We have gone through the basic teachings concerning the precious human rebirth, recognizing that we have temporary respites from the states in which we would have no leisure or freedom to practice Dharma and that we also have all the opportunities to practice. Understanding what the causes for a precious human rebirth are, we appreciate how rare such a rebirth is to get and how difficult it is to obtain.
Once we realize that we have precious human lives, we need to become mindful of death and impermanence. Our precious human rebirths aren’t going to last forever. We never know when we are going to die, but, for sure, we will die. At the end of our lives, nothing is going to be of any help to us other than the preventive measures we’ve taken to avoid having worse states of rebirth and losing the opportunities we now have to continue on the spiritual path.
Gaining Conviction in Rebirth
Appreciating all of this obviously depends very strongly on being convinced of future lives, doesn’t it? If we’re not convinced that there are future lives and that we’re going to continue to experience the results of our efforts – our efforts in this lifetime to practice the Dharma, for instance – the meditations that follow don’t make very much sense. We had already discussed this whole issue of past and future lives in two of the earlier classes. Nonetheless, being convinced of rebirth, understanding the logic behind it, is something that we will need to continue to work on ourselves. But even if we understand the logic, it’s often very difficult to have a “gut feeling,” as we call in English, and a conviction that there is such a thing as future lives.
What is important here is to have a clear understanding of what’s entailed in having future lives according to Buddhism. It’s not that there is some sort of soul, an unchanging type of “thing” that goes from one lifetime to another. Buddhism identifies many different levels of what it would consider an impossible soul to be. And I think that to become convinced of rebirth and to have our understanding fit into the rest of the Buddhist path, it only makes sense to understand the Buddhist explanation of rebirth.
But what do we do if we are not yet convinced of rebirth? How do we go on with the next steps of the meditation andopractice? That’s not an easy one to answer, I must say. Thinking of my own experience, I’d say that we just have to give it the benefit of the doubt, which means to presume that it’s true.
Presumption
When we talk about different ways of knowing according to the seven ways of knowing that are described in Buddhism, we see that there is:
- A distorted antagonistic attitude (log-lta). An example of that would be thinking, “There’s no such thing as rebirth, and anybody who believes in that is superstitious and stupid.” So, there’s antagonism, not just a denial of what is true.
- Then there’s indecisive wavering (the-tshoms). We can’t decide: “Maybe there’s rebirth, maybe there isn’t rebirth.”
If that’s where we are, we would at least want to go over to the side of “maybe there is.” Once we are on the side of thinking that it’s more likely that there is rebirth, we can then go on to the next step, which I think is important to do.
- Presumption (yid-dpyod): “I will presume that it is true and then see what follows from that.” That’s a presumptive understanding. We’re not totally convinced, but we think, “My teacher said it was true, Buddha said it was true; so, okay, I’ll consider it true and see what happens.”
I think that this is the only way to work with it, because to have either a valid inferential cognition (rjes-dpag) of it based on a correct line of reasoning or an actual straightforward cognition (mngon-sum) of it – which would actually allow us to remember previous lives – is going to be very difficult. So, I think that presumption is the way to proceed. What do you think?
Participant: To use Pascal’s argument, even if the probability of future lives is only one percent – the alternative being that there is nothing, no future lives – you should put all your effort into preparing for future lives. If there is nothing after this life, it doesn’t matter what you do, because there would be no meaning to life.
Dr. Berzin: Well, what’s the conclusion?
Participant: You’d better do it if it’s so important.
Dr. Berzin: So, the potential gain of believing it to be true is greater than the potential loss of not believing it to be true. I any case, there are different ways of using presumption. We could think, “I’ll presume that it’s true, in which case, I might as well take some sort of preventive measures.” The question is, how much effort would we be willing to make in that case? That, I think, can become an issue in our meditations on the shortcomings of not being mindful of death.
Actually, I think this point is taken into consideration in the way that the meditations on death are presented in the lam-rim, which is, first, to consider the shortcomings of not being mindful of it, then, to consider the benefits of being mindful of it, and, then, to do the actual nine-part death meditation. In other words, we need to be thoroughly convinced that there are more benefits to being mindful of death than not being mindful of it and that there are definite shortcomings to not being mindful of it. I think that gives us a stronger incentive to actually take preventive measures than simply thinking there’s no harm in presuming that, maybe, there is rebirth – so, “I might as well take these measures.”
Yes, Monica.
Participant: I once made a list and tried to calculate the odds of the Buddha being right, of there being nothing after death, and of there being a God. Only in the case of there being a jealous, vengeful God would following the Buddhist path do me harm. Otherwise, it would do me no harm – assuming that following the Buddhist path is not harmful in itself.
Dr. Berzin: Following the Buddhist path is not harmful in itself. But if there’s nothing after death, it could be a waste of time.
Participant: Well, it wouldn’t be a waste of time because, in either case, I improve myself. I become kinder and so on. So, if there are no afterlives, so what? And if there are afterlives, that’s even better.
Dr. Berzin: I’m challenging your belief because that’s how it’s done in debate. Whether I agree with you or not doesn’t matter. I’m just challenging your belief.
What you believe depends on what your training is. If my Buddhist training is to spend my life trying to be a kinder person, to have more patience and less anger, to behave ethically, and so on, then I agree with you that that can only be beneficial, even if there’s only this lifetime. But what if I spend my life sitting in my room reciting mantras and praying to go to a pure land and never go out to help anybody?
