Review
We are going through the graded stages of the path to develop ourselves spiritually. These stages are the three levels of motivation – initial, intermediate, and advanced. Initially, we are thinking in terms of future lives, wanting to ensure that we continue to have better rebirth states, particularly precious human rebirths, so that we can continue on the spiritual path. This underscores the fact that it’s not a spiritual goal just to benefit this lifetime, although, obviously, we do want to make progress in this lifetime. The intermediate scope motivation is to overcome uncontrollably recurring rebirth, or samsara, completely. The advanced scope motivation is to reach the enlightened state of a Buddha so that we can be of best help to everyone.
On the initial scope, we want to overcome the suffering of suffering, namely, pain. On the intermediate scope, we want to overcome the suffering of change, which is our ordinary happiness that never satisfies, and also the all-pervasive suffering, which is uncontrollably recurring rebirth, the basis of the first two types of suffering. On the advanced scope, we want to overcome our limitations that prevent us from being of best help to everyone.
Initial Scope
The Precious Human Rebirth
The basis of the initial scope of motivation, and the basis of all of these scopes, is the precious human rebirth. We, first of all, need to recognize what it is, acknowledge it, and then appreciate that we have it. The precious human rebirth is a state in which we are free, but only temporarily, from the various conditions that would prevent us from making any spiritual progress. These include worse rebirths, being severely handicapped in one way or another that makes it very for us to learn and so on. Particularly awful is having a very negative attitude toward any type of spiritual growth and being completely closed to and antagonistic toward it. We are very fortunate that we don’t have that. We haven’t been born in horrible circumstances in which there are no teachings, no teachers or no support for the teachings that can help us to get out. Our lives are, instead, very rich with all the endowments of qualities, factors and circumstances that allow us to have spiritual growth. This is extremely, extremely rare. It’s not something that we should take for granted. It’s definitely based on causes, and we have to understand what the causes are. These, basically, are acting in an ethical way by refraining from negative behavior, making prayers to be able to continue on the spiritual path, having generosity, ethical self-discipline, patience, perseverance, concentration, and using our intelligence in a positive, discriminating way, etc.
Death and Impermanence
The very precious rebirths that we have are definitely going to end. We need to acknowledge that, and it needs to be very real to us that death will come for sure. There is no certainty that we will be alive even in the next hour, let alone the next day or year. If we think in terms of rebirth, which is a given here, we see that what is going to be of help at the time of death and in terms of future lives is not how much money we have made, not how many friends we have, etc. The only thing that is going to be of help are the positive habits that we’ve build up on our mental continuums, the so-called preventive measures of the Dharma that prevent us from experiencing worse and worse sufferings.
Dreading Worse States of Rebirth
If we haven’t built up sufficient positive potentials, the negative potentials we’ve built up will predominate, and we will find ourselves in some horrible state of rebirth, which may last for a very, very long time. This could be born as a trapped being in a joyless realm, usually referred to as the “hell realms,” which are the very worst states of suffering that we could experience; as a clutching ghost, some sort of spirit that is plagued by hunger, thirst and paranoia and is completely frustrated in being able to find any type of satisfaction of its needs; or as an animal. And by animal, we need to think of the sufferings of animals that are hunted by each other or by man, either for fun or for food. They have very difficult situations when exploited by man, constantly living in fear, and so on. This would be quite awful. There’s very little that we could learn, except maybe to fetch a ball if we are lucky or balance a ball on our nose. That doesn’t get us a better rebirth, does it?
Seeing that leads us to have a healthy state of fear. We really don’t want this to happen. We would find that absolutely horrible and unacceptable. It’s not a crippling type of fear that makes us feel helpless and hopeless because we know that there is a way to avoid this. The way to avoid this is to put a positive direction in our lives. That’s called “safe direction,” or “refuge.” This means going in the direction of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Specifically, we think in terms of the Dharma. Buddha said, “Let the Dharma be your guide,” when he was passing away.
