Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 61-minute teaching, Ven Thubten Dondrub explores how the eight worldly concerns—craving pleasure and fearing pain, pursuing gain and dreading loss, seeking praise while fearing blame, and desiring reputation while avoiding disgrace—quietly sabotage genuine Dharma practice. He opens by reviewing the precious human rebirth and its rarity (more rare than a blind turtle surfacing through a golden ring on a vast ocean once every hundred years), then diagnoses how worldly concerns prevent sincere practice even when we believe we are studying or meditating. Drawing on the Atisha story about an old Tibetan meditator and the teaching on Parting from the Four Attachments, Dondrub argues that all authentic Dharma practice begins with renouncing attachment to this life—not abandoning happiness, but ceasing to exaggerate the importance of fleeting things. He traces how attachment manifests through the eight worldly concerns, examines their destructive logic (like drinking salt water to quench thirst), and closes with the antidote: recognizing impermanence in the objects we crave and fear. Pitched at practitioners already familiar with Buddhist basics who are ready to examine their motivation honestly.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Eight Worldly Concerns Week 4 2015 01 29.mp3
UUID: 97b05130-fef4-4590-ae31-98b87fba566c
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Eight Worldly Concerns (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2015-01-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 60.9 minutes
Words: ~7,296
Okay. So now particularly generating the right motivation for studying the teachings. So the best motivation we can possibly have is the bodhicitta motivation. So please try and generate that right now as much as possible. Recognizing due to our refuge in the triple gem, this helps us more and more, and especially if we develop more and more faith in the Mahāyāna teachings of the Buddha, this leads us to develop faith in our own Buddha potential. And when we recognize that we have a precious human rebirth, the alt the optimum chance to follow the path to enlightenment, then we have the the right basis for being able to generate bodhicitta, recognizing our intimate connection with all sentient beings, how they’ve been immensely kind, are in the past, are in the present, will be in the future.
We simply couldn’t exist without their help and support, especially the love of a mother, which every sentient being has given us many times in beginningless Samsāra, but has also loved us as a father, brother, sister, friend, helper, doctor, nurse, teacher, and so on. And all these beings are suffering like ourselves in Samsāra, but unlike ourselves, they have most beings have more suffering, but less ability at the moment to do anything about their suffering. I mean, it’s really important we also recognize that that situation can change at any moment. Right now, we are in the fortunate position and other sentient beings are in the unfortunate situation. At any moment, we could fall into that unfortunate situation, and they they take rebirth in a fortunate one.
But right now, they’re in the unfortunate situation. We are in this very precious, rare, but very short lived precious situation. It’s the situation whereby we have the the optimum chance to benefit ourselves perfectly, the optimum chance to be of perfect lasting benefit to all sentient beings by helping them to become free of all suffering, helping them to achieve peerless everlasting happiness, which is the very best way, the complete way to repay their kindness. So thinking along those things along those lines, we can generate this thought that no matter what, I must use this or my future lives to achieve enlightenment for their sake. But what prevents that?
What prevents me dedicating my energy to achieving enlightenment, to achieving what prevents me achieving liberation, what prevents me achieving even a good rebirth is unfortunately being trapped by the eight worldly concerns. So I really need to understand the eight worldly concerns more and more so that I can generate the wish to overcome them and apply all the methods that help do so. So think of all sentient beings surrounding you starting with your parents on either side, family, friends, and helpers behind, harmers in front, and then as much as possible, all other sentient beings. Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create through teaching the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings?
So now we can think the Buddha is very pleased with our motivation, shows this by coming to the crown of our head, then dissolving into light so that that blissful golden light can pour down into us, blessing our mind. So then we can enhance that positive state of mind by just briefly doing the nine round breathing exercise or some other breathing meditation if you’re familiar with whatever you’re familiar familiar just to let the mind become a little bit calmer, clearer, more concentrated so that we can use that level of mind to listen to and think about the teachings tonight. K. Thank you. So what I’ve been trying to say for the past few weeks is to how it’s so important.
So to no. I’ll start again. So all of us are here because we I hope because we want to practice the Dharma. We’ve recognized that how beneficial it is for ourself and others. So we we we value the Buddha Dharma, and we want to practice it, and we try to practice it.
