Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 102-minute second session of a foundational Buddhism course, Venerable Thubten Dondrub teaches on saṃsāra and nirvana, anchored in the First Noble Truth that cyclic existence is suffering in its very nature. He begins by establishing motivation—developing bodhicitta—then systematically explains what saṃsāra is: the five aggregates controlled by delusion and karma. He walks through the eight sufferings (birth, sickness, aging, death, separation from what we love, meeting what we dislike, not meeting what we want, and having an afflicted body-mind), then the six kinds of suffering, emphasizing the crucially subtle suffering of change—that what we label happiness is only pleasant relative to worse suffering, never absolutely good. He uses concrete examples: standing and sitting; favourite songs played continuously; acquiring wealth without satisfaction. He then addresses the Second Noble Truth, identifying ignorance and afflicted desire as the root causes, defines attachment and anger clearly, and outlines how to work with these delusions through recognition and antidotes. The teaching concludes with instructions on how to identify and weaken one’s own delusions through practice. Pitched at students new to Buddhist philosophy or in an introductory study group.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Samsāra and Nirvāṇa week 2.mp3
UUID: b0c88605-c615-462e-8398-6ba2a7fa0bf8
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Samsāra & Nirvāṇa (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2018 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 102.2 minutes
Words: ~12,086
Okay, so welcome everyone to our second class on saṃsāra nirvana. Often I spend quite a bit of time talking about the motivation because our motivation is really important, but I’ll try I’m not going to say much tonight because, as usual, I’m way behind in everything that I’m supposed to talk about in this course. So please, in order to make this time as beneficial as possible, It’s really important to try to generate a really good motivation for being here, but at least wanting to understand one’s own mind and so that one can subdue the negative aspects of it, awaken the positive ones, but particularly not just for this life but for future lives, but not just for future lives, not just to become free of suffering oneself, but recognising or hopefully developing some faith, understanding that one’s mind has this amazing potential within it, this Buddha nature or Buddha potential, then really wanting to realise the full potential of one’s mind, to become an enlightened being, an awakened being, a Buddha, so that one is in a position to be able to continuously and perfectly repay the kindness that one has received during beginningless saṃsāra from all sentient beings, all of whom have been our kind mothers countless times.
Even when not our mothers, they’ve been we’ve depended on them in every conceivable way. And the amazing thing is sentient beings do help us. They have helped us again and again, have been immensely kind to us, and yet sadly they’re all suffering in saṃsāra like ourselves. But at least if we are developing faith in the Buddha’s teachings then we are discovering the way to become free of saṃsāra and also to achieve enlightenment, whereas most beings have no understanding of their situation and because of this are in most cases just generally creating the causes for more suffering, more saṃsāra. So if you’d like to join in the traditional prayer that we say which is on top of page ten.
As we say this prayer we can visualise the Buddha in front of us as our, hopefully our source of refuge, inspiration and guidance and at the same time being motivated by to follow the Buddha’s teachings by thinking of all sentient beings surrounding us, starting with our mother of this life on our left, father on our right, the rest of our family and friends So our mother on our left, father on our right, and then as much as possible thinking of all other sentient beings and trying to have that sense that each of these beings, whether they’re human or animal or in all the different realms, The basic nature is that they are only kind but only suffering. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So then we can think the Buddha is pleased with our motivation and shows this by now coming to the crown of our head and then when directly above our crown the Buddha dissolves into light so that that blissful light and the golden light can then pour down into us, blessing our mind to be able to understand the teachings, put them into practice correctly, and so that we can eventually gain the unmistaken realisations that free us from saṃsāra and enable us to achieve not just the nirvana, which is liberation from suffering, but the great nirvana of enlightenment, omniscient state that is able to continuously benefit all beings.
Then just very briefly we can reinforce this positive state of mind by doing the nine round breathing exercise just to enable our mind become a little bit more calm, clear, concentrated so that we can use that mind to listen to and think about the Buddhist teachings tonight. Okay. Thank you. So our topic is saṃsāra nirvana. So what is saṃsāra?
Just to remind you, the definition is that saṃsāra is our five aggregates being created and under the control of delusion and karma. So the five aggregates also just for the Sanskrit word for aggregate is skandha, so this term is used a lot in the reading so it’s quite helpful to know that. So very specifically, saṃsāra is our mind of all the five aggregates, so the most important of course is the mind, so particularly saṃsāra is our mind under the control of delusion and karma. And so that is saṃsāra and saṃsāra the Buddha said in the very first teaching, the first noble truth is that cyclic existence is in its very nature suffering. So our mind actually is very pure in its nature, but it is obscured.
So if we get rid of that first layer of obscurations which is created by ignorance and all the other disturbing thoughts and the negative karmic imprints that come from following those disturbing thoughts, if we remove that layer of obscuration from our mind, which are called the obscurations to liberation, then we can achieve the state of nirvana, the state of peace, the state of that is completely free of suffering because all the causes of suffering have been removed. But then if we can remove the very subtle the most subtle level of obscurations from the mind, which still remain, which are called, naturally enough, the obscurations to omniscience. If we can remove them, we can then achieve the omniscient state of enlightenment. And that is the great nirvana which is able to spontaneously benefit all beings. And that potential of this great nirvana of enlightenment all sentient beings possess.
So the Mahāyāna teachings of the Buddha are encouraging us to get rid of not just that be satisfied with just getting rid of that first layer of obscurations for our own sake, but to get rid of that subtle level so that we can achieve the great nirvana. Right. So first noble truth is that cyclic existence is suffering. So this is a very depressing thought and many people would deny it because they would say, oh, my life is wonderful. You know, if this is saṃsāra, it’s Okay, I’m not so worried about that.’ But what we need to realise is that we are experiencing right now, most of us here, if not all of us, a pretty fortunate aspect of saṃsāra.
But just because what we’re experiencing now may not seem so terrible, it doesn’t mean it will always be like that. Because one of the features of our obscured mind is that we constantly grasp that things are permanent and lasting, but our situation that we’re experiencing right now is impermanent. It can change at any time. Oh, it is changing, and it may change in drastic ways at any time, we really don’t know. Also this life that we have is impermanent, it’s going to come to an end.
