Review
We are going through these graded stages of the path, speaking not only about how we develop these states of mind but also about how we familiarize ourselves with them through meditation. In order to do that, we need not only to be certain of what these states of mind are but also to have confident belief that they are valid and worthwhile states of mind to develop and, also, that if we develop them, they will bring about the desired result. This is very important in general when it comes to meditation: we need to know what we are focusing on, what the purpose is, what state of mind we need to generate in order to focus, and so on.
The Three Levels of Motivation
We are generally developing ourselves through three graded levels of motivation. Motivation means that we are aiming at something, a goal, and that we have a reason for aiming at it.
On the initial level, we are aiming to have one of the better states of rebirth. The reason for that is that we have a healthy type of fear of having a worse state of rebirth after we die. We are pushed to do this because of thinking of our precious human bodies and that they will be lost at the time of death. The goal of having a better rebirth, specifically a precious human rebirth, is to continue on the path and, ultimately, to achieve enlightenment so that we can be of best help to others.
The way that we can do that – knowing that is also important when focusing on a goal in meditation – is to go in a safe direction, that of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Going in that direction means working to bring about a true stopping of suffering and its causes and knowing or at least having an idea that this can actually help us to avoid suffering. And that means being convinced of behavioral cause and effect. If we get rid of the cause, we will get rid of the effect. Initially, what we have to do is to work on getting rid of the suffering of unhappiness and pain, the so-called suffering of suffering. The way to do that is to avoid destructive behavior.
This is what we are trying to do with this initial scope: aiming for a better rebirth on the basis of a precious human body. We want to achieve that goal because we realize that, with a precious human rebirth, we can accomplish further spiritual goals, which we can use as stepping-stones toward liberation and, ultimately, enlightenment. What would bring the attainment of those goals is going in the safe direction of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha and avoiding destructive behavior.
That’s the initial scope.
On the intermediate scope, what we are aiming for is liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth. What is our reason? The reason is not just not wanting a worse rebirth. Here, we are disgusted with any type of rebirth in the uncontrollably recurring cycle of rebirths (samsara), and we are absolutely determined to overcome that, to stop it. We are motivated by thinking, first, of the general sufferings of samsara and, then, the sufferings of the better rebirth states. These sufferings have to do with the suffering of change, which is our ordinary happiness, and also with the all-pervasive suffering, which is the suffering of continuing to generate more and more bases for experiencing rebirth and to experience the first two types of suffering, the suffering of suffering and the suffering of ordinary happiness. What we need to do to overcome that is to develop the three higher trainings: the trainings in ethical self-discipline, concentration, and discriminating awareness of voidness.
This is what intermediate scope is all about – learning how to achieve liberation and getting motivated to reach that goal. We are determined to be free of samsara. We are disgusted, fed up with all the different kinds of suffering, not just the suffering of unhappiness but also the suffering of ordinary happiness and the uncontrollably recurring suffering. We are determined to get rid of these. What prevents us from doing that are the disturbing emotions, the ignorance, or unawareness, that underlies the disturbing emotions, and also the karmic potentials that we build up, both positive and negative karmic potentials, based on this unawareness. All of that continues to perpetuate our samsara. We understand the 12 links (that’s also here in the intermediate scope), which describe how the whole samsaric cycle regenerates itself over and over again. And we know what we need to do in order to break out of it, which, again, are the three higher trainings.
I suppose, I should complete this discussion by speaking of the advanced scope.
On the advanced scope, we are aiming for enlightenment. Why are we aiming to go beyond liberation? Because we are thinking of the suffering of others. We are moved by compassion and love for them. They have been our mothers in previous lifetimes, and so on. To achieve that aim, we need to overcome not just the emotional obscurations that were preventing our liberation but also the cognitive ones that prevent us from fully understanding all things, especially karmic cause and effect. We need to overcome these things so that we know exactly how to help others.
So, moved by compassion and, especially, driven by bodhichitta, which is aimed at that enlightenment in order to benefit others, we realize: what do we have to get rid of? What we have to get rid of is our self-cherishing attitude – clinging just to ourselves and working only for our own benefit. We also have to get a much stronger understanding of voidness in order to cut through the second set of obscurations. That means building up a tremendous amount of positive force behind our understanding of voidness. That’s done not only with bodhichitta but also with the far-reaching attitudes – generosity, ethical self-discipline, patience, joyful perseverance, mental constancy, and (again) discriminating awareness. That is what we need to do in order to reach enlightenment.
