beyond the the shine. You know, we’ve all known, you know, read about people who look very glamorous, have wonderful lives, you know, and then and then you discover behind all of that so much suffering in their lives. Yeah. But but we don’t want to know about that so much.
We want to think that, you know, that that shiny stuff is the reality. You know? You know, all all our shops, they have so many lights. Just quite literally, lots of lights. Everything is spotlighted because it makes it look good.
Then you take it home. Doesn’t look anywhere near as good at home. And all the models, you know, male and female, they’re all beautiful, perfect bodies, and it looks terrific on them. Then you put it on yourself and blah. Not quite the same and you don’t have a spotlight on you all the time anyway.
So yeah. So we have to see through the illusions, the illusions. Yeah. Because that is liberating. Because, you know, just check yourself that if we have the illusion, if we’re living our life on the assumption that somehow if I just do this, and if I just do that, and if I just, you know, look like this, and if I’ve got this kind of job and whatever, I will be happy.
Everything will go well. Then and we do those things and we discover we’re not happy is a recipe for misery. Yeah? Because you can think, well, it’s working for everyone else. Why not me?
There’s there’s something really wrong with me. But the point is it isn’t working for everyone else. It looks like it sometimes for some people. Sorry. I I probably shouldn’t give this example.
Prove proves how I waste my time. But I recently watched a program about the love story of, you know, the duke of Windsor and what’s her name? Miss Wallace Simpson, which is presented as the greatest romance of the you know, since all time. And it’s just been discovered that actually she didn’t love the guy at all. And she was she just kind of married him because he was besotted with her, and she was kind of trapped in that situation of all this publicity.
You know? Because, you know, it was very nice to be, you know, have a man who was the next king of England to be attracted to you. So that was very flattering. So she went along with it, and then she found herself in this incredible situation that she couldn’t get out of and spent the less rest of the life with this guy who was a suffering sentient being. So much for the great love story of the world.
It’s just an illusion. It was just it was just all suffering. It was just total suffering. These very rich people with diamonds dripping everywhere, you know, the highest status in the world. Everything they did watched by everyone and it was just suffering.
Sorry. I’m gonna but if you think, you know, if you find the right man, woman, the right clothes, job, then I’ll be happy and then we discover we’re not, then it means I I’m something really bad. I’m a disaster, but it’s not true. It’s just not true. But everyone out there is smiling, and we think they’re happy.
And you say, how are you today? And we all say, oh, I’m great. I’m great. But, actually, if we listed all the things, you know, I’ve got a toothache, and I’ve got this ache and that, and I’ve got these money worries, and my girlfriend’s left me, and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, you know, We’d never talk to each other because it’d be so depressing and boring. Right?
So we say, I’m fine. How are you? Oh, I’m terrific. You know? But we’re not.
Oh, you know, to some extent, not total I’m not saying it’s total disaster, but sometimes it is. Some anyway. So that that image is really not helpful at all. So it is liberating to realize that that when we’re suffering, that this is not something indicative of something terribly, terribly, weirdly wrong with me compared to other people. It’s actually what everyone is subject to sooner or later.
Yeah? Whatever suffering I’m I have, hundreds, thousands, millions of people around the world are experiencing it now or have in the past or will in the future. There isn’t anything unique in any way to any of our suffering experiences. It’s the nature of saṃsāra, in fact. So as I tried to say last week that know, when we talk about suffering, we shouldn’t think just of physical obvious physical and mental pain.
That’s just one kind of suffering. There are it it it’s really referring to how when the mind is controlled by delusion and karma, you know, everything is somehow never satisfying. Nothing is ever really complete and perfect the way we want. Whatever that is done with a samsaric mind you know, our mind and its nature is perfect, but samsaric mind is a perfect mind obscured. So whatever you do with an obscured mind, even no matter how brilliant you are, not the result isn’t perfect.
It can’t be. There’s always something wrong no matter how how well motivated we are to do good things. When the mind is obscured, we can’t do perfectly good things, and sometimes things go wrong. If you think about it, every every good thing that has been invented in the world or maybe there’s some exceptions, but virtually every good thing that’s been invented in in the world from the wheel upwards onwards, there’s something wrong goes wrong. You You get run over by wheels.
They take you, you know, places, which is really good, but you get run over by them. You know, cars were a great invention. They revolutionized life, but brought lots of pollution, lots of suffering, deaths, you know, all sorts of stuff. You know, medicine. So many wonderful medicines have been invented to cure all sorts of diseases and sicknesses and whatever.
But many you know, they have side effects. Everything you know, you know, mobile phones are terrific. They they do fantastically good things or it can be, but there’s also some very very horrible side effects from them that no one ever thought of apart from possibly getting cancer and your brain drying up and falling out because of that. But, you know, all the things with, you know, social bullying and all this stuff that’s happened. The Internet’s wonderful, but it’s also had produced, you know, all sorts of terrible things and so on.
Everything you think of, yeah, you can think of. It has its downside. That is saṃsāra. That is the this that’s not actually saṃsāra, but it comes from samsaric mind. So specifically, saṃsāra is referring to an individual mind controlled by delusion and karma, and it’s referring to the fact that such a mind takes rebirth again because it’s directed that mind is pushed by its delusions and karma to take rebirth again and again and again.
So we cycle through all these different rebirths and we have all these different experiences, but none of them are perfect, lasting, fully satisfying. There’s always something wrong with them sooner or later that it leaves us feeling frustrated, unfulfilled, incomplete, dissatisfied. That’s saṃsāra. But from that from that mind, this world is is we we can talk about the samsaric world because please don’t ask me to explain this because I cannot at all. But this world, from the Buddhist point of view, wasn’t created by some divine being.
