Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 107-minute class, Venerable Thubten Dondrub explores the eight worldly concerns—the deluded mental habits that trap us in suffering and saṃsāra. He begins with foundational motivation: renouncing narrow self-interest and cultivating bodhicitta, the heartfelt determination to free all beings from suffering. The core teaching examines how the eight worldly concerns—craving pleasure and fearing pain, craving things and fearing loss, craving reputation and fearing disgrace—spring from ignorant self-cherishing and keep us spiritually asleep despite having a precious human rebirth. Dondrub emphasizes two powerful antidotes: meditation on impermanence and death, which deflates our exaggerated attachment to fleeting objects and status; and understanding emptiness, which dissolves the illusion that anything has inherent, fixed existence. He illustrates with vivid examples—a blind turtle threading a golden yoke, the inevitable decay of flowers and sounds moment by moment, a wealthy man’s Japanese mansion that brought no happiness—to show why chasing worldly happiness wastes this rare opportunity. The teaching is pitched at sincere dharma practitioners ready to examine how these eight concerns operate in their own minds and generate the courage to redirect their energy toward lasting benefit.
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File: Eight Worldly Concerns Week 5 2015 02 05.mp3
UUID: f00761b9-b00a-4108-8a31-173fecba9d8a
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Eight Worldly Concerns (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2015-02-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 107.4 minutes
Words: ~10,877
So welcome everyone to our Thursday night class, which I think this is the fifth one, fourth, fifth, fifth, fifth class on the eight worldly concerns. So we can begin by doing the prayer of the Lion-Faced Dakini. This is on page six of our wonderful new multi colored prayer book. Please don’t find any errors. But if you do, let us know.
I prostrate to the gathering of dakinis and the three places who abide in the holy abodes of the three places. By your powers of clairvoyance and magical emanation, look after practitioners like a mother her child. 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 thinking of Śākyamūni Buddha in front of us, thinking of the Buddha as the embodiment of the Three Jewels of refuge and also the source of all our perfect teachers of the past, present, and future, we offer a mandala as a way to request teachings, to a way to purify our mind, and to accumulate merit, all of which is necessary to be able to understand, practice, and realize the the teachings. Or use the mudras and so on. The main thing is to generate that mind which really wanting to receive the teachings and practice them and generating that mind that really wants to give in order to receive the teachings. So then, especially now, generating the the right motivation for being here and studying the teachings. So really trying to sort of, yes, really check our motivation and let go of any motivation that is just thinking about the benefits of this life, understanding that just all the work of this life only brings very superficial temporary results.
And our our chasing after them involves following the eight worldly concerns. So so, in fact, in in thinking of doing things just for this life, we end up creating all sorts of negative imprints that bring suffering in the future. We try and let go of that motivation just seeking our good rebirth for ourselves or even just getting out of saṃsāra for ourselves, but by, again, trying to bring to the forefront of our consciousness right now as a strong recognition and awareness that in reality, my existence today, this life, in all lives is totally dependent and interconnected with all other beings. I totally depend on them, especially their kindness, especially the kindness of a mother, which I’ve received from every sentient being many, many, many times. And all these beings are suffering, so I can’t just focus on myself.
But the most important thing to do, the most meaningful beneficial thing is to repay their kindness by helping them to become free of all suffering and all its causes, helping them to achieve everlasting happiness. And doing that, of course, benefits all sentient beings. It’s the best way to benefit myself. So as we think of the Buddha in front of us, also try and think of all sentient beings surrounding you, starting with your parents on either side and trying to think of all these beings as only kind but only suffering. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, and the supreme assembly.
By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings? So thinking the Buddha’s pleased with our motivation, we imagine the Buddha showing this by coming towards the crown of our head. When directly above our crown, we imagine the Buddha then dissolving into blissful golden light so that that light can pour down into us, blessing our mind. So then we can enhance that state of mind by briefly doing the nine round breathing exercise or some other breathing meditation to enable our mind to become a little bit calmer, clearer, more concentrated so that we can use that level of mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. Okay.
Thank you. So we’re all incredibly fortunate to have met the Mahāyāna teachings of the of the Buddha, especially through the Tibetan tradition, which has preserved the secret aspect of the the Mahāyāna teachings, which is which is the tantras. So because being able to to generate bodhicitta or have the opportunity to create the causes to generate bodhicitta is the most amazing thing, the most wonderful thing. So we have that. And in order to generate bodhicitta, this involves giving up the self-cherishing thought and cherishing others more than self.
This is the the very heart of bodhicitta, and that’s what it really involves. And there are two forms of self-cherishing as far as I have understood from my teach the the teachings I’ve received, especially from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, received, especially from Lama Zopa Rinpoche. And so there is the subtle kind of self-cherishing, which is the self-cherishing that practices the Dharma for one’s own benefit, particularly to achieve liberation from cyclic existence. So that self subtle self-cherishing is a virtuous state of mind because it involves developing faith in the Dharma and practicing it practicing it based on observing the morality of the law of cause and effect and and so on and developing a certain degree of loving kindness and compassion and so on. So it’s all very wonderful, and it results in achieving nirvana for oneself.
But that practice doesn’t really lead to the the ultimate benefit of other sentient beings. So we have to get rid of that self-cherishing it and replace that kind of self-cherishing and replacing it with cherishing others more than self through generating bodhicitta. But also in order to get rid of that subtle to overcome that subtle self-cherishing, firstly, we have to get rid of the gross self-cherishing, which is what controls our mind now and has been controlling our mind during beginningless time and which is why we we remain in Samsāra. The very cause the very root cause of of cyclic existence is our ignorance, our self grasping ignorance that experiences our self and all things in a false way. But because of that, we have this gross self-cherishing that perpetuates our Samsāra, keeps us taking rebirth over and over again because that self-cherishing manifests mainly through the eight worldly concerns.