Safe Direction
The Dharma, here, refers not just to the teachings but to what is attained by following them: (1) the true stoppings of the emotional and cognitive obscurations, (2) the true pathways of mind – the true understandings that will bring that true stopping about and that will result from that true stopping. Attaining these is the best protection from all suffering; it is a total elimination of the causes of suffering. The Buddhas are those who have experienced and attained these in full. The Arya Sangha are those who have attained them in part. They indicate that safe direction through their inspiration, their guidance, their help and their teaching. On the initial level, we start the process of ridding ourselves of the emotional obscurations by exercising self-control not to act destructively, which we do when we are under the control of the disturbing emotions.
Refraining from Destructive Behavior
To go in that direction, the first thing that we need to do is to avoid worse rebirths, which are the result of our destructive behavior. That is the focus of the initial scope. For that, we need to overcome the first of the two types of ignorance, or unawareness. Unawareness means either that we don’t know or that we know in an incorrect, inverted manner. This first type of unawareness is the unawareness of behavioral cause and effect, being unaware that acting in a destructive way will bring about unhappiness and suffering for ourselves and that acting in a constructive way will bring about happiness.
Now, when we talk about suffering or happiness as the result of our behavior, we are talking about what we ourselves will experience. We’re not talking about what we will cause others to experience, whether it’s harming them or helping them. That’s not the focus here. The focus is on what we do to ourselves in terms of our future experiences. This is what we need to take care of first.
In the case of destructive behavior, we are looking at the ten destructive actions: killing, stealing, or indulging in inappropriate, harmful or self-destructive sexual behavior; lying, speaking divisively, speaking harshly and abusively, or chattering meaninglessly; thinking covetously, thinking with malice, and thinking distortedly with antagonism. We do these things because we don’t understand that they will bring us more and more unhappiness. Of course, our destructive actions are going to be motivated by anger or by longing desire, attachment, or greed, or by naivety, whether naivety about cause and effect or naivety about how we exist. But the main thing that is emphasized on in this initial scope is that our actions are motivated by not knowing what the results will be and thinking in an inverted way, in other words, thinking that acting in this way – killing our enemy, for instance – is going to make us happy.
Constructive behavior is described here as refraining from acting in a destructive way when we feel like doing it. All constructive behavior here is defined in those terms. “I feel like smacking that mosquito, but I realize that that’s going to bring me more suffering because it builds up the habit of just wanting to kill anything that annoys me – which means that I never develop patience or anything like that. In order to avoid that, to stop that, I exercise self-control.” In that way, we start to develop discriminating awareness of what’s helpful and what’s harmful. So, we are not speaking here in terms of what’s called “special constructive behavior,” which would be saving lives, speaking the truth, being generous, rather than stealing, etc. That’s not what we focus on, on this initial level. We are focusing on overcoming the unawareness of cause and effect and developing self-control to avoid acting destructively. That’s the first step.
When we act in a constructive manner by refraining from acting destructively, we still have naivety: we are naive about how we exist and how the other person exists. So, there is still a disturbing emotion there. There could also be some disturbing emotions there in terms of self-grasping and so on: “I’m going to refrain from hitting you because I’m attached to you, and I don’t want you to leave me.” But that’s not the focus here. The focus is on refraining. But because there’s at least naivety there, our constructive actions build up the causes to stay in samsara. So, even though that positive karmic action doesn’t build up the causes for the suffering of suffering, it builds up the causes for the suffering of change, the suffering of our ordinary happiness that never satisfies and that changes into unhappiness.
That – refraining – I think, is quite important to understand as a first step and a necessary step. Unless we develop this type of discipline, or “self-control” as we call it in the West – self-control based on understanding, discriminating between what’s beneficial and what’s harmful to ourselves – we are never going to have a basis for discriminating what’s beneficial or harmful to somebody else. And that we would only know as Buddhas because, until we are Buddhas, we don’t really know what is going to be of best help to others. We can give them a lot of money, for example, and as a result, they could be robbed and killed because they have a lot of money. So, we don’t know what the effect of our actions are going to be. It might seem as though we’re going to really make this person happy, but it might not cause them happiness at all.
In any case, we had the whole discussion of karma, which we went into in great detail.