And there’s no guarantee that when after this life, when we die and our mind continues, there’s no guarantee that we will experience such a good aspect of saṃsāra. We could experience the sufferings of the lower realms as an animal, as a preta, as in the hell realms or something. But even if we manage to get reborn as a human being again, so many human beings experience such horrific lives that we wouldn’t want. So the Buddha emphasised the very suffering nature of cyclic existence, of saṃsāra, to try to waken us up because if we just go on the way we are, we will continue to create the causes of more suffering to remain in saṃsāra and the longer we remain in saṃsāra, it just seems logical that eventually we will create the causes, the suffering causes, the negative causes that lead us to experience the really horrific sufferings of cyclic existence. And once we get trapped in the lower realms, it’s extremely difficult to get out of them.
It is possible they’re not permanent states, but once they’re once one’s trapped in them, it’s extremely difficult to get out. So that’s bad news for us, but also it’s bad news for everyone because while we are suffering, we tend to cause suffering to others and we certainly can’t be of real benefit to them. And the whole, you know, the Mahāyāna teachings are constantly trying to show us from so many points of view that benefiting sentient beings is the best thing, the most meaningful thing that we can possibly do. The real way to achieve happiness for ourselves is to dedicate our lives to others. Anyway, yeah.
So we need to think about more and more this unpleasant situation, that ordinary existence, while the mind is controlled by delusion and karma, then we are subject to so many different kinds of suffering. So did everyone get this handout that was over there? Remember, it’s always good at the beginning of the class to check this table because so you can put in your homework, collect the new homework and also collect any handouts that may be given. Maybe just a couple of people can hand them out. So everyone’s got it?
Okay. So unfortunately I’m going to have to skip fortunately or unfortunately, it depends on your view I have to skip through the explanation of these very quickly to cover them all because there’s one in particular I really want to focus on. Firstly, mean, there are countless kinds of sufferings that we are subject to while we’re in cyclic existence, but Buddhist scholars and practitioners over the centuries have been very fond of of putting things into categories. Some people hate this idea of all these categories of things, but it’s just one way of helping us to be aware of things, to learn things. And so they talk about the eight kinds of suffering, the six kinds of suffering and the three kinds of suffering.
So let’s look just briefly at the eight types of suffering first. So I’ve separated those out into the first four, which are very obvious that as a human being and most sentient beings have to experience the suffering of birth. Mean, particularly I think in the Western world, I’m not sure in other cultures, but in the Western world, in Western cultures, I think there’s this idea that giving birth is a very joyful experience. From what I’ve seen of it. It looks kind of horrific, really scary and horrible.
But certainly the Buddha says that the experience of but here it’s particularly from the point of view of not the mother giving birth but the actual child. For the baby, it is a suffering experience. It can be suffering in the womb if we talk about just being born as a human. The foetus, the growing baby in the womb is subject to all kinds of suffering and can be affected by many physical things the mother does, even the mental state of the mother can affect the child and then there’s the actual coming out which can be quite traumatic and then there’s just this, according to the Buddha’s teachings, the suffering of being born into a suffering world. So then there’s also the suffering of sickness.
So the way to understand this, of course, is one can think, well, I’m not experiencing this suffering now, but the longer we live, you know, we may be very healthy now, but the longer we live, we can experience sickness. And, you know, everyone experiences it. And, you know, in any particular life, one may experience very little sickness or the sickness one experiences may be, you know, very minor sicknesses. But the way to think about this topic to motivate us to become free of suffering, which means to motivate us to put in the energy to get rid of the causes of suffering because if we skip just briefly to the second noble truth, the Buddha says the causes of suffering lie within our own mind, they are our disturbing thoughts and acting on them. It’s not external conditions but, you know, factors within our own mind that are the root cause of our suffering.
So it takes a lot of work to get you know, we can get rid of those causes of suffering, but it takes a lot of hard work and a long time to do so. So we have to be motivated and just thinking, I’m only subject to a little bit of suffering, therefore I can handle it, ‘ is not going to motivate us to get rid of these the actual causes. So what we have to realise is that if we remain in saṃsāra, which means could be forever, if we remain because saṃsāra is not just going to stop suddenly, it’ll only stop if we create the causes for it to stop. So if we don’t do that, saṃsāra will go on forever, which means that eventually we will experience every imaginable sickness in the very worst form. Not just once, but billions and billions of times.
We could have many lives where we have no sickness, but then remaining in endless saṃsāra we will experience Ebola where blood pours out your eyes and ears and every orifice and your organs virtually melt inside your body. And we will experience it not just one time but millions of lifetimes and every other inconceivable horrible disease, physical and mental. That’s what this teaching is saying, yeah. It’s not just, you know, having little problems every now and again, but this will happen over and over and over and over and over again. And same old age, we have a couple of young people here, But, yeah, when one is young, you know, one doesn’t think.
You look at older people and you think, that will never happen to me, yeah. But it is happening, you know, we all ageing. And as one does it, one doesn’t kind of really want to admit it or face it, but we are all subject to it. Of course, as you know, some people can grow old and very old with very few problems and difficulties and actually their older age may be the best part of their life. I’m not denying that, but again the point is, and that may happen for many lives, but in endless saṃsāra, there’s the time to experience all the sufferings of growing old.
And there’s lots of sufferings of growing old and getting very, very old that, you know, you lose whatever physical, pleasant features you have, your body becomes very weak, lots of pain in the body. One of the terrible features of growing old is the older you live it means you outlive your family and friends, they die before you. And so just as you’re getting more and more weaker and dependent on people, you lose your family and friends, the people most likely to take care of you nicely and you’re surrounded by strangers or you’re left all alone. Also, can especially, I suppose maybe this has always happened, but it seems the world is changing very, very quickly these days, and so one grows very old and leaves behind all the people you know, and you’re moving into a very different world that you don’t understand and are able to function very well in. This is very scary and not pleasant.
So we’re all subject to that. All of us will experience that. Not just once, but many, many, many, many times. And all, you know, you know, one’s senses weaken so you know, can’t see so well, hear so well, one loses the sense of taste, you know, things don’t taste as nice as before, one isn’t able to eat so much as before, so many sufferings like that. And because one has less control of one’s life, one’s body and situation, there’s a lot of fear and loneliness.
So these are some of the sufferings of growing old and we will all experience this. Even if we don’t experience it in this life, we will experience it in other lives, not just once, but thousands and millions and millions and millions of times. That’s what we have to reflect on. Every horrible thing you can see of people being sick, that will happen to me. All the sufferings of growing old, can think, that will happen to me.
All the horrible things you read about of people being born with all sorts of horrible deformities or various things happening to them when being born, ‘That will happen to me in saṃsāra, definitely. In one way, of course I know this sounds, what a really creepy sick way to think, yeah, but the whole point of the Buddhist teachings is, you know, the third noble truth is there is true cessation of suffering. Oh no, second noble truth is there is a true cause. What is the cause of suffering? It is ignorance, not knowing things.