Right? So those those worldly concerns are just craving the happiness of this life, the worldly happiness of this life, and what that involves as I mentioned every week before, but we’ll say it again. That that craving, stronger it gets, and it does do so for all of us at various points, that craving for the the worldly happiness of this life leads us to engage in negative actions. And the more we have that craving, we have its opposite, which is the fear of suffering, not the fear of the causes of suffering, but just fear of suffering itself, the fear of painful feelings, unpleasant physical and mental feelings. And that that fear also leads us to engage in negative actions to avoid that suffering.
And that leads to all the other worldly concerns of craving stuff. And the more we crave it, the more we will engage in negative actions to get stuff, the more we fear losing stuff or, yeah, losing it. What else is there? We fear not getting it and fear losing what we’ve got. So the more we have that fear, again, that will lead us to engage in negative actions.
The more we crave acceptance and reputation, the more we’re willing to do anything to achieve it, so on. So all the our worldly concerns, they, you know, they they take up our time and energy so there’s no time to practice Dharma, less interest in it. And and instead of creating the causes of happiness, we create the causes of suffering, and we we act as a condition. Our our our world being caught up in the worldly concerns, we end up harming sentient beings and not benefiting them. So we really need to understand the eight worldly concerns, what they are, how they particularly what they are in general, but specifically we need to identify how those worldly concerns operate in our life, in our mind, and understanding more and more how harmful they are to develop the courage and wisdom and the compassion to apply the antidotes to them.
And all of this becomes much more, what’s the word, relevant and vital, etcetera, when we understand, as I’ve been trying to point out, that right now we have the precious human rebirth. Most of us here, probably all of us here, have the precious or perfect human rebirth, the optimum chance to develop our mind. We all have Buddha nature. That will never go away, but there’s almost no hardly ever a situation in cyclic existence where there is the opportunity to to liberate that Buddha nature, to get rid of the obscurations. Too much suffering in in the lower realms, too much pleasure in the upper realms, even in the human realm.
There are so so many difficulties and so on. But so it’s not enough to have a precious human rebirth. We have to recognize it. We have to recognize that we have it. We have this incredible opportunity, this incredible freedom to practice the Dharma, incredibly encouraging factors to practice the Dharma.
We have to understand the real meaning of the precious human rebirth and how incredibly rare it is because it’s so, so difficult to create the causes for it. You know? It’s probably taken us many, many, many lifetimes of of of difficult practice to have this one short human life where we’ve met the Dharma and have some faith in it and the opportunity to practice it. So last week, I finished when we were talking about the analogy of the the blind tortoise turtle. Blind what?
Turtle. Blind turtle, which is an analogy that the Buddha himself taught that it is rarer to have a precious literally rarer to have a precious human rebirth than for a blind turtle to stick its neck through that golden yoke that’s floating on top of this vast ocean. So that really is worth meditating on a lot, that analogy. It’s really quite powerful. There are some other analogies that are also given in that meditation on the precious human rebirth to get a sense of its rarity.
One of which is if you imagine you have a needle, a a sewing needle, and you were to throw a handful of sesame seeds up in the air. What are the chances that one of those sesame seeds would land on the tip of that sewing needle and stay there? There? How many handfuls of sesame seeds would you have to throw up? How and how how long before you could catch one on the on the tip of a needle and keep it there quite a while.
Yeah. So each one of those sesame seeds represents one lifetime. So you’d have, many, many. Yeah. So one should think like that to get a sense of how incredibly difficult it is to create the precious human rebirth, which we have now.
That, you know yeah. We just take it for granted. Oh, there’s lots of human beings. And, you know, human beings are just created by all the time. Yeah.
human beings are created all the time, but, actually, compared to all other sentient beings, even human beings are very, very few, and very, very few human beings have the precious human rebirth. Yeah. I hope everyone now knows what the eight freedoms and ten endowments are because we hopefully, we are meditating on this topic. As I said, Lama Zopa Rinpoche said, just even just meditating that on that every day is so beneficial and very important, very useful, necessary to wake up each morning remember that one has the precious human rebirth and not to waste it, not to waste it on meaningful meaningless things. And as I was finishing last week, I’ll just carry on a little bit about this.
If you think about it, of which we should, what we’re encouraged to, when we follow the eight worldly concerns, we end up using this precious time, which could be used in the practice of Dharma creating the cause of lasting happiness, we we use it in in doing things in many cases, which, firstly, we don’t need a precious human rebirth to do, and we don’t even need a human rebirth to do because much of the time, we the average human being spends their time just chasing after pleasure, which is okay at one level, but even this is what animals do also. Yeah? And sometimes they’re much better at it, and they don’t have any guilt about it. They just do it. I could give some examples, but maybe as a monk, shouldn’t.
Yes. Anyway, yes. So for a human being just to what you spend their life chasing after pleasure is is really a waste, but someone who has a precious human rebirth, it’s even a greater waste, a greater tragedy to do just that. Of course, to do these things is okay, but what we make the mistake of doing is we give these many people, especially if one hasn’t met the dharma and hasn’t developed faith in it, hasn’t developed faith in future lives, hasn’t some realization of impermanence and death that this life is is is going to end, could end at any time, then in chasing after pleasure, what we tend to do controlled by attachment and the eight worldly concerns is we think what we do is we give some ultimate value to these things. To this pleasure has some ultimate value, like the pleasure of owning, like, a very expensive car or some designer clothes or eating at some very expensive restaurant, that that pleasure is labeled.
You you one projects onto it so much other stuff where we the more one believes just in this life that there’s only the happiness and the pleasures of this life and the sufferings of this life, the more the mind forces itself to believe that this is very special. This thing is very special. This is the ultimate thing one can achieve with no awareness of what we could really do with our mind, with our life. So we you know, attachment makes something appear so important, an ultimate value that it just doesn’t have at all. Right?
And which can actually leave people feeling when they experience these things. You know, one can, you know, crave to have some experience all one’s life, and then you get it, and it can be so disappointing, so hollow. I was telling someone last week, I think it was that actually, I I have a friend here, a friend of mine who who yeah. I suppose it’s okay to say, married a man who was quite a bit older than her. And all his life he was quite wealthy.