But and we do to some extent, but we I I think we can all say I’m only speaking for myself. Who’s I shouldn’t speak for anyone else. I don’t practice as much as I should or as well as I could. And why is this? Because of the the eight worldly concerns get in the way.
They always get in the way. Instead of being concerned with the Dharma, somehow the eight worldly concerns fill up even when one’s practicing. One’s practice isn’t so pure because it gets all or the motivation gets caught up in one or other of the eight worldly concerns. So to really practice the Dharma more and more, we we have to give up those worldly concerns and by recognizing how or recognizing what they actually are, how they operate within our own mind, in our own life, and and how they cheat us and how harmful they are. And but also to do that, we have to really realize what an incredible opportunity we have.
Well, two things. We have to realize on the one hand how dire our situation is because it doesn’t look very dire and terrible because we have a human life and we have very fortunate human life. But that fortunate human life is still part of this whole system of rebirth, in again and again called Samsāra. And Samsāra in its totality that that our teachers are trying to tell us is something appalling, really horrific. And we just don’t recognize that, that we are in Samsāra.
We are right now in one of the best parts, best aspects of Samsāra has parts. I shouldn’t say that. It’s one of the best aspects of Samsāra, having a human rebirth where we’ve met the Dharma. But that that situation we’re in is very short, and it come can come to an end at any moment. This is what we have to recognize.
And and we also have to recognize that we have this we have Buddha nature. We do have amazing potential within us that enables us to achieve amazing things for our self and others to actually achieve enlightenment. So the more we recognize our Buddha nature, the more we understand our that we are trapped in Samsāra, but also how we have the precious human rebirth, the optimum chance to practice, this will really motivate us more and more to practice properly completely. And that will help us to see how at the moment we are caught up in the eight worldly concerns, and we want we will want to let go of them more and more. Because I’m just gonna repeat a story, sorry, that many of you have already heard at at least from me if you’re coming here regularly a few times, but there may be one or two people who haven’t heard the story once yet.
So for especially for their sake, I’ll repeat this story, but also just to remind you. So once upon in upon a time in Tibet, when Atisha was in Tibet, Atisha was this great Indian master, an actual bodhisattva. He came in across an old man who was what was he doing? He was reciting mantras, you know, with his and Atisha said to him, old man, this is very good, but wouldn’t it be better to practice the Dharma? And this old man was really surprised because he thought reciting mantras was the practice of Dharma as we all think, and so he was quite shocked.
So the the next day, Atisha found the old man circumambulating the stupa, and Atisha said to him, old man, this is very what you’re doing is very good, but wouldn’t it be better to practice the Dharma? And the old man was even more shocked because he thought since, you know, it takes more effort to walk around the stupa than just say OM MANI PADME HUM, this must be much more serious Dharma practice. But Atisha said, you know, that better to, you know, implying this wasn’t really Dharma practice. And so the next day when Atisha went to the same place, he saw the old man reading sutras, and Atisha again said, old man, this is wonderful, but wouldn’t it be better to practice Dharma? So by this time, the old man was completely confused annoyed and agitated.
And he said, you know, well, what the heck is Dharma practice? He may may have said something even more impolite because Tibetans can get, you know anyway, so Atisha said renounce this life. Renounce this life. Yeah. So that is the actual definition or there’s many definitions of what Dharma practice is, but all Dharma practice should be about at the very, very minimum.
Minimum Dharma practice is anything that will help us renounce this life, to give up our attachment to this life. Yeah. Until we’ve done that, we’re not actually practicing the Dharma. When the lama when the Buddha Mañjuśrī appeared before one of the great Sakya masters, I forget which one it was, he gave this teaching which is called Parting from the Four Attachments. And the first first first attachment that we have to depart from is attachment to this life.
Because the first the teaching says, if you are attached to this life, you are not a Dharma practitioner. And one could say, well, who cares if I’m a Dharma practitioner or not? But we should care because what is a Dharma practitioner? A dharma practitioner is anyone who is creating the causes for real happiness for themselves and is is giving up the causes of suffering. So everyone wants to do that.
