Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 161-minute retreat teaching, Venerable Thubten Dondrub guides practitioners through a foundational meditation on the precious human rebirth and the eight worldly concerns. He opens by establishing motivation through bodhicitta and the refuge prayer, then walks through the eight freedoms—freedom from the lower realms, god realms, and birth in times when the Buddha’s teachings do not exist. He leads detailed meditations on the ten endowments, including the five personal endowments such as being born human, encountering the Dharma, and developing faith, and the five environmental endowments like living when a Buddha has appeared and having access to realized masters and dharma friends. Throughout, he emphasizes that recognizing these advantages is essential, because without that recognition we waste this rare opportunity on the eight worldly concerns—craving praise, possessions, happiness and fearing their loss. He stresses that saṃsāra is suffering, that our minds are naturally pure but obscured by delusion, and that only by taking care of the mind through Dharma practice can we achieve lasting happiness. The teaching is directed at practitioners who have some faith in Buddhism and access to a dharma center.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Eight WC's Retreat Day 2015 03 09 AM.mp3
UUID: ed2f9d99-bd69-46f6-8843-7e548702aabb
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Eight Worldly Concerns (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2015-03-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 161.1 minutes
Words: ~12,661
So welcome everyone to our little what is it? What day is it? Monday. Adelaide Cup. Adelaide Cup retreat on this very humid day.
So I’ve spent, what was it, seven weeks talking about the Eight worldly concerns, so some of you have attended that, so some people didn’t, so I’m not sure how much you know about the Eight worldly concerns in the whole context because this is a retreat. I’m gonna talk a little bit, but I will just now for a little while. I’ll try and keep it short. But firstly, we can begin with the just a motivational prayer on page two. Our topic is the eight worldly concerns.
So the eight worldly concerns are our greatest obstacle to engaging in the practice of Dharma, which is the most wonderful beneficial thing that we can do for ourselves and others, And particularly the Dharma that we’re encouraged to practice is the Dharma of not just seeking a good rebirth or seeking liberation from cyclic existence, the suffering of cyclic existence, but the Mahāyāna Dharma, which is about realising our full potential, achieving enlightenment so that we are in a position to be of vast, continuous, perfect benefit to every sentient being without exception. So what we’re encouraged to generate as a motivation for our practice is the bodhicitta thought, which is this mind seeking enlightenment, and that mind arises from having faith in the Buddha Dharma or in the Buddha, the Buddha’s teachings and the great practitioners because the more faith we have in the Triple Gem that leads us to have faith in our own Buddha potential. And then what motivates us to realize our Buddha potential is understanding, realizing more and more our connection with all sentient beings, that every sentient being has been our mother and has shown us incredible kindness, but also sentient beings, even when not my mother, have been my father, brother, sister, best friend, have helped me in every conceivable way in beginning with saṃsāra.
But the sad fact is all of these beings are in saṃsāra. They’re trapped in cyclic existence, subject to all the sufferings of saṃsāra, and most beings are experiencing these sufferings right now. So thinking like this, can generate the thought that I have to use this life, all my future lives, to achieve enlightenment so that I can be in a position to repay their kindness by helping every being without exception to become free of all suffering and to help them achieve peerless everlasting happiness, which is another word or term for enlightenment. So that’s the bodhicitta motivation, so we can try and generate that as strongly as we can right now, or at least some approximation of it, because the actual bodhicitta motivation is very difficult to generate, takes a long time. But anyway, to help us generate that thought, that motivation as much as we can, we try and visualise Śākyamūni Buddha in front of us as our source of refuge, inspiration and guidance, and at the same time try to have a sense of all kind suffering sentient beings surrounding us.
So particularly since it’s very difficult to honestly, actually be able to think of and visualise all sentient beings, at least we should try and have a strong sense of those people that we’re most strongly connected to in this life, so the mother of this life on our left, our father on our right, then the rest of our family, all our friends and helpers behind us, those who may have harmed us or who dislike us in front, and then as much as possible trying to think of all other sentient beings. And with that thought that no matter what, I must use this life or future lives to achieve enlightenment, so that depends on following. To achieve enlightenment, I have to follow the path and that first means I have to engage in the practice of Dharma. And to be really fully engaged in the practice of Dharma, what I have to give up are the eight worldly concerns. So for this reason, I will meditate on this topic today.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly. By my merit of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So then we can imagine the Buddha is very pleased with our motivation and shows this by now coming towards the crown of our head, and then we’re directly above our head. We imagine that the Buddha then dissolves into blissful golden light and that light pours down into us, blessing our mind. So then just for a very short time, we can do some breathing meditation, especially if you know how the eight, the nine round breathing exercise, just to let our mind become a little bit calmer, clearer, more concentrated.
Okay. Thank you. Okay. So just as a way of introduction to this topic, especially for people who may not have so much background in it. So the obvious reality is that here we are, all basically relatively healthy and happy, I hope, and we’re living in this beautiful city on what could have been a beautiful day, but anyway, Adelaide has very good weather and it’s Mad what is it?
Mad March where there is the Adelaide Cup and there’s what else is there? There’s the Fringe and there’s the Adelaide Festival and there’s something else. WOMAD, yes. All these wonderful entertaining things. So that’s the obvious reality of one aspect, but a deeper reality is that we’re living at a time where global warming is getting worse and worse and it’s going to become quite horrific.
There are all sorts of social problems and economic problems in the world. We have a problem of growing terrorism and all these horrible things coming, which we don’t really want to think about and deal with, but they’re there and they’re not going to go away, especially very quickly. But there is even a more gruesome reality sorry to start the day like this but this is the reality all that we are all in cyclic existence. We are all trapped in cyclic existence. That is the the actual reality that most of us have very little awareness awareness of most of the time and probably don’t want to be aware of it.
But we are, because our mind is under the control of ignorance, delusion and karma, we are in saṃsāra. That is saṃsāra. Samsāra is being controlled by ignorance, delusion and karma. And because of that, we grow old, sick and die, and when we die, we can be thrown into all sorts of uncontrollable well, we die uncontrollably, we take uncontrollable rebirth, and of course we could be reborn a human being again, but if you look around the world, there are so many kinds of horrible human rebirths that one could have in horrible places, in horrible situations, but there are rebirths which are very hard to imagine exist, but according to the Buddha, who doesn’t lie, who has an unobscured mind, There are these realms of greater suffering than the human realm. There’s one that we can see, which is the animal realm, which some people like to think is nice.
But my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, once said, I never heard him say this. I heard this soon after I met the Dharma, and so but I can imagine Rinpoche saying this. He said, if you could experience the life of a dog for one day, you would never sleep again, meaning it’d be so horrible, you couldn’t, you you would practice the Dharma like crazy all the time, you wouldn’t be able to sleep. So that’s the one other realm that we can see, but then there are the realms of hungry ghosts and then there are the hell realms of various kinds. There are also the god realms where there’s lots of fun happening and it lasts a long time, but it comes to an end and all the horrible sufferings start over and over.