Every kind of ignorance is a source of suffering. From the most simple, not knowing, to the most subtle, which is the ignorance about the true nature of our self and phenomena, that is the ultimate, final root source of all suffering. But every kind of not knowing or, you know, ignorance in the sense of simply not an absence of knowing but actually misknowing things causes problems and suffering. So not knowing the nature of our existence and denying it and living as though this is not going to happen to me, will never happen to me, that is suffering and will lead to suffering, more suffering. So the more we become aware of this, this is opening the possibility to become free of suffering.
And then of course there’s the suffering of death, that we’re all going to die, that this life is not going to last, we’re going to die, but we’re going to be reborn, we will have another life, another body, but that we’ll die again and be reborn again and then will die and then will die and will die and will die. And some deaths are okay, they’re not bad. Some could be quite nice and some are horrific and we will experience those in saṃsāra. We will definitely experience it if we don’t practice. We’ll have every kind of horrible death, you know, getting murdered and chopped up and run over and dying from every horrible kind of disease with a lot of fear and panic and this and that.
Sorry, but, you know, this is it. That’s the potential, that’s what, you know, life, you know, ordinary existence is in its very nature suffering. You know, one of the most common things that is said at funerals is that, oh, heshe died very peacefully. Because we all want to believe that, that we all will die peacefully. And of course some people do, but not always.
Not everyone dies peacefully. And of course we want to think, well I will die peacefully. I’ve got my Buddhist book, I’ve got my mala, know, I’ll die peacefully. But we have no idea what’s going to happen, what state we’ll be in when it actually happens. But even if we die peacefully this life, you know, it’s not sure it’ll happen in future, you know, we will have these bad There’s the potential for to have these bad deaths over and over and over again.
This is what we need to face, you know, to not ignore this. Ignoring it because it’s unpleasant is not, you know, not the way to deal with it. If the doctor says you’ve got cancer, you know, I think, oh, well, I’ll ignore it, then it’ll go away. It’s not a problem then if I don’t think about it. But that’s not very wise.
So these four are all sufferings that we as human beings, every human being is subject to again and again and again. There’s no escaping those four. But in addition to those, what we also experience is the separation from I mean, the suffering that comes from being separated from objects of attachment. So that happens throughout a life, you know, we get attached to things and people and situations, but then we get separated from them. Not always, but it does happen.
And certainly we die and get separated from everything we’re attached to. And this will happen over and over again. And the more attachment there is, the greater the suffering when we’re separated from them. And the very nature of saṃsāra is that we have afflicted desire attachment. So, and since things aren’t permanent, we get separated from them.
So that’s inbuilt into our existence that we’ll experience this suffering of being separated from the things we don’t want to be separated from. And then also, because we have anger and aversion, then there’s the suffering that comes from meeting what we don’t want to meet with. So that’s also inevitable. These are all inevitable sufferings from being in cyclic existence as a sentient being, especially a human being, that we experience that, the suffering of meeting people and things and situations that we don’t want to meet with. We are coming to, you know, we are meeting with global warming.
None of us wants to experience that, but it’s coming more and more. And it could get really, really bad. But that’s saṃsāra. We don’t want this, but we’re going to experience it. But because we have anger and aversion, we’ve created the cause, we’ve created many enemies.
Not just in this life, people who just enemies like very extreme form, but it can range from people who just have a minor dislike for us to people who really hate us. So we may not have many of those in this life, but we’ve existed from beginningless time, so we have these imprints, the karma ripens and we meet people who dislike us in future lives, who hate us in future lives. Again and again and again. And then because we have desire, we desire things but we haven’t created the cause to meet them, so there’s the suffering of not meeting things that we people, things, situations that we want to meet with. We try so hard to have a particular experience, but it just doesn’t happen, so we suffer.
And then there’s just the suffering of having a body. When it’s young and healthy, it’s okay, but this young healthy body can become unhealthy and definitely ages. And we have to separate from it over and over and over again. In the teachings it says something like, you know, If all the bones of our previous bodies could be piled up, you couldn’t fit them in this earth, on this earth. I’ve had so many bodies that we’ve separated from.
So believe it or not it is good to reflect on these things, to meditate on them. And again it’s not to get depressed and feel life is meaningless, I might as well commit suicide, it is actually to make one’s life meaningful by realising that I can overcome the causes of this. I don’t have to right now, if we remain in saṃsāra, we have to experience all these sufferings, but we ultimately, ultimately we don’t have to experience these sufferings, we can become free of them. And we all have the ability to follow the methods that will free us from from all of this. And also, although this subject at this point is taught from the point of view of motivating ourselves to look after ourselves to remove the causes of our own suffering by meditating on these things as well.
Another benefit is to realise that everyone else is subject to these, so it can help us generate compassion for others. Many people can look successful and happy, they can look rich and famous and good looking and blah blah blah and having all this success, but ultimately they also are subject to all of these sufferings. So many people think sort of compassion is only for poor, downtrodden people. They are the suffering ones, but the Buddhist teachings show that everyone is suffering, every sentient being is suffering because of delusion and karma, and because of that, the results of delusion and karma are these kinds of sufferings, these experiences over and over again. And none of the ordinary things that people do stop these sufferings.
They can actually make them worse. So then just very briefly, there are the six kinds of suffering. There’s the suffering of uncertainty, that because everything in saṃsāra is impermanent, but we don’t recognise that, we don’t want to know about it, we don’t think about it, we don’t analyse to check that everything appears permanent to me, but in reality it is not. But because of that, and so things change and we’re constantly surprised. Friends become enemies, you know, success turns into failure and so there’s the suffering of uncertainty, one is never really sure about things.
There is the suffering of dissatisfaction because our mind is always changing what pleases us one moment doesn’t please us the next and so on. But in the teachings it points out, but maybe you think this is too extreme, but when I first heard this I thought it was pretty amazing and is that if you think about it, or you can think about all the things you would like to happen in this life, you know, if only I could do this, if only I had that, if only I could be there, then I would be happy. If I had this job and if I was in this kind of relationship and I had this kind of car and this kind of house and, you know, I could go and visit this place or live in this place or if I look like this, if only my nose was a bit smaller, then I’d be happy, you know, all these things. Well the teaching says all of these things, and if only I was rich, only if I was a famous movie star, I’d be happy. But the teachings say we’ve experienced all of those things, not just once, but millions of times.
We’ve been the most famous person in the world millions of times. The most admired, loved person in the world billions of times. We’ve been kings and queens billions of times. The most richest person in the world trillions of times. And we’re still not happy, still not happy, Still dissatisfied.