Everyone wants to give up the causes of suffering. Everyone, you know, wants to create the causes of happiness. If they know if they know there are causes of suffering, we want to give them up. If we know there are causes of happiness, we want to create them. So in a sense, everyone really does practitioner.
But if we’re attached to this life, we’re not practicing the Dharma, and our attachment to this life is preventing us doing it. And when we try, try, our attachment to this life makes our practice very weak or impure and therefore not very effective. And we have to remember that attachment to this life doesn’t mean we have to give up our enjoyment with this life. It doesn’t mean that. One can we it is still possible to enjoy things, but the trip we have to give enjoy enjoy them without attachment because attachment exaggerates how important these things are.
Yeah. And we become obsessed. Attachment means well, it’s based on afflicted desire exaggerates how good something is, creates the illusion that it’s permanent, it’s always going to be there, always going to be like that, and then we get attached. We it’s this new neurotic obsession with the person person or thing or situation and an unnecessary dependence on it. That’s that’s the problem.
Yeah. So renouncing this life actually means giving up the causes of suffering, not giving up happiness. It’s giving up the causes of suffering suffering so that we can experience a more genuine lasting perfect happiness. So how does the our attachment to this life manifest? Basically, in the eight world of concerns.
That’s what it’s all about. The eight worldly concerns are the way our self-cherishing and attachment to this life manifest of craving, you know, happiness, worldly happiness, craving it crave that’s what attachment is. It’s the craving for worldly happiness and and being dependent on it, stuck to it, stuck to it, and then fearing craving happiness and comfort, fearing suffering and discomfort, craving getting stuff, fearing not getting stuff or losing stuff that we’ve already got, craving a a reputation, fearing bad reputation, craving praise, and fearing blame. Yeah. That’s how you know, if if one investigates practically everything that constitutes attachment to this life comes under one or those categories.
So it’s really important to understand the precious human rebirth, right, that we have this incredible opportunity, which is unbelievably rare to start becoming free of suffering, to get ourselves on the path. Yeah. I mean, for some unbelievably special people, it is possible in one life of meeting the Dharma in this life and becoming enlightened in this life. According to Tantra, it is possible to do that in one life or to achieve even becoming an arhat in one life. But that, you know, that is very, very rare accomplishment.
But what we what we can do when we have the precious human rebirth is start to ensure that we get another good rebirth and another one, and so that we we really follow the path to enlightenment, get on the path so that we never fall off the path, and we’ll definitely achieve liberation from Samsāra and enlightenment. This is what we can do with the precious human rebirth. And as I mentioned last week, with the very rebirth we’ve got now, yeah, not some other special precious human rebirth, but if we’ve got the eight freedoms and the ten endowments, we’re right. That’s what we need. So we need to recognize that, what that freedom actually is.
Not to become rich and famous and blah blah blah. We’ve we’ve had that freedom millions of times before. If we if you study the Lamrim teachings and the meditation teachings associated with it, it points out well, one of the sufferings of Samsāra is dissatisfaction, and it illustrates that by pointing out that in beginningless Samsāra, we’ve experienced all the good things in Samsāra billions of times, not just one time, but we’ve been the most famous richest person in the world billions of times. We’ve been the most powerful person in the world billions of times. The most beautiful looking person in the world billions of times.
And we’ve been all of those things together together billions of lifetime for billions of lifetimes. But are we happy? No. So we’ve had that freedom to to have all those things billions and billions of times, but the the chance to have a how many times have we’ve we’ve have we had a precious human rebirth? Hardly ever.
Lama Tsongkhapa says just one time, which is not strictly true, but he says that to emphasize how incredibly rare it is, which is where we got up to last week because I still haven’t finished the precious human rebirth meditation. So I am gonna finish it because it’s such a great meditation to do. Lama Zopa said my teacher Lama Zopa says, it’s so good to meditate on this every day. First thing, think about your precious human rebirth because it’ll encourage us to practice the Dharma. There’s so much in that meditation.
