Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 63-minute teaching on the Eight Worldly Concerns, Ven Thubten Dondrub examines how the craving for worldly happiness and fear of suffering—along with attachment to possessions, reputation, praise, and their opposites—prevent genuine spiritual practice. Speaking to committed practitioners on a Thursday evening, he draws on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching that a Bodhisattva fears the causes of suffering while we fear only suffering itself, then pivots to explain the antidote: recognising the preciousness of a human rebirth with the eighteen freedoms and endowments. He shows why this recognition makes genuine happiness possible and how meditation on this theme can cure both spiritual letharness and depression. The talk concludes with practical guidance on meditation, emphasising that realisation of the precious human rebirth can come quickly with steady effort.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Eight Worldly Concerns Week 2 2015 01 15.mp3
UUID: 9a75724a-f05e-4fa6-9c54-7d58a735383d
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Eight Worldly Concerns (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2015-01-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 63.3 minutes
Words: ~7,178
So welcome everyone to hello? Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. To our little course on the eight worldly concerns.
So this is our the second talk on this subject. So as I mentioned last week, because this is our Thursday night is meant to be our serious night for the more committed students, although everyone’s welcome to attend. So for that reason, we do some more traditional prayers than at other times. So we can start with the prayer to the lion faced Dakini, which is on page five if you’d like to join in. I prostrate to the gathering of dakinis and the three places who abide in the holy yoga of using space by your powers of clairvoyance and magical emanation, look after practitioners like a mother her child.
Akasama Radha Sadhara Samara Yepe. Akasama Radha Sadhara Sadhara Akasamaraja Sadhara Samara Yape, Thayatah, Gate Gate, Pāragate, Parasangate, bodhi Svāhā. By the teachings of the three supreme jewels possessing the power of truth, may inner and outer hindrances be transformed. May they be dispelled. May they be pacified.
May they be completely pacified. May all negative forces opposed to dharma be completely pacified. May the host of eighty thousand obstacles be pacified. May we be separated from problems and harmful conditions to Dharma. May all enjoyments be in accord with the Dharma, and may there be auspiciousness and perfect happiness here right now.
So then we visualize or think of Śākyamūni Buddha present in front of us, trying to think of the Buddha as the very embodiment of the Three Jewels of refuge and all their wonderful qualities, thinking of the Buddha as the embodiment of all our perfect teachers of the past, present, and future. We can think that the Buddha is there to remind us of our own Buddha potential and there to inspire us to realize that potential. And so as we think of the Buddha in front of us and all sentient beings surrounding us, we make an offering of all the the whole everything in the whole universe, especially those beautiful things of the universe, what Lama Zopa Rinpoche calls the samsaric perfections. The samsaric perfections. Not that anything is perfect in saṃsāra, but we tend to think they are.
And especially the so especially especially to think of those things that we ourselves are are most attached to. So we offer these up as a way to request the teachings, to create the merit, to be able to understand and practice them and realize them and to overcome the obstacles that prevent us fully understanding, being able to practice and realize the precious teachings of liberation and enlightenment. So as we continue to think of the Buddha in front of us, we can particularly focus on all the sentient beings surrounding us and try to generate as strongly as we can that strong sense of how we are interconnected with all of these beings. Every one of them has because of beginningless rebirths and beginningless saṃsāra, each one of these beings has been my mother countless times and show me incredible kindness as a mother when even when not my mother, they’ve been immensely kind in every possible other way. I completely depend on these beings.
And, sadly, all these beings are trapped in cyclic existence, most of them experiencing the the far greater sufferings of Samsāra than myself and with far less freedom to make sense of their suffering to break out of it, transform it, eliminate it, and so on. So thinking along these lines as strongly as possible and recognizing our own Buddha potential, then and then we can generate this thought that no matter what, what, I I I must use this life and all future lives to free my mind of all obstacles, awaken all my potentials so that I can achieve the complete state of enlightenment that enables me to perfectly repay the kindness of all these beings by helping them to become free of all causes of all suffering, helping them to eventually achieve the peerless everlasting happiness of enlightenment. So for myself, firstly, to achieve enlightenment, that involves following the path and committing oneself to following the path. And that involves at the at the at the beginning, the the very first thing I need to accomplish accomplish is developing the mind, renouncing this life so that I can really direct my mind to the practice of Dharma.
