Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 104-minute teaching, Ven Thubten Dondrub continues his series on Samsāra and Nirvāṇa, focusing on understanding the nature of cyclic suffering that motivates serious practitioners to pursue enlightenment. He opens with the Mahāyāna framework: achieving enlightenment benefits all sentient beings, grounded in recognition of our deep debt to them across countless lifetimes. He then systematically walks through how to develop real motivation for liberation by understanding suffering in its full scope. He covers the six sufferings that pervade all realms—uncertainty, dissatisfaction, leaving and taking bodies repeatedly, and profound loneliness (especially the isolation of lacking Dharma). Most importantly, he explores the three sufferings, particularly the subtle suffering of change: all apparent happiness in saṃsāra is not genuine lasting happiness but a subtle form of suffering. He uses the standing-versus-sitting meditation example to show that samsaric pleasure always contains suffering from the moment it arises, though our gross mind fails to notice it until circumstance shifts. Pitched at serious practitioners with some familiarity with Buddhist psychology and karma, this is foundational material for generating authentic renunciation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 05 07 DB Samsāra week3 Dondrub 070513.mp3
UUID: f0090717-090e-4a9a-bac8-754ca41e7427
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Samsāra & Nirvāṇa (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-05-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 103.8 minutes
Words: ~12,466
Okay. So welcome everyone to our third, class on Samsāra and nirvana. So so again, this topic is taught within the context of the Mahāyāna tradition, and the Mahāyāna tradition encourages us to follow the Mahāyāna path in order to achieve the full potential of our mind not just to achieve the nirvana which is freedom from cyclic existence and all suffering, but to realize the full potential of our mind and achieve the enlightened state because only in that state can we be of vast benefit perfect, complete, undeceiving benefit to all sentient beings. And the reason to be beneficial in that way is it comes from realizing how we have benefited so much from sentient beings in all our past lives, in this life. And while we remain in cyclic existence, we will continue to depend on the kindness and benefit of of all living beings one way or another, sooner or later, directly or indirectly.
And to get out of cyclic existence, we can only do that depending on sentient beings. And although the purpose of achieving enlightenment is to benefit sentient beings, the only way to achieve enlightenment is depending on them. So we we, are really, have this huge debt to mother sentient beings, and and the way to repay it is to help them become totally free of all suffering, to help them get out of cyclic existence, and more than that, help them to achieve the peerless everlasting happiness of enlightenment. So, and that comes from realizing, how much suffering these beings are while they remain trapped in cyclic existence and and how realizing how the vast majority of beings are experiencing the worst sufferings of saṃsāra right now, whereas ourselves being in the human realm, we are really at least temporarily in a very fortunate position. And especially having met the dharma and hopefully having some faith in it, then this opens us up to being able to make sense of our suffering to begin to reduce it, modify it, transform it, eventually eliminate it.
Whereas the vast majority of beings don’t have that access. And so in their confusion are trying to be free of suffering, really just creating the cause for more suffering. So if we think about these things, we can generate more and more compassion, and that can eventually lead to developing the bodhicitta mind which is determined to achieve enlightenment for the sake of others. So to achieve that enlightened state, we ourselves have to follow the path and that and to achieve enlightenment, we have to get out of cyclic existence. We have to be free of completely free of ignorance.
And to become free of ignorance, we we have to be motivated to do so. And what motivates us more and more is really understanding our own potential for suffering, how cyclic existence is in the nature of suffering. So it’s really important to you know, know more and more about what Samsāra really is, what it really implies, but also to understand what nirvana is. So the more we can understand what it is and how it’s a real possibility, then we can be motivated to achieve it for the sake of all beings. So try and generate that motivation as much as possible or something like it and try and hold on to that as we say or at least while I say the prayer.
And if you feel comfortable to do so, please join in. And to make which is on page nine. To make it more meaningful, we we think of the Buddha in front of us as the very embodiment of all the perfect qualities of the enlightened mind, of all the Dharma and Sangha. And at the same time, we try and have a sense of all sentient beings surrounding us, at least trying to have some awareness of the beings of this life that we are connected to surrounding us, starting with our parents on either side, family, friends, and helpers behind us, harmers in front. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the Supreme Assembly.
By the merits I create by teaching the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings? So if you find it helpful in any way, imagine that the Buddha in front of you is pleased with your motivation and shows this by now coming to the crown of one’s head. And then when directly above your crown, imagining the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light so that that light can pour down into you, blessing your mind. So then we enhance that positive state of mind by briefly doing the nine round breathing exercise just for a short time to help develop a more calm, clear, and concentrated mind in order to use that state of mind to listen to and think about the Buddhist teachings tonight. Okay, you very much.
So in order to achieve the state of nirvana, the state of total freedom from all suffering, a completely blissful state, we have to eliminate all the causes of suffering from our mind. And to be motivated to do that, to be motivated to start to do that, and to be maintain the motivation to continue all the hard work that is necessary to free the mind of suffering depends really on gaining a deeper and deeper insight understanding or what is called a realization of how much suffering we are susceptible to. And that’s why we need to study what Samsāra is and that’s why the first noble truth that the Buddha taught is that Samsaric existence, ordinary existence, is in its very nature suffering. So the more we really get that that and and that that we shouldn’t as I tried to say last week, it’s not saying that what we’re experiencing now is the totality of suffering. If it was, we wouldn’t have to worry too much.
But because our mind is in cyclic existence, is controlled by delusion and karma, what we need to try to realize that we we are we therefore have the potential to experience every kind of suffering of cyclic existence. And then we have to know what those sufferings are and realize there’s nothing protecting me from any I am susceptible to all of them. I haven’t gone beyond the possibility of experiencing any kind of suffering. So if if you look at this in the human world, of course, we can see people having a wonderful time or what looks to be a wonderful time, all sorts of enjoyments, and there’s all sorts of beautiful, pleasant things in this world. But also if we look, one can see that there is an enormous amount of suffering in this world, enormous amount of suffering.
Alright. And what we when when we look at just the suffering of human beings, we need to try to be aware that, and and we tend to think when we look at that suffering, oh, that couldn’t happen to me. How could it even happen to them, but it couldn’t happen to me? But the point is any of that suffering that any human being has ever experienced, I am susceptible to it. I do have the potential simply by having a mind controlled by delusion and karma.
I have the potential to experience all of it. Not of not, of course, in this life, but even who knows what can happen to us in this life. I don’t know how many people here have been to India and seen some of the lepers in India and how horrible, you know, their bodies are deformed and everything. What horrible kinds of lives they have. And, although I would like to think I have some kind of understanding, when you look at these people, you you tend to see an inherently existing beggar that these people have always been like that.