So the the last section so the first section is about recognizing that we’ve got the ten freed I’m sorry, sorry, the eight freedoms, the ten endowments. The second section is recognizing the meaning of that, which is that we can, you know, achieve any good virtuous purpose in this life, but particularly another good rebirth, even more, we can achieve liberation and enlightenment, and we can and we can make each moment of this life meaningful with our body, speech, and mind because the Dharma gives has millions of methods that we can use, that we can learn, so many amazing things that we can do. Nothing as Lama Yeshe says, nothing is impossible. Nothing is impossible. Everything is possible with the precious human rebirth.
Everything meaningful, yeah, is possible. But so then the the the the the last section of the of the this meditation is to recognize how rare this situation is. And it’s and it’s rare to have all of these eight freedoms and all these encouraging factors, these personal and environmental encouraging factors because all of these things don’t come together by chance, by accident. They come about by creating the causes and only by creating the causes. And the causes that bring about a precious human rebirth are extremely difficult to create.
The basic cause to have a human rebirth or an upper rebirth as a human or in the god realms according to the teachings is the practice of morality and the practice of pure morality. And the practice of pure morality, we could say, is basically morality free of the eight worldly concerns. Because people can practice pure morality for the sake of becoming rich and famous or looking good, or they can practice it for a short time to give the appearance of practicing purely. The pure morality is where one is avoiding the negative actions, engaging in virtuous actions, free of the eight worldly concerns, not just not not just for the happiness of this life, not for reputation, not for praise, not not to get stuff. I I lived in Taiwan for three years, and monks and nuns in Taiwan get drowned in money.
If you become a monk in in Taiwan, it’s it’s really a good way to become rich. But I wouldn’t recommend that. Yeah. So I was sent there. Not I didn’t go there to get rich.
Didn’t become rich, but anyway. Yeah. So to achieve a human rebirth, even a suffering human rebirth, every human being on this planet, the eight, seven billion human beings on this planet to have got a human rebirth had to, in the in past lives, engaged in pure morality. So that, if we’re honest, is very difficult to do, to engage in pure morality. Morality.
Because what I you know, probably all of us here have killed sentient beings in this life. We have, hopefully, haven’t killed human beings, but we have killed animals and insects. Yeah. And maybe not regretted it until maybe we met the Dharma, maybe even happily did it when we were children, maybe not. Some children don’t do that.
And all sorts of stuff we’ve done. Yeah. Thinking is perfectly okay with no regret. We’ve done negative things, and and the the good things we’ve done maybe with not such a great motivation. If we’re honest, you know, if we think about it and maybe haven’t done so much, I don’t know.
I’m not talking about now, maybe in the path of this life. But even now, still, our motivation may not be so great. We we can think we’re doing good things, you know, practicing the Dharma purely with wonderful motivation. You know, we try you know, we start everything with the bodhicitta motivation. But, really, if we haven’t renounced this life, we’re a million miles from having bodhicitta.
You can’t have bodhicitta without first renouncing this life. This is it’s utterly impossible. Because, you know, if we haven’t renounced this life, it mean renounced attachment to this life. Right? What does that mean?
It means that we think this life is okay, that we can deal with the problems. They’re not so bad. I saw this nonsense about, you know, suffering and blah blah. Get real. I can handle suffering.
You know, it’s not so bad. I can deal with all of this. Yeah. And and and that means also, well, if I can deal with all of it, so can everyone else. So it means we don’t have that much compassion for others.
It means we don’t have much compassion or love for ourselves, and it means we have even less compassion and love for others. So we’re a million miles from being able to generate bodhicitta. Because renunciation is renouncing this life is, as I said last week, I think, practicing morality sounds like, especially these days, is a very uncool thing. It sounds very uncool, uninteresting, dreary, boring, but what it actually is is practicing love and compassion for oneself. It’s the beginning of practicing practicing genuine love and compassion for oneself.
And when we renounce Samsāra, that’s developing complete love and compassion for ourselves. And when we generate bodhicitta, that’s when we we fully we’ve really developed love and compassion for others. So it all begins with renouncing this life. Right. Where am I?
I get sort of carried away in my little thing that I forget why I’m saying it all. Why am I saying that? Where yes. Oh, yes. Yes.