And what prevents me doing that is is the eight worldly concerns. So I really have to understand what the eight worldly concerns are, be able to recognize them, see how incredibly harmful they are so that I can develop this courage and compassion and wisdom to overcome them, to not follow them, not only for my own sake, but especially for the sake of all sentient beings. So for this reason, I’ll study this this subject. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly by the merit I create by the merit of listening to the Dharma. May I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings?
So then we can imagine the Buddha coming to the crown of our head and then happily dissolving into blissful golden light so that that light can pour down into us, blessing our mind. So then we can enhance that positive state of mind by just briefly doing some breathing exercise such as the nine round breathing exercise just to let the mind become a little bit more calm, clear, concentrated so that we can use that more subtle level of mind to listen to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. Okay. Thank you. So just before I go into our our topic, last week, because of what I was saying, which I don’t particularly remember what point I was making, but Rudy asked the question about because of your I was talking about all the the terrorists in the world and all the horrible things happening in our world, and he asked about what we can do.
How can we what what how can we counteract that? So I mumbled some things, but I forgot to mention one very important thing that Lama Zopa Rinpoche says is is really important to do in these crazy times, which is to read the golden light sūtra, the sūtra of golden light. So this this sūtra is one of the most popular sutras existing in the Mahāyāna tradition, and it has been translated into English a few times. And it the Sūtra talks about how by practicing this Sūtra, it it has all sorts of beneficial effects for oneself, but also the world in general. How it just and particularly how it the the reciting of the just the the mere reciting of this Sūtra can bring bring peace in the area in which it’s recited.
And, of course, the more people who recite it with a good motivation, etcetera, etcetera, the better. But even just one person reciting this sūtra can have a lot of effect on on on the world. And during so Lama Zopa Rinpoche has has been for some years now giving the lung the reading permission of this sūtra and which he did in Bendigo. It took him the whole, what, two weeks to to do it. And and during that, he asked one of the nuns who had lived in in Mongolia and was teaching there to tell the story about how because the this this sūtra is extremely popular, has been extremely popular in Mongolia.
But then when, you know, the communist took over and Buddhism was and everything. Many of the sutras were destroyed and so on, and very few people had copies of this sūtra. But and that she was saying how there was this particular city. I don’t remember the name of it. Do you remember the name?
Somewhere in in Mongolia where where she was or visited. And it was one of the you know, Mongolia is quite a poor, you know, struggling country and quite difficult conditions. And but this city was one of the particularly most horrible towns, cities in Mongolia at the present time, really, really ugly and filthy and polluted and depressed and, you know, all all sorts of problems and so on. But then somehow, she, supported by Rinpoche and and so on, was able to distribute copies of the golden light sūtra to many people there. A public announcement was made, and people went completely ballistic and and and got all these copies.
So it ended up that a quite a large percentage I’m I’m not exaggerating, am I? Tell me if I am. Of the population of this town, and it was an industrial town, but a depressed one, got a copy of this sūtra. This was some years ago, and just recently, she went back there and she said the entire city is almost unrecognizable. It is now one of the most prosperous places in Mongolia where people want to go and live.
Yeah. She also award she she was given an award by the president of Mongolia for distributing this making this sūtra available. So, of course, Lama Zopa Rinpoche is convinced that that that that what the sudden prosperity and and and everything is due to the distribution of this sūtra and people reciting it and practicing it again after many, many years when they couldn’t. Anyway, and so Rinpoche gave this advice during the retreat that it would be very, very good to try and recite even a little bit of this sūtra every day. So I would encourage people to do that.
I I try and do this every day now. Just read a few pages. So after a while, you know, you’ve read the whole book, the whole sūtra, then you start again. It’s great practice. Yeah.