But many, many years ago when I lived in Dharmasala, when I was Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s attendant, You know, when His Holiness was there, he was living there, which Dharmasala is where His Holiness normally lived. And when there were teachings on, we would walk from the FPMT retreat center there, which is called Tuśita retreat center there up to the the teaching site. And there would always be these rows of beggars, and there was particularly one married couple there, which I’d, every now and again, drop some money into their thing. And I I just look at them, and I’d never talk to them or anything out of great in my great compassion. I never talk to them as human beings.
Sorry. But what really amazed me and shocked me is that I can’t even remember who it was, but one of my friends had actually got around to talking to the the woman. And it turned out that they she and her husband actually came from what was called Madras, which is a long way away. And they were middle class people, and they had owned a chemist shop, which makes you pretty rich in India. And then one of them had got somehow had got leprosy, and the other partner had caught it, and their whole family had rejected them.
Of course, they couldn’t run a business with leprosy, and everyone in their family rejected them. And soon, they’re on the street. And then, of course, their limbs rot and they’re filthy and no. Yeah. You know, the most horrific things can happen in life.
I mean, I was just that’s just a simple but horrible example that we we don’t you know, we somehow think we you know, in our little Australian cocoon that we’re immune to stuff. But, anyway, we’re not. So, you know, every time we see suffering, we have to realize that, you know, I I know I being in Samsāra, I have the potential to experience that. If if not in this life, if I have another human re if I’m lucky enough to have another human rebirth after this, I could experience that. Because, of course, the causes of of suffering are so easy to create.
Any negative karmic action from the tiniest one can lead to all sorts of horrendous suffering results in this life, but especially in future lives. This is what the Buddha taught because this is what the Buddha saw of what how things work. From a even from a even in this world, one sees from a tiny seed an enormous tree can grow. So from a tiny negative action, horrendous suffering can can come from it eventually. So the more we see this, the more we realize our own suffering now and our potential for suffering, we can develop the mind of renunciation.
And renunciation is not a mind giving up happiness. It’s the mind renouncing suffering and especially the causes of suffering. That’s what renunciation is. It’s the mind that recognizes that this is suffering and I don’t want it. I am not going to create the causes of it.
Renunciation is just is not just a mind not wanting suffering because no one wants suffering. Then we’ll if if if that’s what renunciation was, we’d all be renounced. But renunciation is this very courageous mind that is determined to give up the causes, and that only comes from really seeing that suffering is inescapable if I don’t give up the causes. If I create the causes, the suffering is there, and my suffering comes from my mind. My mind creates its causes, not other people, not the government, not the weather.
It’s my mind is the root cause. Everything else are just conditions. The the root cause comes from within my mind. Anyway, just many people mentioned in the homework that they found it very difficult to to believe in the lower realms. And so I just like to say a little bit more about the lower realms.
I probably can’t say much to convince you of their existence, but either I suppose you believe it or you don’t. But and and to be able to believe in to develop some belief in the lower realms, I think, depends on understanding one’s own mind, what it is and its potential for suffering, having some faith in the law of cause and effect. And maybe what really helps possibly is not possibly, definitely is some understanding, at least a little bit of understanding of emptiness. But if you if you look at the human beings on this in this world, then you see this huge range of suffering. Then you have to ask why is this huge range?
And the Buddhist answer, the karmic answer is that the people with a lot of know, human beings with a lot of suffering have created the cause for that suffering. They’ve engaged in negative actions, you know, strong negative actions in the past. So even though they’ve had the good karma to be born human, they’ve also engaged in all these negative these negative actions that bring so much suffering as a human being. So then on this planet, the only other kind of sentient beings we can see are all different kinds of animals. And many people, you know, reject that they have a mind, but actually more and more people are starting to see that this is a possibility.
And if you do start to see the possibility that animals do have minds, that if you can see that animals do have some kind of feelings, some kind of ability to rationalize things, work things out. And there are many, many examples of, you know, animals doing of various kinds of animals working out how to do things in order to get what they want. If you can see that animals have desires and fear, experience suffering and happiness and at all, then that is an indication of mind. Nothing else other than mind has feelings, rationality, etcetera, etcetera. And, of course, the the the mind of an animal now is not functioning like the mind of a human being because an animal’s mind is far, far more obscured.
But just like many human beings, minds are immensely obscured. I I I was listening to a program yesterday about people with children who are you know, have very severe handicaps. And one mother was talking about her her grown up son who had a a mental age of about nineteen months. So that is a fairly obscured mind for an adult, but it’s still a human being with a human mind. It’s just not working, not able to work for karmic reasons.
And same with animals. They have minds. If if it’s if it’s mind, it’s got everything. It’s just some minds are more obscure than than others. And then you have to ask, well, if an animal has a mind and the mind all minds are the same, you know, that that being could have been a human being.
That mind could have been a human in a human body. Why is it in an animal body? And the answer is, of course, because of well, the Buddhist answer is that that mind created the causes, the negative causes to have a very obscured mind which works in an animal body. Because once you’ve got an animal body, you’ve got an animal brain, and the mind can’t work very well. And then if you think, well, maybe if there are more if there are more negative actions than even you know, to have to be a even a suffering human being requires a certain amount of good karma.
If you don’t have that, you get the suffering of being an animal. If you engage in more negative actions, then maybe there’s the possibility that there is the the hungry ghost realm. Now our culture in until very recently, many people, if not most people, believed in various kinds of ghosts. People still do. People see them.
I haven’t seen ghosts. I’ve seen people who I believe are quite normal, sane people who’ve had experiences with them, from friendly ones to very unfriendly ones. Yeah? And this is a common belief all over the world. It has been for since human beings have been on this planet.
And yet, you know, we modern people who say, oh, this is rubbish, and give it all sorts of complicated psychological explanations. And, of course, there are people who think they are seeing ghosts but who are just mentally disturbed. You know? People can, you know, pretend you know, hallucinate all sorts of stuff, but there are many sort of suggestions that there are all kinds of beings out there, folks. Actually, according to the Buddhist view, there’s probably a whole lot of beings in this room right now that we can’t see.
And I don’t mean, you know, fleas and things from another realm, really, in this room. Why not? There’s so many, many, many stories of of, you know, you know, haunted houses where people just won’t go. They’ve tried to be there. And, of course, you know, you can explain that to some extent with a lot of projection.
You know, you can build up fear in people, but there are people who’ve gone to those places who are totally convinced, you know, ghosts don’t exist and they’re not frightened of anything and, you know, they they run out screaming. And, you know, I I people have told me of, you know, places they’ve lived where, you know, all sorts of things happen and not just to them, but visitors who come to the house, stay in that room, you know, repeat the same things. It’s very, very difficult to say this is all rubbish. Yeah. The at Atisha Retreat Centre, there’s a beautiful little all all the retreat houses there, cabins are fantastically, beautifully built with great effort.