So, anyway so even, yeah, even the even the most suffering human beings on this earth have in the past managed to create some pure morality to get this rebirth, but that pure morality is just so difficult to engage in. So it may make take many lives accumulate enough imprints that will get you know, create the cause to be born a a human being. But to be a human being who has all the eight freedoms, all the ten endowments that make up a precious human rebirth, the ultimate human rebirth, we also have to practice pure generosity because that becomes a cause for having all the resources necessary to be able to meet the Dharma and practice it. Then we also have to have practiced purely the other paramita, the other perfections of patience, perseverance, concentration, and some wisdom. Because one of the key what I’ve tried to emphasize, one of the key features of one of the the key features of precious human rebirth is having faith in the dharma.
It’s one thing to be born where it exists and to contact it, but then one has to have faith in it. And to have faith in the Dharma, of course, one has to be wise. One has to be able to distinguish what is meaningful from meaningless. And some people hear the Buddha Dharma and say, oh, that’s rubbish. Future lives don’t exist.
That’s rubbish. You can’t see them. You can’t see the Buddha, so it’s all rubbish because only what you can see is real. So in past lives, one has to have create you know, practice some pure wisdom, develop some real wisdom to be able to distinguish that the Buddha’s teachings are true, are valid. Yeah.
And then on top of that, they say, not only do have do we have to have done that purely, but we have to have consciously dedicated our merit to achieving a good rebirth, directing those imprints to that very specific goal properly. So how often do we do that? You know, many of us maybe say the prayer, like, at the end of teachings. If we do a meditation session, maybe we do a formal dedication. But how strong is that dedication?
How sincere is it? How clear is it? How strongly do we really think about it? How important it is? I’m not trying to criticize people.
You know, I I’ve I’ve I’ve fallen to all the bad side of all of these points myself. I shouldn’t really be sitting here, but, anyway, I got the job. So, anyway, so where am I? Where am I? Done again.
Yes. Yes. So but but in the past, miraculously, we did do those things. It may have taken many lives, but in past lives, we did it. And now we’ve got this result.
And in the in the teachings on the precious human rebirth, it gives us very simple but very powerful example to meditate on to get a sense of how rare the re precious human rebirth is and and because of its cause. And and that is the example if you compare the number of human beings on this planet with the number of beings, sentient beings trapped in the animal realm on this planet. Trapped in the animal realm on this planet. You know? So for every human being, there are millions and millions of sentient beings who have Buddha nature, but that Buddha nature is obscured, and that mind is trapped in some kind of animal body.
Yeah. And we have, according to the teachings, sentient beings in our body, and I’m not talking about people with worms, big worms, but all sorts of other tiny sentient beings in our body, on our body right now. So let so the ones that you can’t you can’t even see. They’re so tiny. So then there’s all those sent you know, animal beings in the animal realm that we as human beings acknowledge as, you know, animals, all the tiny insects, fish, fish, birds, every you know, everything.
So for just every for every human being, let’s say one one million, but there there probably is much more than that, beings in in the animal realm. Be and why is that? Because it’s so easy to create the negative causes to be reborn in the animal realm and very difficult to create the cause to be even a suffering human being in this realm. So then if you compare the eight billion versus seven billion human beings, the seven, how many of those beings, humans, humans, have a precious human rebirth? Hardly any.
If you take away all the humans who are whose lives are like being in hell, and there seems to be more and more, we’re we’re creating more hellish systems on on this earth all the time. There are people whose lives are like being in hell either because of, like, wars, drugs, family violence, political repression, mental disturbance. And then there’s people whose lives like being hungry ghosts, people whose lives are like you know, people who live lives like being animals and so on. And then there are humans who are like It’s not such a good word, but the barbarians and people with wrong views who have all sorts of physical and mental mental problems. And, yeah, all of that.
You and especially all the people who have no have never met the Dharma have and have no faith at all, not even a tiny bit of faith in the Buddhadharma. You eliminate all those people, and you’ve got hardly anyone left, hardly any human beings left who have a precious human rebirth. So that starts to see we start we can start to see how precious this this what we have precious this this what we have is, how rare. So how can we the and the point to reflect the reason for thinking along with these lines is to not think, oh, I am some some superior being. I’m super special.