Have I depressed you too much? Do you want to go home? I’m depressing myself. Oh, it’s awful. It keeps going, sorry.
But this is the truth, this is the truth. If the Buddhist teachings are true, if there is mind, it is formless, it’s existed, it’s always existed, it can’t cease, then we’ve had grillions of lifetimes, so there’s been time to do all of these things, to become rich and famous, to be incredibly beautiful and sexy and blah blah blah millions of times and yet look, we’re still dissatisfied. We could be a Buddha but we’re just this dissatisfied lump. Which is kind of sad, yeah. It’s suffering.
Then there’s the suffering of leaving the body again and again and again. We remain in saṃsāra, so we have one life, you know, depending on a certain amount of karma, the karma runs out, we die, another life, you know, so we leave the body again and again and again. So there’s the suffering of doing that, you know, we get attached, we may think, know, oh I wish my body was taller or shorter, this or that, know, so many things we’re dissatisfied with about our body, but nevertheless deep down we have an amazing attachment to it. We are incredibly attached to this body because also at a gross level of ignorance we identify me with the body. We think we are our body to a large extent.
And then we have to separate from it again and again. And also then there’s the suffering of being conceived again and again, having to go through the whole process again and again and again. To go through the Bardo state and then to be, even as a human being, to be born in a womb and get stuck there for nine or ten months. Yeah. And they have to come out, blood everywhere.
At least they don’t hit you on the bottom anymore. I don’t think they do that anymore. So then there’s what is said to be the suffering of rising and falling, which means, again, it’s all related to impermanence, that nothing is stable, you know, we can be successful for long periods of time and then that’s immediately followed by failure, we can become rich then suddenly become poor, we are liked and then disliked, famous and then infamous, powerful then weak, healthy then unhealthy. Everything is changing up and down all the time. You know, can, like, we can right now we’re in human realm which, from a point of view of practising the dharma, is the very best situation to be in.
We have possibly, most people here, what is called the precious human rebirth with all the conditions to develop faith in the dharma, to be able to practise it and so on. So this is like really the best kind of rebirth one can have. But we could then be reborn in the hell realms. Or one is in the highest god realms and one dies and then falls into the hell realms. This is the suffering of rising and falling.
Nothing is fixed in saṃsāra. It just goes around and around, up and down depending on our karma. Of course, if one practises, one can gain gradual control of this and that process gets weaker and weaker and one is able to control it more and more. But right now, we as ordinary beings, we can things can change dramatically within a life and from life to life. So, so much suffering and confusion.
Any questions, comments so far? So now there’s the three kinds of suffering. When do we stop? When do I stop? About half an hour at thirty five, yeah.
Okay, good, good. You’re still yeah, very quickly. So the three kinds of suffering. So one way of summarising all suffering is like there’s the suffering of pain, obvious pain, physical and mental. And then, so that’s covered in most of the eight types of suffering and the six kinds of suffering, so no need to go into that anymore, other than just to say this kind of obvious suffering of pain is something that it doesn’t even need to be a human being to recognise even animals can recognise the suffering of pain. But then, one of the most important types of suffering to understand is the suffering of change and this is much more difficult to understand and a lot of human beings just don’t want to accept this because what the Buddha calls the suffering of change is what we as ordinary human beings think of as happiness.
So this is what I’d like to talk about a little bit. So every kind of happiness that we’ve experienced You know, the simplest way to understand why what we think of as happiness is a type of suffering, not in the sense that it’s obvious pain, but suffering in the sense of being incomplete and unsatisfying and ultimately frustrating and so on, is that whatever experiences that we as human beings have that we think of as happiness or something along those lines, one can understand it as being this type of suffering or unsatisfactory is because it just doesn’t last. All the pleasures and good experiences we had when we were younger, they came to an end. And similarly, we may be in a very good situation right now, we think, but it can come to an end. And in the future we will have good experiences in this life, hopefully, but they will come to an end.
They just don’t last. Because also because most of our happiness arises depending on external things, because of our relationships with other people, our interaction with, you know, physical objects like food, motor cars, movies, sunsets, all those nice things that make us happy. All of these things themselves are impermanent. They arise depending on causes and conditions and are therefore impermanent. They change moment by moment.
So the happiness that arises from them, you know, because the thing itself isn’t permanent, it can’t produce lasting happiness. So this is kind of frustrating. And also our mind itself is changing all the time, so many things bubbling up in the mind. You know, we may be having a pleasant experience, even if the objects that caused that pleasant experience were permanent, because our mind changes and the subject all sorts of delusions, fears and worries and things, you know, that pleasure can something in our mind destroys it. I remember meeting a young man years and years ago who had done a retreat in America to develop Samādhi, which had been organised by a very famous great Tibetan lama.
And he was saying how at the very beginning of this retreat it had gone extremely well for him and he was developing all these good experiences and this kind of bliss going up and down his body and all these wonderful things that I was getting very jealous of. And he said, But just at one point during this retreat some doubt arose in his mind about the whole practice. And he said, Just everything collapsed from then. And when I met him he was he developed this meditating disease which is called ‘lung’ and like it was like his whole body was like vibrating, he was really like a nervous wreck. So what had changed, know, been having all these very peaceful blissful experiences and just one thought of doubt in his mind had destroyed it all.
So we do that all the time. In our relationships with people, we fall in love with people and then fall out of love and hate them. Thoughts in the mind appear, jealousies and doubts and all sorts of stuff and everything. That’s saṃsāra. So that’s a basic way to understand but at more subtle level, also it’s really about what we label happiness is just something completely rel well, one way to look at it, it is completely relative.
That according to the teachings, when one develops Samādhi or single pointed concentration, that experience generates a state of physical bliss and mental ecstasy, which is far greater than any kind of ordinary happiness that we have experienced. According to the Buddhist teachings, for an ordinary person the most blissful experience is the bliss of orgasm, sexual orgasm, which doesn’t last very long. I don’t know what the world record is for how long sexual orgasm lasts, but I don’t think it’s all that long. Whereas when one develops Samādhi, the bliss that arises in the mind and the body from that can last weeks and months and years if you sit in that state. Yeah.
Yeah. And that is considered from a Dharma point of view like a worldly experience. Then there’s the bliss that arises from doing much more advanced practices, especially in tantra. So we have no idea of what we’re actually capable of, so these very ordinary experiences we label as happiness. But some of you have heard this before, but at a deeper level what teachings are saying is that what we think of as happiness, which, you know, can then seem to turn into suffering because it, you know, the happiness stops or it seems to turn into suffering, actually that experience from the moment it starts was never what it appeared to be.