This world, this universe, and all the universes are the karmic results of all sentient beings. This world is a place where there is a mixture of happiness and suffering, but it’s basically quite a good place. So it’s actually the basically the product of the good karma of sentient beings. The hell realms are the the the karmic result of the really bad karma of sentient beings. So there is saṃsāra is our mind, but our mind also in a sense creates the physical environment we’re in.
Or we can’t experience this physical environment without our samsaric mind, and our samsaric mind determines how we experience the that world as either good or bad, suffering or happy. Yeah. And the more obscured our mind is, we end up, you know, experiencing what is called the hell realms, or we experience the realms of the hungry ghosts or as an animal or as a human being. And within those realms, there are many differences. If you look at at our realm, the human realm, There there’s such a huge range of experience of human beings from people who are incredibly brilliant to the people, you know, with very, very simple minds, obscured minds, people who experience incredible power and wealth, and those who experience unrelenting horrendous poverty and misery their whole life.
Such huge ranges of like, within the human realm, there are different realms of human beings in a sense, like the realms of the very, very rich, which we as ordinary people, we we don’t get into. I don’t know. Maybe you do. I maybe you are very, very rich. I don’t know.
But we you know, as an ordinary person, an ordinary person just doesn’t get into that room. You you don’t mix with Mick Jagger and all these people. You see pictures of them, but you don’t you don’t get invited to their place. I don’t. You don’t go to their parties and get on their yachts and, you know, private islands they have.
You know? But that that realm exists here. Yeah. And and then there’s the realms of immense poverty and and so on. More.
You see? Nothing lasts. It all breaks. And when it breaks, you can’t fix it because I need glasses to be able to see to fix my glasses. So that’s saṃsāra.
Okay. So many, many examples of, you know, everything is not just not quite right. You just can’t get it right or it seems to be right for a while and then it’s not right anymore. That’s saṃsāra. So and so the nature of cyclic existence, having a mind controlled by delusion, is that it’s suffering.
That it’s suffering. So we need to realize that. So the more we feel our suffering, the more we can motivate ourselves to do something about it. If we think there’s just a little bit of suffering, well, we think, well, I can handle that. I don’t have to worry too much.
I think Buddhists are going on and on about suffering, but it’s not so bad. I can handle it. But we have to realize that we are subject to so many different kinds of suffering. So this is what we have to reflect on, and that’s what I’m gonna talk about now. So in the the teachings about the first noble truth, suffering has been divided into three groups of suffering.
There are the eight sufferings, the six sufferings, and the three sufferings. So tonight, I’d like to talk about the eight sufferings because these are very easy ones to identify and think about, which are all human beings are subject to them. So these I’ll just mention them, and I’ll just talk a little bit about each one of them. When’s the bell gonna go? Who’s our bell ringer?
Do we have a bell ringer? No. Yes. Oh, half past? Quarter past.
Oh, quarter past. Oh, okay. So there is the suffering of of birth, sickness, old age, and death. These are what are often referred to as the four rivers of suffering. And then there’s the suffering of meeting what you don’t want to meet with, the suffering of not meeting what you want to meet with, and the suffering of separating from what you don’t want to separate from.
And then there’s the suffering of having this body of having up this body, which is another way of talking about all the other ones. Okay. So the suffering of birth. So so we probably most of us here, if not all of us, don’t remember being born. Right?
Does anyone here remember? I won’t go into it too much. I don’t at all. You know? Many people often ask, why don’t we remember our past lives?
But we don’t even remember being born. So is it such a big wonder that we don’t remember our past lives? The reason we don’t remember our past lives is because a whole lot of traumatic things happened like getting born. It’s not fun. It is suffering.
It’s suffering for the mother. It’s suffering for the child. I know everyone thinks it’s wonderful, you know, especially when you when it’s finished, it’s wonderful. New baby and everything. But actually and and some peep some mothers actually seem to have, you know, really I I just before they have babies, they they glow and float and things like that.
That’s possible. And maybe some mothers, women do give birth painlessly, but usually I don’t think this is the case. But here we think about ourselves being born. If the point to try and reflect on to because this is something to meditate on is: if I remain in cyclic existence, if I don’t do anything with my mind to stop the causes of saṃsāra anyway, this I have to make this point. The nature of saṃsāra is that it’s self perpetuating.
There are causes for it. And if we don’t and the causes arise all again and again because we’re usually not aware of them. And because we’re not aware of those causes, we create them again and again. So for so because of ignorance, unawareness, the unawareness of saṃsāra is the condition, the basis for saṃsāra to be endless. Right?
But if we if we start to understand saṃsāra has causes and we identify those causes and do something about it, then saṃsāra can be reduced and actually eliminated. But what we have to reflect on is that most people here probably find it very difficult to believe that they could be born as an animal. And we do see animals and maybe some people can see that they have minds of some degree, but we still probably think they’re different kinds of minds. And even if they are the same as mine, there’s no way I’m going to be born an animal. And then we probably don’t even believe in the ghost realms, the hungry ghost realms, and certainly we don’t wanna believe in the hell realms.
But we there are human beings, and you look at the suffering human beings experience. So even to be reborn a human being, we there’s enormous amount of suffering to be experienced. So the thing to reflect is that if I don’t stop saṃsāra, if I don’t use this life to try to eliminate saṃsāra, or at least start the process, that means I’m gonna be reborn again. And now I’m gonna suffer when I’m being reborn. I’m gonna be I’m gonna suffer in the in the womb, nine months in the womb, and it’s not all fun apparently.
It’s not pleasant being in there being bumped around and jump, you know, all sorts of things, They say and you could say, how do they know? Because the Buddha’s omniscient. They know these things. They remember these things. Even before you’re an enlightened being, you can remember all these experiences.