Intermediate Scope
On the intermediate scope, we start to think of the problems of the suffering of change, our ordinary happiness, and the problems of uncontrollably recurring rebirth in order to realize that no matter what type of rebirth we have, whether a better state or a worse state, the ordinary happiness that we have is never going to last. It’s never going to satisfy, and the suffering of unhappiness is going to follow, but we don’t know when. So, there is complete uncertainty.
What this leads to in terms of understanding the different types of shortcomings of the so-called happier states is looking at the disturbing emotions that drive all our karmic actions, whether positive or negative karmic actions. We want to overcome those so that we don’t even act in a constructive way based on unawareness, which is included as one of the disturbing emotions. Eventually, what we want to be able to do is to act in a constructive way that’s not only completely free of our ordinary disturbing emotions but, in particular, free of the unawareness of how we exist – in other words, to act in a positive way with some understanding of voidness. This is what we are aiming for here with the intermediate scope.
The Six General Sufferings of Samsara
In some lam-rims, the general sufferings of samsara are discussed first and then the sufferings of the specific better states. In others, the order is reversed. We’ve followed an order that we find in Pabongka’s Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Tsongkhapa does it in the other order.
The six general sufferings are:
- Having no certainty
- Having no satisfaction
- Having to forsake our bodies repeatedly
- Having to fit into new rebirths repeatedly
- Having to change status repeatedly from exalted to humble, high to low
- Having no friends – basically, we are born alone, and we die alone
Then we got into the sufferings of human beings. Last time we spoke about the suffering of birth.
Suffering of Humans (Continued)
Suffering of Old Age
We are now up to the suffering of old age.
Taking Human Rebirth as an Arhat
We spoke last time about the choices we would have as liberated beings, as arhats. If we didn’t want to go for the option of staying in a pure land, just going in and out of meditation forever, but wanted, instead, to follow the bodhisattva path and to go on toward Buddhahood, how would we do that?
As arhats, we would, of course, already have had non-conceptual cognition of voidness and the four noble truths. That’s according to Prasangika. So, we could stay in a pure land, be taught by Sambhogakaya, these subtle forms of a Buddha, develop a bodhichitta motivation in that pure land and continue working toward enlightenment. But we could also decide, “Hey, I want to try to benefit others as much as I can now and be reborn in the human realm.” There also are those who would have been working toward both arhatship and Buddhahood from the very start of this intermediate scope.
In any case, the point is that if, as arhats, we chose to appear as human beings and to continue in that type of form to benefit others as much as we could at the level we were at and to work further toward enlightenment in a human realm, we would go through birth, old age and so on because those things are part of the human cycle. But we wouldn’t suffer. We wouldn’t experience unhappiness, even if we were physically damaged. We also wouldn’t feel the ordinary type of happiness. Either we would have a pure type of happiness, or we would have a numbness of feeling, as when in the deep meditation states that are beyond feelings of happiness and unhappiness. And we wouldn’t have uncontrollably recurring rebirth after death. In other words, at the time of death, we wouldn’t have that clinging (thirsting) and grasping for a “me” and all these sorts of attitudes that activate karma. We wouldn’t have any karmic potentials that could ripen into unhappiness, so we would also not experience suffering at the time of death.
For us ordinary beings, however, death, old age and so on are experienced with suffering. We need to think about that and about how horrible it would be to have to go through all of that again. The alternative is not just a nothing, though. The alternative is accepting the limitations of being a baby, a very old person, etc. because we want to benefit others.
Contemplating the Many Sufferings of Old Age
So, what is ordinary old age like? Well, it’s horrible, in so many ways. There are long lists of the sufferings. I am 65, and I am certainly experiencing some of these already. It is not any fun whatsoever. You don’t have much energy, your eyesight is weaker, your hearing starts to go, you get aches and pains all over the place, and you can’t eat many of things that you like because they upset your stomach, your digestion is not as good. Your sexual life goes way down (which doesn’t mean that your desire goes down). People don’t find you so attractive anymore; so, socially, you have problems. In your mind, you think that you are still young, but to young people, you are very, very old and in no way attractive.
Participant: What about people of the same age?