This is the general structure here. We are working to improve or to widen our motivation, which means to widen the scope of what we want to achieve, and also to strengthen our reasons for achieving those goals by knowing exactly what prevents their attainment and what will bring them about and by being confident that it’s actually possible to achieve them. This is putting these lam-rim meditations in the context of Tsongkhapa’s instructions on what we need in order to meditate properly, which he gives in the Letter of Practical Advice on Sutra and Tantra, which we studied here some years ago.
Suffering of the Better States of Rebirth (Continued)
We have already discussed the sufferings of samsara in general. Last time, we finished discussing the sufferings of humans. Although, of course, we want and need to have precious human rebirths because it’s primarily with a human rebirth that we’ll be able to achieve enlightenment, we have to overcome our attachment to the human rebirth. We want to see it as a stepping-stone toward liberation and enlightenment.
Now we are up to the sufferings of the other two better states of rebirth, the sufferings of the so-called anti-gods and the gods. And by “gods,” we don’t mean God the Creator. I think we need to try to understand these rebirth states in the same way that we understood the worst rebirth states. In other words, we need to understand them as levels of feelings, extremes of either happiness or suffering that a mental continuum could experience. And that mental continuum would have to generate a physical basis that would be capable of experiencing those extreme levels of feeling.
All of these rebirth states are samsaric states, which means that these gods and anti-gods still have certain disturbing emotions. And certainly, they have disturbing attitudes – grasping for a solid “me,” etc. So, although these rebirths might sound a little bit nicer than human rebirths, they certainly are not what we are aiming for.
Suffering of the Anti-Gods (Asuras)
We’re up to the anti-gods, the asuras, as they’re called in Sanskrit. Some time ago, we discussed that “quasi-gods” might be a better translation than “anti-gods,” but let’s stick for the time being with the more familiar name, “anti-gods.” Here, we have a description of them that fits in with abhidharma cosmology. They live on the banks of the rivers that surround the base of Mount Meru, at the center of the universe. They have four cities. They have a king, and so on. They are materially more comfortable than humans, but they still experience most of the sufferings that humans do in terms of birth, sickness, old age, death, etc. However, they are obsessively jealous. So, even though they are really quite well off, they’re very jealous of the gods. They’re always waging wars with them and suffering accordingly. Moreover, the gods are always raiding the anti-gods’ cities and carrying away their women. Also, the anti-gods’ wives and children who stay behind from these wars experience the additional suffering of being able to see all the battles that occur and those who die in them in a so-called All-Visible Lake.
As you know, there are six different types of rebirth states. It can happen that remnants of karmic experiences experienced in one type of rebirth state can carry over into a different type of rebirth state and be experienced there. And although some people might think that these other realms are fictitious and that the descriptions of sufferings experienced in them pertain only to human experiences, the human experiences of suffering that are similar to those described are merely suggestive of the kind of suffering experienced in these other realms. They are much more intense, much more severe.
In any case, here we have a very interesting situation. I love this thing about the All-Visible Lake. This is like watching television and being able to see all the battles that go on in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the people who die and so on. Maybe the anti-gods don’t watch them on television sets, but they could. It’s a very easy extension of this idea.
Jealousy
As I mentioned, there is this jealousy. The jealousy is of those who are wealthier. This is something that we find not just among people who are really, really poor; we often find it even more strongly among those who are middle-class or who are fairly well off. In any case, these anti-gods are constantly competing with the wealthier gods, fighting with them, and so on. But they don’t have the power of the wealthier ones. For example, here, the gods can kill the anti-gods in any sort of way, whereas the anti-gods can kill the gods only in one way, so they are much more limited. And of course, their women are stolen away. What does that mean? A parallel that we could draw here is with wealthy men seducing, in a sense, women with their wealth. They attract women of lesser wealth, women who would marry just for wealth, just for the riches – this type of thing.
So, we do have experiences in the human realm that are similar to those of the anti-gods. Either we have them ourselves, or we know of others who have them. We can therefore extrapolate from that what a life in which one is totally obsessed in this way would be like. Why don’t we think about that? Think about the suffering, the unhappiness, that that brings – always wanting more, even though we are quite well off materially, and being extremely jealous of those who have more.