And this very Sunday, although I won’t be here, because I have to I have to go somewhere else just temporarily chasing after a statue for Buddha House. So there will be a recitation of the golden light sūtra at two o’clock here. Lots of fun. Takes a while, but very reading sutras is a a very good practice to do. Very good for the mind.
Very yeah. And for everything. Anyway right. So our topic is the eight worldly concerns. So what we should be cons well, from a Buddhist point of view is what we should be concerned about is practicing the Dharma.
Why? Because it is the Buddhadharma, the practice of the Buddhadharma, which is about taking care of our mind properly, wisely, compassionately so that we are firstly subdue and eventually eliminate all the causes of suffering from our mind, and we awaken we cultivate all the positive potentials of our mind until we reach a point where we don’t have to do do anything. Those this all the the negativities are eliminated. All the positive potentials are just spontaneously active all the time. So this is what we should be doing because this is the most beneficial thing in every conceivable way for ourself, but, also, it’s the very best thing that we can do for the benefit of others.
Right? If we subdue our disturbing thoughts, then this benefits many, many people. You know? The the more we subdue our mind, the more people are benefited from it, one could say in a passive way. But, of course, if we cultivate our positive potentials and act on those, then we can be very actively helpful, beneficial for sentient beings.
So from a Buddhist point of view, this is what we should really be concerned about, taking care of our mind. But, unfortunately, what the vast majority of of human let’s just talk about human beings do, even when, for example, we’ve met the the Dharma and have faith in it and want to practice it, we waste this opportunity with what are called the worldly concerns of which they’re you know, all our worldly concerns can be related to the central world the eight world the main eight worldly concerns. As and as I mentioned last week, the first two are the main ones, and the other six really arise because of those first two. So there is the craving for the concern for happiness, and that concern is for worldly happiness. You know, we don’t think of it as worldly happiness, but from the perspective of a realized being, what an ordinary human being is craving for, waste their time chasing after is a happiness that is is just of this world.
It’s impermanent. It’s illusory. It is not true happiness. It’s not fully satisfying. It’s not fully complete.
It’s not what we really want. So we waste our life on that and chasing after that, craving that. And because of that craving, we have the opposite, which is the fear of suffering. But, unfortunately, we don’t because of our craving for happiness, and what that means is the more we have that world of concern, the more we’re willing to do anything to achieve it. And that means getting caught up in engaging in negative actions, negative thoughts, negative speech, negative behavior.
And and the more we have that, we have this fear of suffering, but, unfortunately, we don’t fear the causes of suffering. This is the big problem. Yeah. One of the many wonderful things Lama Zopa Rinpoche said that has stuck in my mind is how the the great difference between difference between us ourselves and the Bodhisattvas is that a Bodhisattva well, we fear suffering, but and we can’t bear it, but we we have no real fear of the causes of suffering. We blindly create the causes of suffering all the time even though we fear suffering, but we blindly, sort of in a sense, bravely create the causes for it.
Whereas a Bodhisattva is someone who isn’t afraid of suffering. They bear it. They put up with it. They have cultivated patience. So they support their suffering.
They don’t get upset by it, but they have a great fear of creating the causes of it. Because not for themselves so much, but they don’t want to create the causes of suffering because that is preventing that suffering is preventing them benefiting sentient beings. So they have a wise fear, not a neurotic fear, but a wise fear of creating the causes. So that’s not a worldly concern, whereas we have this craving for momentary pleasures and everything, everything, but fearing not getting that fearing suffering. And then because of that, we we those two basic worldly concerns, we we crave crave getting stuff.
Just stuff that has all very fancy names. You know? But, basically, it’s just stuff. We crave it. You know, paper stuff with large numbers on it, various colors, possessions of all sorts.
We crave all this stuff, and and therefore, because of that, in escapably this is an interesting thing. If we have that craving for stuff, inescapably, we have its opposite, which is the fear of not getting stuff and the fear of losing whatever stuff we’ve got, bits and pieces, however much money, possessions, whatever. Our possessions can be quite, from what other, you know, conventional standards, quite crummy, but it they’re mine, mind, and we fear losing them. Yeah. Yeah.