And and and the teachings it says in the sutras that when when the mother eats hot food, the the mother this child suffers with you know, when it when the mother walks or wears tight clothing, the child can suffer. The the child the unborn child can even pick up the emotional feelings of the mother. Even some of that has been established by, believe it or not, the most important thing in the entire universe, Western science has done some sorry if I’m I shouldn’t do that. I do admire science. It’s wonderful in many ways, but sometimes yeah.
So there’s the suffering in the womb, and then there’s the the suffering of coming out of the womb. And then there’s the suffering of, you know, just being born into this world. In the past, in the recent past, you know, when you came out, they’d pick you up by your feet and hit you on the bum. And if you were a little boy, they’d chop off a little bit of the skin. Not nice.
Suffering. It has you know, some things have improved, but it’s still suffering. They try to reduce the suffering, but there is still suffering. And the point is, of course, not every birth is painful and horrible, but the point to think is that if I don’t stop saṃsāra, I’m not just gonna have one more rebirth where I’m gonna be born. I’m gonna have another one and another one and another one and another one another one one and again and again and again and again forever.
Boring, painful, pointless, unnecessary. So then if we get born even though just forget about all the other horrible realms, just even if we get reborn a human if saṃsāra goes on and we only get reborn as a human being, then we still have to we have to experience the suffering of aging. Yeah. So in our society now, you know, there’s this huge cult of being young. So there’s even more suffering in growing old in our culture now than there was in the past.
The psychological suffering of being, you know, someone not unbelievably young. And there’s such a huge gap generally between young and old people. Young people don’t mix with old people. You know, they’re shunned. Young people don’t want to be with old people.
This is totally uncool. Not not not with everyone, of course, but there there there’s a general tendency like that, and and it’s growing. So, you know and and that is suffering for both. It’s actually suffering for the young people because young people are growing old even if they’re denying it. Everyone is aging.
From the moment we’re born, we start aging irreversibly. And, of course, after some time, it starts to show. And, of course, they’re all things to, you know, Botox, to stop the aging, you know, stop the what the appearance of aging, but it doesn’t stop aging. Nothing can stop that. And then, you know, so there’s the suffering of of aging of whatever, you know, good appearance you have with time, it’s lost.
No matter how beautiful you start out, the older you get you know, some people when they’re quite old are still really nice looking. Sometimes they look nicer than when they were younger. Some there’s a certain kind of well, I think for some people, a beauty in in older people than whatever. But if you get really, really old, then even that’s gone. I don’t know if you saw the pictures of the the oldest man in the world who’s a hundred and sixteen.
Yeah. So what you know, old age eats away every good thing. You know, your your good appearance. So the so there’s the suffering of losing your appearance. And, of course, however much attachment do we we have to our appearance, that much suffering happens.
And, of course, our our our the strength of our body declines as we get older. And the more attached we are to our health and strength, there’s the suffering of that the mental suffering, but there’s just the the actual physical suffering of your body gets you can’t use it the same. You know, you can’t run a mile. It’s like can’t even climb stairs. It’s difficult to even stand up.
Your body creaks. The the bones ache. This happens. And and the point is not in every life there are old people who are like fit as fiddles and, you know, everything. But the point is to think that if I stay in saṃsāra, I’m going to grow old again and again and again and again and I will experience sooner or later every possible suffering of aging not just one time but at infinite times.
So this is definitely going to happen. If if we don’t die young or young ish, we’re going to get older and older and face all the sufferings of being old. And some of the major ones are, you know, the suffering of just the pain of the body. And and, you know, as you get older, you you can’t eat as much. So if you enjoy eating, you can’t enjoy it so much.
The taste goes away. Doesn’t taste as good. You lose your taste. You get you know, you can’t see. You can’t hear.
That will happen if if we get really, really old. Yeah? And then younger people laugh at you because you’re old. Oh, you know, he’s doddery and shaky and he can’t hear, and they laugh at you. So that’s suffering.
And, of course, the longer we live, one of the great sufferings of living to be very old is it means that you outlive your family and friends. So you have to experience the suffering of being separated from your family and friends because they die before you. And what also what that also means is that just as we get older and more dependent on other people, we don’t have our family and friends to help us. We have we have to depend on strangers who don’t give anything, care about us. You end up in some old home where someone’s paid, you know, to look after you, not paid very much.
Some of those people are wonderful, by the way, actually, but not always and kind of you know? So sometimes we’ll be born you know, have reversed where nice people will look after us. Some, they won’t. We’ll be left to rot. That’s the reality.
If if you believe, you know, if there is mind and it continues, there is rebirth, that’s what’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen in this life. Those these things to some extent. If they don’t happen in this life, they’ll happen in the next one, the next, the next, the next, next. And one of the great sufferings of old age is loneliness and fear because, you know, you you you can’t hear, you can’t see properly, you can’t control your body properly, so you don’t know what’s going on, and you don’t know, but, you know, you’re left alone.
So there’s so much fee things to fear, so much loneliness. That’s the suffering of old age. And, of course, the point is, you know, you could say, oh, that’s too extreme. Not everyone’s like that. That is absolutely true.
But in the next life and the life, you know, sooner or later in saṃsāra, there is time to experience all the horrors of old age. Sorry. This is not a fun topic. I hope you hope you come back next week. But it’s to realize this.
This is the truth. You know? This is not, you know, this is the reality. Yeah. And and you you look in this world, you can find or everything I’ve mentioned, you know, you you can find in this world now.
human beings undergoing these these things, you know, horrible stuff. And, also, you know, just just yeah. You have to look at your old old ugly body getting older and uglier all the time. I did look a little bit better when I was younger, but not much. But yes.
Anyway, so those those are some of the sufferings of growing old. Maybe you can think of others. Well, you should. Yeah. And whatever suffering you can see in other human beings, you know, we we if we stay in saṃsāra, we we will experience them, and just once, over and over and over again.
