Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 39-minute guided meditation, Venerable Thubten Dondrub leads practitioners through a deep analysis of precious human rebirth, framed not as a rare biological accident but as the accumulated fruition of countless lifetimes of ethical practice and conscious dedication. He begins by anchoring mental stability during the meditation itself—recognizing and releasing hindrances like dullness, distraction, and agitation—then moves into sustained analytical work on what makes human existence valuable: the eight freedoms (not being trapped in lower realms, god realms, or barbaric conditions; having access to Dharma) and ten endowments (being human, born in a spiritually auspicious time, with the faculties and circumstances to practice). Dondrub repeatedly challenges complacency by asking practitioners what they actually lack to begin serious practice now, working with concrete examples—memorizing daily prayers, studying texts like the Lamrim, developing concentration—to show that the infrastructure for transformation is already present. He concludes with a stirring passage from Lama Tsongkhapa on the rarity and urgency of this rebirth, and guides practitioners to a visualisation of guru-Buddha dissolving as blessing-light, sealing the realization. Suited for those already engaged with Buddhist practice and familiar with Tibetan meditation conventions.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 9b. Day 3 Meditation Precious Human Rebirth.mp3
UUID: 0cdc25ea-26b0-4283-8ac1-21478acbe9b2
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Meditations DTL (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2006 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 38.8 minutes
Words: ~2,275
So again, strong determination to keep the mind within boundaries of the analytical meditation or precious human rebirth, not letting us succumb to any kind of hindrance, dullness, sleepiness or agitation by being distracted by external sounds, sensations arising in the body and arisen thoughts. With mindfulness, soon as one is aware of those things, let go of them or apply the antidote, such as recalling the guru on the crown and white light coming from the guru buddha, eliminating that hindrance. So we can think that, as Geshe was saying yesterday from the text, that the key to what determines whether we’re practising the Dharma or not is whether we’re using it to turn our mind to give up our attachment to the things of this life. Giving up this life means to give up the attachment of this life, which means in order to turn our mind to real Dharma practice. And so what helps us to turn our mind away from the things of this life, the obsessions of this life, the false appearances of this life, is recognizing that we have the precious human rebirth, the optimum chance to discover our buddha nature, that we have the optimum chance that is so rare to have to become just even start to become free of suffering.
We don’t even need a human body just to follow the attachments of this life. Animals are doing that. How can we waste the precious human rebirth doing ordinary empty things? So again, briefly recall that the meaning of the precious human rebirth is not just to be a human being, but to have all eight freedoms and ten endowments. So all human beings, of course, have the first four freedoms of not being born in the lower realms or in the god realms.
But not all human beings have the other four freedoms of not being born in those barbaric places with imperfect organs, having wrong views, or being born at a time when the Buddha hasn’t appeared. So we have all of those freedoms right now. And remember that freedom doesn’t mean just the freedom to do anything, to go traveling and wandering, to get a new job and go shopping and blah blah blah. It means there’s this amazing freedom to understand our mind. And how does our mind that gives rise to all experience is the freedom to practice the Dharma, the liberating Dharma.
And it’s important to recognize that not all human beings have the five personal endowments, that all have the first one of being human, but not all are born in a religious country with perfect organs, not having created the five extreme actions. And especially, very, very few human beings have any belief in spiritual values, especially in the Buddhadharma? So all human beings right now on this planet have been born in the auspicious eon, but most are unaware of the existence of the Buddha’s teachings, of the great masters of these teachings, of the value of the monastic community, they don’t have Dharma friends and support. I have all of these things. So then what is the meaning of having all these freedoms and endowments?
It means that we have the optimum chance to practice, which means that any temporal, meaningful accomplishment we wish to attain that we direct our mind to, we can achieve it. There is nothing preventing us achieving it. There’s everything encouraging us to achieve it. If we want to become a more kind, loving person, more generous, more wise, more patient, if we want to develop the ability to concentrate our mind more than we can do now, any of these virtuous things we definitely can achieve with the precious human rebirth. It’s just a matter of deciding to do it and doing it.
But otherwise, everything exists for us to be able to accomplish those things. We just have to recognize that and take advantage. And, of course, if we want to have a good rebirth as a human being, especially with the precious human rebirth. There’s nothing preventing us engaging in the practices that will ensure that, that we will have a good death and a good rebirth. We just have to recognize this fact and take advantage of it.
Any Dharma texts that we know of, such as the great works by Lama Tsongkhapa, Śāntideva’s wonderful text on generating bodhicitta, we can use this precious human rebirth to study them more and more and more, and develop greater and greater understanding of them. Studying the wisdom teachings, the Prajñāpāramitā, if we apply our mind to these things, definitely our experience, understanding, wisdom, and qualities will develop. That is definite. It’s just a matter of recognizing I can do this with a precious human rebirth. I won’t be able to do it without the precious human rebirth.
For those of us here who’ve been in the Dharma a few years, ask yourselves, how many of the basic prayers that I recite every day do I know by heart? Why don’t I know them? Because I haven’t tried to learn them. It’s not that I can’t. There’s nothing stopping me.
I just haven’t recognized that I can do it. There is no outer impediment whatsoever. It’s just I’ve failed to recognize that I have all the opportunity to do it. But I didn’t recognize that, and I’ve lost the opportunity. But there’s no one thing, no person stopping me.
I can learn these things, know them, become experts in them. It’s just a matter of applying the mind, the mind of the precious human rebirth, through the power of familiarity, every short term goal I can achieve. But the the great meaning of this precious human rebirth is that, in fact, with it, I can achieve complete liberation from cyclic existence. And even more than that, I can achieve enlightenment. This is possible even within this lifetime, but certainly with this precious human rebirth I can begin to establish definitely the causes for liberation and enlightenment.