One of them they can’t use anymore because when you go in, something happens. It’s happened to too many people, and they freaked out. So yeah. And no one, of course, who has gone in there knew because you don’t tell them. You just see what happens.
So there’s maybe all sorts of kinds of ghost beings, hungry ghosts. Why not? And then, of course, if there’s that, then maybe one can see the possibility that if one engages in, like, really, really negative actions or, you know, or a lot of small negative actions accumulate and ripen together, you can have hell. And if we just look at what our mind can do in this life, you know, there’s so much potential there for suffering and misery. Apparently, in Mexico, in the last few years, something like sixty thousand people have been murdered by the drug barons.
Sixty thousand. And they don’t just kill them. They mutilate peep they torture them and then rip them to pieces. They disembowel them, you know, and stuff like that. And there was one group I’ve forgotten the name of.
They pride themselves in being just totally, totally barbaric. You know, they they go into a village which they need to take over for running their business. So they just chop the heads off a few people, including little babies, and run them down the gutters and then let people know if you don’t do what we want, this will happen to all of you, and we don’t care a damn. You know? And they don’t, and they enjoy it.
Yeah. This is just in this human world, but that can always end because there’s other factors in this world. But imagine where none of those positive factors are present. Because we have a human world where there’s many positive factors and negative factors because we have that karma of good and bad. But maybe if you’re only your negative karma ripens, only that ripens one after the other.
Imagine that, what that would be like. You know, even if one gets really depressed as a human being, you there are always other people who can help you. We have that karma. Even strangers. Like, there are organizations that don’t know us who will help us.
We have that karma. And we we live in a you know, there’s a lot of physical beauty in this world so that can lift up the mind a little bit. There are kindness of nice food to eat. Not that if you’re depressed, that maybe helps much. But there’s all all sorts of mitigating factors, and there’s medicine you can take we can take.
All sorts of things mitigating the horrors of human existence. But imagine if there the complete there’s the calm there isn’t that karma for all those mitigating factors to be present. Then you have hell. And these realms are not just psychological states. They are states of mind, though they have to be created by the mind, but they’re and experienced by the mind, but they’re not just psychological states because the human realm is not just a psychological state.
And all the other realms are just the same. You know, animals exist. That’s not just a psychological state. So it also means that the preta realms, the hungry ghost realms, are not just psychological states. The god the hell realms are not just psychological states.
And all the different kinds of god demigod and god realms are not just psychological states. They are realms of existence. They are as real as the human world, or that you could put it another way, they are as unreal as this world is. Because when one starts to well, I don’t understand emptiness, but I pretend to. When one understands gets some understanding of emptiness, the teachings on emptiness say that, you know, there seems to be this very solid concrete world out there, but things just don’t exist that way.
The world isn’t as concrete as we think, and it’s not it’s not separate from our mind. We we have this kind of body, but this body we are the only way we can know this body and experience it is through our mind. One could say in a gross way that this body is a reflection of our mind. There is a there is a saying in in the dharma that goes something like, what is it? If you want to know what you did in your past lives, look at your body now because it’s the result of your past actions.
If you want to know what your future life will be like, look at your mind now. So and and someone made the point, you know, what what what what is so important about knowing about the you know, believing or knowing about the different realms of existence? Well, in one may in one way, may maybe one could say it’s not that important in in practicing Dharma in general because there’s enough suffering in this world that should motivate us. But there is a very profound reason for believe well, for believing in the in in the other realms because if if the suffering of we know about we can see the suffering of human beings and we this still doesn’t cause us to stop engaging in negative actions. It should if we realized, I could end up like that.
Because why is this person suffer why does that person have such a suffering body, such a suffering mind, living in such suffering situations? There’s a cause. That that being created the cause. So yeah. But we still go on doing negative stuff.
So maybe if we realized that we could experience even more suffering for longer, that might motivate us. And some people argue, well, Buddha just made up all these sufferings to scare us so that we would behave ourselves, but this is rubbish. It’s not like that. It’s not made up. The Buddha just saw things and said, if you don’t want this suffering, don’t create the cause.
And the Buddha is trying to tell us some of the stuff you’re doing is creating the cause for this horrendous suffering. You have no idea what you’re doing to yourself. Don’t. I like you. I love you.
I have compassion for you. Please don’t do that’s what the Buddha is telling us. And beyond that, a deeper reason for developing some faith belief in cyclic existence and all its potential and all the suffering realms is that in order to achieve enlightenment, we have to develop great compassion for all sentient beings. So if so we have to know about all the suffering that exists because if we say that that suffering doesn’t exist, we can’t develop compassion for it. And if we say that human animals aren’t sentient beings, there’s no way to develop compassion for them.
If we say pretas don’t exist, and they do if they do exist but we say they don’t, then we have no compassion for all these beings. And we say hell beings don’t exist, so there’s no way to have compassion for them. And if we say the gods don’t exist, so we don’t have compassion for them. So there’s no way to generate bodhicitta, no way to achieve enlightenment. And so all these beings will continue to suffer. In thinking about the suffering of cyclic existence, the the immediate reason to think about it is to motivate ourselves to be free of it.
But the more we think about but the more we think about our own suffering, how horrible it is or potentially horrible, that is also becomes the basis if we want to use it to develop compassion for others. Because we we can then realize that whatever suffering I am experiencing or have the potential to experience, every sentient being has that potential. And billions and trillions of sentient beings are actually experiencing those sufferings right now as their everyday reality. So, you know, this this the realms of cyclic existing are not just something, you know, floating in the background. It it it’s a it’s a vital aspect of the whole Buddhadharma.
You know, if if there is, you know, something existing in the world that we can experience, we need to know about it. And we need to know what causes it, and we need to know what to do to avoid those experiences. You know, just like parents tell their little kids, you know, to avoid various sufferings because little kids don’t realize that this is dangerous. So parents have to say, oh, you know, this looks okay, but you can’t do that. It’ll burn you.
Yeah. And because and the parents tell the kids because they have compassion, and they’re not making up that suffering. They know about it. The kid doesn’t. The child So we’re like little children.
We don’t know about all this stuff. But there’s someone who does and out of compassion they say, There is this suffering. Avoid it. And you can avoid it. If you don’t create the causes, you won’t experience it.
Nothing can make one experience a suffering if if the cause isn’t there. No matter how hot the hell realms are, if we don’t create the cause for them, we will never experience them. And no matter how blissful the god realms are, if we don’t create the cause for them, we’ll never experience them. Okay. Anyone want to argue with me?
Ask a question? Clarification? Something? Yes? I well, just think the I don’t know the full details, but see, this this house had an old tree, and they built around it or something, but then they disturbed it.