And all his life, he had had an interest in Japanese culture, and he collected all sorts of Japanese things. And all his life, he wanted to live in a Japanese style house. So his first wife, who was very sick, eventually died, and then he married my friend. And then he built this Japanese house in the Adelaide Hills. And he he in he actually brought one or two Japanese craftsmen from Japan to build a particular part of this house.
I’ve forgotten what it’s called. I’ve been there. I went there. Saw it. You know, some not sort of like a kind of like a tea room within the house, but the whole place was Japanese style and everything.
And it was all finished and furnished Japanese, and then he realized it didn’t make him happy. And then he died. Yeah. So many, many stories like that actually. You know, there’s all these famous Victorian follies, these huge houses built by very people who became extremely rich during the industrial revolution, and they built these gigantic houses.
Then they built them and found out, oh, don’t like it. Can’t live in it. Then they fell down. So many things things like that in life. You have one has this fantasy.
If I have this huge, big, this if only I had that. So we crave these things thinking this is happiness. Our self-cherishing, our worldly concerns, our attachment tells us this is the ultimate happiness. And all our energy and intelligence and focus goes on to that, onto an illusion that leaves leaves us disappointed. Or even if it works, all all we get is the pleasure of this life, some entertainment, and then we die.
And we haven’t done anything with our mind. We haven’t purified our mind. We haven’t developed our mind. We haven’t changed our mind. We haven’t become wiser, more intelligent, compassionate.
We’ve actually just become more attached. Now I’m depressing everyone. Anyway, so where am I? Yes. So it’s really important to have a sense of the precious recognizing that one has a precious human rebirth, what we can really do with it, and how rare it is because understanding how rare it is will motivate us to use it in in the right way, in in the most meaningful way to try and reduce our obsession with the things of this life so that we can devote our our wisdom and energy and and so on to taking care of the mind more and more.
So what gets in the way is those worldly concerns. The and of the two principal ones are that craving for worldly happiness and and fearing suffering, just fearing suffering. And and the the strange sad thing is that the more we fear the suffering, the the more we ignore concerned with the causes of our suffering. We just have this neurotic fear of suffering, this inability to to bear it. Yeah.
We don’t have this wise fear of suffering or the wise fear of the causes of suffering. We just due to our craving for instant happiness, we have this inner what goes with that is the inability to bear suffering. If you really check, that has to happen. Because the more our mind demands pleasure now and quickly, that that means at the very same time as that mind is operating, we are creating a mind that can’t bear creating a mind that can’t bear the opposite. If we want happiness now easily, that do we want it happiness quickly now?
It’s because we can’t bear suffering. And we want it to go away immediately, quickly. And the more we want suffering to go away immediately and quickly, the more we will label anything that distracts us from that suffering as happiness, as good, as beautiful. We can convince ourselves that getting addicted to drugs is great because it instantly gets rid of my suffering or appears to. Yeah.
So we all have various kinds of drugs we take. Some are illegal. Some are legal. You know? And I hope socially acceptable, but we all have things that we’re very, very addicted to, you know, that distract us, that, you know, seem to entertain us for a while.
While. So one way one major way to oh, no. Okay. Yes. Just go back a bit.
So also in no. Okay. Yes. So one of the main ways to overcome our worldly concerns is is to understand impermanence and death. Lama Zopa Rinpoche says there are about eight main ways, antidotes to overcome our worldly concerns.
And probably the most powerful one for us, the most effective one is understanding impermanence and death. Firstly, we we can we we should really put effort into understanding how we ourselves are going to die and that we could die at any time, particularly in the context like, if someone has no belief in future lives and and this and so particularly in that case, thinking about death is not a good thing to do. It can be very depressing. But for a Dharma student student who has refuge in the teachings and has some basic faith, understanding, belief in the continuity of mind and future lives, it is incredibly important to meditate on developing an awareness of our own mortality that we are definitely going to die and even more important to us to put into perspective what is meaningful to do in this life. There are there are many people who have nearly died in this life, have come very close to death.
There are people who have had what are called the near death experiences where they’ve had an experience where it seems they’ve died and then come back. And for many of those people, that experience has been extremely life changing and really quite revolutionary in forcing them to think about what is meaningful to do in this life and has helped people sort of lessen their attachment to all sorts of meaningless things. So unfortunately, it’s not easy. One just can’t manufacture near death experience. I think it would be very good if we all had one, but they just don’t happen like that.
But the Buddha has manufactured one for us, which is the death meditation, to think about how we are definitely going to die and especially that we could die at any time, quite literally, because there are so many causes of death. All of the ways that human beings have died, we we we are subject to. We may not feel feel this is the case, but there’s no way we can say that I I know for sure. I I I am guarantee it is guaranteed that I will not die in that way, that other human beings have died. Yeah.
We just can’t say that because we don’t know our karma. And in fact well, in one way we do because we can say in past lives, we’ve engaged in every kind of action, good and bad. So, actually, we could have created the cause in the past to experience experience this way of dying. Some of the very common ways of dying, there are very uncommon, bizarre ways that people have died. But even those, we can’t say this couldn’t happen to me.
We just don’t know. So the more we develop an understanding of how we are mortal and that especially that we could die at any time, then and and especially when we understand in the context of having a precious human rebirth, how ridiculous it is, how sad it is to waste this very short life on these things, these meaningless and negative things when death could happen at any moment. And, unfortunately, in this crazy world we’re living in, it seems like death could happen even in any moment even more than in the past with, you know, terrorists and what whatever happening and all sorts of strange new diseases evolving in this world. So one has to it’s not enough just simply to read these words or hear them. One has to reflect on them.
One has to meditate on them so that it affects the mind one until one actually realizes this. Because intellectually, of course, we all know we’re going to die. This is not news, but we don’t realize it. It doesn’t really go deep into our mind so that it affects the way we do things, how and and what we see as significant and important. Important.