I am much better than everyone else on this planet. It doesn’t mean that because we can lose this precious human rebirth at any time. And all those beings have had a precious human rebirth rebirth in the past, may have a potential to have it in the future, but right now, they don’t have it. Just right now, I do. I’m not better than anyone else, just momentarily more fortunate.
Alright. So the point is to realize how can I waste that kind of rebirth on doing ordinary things that we don’t need a human body to do? Yeah. When when we follow the eight world, it concerns just waste chasing after pleasure and ordinary happiness, worrying about ordinary suffering, not its causes, chasing after stuff, chasing after, you know, especially those two. You don’t have to have a human body to do that.
And you certainly don’t need a precious human rebirth, and you don’t even need a human rebirth just to get pleasure. Don’t just to get pleasure. You know? Animals do that. So we we engage in so many meaningless things.
And on top of that, we do all sorts of negative things as well. So it’s, you know, it’s a I don’t know how many times more a tragedy to use a precious human rebirth to engage in negative actions, but also so many kind of pointless, meaningless actions. You know, some of our actions can look, you know, very we can fool ourselves and think what I’m doing is really terrific. And we look at other people doing things and think, oh, how wonderful. How wonderful.
You know, ladies dripping in diamonds and all these fancy dresses and going to fancy restaurants. You know? But what is it? You know, when a pig is eats in the in the in the mud and someone eating off gold plates in a in a a restaurant and drinking champagne that costs a thousand dollars a bottle, it’s just the same. It’s just eating.
It’s just, you know, place chasing after the pleasure of taste. We can dress it up and make it look terrific and impressive, but it’s just it’s just something very ordinary. It’s not evil. I’m not just saying, you can’t do these things, but we fool ourselves. The mind attached to this life attachment what happens is attachment says, that is incredibly meaningful.
Doing that is incredibly important. Doing that is the most meaningful important thing to do in life. And some people believe that. Maybe we did that. Maybe we still do, unfortunately.
Think that looking like that, doing that, having that is really the top. Yeah? Like having one of those tiaras the queen has. If only you could get one of those or what or become a knight like prince Philip. Whoo.
Wow. You’ve made it. That would be terrific. And you have a sword and, you know, uniform and the epaulettes. That’d be great.
Those you’d have bigger shoulders. Get the girls that way for sure. You know? So yeah. Maybe I shouldn’t well, anyway, in one of the hundred thousand songs of Milarepa, he makes this he makes this comment about sort of girls dressed up in all their their wedding refinery refinery finery.
Wedding finery. And then, like, in festivals, they they decorate all the decorate all the cows and put flowers and paint them. Is it just the same? Just the same. But we attach so much importance to all these things.
I mean, these things are okay. Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t do any you know, me, I I have no position to say that anyway. I’m just trying to say what the Dharma says. All of these things, you know, can there’s some enjoyment, you know, something to them. Sure.
But our attachment to the worldly life just, you know, totally exaggerates totally exaggerates how important, how wonderful, how meaningful that is. And that’s the problem. Because the more we do that, the more time and energy goes into it and also the more negative energy goes into negative energy goes into it to achieve that. You know? To achieve that, we are willing to do all sorts of things.
You know? Pride gets involved. Jealousy gets involved. Lying gets involved. Exaggerating, you know, being doing all sorts of sneaky things, even very unpleasant, nasty things to to get all of that.
Think, oh my, you know, think about weddings, how much money is spent on weddings and the stress of weddings. Yeah. And what people are willing to do and and, like, the competition to have a better dress, a bigger wedding, a bigger wedding than someone somebody somebody down the street and a bit more beautiful dress and more bridesmaids and more flowers. And, I mean, not not all weddings are like that. I’m not saying they are, but those things happen because it is so important.
Is it? Is it really? When I was in India, I I knew vaguely or I met. I didn’t really know. This very rich Indian family who lived in Hong Kong, and their daughter was getting married.
So the mother flew back to Delhi, I think, once a week to arrange the wedding. Once a week. That was that was just you know, you can imagine those airfares, then then there was the actual wedding, which costs, I think, half a million dollars or something. Half a half a million American dollars, and then you put that into the context of the Indian economy, how much that meant. That was one wedding for one I don’t know how long the the wedding the marriage lasted, but yeah.