And if for those of you who know something about Tibetan or not Tibetan, Buddhist beliefs, there are there are kinds of beings called nagas who can live in very, very, very old trees. And if you disturb them, these beings can get really nasty. So it seems it was one of these beings. Yeah. And and once you you know, they are very difficult to to tame.
No. You yeah. I think things were done very you know? I think it may have got better with time. It may not be like that now, but for some time, it was it was quite, yeah, not so good.
I know I’m sorry. This sounds very weird for some people, but, really things can happen. I would personally recommend wherever you are and you find a very old tree, be very nice to it. Because if it’s a really, really old tree, it’s possible there’s a being who thinks this is my tree. And if you disturb it especially you can get all sorts of skin diseases from from Nagas.
Sorry. I’m this is getting carried away. Now I’ve lived in India and Nepal. I’ve seen these things happen, really. It’s very, very interesting.
Also, like the Aboriginal, know, where where you find a cluster of very big rocks by themselves such as Uluru, definitely there are beings living there, and you don’t want to upset them. There is I read many when I was living at Nālānda monastery in France, I read an article in the what’s that newspaper? The herald trip International Herald Tribune about people, tourists who’ve gone to Uluru, and, they’ve chipped off a little bit of the stone to take home as a souvenir. And apparently, the Uluru National Park or whatever it’s got regularly receives these chips of rock back, sent back saying, please put it back. Ever since I took it, all these terrible things have happened to me.
Like, the Aboriginals never walk over Uluru. They go around in respect, but you don’t walk on it because there are some very special beings living there. Yes. It wasn’t a monastery. It was a retreat center.
Yeah. When when when these beings get upset, they they hurt anyone around. Well, I don’t know all the details, Maggie. It’s just that the the ordinary human beings who went there to try and do a retreat had a bit of a difficult time. So the yes.
Yes. Yeah. Well, it is possible. Sorry. No.
Don’t tell him. Because there’s many layers of that, like the human you know, like the ghost that human beings talk about is probably the least suffering of the hungry ghost realm. Just like, you know, there’s many kinds of human levels of human suffering. So, yeah, hunger the the ghosts who hang around a place that they’re attached to, that they don’t yeah. They don’t have probably as much suffering as the the the actual hungry ghosts.
The hungry ghost version of ghosts. Yeah. No. Well, no. Don’t no.
Sorry. No. No. Let’s not get too superstitious here. Just meditating in general.
There should be no problems. The Umis will come and try and harm you, especially if you’re just in your living room or in your house or whatever. But that’s also why it’s encouraged to to do retreats and whatever in places that have been blessed by great practitioners because that’s that’s helpful. But also, on the other hand, when you when practitioners get to a certain level of accomplishment and of course, this is illustrated in the life of the Buddha himself that when he sat under the Bodhi tree, then Mara came to tempt him. And, of course, many people, lots of Westerners, but and also some modern Tibetan lamas these days say that that’s all psychological, that that that’s about the last vestiges of delusions of prince Sadhata manifesting in front of him.
But, actually, this is this story is meant to be taken quite literally because Mara is one of the that kind of rebirth is is is a rebirth of the desire realm gods, the the the sixth level of desire realm gods. These beings are called, anyway, the gods that could use other people’s emanation, something like that. So these beings come when someone is about to gain some really powerful positive realization, then you can get attacked by Mara in various forms. This is supposed to be quite a common thing that people no. No.
That’s that’s the Asuras. No. This is the desire realm gods, a particular type from this yeah. I can never name remember the name. Anyway, it’s the six there are six levels of desire realm gods, so they’re in the top level.
So they’ve created the cause, the virtue to be be born as gods, but they’re not nice ones. Just like they’re a you know, to be born a human being generally requires a lot of good karma, but but there’s some very nasty human beings who, you know, they don’t like good people. You know, they really can’t stand virtuous people. So yeah. I yeah.
I don’t know. Yeah. They don’t want the good word to spread somehow anyway. But this is what they say. Oh, yeah.
There are many stories about that of people, you know. Yeah. And this is also I mean, I I think I may have mentioned this. I think probably I mentioned the very first talk I gave here when we did the oh, no. This is DB cut, but in the other in the beginning oh, I haven’t gone anywhere.
I haven’t started tonight yet. Haven’t started. Oh my god. Yeah. This is the introduction.
Yeah. Traditionally, when teachings are done at the beginning of teachings, the Heart Sūtra is read because this is the expression of the highest truth, and it is believed that even expressing the truth has immense power to eliminate obstacles. So it is believed. And I believe this that when you well, when you try and do anything negative, it is very, very easy to do negative things to yourself, to other people, to the entire world. It’s very easy.
All the all the things come together inside and out. You know, like Nazi Germany, there’s this little nasty person, Hitler, came along, and there are a whole lot of pals he met who were like minded, who tried to destroy the world or a lot of the bits they didn’t like in it. Yeah. It all came together very nicely for a while. Didn’t last, fortunately, but it’s very easy to be destructive and brutal and nasty.
But to do really, really positive things is very difficult. It’s very difficult. Many obstacles come, and they also say, you know, that when something is building up that can be very positive, then all sorts of beings can come to try to stop it. I don’t know. Why do negative human beings do negative things?
Same. It’s the same. It’s just the same. They’re sentient beings. Oh, well, why don’t they come in and well, possibly they do.
Maybe there’s a huge fight going on and you know? I don’t know. Don’t take this too negatively. Know, it’s good to triumph in the long run. In the long run.
Come on, Kathy. Some Now those most of the god realms are good. Know, only a few of these In the form and formless realms there aren’t nasty ones. It’s just the top level of the desire realm gods are the nasty ones. Or some of them.
I don’t know if it’s all of them or just some of them. Never found that out yet after all this time. Anyway, back to obvious suffering. Right? So last week I talked about the eight sufferings which are so I’d like to just briefly oh, I haven’t this is a very important topic.
Just quickly go through. There are what are called the six sufferings and there are the three sufferings. So the six sufferings sufferings that really can occur anywhere in cyclic existence. So these are. When do we stop?
So yeah, ten minutes, five minutes or twenty past. Yeah. Okay. So firstly so the eight kinds of sufferings are particularly, but not entirely, are related to the sufferings of human beings. Whereas the six sufferings, these all we human beings are subject to these, but one can sort of see that these apply in in many of the realms of cyclic existence.
So the first one is called the cyclic the suffering of uncertainty. That when while we’re in cyclic existence, we experience a lot of particularly mental suffering because everything changes. Everything changes. Things are changing all the time. You know, friends become enemies, enemies become strangers, strangers become enemies.