And then oh, I I jumped. I should have talked about sickness. We get old, we start you know, even when you’re young, you can get sick. In fact, you know, young kids there’s all sorts of sicknesses as a young kid. And throughout life, we have to experience sickness.
And there’s kind of, you know, very manageable sicknesses that are nothing, but then there are horrible sicknesses. There are truly horrible sicknesses. So consider that if we stay in saṃsāra, we will. It is guaranteed. It follows logically that if we stay in saṃsāra, we will experience every sickness that human beings are subject to.
And not just one time, but billions of times. We’ll we’ll experience AIDS, you know, cancer, every kind of cancer, brain cancer, lung cancer, throat cancer, tongue cancer, liver cancer, breast cancer, every cancer. We will experience all of them over and over again. And things like I there’s this truly gruesome thing in Africa called Ebola where basically all your organs kind of rot and blood pours out of every part of your body. Truly horrendous.
Leprosy, it’s still around. We’ll get it. Billions of times. Jolly Jolly story, isn’t it? But it’s true.
It logically follows. That’s saṃsāra. Every sickness. All our teeth will rot and fall out. We’ll get to what’s this horrendous thing in even in Australia?
Streptococcus thing where in fact, yeah, when bits of your body it’s kind of like leprosy, isn’t it? Really? Yeah. Well, anyway, there’s all that kind of stuff. Everything.
We’ll get it. Guaranteed if we stay in saṃsāra. And then we die. There’s the suffering of death. So we’re all gonna die, you know, at the end sometime in this life.
The end of this life will come. We’re going to definitely die. So there are infinite ways of dying from very nice to truly horrendous, and we’ll experience all of them if we stay in saṃsāra. Not not just one time, you know, shot, chopped up, tortured to death. I used to be sorry.
I I once in in my before I met the dharma, when I was young, I wanted to be historian. And so I studied history at university, and I I anyway, it’s getting a long story. The emperor Charles the fifth who was who ruled over the greatest empire the world has known, the like the Spanish Empire. He was the holy Roman emperor. You know, he controlled all of Mexico, South America, blah blah blah.
When he died, his body was totally riddled with maggots. He was eaten away as he was dying. No one would come near him. They eventually had to put his body in a lead casket and bury it because it stank to high heaven, and he was he was he died infested with maggots. So, well, that’ll happen to us.
Everyone likes to think, you know, people die peacefully, but they don’t. They don’t die peacefully. Some people do. People die peacefully in our culture now because they’re drugged up to their eyeballs. So no.
I have to say sorry, but no way to make this. It’s very this is yeah. First noble truth, our existence is suffering. And also the the point one point to think about is, yeah, that, you know, saṃsāra is the mind controlled by delusion and karma. So the more delusion you know, the more samsaric our life chasing after pleasure and stuff out there, the less we take care of our mind, the more delusions we have.
So when we experience birth, old age, sickness, and death with a lot of delusion, it’s more suffering. The more attachment we have to stuff, the more we will suffer. Because, yeah, the more attached we are to our health, our possessions, our beauty, our strength, our this or that, our youth, the more we will suffer when it fades away. So then very quickly because I I try and behave myself to some extent tonight that the other sufferings, there is the suffering apart from those, these are absolutely guaranteed. You know, we’re all we’re all gonna experience we’ve already we’ve already experienced birth, but we don’t remember it.
But we’re gonna get sick sooner. We’ve all been sick, and we’ll probably get you know, experience more sickness in this life. We’re all aging. We have, fortunately, a few young people here tonight, which is really nice. But these young people are also aging.
Stop. Stop. So we’re all aging. Actually, it just looks more obvious on some of us than others, but there’s the suffering of aging, and we’re all going to die. So that’s you know, even in this life, those samsaric things are going to happen.
And but then we’re gonna be born, and it’ll happen again. Even if if we’re born an animal, we’ll we’ll we’ll get sick, grow old, die, be, you know, there’s the suffering of birth. Even in the God realms, you die. You don’t get sick in the god realms, but you die. Being born there is, you know, kind of blissful.
There’s not the suffering of birth. Anyway so, anyway, the on top of those basic ones as a human being, another category of suffering, a general category, is the suffering of, you know, we we all have so many desires, cravings for this and, you know, wanting this, that, and the other, and there’s the suffering of not getting it. You know? There’s many things we desire, and we get them. You know?
Opening the fridge, tons to eat, and we have friends and family, and we get various things that we want. But there are other things we want, and we really want them. But no matter what we try to do, we don’t get them. Why? Because we haven’t created the karmic cause.
If one hasn’t created the karmic cause, you don’t get the result. Yeah. Of course, the the the classic one, of course, is unrequited love. You know, if there’s someone you love or you want to be with or just generally you’d want to be with someone, but you can’t. Just doesn’t work.
This person doesn’t love. You fall in love with all these people who don’t care about you. No matter how much you try and charm them, they’re not interested. No matter what you do, it doesn’t work. So probably all of us I don’t know about all of us.
Some of us experienced that fun to some extent. Yeah. If we haven’t done it and experienced it in this life, we’ll experience it in other lives as human being. And but not just with people. You know, we want to get something, a car, this, a job, something.
Just can’t get it no matter what we do. Just doesn’t work. Can’t even make a nice cup of tea sometimes. I drink lots of tea myself. Only occasionally does it just how I want.
I always make it the same way. It never never tastes the same. Sometimes it does. It’s just right. Just per well, you know, samsarically right.
And then so, okay, there’s that one. You and you can think of millions of examples of that, which will we will have to experience over and over and over and over and over again, not just in one life, but life after life. And then there’s the suffering of the opposite, which is we have things that we are attached to and peep we’re in relationships with people, you know, family, friends, lovers, whatever, that we’re attached to, but we have to separate from them. So that’s really unbearable. And, of course, the more attachment, the more suffering.