Dr. Berzin: People who are the same age? You don’t find them attractive. As an old person, you are still attracted to the pretty, young people in the pornographic magazines. That’s what you are attracted to. You don’t find a 70-year-old woman or man sexy. So, you make do. You like the other person as a person, but you don’t fool yourself into thinking that they are sexy. That’s not the concept that you have. Your concept of sexiness stays pretty constant. Maybe you find somebody who's a little bit older sexy, but certainly not this old person in a wheelchair or with a cane.
Participant: And everything is all wobbly.
Dr. Berzin: And usually they’re very overweight and so on. It’s very frustrating. There are many, many sufferings of old age.
Then, of course, there’s senility, not being able to remember things. And even though you want to do things… this is the terribly frustrating thing: you want to do things. Of course, there are those who just want to retire and to sit around and relax, but if you have been doing a lot of positive things in your life and you want to continue doing positive things, you find it more and more difficult. You just don’t have the energy. It’s difficult to sit because your back hurts. Your memory is not as good. And what really goes down is your mindfulness. You walk into a room, and you forget what you were doing. You go to pick something up, and you pick up the wrong thing because you weren’t paying attention. You press the wrong button because you weren’t mindful on the computer. It’s really quite amazing how mindfulness goes down – even though you might be very well trained in mindfulness. Well, in mediation, maybe, I can remain mindful. But when I go to take a fork out of the silverware tray, I take a spoon instead.
So, there are all these sufferings – which as somebody who experiences these things, I can tell you about. And although the ordinary wisdom is to learn to laugh about it and not get upset, here, we want to be thinking, “What a drag! I don’t want to experience this over and over and over again.” This is especially so when we are thinking in terms of bodhichitta, wanting to attain enlightenment. “How horrible it is that I am limited and that senility is probably waiting for me in a few years. Then I’m going have to be a baby again – if I’m lucky to be a baby human again. Then it will be many, many years before I can really continue doing something positive.” Thinking in these ways, we no longer romanticize this whole human cycle. So, think about it.
I think one of the most helpful things is to visit nursing homes and to go into the Alzheimer’s wing or such places. One sees these old people sitting in wheelchairs in the hall, sort of drooling with a little towel on their laps, maybe mumbling to themselves. And if you – or any human being – walk along the hall, they reach out and try to touch you so that they have some human contact. Ordinarily, they’re just ignored. They’re just wheeled out into the hall and left there for the whole day. Or they're left in front of a television that’s playing absolutely inane game shows and constant news shows and constant commercials. They’re just stuck there. Imagine being there and that nobody comes to visit you. Or if people do come to visit you, they feel so uncomfortable because they don’t know what to say. They just want to leave as soon as possible. They come because they feel obligated to come, and you can sense that. Think how awful that would be. Try to imagine it.
[meditation]
If you live in the West, half your days as an old person, if not more than half your days, is spent going to doctors’ appointments because of this type of ache or pain, this type of thing with your eyes and ears. And most of that time you spend waiting in the waiting room, absolutely wasting time. So much of your conversation with your peers is about what medications you’re taking. So much of your time is taken up just trying to maintain your body. You can never get rid of all the aches and pain. You become very dependent on the help of others, which is not always available.
[meditation]
You want to continue living in your home, but you can no longer take care of it. You’re put in a nursing home. Do you know how horrible it is to be in a nursing home? There is never enough staff. They take all your money. Once your money is gone, at least in most Western countries, the government will support you. But then you are put in a room with somebody else who, often, is senile or can’t hear, so you have nobody to talk to. You have a bed and a curtain that separates you from the other bed, and that’s it. You have to wait for the nurse to have enough time to help you to get out of bed and go to the toilet. If the nurse isn’t available, you have to go to the toilet in the bed like a baby. You may have to wear diapers, just like a baby.
Participant: How does it help to imagine all of this?
Dr. Berzin: What we are trying to do is to appreciate the suffering of old age and to realize that we really don’t want that. The whole point of this is to develop some renunciation, to recognize that there is this suffering. Even if we get precious human rebirths, which we definitely want to do, that’s not the ultimate or final goal.
Participant: So, we are trying to get tired of this.