So the vast majority of sentient beings are experiencing those sufferings right now, and we’ve experienced all of them before, but the important thing to be aware of to try and understand is although it may not feel like it, we have the potential to experience all of those sufferings again in the future, and we creating the potential for the cause for those experiences. Yeah, sorry to start the day with that. No, I’m not. That’s my job, I have to do that. That’s what we all have to tell ourselves, remind ourselves again and again, because living in a place like Adelaide, you know, it doesn’t look like Samsāra, but even in Adelaide, there’s all sorts of horrible things happening.
But Samsāra is not something out there anyway. It’s really our mind, our mind. So our experience of Adelaide, Australia, the world is quite good because we’re experiencing some good karma affecting our mind, but that good karma can change any moment. Even before we die, our karma can change for the worse. But then when we die, another whole set starts operating uncontrollably.
So that’s one thing. But the good thing we have to remember, we shouldn’t lose sight of, is that although we are trapped in saṃsāra, the nature of our mind is not saṃsāra. The nature of our mind is pure and perfect. We all have every sentient being, whether they’re in the lowest hell, the highest god realm, wherever they are, every sentient being has Buddha nature. So we have Buddha nature.
That Buddha nature never changes, can never be removed, it is the actual nature of our mind, so it cannot be changed in any way. But what can happen to it, and what has happened to it, is that it’s been obscured and we continue to obscure it. So in the lower realms, there’s not much we can do about our saṃsāra that’s obscuring our mind. In the god realms, we don’t see any need to because we seem to be having so much fun. There’s so much wonderful stuff going on.
It doesn’t feel like, it doesn’t seem like, it doesn’t look like we have an obscured mind because the mind is temporarily experiencing a lot of bliss and clarity and beauty, but those obscurations are still there. So the teachings are pointing out that it is really only when we are a human being, when we achieve a human rebirth, do we have the opportunity to work with our mind in a meaningful way, to free our mind of all its obscurations, and not just as any human being, because so many human beings, if we look at it, have so much suffering and confusion and difficulties, or on the other hand, their life is very comfortable and successful and blah, blah, blah, don’t see the need to work with their mind or don’t even believe that they have a mind. They’re just a brain. Anyway, so it’s really only when one has what is called the precious or perfect human rebirth, when one has the eight freedoms and the ten endowments that make up a perfect, precious human rebirth, does one have the optimum chance to work with our mind? And what we need to realise, what the Lamrim teachings that are preserved, especially in the Gelugpa tradition, a little advertisement here, in the Gelugpa tradition, which is what we try to follow here at Buddha House, the Gelugpa tradition established by the glorious Lama Tsongkhapa, it’s only when we have a precious human rebirth do we have that optimum chance to work with our mind.
And most of us here, if not all of us, probably all of us, have this precious human rebirth. We have all or most of the Eight Freedoms and the Ten Endowments. But what we have to do is, as the teachings say, it’s not enough just to have these eight freedoms and ten endowments. One has to recognise that one has got them, and one has to recognise the meaning of having these eight freedoms and ten endowments. Because even if you’ve got something but you don’t recognise what it is and we don’t recognise its value, we won’t use it, we will waste it, we’ll ignore it, and then we’ve lost the opportunity.
So with ordinary things, if we don’t recognise what they are and their value, that’s some loss, but it can’t compare to the tragedy of not recognising having a precious human rebirth and not recognising its meaning, what one can do with it, because what we can do with a precious human rebirth is the most amazing thing of all. We can become free of suffering, and more than that, we can achieve peerless, everlasting happiness for ourself, and more amazing than that is that we can help everyone become free of suffering and achieve peerless, everlasting happiness. That sounds just I mean, that’s the best sales pitch of all. There’s nothing better than that. Absolutely nothing.
Nothing can compare to that. You know? Many people would like to win lotteries, but we’ve won the best lottery of all, and we don’t understand it. We’ve won it. We’ve got it, but we don’t recognize it.
Or we’ve you know, we have recognized it, and then we forget what it means. And why is this, what is the problem, what gets in the way of that is what are called the eight worldly concerns or the actual traditional term, I don’t know the actual Tibetan term, Eight worldly dharmas. Don’t know the Tibetan word, but what it literally says is the eight worldly dharmas because instead of being concerned with the holy Dharma, the Buddha Dharma, we are concerned with eight worldly dharmas, because Dharma just means the stuff, things, phenomena. Instead of being concerned with the most important phenomena of all, the Dharma, we’re concerned with eight very worldly things. And that takes up, that’s what eats up our life.
It uses up this precious human rebirth, which is so immensely difficult to get and so rare and so meaningful. This is why in the little course I did on the worldly concerns, I spent quite a bit of time talking about the precious human rebirth, because if we don’t recognise that, then won’t really if we don’t see how precious and meaningful our life is, we won’t really understand how bad the eight worldly concerns are and how we have to overcome them. So that’s why we are going to spend some time meditating on the precious human rebirth in this course, this little one day course. See, it’s great. We could have been concerned with the world, the concern of the national what is it called?
No, the Adelaide Cup, which many people are, but you’re here, so that’s terrific. So that’s a great start. Yeah. So we need to recognise more strongly that we have a precious human rebirth, how meaningful it is, how meaningful it is for ourself and others, and then we will realise how crazy it is, what a disaster it is to be caught up in the eight worldly concerns, to spend our life doing those things or paying so much attention to those things. So just to remind you, and I’ll remind myself, what are the eight worldly concerns?
So the eight worldly concerns are really all reflections of our self-cherishing thought. So the self-cherishing thought is, we have this natural wish for happiness and that deep down, whether we’re conscious of it or not, what we really want is a happiness or state of experience or mind which is completely free of suffering and is complete, pure, perfect and everlasting, because a happiness that isn’t lasting isn’t happiness. It’s not satisfying, it’s not complete. If you have a choice between everlasting happiness and momentary happiness, which would you take? Who would choose momentary happiness, temporary happiness, even if the temporary happiness was for quite a long time?
Who would choose that if there was the real opportunity for lasting happiness? And the Buddha is telling us there is this opportunity for lasting happiness. It exists as the very nature of our mind. That potential for lasting, perfect lasting happiness exists indestructibly in our mind all the time. So why choose this temporary stuff?
It’s crazy. And yet that’s what we tend to do because, so that’s what we want, I think I’ve lost my point. Unfortunately, I just remembered. So there is this natural wish for perfect lasting happiness, but due to the confusion of our mind, due to our ignorance and the delusions, that gets twisted by our self-cherishing into just chasing after something illusory, momentary, believing it’s the real thing. Yeah.
And much of our what we label happiness, if one really looks at it, is just distraction. It is just entertainment. We’re just trying to distract our mind, entertain our mind, because underlying that is always some feeling of dissatisfaction, of discontent, discomfort, and instead of dealing with that, which seems very scary and frightening and complicated and difficult and maybe hard work and take a long time, it’s always easier to distract the mind, to entertain the mind, to believe this is happiness. And we are so habituated with that, that’s what we do. We follow the easy happy now mentality.