Then you think about all the stress and worry and blah blah blah. And then, of course, in the end oh, no. I won’t go into that. But we could be doing so so many more, you know, meaningful things with our time and energy. That’s what the Buddha is trying to tell us.
Yeah. So there’s the analogy that you’ve all heard, which I might repeat. I will. I can’t help myself with the blind turtle. Everyone knows the blind turtle story.
Right? Yes. You you I’ve I’ve mentioned it, Sharon. Anyway, just very quickly, I’ll I’ll do it again. You know?
You will hear it from other you know? Well, I’m not a Lama. Lama’s you’ll hear it. His Holiness might repeat it to you sometime. It’s repeated years and years.
If you’re a Tibetan, Tibetans love story. They’ve they know all the stories, and at the right moment, they laugh hysterically always. And very sincerely, you know, they just love these. This is not a funny story, but the story is the analogy is that you imagine this ocean very, very deep, and at the bottom of this deep this analogy was taught by the Buddha himself in a sūtra. So he said, you imagine that, and at the bottom of this ocean is a blind turtle.
And so that being blind because of ignorance, this ocean is Samsāra, and it and the turtle lives at the bottom of the ocean, meaning that most of the time, we are reborn in the lower realms. That is our real home. We’re just on a holiday here, a little holiday, camping holiday. And and so every one hundred years, that tortoise? A tortoise? A turtle turtle turtle, blind turtle, is able to come to the surface.
So the Buddha said that’s like being able to take rebirth in the upper realms once every one hundred years. The the turtle is able to stick his head above the water just once every hundred years. So then the Buddha said, imagine that on this vast, vast ocean, there is this golden ring floating, and it’s always moving because so this golden ring symbolizes the Dharma, and it’s always moving because the Dharma does move. It never stays in one place because people don’t have the karma for it to stay long. So then the Buddha said, imagine the the the possibility, the chance that this blind turtle, which is only able to stick its head above the water once in a hundred years, then what is the chance of it sticking its head through that golden ring?
So it’s almost impossible. But the Buddha said that, literally, literally, it is more rare to have a precious human rebirth. More rare. More rare. Really think about that.
I’ve heard that story for many, many, many years. It’s only fairly recently that it dawned on me what that meant. I don’t claim I realized it, but maybe a little realization for a few seconds. More rare. And the Buddha doesn’t lie, doesn’t kid.
More rare. So we’ve done it. We we’ve we’ve got the golden ring. We are still ignorant. We are blind, but we’ve got the golden ring around our neck.
So how can we waste that on doing ordinary stuff that we’ve done billions of times before? But we do it because we’re we’re trapped in the eight worldly concerns. We believe we have have the habit of following them, and we just believe the lies that the eight worldly concerns tell us. Because no matter how many times we think about what attachment means, we still hold on to this idea that this attachment is good, that that’s what I need to be happy. But attachment is a negative state of mind.
It brings it is a suffering state of mind that brings more suffering. And Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, one of the reasons why we we we fear giving up attachment and thinking it is the source of our happiness is because we have never gone beyond the experience of being controlled by it. We’ve never had the experience of not being under the control of attachment. Now that’s what Dharma is all about, is to be free of attachment. You know, when we have desire for something, afflicted desire, our solution is to stop that.
Actually, you know, what happens is that when we get the object of our desire, there there is some pleasure. And, really, why is there that pleasure? It’s because not because of the object, but actually it’s because the desire has stopped. Because you meet the object, and so you’re no longer desiring it because you’ve got it. So momentarily, there’s some pleasure, some relief, freedom from the desire, the craving, the dissatisfaction.
And so for momentarily, there is a superficial kind of satisfaction from meeting the object, but then that’s impermanent. It doesn’t last. But the trouble is every time we follow a delusion but, also, this is fortunately true. Every time we follow one of our virtuous mental factors, an imprint of that mental factor is generated in our mind. So every time we follow afflict afflicted desire and attachment, we create an imprint in our mind to follow attachment again.