Dr. Berzin: We have gone through this already. First, we’re slightly angry: “It is so unfair that this has to happen.” Then we’re disgusted with it, fed up. But then we’re just bored with it: “I have to experience this over and over again.”
Participant: It’s difficult to be bored with this because, unless we have incredible meditations or abilities, we don’t remember the other times when this has happened.
Dr. Berzin: That’s true. We have to infer from what we experience now that we have gone through this over and over again. But I must say that getting older is boring. The amount of time spent in doctors’ waiting rooms is incredibly boring.
Participant: Even if we don’t think about old age in order to be bored with having to get old, we can just think in terms of this lifetime – how you should use your time well when you’re still young. I’m not even 50 and already my memory is going. I used to have such a good memory.
Dr. Berzin: So, you’re saying that when one is young (the young don’t appreciate youth; “youth is wasted on the young,” is the expression in English), one should appreciate what one has. She is not yet 50, and yet she finds that her memory is fading. I have certainly found that as well. I had an unbelievably excellent memory and learned all sorts of Asian languages. When I was about 50, I tried to learn Mongolian. I had always wanted to learn Mongolian. There was no way the vocabulary would stick in my memory, whereas at 18, I learned Chinese easily and could remember all the characters.
And it’s boring. I’m thinking of my 99-year-old aunt. She is so bored. She is in an old age home. Her eyesight is poor, so she can’t really watch television or read. She doesn’t have much of an attention span, so she can’t really listen to the radio. What does she do all day long? She is just totally, totally bored. There’s no stimulation. This is a hell, unless we have some sort of Dharma practice that we can do. But even then, for how long can we say OM MANI PADME HUM? Most people can’t do that all day long, every day. So, what are we going to do when we can’t use our senses very well, can’t move around very well and aren’t able to do anything? We’re just stuck there, probably in a wheelchair, just sitting. Awful.
Also, by the way, one of the main points of this mediation in terms of the advanced scope is to develop more and more compassion for older people and to realize that they have been young just like we are or have been. They have had lives, careers, families.
Participant: And they probably want to relate to people like they always did.
Dr. Berzin: And they can’t believe that they look the way that they look; it’s not their self-image. It’s not my self-image – the way that I look. I don’t conceive of myself as looking the way that I actually look.
Participant: That can be a problem at any age.
Dr. Berzin: True. Young people want to look older.
Participant: Or they want to look bigger or thinner.
Questions
Renunciation Motivated by Positive Feelings, Not Just Disgust and Boredom
Participant: Do we just want to have the feeling of boredom with all of this? If we have a higher goal, we can feel more and more delighted that we have taken preventive measures and that we can benefit this human life.
Dr. Berzin: If I understand correctly, what you are asking is, can’t we find some satisfaction in terms of what we are doing with our precious human lives if we are working toward a higher goal? Certainly, if we are using our precious human rebirths, we would rejoice in that. We would rejoice that we are making our lives worthwhile.
Participant: So, couldn’t we do this over and over, even if we think that the best thing would be not to be born again in a womb?
Dr. Berzin: I didn’t quite understand that.
Participant: I think she was asking whether we always needed to be bored with being reborn again. Couldn’t wanting the higher goal also be motivated by something positive?
Participant: Yes. Wanting the higher goal can also be felt in a more positive way.
Dr. Berzin: Definitely. It is necessary to get the precious human rebirth again and again – even with its limitations. It’s stepping-stone, and we want to use it. But what we don’t want is to see that as the final goal. But, yes, I definitely want to continue having precious human rebirths.
Participant: But one motivation for wanting to achieve liberation might be not wanting to go through this drag again. Another motivation might be wanting to be free of the disturbing emotions in order not to hurt others and also to be of better help to others. So, this second motivation might be the positive motivation.
Dr. Berzin: We add that on top. First, we think, “I want to be free because of all the suffering that it causes me.” Then we add the higher or more advanced motivation, thinking, “I also want to be free so that I don’t get angry with others and so that I can help them better.” So, there are two things: overcoming limitations in terms of fulfilling our own purposes and overcoming limitations in terms of fulfilling the purposes of others.