And that’s our self-cherishing, and that causes us to engage in every kind of negative action, sooner or later. All the ten non virtues are all motivated by self-cherishing. And the way that our gross self-cherishing manifests is the eight worldly concerns of craving happiness. We crave it, but that happiness we crave isn’t, so that this conscious craving happiness is not craving this pure, lasting one, it’s just craving the worldly version. We understand that, that it’s just worldly happiness.
We think it’s the real thing, and yet we crave that, and because of that, we fear suffering. We don’t fear the causes of suffering, just suffering. And because we crave happiness, we are willing to crave the causes of suffering, not understanding we’re creating the causes of suffering, but that’s what we’re doing, because we crave this instant distraction, this instant entertainment, this instant happiness, and the more we crave that, the more we seek happiness. We are willing to do anything meaning what is in fact engaging in negative actions, to be happy, to have instant, easy happiness and to quickly be free of suffering. So those are the two main worldly concerns.
All the other six are just branches of those, really, the craving for getting things, getting stuff, because we associate that with happiness. If I have this stuff, money, possessions, clothes, cars, yachts, holiday islands, this and that, then I’ll be happy. And the more we crave that, you know, we fear not getting stuff or losing it, and also we crave having a good reputation, being liked and acceptable, and the more we crave that, the more we fear not being liked, not having a bad reputation, not being accepted. And also what goes with that is the craving for praise, you know, hearing nice things about ourselves, and the more we crave that, we fear the opposite. Not hearing nice things about ourselves, being criticised and so on.
So these are the worldly concerns and they eat up our life because we spend a lot of time thinking about them, worrying about them, and then actually doing stuff to get the one and avoid the other. And even if those things work, what do we end up with? The most we get is some worldly happiness. That’s it. And how did we get it?
We bought that it’s a bit more complicated than this, but anyway, what we’ve actually done is we’ve bought that worldly happiness by engaging in negative actions. And what could we have been doing all this time? We could have been concerned with the Buddhadharma. We could have been concerned about our mind, what our mind is doing because There’s never enough time. Anyway, one thing to really understand well, you know, the core teaching of the Buddha is about emptiness, so I’ll talk about emptiness in five minutes.
Right, the most difficult subject. Our self-cherishing is not cherishing the I, the person we actually are, the merely labelled, dependently arising I that does nominally exist, our self-cherishing is trying to cherish a sense of I which is just an illusion, which doesn’t exist at all. It only exists as a fantasy, as an illusion. So the I that does exist, the nominally existing, merely labelled, dependently arising I, is an I, a me, a person that arises depending on the body and depending on the mind. It is not the body, it’s not the mind, it’s not both, it’s what arises depending on them.
It’s not them, it’s not separate from the body and mind, but it’s not the same as the body and mind. It’s what arises depending on the body and mind, and particularly, it’s what depends on the mind. This is the mind. So when the mind is like that, and the mind is like that because it’s under the control of delusion and karma and ignorance, then the I that does nominally, merely labelledly, dependently arising exist, that I is suffering. That mind is suffering, is unhappy, so there is no way I can be happy when the mind is confused and suffering, because the I, although it’s not the mind, is totally dependent on the mind.
So our mind is like that. We came into the world, even as a little baby, our mind was kind of like that. Maybe it was asleep a bit, maybe it was a little bit like that, but it still had the potential for all of that, and when we came out of the womb, it definitely went like that, and it stayed like that pretty much ever since, just personally speaking. Now, what am I trying to say? Yeah.
But the mind could be like that. So what’s doing that is our eight worldly concerns, yeah. But we could be concerned about the dharma, which is being concerned about our mind. And if we were concerned about our mind and took care of our mind, our mind will become like that. So that represents the happy mind, the peaceful, calm, unconfused, undistracted, pure, peaceful, contented, blissful mind.
And guess what? When the mind is like that, I am like that because I’m not separate from my mind. So the only way the only way I can be happy some people like to think there’s no doctrines in Buddhism. It’s just a free for all, but I’m sorry, it’s not like that. The Buddha is saying, if you want to be happy, the only way, there is only one way to be happy, and that is to take care of your mind.
There’s no other way. There’s absolutely, and I have no qualms about saying that, sounding like I’m some nasty little dogmatic creep, but that’s what the Buddha is saying. There is no way to be happy other than taking care of your mind and taking care of your mind properly. Not taking care of your mind by popping pills or getting drunk or, you know, something, really taking care of the mind, which means firstly subduing the disturbing thoughts and then getting rid of them, and getting rid of them by destroying ignorance and cultivating at the same time one’s positive potentials, and there is an actual way to do that, and the Buddha has taught it, all of it. That’s what we should be concerned about.
But our eight worldly concerns are saying, Oh, do this. It’s much easier. It’s quicker. And we believe it because we’ve been following them since beginningless time. We have the habit of them.
So it’s a disaster. So this is why we have to firstly recognize we have this amazing opportunity to take care of our mind right now. This the rare, precious human rebirth, the optimum chance to take care of our mind. So this is what we should do. So that’s why we’re going to start meditating on that right now.
I’ll stop talking. Firstly, there’s probably not enough time to do all of this, but we’ll try and look a little bit at the eight freedoms to try and recognise how we have the eight freedoms. So these freedoms are the freedoms of the great We need to recognise that we have these eight freedoms, which are the freedoms we are being free of the greatest obstacles to practising the dharma, of taking care of our mind so that we can achieve happiness. That’s what we need to recognise. Of course we have problems and difficulties, everyone has, but we need to recognise that we are free of the major obstacles to practising the dharma.
There’s no one who started practising the dharma without problems and difficulties. Just being human, one has problems and difficulties. But we need to recognise so that’s not an excuse. We have to recognise that we’re free of the main ones, the big obstacles. So that’s what we’re going to do now, just briefly.
Okay. So please sit comfortably in the correct posture as much as possible. Especially paying attention to your spine, trying to keep it really straight and your upper body position so that you’re not leaning forwards or backwards or to either side. If you’re sitting in a chair, try not to lean against the back of the chair, but hold your back upright. Have your right hand resting on the left, the thumbs lightly touching, your hands resting in your lap close to your body, but so your elbows and upper arms are just a little bit away from the sides of your body.
And you position your head so that it’s not tilted down or lifted too high. Relax your jaw. Have your mouth lightly closed, tip of your tongue resting at the back of the top row of teeth at the palate. It’s best to meditate with your eyes a little bit open, just very slightly, directing your gaze a short distance down in front of you, but not actively looking. And then just briefly check your posture by moving your awareness from the crown of your head down through your body just for a short time.
So then reaffirm one’s good motivation for doing this practice, trying to have the bodhicitta thought, and it can be helpful to imagine that the Buddha is appearing above the crown of your head during the meditation session, creating a protective environment in which to meditate and constantly blessing your mind. You don’t have to actively visualize the Buddha while you’re meditating, but just have a sense that the Buddha is there. So then reflect in order to stop wasting this precious life so that I can begin to make it as meaningful for myself and others, then firstly, I need to recognize the meaning of this life. So try and recognize as strongly, as clearly as possible how incredibly fortunate one is not to have been reborn in any of the three lower realms. I could have been reborn, trapped in an animal body as some kind of hungry ghost, even in one of the hell realms.