Because in the moment, you know, we lose sight of that. I mean, how often do you wake up in the morning thinking, I could die today? This could be my last day in this body on this earth. Because it could be. It really could be.
Because there there will come a time where there is a last day. We’re all going to have that last day. And we may think it’s when we’re very, very old, but young people die too. People die at all sorts of ages, or any age, in fact. One one moment, we’re alive.
The next moment, we’re dead. And we tend to think that second moment is a long way away, but it’s just the next moment. One moment we’re alive, the next moment we’re dead. There’s not a huge gap. Seems like there’s a huge gap, but it’s just the next moment.
We just don’t know when that next moment will be. So if we could have that awareness, that would really help us to put things in perspective of what is really worth doing with the time we’ve got. You know? Especially when we understand more and more through the teachings on the law of cause and effect that when we die, we need to die with a peaceful mind, with a virtuous mind. And when if the mind’s controlled by the eight worldly concerns when we’re dying, that isn’t a peaceful mind.
It isn’t a virtuous mind. So when the mind is peaceful and virtuous, then one of the positive throwing karmas will ripen that brings a good rebirth. If the mind is not at peace, is not in a virtuous state, then that acts as the condition for one of the negative throwing karmas to ripen at death that brings us a bad rebirth. So just that helps. Just that.
That’s quite a lot. But this is something to think about more and more, to meditate on more and more. We have a precious human rebirth, but it’s impermanent. We’re going to lose it, and we could lose it at any time. So why waste it on meaningless things and certainly on really negative things?
It’s really a disaster. And so that’s one aspect of overcoming the worldly concerns is thinking about our own mortality and how and how we could die at any moment. And and also understanding that when we die, the what is going to help us at the time of death? What is really going to help us? Meaning, what is gonna help us leave the help our mind leave this body properly, peacefully, calmly, so and have a good rebirth?
What is gonna help at the time of death to bring a good rebirth? And the the answer is, of course, the practice of Dharma. Having having and And it doesn’t mean practicing the Dharma at the time of death. It’s a bit too late. Well, hopefully, we will be able to practice Dharma at the time of death, but the only way in general we’ll be able to do that is if we’ve practiced it during our life.
Yeah. Because, you know, death is is a very unique experience. And at the best, it’s a difficult experience. So it’s very unrealistic to think that during this very difficult time, suddenly, I’m going to take a strong interest in the Dharma and become all very virtuous and calm and peaceful and kind and compassionate, etcetera, etcetera. We don’t become calm and peaceful when we lose our car keys or something breaks.
The mind tends to get instantly agitated. So dying, losing this body is much more than losing our car keys. So for the mind to remain in a basically okay state during that time, we have to have practiced the Dharma during this life and not pretended to pretended to ourselves or others. We have to have practiced it genuinely, sincerely. So only genuine, sincere practice is gonna help us at the time of death.
And what stops us doing that is the above worldly concerns. So what acts as a very direct antidote to the eight worldly concerns is understanding more and more that not only are we going to die, that we’re impermanent and could die at any moment. But everything that our worldly concerns are concerned with, those things are impermanent. We crave worldly happiness believing it’s permanent. That’s why we crave it.
That is the nature of all our delusions of of attachment, desire, anger, pride, jealousy. It sees the object as permanent, unchanging, fixed, static, always like that. So in the case of of craving happiness, which is due to attachment and desire, that that desire and attachment, you know, projects onto something pleasant, something much wonderful, makes it so much more wonderful, gives it a value that it just, you know, an ultimate value that it just doesn’t have and can’t have, and then also creates the illusion that this amazing thing is always going to be like that, which means that it will always bring this imagined wonderful experience. If I have this, it I will always be happy. I will always be comfortable and secure and protected and blah blah blah.
That’s the illusion which we always tend to fall into, believe, and get cheated by. But what we have to, again, meditate on more and more is how everything in our world or everything that arises depending on causes and conditions is impermanent. Changes. It has to change. This is one of the four seals of the Buddha’s teachings, one of the unique viewpoints of the Buddha’s teachings that everything that depends on causes and conditions is impermanent.
It’s changing irreversibly. So everything that, you know, we crave, all the happiness that we crave, all the pleasure that we crave to have, it’s all impermanent because it arises depending on causes and conditions. Worldly happiness arises depending on causes and conditions, which means it’s not going to last. It changes moment by moment. It decays moment by moment.
It fades away moment by moment irreversibly. And so if we really understood that, not just intellectually, but could really have some experience of that, then these things we crave would be less desirable. Why put so much time and energy into craving these things? Why put so much time and energy into trying to get these things when they are going to disappear, fade away. I mean, it’s okay if we get them.
We can enjoy them for a while, but why put so much effort into it? This is what we have to think about because, really, we we we all get caught up in this. I won’t go into lots of elaborate details, but some of you have seen my amazing, magical, creation of a sound where I I will you know, where you create well, an example of something that arises depending on causes and conditions is a sound. A sound only exists depending on causes and conditions. So if you make a sound depending on causes and conditions You create that sound.
All all the causes and conditions come together in one moment when I hit it there, this thing there, when all those kinda causes and conditions come together in one moment, a sound is created. And then moment by moment, that sound fades away. And nothing is making that that sound go away. Nothing is coming along to make it go away. It just declines, decays moment by moment because it has no power from its side to stay the same beyond one one moment, the first moment when it’s created.
And in the very next moment, it gets less and less and less. And that is irreversible. You know, you can’t that sound has now ceased. It doesn’t exist anymore. And you can’t make it come back.
There’s nothing you can do to stop that process. Nothing. No one can do anything. No scientist can invent something that will make that irreversible. Even though they did invent how to unboil an egg, they’ve just invented developed how to unboil an egg, which apparently is gonna have many wonderful benefits for medicine.