But Alisse, I’m not sure that we have really understood your question.
Participant: You say that a strategy for wanting to get the higher goal is to see the limitations of this life.
Dr. Berzin: One thing is turning away from what we have in this life, seeing its shortcomings; the other is being attracted to what we are aiming for.
Participant: Yeah, that’s what I mean. So, when we act constructively, we can have positive feelings that make us want the higher goal.
Dr. Berzin: We have positive feelings in this lifetime that would make us want the higher goal of liberation and enlightenment. So, what are these positive feelings?
This is an interesting question. By positive feelings, do we mean our ordinary happiness? Well, it’s quite nice to have our ordinary happiness, but we don’t mean that. It could, for example, be the feeling of satisfaction that we get when we help others a little bit. We do something for someone, and we see that it benefits the person – maybe not ultimately, but still, it does benefit them – and we see, “Hey, that’s really great.” So, it makes us feel good, it makes the other person feel good, and it makes us want to be able to do more. That could drive us, definitely. But we’d have to watch out that that kind of thing doesn’t lead to an inflated ego, thinking, “I am so wonderful,” or to attachment, thinking, “What I do has to help. If it doesn’t help, then I’m no good. I wasn’t good enough,” in which case, we beat ourselves up.
Participant: I also mean that I may be able, in a way, to experience the feeling of detachment. So, two things.
Dr. Berzin: Well, yes. What you are referring to here is that when we get a taste of some of the qualities of liberation, we could feel less attached, though it certainly wouldn’t be 100%. 100% detachment is not so easy. And progress, as His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, is something that we really need to measure in terms of at least five-year periods because everything goes up and down, up and down. But if we see that over a five-year period the trend is that we get less upset when other people criticize us, that we feel less hurt when people that we like don’t call us or don’t pay attention to us (so, we’re not so attached), that we’re not so destroyed when our relationships break up, and that everything seems more like a dream or an illusion – so, when some opportunity comes, we don’t have great expectations or a lot of grasping: “If it happens, it happens; if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen” – we are very much encouraged, definitely. We are encouraged and think, “Hey! I would like to go even further in this direction!” Definitely.
What we really need to experience to become stronger in Dharma practice is to experience that it works. If we see that, even at our level, the amount of effort that we put into it – which is certainly very little compared to what we read of the great masters – actually brings results, that gives us confidence to go on. Definitely.
Inspiration
Participant: When I watch people who are more experienced in this path – teachers, for example – and I see them being kind when it’s not so easy to be kind, I think, “Oh, I want to become like that.”
Dr. Berzin: This is the whole point of inspiration. And it doesn’t just have to be great teachers who inspire us. It could be anybody. It could be people who work with the severely handicapped, people who work in the Alzheimer’s ward. Seeing them, especially the ones who are really kind and so on, is very, very inspiring. They don’t have to be Buddhist practitioners.
One of the most inspiring things for me, I think, was seeing the nuns in Mother Teresa’s place. I didn’t go to her place in Calcutta, but I went to her place in Nairobi. My God! The types of mental disabilities and physical deformities of the children that they took care of were truly dreadful, and the attitude of love and affectation that these nuns showed them was just unbelievable. Really, really inspiring. So, yeah, inspiration plays a big part. It’s very much emphasized in Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism. What has to go with that is not feeling, “You’re so great, and I’m such a worm down here. I can’t possibly do what you do,” but feeling encouraged – based on Buddha-nature – that we, too, can do it.
Participant: There are times when you see someone who has more limitations and problems than you, and they’re helping others. They’re smiling and being generous. I find it inspiring.
Dr. Berzin: Right. I’m thinking of the example of a friend of mine. He had muscular dystrophy and couldn’t really move very much, yet he devoted himself to becoming a therapist to help other people who had similar types of afflictions. Sometimes one sees people who have had strokes and are paralyzed or half paralyzed and so on, and yet they have dignity. Their attitude toward themselves is not one of feeling sorry for themselves. This can be very inspiring. Or blind people – I’m amazed at the blind people that go around the city here. They use the public transportation system, the U-Bahn as we call it here in Germany. It’s unbelievable how they do that. That’s very inspiring.