And and, of course, what is again, what we have to remember is with that craving for stuff and the fear of losing it, the stronger those those emotions are, those concerns are, the more we reach a point where we’re willing to do anything, including negative actions, either either consciously or unconsciously to achieve what we want. And then we as then associated with that, we crave a good reputation and being loved and accepted, part of, you know, some circle, being admired and all those things. And and inescapably, the more and, again, this will take so much time just thinking about it, you know, and and then acting on it in order to ensure acceptable, that we will have a good reputation. We have to do all sorts of stuff, do stuff, go places, dress in a certain way so I’ll be acceptable and liked and loved and respected, respected, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah?
So there’s many aspects of that craving. It’s not just the mere craving that’s the the concern. It’s what that concern leads to. So much time and energy. Wasted time and energy.
And then in inescapably, we have the opposite, which is what? Fearing having a bad reputation, fearing not being acceptable, loved, being part of some group that we want to be part of, etcetera, etcetera. And then the the final worldly concerns, which is similar to that that that last group, is is craving praise, hearing nice things, hearing hearing nice things, hearing nice things about ourself, just hearing nice things in general. And, of course, the more we crave that, the more we fear and reject the opposite. So these are the eight worldly concerns that take up our time and energy and and stop us engaging in the dharma.
Near as effective as it could be because it’s got mixed rather than being a pure having a pure motivation, there’s that underlying worldly motivation. You know? We may give something away, but we give it away to gain a reputation, not just out of pure wish to give and benefit. So what what was a good action has been polluted. So the benefit is not so great.
Still some good some benefit, but no nowhere near what it could be. And in fact, one can twist Dharma practice into something completely worldly. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, if you’ve heard of him, great Kagyu Lama, who’s one of the great Lamas who brought the Dharma to the West, a very eccentric, controversial lama. He wrote a whole book about that called a Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism because that’s really what you know, when the eight worldly concerns motivate Dharma practice, that’s what it becomes. It becomes spiritual materialism.
It looks like something spiritual, but it’s just all about this life and impressing other people and getting powers and through through, yeah, meditating and sort of whatever. And in in in that book, he talks about if one’s not careful, if we practice the Dharma, you know, in in a very polluted way with very strong worldly concerns, instead of turning oneself into a Buddha, one turns oneself into what he called cosmic guru. Great expression. One becomes a cosmic guru. Yeah.
Right. So, really, the the the the eight world concerns are really a disaster in every possible way. But to really appreciate that, we have to appreciate that we are in Samsāra, and we need to get out of it, and we can get out of it. Samsāra is the pits. Yeah?
Samsāra is not just a bit difficult and uncomfortable and a little bit unpleasant. Unpleasant. It is really what the Lamas are really trying to tell us. It’s quite horrific being in Samsāra. Yeah.
And so we have to realize that, that we have to get out of it because if we don’t, we are going to continue to suffer, and the suffering will eventually, sooner or later, get far worse than what it is now because there’s so many there’s so much more to, unfortunately. Sorry. Not there’s so much more to than than what we are experiencing now. No matter how bad our experience in this life may be, it’s nothing what to what it could be. Yeah.
Because as a human being, we have it fairly good. I mean, human beings can suffer a great deal, but as I tried to say last week, it’s it’s the karmic nature of being a sentient being that as a as an undeveloped sentient human being sorry. What did I did I say? It’s the karmic nature of being a human being that we can only experience so much happiness and so much suffering. With a deluded this deluded mind, we can only experience so much suffering so much happiness.
If we purify our mind and, you know, follow the path and become a realized being, then our mind is capable of much more bliss and joy and so on. But just as an ordinary, uncontrolled, deluded human being, we can only experience so much happiness, but also only so much suffering. That’s that’s the karmic nature of being a human being. But we have the potential to be reborn in other states where the karmic nature of that state is to experience far more suffering that can go on far longer, and yet one remains completely conscious of that. Alright.