No. Seriously. Apparently. Anyway, I probably shouldn’t have said that. Now you’re gonna think about unboiling eggs when the main thing is sounds irreversible.
It’s irreversible. And the point about that example of the sound is that everything is like that. You know, these flowers are decaying moment by moment just like the sound. But we just like the with the sound, you can hear it. With with with the flowers, with physical object well, sounds are physical, but the gross of physical objects, we can’t see that decay moment by moment.
But in a few days, when you come back and look at these, they’ll they’ll have changed because the decay is occurring moment by moment. I haven’t always had this under my eyes. All this out here, you know. It happens moment by moment. I was young once.
I wasn’t always like this. Yeah. It happens moment by moment. Yeah. And and there’s nothing to be done about it.
It’s irreversible. So this is true of everything. So the if we could understand that more, which we can, we can understand this, we can realize this, if we put our mind to it, that we can realize this, then we could we could enjoy things for what they are in the moment, but we wouldn’t crave for them crave them for them. We wouldn’t get attached to them. Would be less and less concerned with these things as ultimately important as having incredible significance.
Right. They would take their appropriate place in our life. And then the mind would be free to do what is really significant, which is take care of the mind and for the sake of oneself and all sentient beings. And also so this is true for all the things that we’re attached to, but also the things that we fear. You know, because of our craving for worldly pleasure, there’s that fear of suffering and, you know, the fear of discomfort.
But all of those things that we fear, the the sit people, situations, and so on that we fear, it is also true that all these things are impermanent. They they they cannot last forever. And if you check what just as with things that appear beautiful and therefore a source of happiness, by believing that they are permanent, the the desire for them is even greater. That reinforces the desire because this it seems like this thing will be always like that. Yeah.
But if and and so that that makes it more desirable. And in the same way, when when there’s something unpleasant, our our ignorant mind creates the illusion that that unpleasantness, that difficulty, difficulty, that problem, that situation, that bad situation, that uncomfortable situation is going to go on forever. It’s never going to stop, and that makes it worse. It makes it more unbearable. It’s not to say that you know, so if we could understand, really remember that this is impermanent, even though the the the situation is still difficult, it wouldn’t be so bad.
It wouldn’t be so unbearable. It wouldn’t act necessarily activate activate our negative minds. But when something becomes unbearable, that’s when our self-cherishing reacts in a really negative way. So we really need to meditate on impermanence to try and practice that in order to be be mindful in our daily life that that is the actual nature of virtually everything we experience, especially all the things that we we crave, all, you know, that that that are the objects of our worldly concerns of craving pleasure, fearing pain, all the the objects that you know, if you check if you check, don’t believe me. Check.
Don’t necessarily believe the Buddha. Check up that the things that we are craving for, actually, they arise depending on causes and conditions. Therefore, they must be impermanent. They are changing. So if we allow some space in the mind for that awareness, then hopefully our craving will be reduced.
We’re creating conditions for our craving to be reduced because everything arises depending on causes. You know? It arises dependently. If we allow our mind to think in the old way, the way it’s always thought, then the worldly concern will always be there. Yeah?
But if we start to introduce a new component into the mind, a slightly different way of thinking or hopefully a completely different way of thinking, a different way of looking at it rather than looking at it as permanent, rather than agreeing that this is the most wonderful thing, and we start to see that it’s that it’s it’s something impermanent. Impermanent. As soon as we allow our mind to think that way, the our experience will change step by step. Because especially, I’m not sure so much with the fear side, but especially I always here always have my attachments over here. The beautiful things here.
Because, you see, attachment is the sneakiest one. Getting rid rid of anger and aversion is much easier than getting rid of attachment because we all don’t like getting angry, yeah, usually. We can it’s quite easy to see that anger is not such a good thing, but we have fooled ourselves into thinking that attachment and desire is good because it brings me these nice things or it seems to. So we’re attached to our we’re not attached attached to our anger, but we’re attached to our attachment. That’s the problem.
So our dharma mind says, oh, yes. I should give up my attachment to things. But but then, you know, the attachment says, oh, but it’s so nice. It’s so nice. If if if I give up my attachment to it, I’ll be unhappy.
Yeah? I’ll be unhappy if I’m not attached attached to this, if I don’t desire it and get attached to it. How will I be able to enjoy anything? The Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, the whole problem is that we have never been able to go beyond attachment. We have no idea what it is like to experience something free of attachment.
And what the what what the practitioners, the great practitioners are telling us is that to experience this beautiful object free of attachment is much more enjoyable enjoyable than experiencing it with attachment. And at the same time, there’s more time, space to enjoy other things as well. But we believe, oh, no. No. You have to be attached to things to have happiness.
You have to desire all these things. But just enjoying something is not the same as having desire and attachment for it. One can enjoy something and not necessarily be attached to it. But the trouble is for us, when as soon as we enjoy something, we get attached to it. But that isn’t necessarily it doesn’t have to be that way.
Because the lamas enjoy everything. They have a great time. They have a really great time. They have a much greater time than we do. They really enjoy stuff.
But then they can just let it go. Tea break or question first Any disagreements? So we have a question. Yes? Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes and no. I’d because it’s it’s not so much the problem of of labeling things, of saying this is this or this is that. The problem is is then believing it, of grasping that this is it’s it’s a I I think it’s perfectly okay to see say this is a beautiful flower because, know, because, conventionally, there are beautiful things, and, conventionally, there are unpleasant things and bad things and so on.
But, the problem is that we then grasp that that label becomes the thing inherently from its own side. That’s where the problem arises, not so much the labeling itself, but believing that label is the thing inherently from its own side. That’s the big problem. And, of course, that is the main way to overcome. Well, the most powerful way to reduce the worldly concerns is to understand emptiness, but that’s the most difficult thing to understand.