Participant: A close friend of mine has been in the hospital. She has a tumor or something in the brain. We don’t know yet what it is. She said, “Well, in the worst case, I will die, but I have no doubt that I will be a human again and meet with the Dharma again.” I was amazed by how confident she was and how calm, how relatively calm she was.
Dr. Berzin: This is a very good example. This is what these lam-rim meditations are aiming for – gaining some confidence that we have taken enough preventive measures so that we are not afraid of death. “Yes, I am going to have to be a baby again and all of that, and that’s going to be drag. I won’t be able to proceed very well on the path for quite a few years, and I’ll have to wait until I’m old enough and have learned everything again. But, maybe, I’ll be able to learn much more quickly, and maybe the circumstances that will enable me to do that will be much easier to find. So, I can die with a happy state of mind,” which is something that is emphasized very, very much. So, these are the benefits of these lam-rim meditations.
That type of serenity that people can have, even in the face of death, is something we need to have all the time because death can come at any time (and we don’t need to have a brain tumor to have that serenity). That’s why we need to build up these positive habits now. Whenever death comes, we want to be ready, and, also, to die without regrets. “Oh, I didn’t have time because I was too busy.” Well, it’s not so easy because our lives are very busy, and we have many demands and things that attract us. But what are our priorities? If we don’t have the ability, which most of us don’t, to devote 100% of our time to work on ourselves… the thing is, though, we can work on ourselves all the time. Once we have the basics, we can use any situation in life to practice, to develop more patience, more kindness, more perseverance, more equanimity and so on.
Well, perseverance and equanimity I find very, very important, I must say, because realistically speaking, we are not going to feel happy all the time. I don’t feel happy all the time. Certainly not. When we feel unhappy, it’s not that we’re in some depression – “Oh, I’m so unhappy!” But we’re not joyous either. When we feel unhappy and we have this perseverance, we say, “So what? So what that I don’t feel happy. What do I expect? I’ve been building up karma, mostly negative karma, since forever.” So, we just persevere and continue with whatever positive things we are trying to do, not feeling sorry for ourselves, thinking, “Poor me,” and all of that. This is so, so important.
As the young Serkong Rinpoche always says, “Nothing special.” So, if we’re unhappy – nothing special. Do we expect to feel joyous all the time? It’s unrealistic, unless we are highly, highly developed. Someone like the Dalai Lama seems to feel happy almost all the time, even in the face of unbelievable difficulties, like with the Tibetans living in Tibet. That’s inspiring. I am not at that level, but it is possible. That’s what’s very inspiring – to see that it is possible. So, yeah, that inspiration drives us toward liberation and enlightenment.
Leaving Our Ordinary Happiness Behind
The danger here is to think that we can go toward liberation and enlightenment without having to discard all the other stuff. In order to get to liberation and enlightenment, we’re going to have to discard our attachments and all these other things. As one of my teachers said, “We want liberation and enlightenment cheap.” We want it on sale, fast. We want to get it at a bargain. As he said, there are no bargains.
Participant: You have to leave behind your ordinary happiness.
Dr. Berzin: We have to leave behind ordinary happiness.
Participant: That’s very tricky.
Dr. Berzin: It’s very, very tricky because our ordinary happiness is very seductive. It feels nice. Even though it doesn’t last, it feels nice. So, yeah, that is really difficult to leave behind. It’s also really difficult because we don’t instantly have unending, pure joy.
Participant: Why do I have to leave it behind?
Dr. Berzin: Because ordinary happiness is the ripening of positive karmic potentials that have been built up with ignorance.
There are two types of happiness. There is our ordinary happiness, and then there is the unstained, pure happiness. We don’t want the ordinary happiness anymore.
Participant: So, I don’t want to pursue it anymore.
Dr. Berzin: We don’t want to pursue it. Getting that type of happiness is not our goal.
Participant: But if it comes up, I can enjoy it.
Dr. Berzin: Right.
Participant: But we enjoy it without grasping at it.
Dr. Berzin: Right. We know that it is not going to satisfy and that it’s going to go away. And undoubtedly, when it ends, we are going to feel unhappy or just blah again.
