Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Thubten Dondrub guides practitioners through foundational meditation practice in this 28-minute session, focusing on impermanence and death as catalysts for genuine dharmic commitment. He opens with instruction on meditation posture and breathing exercises to settle the mind, then leads detailed visualization of taking refuge in the Buddha while generating compassion for all sentient beings. The core teaching uses the Three Principal Aspects of the Path—renunciation, bodhicitta, and wisdom—as the meditation subject, with Dondrub stressing the difference between intellectual understanding and direct, spontaneous realization. He emphasizes that understanding impermanence transforms practice from forced discipline into authentic motivation, and that consistent reflection over time ripens these insights into lived experience rather than mere belief.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2a. Day 1 Prayers for Meditation Impermanence.mp3
UUID: d5b9340d-43cc-46c0-b18b-94efacd1ff92
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Meditations DTL
Date: 2006 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 28.4 minutes
Words: ~2,840
Start on page twenty four of volume one of the morning prayer section, the daily prayers. And also does everyone have a copy with them of Jampa Gendun’s translation of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path? Do you have that with you? Is that to be given out? Morning Prayers, page twenty four and five.
So for this session we’ll read this instead of the Foundation of All Good Qualities. So for this session we’ll do a little bit of meditation on impermanence and death, which is such a fun topic and probably one of the most important topics of all to meditate on. Because this is particularly by understanding this, this really turns our mind towards Dharma when we realise that everything we’re attached to not when we just know it by the words but when we realise that everything that we’re attached to, everything that upsets us is impermanent. It cannot last no matter what we do. Nothing can make it last.
Nothing ever. And it’s it’s decaying all the time. All the time. Irreversibly. Irreversibly decaying.
Every brand new thing we create, as soon as it’s created, it it decays straight away. Brand new stupas, meditation centres, they decay straight away. But it’s good to start their meditation centers and stupas anyway, but still, it can’t be attached to them because they just decay everything, everything. And then, of course, our body is one of these things that decays, and therefore we’re going to die. Right?
Of course, the whole point of doing this meditation in the Buddhist context is, well, there’s no point in meditating on death if we don’t believe there’s something after death. That just makes us will make us totally depressed. But the whole context of meditating on death in Buddhism is on the basis of believing that our consciousness is going to go on. Right? That’s the whole point.
If we don’t have much belief in that, this this whole topic is is kind of will just make you depressed. Only that. The purpose of meditating in our context, in a Buddhist context, is to realise that our mind is going on, and it can go on in a better way, it can go on in a worse way. As we did meditate on the lower realms, Our mind can create the cause for that, but our mind can create the cause for something far better. And already there are or even apart from creating causes now in this life as something in the future, we’ve already created the causes for stuff to happen in our future lives.
Right? It’s already there. Right? But it’s also not fixed, it’s not permanent. All the imprints in our mind can ripen in all sorts of rebirths, none of that is permanently fixed and set in concrete.
It can all be changed. And that’s what we need to recognise with our precious human being, that we have the freedom, you know, not to travel and, you know, go shopping, but we have the freedom to work with our mind and change our mind. Okay. Of course, just sorry to hammer the point. I’m sure Well, I still haven’t got this point after twenty nine years anyway.
But to understand impermanence and death in most topics in the Lam Rim, it’s very easy to understand them intellectually. We all know we’re going to die. It’s relatively easy to understand that things are impermanent. To realise it is something else. To realise it so it goes kind of deeply in our minds so that everything that we do comes from that awareness, that spontaneous, not some kind of forced intellectual belief or understanding but a spontaneous experience.
And that’s what we’re trying to do in this retreat by meditating, not just in this retreat but hopefully in our daily life, meditating on these, reflecting on these topics again and again until we get this spontaneous experience of them, the absolute truth of them and direct experience of it, unfabricated spontaneous experience of impermanence and death and loving kindness and everything else. And that takes hard work and that’s what we’re doing now, but it’s the best work, Right? And to do it, to bring about these spontaneous experiences, we have to prepare our mind. All the great beings who achieve these spontaneous experiences said, you you have to do it in a particular way, pretty much. Well, this is how they did it.