So if we understood that everything was empty, it’s not inherently existing. There’s inherently beautiful object, no inherently bad object, and so on. That if we had some real experience of that inner experience, then that would be the most powerful way to overcome the worldly concerns. But, unfortunately, it’s the most difficult realization to get. That’s why I was saying, from my point of view, the the for us of the of the eight ways to try to overcome the worldly concerns, probably the most powerful one for us is to understand it’s all impermanent because we can understand that and realize that more quickly, easily than to understand and realize the empty nature of things, that they lack inherent existence.
But it’s true to some extent. The more we put labels and and tell ourselves, oh, this is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, then it does, you know, engender that attachment or aversion or, you know, saying this is bad, bad, bad. So we do sort of have to catch yes. It is helpful to some extent to catch the mind that is really giving those labels and especially dwelling on it. It’s the mind that dwells on that.
Yeah. Because as Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, you know, one way of thinking produces every kind of happiness. One way of thinking produces every kind of suffering. So it’s by thinking about just dwelling on a particular object in a particular way that induces that either the aversion or attachment. Okay.
So understanding impermanence and not just understanding it, but trying to really have some actual inner experience of the impermanence of things through meditating on it over and over again. That really not only works for the the first set of worldly concerns, the craving for pleasure and the fearing of pain, but also for all the others. So if you think the the next set is we we waste our precious human rebirth craving for for stuff, for things, craving wanting to get things. And, of course, what goes so a lot of time and energy goes into thinking about getting stuff, what one wants to get. But then as a result of that, there’s all the time and energy that goes into trying to get the stuff, having thought about it.
I want this and how, you know, I you know, how will I get it? Then there’s all the time and energy that goes into actually trying to get the stuff. Again, if we could be more and more aware that all the stuff we want is impermanent, is not gonna last. It’s it’s gonna go out of fashion. Or if it doesn’t go out of fashion, it’s it’s just gonna get old and worn, could break, go rusty, scratched, blah blah blah, all those things.
If we could remember what it will what it will look like in ten years time rather than thinking what it looks like now, then maybe we wouldn’t desire it so much. So that’s what we should try to do rather than think that it’s permanently like this to realize that actually it’s not going to stay like that. And it may not stay like that for very long at all. I I don’t know. What is it that they enjoy?
Oh, I think they enjoy the same things we enjoy, but they enjoy them in a different way free of attachment. That’s all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yes and no. That’s one way of looking at it because by understanding its impermanence, you can actually appreciate it more because it is so fleeting. The beauty in this world is so fleeting, and you can’t hold on to it. So in some ways, it’s more precious. But but the trouble is in explaining that everything gets very tricky.
That could lead to even more attachment because it’s so but the the other way of of thinking it is the the main point is our attachment to things is increased by believing this will always be like that. What we need to do is is is reduce that attachment by realizing this is not going to stay like this. Not not for the sake of therefore, not being attached to it I’ll be able to appreciate it more but for the sake of not being attached to it. But the point is that by not being attached to it, actually one will be able to appreciate it more. Did that make any sense?
Yes. Yes. I know. Well, no attachments fit. But you have to remember, Liz, I think you sorry.
I’m maybe completely wrong in projecting, but I think you’re making this mistake of again associating attachment to your family and friends and dogs with love and affection for them. Right? So attachment is remember oh, do I have to say that? I should say this again. Desire exaggerates.
There are conventionally these are conventionally beautiful. Yeah? These are not ugly. These are conventionally beautiful flowers, conventionally nice colors. Yeah.
We all agree. Right? Yes. But desire exaggerates how wonderful this is. Well, you know, if one has desire for them, maybe not everyone does, but if one desires it, the desire arises because you we experience a pleasant thing and then that makes us happy.
And because I am happy then and because I really want to be happy. And then something makes me happy, so that must be really, really good. So desire exaggerates how good that is, how beautiful that is, and then and sees it as permanent, and then we get attached to it. We don’t want, We want to separate it from it so we become dependent on it. We get neurotically obsessed with it and dependent on it.
So that is a completely different state of mind from the mind that is in the case of an object able to enjoy it, appreciate it, and in the case of a person have affection for that person and caring for that person and wanting that person to be happy, that is different from having desire and attachment. But for us, they get very mixed up in our mind. You know, they they we have both, you know, alternating. But as in as in the teachings, it says that because one love and affection and appreciation, these are positive states of mind. There’s nothing wrong with them.
They’re okay. They don’t bring suffering, whereas desire and attachment bring suffering. So in a relationship with a person, it’s not the affection for a person that is problem. It’s the attachment. Yeah.
And and and if you have an object, it’s not your enjoyment of the object that is the problem. It’s the attachment. It’s not the object that’s the problem, and it’s not and it’s not one’s own enjoyment of the object that’s the problem. It’s the attachment to that, which is the problem. Well, yeah.
Well, that’s a form of attachment, but it may not necessarily be mine. It may never be mine, but one is attached mentally to that. Yeah. I want it to be mine. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Meaning in people. Yeah.
You can’t have compassion for things. So it’s only people. Yeah. So, conventionally, there are nasty people, you know, like like the terrorists and so on. Yeah.
We can say, conventionally, they are terrible people. But as a Buddhist, what we want one they are actually greater objects of compassion than nice people because those people are suffering and are creating the cause to experience even more suffering. That that yeah. And and those people also have Buddha nature. Their their their terribleness is is a superficial quality.
It’s not their true nature. So their true nature is Buddha nature. They’ve also been our mothers, but they are obscured and doing terrible things, which are as which which is coming from their confusion and suffering, and they’re creating the cause to have more confusion and suffering in the future. So, therefore, if if we if we focused on those things, one could generate actual compassion for those people. But by think by focusing on the the terrible things they’re doing, one says, oh, they’re doing terrible things because they’re inherently terrible people.
People. So then thinking that way, one can’t feel compassion. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No. You know, they’re they’re your mind can only be in one state, you know, either positive or negative state.
So if if your mind is having experiencing compassion, it it can’t experience it it doesn’t experience attachment at that time. Yes. I wouldn’t worry about that. If you’re gonna be attached, if you’re gonna have desire, desiring to be compassionate is a terrific desire to have. And if you’re gonna get attached to anything, getting attached to be being a compassionate person is a terrific thing to be attached to.