So I know these are not nice things to talk about, and some people think our religion only exists to scare us. Yeah. There’s too much scary stuff in religion and, you know, fear. But I think we always have to try and remember that the Buddha didn’t create this world. The Buddha didn’t create the suffering in this world or in Samsāra.
The Buddha just perceived it and said it’s there, and these are the causes of it. So if you want, you you need to be careful not to create the causes of this suffering. And there’s a big difference between just neurotic fear and wise fear. There are things we should fear because they bring pain. It’s wise to fear them.
And that that wise fear, the nature of that wise fear will cause us, will encourage us to do something wise to avoid that suffering. Where there’s a whole lot of neurotic fears we have, unnecessary fears, which are not based on any kind of wisdom, and those fears don’t lead us to do anything wise about those. And the and the other side of the eight worldly concerns, you know, that there are the four craving something that looks good, which we believe to to be good, such as craving happiness, craving possessions, craving friendship and love and acceptance, etcetera, etcetera. And then there’s the fearing, all these other things, fearing suffering, fearing losing stuff. We haven’t haven’t lost it.
We don’t know if we’re ever going to lose it, but we have this unwise, ridiculous fear of losing it, which breeds all sorts of anxiety and stress. Yeah? We We fear not being liked. Yeah? That’s not a wise fear.
That’s not a beneficial fear. That doesn’t lead us to do good stuff, virtuous things. It doesn’t cause us to be a better person. It just causes us to disguise who we are so we’ll be liked. Yeah.
But there are there are things to fear. We don’t actually, if we really appreciate our Buddha nature, we don’t have to worry whether people like us or not. Whether they like us or not doesn’t change who we actually are. But we should we should worry whether the Buddhas like us or not or our our gurus like us or not. If they’re happy or not, how we’re behaving.
Because they how they judge things is something really valid, whereas the way ordinary people judge us is something extremely superficial and not to be really worried about at all. Right. So I’ll I’ll I’ll say I’ll save you from going into gory details about you know, more about Samsāra. You can read about it yourself, or you can also check your own mind about what Samsāra is. But it is important to try to get a sense of what Samsāra is because it’s not just the experiences of being a human being.
We have personally, I think it is so important. Probably everyone here believes this, but if just if you have any doubts, to think about how animals are have consciousness and that their consciousness is the same as ours in its nature. Of course, it’s more obscured than ours, but an animal’s mind is exactly the same as ours. And then one has to ask oneself, why is that mind, which is in in essence no different than mine, why is that mind in that body not a human body. What did that mind do?
What mistake did that mind do that it ended up in this ended up in this body where they have to suffer and have so little control? Whereas just the mere fact of having a human body, we have so much ability to do things, to protect ourselves from suffering. human beings suffer from hot and heat and cold. Animals suffer from heat and cold. We have far more ability.
Far yeah. Far more. Was that English? Far more ability to protect ourselves from those than an animal. We suffer from hunger and thirst, so do animals.
We have far more ability to protect ourselves from those things than an animal does. We get sick. Animals get sick. We can do so much more to protect ourselves from all sorts of sicknesses than an animal can. They just have to endure it.
There’s nothing they can do. We can. So then one can see some maybe that karma is operating, that being trapped, the mind trapped in such body that opens them up to so much suffering is a karmic result. And then one can think, well, if one engages in even more negative actions, then maybe there’s even more suffering realms, like the hungry ghost realms and the hell realms. So saṃsāra is not just being a human being, but also if we’re if one looks at the human realm, you know, there is so much suffering in in the human realm.
And we could have such a you know, we could be reborn. We could have been reborn in a much worse state than we are, but we have been. We could have been born with a far more suffering body in all sorts of ways, a far more suffering mind. We could have been born in a much more horrible place where there’s, you know, all sorts of war and violence and poverty and lack of education and food and and and resources. Yeah.
We all complain about the government, but, actually, we have you know, we’ve got a very good system in this country. We’re incredibly lucky, but many human beings, the vast majority, don’t have anything like the security and peace and prosperity that we have. But that can all change. Yeah. Death can come at any moment, and another rebirth happens.