So try to imagine if you can what that suffering would be like. If you find it difficult to believe in those realms or that oneself could have been born there, think of human equivalents of so many human beings’ lives are like being in the animal realm. There are those so many human beings born to only experience hunger and thirst for all their short lives. And sadly, so many human beings have lives that are like hell due to violent wars, political repression, being under the control of drugs and addictions, of having severe mental disturbance, being subject to domestic violence, their life is like hell. So I could have been reborn in any of those situations.
Try and imagine that suffering. Honestly, could I practice the Dharma in that kind of situation? Just try and see how incredibly difficult it would be, and then realise right now, whatever problems I have, it’s nothing compared to that. I have so much freedom. The rare freedom to take care of my mind.
Recognize that. Rejoice in it. Also try to see how fortunate it is not to have been reborn in the god realms or the human equivalent of them. It seems like it would be good to have such a rebirth, but if one investigates the beings who take those rebirths just waste their life just simply indulging in pleasure with no other awareness than that, just absorbed in their own pleasure, completely convinced it will go on forever. No need to do anything else.
But then all of a sudden it comes to an end. So try and see how difficult again it would be to practice the Dharma when the mind is so distracted by pleasure, believing it’s permanent. And that actually, I am very fortunate to be free right now of that kind of life. Gives me so much space, so much freedom to do something really meaningful for myself and others. I’ve had so many rebirths, but so few where that freedom existed.
So then think, even in this human world, I could have been born in so many places on this earth where there is so much violence and brutality and lawlessness. There is so much crime, so little idea of practicing compassion, where religion of any kind hardly exists has been stamped out. So try and imagine the suffering that human beings experience right now in those places. Try to see how incredibly difficult it would be to practice the Dharma of any kind, to develop any kind of altruism, kindness, and always surrounded by so much violence, brutality, and self-cherishing. And then think right now, I’m completely free of that kind of experience.
So that freedom is so rare. It’s that rare freedom to really take care of my mind, to awake, to let go of all the negative tendencies, to awaken all the positive ones. Or imagine being born, one could have taken rebirth in this world as a human being, but being born very seriously physically or mentally handicapped, just being born blind or deaf. So so much suffering involved with those kinds of rebirths, but especially think how difficult it would be to understand and practice the Dharma with that kind any with that kind of rebirth. And recognize what an amazing freedom I have right now because I don’t have that rebirth.
It’s a freedom I just take for granted, but many human beings don’t have it. So finally consider how one could have been reborn as a human being who may have escaped all those other sufferings that human beings are subject to, but one could have been born as someone who has completely wrong views, who has no belief in future lives, no belief in the possibility of the law of cause and effect, no belief even in the existence of the mind. So when the suffering comes to such a person, there’s no meaning to it whatsoever. Life can be ultimately meaningless. In holding such cynical wrong views, one has cut oneself off from all possibility of future happiness.
I could have been born with that kind of attitude, but I wasn’t. So it gives me so much freedom to change, to escape suffering. So how can I waste that freedom? So bring the meditation to a conclusion by making a strong determination to be more and more mindful in daily life, especially from the moment one wakes up in the morning, that one has a precious human rebirth. One has so much freedom to take care of the mind, to be aware that one has a mind, to be aware of what the mind does, its potential for happiness and suffering.
I have so much freedom to take care of my mind, to cultivate it, to develop it. So I can’t waste this freedom following the eight worldly concerns. I’m going to use today, the rest of my life, being concerned to practice Dharma. So then recall the Buddha on the crown of one’s head, imagining the Buddha very pleased, and the Buddha shows this by now dissolving into blissful golden light that pours down into you, blessing your mind to be able to gain a deep, authentic, unchanging realization of all the freedom one has because of having a precious human rebirth. Through the merits of his 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 body mind, not yet born, arise and grow. May that born have no decline but increase forevermore. Okay. Thank you. We have a twenty five minute break until half past ten.
Okay. Does it just press pause? Oh, yeah. Now it’s working. Yeah.
So we’ll continue meditating on the precious human rebirth. So we’ve looked a little bit at the eight freedoms. So these are the freedoms from the greatest obstacles to turning our mind to the practice of Dharma. So now we look at what are called the ten endowments or encouraging factors that make it as easy as possible to engage our mind with the Dharma. There are what are called the five personal endowments.
So this is what we’ll look at first, then we’ll take a short break and then we’ll look at what are called the five environmental factors. So again, if you have your little prayer book open and firstly we start just sitting comfortably in the correct posture as much as possible, and then checking our posture just briefly. So then again, visualizing Śākyamūni Buddha on the crown of one’s head and thinking all sentient beings are surrounding oneself, trying to have that strong awareness of how all these beings are only kind but sadly only suffering, generate that bodhicitta motivation. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the Supreme Assembly. By my merit of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings.
So then just spend a little time doing the nine round breathing exercise if you know how. Otherwise, just some basic breathing meditation just to let the mind become calm and clear. So then generate that thought that in order to not waste this incredible opportunity, I need to recognize more and more strongly the incredible opportunity I have. Not only have I these eight freedoms from the greatest obstacles to practicing Dharma, but I need to recognize that in addition, I have all these encouraging factors, which are extremely rare to have in time and space. So just reflect that the first of these personally encouraging factors or endowments is just simply being born as a human being.
So with this human body, I can do so much and especially with this human level of consciousness, I’m able to understand the Dharma and practice it. And especially with, it’s only with the human body that I’m in a position to be able to practice the most advanced special teachings of the Buddha, the tantric teachings that enable me to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible. And try and get a sense that just having a human rebirth itself, any human rebirth, is incredibly rare. Although we see that there are billions of human beings on this earth compared to the number of sentient beings in existence, just to be born human at all is incredibly rare. So I’m so fortunate to have taken a human rebirth.
But then consider, reflect that even if in beginningless Samsāra, even if I have had many human rebirths before, just consider that in all or most of those previous human rebirths I’ve had, I was never born in a place where the dharma existed. Countless human rebirths I’ve had, but never in a place where the Dharma existed. But this one time, in this particular human rebirth now, this one time, I have been born on this earth as a human being in a place where I’ve come in contact with the Buddhadharma. So that is really amazing. Millions, if not billions of people, human beings on this earth, will never even hear the word Buddha their entire life.
But I have not only heard the word, I have met the teachings. So how amazing. Just think what an incredible opportunity that gives me. I’ve met the teachings that explain the mind, that explain its potential for suffering and happiness, that show the methods to overcome suffering and achieve peerless, everlasting happiness. I have met this one time the rarest teachings, the most precious teachings in the universe.