But the point is that that the desire to be compassionate is not an afflicted desire. And, yeah. And, technically, you can’t get attached to virtuous states of mind, my understanding. So you can’t get attached to being compassionate. You could get attached to a wrong view of yourself as a compassionate person due to the worldly concerns thinking, oh, people will love me if I become a compassionate person.
I’ll become righteous, and people will admire me. And so that false view of what you what your compassionate self, you could get attached to that, but that is not a correct view of compassionate person. Is that yeah. But understanding what it means to be a compassionate person and all the hard work it involves of giving up oneself, cherishing, and etcetera, etcetera, you can’t get attached to that. But you could get attached to the idea of quickly becoming a compassionate person that makes you rich and famous and and movie stars will want to hang around you and things like that.
That kind of idea of a compassionate person you could get attached to. Be get attached to being such a person, which is, yeah, which is a phony thing that you become yeah. Yeah. And, like, that becoming compassionate person like that is something that just happens easily. But when one understands what is involved in becoming compassionate, there’s a lot of hard work and and feeling virtuous minds, positive minds towards very unpleasant people.
Towards very unpleasant people, because compassion is not just for nice people, it has to be for the terrible people, then you don’t you can’t get attached to that. You can be committed to it. You can become committed committed to it. You can become committed to being a compassionate person, not but not attached. And that’s completely different.
K. Passer. What? I wish I could peep read people’s minds. You disagree?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’m becoming famous. They’re all admiring me down below.
Yeah. Okay. So yes. So applying an understanding of impermanence really helps with reducing our attachment our world concerns to getting stuff and losing stuff or not getting stuff. Because when we get stuff, we should realize that because it’s impermanent, it’s likely we’ll lose it.
In the Lamrim, it talks about, you know, the night the meditation of developing renunciation, renunciation, especially renouncing cyclic existence altogether. We have to meditate on how cyclic existence is in the nature One of the sufferings of being in cyclic existence is that is the suffering of what is it? The suffering of suffering of change. Yeah. The suffering of change.
Is that the one? Yeah. Anyway, you have whatever wherever there’s a meeting, there’s a parting. Whatever you collect is dispersed. If you go high, you fall down sooner or later.
Snakes and ladders, you know, whatever collection there is, it gets separated. In the meditation on death, and it relates to this one as well, maybe very depressing, but it can be quite useful to like, for example, when you go home tonight and you walk you know, you open your door and you look at all the things in your house or flat or whatever, and you think, well, when die, all this is gonna be dispersed. It’ll end up in, you know, relatives’ homes. Maybe even the relatives I can’t stand will will get all my good stuff. It’ll end up in op shops, you know, in the back the very back room of the op shop, you know, where all the junk is, maybe.
Complete strangers will get it. Strangers will get it. Rubbish dump. Yeah. Actually actually, I have a ninety four old sister, and I go and visit sister-in-law, and I try and visit her about once a month.
Month. And this is one of the things she talks about every time I visit her, how she’s trying to get rid of the stuff in her house place because she says when I die, who’s gonna appreciate it? They don’t know anything about it. So I’m trying to give it to the people who like it now because it’s just gonna be thrown away or sold. So she’s very aware that all of this is going.
Her life is going. All this will go. But we aren’t as all their my stuff. And we try and gather more and get upset when it gets broken, which it will, or gets damaged. But if we could remember remember that, you know, it’s all impermanent.
The things themselves can’t last. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Amazing. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
There are extreme versions of every everything that we have as so called normal people. Yeah. So the the idea is not to depress oneself with all their things, I’m saying, but it’s a way just to counter or to put things in perspective so we don’t crave things so much and get so attached to them. And as a result of that, waste so much time in these things and create negative tendencies and imprints as a result when so much you know, we could have so much more time and energy to practicing Dharma because that our practice of Dharma is going to affect our mind. The the effects on our mind will last far, far longer than any anything we acquire, any pleasure we get in this life, any objects we get in this life, any reputation we get in this life, it’s all impermanent.
But the positive imprints in our mind, these can carry on. The effects can last for lifetimes. And any way we can build on those imprints so that the we eventually gain so we these positive imprints can build up and act as a condition for us to gain the realizations that take us along the path. So those those realizations, in a sense, can will have have a everlasting effect. So there’s no comparison between the time and energy we put to get some some little thing.
Now even if we’re lucky, we get this small result, really, and it which doesn’t last. Whereas by practicing the Dharma, we get an enormous result that can last forever. Alright. Because it all has to go sorry. If I keep you know, I’m becoming more and more aware that I I just the same things over and over again.
But it all goes back to what do we want. Do we want third rate happiness, second rate happiness, or pure perfect happiness? And do we want it just for a short time or forever? Deep down, we want perfect lasting happiness. We really do.
Whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, that’s what we are driven by all the time. But but our confusion, our ignorance, and all the confusion in our mind, you know, then identify you know, this wish for permanent lasting happiness gets you know, this is it. Oh, I found it. Here it is. And all it is is just a little bubble of pleasure.
It’s crazy. Yes. Yes. False refuges. Little soup.
Yes. Yeah. Chocolate. What as Lama Zopa said, what do you do when the chocolate runs out? So choc get more.
Yes. But but what if you can’t get any more, you see? It’s because we think so this is the permanent view that there will always be chocolate, but there won’t be. This is the point. But but the chocolate of the mind is always there.
That never runs out. The the natural bliss of the mind is always there. It’s just obscured. Right. Yeah.
So just just very quickly to conclude. So if if we then think of the the next set of world ly concerns of of reputation, craving reputation and acceptance and and being part of some kind of group, again, all of that, if we really investigate, investigate, is very impermanent, especially human beings are so fickle. You know? They like us one day, and we can say something, and the next day, they dislike us. They ignore us.