Participant: Look at the elements in yourself, no?
Dr. Berzin: Look at the elements in yourself, absolutely. That’s the whole point.
[meditation]
Notice that jealousy here is not just about wanting the same as the other person has but being OK with the fact that they have a better situation, more money or fame than we have. It’s not that. It’s that we want to fight with them and even want them to lose what they have. “I have to have it, and I don’t want them to have it.”
Examine: Do we have that aspect of jealousy in ourselves? We certainly could have it when it comes to a partner. “This other person has this partner, and I want to take her away from the other person. I want her to be all mine.” Do we have that type of attitude in other situations? “I don’t want them to get the promotion at work. I want to get the promotion. And I would rather that they get demoted so that I can get promoted. I don’t want both of us to have the same position.” So, notice.
Does jealousy imply struggling and fighting with others? Think about it.
[meditation]
Any comments?
Participant: I just feel sorry for them. Don’t they want to listen to the Buddha Dharma?
Dr. Berzin: Well, this is exactly the type of thought we would develop on the advanced scope. We would think of all those who are suffering in these different rebirth states and how we could help them and, also, how wonderful it would be if they got free of that suffering. But first, we have to want to be of that suffering ourselves. Does the wish or intention to try to improve our situations necessarily entail being jealous of those who have things better than we have? No. That’s the point, isn’t it?
Participant: I think that thinking in this jealous way implies that there is a limited supply of what we want and, also, that it’s solid and exists from its own side. So, we have to get that thing from those who have it. We have to take it away.
Dr. Berzin: So, underlying jealousy is a projection. What we want appears to be some solid thing that exists under its own power as something so fantastic, and we think that there is a limit to how much of it there is (although there may be a limit, like to the amount of oil or whatever), so we have to have it. But whether it’s limited or unlimited in quantity, we still grasp at it and over-estimate how wonderful it is. So, longing desire is also there. However, even stronger than the grasping at the object is the grasping at “me” – “I have to have it” – and thinking that getting the object is going to make us happier. Will it? I think that it has been demonstrated that having a lot of money doesn’t necessarily make us happy. We might be physically comfortable, but a lot of wealthy people have a great deal of mental suffering.
Participant: Wealth is neutral, no?
Dr. Berzin: Wealth is neutral. It’s neither constructive nor destructive. It can be used in a constructive way to benefit others, and it can also be used in a destructive way to harm others, like buying a lot of weapons to kill people.
Participant: But then you have to look after the wealth.
Dr. Berzin: Wealth brings problems. We have to look after it. We can be worried that others are going to steal it. But this gets into the suffering of the gods, so let’s leave that for that discussion.
Participant: I was thinking that what makes me jealous is not so much material things. It’s more when a person whom I appreciate is giving attention to another person rather than to me that I feel jealous.
Dr. Berzin: So, the object that you’re jealous of is somebody’s attention.
Participant: Yeah. And I think that I would be too proud to quarrel about it or to strive for it. It’s more that it’s just the pain.
Dr. Berzin: Why is it pain?
Participant: Because I didn’t get it.
Dr. Berzin: “They got it and not me.” So, in a sense, there’s a strong grasping for a “me.” Also, jealousy is the opposite of rejoicing. So, instead of rejoicing in what others have, we begrudge it. Not only that, we want it for ourselves and for them not to have it. Well, it’s interesting. People in developing countries would like to have the kind of lifestyle that exists in developed countries, but I don’t think that the people in those developing countries would necessarily like those in the developed countries to become extremely poor. Some might, of course, but I don’t think that that necessarily follows.
Participant: I would like to have it based on admiration, not on desire.
Dr. Berzin: We could have admiration for what others have and strive to attain it.
Participant: We could strive in a healthy way.
Dr. Berzin: But the point is that, here, we are talking about striving for worldly things that can’t bring ultimate happiness. We could, of course, admire the spiritual attainments of great masters and strive to attain those without being jealous. Jealousy has behind it a strong grasping for “me,” a strong grasping for what the other person has, and “poor me, I don’t have it.” So, as I said, longing desire is part of it as well. And in many cases, there is also some sort of hostility toward the person who has what we want.