How can I waste this on the eight worldly concerns? You just take the example, just as an analogy, Buddha house itself, where the Buddha’s teachings exist. Many people in the city, most people in the city, don’t even know of its existence at all. And yet some people do know of its existence but have no interest. There are people who sit outside on chair outside of Buddha’s house every day attending things elsewhere in the building or waiting to attend things elsewhere in this building, but they never even put a foot in Buddha house to even look what is happening here.
So countless lives might it’s been like that for me. But this one time, I’ve actually contacted the Buddhadharma. This one time. I’ve not just know about it. I’ve actually come in contact with it.
So then reflect that maybe it’s possible in beginningless Samsāra that I have had many human rebirths, and in fact, maybe many times I’ve been reborn human in a place where the dharma existed. But in all those previous rebirths, I was born either without a healthy body or a healthy mind. But this one time, I have met the Dharma as a human being and I have a healthy body and mind that enables me to practice it. So think how amazing it is that those three factors have come together in one life. Because this is not an accident that these three have come together.
This all depends on karma, on creating the causes. So it’s just amazing. So then consider and reflect that maybe it’s possible that in beginningless saṃsāra, I have been born a human being many times where I met the dharma and had a basically healthy body and mind. But in all those previous lives, where all those three factors came together, unfortunately, I ruined it by engaging, creating one of the extreme negative actions of killing my father or mother, wounding a Buddha, killing an arhat, or creating a schism in the Sangha. These actions are so negative that the mind becomes so obscured as a result in this life that unless one engages in intense purification and so on, it’s impossible to gain any benefit from practicing the Dharma.
But this but this time, in this human life, this one time, I haven’t engaged in any of those actions. So in this one life, all these four factors have come together. So that is really amazing. I am so fortunate. So then consider, reflect that maybe it’s possible that in beginningless saṃsāra, I have been born a human many times where I met the dharma, had a basically healthy body and mind, and hadn’t created any of the five extreme negative actions.
But in all those previous rebirths where I had all those four factors together, although I met the Dharma, I never developed any faith in it. But this one time, in this particular human rebirth, this one time, I have developed faith in the Buddha Dharma. So this is truly miraculous because by having some faith in the Dharma, this opens up the greatest possibilities for freedom from suffering to achieve peerless, everlasting happiness. There’s nothing more amazing and wonderful than that. There are many people who have met the dharma, have studied it, much more intelligent, educated than myself, but they have no faith in what they meet or study.
So it doesn’t really benefit them. But by having some faith, then that is the key, the door to liberation and enlightenment. And I’ve found it this one time. All of these five factors has come together, each of which is very rare and difficult to create the causes for. All of these five factors have come together in this one life.
So just consider that no matter what difficulties I’m experiencing in my life right now, life problems, fears, worries, obstacles. The amazing thing is I am free of the greatest obstacles to practicing the Dharma. I am far freer than the vast majority of other human beings. And in addition, I have all of these encouraging factors, Especially the fact that I have met the Dharma, and more than that, I actually have faith in it. So there’s nothing really preventing me from practicing the Dharma, and there’s everything encouraging me to do so.
So how can I waste my life following the eight worldly concerns, just craving for the illusion of happiness, fearing suffering and not doing anything about the causes of suffering, just chasing after stuff and worrying about not getting it and losing it, Being concerned about having a reputation among worldly people and fearing criticism of such people and so on? So bring the meditation to a conclusion by making a strong determination to be more and more mindful in daily life, especially from the moment I wake up that I do have the precious human rebirth, I have all the freedoms, all the encouraging factors, so I can’t waste this life on meaningful, meaningless things, meaningless and negative things. That that would be just such an incredible tragedy, such an incredible waste and loss for myself and others. I must use this life more and more for its real meaning, which is to practice the Dharma. So we’ll just take a silent three minute break.
People might like to stand up and stretch, and then we’ll start again. Continue with this same precious human rebirth meditation. So in this segment, we’ll look at the five environmental encouraging factors. So again, we begin sitting comfortably in the correct posture and just reestablishing a good motivation, remembering the Buddha on the crown of our head. So then reflect that not only have I achieved a human rebirth with a healthy body and mind, free of the eight world, free of having created the five extreme negative actions, and I’ve met the Dharma and not only met it, but I’ve developed faith in it.
But I’ve also been born at a very special time in a fortunate time, and I’ve been born in a fortunate time when a thousand Buddhas are going to appear in the world and teach the Dharma, but most fortunately, I’ve been born at the time of Śākyamūni Buddha. And what makes Śākyamūni Buddha special among the thousand Buddhas is that he is only one of four who will teach the tantras, the fast path to enlightenment. So think how incredibly wonderful that is that I’ve been born at such a time. There are times when Buddhas don’t appear at all in the world, these very long periods of the dark times where the enlightening influence of the Buddha doesn’t exist in the world at all. But I’ve been born at a time when a thousand Buddhas will appear, and I have been born at a time when the amazing teachings of the Buddha, Śākyamūni, have been taught.
So how amazing. Because of that, it is so much easier to free my mind of all its negative tendencies and to awaken all my positive potentials. Imagine what it would be like to be born in a time when only hatred and intolerance and brutality existed, where the idea of compassion, altruism, kindness, forgiveness didn’t exist. Imagine what it would be, how impossible it would be to cultivate the mind born in such a situation. But because the enlightening influence of the Buddha does exist in this world now, it is so much easier to cultivate the mind.
And not only have I been born at a time when the enlightening influence of the Buddha still exists, but even more amazing, more wonderful, more helpful, more encouraging is the fact that the Buddha’s teachings are still flourishing in this world. That all the teachings about how to achieve one’s own liberation, those teachings are still existing. All the Mahāyāna teachings about how to follow the sūtra path to enlightenment, those teachings are still existing, still flourishing. And most amazingly, the tantric teachings of the Buddha of how to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible, that tradition has been preserved, still exists, is flourishing. So I’ve been born into this incredibly rich environment of Dharma.
So that is so encouraging. Before we meet the dharma, we don’t know of its existence and how it exists in the world. Then we meet with it, develop faith, and then we enter into the world of Dharma. We get to know the existence of the different types of teachings and where they exist, how they exist, what they’re about. So all of this becomes accessible to us, and that’s so encouraging for our practice.
But we have to recognize this situation in order to take advantage of it because it won’t always exist. Nothing is permanent. And then consider more wonderful, more encouraging, is the fact that not only do the teachings exist, but that we have been born in a place, a time when there are great, truly great, realized masters of these teachings. We have the example of his holiness, the Dalai Lama, great practitioners like Lama Zopa Rinpoche and many others. It is these great masters that bring bring the Dharma alive for us.
They enable us to gain the authentic understanding and more than that, the actual realizations. So we need to recognize that we have been born in such an environment, such a time where these great masters exist so that we use that situation. We take advantage of it by connecting with these great masters, becoming their students, receiving their blessings. But if we don’t recognize the wonderful situation we have, we won’t take advantage of it. We will lose it.