Yeah. And then we have to to endure it. And so the longer we stay in Samsāra, the longer we will continue continue to create negative actions, and they accumulate, and we can end up in those truly terrible state situations. So we need to think about that. It’s not it’s not an enjoyable thing to think about, but the reason to think about it is not to make ourselves miserable and depressed, but to encourage ourselves to do something meaningful rather than meaningless, to give up, to reduce the the meaningless and negative things we do so that we can do things which are more meaningful, more virtuous, at least for ourselves.
But, especially, we we can think think about also to change so that we don’t harm others and we can start benefiting them. So in that context, we have to remember that we do have Buddha nature. Despite all our delusions and confusions, the nature of our mind is pure, perfect, and that nature cannot change. That is our true nature. It’s there.
Our Buddha potential is always there. And then what we have to really recognize is right now as a human being, if we have all the eight freedoms and all the ten endowments, we have a perfect human rebirth. Perfect in the sense that it’s the perfect opportunity to practice the Dharma, the perfect opportunity to get out of or to get a good rebirth, to get out of Samsāra, to achieve enlightenment. Even if we have even if we don’t have all of those eighteen qualities, qualities, if we have most of them, we still have this incredible opportunity. We have a precious human rebirth.
Not all human being rebirths are the precious ones. It’s the the the ones with the eighteen qualities that is a precious human rebirth. It’s the optimum chance to get a good rebirth, the optimum optimum chance to get out of Samsāra. And that’s what we have to recognize because it’s a tragedy, the greatest tragedy to waste that kind of rebirth, to waste it with the eight worldly concerns. And that’s what this teaching is about.
It’s it’s it’s saying you you know, it’s particularly aimed at someone who has a a precious human rebirth and saying the Buddha is saying, you have a precious human rebirth, which is incredibly rare to get because it’s incredibly difficult to create the causes. It’s taken many probably many, many, many, many, many lifetimes to accumulate all the causes to get not just a human rebirth, but a human rebirth with all the eight freedoms, all the ten endowments. So how can you waste this life just chasing after worldly pleasures and distractions and all the other worldly concerns. You need to be concerned to make sure you get a good rebirth so that, you know, so what we can progress, move away from suffering. Step by step, rebirth after rebirth, eventually get out of Samsāra, and then eventually achieve enlightenment.
So if we don’t understand Sams if we don’t so what we need to understand is Samsāra. We are in Samsāra. We have to understand, actually, we have Buddha nature. Yeah. And we have to we have to recognize that we got a precious human rebirth.
So that is what we can’t waste. To waste an ordinary human birth human rebirth is pretty bad, but it’s nothing compared to wasting a precious human rebirth. Because most human beings, to be quite honest, from Buddha perspective, Buddhist perspective, are not creating the cause to be reborn humans again. They don’t have the chance, and they’re not doing it. And they don’t have the opportunity to do it because most of them haven’t met the the teachings.
They don’t believe in them. They don’t have the the freedom to practice them anyway. But if one’s met the Dharma, believes it, has some faith in it, and the opportunity to practice it, then this is the most fortunate rebirth possible. And it’s so short. It’s so unbelievably short.
And it can be far shorter than we think because our death can come any moment. And even if we if death doesn’t come sorry. Is this sounding too depressing? Anyway, I’m not gonna stop. It’s not meant to be anyway.
Even if even before we die, we can lose the precious human rebirth. We could go blind, deaf. We have some some physical something wrong with our body, so it becomes very difficult. Something can go wrong with our mind. We can lose our faith in the dharma, and then we’re lost.
So what we have to do is recognize that we have a precious recognize that we have a precious human rate of birth. As I mentioned last week, it’s not enough just to have a precious human rebirth. We’ve got to recognize that we’ve got one, then we have to recognize what it really means to have one, and then and then we’ve got to use it. Take its essence as Lama Zopa Rinpoche says. We have to take the essence, extract the meaning, which is practicing the Dharma, especially the Mahāyāna Dharma, because we’ve met the Mahāyāna Dharma which is the most precious of all.