You know, we we think we have this friend forever. People get married, live and don’t live happily ever after, you know, things like that. So it brings a lot of suffering. Things change and although things change all the time, we as ordinary deluded beings, we never get that message. We don’t understand impermanence.
And so when change occurs, you know, it really upsets us because we don’t expect it. We have health and then we get sick. And so everything, you know, everything is uncertain. We can never be a hundred percent sure about anything in cyclic existence because our mind, you know, we like to think that we know things, but do we know we know things properly? Can we be really sure?
Everything is nearly not quite sure. Is the Buddha Dharma true? Does the Buddha exist? So the more samsaric the mind, the more uncertainty. But we try and do good things, but we can’t be sure that it was the right thing to do.
Should I do this? Should I do that? Should I go here? Should I go there? What should I do?
We’re we’re never certain. And so there’s a lot of difficulties, problems, dissatisfaction because of that. It’s it’s inbuilt within cyclic existence, this suffering of uncertainty. And then there’s the suffering of dissatisfaction that this is a great one to reflect on. The suffering of dissatisfaction that no matter what good things we experience, we’re net as we’re never a hundred percent satisfied.
We want more. We want a bigger one, a shinier one, a different color, two of them, or three. Yeah. We’re never ever satisfied no matter what happens. Where we go, you know, wherever you go, there you are.
We just take out the satisfaction with us on our holiday to Bali, and trouble is we are there, and we bring all our suffering with us. But, also, the the interesting way to meditate on this, but of course it only works if one has some belief in the cyclic existence and karma. But if one develop has a little bit of faith in it, it’s really quite scary and powerful to think that all if whatever you can think of that you would like to do or have or be or go to own, and you think, if if only I could have that, be there, do this, look like that, have this kind of power, this much money, I’d be happy. I’d be really happy. So guess what?
We’ve had it. We’ve had those things in previous lives, and not just one time, billions of times. And look at us. We’re not happy. We have been Elvis Presley, millions of the equivalent.
Only Elvis Presley has been Elvis Presley, fortunately. But, you know, we’ve been the most famous person in the world. We’ve been emperors, you know, billions of times. We’ve been the most famous movie star billions of times. We’ve been the richest person in the world billions of times because Samsāra is beginningless.
We have been in the highest god realms billions of times. Not just in the desire realm, but we’ve been in the form realm where you have a body of light that lasts for trillions of years. And in the formless realm, you don’t even have any kind of body that experience is so utterly refined and pristine. And we’ve had those experiences billions and billions and billions and billions of times, and we’re still not satisfied. That’s Samsāra.
We’ve won every possible award billions of times. We’ve been the fastest man, woman, swimmer, runner. We’ve won every gold medal billions of times. We’ve been voted the sexiest man, woman, dog in the world billions of times and we’re still not happy. Think about it.
It’s very interesting because it’s possible. If you start to think about what the mind is, that it’s beginningless, endless, that is how it is. So there’s also the suffering just quickly of having to leave the body again and again. We take this body. We get we get attached to our body.
We may be dissatisfied with it, but still we are incredibly attached to our body. I don’t think we really realize how attached we are to our body, but we are, believe me. And then death comes, and we have to leave it. And then we get another one, and we get attached to it, and then we have to leave it. We separate from it, and then we get another one, and we get attached to it, and then we have to leave it.
I I know this is I I I can’t help myself saying these things. I know it’s just too much for some people here, but in in the desire realms in the desire in the in the god realms of the desire realm, there is a period where at the where, you know, the the lifespan in in those realms last for millions of years. And for most of that time, those beings just experience just, you know, incredible happiness and joy. They have this incredibly beautiful body, and you float around on lotuses or something like that and just have an absolutely wonderful time all the time. And you have this beautiful body and beautiful clothes.
And then as the karma runs out, then it it says the luster of one’s body starts to fade. And for the very first time, you develop body odor. And all the beautiful flower garlands over your body, which just appear there spontaneously, all fade and die. And then all the other gods and goddesses who’ve been you’ve you’ve been hanging around with for millions of years won’t have anything to do with you, and you suddenly realize you’re going to die. And they say that in the teachings, it says that suffering is worse than the suffering of the hell realms.
That mental suffering of realizing all that beauty is gonna end, and you’re going to actually fall into the lower realms, that the mental suffering of knowing that is even worse than the physical suffering of being in the lower realms. So that’s a little bit like you get attached to a body and you have to leave it. You have this beautiful body of light which you think is going to last forever. Because these god beings, they think they’re they are in nirvana or they’re in heaven, but it’s just it’s just another Samsāra. So the realization that it’s all going to end is the greatest torment possible.
And then there’s the suffering of having to take a re a body again and again. The suffering of having to go through the Bardo state and then to take rebirth and to be reborn into a suffering realm. I don’t know if any of you have read the there’s this amazing book written by Gunther Grass called the Tin Drum. I read it many, many, many, many years ago. Anyway, the first part of that book is about, the hero who’s a kind of a dwarf as him getting born and realizing he’s been born into this lousy world, which was Nazi Germany or the development of Nazi Germany.
Anyway, that just sprung to my mind. Anyway, so there’s the suffering of leaving the body, then we have to take another body and get we have to get born again and into the world. Not born again. Reborn again and again and again and again again and again. And that will be forever if we don’t do anything about Samsāra, if we just let it go on, if we don’t stop our ignorance.
So I’ll stop now. Oh, we’re up to four. There’s two more to go. Just before we get into one question. Complaint, disagreement, dialogue.
No feedback whatsoever come on okay cup of tea time I I keep writing group discussion questions, but I’m not sure if we’ll get it to it tonight next week because I I really have to anyway, just very quickly, the last two of the six sufferings. Of course, there’s endless sufferings. This is just a general way to categorize things to help look at things. Another of the sufferings is said to be the suffering of rising and falling, which is a little bit like the suffering of uncertainty is that, you know, the the nature of cyclic existence is that no no matter how much we progress to some degree, we can always fall back. You know, we can become very, very rich, and then we can become very, very poor.
We can become happy and then unhappy. We’re young and then become old. Yeah. Healthy, unhealthy, successful, unsuccessful. People like us, dislike us.
Things go up and down all the time. You know, within a life, within any particular life, this happens. But also from a broader perspective, you know, we can like right now we’re in the human realm, which from a Dharma point of view is the rest best realm to be because we can meet the Dharma and there’s all the conditions to practice it. But we can we can be reborn in the god realms, fall to the the hell realms, up and down, around and around. This is what Lama Yeshe, one of my main teachers, used to call the yo yo mind.
Yeah. Always suffering of up and down. No, Richard. No. No.
Definitely not. There wouldn’t be any point becoming a Buddha. Now this is Samsāra. This is one of the sufferings of Samsāra, not of nirvana or enlightenment. This is unique feature, special unique feature of Samsāra.