And no matter what we try, you know, we can’t it it happens because it’s karma. Either we haven’t created the cause to remain together or we’ve created the causes by, for example, sexual misconduct or lying and divisive speech. We’ve created the cause to be separated from people that we don’t want to separate from, to be separated from things. By stealing, we create the cause not to get things or to lose the things that we’re attached to. That’s saṃsāra.
And then there’s the just quickly. Sorry. But you you think there’s many, many, many examples of that, of how that happens, and and we have to experience it life after life. And then there is what? What have what what have we done?
Not meeting what we want? Yeah. And meeting meeting what we don’t want. Yes. Of course.
We have to meet up with people again and again that we don’t want to see. We don’t even wanna see like, having to have anything to do with them. But but we meet with such people all the time. People who are just generally unpleasant or whatever. And then there are people who actively dislike us, who we are so charming and lovable and kind, but people don’t like us.
Oh, no. No. I’m just giving you example. You know, it can be anything. Yeah.
It can well, it can be animals, but, you know, we have to meet with things such as sickness and failures and and bad weather and wars and, you know, all sorts of stuff that we don’t want to meet with. Remember George Orwell’s nineteen eighty four, the antihero who you know, it was you know, the the the thought police and the big brother found out what was the thing that he was most terrified of, what he most didn’t want to meet with. So he met with them. They made sure he met with them because he was terrified of rats. So they tied a cage to his face full of hungry rats that had a tunnel leading straight to his face, and they changed his mind that way.
So whatever we are terrified of and don’t want to meet with, I really don’t want to meet with a shark. I am not interested in falling into water where there are sharks. This is definitely going to happen to me in some life. Thousands of times getting eaten by sharks, crocodiles, swallowed by whales, bitten by poisonous snakes, just meeting generally unpleasant people. You know?
Everything you can think of that we don’t we don’t want will happen because of karma, because being controlled by delusion, we create the the negative causes to meet unpleasant things. That’s that is saṃsāra. Am I making sense? And and final one is just having this body. This body, when it’s young especially when it’s young and when it’s healthy and strong, it can give all sorts of pleasure.
No doubt about that. But even when it’s young, it can go wrong. And when it goes wrong, this body is the arising place of great suffering. Yeah. It’s because of this body and this samsaric mind, the five aggregates, the five contaminated aggregates of a body and mind that we, you know, we have suffering.
We have a suffering body and our suffering mind compounds the suffering. We experience our suffering body with a suffering mind. That’s the first noble truth. I will take any questions. Some questions.
Yes. Oh, it it well, that’s what I said. Actually, in some ways, it’s not. It’s just a, it’s like a summary. It puts it all together in a sense.
Yeah. Well, I think it just makes it it’s it’s it’s just to try and make the point because we can think, oh, yes. There’s the suffering of sickness. But why why is this sickness? It’s because we have a contaminated body.
It’s it’s just the mere fact that we have a body that is the product of delusion and karma that we we suffer. No matter how young we are, no matter how beautiful our body is, no matter how strong our body is, no matter how healthy our body is, it’s still a suffering body. In the sense that, like, for example, of the it’s still suffering in a very subtle sense unsatisfactory because even if you’ve got a body that is very strong, healthy, attractive, etcetera, etcetera, it’s not it’s not satisfying that this body is gonna grow old, sick, die, and whatever and fall apart. Yeah. Yeah.
So just having a body that is subject to suffering is suffering, A subtle kind of suffering. Whereas a Buddha’s body is not produced by delusion and karma. So it is a body of, you know, bliss. The Buddha’s body isn’t subject to birth, aging, sickness and death. It is a pure body.
We have five contaminated aggregates, which is the body aggregate, the form oh, sorry, the feeling aggregate, discriminations, compounded what is it? The aggregate of consciousness and the aggregate of what’s it called? Compositional factors. So those four aggregates there’s the form aggregate and the other four aggregates are all aspects of our mind. So these are all contaminated.
They’re all the product of delusion and karma. So it is true suffering. I can’t help myself. I’ll just say this one thing and we’ll break. I don’t know what I want.
I’ll stop myself. No. Tea break. Coffee break. What can what like what?
The full yeah. The the true path. Yeah. Well, I I don’t know the article off by what what question do you have? Like, what?
Well, if in the in the homework, I ask people to ask, you know, to put down the words they don’t understand, and so I can explain it in the homework. Or but if you don’t, can’t. But also remember, I think the homework that the book points out that there is a glossary that you can download from the FPMT that has a lot of the terminology. But the if you’ve mentioned a word now like dharmakaya, dharmakaya is the technical word that refers to the enlightened mind of all Buddhas. The dharmakaya is the is the technical term for the enlightened mind.
You know, we we have a body and mind. The body and mind of of of a the body of Buddha is called the Rūpakāya. The mind of a Buddha is the Dharmakāya. What no. Wisdom wisdom is a mental factor that perceives reality.
So the dharmakaya, the enlightened mind of the Buddha has wisdom, but it’s more than just wisdom. Yeah. Maggie? Now I would really encourage people what Maggie’s asking is good that if there are terms in because unfortunately, fortunately, unfortunately, in the reading of these courses, get especially in this course, some of which I’ve tried to point out in this week’s homework. The pages I’ve quoted for suggested to read for this week, Some of it is all about emptiness and which is not the topic of this course, and there’s all these technical words.
So unless you’re familiar with that, it’ll it’ll probably be totally meaningless. So I said, don’t worry about that part too much. Just read it, but focus on the the main section, which I I identify in your homework. Some people here have have heard a little bit about Śūnyatā and emptiness, but but the new people wouldn’t probably know anything about it. So don’t try and get your heads around it at this point.
Don’t worry. Sorry about that. But if there are words that you you’ve come across or I’ve used or you’ve read that you don’t understand you’d like to know? If you want to ask me now, I can try and explain, you know, or at least, you know, give some hint to the meaning. Or any other concepts?