It just appeared to be happiness to our confused mind. So I’m just going to give the usual boring old example, I shouldn’t say, maybe it’s not boring because some of you have never heard of it, but anyway. So one of the examples that is always given, just a simple example to illustrate this, is that you take for example, and you can experiment, you can go home tonight and experiment with this yourself, you just stand up for some time, just stand still, yeah. And at first, you know, it’s just an ordinary okay experience. But let’s just say it’s a pleasant experience, you’re standing there happily and you stand and you stand and after some time one will discover it starts to get really unpleasant and painful.
Yeah? So you then sit down. Yeah? And so there seems to be the pleasure or the happiness, let’s just call it happiness to keep it consistent, there’s the suffering of standing and then we sit down because it’s been suffering and you sit down and then there is the happiness of sitting. And then you continue to sit and after some time you have to move, yeah, it gets a little bit achy and this and that.
So what started out to be the happiness of sitting becomes, seems to turn into the suffering of sitting. And so you stand up and the suffering of sitting stops and the happiness of standing starts or appears to. But then, so you’re standing here and it’s suffering and you sit and you sit and it’s happiness but after some time it seems to be suffering so to stop the suffering of sitting you stand up and then there’s the happiness of standing up but after some time that seems to turn into the suffering of standing. Right, okay, So, to understand this situation, one has to understand the law of cause and effect, which says that for there to be an effect, there has to be a cause. And the nature of the cause determines the nature of the effect, right?
So if the nature of the cause is painful, the effect has to be painful. If the nature of the cause is pleasant, then the nature of the effect has to be pleasant. That never ever ever changes in any situation. Right? So as I always do, unfortunately this is a small stick, if you hit your head, you know, it is painful, right?
This going on your head is, it hurts. And if you do it again, it hurts. And if you do it again, it hurts. It never stops being painful, because it is a valid cause of pain on the head, of hitting it with a hard object. Right?
It doesn’t turn into, if you keep hitting, it doesn’t turn into something pleasurable. It just actually gets worse to a point where you can’t take it anymore and you become unconscious or die. Right. But in this case, somehow it seems the suffering of sometimes standing is suffering, and here, first it was the suffering, the standing of happiness turned into the suffering of standing. But it’s just standing.
It’s the same cause as standing. So how can the one cause create two different effects? It’s impossible. And the same, firstly there was the happiness of sitting that seemed to turn into the suffering of sitting, but there was the one cause sitting. The same cause, so the same cause cannot produce two different effects.
So this means, this shows that what appeared to be the happiness of sitting and the happiness of standing was never happiness or pleasure at all in the very beginning. What actually happens is there’s the suffering of the obvious suffering of standing that we experience, which is in this category the suffering of pain. It’s the obvious suffering of stand pain of standing. And then when we sit, when we first sit down, what happens is that compared to the obvious suffering of sitting, the very subtle suffering of sitting appears to be, relative to the obvious suffering of pain, of standing, the very subtle suffering of sitting appears to be happiness. Relative to something much worse, it appears to be happiness.
But after some time, the obvious suffering of standing has been forgotten. And now this very subtle suffering of sitting becomes, as you continue the cause of sitting, the obvious it becomes more obviously suffering, painful. So then one stands up and relative to the obvious suffering of sitting, the subtle suffering of standing appears to be happiness, pleasurable. But the longer one stands, the obvious suffering of sitting has been forgotten and the suffering of standing becomes obvious. And that is our life.
Check up. Right, just just There are people my age who still listen to rock and roll records from forty, fifty years ago and love them. So you could say, well, that disproves. But I tell you, if, you know, if you take your favourite piece of music, which you may listen to quite regularly, whatever kind of music it is, But if you were to take this piece of music and then play it continuously, non stop, non stop, tell me what would happen. You may never want to hear that piece of music again in the future.
Take your favorite food. We like to eat our favourite food quite regularly, but if you only were able to eat that You know, people are having eaten something after four times, oh, I’m sick of that, I want something different. Yeah. I mean, many people eat the same food every day in poor countries, but It’s all just relative. So it’s just a subtle kind of everything we’re experiencing is just some kind of subtle suffering.
Or a more subtle kind of suffering than the obvious suffering of pain. And in our confusion, in our ignorance, we think this is happiness, we think this is all we can experience. But the Buddha is saying that this is just suffering, that we can experience something really sublime that goes on forever, forever. Which is not an illusion, which actually something deeply, completely satisfying and fulfilling. And that doesn’t depend on anything external, it is within the very nature of our mind.
And just very briefly, the final kind of suffering is the most subtle of all, which is called compounded pervasive suffering, which refers to just having a body and mind, the five aggregates controlled by delusion and karma. That we have a body that can do all sorts, know, can give rise to a lot of pleasure and happiness and this and that, but this body is also the place that gives rise to so much suffering when it goes wrong, which it does, inevitably. It grows old, it gets sick, it dies. Our mind can generate all sorts of wonderful thoughts and feelings and creative processes and whatever, but our mind is also controlled by disturbing thoughts. So even when, you know, we’re experiencing relatively good situations, relative happiness, etc, even in the highest god realms or whatever or wonderful experiences as a human being, because our mind is controlled by delusion and karma, there is always the potential within that situation to experience suffering, obvious suffering.
So that fact that we have the there is always the potential for suffering is the subtlest kind of suffering. Right? You know, someone can look really healthy and happy but they may have within them some disease that is killing them. They don’t even know it and they’re to die in three months or something. So is that a great situation to be in, that you look terrific, you feel happy, but actually there’s something in you that is killing you?
Is that a satisfying situation to be in? No. And that’s what we’re in. It’s very hard to accept, to see that, but this is what the Buddha appeared in this world to tell us. Most people don’t want to know because it sounds too depressing and whatever, but it would be depressing if there’s nothing we can do about it.
But the Buddha said there’s everything we can do about it, not only for ourselves but to help others as well. And while we remain in saṃsāra, you know, working, you know, following the Buddha’s teachings, working with our mind, trying to benefit others is, gives some real satisfaction, some real contentment, you know, and that yeah. And when we’re doing that, in a sense, we are no longer in saṃsāra or part of saṃsāra. You have a question. Yes, yes, that’s what I was trying to say.
Yeah, yeah, yes. I just took longer to do it, that’s all. Right, so that’s something about what saṃsāra is, and that’s us. saṃsāra is us, it’s not a place or something. When we talk about saṃsāra, it’s talking about us.