Participant: The suffering of old age and things like that are easy to renounce but not ordinary happiness.
Dr. Berzin: That’s absolutely true. And it’s one of the most difficult things to do. Very difficult.
Even more difficult to renounce is the ordinary appearance of things. In tantra, we have to renounce that because it seems as though it’s absolutely the case that everything is self-established. Things appear to be independent of causes and conditions, of our perceptions, of how we label things and so on. In other words, our ordinary perception of reality is something we have to give up. That’s even deeper. And on top of all of this, there’s biology – biological urges and so on. That, also, we have to give up.
So, liberation and enlightenment are not cheap. Not at all. But to say “give up” is maybe not the nicest way of saying it. “Grow beyond.” We have to grow beyond, grow to a more highly developed level.
Participant: I was thinking of the story about Buddha’s cousin who got married. Buddha was a guest at the wedding, and some time afterward, the cousin asked him if he would ordain him. Buddha ordained him, so then he stayed with the Buddha. But he couldn’t meditate because he kept thinking about his beautiful wife. When he told Buddha about that, Buddha took him to a god realm and showed him all these beautiful deities. He said, “Well, compared to your wife, they’re much more wonderful.” Then he said, “If you meditate, you’ll be able to reach that heaven, and then you can be with them.” The cousin meditated and eventually reached the state of arhatship.
Dr. Berzin: Well, this is talking about an initial scope motivation – wanting to overcome gross suffering and aiming for a better rebirth. Of course, there’s attachment to start with. So, whether we are trying to avoid lower rebirths or to overcome attachment to this human rebirth, that aiming for rebirth in the heavens is one method we could use. Of course, that may have worked in the case of Buddha’s cousin, but it could be a little bit dangerous for people nowadays because we aren’t able to achieve arhatship as quickly and easily as people did in the time of Buddha.
Anyway, this is the suffering of old age. We haven’t gotten very far beyond that. I had hoped to discuss more than the suffering of old age.
In any case, I think that this whole topic of recognizing suffering and developing a strong wish to avoid it is very important. Obviously, Buddha thought it was very important because that’s his first noble truth. It was to recognize the unsatisfactory nature of samsara and to say that there is a way to avoid it. And the way to avoid it is not just to go into total nothingness but, in a sense, to grow beyond it.
Aiming to Have a Precious Human Rebirth Thrown by Compassion
OK, let’s just take a moment to reflect on what we have discussed and, also, to think of it in terms of what happens at death. I always try to relate this to the 12 links – that at the time of death, I don’t want to activate the karmic potentials. That’s the way to get rid of uncontrollably recurring rebirth. I don’t want to activate the negative potentials or even the positive potentials by clinging to happiness, clinging to getting rid of unhappiness, and clinging to the obtainer attitudes, the me, me, me that wants to be happy, that wants to be able to continue, and so on. Instead, I want to die with compassion and love. I want to be able to continue to be with spiritual teachers, to meet with the Dharma, and to continue working further to benefit others. If I activate these karmic potentials, whether negative or positive – even if I am fortunate enough to get a precious human rebirth again – I am going to experience rebirth with all the pain and unhappiness, all the suffering of change, all the difficulties of old age and so on. I really want to avoid that.
This is the point: We really want to avoid that suffering. So, we become very strongly motivated, especially in terms of death. This is why I’m thinking ahead, here, to the tantra meditations – transforming how we experience death. I really do not want to activate the karmic potentials, or I want to activate only a minimum of them so that if I gain a precious human rebirth by the force of compassion rather than merely by the force of being thrown by activated positive karmic potentials – or I gain it by the force of compassion together with activated positive karmic potentials – I will be able to go through the cycle of being born, growing old and dying with only a minimum of suffering. And the less suffering I have, the more able I will be to help others. Even though I could still try as hard as possible to help them while I am suffering, while I am unhappy, it would be easier without the suffering. I think this is what we are aiming for here. So, think about that for a moment.
[meditation]
OK. So, in short, although I want a precious human rebirth, I don’t want an ordinary precious human rebirth.