We won’t benefit. Another of the encouraging factors that we need to recognize is that we’ve been born at a time and place where the monastic community still exists. So the Buddha himself said that wherever a community of four fully ordained bhiksus exists, the Buddha said, In that place, the Dharma exists and in that place, I exist. So the monastic community is able to preserve the teachings of the Buddha. The monastic community act as inspirations and models of practice, so having that monastic community is an incredible, encouraging factor.
So then the final encouraging factor is that not only have we been born in a place where the enlightening influence of the Buddha exists, at a time when the teachings are still flourishing and there are still great realized masters existing, teaching the Dharma, guiding students, and there is the monastic community. But also a very important, encouraging factor that we need to recognise in our life is having Dharma friends. As ordinary practitioners just starting in our practice of the Dharma, in this life, then we need Dharma friends, ordinary people like ourselves who have the same basic interests in the spiritual life. Because we’re surrounded by people who have no faith, no belief, maybe antagonistic. So just as an individual isolated practitioner, it becomes very, very difficult.
The mind, because of the eight worldly concerns, wanting praise, wanting acceptance can easily be dissuaded away from the practice and belief. So we need Dharma friends who support our beliefs, encourage us, give emotional support, can even give financial support. They are vital for our spiritual life. So if we have such people, we are so lucky. It is so helpful, so necessary.
And of course, dharma friends also are responsible for creating dharma centers, producing dharma books, other statues and paintings, all the things that we need for our spiritual life. So if you can recognise that you have dharma friends, access to dharma centres, retreat centres, all the other aspects, recognize how fortunate one is. That these things are very rare to have in time and space. We would be lost without them. And they won’t last forever.
So let your mind rejoice and be happy, feeling so fortunate in recognizing that I have all or most of the eight freedoms and the ten endowments. The optimum chance to be free of suffering, to help others become free of suffering, the optimum chance to achieve peerless, everlasting happiness for myself, to help all beings achieve peerless, everlasting happiness. Recognize that this precious human rebirth isn’t going to last forever. So I can’t waste it. I can’t waste it doing meaningless things, especially doing negative things.
I can’t waste it on the eight worldly concerns. That’s an incredible incredible tragedy, incredible disaster. It’s crazy. Think it’s a tragedy, it’s an incredible waste, even for an ordinary human being to spend their life just chasing after the eight worldly concerns, because they never bring what we expect. But to have a precious human rebirth, the optimum chance to practice Dharma, and then throw it away on the eight worldly concerns is just an unbelievable tragedy and waste.
So bring the meditation to a conclusion by making a strong determination to be more and more mindful in daily life, especially from the moment one wakes up, that one has the precious human rebirth. I have all the freedoms, all the encouraging factors, so I can’t waste this life on meaningless negative things. The best thing to do is to practice Dharma, to give up the self-cherishing thought, to give up the eight worldly concerns, to cherish others more than themselves. To use my body, speech, mind as much as possible in the practice of Dharma. If I do that, this is really taking the essence of having a precious human rebirth.
So then recall the Buddha on one’s crown. Imagine the Buddha being extremely pleased with your meditation and showing this by now dissolving into blissful golden light and that light pours down into you, blessing your mind to be able to eventually gain a complete realization, recognizing that one has a precious human rebirth, recognizing its great meaning, and recognizing its great rarity. Then we dedicate the merit. Through the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious bodhi mind not yet born arise and grow.
May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore. Alright. Do people need a a break? Tiny break? Because I was I was supposed to talk now for a while, for about a half hour.
Can you bear that? Yeah. I’ll try. Okay. So what am I gonna talk about?
Okay. Right. So just a little bit more about the eight worldly concerns no, no, not the eight worldly concerns, the precious human rebirth. So I left out a couple of the freedoms, which was the no, two of the freedoms I left out because there wasn’t time. So one of the freedoms was I mentioned it in my little introductory talk, but we didn’t meditate on being free of being born in the god realms.
I just always feel guilty about that, but it does seem strange not to think that one’s lucky not to be born as in the god realms or to be rich and famous in this life, but one has to reflect on the It’s from the point of view of the freedom to practice Dharma. Certainly those beings have lots of pleasure and happiness, but because they have so much pleasure and happiness, they in general, in most cases, don’t see the need to practice Dharma. The beings in the god realm certainly don’t because according to the teachings, they have these unbelievably beautiful bodies of light and they float around on lotuses all the time. I’m not quite sure what that really means, but I think it’s just some of, you know Anyway, they float around on lotuses having a wonderful, wonderful time for millions of years and believing this is permanent, that this is never ever going to stop, that they’ve made it. But of course then it comes to an end.
And in the teachings it actually says, this is very interesting, don’t know if you’ve read, which we should as Dharma practitioners, the sufferings of the hell realms, which are the extreme sufferings of how horrific that is. But in the teachings, certainly Pabongka Rinpoche in the Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand says that actually the worst suffering in all of saṃsāra is not in the hell realms, It is in the minds of these god beings, gods and goddesses, in the last moments of their life when they realize that their life in the god realms is ending and that they’re going to fall into the hells. So before they fall into the hells, that awareness, the bliss is stopping and the hell realm is going to start, that suffering is actually the worst of all. That mental suffering. Yeah.
Many people, don’t know if you’re among that terrible number, think that these realms don’t really exist, that they’re just sort of something made up by the Buddha to scare the hell out of us, but I believe in them, and of course there are human equivalents, but the teachings are saying the human equivalent is nothing to the actual realm. So there are human equivalents to being like an animal, to certainly like a hungry ghost and in the hell realms. human beings are very good at creating equivalents of hell realms and in the Middle East now and parts of Africa, they’re doing a fantastic job creating hells in those places. But also in Australia there are little hell realms and certainly in the aboriginal community it’s truly, in some situations, truly horrific, but also in the white community in some parts as well, and not necessarily just in the poorest people but among the rich. You can have some pretty terrific hell realms happening.
And then you have in the human equivalent of the god realms of people who are extremely wealthy, extremely, yeah, have got all the power and everything and just, I mean, there are very rich people who do many good things, our dharma practitioners and whatever, like I don’t know about dharma practitioners, but good old Bill Gates has donated billions of dollars to really good causes and is working, and there are many people like that, but in general, many people who have so much wealth who could do so many good things with it just use it for themselves, and maybe a limited group, their family and friends and whatever, and just for, yeah. I mean, you have the example. Probably I shouldn’t mention this, but just, you know, there’s this lady called Kim Kardashian who apparently has started off life quite wealthy and has become immensely wealthy because of her reality program, which I fortunately have never seen, but she is famous just for being, I mean, she spends her life being beautiful and sexy. This seems to be her goal in life, and mainly it’s about dressing up. I mean she is photographed all the time and she photographs herself all the time in all these very expensive clothes, or sometimes with no clothes, but it’s all about me, I mean just being beautiful or desirable.
She probably is a very nice lady, don’t know, I’m not trying, but just from the outer appearances, it’s all her whole energy is dedicated to just putting stuff on her body or making her body desirable at great expense. She has a worship list, doesn’t she? Oh, yes, and people well, but that’s the thing, and people admire this. She is incredibly famous. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So she is a role model for many people. So, I mean, that’s why we mentioned it because she’s symbolic of what yeah. Never heard of her.