We have our own saṃsāra and we need to get free of that saṃsāra, to free the mind of being trapped. Second noble truth is what is trapping us, what is obscuring our mind. So basically it is this ignorance, mental factor that is obscuring our mind, that prevents us experiencing ourselves as we truly are, and it creates this illusion of a self, a truly existing self. The illusion that everything else truly inherently exists from its own side under its own power, and therefore there are truly inherently existing good things, bad things, beautiful things, ugly things. And because of that, and only because of that, we have all the delusions that we have desire for things that appear I don’t know why I always go over here.
I’ve got to start going The flowers are always on this side anyway. So this object appears to be not just pleasant, but truly inherently pleasant, beautiful from its own side under its own power. It’s out there completely separate from me and it’s this beautiful thing, really beautiful, from its own side, is generating its own intrinsic whammy zammy beauty, beautiful quality and therefore I want it. I want it. Because it’s also when we associate beautiful, nice, pleasant things with happiness.
This is happiness and it appears to be unchanging. It’s not changing at all, it doesn’t appear to be changing. There is some kind of permanent happiness. So we desire that. So we have this afflicted desire.
The nature of desire is that it is the object of desire is what is called a contaminated phenomena. A contaminated phenomena is actually everything in this, in our cyclic existence, in our samsaric existence, because everything in our Just very quickly. According to the theistic views, which most of us were probably brought up into, for example in Christianity, this world has been created by God for us. So it’s all okay. It’s all nice and pretty and just right for us.
This is not the Buddhist view. Then there’s the materialistic view that there’s just this kind of inanimate, impersonal, neutral stuff, you know, that exists. But the Buddhist view is, you know, this world hasn’t been created by a god, it just hasn’t come into existence. I don’t know what the materialist, you know, big bang view ultimately really is all about, but anyway, the Buddhist view is that the physical world is in some way, which I don’t really understand, but it is created by all of us. The whole universe is the creation of the minds of all sentient beings.
But our minds are samsaric minds. It’s these samsaric minds that created the physical universe. It has come into existence dependent on the samsaric minds of all sentient beings, the minds that are controlled by delusion and karma. So this physical world, this physical universe is a product of delusion and karma, so it’s contaminated. So although, you know, because it’s a contaminated phenomena, although this object here can give rise to some simple pleasure, right, or if you just take this, we all agree that this is a nice look.
Know, it’s been put here because someone thinks that this is it looks attractive and pleasant and desirable and whatever, and I agree it is. So if you take this just as an example of anything you think of as being attractive and beautiful, whatever, including, you know, human, not just inanimate things, but human beings and whatever. Where am I? Oh yeah, so when we contact, we come in contact with pleasant things, there can just be a simple enjoyable experience. But because it is a contaminated phenomena, it has the potential for us to generate desire and attachment and anger and aversion, Oh, beautiful thing belongs to you.
Oh, I don’t like you. That should be mine. You know, why have you got it? I don’t like you. I don’t like you because you’ve got that because I’d like that.
I should have that. Or you just, you know, it just generates afflicted desire and attachment. Unfortunately, we tend to get attached to nice things, people, nice situations. We don’t just let it. It’s very difficult just to simply enjoy something and let it go.
I mean it’s possible, but it’s pretty difficult in some cases. So the nature of afflicted desire, because desiring to practice the Dharma, desiring to be a good person, that is not afflicted desire. We don’t have the proper word in English, so that’s why I add ‘afflicted desire’. It’s a delusion, it’s a disturbing thought, because and the nature of afflicted desire is the object is always a contaminated phenomena, a conventionally conventionally pleasant contaminated phenomena, but what desire does, it exaggerates how good it is. And it makes me happy, therefore it must be good.
And what so one projects how important and wonderful this thing is, how desirable, how attractive it is. And therefore, you know, we crave it. We feel that we have to have it for our happiness and our well-being. And then if we get it, we get it, then what goes with afflicted desire, they’re slightly different but they always go together, is attachment, which in our language, you know, we often use in a positive sense, but here it’s used to translate a term which is disturbing because attachment then gets stuck to that object and feels, I cannot live without that. This is mine, I need it.
I have to have this for my happiness and well-being and blah blah blah. And of course what attachment involves is becoming, you know, we tend to think that by having, you know, surrounding ourselves with people and objects and money and this and that and reputation and power, this makes us more strong and powerful. But actually the nature of attachment is it makes us dependent. Something that we didn’t even know about before or didn’t have, didn’t even think we needed, we come in contact with it, desire it and get attached to it and become dependent on it. Again, I always give this example which is a very, very old example.
I remember reading years and years and years and years ago in some stupid magazine about some very third rate actor who was married to a very famous TV actress who was very popular at the time and he was getting divorced from her and he wanted, I think for alimony, he wanted something like, oh I don’t know, a hundred thousand dollars a month alimony because he couldn’t live on anything less, because he and his wife had been spending two hundred thousand a month to live, you know, just to grovel by, you know, struggle. Yeah. So he had to have a hundred thousand a month to live. Of course I think he was lying, but he was trying to give the argument that he was now dependent on a hundred thousand a month. And if you’ve read this very famous book by the which I can never remember the name of the author, is called The Bonfire of the Vanities by somebody, which is about, you know, like the eighties when everyone was going berserk making money on the stock exchange.
So it’s about this guy who’s a stock exchange owner who’d become very rich and he talks about but then he gets into trouble and loses all his money, but he says, When you own an apartment which has got a two million dollars entrance hall, how can you possibly live in one which has only got a million dollar entrance hall? And I mean, how could you? How could you? I couldn’t have to commit suicide. So and of course the nature of desire is we think desire and attachment is absolutely vital to our existence.
This is, you know, we need it to become happy because, you know, when we meet the object of desire there is some pleasure, but remember, what is that pleasure happiness? It’s actually the suffering of change. But apart from that where’s my point? Oh yes. But when we don’t meet the object of our desire, then we can experience the nature of desire, which is it disturbs the mind.
You know, and if you think, probably we’ve all had some experience in our life where we desire a person or a thing, especially it’s true with people, if one desires someone and there is no reciprocation at all, then lots of suffering. One can then feel how much, you know, anxiety and stress and fear there is when there is desire and one cannot, you know, come in, you know, meet one, the desire isn’t met. So that shows that what the actual nature of desire is. So it can never, if the Buddha’s teachings are true, it can never become the cause of happiness. But apart from all of that, if one looks from the Dharma point of view, well, is all from the point of view of Dharma, on top of that is that so much of our energy goes into desire and attachment for ordinary contaminated phenomena, it doesn’t give us time to practise dharma.