That’s why we wanna get out of it because there’s no suffering of rising and falling because then enlightened mind well, the state of nirvana and of and enlightenment is is a state of complete equanimity and unchanging. It’s always the same. It’s always blissful. It’s always perfect, complete. Yeah.
Whereas Samsāra, Samsaric experience is always up and down. You know? Even in one day, if you check, you know I I mean, our mind can change in a matter of moments. We can be happy, happy, and then just bingo. Next moment, we can be down.
And someone smiles at us and we’re happy, and then someone, you know, says boo to us and we’re upset. No stability. Everything changes. You know? And no matter how concrete and permanent and lasting it appears, it can change overnight.
Like, you know, the Berlin Wall and the, you know, the evil empire of the u you know, the USSR, you know, it it just it just disappeared. It fell apart. And it was this huge monstrous we were told this huge monstrous evil scary thing that was going to rule the world, and it was just a it was just a paper tiger. As what is it? Good old Percy Bysshe Shelley said.
What is it? I am Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Which was written when he saw this, you know, broken statue of a pharaoh. Because when the pharaoh had it created, he thought it would last forever And but, of course, everything falls apart.
Possibly. That’s the only one I remember. Did you study Jared Manley Hopkins? Did I study? It’s the question.
Oh, no. Okay. Let’s not get into that. Okay. Alright.
And then the what happened to Bill? Has he gone? Oh, okay. So then the the next suffering, the last of the six sufferings, we’ll finish these, is the suffering of being alone. So this is also inbuilt in Samsāra that we are well, in in many ways to look at this.
You know, we are born alone. We are we die alone. No one can share it with us. And it says in the middle, we are just alone, really. And although we as human beings are said to be social animals, you know, we like to have family and friends and find someone who is our, you know, our what?
Could. You know, the woman or man of our dreams, etcetera, that we’ll, you know, when we’ll live happily ever after. You know, the we human beings have that kind of mindset. But even so, even with the people we are closest to, they can’t totally know us or share our experience. We and why is this?
I mean, many, many reasons. But partly, it’s because partly, entirely, is because we have self grasping. We hold to this, you know, this this me, this sense of I. Ignorance creates the illusion of an inherently existing I. And because of that, there is always other separate, you know, I and other.
And on what what then makes it, you know, makes it worse is because of the self grasping ignorance, we have self-cherishing where me always comes first. When the self-cherishing thought is operating fortunately, it doesn’t operate twenty four seven, but pretty much it is, you know, open, you know, all days of the week for long hours. Yeah. So and when it’s operating, you know, me always comes first. Yeah.
Me. It’s always me. So because of that, you know, there’s always that sense of separation that we can’t bridge. So, I mean, there’s obvious loneliness when we don’t have friends and family and all get separated from them. But even when we have family and friends, this and that, still there can be the suffering of being alone.
And we have, you know, we the the modern world has created a very strange society where that kind of suffering is on the increase because, you know, we we don’t live a community life. You know, we live in big cities surrounded by more and more people than people ever did in the past, but we don’t know them, and we don’t we don’t interact with them. And maybe it’s maybe this is just because I’m an old fuddy duddy, but it may be getting worse because of all the modern communication of Facebook and iPhones and blah blah blah that there’s a lot of stuff going on between people. But is it, you know, is it really real communication? It looks it can look like it, but is it you know, are people really connecting with each other this way?
I don’t know. But the the the very profound meaning of this suffering of being alone is on top of all those other ones, the worst kind of suffering of being alone refers to the fact of not meeting the dharma. That when one doesn’t have the dharma, then one is alone with one’s suffering. There is no protection. One is completely, really, totally isolated.
But when you have the dharma, you have a friend. You have an unbetrayable friend who will never betray you. Right? The dharma is the the best and only real friend. And when we don’t have that, when we don’t have any understanding of what is going on, you know, then we are really, really alone.
So that’s a little bit on the six sufferings to reflect, which is your homework for the week. And now I just I I really I’m sorry. I mean, it really is good to have discussion, but I have I have to talk about this next topic, which is the three sufferings, but I only wanna talk about one because it’s the the one to for us as human beings, especially having met the dharma, to really think about because it’s very important. So the three sufferings are the suffering of suffering or what can also be called the suffering of pain, which is referring to obvious physical and mental suffering. What we normally think of as suffering, you know, someone hitting on your head, screaming at insults at at you and so on.
All of that is the suffering of suffering. Then there is the suffering of change, which is a much more subtle kind of suffering. And the most subtle kind of suffering of all is called compounded pervasive suffering. And just I’ll just talk about that briefly. I wanna talk about the suffering of change because that’s very important.
But the compounded pervasive suffering, which is said to be the most subtle kind, is basically — the easy way to understand what it’s referring to is simply having a body and mind that is produced and controlled by delusion and karma. So we have a human body, which is a good thing to have. It but it it is the so it’s the product of good karma, but it’s still just ordinary good karma in Samsāra. So this body, you know, grows old, gets sick, is subject to all sorts of suffering. And and our mind, the human mind, is the best one to have to practice Dharma, but this human mind is under the control of delusion and karma so we suffer.
And it’s called it’s called compounded pervasive, compounded because when the body suffers, the the the confusion of the mind just compounds that. The two the body and mind interact to just compound the suffering. Right? And while we have a body and mind produced by delusion and karma and under the control of delusion and karma, there is always the potential for suffering. Always.
So even no matter how happy we are, how healthy, successful, loved, rich, blah blah blah, we are still experiencing compounded pervasive suffering because there is always the potential to experience suffering. In the highest god realms where that rebirth state is supposed to go you know, last for eons, where where the mind is this is this in this inconceivably refined state. Even there, there is compounded pervasive suffering because those beings in that state or we’ve been in them don’t think of them as separate. You know, when we are in that realm, in that type of rebirth, we still experience compounded pervasive suffering because we still have delusion and karma, which will right, they’re not active in that state, but at any moment, they reactivate, and an obvious suffering comes again. So anyway, what I I wanna talk about a little bit because it’s really important to oh, yes.
Okay. Oh, pervasive in that in all it pervades all the realms of cyclic existence like in the chart. Actually, the chart shows you where where to locate the three kinds of sufferings. So the suffering of suffering occurs I think only in the if if I’m right, only in the desire realm. The suffering of change is in this desire realm and in some of the form realm and but above, I think, the third level of the form realm and above, there is no suffering of change.
But in all the realms, there is always compounded pervasive suffering. It pervades all cyclic existence. Yeah? But anyway, back to the second kind of suffering, which is called the suffering of change. So just in the teachings, it makes the point that any human being can, if they apply their mind, can understand the suffering of change.