Good. Good. Oh, you must have heard of She’s everywhere. Her face is everywhere. Don’t read magazines.
I don’t watch TV. But even if you go past the magazine thing, you have to see the magazine. You should. It’s so fascinating. I’m gonna Google it.
The supermarket. Anyway, it was just an example of the whole life is dedicated to that, and then it’s gone. So this is not creating the cause to have a beautiful body in the future or whatever. All the good karma is just being used up, used up for no real benefit, purpose. I’m not saying she’s a terrible person.
She may be actually a very nice person, sweet, just trying to be happy and whatever, but all that good karma is going just eaten up for nothing lasting. So that’s like the god realms, that’s like so many human beings. And then the other freedom that I didn’t mention, although I kind of snuck it in just recently, because it’s very hard to really get the mind. I find it very difficult to get the mind around some of these things, but there’s the freedom of not being born at a dark time when the Buddhas haven’t appeared. So this could also sound, you know, how can I put this?
Anyway, from a Buddhist point of view, all the good things in the world exist because of the enlightening influence of the Buddha. So this can sound very sectarian and you can say, Well, what about Christianity and all the other religions are also responsible for all good ways human beings think and behave. And of course that’s true, but maybe I shouldn’t say anymore. But from a Buddhist point of view, you know, the Buddha’s influence is everywhere. It may not be noticeable because it also depends on the karma of human beings or sentient beings in general, but the very fact why we behave, I mean we have all these potentials for good qualities, but to whatever extent we awaken them is due to the enlightened influence of the Buddhas who have been around since the beginning of this time.
But there are times when we can be born into a world system that hasn’t been influenced by the Buddhas at all or for a very long time, So one can imagine what that would be like. And we have some human examples of the Nazi era. So imagine being born when that kind of mentality was the only mentality existed in the world, not just one or a dominant one, but the only one. Or imagine when if the mentality of the people in Boko Haram or ISIS was the only mentality in the world, not just the dominating one, but that was it. We were born in that.
Not, It came over the world when we had time to develop other ideas, but one was born when that was the only way people thought and behaved. Wouldn’t that be horrific? But we haven’t been born at such a time. We’ve been born in a kind of crazy world where there’s all sorts of horrible things, but the enlightening influence of the Buddha is here underneath doing all sorts of good stuff. There are lots of good people doing good stuff even in this crazy world, so we’re so lucky.
We have so much freedom. So in the encouraging factors, I can’t emphasize how, I presume everyone here has some faith in the Buddha Dharma. Dharma. This is the key bit, the two key bits of having a precious human rebirth is having some faith in the Dharma and meeting spiritual masters, real ones. But really the main one is having faith, having some faith.
Like I often say, and people here have heard me say this before, there are many people who have met the Buddhist teachings, who study the Buddhist teachings, who are university professors, they’re experts in the Buddhist teachings. They write unbelievably complicated, impossible to understand tomes, weighty tomes about emptiness and Mādhyamika and the difference between this and that, and this school thinks this and that school’s that and blah blah blah, and all sorts of subtle points about this, but they have no faith in it whatsoever. So apart from making an income out of it, it has no benefit to their mind. What yeah. They get an income, but there’s no benefit to the mind.
It doesn’t in any way help transform the mind. But there can be someone who is not very intelligent, not very educated, and they have some faith, and that faith is the key to becoming a Buddha. Through that faith, even someone who is not intelligent, not educated, you know, nothing, you know, that person is in a far better position than this PhD person because that faith will help awaken all their wisdom, knowledge, good qualities, and help them overcome all the negative stuff. So having that faith, and we are so lucky if we have that. Maybe I want to sound, maybe I do sound kind of nasty, but know, I often think, you know, there are people sitting on the bench outside there, yeah, and they never ever even come in, and they never will.
Well, that won’t help. It won’t change. I mean, it’s nice to have a welcome sign, even a welcome mat. We could drag them in, but we can’t change them. The children sometimes come in.
Yeah, but that’s the thing. Some people will come in. Some people will, you know, even to want to go in, you have to have something attracting you. There has to be some karma there. That’s the point I was making, even to, Oh, should I go into this weird, creepy, frightening place or not?
Should I check this out? So even to have that wish, one has to have some karma and some people don’t. It always amazed me when I lived in Perth at the centre there, there were some actual dharma students who lived quite close to the centre, very close to the centre, who almost never came to the centre, and other people who lived a mile, an hour away or more, who would come regularly. Really depends on your karma. But it’s like that, from lifetimes we’ve never even been close to where the dharma existed.
In some lifetimes we’ve been where the dharma existed and we didn’t know. And sometimes there have been lifetimes where we’ve known that the dharma existed but we didn’t do anything about it and sometimes we knew about it and made some connection, know, met it. Like myself, you can meet the Dharma but not connect. When I first met the Dharma, I ran away, made a vow. I would never go back to this strange Buddhist center, but then I came back and then I connected with the Dharma.
So there’s lifetimes where we’ve done that, where we’ve met the Dharma and had no connection, and then we meet it and we develop some faith. So this is amazing. It absolutely miraculous. But the sad thing is also this can be lost. I’ve met people who’ve done tantric retreats and then they give up, lose their faith in the Buddhadharma.
So while we have this faith and it’s there, we have to use it. Yeah. Because the more we use it, you know, as they say, is it? Use it or lose it. Yeah?
That’s it. Use or lose it. I should’ve been saying that all the time. Yeah, that’s it. Use it or lose it.
Losing the chance to practice Dharma, you can’t lose any, that’s the greatest loss of all. For example, another part of the whole precious human rebirth meditation we haven’t got onto and we won’t in this little, in this one day retreat, but it is about how the meaning of the precious human rebirth, which is there are three meanings of having the precious human rebirth. One is that with a precious human rebirth we can accomplish any meaningful temporary spiritual goal we want, such as if we want to become a nicer person, more kind, more loving, more patient, more generous, more compassionate, more tolerant, more wise, we can do it because we’ve met the dharma, we have faith, we have all the encouraging factors. It’s just a matter of recognising that and doing it and overcoming our spiritual laziness. That’s the problem.
We don’t recognise that we can do it and we have spiritual laziness. But other than that, we have all the freedom, all the encouraging factors. And particularly within that first meaning of the precious human rebirth, we have optimum chance to create the cause for another precious human rebirth when we die, and that’s the main thing to go for. But then the second great meaning, which is the great great meaning, is that with the precious human rebirth we can achieve liberation and enlightenment even in this lifetime, but even if we can’t do it in this lifetime with the precious human rebirth, we can start creating the causes, to create the first step because we get another good rebirth, another, another as we achieve progress towards liberation and enlightenment. And the third great meaning is that moment by moment we can make every moment of our life meaningful using our body, speech, mind, because the dharma has infinite numbers of methods.