This is the tradition. So we prepare our body and mind by doing these sitting correctly and doing the prayers. I read just recently, Pabongka Rinpoche said that perhaps if you make requests to the guru, you know, the guru coming into you and blessing you, after maybe about a thousand times of having done that, you may start to get some actual experience of it. I mean, yeah, it can happen long before that, of course, depending on our karma and devotion and understanding and all sorts of things, but just by sheer working at it, it will happen. So we begin by sitting comfortably in the correct posture as much as possible, arranging your legs, whatever is a comfortable way.
If you can sit in a full vajra position, that’s fantastic, but otherwise just comfortably. But the main thing is to try to keep your back, your spine really well aligned, the upper body centred so that you’re not leaning to the left or right, forwards or backwards. And in maintaining the posture, we need to put some effort and discipline into it but not so that we can become tense and rigid. Still do it in a comfortable, normal way. We place the right hand on top of the left, the thumb slightly touching, elbows just a little bit away from and upper arms just a bit away from the sides of the body.
And the position of your head is very important. You don’t want your head tilted down too much because that tends to make the mind dull, sleepy, and depressed. Whereas if you have the if we have our head too high, that tends to distract the mind. Doesn’t mean this will happen, but it just creates a condition for that to happen. So we have our mouth lightly closed.
When we’re doing the actual meditation, it’s good to rest your tongue at the back of the top row of teeth at the palate. And as Lama Tsongkhapa says it’s good to train, although it’s more difficult at first, but it’s good to train to meditate with your eyes just a little bit open. And you direct your gaze down just a short distance in front of you, not actively looking because we’re trying to, pacify, subdue, all our sense consciousnesses so that just the mental consciousness itself can become the dominant aspect of our mind. That’s what we’re trying to work with in meditation. So we have a we subdue our eye consciousness by just directing our gaze in front of us, but not actively looking, but having a, like, an unfocused gaze.
And then just fine tune your posture by placing your awareness at the crown, moving it down through your body for a short time, also checking any points of tension. And then begin to prepare the mind by firstly establishing a calm, neutral mind by doing the nine round breathing exercise one or two times. And with each in breath of the cycle, imagine breathing in the blessings of the Buddhas in the form of very blissful, calming white light. And that and we also imagine that that blesses our mind to be able to meditate effectively and gain the realization of impermanence and death. With each out breath of the cycle, imagine breathing out all our disturbances, negative imprints, obstacles to meditation in the form of black smoke.
So now on that neutral mind, we build a virtuous mind by generating the thought of refuge, recognizing that it is our mind, is the source of all happiness and suffering, and therefore, we have to be able to work with our mind skillfully, wisely, compassionately. And to do that, we need a perfect method, an unbetraying method, a complete method. And the only source of such a method is the enlightened mind, free that is free of all faults, possessing all qualities, has unmistaken wisdom. So we generate with the wish to really work with our mind moment by moment. So we take refuge in the triple gem of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, visualizing Śākyamūni Buddha as the very embodiment of the triple gem, appearing seated on a magnificent lion throne with cushions of lotus sun and moon, a Buddha with an incredibly beautiful, magnificent body of golden radiating light, the very embodiment of the three principal aspects of the path, of renunciation appearing as a perfect picture, the very embodiment of bodhicitta, great compassion and wisdom.
So as we generate that mind of refuge, wishing to become free of suffering, again, we can be aware that everything wishes to be free of suffering, to experience happiness just as I do. So we visualize all these beings surrounding us, try to feel their presence right now, and recall that even today, just for my existence, I have depended on directly and indirectly a vast number of people and beings. And on top of that, every good experience I have today of this life, all the good qualities I develop, skills and so on, it all arises depending on the help, support, love, encouragement, skills, and so on of others. And just as this is true in this life, it’s been true in all my past lives and what could remain so until I’m enlightened. So I am inextricably interconnected, interdependent on every sentient being in the universe, even without recognizing the fact that every sentient being has been my mother again and again.
So how can I just work for my own sake? It’s because and because I have Buddha nature, I can achieve enlightenment. So therefore, I must achieve that state to repay the kindness of all these beings who are trapped in suffering right now, and in this suffering, creating the cause for more. So think of all these kind beings surrounding you, starting with your mother on your left, your father on your right, the rest of your family, friends, helpers behind you. We we much prefer to have them in front because of our attachment, but we put them behind us, not to forget them, but not to be so obsessed with them.