In fact, if I don’t establish them now, they’ll never happen. I will never be able to achieve any of the causes of liberation, enlightenment as an animal, as a preta, in the hell realms, as a god, as an ordinary human being. So if I don’t do it now, it will never happen, meaning there will only be suffering. All the realizations of the path I can either achieve in this life or start to achieve them. The realization of impermanence and death, of suffering, of loving kindness, compassion, bodhicitta.
Even the realization of emptiness, some degree of realization of that, I could achieve in this life if I apply my mind and then enter the path. This is the real meaning of this precious human rebirth. Ask yourself, what do I think I really need extra before I can practice the Dharma or gain special qualities? Do I have to be in another place? Do I have to hear some very, very special teaching?
Geshe has already explained that the lamrim contains everything that we need. Milarepa didn’t have a single thing and achieved enlightenment. He didn’t have any even any clothes to wear, but he had the precious human rebirth, and we’ve got it. There’s nothing extra that we need. We just have to recognize what we have and how to use it.
And reflect that another special feature of this precious human rebirth is that with it, we can make every moment of our existence meaningful. In every moment, there is the opportunity to accumulate merit with our body, with our speech, with our mind. Even if we can’t do particular practices right now, we can rejoice that others can do them, and that accumulates incredible merit. We can make prayers, heartfelt prayers, that in the future, I can do these things. Every moment we can purify negative karma, we have the opportunity to do this.
There’s just an unlimited number of things that we can do moment by moment now that we’ve met the Dharma and have faith in it, Dharma friends, teachers. So then it’s important for us to reflect, remind ourselves again that this precious human rebirth we’re experiencing now is not something that has arisen by chance. It hasn’t arisen just simply because I was born from my parents, just the mere fact of physical birth, physical conception and birth. It is my mind that is experiencing this rebirth, and my mind had to create the causes for the effect, and the causes to have not just a human rebirth, but a human rebirth with all eight freedoms, ten endowments. The causes of that are very specific and very difficult to create.
And the fundamental causes are practicing pure morality, morality free of the eight worldly concerns. And also practicing the other perfections, especially generosity, but all the other perfections of patience, perseverance, concentration, and wisdom. Just think, we have a precious human rebirth now, which makes it so easy to practice the Dharma, but how easy is it for us to practice pure morality now? How often do we really live according to the teachings on morality, on virtue, avoiding the ten non virtues and so on. It’s very difficult.
Yet somehow, in past lives, we did it. Think how easy it is to create negative karma with all the factors complete. We have strong motivation, and in our ignorance we are happy, we are content that we’ve done something negative. Certainly in the past, that was the case. Even when we do virtuous actions, our motivation isn’t very strong, the way we do it is half hearted, and sometimes we even regret we’ve done something virtuous.
Also, to achieve the precious human rebirth, we have to consciously, in the past, have dedicated the merit that we created to achieving a precious human rebirth. How many times in this life have we made sincere, conscious prayers that my virtuous actions bring me another precious human rebirth. So it’s a it’s like a miracle that I have this life. If we compare the number of animals existing on this earth to the number of human beings, the ratio is is huge for every human being on this planet. There are thousands and thousands of beings trapped in animal bodies as insects, birds, fish, and so on.
Probably tens, maybe even millions of beings in the animal realm for each human being. Actually, each of us has many sentient beings living on our body right now. We have many sentient beings living inside our body. The reason there are so many animals compared to humans is simply because it’s very easy to create the causes that lead to the suffering of an animal rebirth. It’s extremely difficult to create the cause just to be a human being.
So then of the six thousand million human beings, hardly any have the precious human rebirth. And somehow, almost like a miracle, I am one of these human beings. Of course, this doesn’t make me better than any other human being. It just means that I have this amazing opportunity to help myself and help all others. Lama Yeshe once gave the analogy that there was a man who has a family that he’s very fond of.
He has a child that he loves very intensely. So to benefit his family, he leaves them, goes into the desert to look for gold, spends many years all alone suffering, gathering gold. Then he comes back after many years of suffering with his gold and gives it to his only beloved child. And that child, having no idea of the value of the gold, just throws it away. So that has made the man’s life meaningless, all his suffering meaningless, but it’s made the child’s life meaningless too, just more suffering.
So that’s kind of a tragic situation. But for us to have worked over countless lifetimes to get this precious human rebirth and then squander it on meaningless things, chasing after the eight worldly concerns. That is really tragic for ourself, for others. It means all our past lives have been wasted, This life has been wasted. The chance of happiness in future lives has been thrown away.
Lama Tsongkhapa said about the precious human rebirth, If you knew how hard it is to acquire, living the average life would be impossible. If you saw its great benefits, you would be sorry if it stayed meaningless. If you thought about death, you would make preparations for your future lives. If you thought about cause and effect, you would stop being reckless. So bring the meditation to a conclusion, making a strong determination to really take advantage of this precious human rebirth, recognizing its great rarity and meaning every day, therefore taking the essence of this precious human rebirth by giving up the eight worldly concerns and directing the mind more and more to the practice of the liberating Dharma, Especially since we have been so lucky to have met the lamrim and the teachings.
Then recalling the Guru Buddha, the crown of one’s head, seeing the Buddha is very pleased with us, he happily dissolves into light. This blissful golden light comes down through our crown, pervading our whole being, blessing our mind to have a complete, stable, unmistaken realization of having a precious human rebirth, realizing its great meaning, its incredible rarity. And that realization, in turn, bring the realization that enables us to completely turn our mind away from its obsession and attachment to the empty appearances of this life.