And we’ve met not just the Mahāyāna Dharma, but we met Tibetan Buddhism, which contains which is the preserver, the sole preserver in this world of the Tantric teachings whereby if we practice them properly, we can achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible. So that’s unbelievably fortunate. So that’s what we really have to recognize so that we don’t follow the eight worldly concerns or we, you know, we follow them less and less and less and less. The great Lama Tsongkhapa said, the human body at peace with itself is more precious than the rarest gem. Cherish your body, and this doesn’t mean, you know, do Pilates and exercise and spas and things, although that’s okay.
Means means cherish your body. It is yours this one time only. The human form is won with difficulty. It is easy to lose. All worldly things are brief like a lightning flash in the sky.
This life, you must know as the tiny splash of a raindrop, a thing of beauty that disappears even as it comes into being. Therefore, set your goal, make use of every day and night to achieve it. And that’s what Lama Tsongkhapa did, and he became a Buddha. Alright. So okay.
Oh, it’s almost time to finish. I haven’t started yet. That was the introduction. Done it again. Unfortunately, there’s no money back guarantee here.
Okay. So I wanted to talk a little bit more detail about the eight the the the precious human rebirth. So this is one of the basic meditations in the in the the the the teachings on the graduated path to enlightenment. This this is really good to to meditate on every day. First thing when you wake up is to think about how you have a precious human rebirth, how meaningful it is, how difficult it is to create, you know, to get such a precious human rebirth so I can’t waste it.
I can’t waste today, since death could come, which I was trying to make that point, but I got lost somewhere. I don’t know if you realize that that so this life is very short. This precious human rebirth is very short, and we can lose it, you know, so quickly. Death can come at any time. So we we really need to meditate on these things over and over again until one gains the realization.
Says it’s actually quite easy to gain the realization of the precious human rebirth. If you were to meditate it on meditate on on it strongly for a few weeks, you should get the realization. Yeah. That’s what Rinpoche says. Some realizations can take years.
Some some can take lifetimes. But this one, if we put real effort into it, can come quickly. And, really, if you if you if you go into this meditation, all other aspects of the of the Buddhadharma are connected to it. And and but, basically, it encourages us to practice the Dharma because we realize I have the the this is the best opportunity to do so. I’ve I’ve got it.
Because we can all think that there must be some extra secret things I need to become someone like his holiness, the Dalai Lama. But, actually, we’ve got it now, which is the precious human rebirth. The reason the person we call the Dalai Lama is who he is is because that person, at some point, recognized that they had a precious human rebirth, gave up the eight worldly concerns, and whole heartedly involved themselves with the dharma and never looking back. So if we do that, we end up like the Dalai Lama, which is pretty good. More than pretty good.
So it all begins with giving up the eight worldly concerns. Says, genuine happiness begins the moment you give up the eight worldly concerns. The moment you give them up, mentally give them up. The moment one mentally gives them up, moment one mentally gives them up, genuine happiness starts. Everything starts to work.
Everything starts to become clean, clear, my dears, when we give up the eight worldly concerns. And yeah. And each meditations in the lam rim, the the graduated path, have three levels of benefit what what can you say? Three levels of purpose. There’s the long term purpose of achieving enlightenment.
There’s the long a short maybe a short term purpose of helping us to get a good rebirth or out of Samsāra, but there’s also a there can be an an immediate immediate purpose benefit of practicing. And the immediate benefit of doing of meditating on the precious human rebirth is to make one happy. It makes you happy because one recognizes how fortunate I am, how incredibly lucky I am that I have I’m not just a human being, but I have a human being with all this incredible freedom to practice. I’m free of the greatest obstacles to practicing the Dharma. I may have some obstacles to practicing Dharma, but I’m free of the main greatest ones.