And the people we don’t want to think about, the people who have harmed us, we put in front of us to make ourselves realize that these are just human beings who want happiness and don’t want suffering like myself. And like myself, are under the control of delusion. So around that core group, try to think of all the beings of the six realms of cyclic existence. Imagine imagine the appearance of human beings, but undergoing the different sufferings that are unique to each realm. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly.
By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from the happiness that is free from suffering. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from desire for friends and hatred for enemies.
Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, mind. I present clouds of every type of offering, actual and imagined. I declare all my negative actions accumulated since beginningless time and rejoice in the merit of all holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of dharma for living beings. I dedicate my own merits and those of all others to the great enlightenment.
So then imagine the mandala dissolving into the heart of Śākyamūni, generating great bliss in his holy mind. So I think the Buddha is very pleased the Guru Buddha is very pleased with us, and so wishing to bless our mind, we imagine that firstly the lion’s throne dissolves into light, and then the Buddha, seated on the cushions of lotus sun and moon, comes to our crown, turns around facing the same direction as ourselves, And then we make a strong, heartfelt request to the Guru Buddha for our mind to be completely free of all disturbing thoughts, all the negative imprints from those thoughts, all the obscurations, all the difficulties we have in meditating in general and specifically on impermanence and death. So wishing to be completely free of all these, we make that request to the Buddha. I think the Buddha happily responds by sending from his heart this powerful stream of blissful white light and nectar. It comes into us, and all those obstacles leave the mind in the aspect of a very thick black liquid, and it pours out from the lower part of our body, completely dissipates, becomes nonexistent.
And then a continuous stream of blissful golden light and nectar comes from the Buddha, blessing our mind to be able to meditate effectively, single pointedly, on impermanence and death, blessing our mind to be able to gain the unmistaken realization. So we can then go through the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, and we can imagine that it’s like the Buddha on our crown is speaking these words to us. Homage to all the foremost holy gurus, I will explain as best as I can the essential meaning of all the conqueror’s teachings, path praised by his noble children, a crossing for the fortunate seeking liberation. Listen with clear minds those fortunate of you who, unattached to the pleasures of conditioned existence, and striving that your lives of freedom and richness will find meaning. Entrust yourselves to the path that pleases the conquerors.
Without real renunciation, there is no way to end your struggle for pleasures sought in the seas of conditioned existence, and, too, clinging to such existence will utterly enslave you. Thus, at the outset, seek the will to awaken. Freedoms and richnesses are hard to find, and life does not last long. Keeping this always in mind will alter the priority you give to this life. Thinking again and again about the unvarying relation between actions and their effects and the sufferings of cyclic existence will alter the priority you give to future lives.
Meditating in this way, when your thoughts have turned night and day towards liberation, and not even for a moment do you entertain the wish for the splendours of cyclic existence, then you have given birth to the will to awaken. But even such a will, if not conjoined with the awakening of your heart, does not serve as cause for the perfect bliss of highest awakening. Thus, those of you who truly understand, go on to develop the supreme awakened heart. Think about what is happening to your mothers, how they are swept along in the currents of four raging rivers, bound by the near-unbreakable chains of compulsive actions and held in the iron grip of self grasping. Think how they are enveloped in the thick darkness of ignorance, are reborn into limitless lives, and in those lives are relentlessly made to bear the three sufferings, thus give birth to the highest of hearts.
But even if you were to instill within you the will to awaken and the awakened heart without the wisdom realising reality, the awakened mind, still you have no way to cut the root of conditioned existence. Thus, work with the means of realising dependent arising. Whoever sees the unvarying relation between a cause and its effects in all things of cyclic existence and beyond, and brings to an end holding them as real, has entered onto the path that pleases the Buddhas. As long as the two, appearance as infallible dependent arising, and emptiness as freedom from assertion as truth, appear as distinct one from the other, you have not you have yet to realise the subtle thought. But when they no longer alternate but coincide such that in the mere seeing of the infallibility of dependent arising, definite knowledge destroys the way you conceive of things as real, then your analysis of the view is complete.
Moreover, the extreme of true existence is dispelled by appearance and that of nonexistence by emptiness. If you understand the way emptiness finds expression within the context of cause and effect, you no longer will be captivated by extreme views. Then when you have realised just as they are these essentials of the three principal aspects of the path, resort to solitude, intensify your joyous effort, and quickly, my child, fulfill your ultimate dream.