Yes. Oh. Oh. Well, our last course of six weeks, seven weeks was on karma, but karma, the word literally means activity. It’s just a Sanskrit word that means action.
But in the Buddhist context, it’s referring to the activity of the mind where and it’s and it’s particularly referring to consciously motivated activity of the mind. So that is karma, and and there is positive and negative because there are consciously motivated actions of our mind or thoughts which have a positive motivation, some have a negative. So both generate imprints in our mind or potencies. The potency is of the same nature as the motivation behind it, such as if it’s a positive motivation, it’ll be a positive imprint, negative motivation, negative imprint. And therefore, a positive imprint brings a positive result and a positive a negative imprint generates a negative result.
That that is karma and the law of cause and effect in a very simple nutshell. No. No. No. Both.
Both. Both. So our mind now is under the control of delusions, also positive thoughts. We do have positive thoughts, but our mind is controlled. Unfortunately, the the negative ones have a lot of strength.
And, also, we experience good karma, you know, the ripening of good karmic imprints, but negative ones as well. I mean, the fact that we’ve been reborn human is actually the result of good karma. And, of course, having met the dharma and having some faith in it, this is super good karma, ripening. Yeah. But we still have a body that grows old blah blah blah blah blah.
So that’s, you know, bit a bit of both. You know? It’s it’s good to have a human body, but because it’s a samsaric body, it’s still subject to suffering. So it grows old and gets sick and so on. And our mind, we can do amazing things with this mind, incredibly positive things, but it is an obscured mind.
It’s a mind that is con is controlled to some extent by our our negative by our delusions and our negative imprints. So we have to fight all that stuff. Okay. No more questions? I’m happy to try and answer.
Anyway, during the talks, if if that you if there’s something you want me to clarify or please, you know, put your hand up if it’s suitable. I’ll try and answer it during the talk. Otherwise, you know, I’ll I’ll try and do it at the end of this of the talks. But please ask questions. That’s good.
Okay. One more. Yes. Merit. Yes.
Yes. We dedicate it. Yeah. Well, merit refers to the positive imprints generated in our mind is our merit. I’m not a hundred percent sure on this, but I I tend to think that the the Tibetan word for merit is sonam.
And my understanding, which may not be completely correct on this, I think there is a little bit of a difference between positive imprints, positive karma, and merit. My understanding, but it may be wrong, is that anyone can create positive imprints, but you don’t have to be Buddhist. You don’t have to be religious. You don’t even have to be human beings. Dogs create positive imprints sometimes.
And, you know, anyone goes around doing good things generates positive imprints in their mind which, know, ripen as some kind of good experience in saṃsāra. I I think that but but I may be wrong that the term merit is applied specifically to positive imprints that have been generated by consciously know, you’d like, you you’ve consciously done something good knowing it’s good and for a particular reason, and you’ve dedicated the merit to a specific virtuous goal, you know, a Dharma result. That that’s what I understand merit to be, but I may be wrong. Okay? And and so this is something generated in our mind stream.
And in Tibetan Buddhism, we talk about dedicating our merit to the benefit of others. In the Chinese Mahāyāna tradition, they often use the term of giving away your merit to others. But one should understand that this is something symbolic. You can’t actually give your merit. You can’t put the merit or all the positive imprints generated in one’s own mind into the mind of another person.
You can’t do that. What it means is is that we we need these positive imprints in order to purify our mind to gain, you know, you know, dharma experiences, realizations, and those will benefit others. They those can flow out to others. So that’s why we, know, we dedicate our merit to achieving enlightenment so that we can help others. So what you you don’t take that concretely.
You know? Dedicate merit. Does that multiply No. It doesn’t multiply them. It just protects them.
Yes, it’s some energy I suppose it’s an energy. I don’t know what karmic imprints are. Yes. Because as as I try to explain in the karma course, the negative imprints negative karmic imprints, you know, actively obscure the mind even before they ripen as suffering, you know, because we we are Buddhas. A Buddha is omniscient, but we so we but but we’re not Buddhas.
I’m sorry. We’re not omniscient. Why not? Because our mind our Buddha mind is obscured. What is it obscured by?
Karmic imprints and also delusion. Whereas merit has this it ripens in a positive way, it energizes the mind in a virtuous way. That that’s why we need it. Because the more merit one has, the easier it is to to to do, you know, meaningful things. And there is more inclination to do meaningful things, and it’s easier to understand meaningful things.
Right. Yeah. I did try to explain that last during the other course, but a a delusion yeah. The two main one you know, there’s ignorance, which is the root delusion. Then you have an afflicted desire and attachment, and you have anger.
Right? So these are delusions that color the way we experience people in the world when when those delusions and also pride and jealousy and so on. When they, you know, are operating, they affect the whole mind. So it affects how we perceive ourself and how we perceive or, you know, or conceive actually to be correct, everything else. And though that those delusions motivate our actions.
Right? And so karmic imprint so the actions are karma. The imprints are karmic imprints. And those karmic you know, a a delusion is a is a is a a type of consciousness. Right?
It’s a mental factor. Karmic merit or or karmic imprints, they they aren’t consciousness. A delusion is an active way of knowing something. You know? You know, with hate, you know something as being, you know, ugly and threatening.
That’s how it know, a thing or person appears to the mind that is obscured by hatred. It it it it appears horrible in some way. You know? You you know, even if you have an argument with your boyfriend, girlfriend, you know, best friend, you know, if you have a really bad argument with them, this person you care for and like and see is attractive in some way, they don’t when you’re when you’re fighting with them in some way. Right?
You can you can still see their actual physical form, but it’s no longer as nice when you’re screaming at them and they’re screaming at you. Where so a karmic imprint is isn’t an active conscious agent like that. It’s a well, it’s very difficult to explain what karmic imprints are. It’s a very complicated subject, but they’re there. And and the the negative ones obscure the mind.