Even animals understand sorry. The suffering of suffering. Even animals understand that. But certainly animals can’t understand the suffering of change and most human beings can’t and don’t even want to because the suffering of change refers to what we as ordinary beings label happiness. That all the happiness of cyclic existence including the bliss of the god realms is an example of the suffering of change.
So, you know, anyway, most of us can’t relate to the suffering of the god realms, but you what whatever sort of wonderful happiness you can think of that you have ever experienced in this life or you you can imagine experience because you’ve read about other people or seen them on movies or or seen some actual people appearing to have incredible happiness, all of that, all of it is comes under the category of the suffering of change. And there’s three ways to understand why what we see what why samsaric happiness is actually not happiness, but a subtle kind of suffering in the sense of being incomplete, imperfect, frustrating, unsatisfying, is that the obvious way to understand it, the simplest way, is that so for for example, whatever you think of whatever wonderful happiness you’ve experienced in this life. You just think of any example of it, and the point about it is it finished. It’s not happening now. And whatever happiness we’re experiencing now will finish.
Because the nature of samsaric happiness, unlike the bliss of nirvana when the mind is, you know, free, when it’s not oh, sorry. Wrong one. When the mind is when the mind is like that, you know anyway, no. When the mind’s like that, then it doesn’t have anything to disturb that ongoing happiness. It it it just goes on and on.
But when the mind’s like that, something always comes along to end our happiness, the pleasure, the joy, the peace, whatever it is. It just doesn’t last. It’s impermanent because all the types of happiness we experience have been have been produced by causes and conditions. So it doesn’t last. It usually depends on something out there.
And everything that we chase after for happiness is impermanent. And so an impermanent thing can’t be the basis of permanent happiness. And remember, what what do we really want deep down? We want happiness, all of us, deep down. I mean, happiness is a terrible word.
You know, it it doesn’t capture what we because most of when we happen to see seems to imply being jolly jolly and laughing and carrying on. But it’s really referring to a state where there’s great peace and calmness and clarity and and actually a lack of suffering because nirvana is is is the total absence, the the permanent everlasting total of absence of all suffering and its causes, which is not just a boring neutral state, but a blissful state because the mind is naturally blissful. Anyway, deep down, whether we know it or not, whether we’re conscious of it or not, we all have the wish for happiness. And we don’t want just short term happiness. We all want, whether we know it or not, perfect happiness.
And we want our perfect happiness to last forever. Because if you check, if it’s not perfect and it doesn’t last, it isn’t happiness. It’s because it doesn’t it won’t satisfy us. Now if it’s worth thinking, maybe I should’ve made made this one of the meditation topics. You can add that this to your list if you find yourself bored and run out of things to meditate on, is just check that if you imagine that just one day somehow your mind went incredibly blissful.
You just had this kind of absolutely ecstatic experience where everything was just utterly perfect in every way, and it went on and on and on. And then suddenly it stopped. That would be kind of unbearable. Everything after that, your life would be trying to get that state back, and every other ordinary pleasure wouldn’t be anything compared to what one lost. So perfect happiness that doesn’t last isn’t happiness.
So that’s what we want deep down, perfect lasting happiness. And nothing that we experience in Samsāra will ever be that and cannot be that, Cannot. The mind controlled by delusion and karma cannot give rise to perfect lasting happiness. Nothing one does in Samsāra. You know, someone very nicely put these here to make me happy, I presume, and they’re very nice.
But no matter how beautiful, no matter how nice it smells, no matter how nice it touch it touches, no matter how nice it tastes, you just can’t it nothing. You know, the samsaric mind cannot produce perfect, lasting happiness. Alright. So samsaric happiness is is the suffering of change because it doesn’t last. A more subtle way to understand this is to realize that why we label certain things as happiness and wonderful and highly desirable is because we don’t know any better.
You know, for us in this world, we can see people who are much healthier than us, so we have an idea of what really good health and being fit is. But we don’t see in this world people unbelievably happy, unfortunately, permanently, except when you meet someone like some of the great lamas. But even then, we look at them with deluded minds, and we don’t see their actual state and project all sorts of things. But, anyway, we don’t see people who have this pure joy. Yeah.
And so yeah. We just have a very, very limited idea of what happiness is. And so when we get that, we think, oh, that’s it. You know, in in the teachings, says when when one achieves Samādhi, which is still a worldly state, it’s a very important thing to achieve to be able to gain realizations on the path. But developing single pointed concentration itself is just a worldly accomplishment, a worldly state of mind.
But when one generates it, it says that you experience or when you generate calm abiding, you experience what is called physical ecstasy and mental bliss, something far greater than anything we can imagine. In the teachings, it points out that for ordinary people, the the the highest bliss that we get, we have for people who don’t meditate and blah blah blah is sexual orgasm. I don’t know what the world record for how long a sexual orgasm lasts is. Does it I don’t does anyone know? But it’s not that long, I don’t think.
Whereas when you develop calm abiding, that bliss can go on for weeks and months and years if you want it to. And that’s still a samsaric experience. And it’s still an example of the suffering of change because it doesn’t last forever. But compared to that, everything we experience is just nothing. And again, the bliss of the gods, terrific, but we have no idea of it.
And that’s still a samsaric experience. It’s it’s like compared to having your head hit with a sledgehammer three times, having your head hit with a hammer one time, that’s happiness Relative to having your head hit with a sledgehammer three times, just being hit with a hammer once, that feels that’s quite nice. That’s happiness. So that’s our kind of happiness, really. We just have no idea what our mind could actually experience.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
But then the the most subtle way of understanding the the suffering what we call happiness is the suffering of change is to realize that it is just suffering. So the way to realize that there’s just I always use the same boring example, which I heard. It’s not a boring example. If you’ve heard it many times, it could be a boring example. But it’s the first example I heard from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and I use it every you can you can rep give many, many other examples.
But, for example, imagine standing still for a long time. If if you ever tried this, which I I can recommend or don’t recommend, if you stand still for a long time, it starts to get really, really painful. It’s it becomes kind of unbearable. Like, you know, those soldiers in you know, standing and they faint and everything. So if you’re standing still for a long time, you start to you know, it becomes painful, which is the suffering of suffering.
So you sit down. And when you sit down, it’s pleasant. It feels good, which we can label a happiness. Of course, it’s not the highest happiness, but there appears to be the happiness or the pleasure of sitting down. Right?
Suffering of standing stopped, and then the happiness of sitting starts. But then if you check, you know, the longer you sit, you know, it becomes it starts to get uncomfortable and you have to move a little bit, rearrange yourself. So after some time, it seems that the suffering no. Sorry. The happiness of sitting has turned into the suffering of sitting.