So we can purify our mind or we can stop creating negative karma. We can avoid creating negative karma. We can purify the negative karma we’ve already created. We can study the Dharma. And the other part of the meditation is to reflect on recognising how rare the precious human rebirth is.
Why is it rare? Because it depends on causes. The precious human rebirth doesn’t exist just because our mum and dad did something. That was just a tiny condition. To be reborn with our mum and dad in this world, there were many, many causes we had to create, and those causes are immensely difficult, but by practising pure morality and pure generosity.
And what does pure mean? It means free of, guess what, the eight worldly concerns. So in past lives we did that. But also in the teachings it says that you also have to practice all the other perfections of generosity, no, sorry, patience, perseverance, concentration and wisdom to get a precious human rebirth to some extent, if we’ve practiced them in the past. We must have practiced wisdom in the past, at least some kind of wisdom that is able to think, Oh, the Buddhadharma is right, because that’s been very wise to decide that the Buddhadharma is true and meaningful and beneficial, because some people would say it’s stupid and ridiculous and evil.
A couple of days ago, two ladies from what are they? Seventh Day Adventists? Watchtower? Who are the Watchtower people? Witnesses.
Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the door, and I said, I’m sorry, I’m not interested, I’m a Buddhist monk, and the old lady said, Well, we at least try to give everyone a chance. And when I first heard this, I thought it was really amazing. Sometimes the effect wears off, but in that meditation on understanding how difficult it is to create the causes, they give the example of comparing animals with human beings. For every human being there are billions of animals who are sentient beings, of course, with minds exactly the same as our own. Because we’ve got sentient beings living on our body, in our body, and then there’s all the ones around.
So millions and millions because it’s so easy to create the cause to be an animal and so difficult to be even a suffering human being, let alone to have so of the seven billion human beings on this planet, hardly anyone has a precious human rebirth. So Buddhism is not going to take over the world. It never will because the precious human rebirth is very, very rare. Other things will take over the world. So one of the one of the, what is it, one of the non freedom states is having wrong views.
Of the aspects of a precious human rebirth is being free of being born with wrong views. Well I think I was born with wrong views, then I met the Dharma and dropped my wrong view, or I’m trying to drop my wrong views, so that’s okay. But in Bendigo last year, Lama Zopa Rinpoche was teaching in Bendigo, and he said something which really struck me as it was quite amazing, or not amazing, but really profound in relation to that point, where Rinpoche said, In the case of believing that an animal is a sentient being, that an animal has consciousness and feelings, He said to have that belief takes millions of lifetimes, millions of lifetimes just to believe that, because most people don’t. More and more people seem to be believing it to some extent. Even some scientists are now accepting that animals have feelings and intelligence and much more intelligence than it was ever given credit for before.
And there’s sort of amazing examples of animals and how they work out things and do all sorts of very clever things, but still many scientists reject that as just robotic, habitual behavior, blah blah blah. But Rinpoche was saying, actually, it’s taken millions of lifetimes to reach a point where one can believe an animal has consciousness. He’s a sentient being. So just to get rid of that wrong view takes lifetimes, many, many lifetimes. So to get rid of all the others, you know, just somehow where one is at a point where one can believe the Buddhist teachings, the fundamental, and have some basic belief in the basic Buddhist teachings that sentient beings have got, there are sentient beings, because there are people who call themselves Buddhists who basically only believe human beings are sentient beings, so they’re not really Buddhist.
They may label themselves Buddhist, but that’s not the Buddhist teachings. We’re not the only sentient beings. There’s billions of other sentient and there’s other different kinds of human beings according the Buddha on different planets, different realms. So to even have some belief like that is an amazing thing. It’s taken us lifetimes to get there.
So to believe in the Buddhist teachings totally, wow. As Rinpoche would say, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. And then to blow that on the eight worldly concerns, you know, it’s really a bummer. It’s a disaster. So just on the eight worldly concerns themselves very briefly, I think it’s really important to understand if we have one, we’ve got the other.
If we crave worldly happiness, inevitably we have the opposite, which is fearing suffering. And the more we crave the one, the more we will fear the other. And if we fear the one, we will crave the other as the solution. The solution, if we fear suffering, if we have this incredible fear and inability to deal with suffering, then we won’t generate the mind at first that wants to eliminate the causes. The worldly mind controlled by self-cherishing, which is how we come into the world, generally speaking, unless we’re already realised, have very strong imprints and I don’t have those.
I came into the world with piles of self-cherishing, so because of that, the more we fear suffering, our solution is to chase after distraction. Anything that will distract us, that’s the solution to suffering, and that we label happiness. It’s just distraction. You know, When mister what’s his name? What’s his name?
I’m sure you haven’t heard of him either, but I have. What’s his name? Who’s who’s who’s the Apple man? Steve? Steve somebody.
Jobs. Jobs. When he would announce these new things like the iPod, this was presented in this huge hall in front of thousands of people and everyone would go ballistic. It’s like a religion. Here was this iPod.
A thing, a bit of stuff where you could listen to music on. This was happiness. I mean, have you seen those presentations? It really is like a religious event, a spiritual event. Oh yeah, that’s all basically marketing and manufacturing.
Oh, yeah. But, I mean and ways like that too. I got caught into that in the nineteen eighties. Yeah. It’s like a religion.
It is. Yeah. But all it is is distraction, but we label it happiness. And actually, I mean, we’re all susceptible to it. I mean, maybe it sounds like I’m some highly realized being that doesn’t get totally susceptible to all this rubbish.
We all are to some extent because it’s very, very powerful, you know, and it’s quick and it’s easy compared to practising dharma, which is slow and difficult. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s slow and difficult. But as I try to remind myself and remind you, Samsāra is difficult. Just being in Samsāra, being a human being is difficult. Practising dharma is difficult but practising dharma works.
Samsāra doesn’t work. It’s a disaster and it never comes to an end. Practising Dharma brings an end to suffering in Samsāra. It has an ending. The ending is terrific, enlightenment. So if things are going to be slow and difficult, the only choice is to practice Dharma.
Because it’s also meaningful, whereas the saṃsāra is meaningless. And the sad thing is when we follow the eight world concerns, the more we get caught up in them, the more we crave this happiness stuff, praise and so on, the more we reach a point where consciously or unconsciously we engage in negative actions to achieve that. And of course, the more we fear suffering, not getting stuff, we fear criticism, blah blah blah, we will reach a point where consciously, unconsciously, we will do negative things to avoid that. We go along with stuff that we because of fear of criticism and fear of having a bad reputation, with people who say all sorts of negative things, sexist things, racist things, but because we don’t want to shake the boat, we don’t say anything or we even join in, laugh at the terrible, racist, sexist, you know, blah blah jokes. Yeah?
That’s the worldly concerns. And so it helps perpetuate it all, you know, passively or even a little actively. Anyway, I’ll stop there. I’m not I can stop there about yeah. Right.
So thank you very much. Lunchtime. And then we’ll start again at one twenty five, A mysterious time that I’ve chosen, but one twenty five. I’m sure there’s a very profound reason.