And and the way it works is that the more the mind is obscured, the more likely the the the delusions are will be activated in an obscured mind. Whereas the less obscured the mind is, the the the the the delusions, you know, just generally speaking, won’t be so active, easier to manage. Because when the mind’s less obscured right? When the mind is less obscured, then you notice the delusions and you notice their effect. You feel their suffering effect.
So you you will modify them. But when the mind is really obscured, you you can’t your mind is desensitized, so you can’t tell how these disturbing emotions are disturbing you because you’re already so disturbed. Emotions are disturbing you because you’re already so disturbed. And so they they can take over more easily. Is that making some sense?
Yeah? Oh, well, now we don’t have much time for a discussion. That’s your fault, not mine tonight. Ten points for me, ten demerits for you. Now we have to fill in the time.
What we’ll do is we’ll one or two more questions. I’m happy to ask answer. No. No. We we’ve got one coming.
It’s it’s thinking. No. That’s fine. Because the new thing is fine. It’s fine.
No problem. I mean, there’s satisfaction and satisfaction. Sure. That there’s I mean, of course, there are people in the world who have basically satisfying lives, who have no spiritual interests or practice whatsoever, but they have a a satisfying life. Right?
But that doesn’t deny that doesn’t actually go against the first noble truth because, you know, I don’t know if this is gonna take a while for me to make my point. You know, people can hear the teaching on the first noble truth that life is suffering. And then they think, well, look at my life. You know, I have, you know, I have a reasonable job. I have enough money.
I have some friends, family, this and that. Life is okay. You know? Sure. It’s not perfect.
You know? Sure. I’m growing old, and I have, you know, this and that, but it’s not so bad. I can saṃsāra isn’t so bad. And, of course, this saṃsāra isn’t.
This is the point that most of us here have or probably if not all of us have what is called a precious human rebirth where we’ve met the dharma and have faith in it, etcetera. So we are incredibly fortunate. And and just most people in Australia are incredibly fortunate compared to most people in the world. They know, I mean, there’s there’s, you know, there’s lots of suffering in Australia, but many people have quite a good life. Even, you know, reasonably poor people compared to the poverty and anyway.
But what so we think, oh, you know, so saṃsāra is not so bad. What what’s the big deal? But this is just one life. You know? Yes.
One life in saṃsāra can be okay relatively okay. Not you know, there are people who were who actually live their life where almost nothing goes wrong in their life. But that’s just one life in saṃsāra. And but there’s the others to experience. That that’s what we forget, that this is not this is not representative of saṃsāra.
We’re like in the penthouse. Well, a penthouse, I suppose, are the god realms and whatever, but we we can’t say that it’s in everything. But but even in even in the human realm, we’re we’re in the top. We’re in the top bit. Really.
Even with with whatever problems we have, sickness, you know, financial worries, girlfriend, boyfriend worries, we’re fine compared to my we are we are so much better off than most people. And so we yeah. And you yeah. I’m going all over the place. So, yes, there there is there are there are ordinary satisfying things in life.
Yeah. Sure. I mean, there has to be because, I mean, human we couldn’t function if there wasn’t. But but there’s yeah. There’s only so much you get can get out of them.
And, of course, sometimes those satisfying things do last a long time so that’s great but there’s no guarantee they will. And you know I was teaching a course many years a few years ago to a large number of people at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, and I made this point some and another Australian took some offense to this. I was just trying to make the point that because myself, before I met the dharma or some years before I met the dharma, I was really interested in art. I have no artistic abilities, but I you know, for me, looking at beautiful paintings was like the ultimate and and my fantasy was, of course, to own some I would never been able to, but I would go to museums and think how wonderful if I could own this and take it home and plunk it in my whatever and look at it. But the point is or and some people feel that there’s a way about music or whatever.
And, of course, there’s beautiful music and beautiful paintings and beautiful this is and that. But, you know, what was it? One of Van Gogh’s paintings sold for ninety million dollars a few years ago, though. Someone bought one of his his paintings of something or other. Or was it Monet’s paintings of lilies or something?
Anyway, big painting, probably bigger than this, you take it home, cost you ninety million dollars by one of the greatest artists in the world. You hang it on the wall and you sit in front of it, it’s not gonna stop your suffering. It just won’t. It can make you happy. You can have all sorts of very refined feelings about it.
And same with you know, there there are people listening to Mozart or Beethoven, and they go into some other stratosphere listening to it, but it’s not gonna stop their suffering. Some people go into the stratosphere listening to Mick Jagger, but it’s not gonna stop their suffering. Or, you know, Beyonce or somebody. You can watch these people and listen and the people doing these things, of course, it’s satisfying to paint something. I’m not denying that, but it’s not gonna stop our suffering.
This is the point. Which is not to say not to do these things, but if we if we try and put an ultimate value on them, on things that that that that just can’t bear it, support that. This is the trouble that we we think we invest all our time and energy and hopes on. If I do this, this is going to happen. But it won’t.
We we make it some satisfaction, some pleasure, some contentment, this and that. Yes. But we’re still gonna grow old, sick, die, meet with things we don’t want to meet with, separate from things we don’t want to separate with, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And that yeah. And there’s levels of satisfaction.
There’s the satisfaction that comes from doing ordinary things well that also good good things to do that are, you know, make people happy in in a in a harmless way. You know, there’s things that make people happy in a a negative way. But you can there’s things that are, you know, that these are good, but they they still have their limitations. And, ultimately, we have to face our delusions. We we have if we don’t deal with them as I said last week, you know, said, you know, this first course I attended, how how can you expect to be happy when you have a mind controlled by anger and attachment and desire and jealousy and pride?