Because desire is telling us happiness is out there. It’s all out there. Might, know, Lama Yeshe? Lama Yeshe, used to say. Used to say, you know, the Samsarik supermarket, it’s all really shiny and dazzling and it’s all nicely lit up and it’s got the shopping trolleys and everything, it’s all so easy.
Yeah. And so all it’s telling us happiness is out there and we believe that’s when we’re controlled by a delusion of course we believe our delusions. We become our delusions. But the secret message of desire and attachment, which is even worse, is that desire and attachment, the obvious message of desire and attachment is that everything beautiful and good and and happiness is out there, but the secret message is there’s nothing good and beautiful and joyful in here, within me. And we believe that.
So we don’t take care of our mind. And when we look at our mind, looks like a disaster so we go shopping in the Samsaric supermarket. And because we keep shopping, we don’t take care of our mind. And therefore that means we have to shop even more. So it’s that’s saṃsāra.
Another way of looking at saṃsāra. I mean it’s a bit corny but it’s like this, I love to have the analogy of like a garden, if you don’t take care of the garden, know, it’s got all the weeds grow, but it’s got, this garden’s got all the seeds of every good thing in it but you go out the backyard and all you do is see is the weeds and you think, oh, it’s too much work. Just go to the supermarket and buy all your veggies and fruit and flowers there. But if one didn’t spend so much time shopping in the supermarket and dug up a few weeds, then you’d get a few veggies and flowers and fruit growing, which tastes much nicer, it’s much healthier. And there would be less need to go to the supermarket, time to look after the garden.
That’s what it’s all about. If we took care of our mind more, we wouldn’t need all this stuff out there. Really. Because the nature of desire and attachment is, in the teachings it says, it’s like drinking salt water. We follow a desire for something and you think, oh, you get the thing and the desire stops, but it doesn’t.
One has just created the habit to desire the same thing again or something bigger or better. So every time we follow desire, we create the cause for more desire, which means what are we creating the cause for? Discontent. Our desire doesn’t lead us to become content, it leads us to be discontent. On that unhappy note, I think we’ll stop for tonight.
Tea break. And discussion. I hope everyone knows which discussion group you’re in. There are two groups. So group one can meet tonight here and group two in the student lounge and you can change next week.
But please stay in the same group. And you can please collect your questions. You don’t have to discuss just those questions. Anything that comes up, please discuss, talk about, yeah. How long for group?
It’s now twenty five two, so ten two? Oh, let’s say five two. Five two, that’s about twenty minutes. Good. Just please.
One sugar. Any pressing questions? Everyone’s being polite again. Some challenging questions. Okay, all right.
So in this course, so the Second Noble Truth is that there is a true cause of suffering. So this particularly is referring to the root cause of ignorance, but this is a very complicated subject and it’s also a topic of one of the other Discovering Buddhism modules about the wisdom of emptiness. So we’ll leave that. So we’ll just look into a little bit about the delusions as the cause of suffering. So next week I’d like to try and talk a little bit about how we can deal with our delusions, how we can apply some antidotes to our delusions.
But in order to do that, firstly, we have to recognise our own delusions by meditating on them. So what helps is understanding what the definition of the different delusions is. So I hope I’ve explained what afflicted desire and attachment is. But just to quote from some different traditional definitions, it says one definition of attachment, desire attachment, is: It is the hankering after things ranging over the three levels of existence and its function is to produce frustrations. It regards something impure and contaminated as being worthwhile and attractive.
It over exaggerates its attractiveness and then proceeds to wish for and take a strong interest in it. As a contributing condition, it acts as a basis for the continued production of discontent. It’s also very hard to separate the mind from the object. Okay, so that’s afflicted desire attachment, yeah. So that’s the definition, this clever thing, the smart thing, or the tricky thing is to be able to identify one’s own afflicted desire and attachment when it arises.
Because if we can’t identify with it, can’t identify it, then we won’t be able to overcome it. And the trouble is, because our mind tends to be controlled by self-cherishing, we’re often not willing to recognise our delusions as delusions. We sort of see them as something else. But that’s what we have to try and do is to recognise, oh, this is you know, practise mindfulness of the delusions arising, being able to mindfulness recognise, oh, this, this is afflicted desire attachment’. And it’s only then can we then try to overcome it.
But if we can’t recognise it and admit it, One of the famous short teachings in the Kadampa tradition is the eight of mind training where it says, you know, something along the lines of recognising the delusions as my greatest enemy, I immediately face and avert it. You know, one has to face the delusion, in other words we have to be honest and recognise this is the delusion and be honest that this is the delusion. And then we have to try and avert it, not suppress it, but we have to reduce, deflate deflate the power, the energy of that delusion. And mainly the way with all of them is just simply understanding as much as possible having reflected strongly on how harmful the delusions are to myself and others now and in the future. So the main source of all our suffering ultimately is ignorance, you know, when we get rid of that all suffering ceases.
But because of ignorance we then have afflicted desire attachment and that is, apart from ignorance, our greatest enemy. We tend to think of, as ordinary people, we tend to think of afflicted desire and that we don’t think of it as afflicted, but we think of a desire and attachment as necessary for our happiness, but actually it’s the greatest problem. And although anger is much, seems to be a much worse delusion and very very powerful, it in fact is easier to overcome than attachment, afflicted desire and attachment. They say, you know, they give the analogy that getting rid, you know, subduing anger is like removing dirt from a, you know, like a piece of cloth, whereas getting, you know, subduing desire and attachment is like getting oil out of cloth. And that was in the good old days before they had all these nice fancy chemical products to do it.
So, and also, I’ve often said many times before in previous classes, this is something you can check up for yourself, because we have ignorance, we have there’s always the potential for afflicted desire and attachment to rise as soon as a contaminated, conventionally pleasant object arises. Of course, what one person thinks of as attractive and not attractive varies from person to person, time to time and this all depends to a large extent on our karmic imprints from past lives, what we’ve conditioned our mind to think of as pleasant and desirable, etcetera, etcetera. Although, you know, there are many things that we all generally accept as pleasant and desirable. But so because of ignorance there’s always for afflicted desire attachment, and because there is always the potential for afflicted desire and attachment, there’s always the potential for anger. Because anger, if you check, then this is worthwhile doing, is that underlying the arising of anger there is usually attachment to something, yeah, that we are attached to our opinions of ourself, of who we are, all sorts of opinions about our intelligence and our status and our significance and everything in the world and like our position, like in our job, you know, I have this status in the job and if people don’t accept that, you know, acknowledge that, then because of attachment to that we can get upset and so on.