And I have all of the encouraging factors that make it as easy as it’s not easy to practice the Dharma, but I have these encouraging factors that make it as easy as possible. If we recognize that, if we realize that, that will make us incredibly happy, joyful. And, of course, that means it’s also an antidote to getting depressed. So if you’re depressed, meditate on the precious human rebirth. Recognize, allow yourself to see that one is incredibly fortunate.
You do. Yes. You do. Yes. Rebirth is automatic.
Yes. But not not it’s not automatic that you get reborn a human being. It’s definitely not automatic that you get reborn with a precious human rebirth. No. Even to be born a human being according to the teachings is immensely difficult and rare.
But the rarest rebirth is to be born human with the the eighteen qualities, with a precious human rebirth. That’s why the Buddhadharma will never become a, you know, hugely popular in the world because there’s only a few people with the eighteen factors. It will you know? Yeah. It’s never gonna become a mass thing unless the people’s karma changes a lot in the way way down in the in the future, maybe after Maitreya comes.
But that’s quite some time in the future, I think. Okay. So just quickly, again, so the the there are the eight freedoms. So all human beings have the first four, as I mentioned last week, the freedom of not being born in the three lower realms of animals, the hungry ghosts and and hell beings, and all because there’s too much suffering there. So the the meditation, what one should try and do is try to in the teachings, if you study them and hear them, read them, it describes the sufferings of these realms.
So one tries to meditate on that suffering, imagine what it would be like to be born, not just sort of go there like a tourist, but to be born as an animal, to be born as a hungry ghost, to be born in the hell one of the hell realms. You know, just imagine what it would be like to be born as an animal, to be born like a snake or a cockroach or a crocodile. Yeah. Just imagine that, what it that would be actually like. And so you imagine what that would be like, and then you and and the suffering involved, and then you could try and imagine, would it be possible as in that state to practice the Dharma at in any way whatsoever.
Yeah. The Dharma in any sense of freeing oneself from any of that suffering and developing kindness and compassion, tolerance, generosity? And the answer is actually, no. The impossible. And then the idea is that so the reason to do that is then to realize right now, I I am free of that.
I am free of that incredible suffering and restriction and limitation. That is an amazing freedom to have, and we need to recognize it because it’s not going to last. We take it for granted. Yeah? And if you find it too weird to relate it to animals and the hungry ghosts and the hell beings, just think of some human beings on this earth, what it would be like to be born, you know, in in Northern Nigeria at the moment with the Boko Haram people just massacring people left, right, and center, or what it was like where was it in Sierra Leone where they chop people’s arms off if they you know, just that you want you know, one up because they you possibly voted for the government.
Yeah. Or or you’re you’re in a North Korean concentration camp. I don’t know if you’ve read or seen anything about what it is like in North Korea. It is just a hundred percent nightmare. And then you think what it would be like, and could I practice the Dharma in that situation?
And then you and then you recognize that I am completely free of that right now. I have some suffering, problems, difficulties, but I have incredible freedom. This may take us a year to get to what rate I’m going. Anyway, if you’re interested, I’ve printed out a a brief outline of the precious human rebirth meditation. So you’re welcome to have a copy.
And if you take a copy, not just read it, try and meditate on a little bit or a lot. You’ll be doing yourself a great favor. It’s it’s one of the best meditations to do. Wake you up, recognize how lucky we are, and how much freedom and and good stuff we have to be good in the situation we are in to be able to practice the Dharma. So we therefore, we have to get on with it and drop those worldly concerns.
Okay. Thank you very much. What what are we doing? We’re gonna take a tea a a break. So if you peep if people would like to, maybe we can just do a quick dedication because some people may not stay.
Stay. So if you’d like to stay for the Tsok offering, which is an offering to the guru, it’s a tantric practice. It’ll all be all in Tibetan for about a half hour or so. But you’re most welcome to stay. But if you don’t feel comfortable with that, not interested, or whatever, please hope to see you next week.
But we can just quickly dedicate the time we’ve spent so far. Just page page eight. 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 body mind, not yet born, arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore.
Okay. Thank you. So, Lee, would you like to hand these out? Thanks. Or a couple of people.