The important point here is to understand that if this state of mind, this disturbing emotion became an obsession, our main mode of experience – which is the anti-god extreme – how much suffering we would experience, even though, materially, we might be quite comfortable. So, we become determined that we certainly do not want to experience this sort of life. That’s the point of thinking about the suffering of the anti-gods.
Participant: How do we meditate on it?
Dr. Berzin: When we think of the suffering of the anti-gods, we focus on it with a strong state of mind of disgust – “Yuck! I don’t want that!” – because we understand that although that type of rebirth brings some sort of material happiness, the state of mind is one of extreme suffering. Plus, if we are always fighting and struggling trying to get what the gods have, we get hurt. Let’s focus like that.
Participant: I was thinking that examples of that in the human realm might be people who work in the higher levels of a bank, the financial market or something like that.
Dr. Berzin: Right. I know some very, very wealthy people who are so jealous of people who have a little bit more than they have. They are not at all satisfied. This is really quite awful. They have so much, and yet, they want more. What they have is not enough.
But as I say, what is very much a part of the asura, the anti-god, life is fighting. They are constantly fighting with the gods and getting hurt in their struggle to get what they think they really want and think they really need. Can you think of any example of this?
Participant: I can think of an example from when I was a kid. I wanted to go to a party. A friend was at my place, and she didn’t have shoes to wear. The only shoes that would work for her were the one that I wanted to wear – the most beautiful ones. She said, “Can I wear them?” I said, “No!” My mother was totally furious, of course. There were a lot of people going to the party – my mother, my friend’s mother, the sister… a lot of people. I was really furious also. I told my mother, “No, they’re mine, and I am not going to let my friend borrow them.” My mother was really, really hard on me. Anyway, I went to this party, but I don’t even remember if my friend or I wore the shoes because I think that, at the end, it didn’t matter who had the shoes. I realized that the only thing that matters is your intentions or your relations to the people or your ability to let go of something. I do remember that when I got to the party, I was in a very bad mood because of the whole thing. There were a lot of kids at the party and a lot of things to do, but I wasn’t able to enjoy it. So, what I saw was that when you can see that the source of happiness is being generous in your relations with others, it doesn’t matter anymore what you have or what the other person has. You just don’t see those things as having any value anymore. In the end, it was so unimportant – this pair of shoes.
Dr. Berzin: So, the lesson that you learned from this was that when there is a tremendous amount of jealousy, you can’t even enjoy the good things that you have. That’s very, very true, isn’t it?
The example I was thinking of was getting into big legal fights over inheritance and these sorts of things and being so jealous that the other person got more money. It can be a nightmare – all the legal hassles that one goes through in order to get a little bit more money, to take it away from the other person so that we have it instead. This could go on for years and cost a tremendous amount of money. And during all that time, we can’t really enjoy the part of the inheritance that we do get because we’re so upset and angry fighting with this other person.
I think this is a good example. The point is, why go through all that hassle? We could say, “But it’s not fair!” and so on. This is the state of mind of the asuras – “It’s not fair that they have it and we don’t” – even though they have quite enough.
Let’s focus on what that type of life would be like and have the very strong determination that we really don’t want that.
[meditation]
The Opponent to Jealousy: Rejoicing
OK, any further comments about the asuras, the anti-gods?
Participant: Would we want, in this case, to cultivate an attitude of rejoicing or one of disinterest?
Dr. Berzin: Rejoicing in what?
Participant: Rejoicing in what the others have.
Dr. Berzin: Well, yes, the opponent to jealousy is rejoicing. That is the provisional opponent. The deepest opponent is overcoming the grasping for the solid “me” that has to have what the other person has. But at this point in the meditation, here, on the intermediate scope, the main thing is to develop the determination to be free of this type of rebirth.
When we get to the causes of the different types of rebirths, we will be focusing on the disturbing emotions. For instance, anger is a strong characteristic of the hell realm beings. They’re always fighting with each other out of anger. They experience all sorts of horrible things happening to them, so, of course, they are very angry about it. Miserliness is the main characteristic of the clutching ghosts. They just hang onto what they have and don’t want to share; so, they’re very, very tight. Animals have ignorance or naivety as the main characteristic. They don’t understand what’s going on and don’t understand what’s good for them, what’s not good for them. They just act on instinct and so on. Humans have desire as the main characteristic – always wanting and never being able to satisfy their wants. The anti-gods, as we’ve said, have jealousy. The gods have pride or arrogance. So, we will look at these provisional antidotes when we get to that stage in the intermediate scope. But then we’ll also look at the deepest antidote, which is the understanding of voidness.