So as the great Śāntideva says, following desire is like drinking salt water. Water. You know? We we drink water because we’re thirsty, but if we drink salty water, we’re just creating the cause to be thirsty again. So we drink more salty water, then we which means we have to drink again and again, which means every time we follow this afflicted desire and attachment, we are just creating the cause to be dissatisfied again and then again and again.
And in this way, there’s no time for dharma. Have I depressed everyone? No. Good. Rinpoche once said he and Rinpoche actually does say quite often.
But when I first heard it, I was found it a bit shocking, especially the way Rinpoche says it and how powerfully. But Rinpoche once said something along the lines that for it it is better for someone who who doesn’t practice the Dharma, Dharma, who has no faith it’s difficult to say. It’s better for them to die young than to live an old life long life because the longer one lives, one is creating just more and more negative karma. Whereas if if one is living a good life, a virtuous life, having a good heart, it doesn’t matter if one has a short life because one has engaged in virtue, one has a good rebirth. It’s okay.
So it’s not, you know, whether we live short or long, it’s what we do with this life. But, of course, if if we’re engaged in you know, if we are really trying to practice the Dharma, then it’s good to have a long life because that gives us the opportunity to practice more Dharma. That’s why in Tantra, there are practices like the of long life of White Tārā practice and Namgyälma practice and so on to extend one’s life so that one can continue to practice. On that happy note, we’ll take a break, tea break, coffee break, biscuit break. Oh, no.
That was it. Oh, sorry. Right. I forgot. Yes.
Yes. That’s it. For that’s the talk for tonight. Yeah. Yeah.
So so quickly, in conclusion, one extra thing addition to make that meditation on the precious human rebirth really powerful is to reflect that with all of those freedoms and endowments, not only can we lose them during this life, but we are going to die, and we could die at any moment. Yeah. This precious human rebirth is so short. Even even a long human life is very, very short, but also, you know, it it it can end at any moment. So we you know, that’s why it’s so important to try to encourage ourselves to practice, to seize this opportunity, not to waste it on meaningless things, certainly not on negative things.
And, therefore, to have the courage wisdom and compassion to be able to recognize our own worldly concerns, how they manifest in our life, and to have the courage and and wisdom not to follow them or to follow them less and less less in our life. So that will give us the space, the time, the energy to to practice the Dharma and to practice it more purely, more effectively. Therefore and by doing that, we will get what Lama Yeshe used to call the taste of the Dharma, which is the most delicious taste of all, and that will encourage us to practice more and to give up the self the eight worldly concerns more. And what helps us do that is I’d like to talk about this a bit more next week and some other things. One of the ways to antidotes, the most effective antidote for us as ordinary people to give up the eight worldly concerns is to realize more and more deeply that all of the the objects of our worldly concerns, the things that we crave, the things we fear are impermanent.
They don’t last. So why bother with them? Why bother so much? Why have so much craving, so much fear and aversion when it’s all impermanent? It doesn’t last.
It’s not enough just to say those words. We have to really feel it, really know it, that this thing I’m craving, it’s just it’s not gonna last. This thing I’m so upset by, worried by, afraid of, have version for, it’s not gonna last. So this talk doesn’t last either. You are happy to know.
So we can stop here. So we can maybe do a quick dedication just for those people who so then we’ll have a break, and then for people who want to stay for the torma offering to the guru, we’ll do that. People who don’t want to, then are free to go. Yeah. There might I’ve gotta stop trying to make pathetic jokes, you know, really.
So we’ll just do two dedications on 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 very much. Oh, for people who may not have an outline of the precious human rebirth and who would like one, you’re most welcome to collect one. It’s just a short outline of the points of the precious human rebirth meditation. If you’d like to study the topic more, there is a whole book on it by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Free book in in the f in the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, FPMT lineage series, which we should have at Buddha House, which we don’t, but we we will get.
But you can also get them through wisdom archives. You can go to their website, which is a wonderful website. Lama Yeshe wisdom archive, w w w dot lama yeshe dot com. It’s called The Perfect human Rebirth, Freedom and Richness on the Path to Enlightenment. There’s also another whole book by Rinpoche in this same series on the eight worldly concerns.
Fantastic. Which I can’t I haven’t got a copy of yet. Gotta get. Anyway, please take a break.