So you stand up. And the suffering of sitting stops, and the suffering and and the happiness of standing starts. But after you’ve stood for some time, the happiness of standing stops and the suffering of standing starts. Right? That’s what appears to be happening.
But if you check, that is not what is actually happening. Because if we take the example of sitting down, if sitting down is the cause, the actual cause of the happiness of sitting. Right? Then according to the law of cause and effect, if some something is the cause of an effect, then if you maintain that cause, the same effect will arise. It has to.
Yeah? If hot water produces if heat produces hot water, if you continue the heat, you will continue to have hot water. Every time you put water on the heat, you will get hot water. And if you leave the hot the water on the heat, it will tend to get if you maintain the cause, the effect will possibly not only maintain, not possibly will maintain, it can even increase. So if if this sitting down is an actual cause of of genuine happiness of sitting, the longer you sit down, the happiness of sitting should at the very least continue without declining, and possibly it should increase.
But it doesn’t. It actually gets less and less and then seems to change into the suffering of sitting. Alright. For example, to go back the other way, if I hit my head with this, it hurts. It did hurt.
If I hit my head again with this thing, it hurts. If I hit my I’ll try another place because that did hurt. Yeah. Every because this hitting head with this is an actual cause of head hurting. And if one continues to hit head with hard object, head will continue to hurt, and actually hurting will increase, and I will die.
So I’m going to stop doing that. Yeah. Because that is real suffering. When we sit down and think this is the happiness of sitting, it isn’t real happiness at all. It is actually the suffering of sitting from the very beginning.
Because if something is something and the cause continues, suffering can’t turn happiness can’t turn into suffering, and suffering can’t turn into happiness. If you’re creating the cause of something that is actually creating that thing and you continue the cause, that effect can’t change into something else, especially the opposite. If you are actually creating the cause of happiness and you continue to create the cause of happiness, you will continue to get happiness. You cannot get suffering. So if you sit down and that there appears to be happiness, but after some time of sitting down there is suffering, it actually means there was never the happiness of sitting for one second.
It was just an illusion because what actually happens is that when we stand up, when there’s the suffering of standing, which is the suffering of obvious suffering of pain, when we sit down, what happens, what is going on, is that the mind, being gross, observes that the gross suffering of pain has stopped. That is what the the mind really notices, and the very subtle suffering of sitting, which has started immediately, is not noticeable. But with time, the mind forgets the suffering of standing and becomes aware of the suffering of sitting. And the longer you sit, you become more aware of it, and you call it suffering. And then you stand up.
And the suffering the gross suffering of sitting, you observe that stopping, and the subtle suffering of standing, you don’t notice, and it appears to be happiness compared to the sudden obvious stopping of the suffering of sitting. But as you continue to stand, you forget the suffering of sitting, and you now notice the suffering of standing. This is our life. Everything we do is just suffering. Don’t get too depressed.
Check it out, though. This is the most important thing for a dharma student. One of them, I think, one of the most important things to get. If we can really get that I’m spending my life chasing after the illusion of happiness, this is, you know, it’s kinda sad. Was more than sad.
Especially a precious human rebirth, not just any human rebirth. I have a precious human rebirth, which took me maybe millions of lifetimes to get, And now I’m chasing after the illusion of happiness with it. And how am I chasing after it? By creating negative karma. Getting all attached, craving, you know, getting angry because I can’t get it, jealous when other people have got it, proud when I seem to have succeeded.
It is totally insane what we are doing. It is a total suffering mess. When the possibility of genuine bliss is always in our mind, It’s always there and it will never go away. It will never go away. That is the very nature of our mind, is blissful.
So that’s what it really means when we talk about Samsāra is suffering. There isn’t any real happiness in Samsāra. Just the illusion. And sometimes there isn’t even that. There’s just obvious suffering.
So a cynic could say, or well then does that mean practicing Dharma as an ordinary person just that produces samsaric happiness? And the answer is yes. It is at our level still samsaric suffering samsaric happiness, which is a subtle kind of suffering, but it’s it’s better. It’s better than just pure samsaric suffering. And and what gives rise to it is virtuous actions, which will have good results in the future, not the the result of obvious suffering.
And that that the samsaric happiness that we get as ordinary people practicing the Dharma is is energizing us to practice the Dharma more so that we can eventually achieve what is peerless, everlasting happiness. Whereas chasing after the, you know, the the totally samsaric happiness, worldly happiness, that that will never become a path to to peace and contentment. So I think that’s all I’ve got to say tonight, and there’s no time to to to have a discussion group. I’m really sorry. Next week, we will have one.
You will have so many questions to discuss. But, anyways, there are one or two questions now, disagreements, something to get off your chest. No. Alright. Thank you very much.
Please remember to collect last week’s homework. There’s next week’s home there’s the marked homework from last week, and there’s the coming weeks homework to take, so please do that. Also, while I think of it, I’m not sure of the exact day, but I think within a few days, according to the the Tibetan lunar calendar, the the the what is it? The anyway, the holy month of Saga Dawa starts. So this is the month during which the Buddha was born, achieved enlightenment, and also passed away.
So the actual Saga Dawa day is twenty fifth of May, but I think the month the month in which that occurs starts in a couple of days, doesn’t it? Friday? Friday. So so this is so that that particular day that what is it? The twenty twenty fifth is considered like the super duper most holy day in the Buddhist calendar.
So we’re doing some various practices here at the center, which encourage people to come along and join in at least some of them or one of them. But also the whole month is that whole lunar month starting from about this Friday is considered a very special time when it’s really great, important to try to do more Dharma practice, to do virtuous actions, put more effort into avoiding negative actions. And so I would encourage people to be aware of that and try and do that if you feel more and more connection with the Buddhist path. And for example, among Tibetans, Tibetans tend to be, because they don’t have much choice in Tibet, to be meat eaters, but they also realize that they eat meat as Buddhist is not the the best thing. So a lot of Tibetans during Saga Dawa don’t eat meat.
This is something I would highly encourage meat eaters to try to avoid in this holy month, especially on the Saga Dawa day, but also, if not that, to try to reduce your intake during this month for the sake of all sentient beings. And just, you know, try and do some good stuff this month. I’m sure you do all the time but, you know, more effort, this sacred month because the merit increases some hundreds of thousands of times. The imprint is much more powerful during this holy month. Okay.
So if you’d like to join in, we’ll just do the dedication of the the positive imprints we’ve generated listening to this depressing information. So we can dedicate that may this merit help us realize the suffering nature of cyclic existence and therefore help us renounce all attachment to it so that our our mind can more and more wholeheartedly involve get involved in the practice of Dharma so that we can quickly achieve enlightenment for the sake of all kind mother sentient beings. 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 bodhimind not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline but increase forevermore.
Okay. So, for those people who find it’s meaningful and so on, we can finish with three prostrations