Participant: It’s an interesting question: Why is the opponent to jealousy rejoicing and not, say, equanimity?
Dr. Berzin: I think that one could say that equanimity can be used as a type of opponent for any type of disturbing emotion. However, it doesn’t take us in the opposite direction of a disturbing emotion. Also, I think that the opponents are always defined in terms of the positive qualities that we find with the far-reaching attitudes, the Mahayana qualities that we develop. We develop these qualities in Hinayana as well, although, there, the aim is to achieve liberation rather than enlightenment. It’s important to realize that love, compassion, patience and all these things are developed on the Hinayana paths as well, so not just equanimity.
The opponent used for anger, wanting to hurt someone, is love, wanting them to be happy. For miserliness, it’s generosity, being willing to share and to give to others. For ignorance and not being able to understand and so on, it’s discriminating awareness. For desire, I suppose it’s contentment. For jealousy, it’s rejoicing. For pride, it’s putting others first and thinking, “I’m not so special,” and stuff like that. The opponent to laziness is joyful perseverance. So, we get more positive.
OK. Enough of the anti-gods, unless you have something more you want to add.
Participant: I’m not finished thinking.
Dr. Berzin: Well, we could spend a little bit more time thinking about these jealous states of mind. I think it’s important to try to identify within ourselves what we are jealous of and why. And could we rejoice instead?
Now, when it’s a case of, “My lover is having an affair with somebody else, and I want my lover back,” can we rejoice?
Participant: Rejoice in their happiness?
Dr. Berzin: That’s a hard one.
Participant: I think what the other participant was saying was that maybe you have a good friend who for some reason gives a lot of attention to another friend and that you want more of that attention for yourself. So, my question is, in those intermediate cases, might it be possible to rejoice?
Dr. Berzin: Yes. So, you’re saying, let’s not go to the extreme of thinking in terms of sexual relations but in terms of “I have a partner, and my partner spends time with other people and doing other activities. I am jealous because I want my partner to spend all their time with me.” That happens quite often in relationships. In that case, we certainly could use rejoicing as an opponent. We can think, “My partner needs balance; they need other things in their life. It will make them a happier person. Plus, the time that I have with my partner will be better quality time. If I insist that they be with me all the time, they will be unhappy. Then they wouldn’t have the other things that they need in their life as a balance.”
Participant: Maybe we can also think, “I can also use this time for myself.”
Dr. Berzin: Right. We can also use this time for ourselves and realize that our happiness is not totally dependent on this other person.
Participant: Another example: My boss at work praises my colleague for something he did, but he doesn’t praise me for something that I did.
Dr. Berzin: Shantideva has a lot to say about that – that wishing them not to praise somebody else doesn’t mean that they will give the praise to me.
Participant: I think that the feeling of jealousy is kind of a mixture of neediness and hatred.
Dr. Berzin: Yes. Well, this characterizes jealousy in general – that one resents the fact that the other person has what we want. Whether we want to take it away from the other person or not, we still resent it. So, there is some anger there. And there is a feeling of neediness, “Poor me. I need this. I don’t have enough.”
Participant: There’s also insecurity.
Dr. Berzin: Of course. And there’s also the false notion that I can make myself secure by having this thing that the other person has.
Participant: The neediness is a bit like with the clutching ghosts because, in a way, we can never have enough.
Dr. Berzin: It’s not that they can never get enough: they can never get anything.
Participant: Not those clutching ghosts, but with jealousy, we can always want more attention, more money or whatever.
Dr. Berzin: That’s true.
That was part of the general suffering of samsara – that there’s no satisfaction, that we can never have enough. We feel that we can never have enough because we’re always thirsting, trying to feed the solid “me” – which doesn’t exist at all; so, of course, we can never have enough. So, let’s think more about this.