So so, you know, what’s the point? Trying to in the teaching as Śāntideva says something about what’s the point of trying to please childish people, childish beings. And we’re all, you know, by the standards of the Ārya beings, we’re all childish. We’re all, you know, under the control of self-cherishing. And so we’re all like children, little children.
And, really, you just can’t make people happy. Very difficult in an ordinary sense in Samsāra. Samsāra. And yet we we spend so much time and energy trying to be lovable to others. Yeah.
And, you know, being worried about so much time thinking about it, worrying about what can I say, what can I do, what can I look like, where can I be, what can I have, what yeah? So people will like me and love me and accept me and blah blah blah blah blah. Yeah. And if, you know, again, if we think about it, we we can be willing to do all sorts of you know, if we’re really desperate for that approval and and reputation, then we’re willing to do all sorts of negative things to get it. And who we who we try to get it from?
Basically, deluded people. Not not from the Buddhas and the Gurus, but just deluded people whose values are not necessarily particularly admirable, and yet we’re so concerned about these people. Which people? No. We should hate them.
Of course we should. No. I’m not yeah. Of course. That that that’s another thing.
But oh, I think I have to go back to school and learn how to teach the Dharma. I don’t know. No. No. No.
No. The whole basis of of our attitude to others maybe doesn’t sound like it. What I’m saying is having compassion for people. Right? But when we’re under the control of the worldly concerns and we want to be loved and well, don’t forget loved, but liked and acceptable by a group of people.
It’s not because we we have compassion for them, and it’s we’re not concerned about them. We we’re concerned about me. I want to be liked by you, you know, this group. Not because I have compassion. It’s just because I I need this affirmation because of my ego insecurity, blah blah blah.
I need to be told by some people that I’m a good person, nice person, lovable, blah blah, humorous, witty, clever, smart, blah blah blah. Yeah? So I try to be liked and accepted by you. So that’s got nothing to do with having compassion for the people. Well, we’re all in that category that we are we are all, you know, that in trying to fit in with such people who are are childish, it’s very difficult to to do so because people’s minds change so much.
But that’s not to say Yeah. Yes. Right. What would we be doing? Oh, no.
You’re missing the point, Jan. You’re talking from a bit you’re a very nice person, not controlled by the eight worldly concerns. Concerns. I’m trying to say, if I recognize I have the eight worldly concern of being desperate to be liked, yeah, by you or a group of people, then I have to remember to cut that that I shouldn’t be so obsessed with trying to be liked by people who who, you know, are it’s difficult to to always satisfy because people’s minds change because they have uncontrolled minds. It’s not because I’m saying they’re terrible evil people.
I just have to remember that. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, Help me.
It is time actually, actually, unfortunately. No. It’s actually good to go into these things in more detail, but I I Well, I suppose this all this being a deluded person myself, it’s difficult to do you think his Holiness Dalai Lama wants to be liked? Oh yeah, he is liked but well, what I’m trying to say is I don’t think there’s anything wrong in wanting to be liked as such, but then there’s this kind of self-cherishing desperate need to be liked. Yeah?
Yes. Yes. Yes. Something like that’s it. That’s it.
Perhaps. Yes. Well, we all fit into this category to some extent. May be to some ex yeah. Sorry?
Well, it’s also good to be validated by the right people. The trouble is that this this one, the worldly concern, is just wanting to be liked by ordinary people rather than people who have that we should be liked by, that it’s worth being liked by. In other words, we you know, as as dharma practitioners, if we have concerned that our guru is pleased with us, not where the ordinary people are. Right? That concern is not a worldly concern because to be liked by the guru means we’re behaving ourselves and practicing.
Right? So that we should be concerned about. But to be concerned about whether an ordinary deluded person who has deluded values, likes us and we fit in with them, then this is a worldly concern, and we’re only doing it for the happiness of this life. Right? This is becoming clearer.
This clearer? Yeah. Okay. On that clarified note, we can finish tonight. So so I’m not sure if we that any understanding came through tonight.
If it did so, we can dedicate that and all the positive merit imprints to being able to overcome the the self-cherishing, the eight worldly concerns so that we can cherish others more and more, generate bodhicitta, and quickly achieve enlightenment. So page nine. 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.
Page eleven. The object of refuge all transmigratory beings in all our lifetimes is the embodiment of the Three Jewels, the all encompassing three refuges in one, the guru, the wish granting jewel, his holiness, the Dalai Lama, the master Padmasambhava, the Dharma king Songtsen Gampo and Trisong Detsen, the abbot Śāntaraksita, and the numberless holy beings who preserved and spread the Buddha Dharma in Tibet, and the Tibetan people immediately. Due to their limitless kindness, the son of Tibetan Buddhism has now risen in the West, which was a dark land. But now that I have met with the Dharma, I have received the perfect human body, enabling me to lead meaningful life. Our refuge and savior, the supreme one, his holiness, the Dalai Lama, and the Tibetan people have been so kind to us.
We make the following dedicating prayers. May all his holiness, the Dalai Lama’s wishes be successful immediately. May the snow land of Tibet achieve pure freedom and develop the Buddhadharma even more than before in Tibet, and may all mother beings achieve enlightenment quickly. Tenzin Gyatso. Savior of the snow land teachings and transmigratory beings who makes extremely clear the path that is unification of emptiness and compassion to the lotus holder, Tenzin Gyatso, I beseech, may all your holy wishes be spontaneously fulfilled.
You who uphold the subduer’s moral way, who serve as the bountiful bearer of all, sustaining, preserving, spreading Mañjuśrī’s victorious doctrine, who masterfully accomplished magnificent prayers honoring the Three Jewels, savior of myself and others, your disciples, please, please live long. Lord of Dharma, who in accordance with the various dispositions of those to be subdued, makes clear in the light of your well spoken advice, the sacred Ganden tradition, essence of Buddha’s teachings, o foremost and holy Lama to you who are supreme, O Lama, please, please live long. Very much.