Taking the Path Seriously

Is Ordinary Life Satisfying?

What is most important in following the lam-rim graded path is to take it very seriously. To take something seriously doesn’t mean to be grim and not be happy about it or not to joke about it sometimes in the process of studying. It doesn’t mean that. Rather what it means is, if we’re to going to follow this spiritual path, having great respect not only for the path and those who have achieved it, but also for ourselves.

Also, not taking it lightly but thinking, “If I’m going to work on myself and follow this path, I want to do it correctly and in the best way possible.” This is based on really understanding the importance of it, and that the importance is not just based on “holy, holy lama” or “sacred, sacred” or something like that. 

This is not an exercise purely in devotion. Rather, we look at our lives and at the lives of all the people around us, everybody that we know, and even the people that we don’t know, the poor people we see in the streets and the street dogs. We think of the people that just work and work and work and just hit more and more problems and eventually die. Everybody that we know, when we get to know them better, we see that no matter how rich they might be or, on the surface, how superficially happy they seem all the time, everybody has their own brand of samsara, their own suffering. The problems are different, but there are some standard problems – the aches and pains as we get older and all these sorts of things. All of that is terrible.

Is this all that there is to life? If that’s all that life is about, that’s really awful, isn’t it? However, if it were possible to actually do something about that, if it were really possible to get out of this state of existence, that would be really wonderful. Furthermore, if everybody could get out of it, that would be even more wonderful. We need to find out, is there a way to get out of it? Not just to be satisfied, to be in a flock of sheep where eventually our turn will come to be slaughtered. We need to think, is there a way out, and if there is, is it really possible?

First, we take the situation seriously: this is what we see, this is what’s going on, “Do I want to just go on with this, or do I want to try to get out of it?” This is the first of the three paths that we’re talking about, renunciation. However, when we talk about a path, what does that mean? We’re not talking about stones on a road that we’re walking on, but a state of mind and a way of communicating and acting that follows from that state of mind that will act as a pathway to reach a goal. Here, our first goal is to get out of all of this.

As I say, we need to take that seriously, “If I can do this and go in this direction, that gives meaning to my life. I’m doing something with my life, not just walking and walking around in a circle waiting until I die, just trying to have little happy experiences and stuff like that, which at first are nice, but not really satisfying.” If they were satisfying, we wouldn’t need to repeat them over and over again. Also, whatever joy we have, wears off; we have no certainty of what we’re going to feel like next, or what’s coming next. That’s not very satisfactory; it’s not very secure.

All the toys that we’ve collected in our lifetime and material things and so on, what are they going to do at the moment of death? Not very much. Money, after all, is just pieces of paper with numbers written on them. We see this with many people that after they die, all their prized possessions instantly become garbage and are thrown away. What was the point? Sure, it was nice, but is that all that life is about? Of course, we need a nice environment and a conducive situation, but when we’ve satisfied the basic needs, we don’t need more. As the Tibetans say, we can only fill our stomach to its fullest; there is a limit to how much we can throw into ourselves.

Top