[meditation]
Let me give another example. Let’s say that there are many corrupt officials who have become very wealthy and powerful and that we are poor or relatively poor compared to them. Would it be the same thing as the asuras fighting the gods if we were to fight or to oppose these corrupt officials? Would it be because of jealousy? Is there a difference here? What would be a similar situation to the asuras fighting with the gods, and what would be a different situation?
Participant: What would be similar to the asuras would be to want to take their wealth from them and not to care where it came from. We think, “Wealth is wealth,” and we just want that wealth.
Dr. Berzin: So, we want to become the corrupt officials. This is the thing: the asuras want to become the gods. So, we would want to become the corrupt officials and throw them in jail.
What would be an acceptable way of dealing with this kind of situation?
Participant: We want justice and are willing to fight for it.
Dr. Berzin: That doesn’t mean that we fight with guns and so on but that we are willing to put in the effort, even though it might be quite difficult.
But what would the purpose be? Would the purpose be just to punish them? Or would it be to use the money that was stolen by the corrupt officials for the welfare and benefit of everyone? There is a quite a big difference between the two. In the latter case, our wanting to fight would not be based on jealousy. Overcoming jealousy doesn’t mean that we don’t try to improve our situations and to correct things that are out of balance.
Question about Avoiding the Extremes of Samsara and Nirvana
Participant: I was wondering about the Hinayana arhats, those realized beings on the intermediate scope. I thought that maybe they just don’t care, that they are disgusted by all of these problems of samsara, so they don’t care.
Dr. Berzin: Well, this is what’s called the “extreme of nirvana.” To be freed and then just to stay absorbed in that state of peace and not to care about anything is considered an extreme. On the Mahayana path, one wants to overcome the extremes of samsara and nirvana.
But in order to achieve arhatship, one needs to develop love and compassion. One needs to develop a certain type of positive force to attain arhatship, and that doesn’t come from just sitting in meditation. All the Hinayana practices and paths always have what’s called metta-bhavana, which is Pali for “meditation on love.” “Metta” is “love.”
Participant: They also have compassion and rejoicing.
Dr. Berzin: Right. All of that stuff is there.
It’s quite interesting, the Mahayana depiction of the Hinayana path takes that path to an extreme. It certainly is not a fair depiction of the way that someone on the Hinayana path would practice – whether we’re talking about Theravada, Sarvastivada or any of the other forms of Hinayana. I think the point, though, is to point out the extreme that one could go to in order to help one to avoid that extreme.
Participant: I think it’s important to realize that this is what Mahayana says about Hinayana arhats. It is not necessarily the case that the people who have followed, say, the Theravadan path and have achieved arhatship would be like that.
Dr. Berzin: Right. The arhats who don’t go on to practice Mahayana are not necessarily like that at all.
Participant: What I wanted to say is that many Theravadan monks did teach in the West before Mahayana teachers, particularly Tibetan teachers, came to the West. So, they did care about us.
Dr. Berzin: Well, one has to look at the history of the British in Sri Lanka and the early contact they had with the Buddhist monks there, the founding of the Pali Text Society, and all of that. It is part of the history of how Buddhism was spread to the West. The fact that it spread was not just based on the motivation of these monks, there was also interest by some in the West. But, you know, there is nothing special about the West. These monks teach in their own countries as well.
Buddha sent the arhats out to teach. According to the accounts in the Pali canon, those who achieved arhatship don’t just sit in a cave for the rest of their lives. But this just underlines what I said, which is that the Mahayana depiction takes the Hinayana position to its extreme. That is very much the Prasangika method – taking a position to its logical extreme and thereby showing the absurd consequences that follow.
This, I think, is true of the tenet systems as well – that the so-called higher tenet systems take the views of the so-called lower ones to their logical extremes. It’s the same with the Buddhist presentations of the non-Buddhist views. Most are not very fair to these views. What they do, though, is show the fallacies of thinking in those ways by taking those views to their logical extremes. You find the same thing in all the Tibetan texts in which they argue against other commentators: they take their positions to their logical extremes. “If you think like this, then there is a danger that you could make this mistake.” It doesn’t mean that the others actually make that mistake. But there is that danger, so watch out.
I think that brings us the end of our class and our discussion of the asura realm. Next time, we’ll discuss the various god realms to see what they are like and then try to develop the determination not to be reborn like that.