You can’t. It’s just not possible. No matter how many billions of dollars we have, no matter how much people say you’re the most wonderful person in the world, when you have pride and jealousy, you’ll think, oh, there’s someone more wonderful. Can’t stand it. And this person who just told me I’m the most wonderful person, they’ll find this other most wonderful person can’t bear it.
There’s no way to be happy with pride and jealousy and craving and anger and and ignorance, the deepest delusion, not knowing not not really experiencing who we are authentically. But once we know the the yeah. Once we know the first that ordinary existence is bound to be frustrating and imperfect, incomplete, we can kind of relax a little bit. So that when when we do things and they don’t bring us perfect happiness and things go wrong, we can think, oh, this is saṃsāra. It’s okay.
It’s okay. In a sense in one sense, it’s not okay, if you know what I mean, But it’s okay. It doesn’t mean there’s something uniquely wrong and bad and disastrous with me that we everyone has experienced. It really actually, one one thing my I I anyway, my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, when I first met him, it was well, certainly in the apart from some Tibetans, no one knew about him. He wasn’t famous.
Now Lama Zopa Rinpoche is kind of quite famous in the world, at least in the Tibetan Buddhist world, at least in the Mahāyāna Tibetan world. And he has many, many students, and some of them are quite famous people or very famous people and very, very rich. So that he knows some immensely wealthy people now. Right? So Rinpoche may once made the point that, you know, when he travels around the world, some of these very rich people invite him to their houses, and they show him around their huge houses.
Some of these people have huge huge I haven’t been to any of them. I’ve seen some pictures. Huge houses with gigantic swimming pools and got, you know, heated swimming pools and, you know, the whole shebang, immense places. And they talk about, you know, all their success and blah blah blah blah blah. And Rinpoche says and and this is not criticizing or making fun because Rinpoche has genuine compassion for beings.
He re he is the real deal. And and he says, but at some point at some point, they start to talk about their problems, their suffering. Of course, that’s why they’re I invited Rinpoche to come to their place because they’re suffering. Everyone is suffering. No matter how famous you are, how rich you are, how successful you are, there’s always some suffering.
You can’t make people love you because you’ve got ninety million dollars. You can’t. You can you can make them pretend, but you can’t make them love you. I mean, if if you think the suffering of being very rich that, you know, you have all these people who, you know, seem to like you and tell you you’re wonderful, and then you you must think, do they like me or my money? That must be a horrible experience.
Whereas if you’re poor and someone likes you, they like you. You know they like you. If you’re poor and ugly and unknown and someone likes you, it means they like you because they’re not gonna get anything out of you. It must be very satisfying. But if you’re rich and people like you, you can you can never tell.
Oh, I mean, maybe sometimes, but you know what I mean. So this is another way of saṃsāra. You know, there’s the suffer you know, there’s the suffering of being rich. I mean, there’s the obvious suffering of being poor, but there’s the suffering of being rich. And it’s a real suffering.
It’s a real suffering. And there’s the suffering of being ugly, you know, conventionally ugly or thought of or thinking yourself ugly or knowing other people think you’re ugly. But there’s also the real suffering of being beautiful. Real suffering. It’s real suffering.
I I I don’t have this experience but but, you know, there’s suffering involved, especially being attached to your beauty and knowing, you know, and thinking you’re gonna lose it, which leaves me I’ll just finish. I always tell a story. I’ve told it a million not not quite a million times before, but one lady in France who was the director of our center in in Paris, she was a model for a while. And she knew she never became famous, but she knew lots of famous, you know, models. And she was telling me that I think it was her mentor, was some super famous French model.
I don’t know who it was, who became famous when she was about eighteen, which is about when young girls become models or even younger. And she was head of photos on Vogue and all these, you know, Vogue and what else is there? Cosmopolitan or something. All these famous fashion magazines. So she many photos cover photos of her.
And then she got to be about enormously old, like thirty. And so she was finished as a model or something or thirty five or something. So this friend of mine was telling her that she she well, at least once visited this friend when after she’d sort of stopped being a famous model. And she said this woman lived in an apartment in Paris where she she would sit on a sofa and behind the sofa were all the framed pictures of her in her heyday as this beautiful super famous model. And in front of her was a mirror.
So she would look at her face now and then all the pictures of herself as the beautiful and total suffering. And this this friend of mine pointed out that these tiny lines that appear around here, which are the first wrinkles you get, appear when you’re about eighteen. So all these models have to do things to get rid of those, you know, all the stuff that they have to do to remain perfectly perfect and perfectly young, forever young, that is real suffering. Along these other lines of the suffering of vanity, which is why I I’ll never stop. I’m sorry.
Once I get up here, I go berserk. A friend of a Dutch friend of mine who was a nun for some years, Before she was a nun, she lived a wildlife in Brazil, and she’s a very funny lady, and she laughs a lot. And she said once when she was hanging out in Brazil, having a good time with some of her girlfriends and she was laughing. One of her friends girlfriends said to her seriously, you’ve got to stop laughing because it makes wrinkles. You’ll get wrinkles.
I mean, that’s really sad. That’s not funny. It’s funny sad. Yeah? That you can’t laugh because it’ll make you look old.
I mean, that’s that mind, that is real suffering. These were young girls saying this. Young girls. Because you have to look perfect and perfectly young and perfect. What a suffering we’ve imposed on ourselves.
Yeah? That’s saṃsāra. It’s that that’s a mind construct that we we stick on ourselves. On that happy night, we’ll stop. We can dedicate our merit because we’ve created some merit tonight so we can dedicate it that it helps us to understand saṃsāra so we can renounce it, so we can achieve not only nirvana but but complete enlightenment.
So if you’d like to join in, page nine. 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. K.
Thank you very much. For for those who feel it’s meaningful and comfortable to do, we can finish with, three prostrations.