Yeah, so we are attached to our self and our family and friends and our possessions and our political opinions and religious opinions and, you know, all sorts of things we’re attached to. And when they are interfered with, then anger arises because we use that anger to, you know, well, firstly, the mind can’t bear, you know, me and mine being attacked, you know. We cannot bear that, and that’s what anger is, it is the mind that cannot bear something and it, you know, it gets very agitated and explodes. And that gives us the energy to sort of push away things we don’t like. And that’s why often people think, you know, a certain amount of anger is really good because it helps us protect ourself and our loved ones, etc.
But the Buddha says the very nature of anger is it is a disturbing thought, it agitates the mind, it obscures the mind. Its very nature is painful, so the effect, not only now but especially in the future, can only be painful. The disturbing thought, if a particular thought is negative in its very nature, then it creates negative karmic imprints that can only bring suffering or the conditions for suffering. So one of the definitions in the Abhidharma, no Abhidharma, no, it is a vindictive attitude towards sentient beings, towards frustration and towards that which gives rise to one’s frustrations. So we get angry towards other sentient beings, towards the frustration itself, you know, we get frustrated by things, we can get frustrated by our own shortcomings, and this and that.
So we, you know, and also we get angry to the things that cause our frustrations, which of course is already mentioned them, is sentient beings, but the weather, anything can cause us to get frustrated. So, and that, whatever frustrates us, becomes the basis of anger. And also if one checks, and this is again worthwhile to do, as Lama Yeshe used to say, check up. Anger tends to arise most quickly, most easily, most strongly when the mind is discontented. You don’t get angry, one doesn’t get angry when one is happy, when there’s some basic of course it’s only worldly happiness, it’s just the suffering of pain, suffering of change I mean, but when the mind is basically content and peaceful, one doesn’t get angry.
Or is it harder to get angry when one’s in that state? But if the mind, there’s some fundamental basic discontent in the mind, right, which really comes from following desire or one’s desires being frustrated. If there is discontent, it is so much easier to get upset, to be, you know, I mean, when one’s discontented, one is frustrated and that’s the basis for anger. So in a sense oh, I’ve already covered next week’s topic. One of the most fundamental ways to deal with anger is to develop basic contentment in the mind.
And of course, how do we do that? Practising the Dharma, of course. Practicing the Dharma is the best way to develop contentment. Take looking after the mind. If we look after the mind, there is some basic contentment, some basic satisfaction, because one knows one is even if one’s not very good at it, one is trying to do the best thing, especially if one’s trying to do it with at least the effortful bodhicitta motivation, wanting to be able to benefit sentient beings in the future, then this is the most satisfying thing.
And that brings some contentment in the mind. Vasubandhu’s definition goes on to say, Its function, that is the function of anger, is to serve as a basis for fault finding and for never finding even a moment of happiness. So when we’re discontent and angry, frustrated, we find faults in everything. We find faults in ourselves, we find, but particularly in other people, yeah, and things, the government, the world, everything is bad, everything is terrible. And it’s always, you know, the problem is out there.
So because of ignorance, then there is So there are said to be six main delusions, which you have listed in your sheet there, which is where? So the six root delusions are ignorance, attachment and anger. So those first three also referred to as the three poisonous minds, they’re the three main ones, the three delusions that really poison our mind, the three main diseases of our mind are ignorance, attachment and anger, and then the other three are pride, afflictive doubt and afflictive views, of which there are six, no, five kinds of afflictive views, which I won’t go into, I mean, since this is just an introductory course, the afflictive views. But, yeah, just very briefly, afflicted doubt, There are three types of afflicted doubt. There is, you know, if something is true, at least from a Buddhist point of view, afflicted doubt can be thinking that what is true is probably not true.
Then there is the afflictive doubt, which is thinking that, you know, is really sort of fiftyfifty, it could be true, it could be wrong, it could be right. Hold it, what did I say the first one was? The first one, which is the worst kind of afflictive doubt, is thinking something is true is probably wrong, yeah. Then a little bit better kind of afflicted doubt is thinking it might be wrong but it could be right. And then the third kind of afflictive doubt, which is the best one to have, although it’s better not to have any afflictive doubt at all, is to think, it could be right.
I don’t really believe it, but it could be right. But this is a delusion because, and it’s one in many ways for Dharma practice it’s one of the worst because doubt holds us back from, you know, really engaging wholeheartedly with the practice because we’re not a hundred per cent sure. You know, we can have a doubt about ourselves, oh, the Buddha’s teachings are true, it’s all wonderful, blah blah blah, enlightenment is possible, but not me. Doubt that I could achieve it. Or one could doubt some aspect of the teachings, or it could happen in the past but not now, or, yeah, this part of the teaching is right but I don’t believe this part, I don’t really think this part’s true.
So while our mind has that, you know, there’s not the energy to practice. So then on the next page there’s a whole list of other secondary delusions which are all in a sense the result of the combination of the first three, you know, ignorance, either ignorance and attachment or ignorance and anger or attachment and anger, so you get all these others. So this is just an introductory course, so we’re just going to look mainly at attachment and anger and a bit about pride, how they can be overcome. But we’ll do that next week. What time are we?
It’s about time to finish, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Has everyone looked at their homework sheet for the coming week? Do they all have it?
You all have it? I don’t have a copy here with me, but are there any questions about that? Or last week, was everyone sort of clear what they were supposed to do more or less? Not too confusing? Yeah.
It’s okay? Good, great. So if you do have any problems with anything, as I think I mentioned somewhere in the first, please, you can always contact me, talk to me either like in the break times here, Maybe sometimes if I get here early, you can talk to me or in the tea break or a little bit afterwards, or you can contact the centre and we can meet to talk if you have some problems with the course or something. I’m happy to try and help out if I can. But please just don’t remain silent and quiet and being polite.
The whole idea is to ask some questions. I would like that you agree with everything, but if you don’t, it’s kind of fine, we can talk about it. Yes, okay. Thank you very much. So we can finish by dedicating the good energy that we’ve generated by being here tonight, thinking about the Buddha’s teachings.
So page ten is the dedication. So we dedicate that this good energy, the positive imprints from tonight, become a cause when those positive karmic seeds ripen, that they become a cause or condition for me to be able to practise the Dharma, follow the path to enlightenment and eventually achieve enlightenment for the sake of all kind suffering mother sentient beings. So 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.