Participant: Well, that’s another case. I didn’t calculate those odds.
Dr. Berzin: Right. But whatever reason one gives, one always needs to challenge it to see if it really holds up.
Participant: Just sitting in your room praying to go to a pure land and not doing anything else constructive is based on a misunderstanding of the path.
Dr. Berzin: Right, it’s a misunderstanding of the path. This is very important: one has to understand the nature of the Buddhist path, the nature of the training and the practices.
Not Trivializing Pure Land Buddhism
Mind you, there are Buddhist practices, though not necessarily in the Tibetan tradition, of just praying to go to a pure land. For a lot of people, that degenerates into just praying to go to paradise, which is not the intention of the Buddha’s teachings on the pure lands. The intention is “May I have the most optimal circumstance so that I can spend twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, for as long as it takes, doing nothing but intensive practice.” This is what one does in a pure land.
Participant: What if you pray to be in this kind of pure land?
Dr. Berzin: If you pray for that, are you just procrastinating? Why not do something to improve your situation now, rather than pray for some better situation later on? Putting things off till tomorrow is procrastination.
Participant: I think there’s a reason this tradition says just to aim for a pure land.
Dr. Berzin: Right, you might think, “Now I’m in such a terrible state. Next time I’ll do better.” But that’ a shortcoming of not being mindful of death: you don’t take advantage of the opportunity you have.
Participant: What do you think of these Pure Land schools?
Dr. Berzin: I think that one has to look more deeply into the teachings of these schools and not just take them at a superficial level. When they talk about attaining liberation through the power of the other, as they do in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism, they’re talking about it being impossible to attain liberation through your own self-effort. “Self,” here, means through the emphasis on the impossible self, the very egotistic self: “I will do it. I am so great,” etc. One has to understand the nature of the self and that liberation can’t be attained on the basis of a truly existent “me,” or self, but only on a basis that is other than that. Whether or not every practitioner of that tradition understands this is something else. But then, again, I don’t think every practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism who recites OM MANI PADME HUM understands what he or she is doing either.
Also, there are many different levels of pure land. There’s Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya levels of pure land. The deepest meaning of pure land is the Dharmakaya level, which is the clear light mind. One can get to the clear light mind at death and stay in that state. It is the optimal situation for being able to gain non-conceptual cognition of voidness, cut through all the obscurations, and become enlightened as quickly as possible. That’s the actual pure land.
So, there are many different levels of understanding, many different levels of Pure Land Buddhism. We shouldn’t dismiss it as being simplistic. It’s not. Just as we can have an overly simplified understanding of Mahayana by thinking, for example, “Just be a nice person and don’t hurt anybody; then everything will be wonderful” – which is trivializing Mahayana – we can have an overly simplified understanding of Pure Land Buddhism. We need to avoid trivializing pure lands.
The Six Shortcomings of Not Being Mindful of Death
OK. As I said, I think that the method of using presumption is probably quite a good one since it’s one that’s indicated in the texts and one that people have followed for a long time. So, first, we would think of the shortcomings of not being mindful of death and, then, of the benefits of being mindful of it. I think we have to look at each of these points quite deeply in terms of our own understanding and convictions and in terms of what we’re actually doing about future lives – how seriously we take rebirth.
(1) We Will Not Be Mindful of the Dharma
There are six shortcomings that are listed. The first is that we will not be mindful of the Dharma, of preventive measures. We’ll think only of this life; we won’t think about taking any preventive measures for the future. Why is that a shortcoming?
Participant: I think that I’ll have time, so I can practice later.
Dr. Berzin: That’s a thought that’s covered in the second point, actually.
Participant: I basically won’t care about practice at all.
Dr. Berzin: Well, could I practice Dharma just for this lifetime?
Participant: That depends on your definition of Dharma.
Dr. Berzin: That’s the important point here.
Dharma, Preventative Measures, Is Defined in Terms of Future Lives
What is the definition of Dharma? It’s a preventive measure to protect us from experiencing suffering in future lives. So, it’s defined in terms of future lives. If the measures we take are only for this lifetime, they’re not considered Dharma. So, now we have to really examine if this is our understanding of Dharma. Why is Dharma defined that way?
Participant: Well, Dharma deals with samsara. So, if it’s not positively affecting our future rebirths in some way, then it’s not going deep enough.
Dr. Berzin: That’s right. That’s very good. All Indian schools, except for maybe the ancient Indian materialist schools such as the Charvakas, assert and accept rebirth. So, the whole context of the Dharma, the Buddhist teachings, has to do with overcoming samsara – whether improving future lives, gaining liberation from samsara altogether, or helping others to get liberated from samsara.
Participant: Doesn’t Atisha talk about a type of Dharma practitioner that would be like a Dharma-lite practitioner, someone who is doing practices that are basically just for this lifetime?
Dr. Berzin: That I don’t know. It’s not in Lamp to the Path.
When I explain Dharma-lite, I say that an acceptable form of Dharma-lite, one that would fit into the general Buddhist teachings and that would still be considered Dharma, would be “I am working for this lifetime in order to be able to use this lifetime as productively as possible so that I can benefit my future lives or so that I can understand future lives.” In that case, we are not saying that there are no future lives and that we’re working only for this lifetime.
But working for this lifetime – what does that mean? Does it mean trying to do as much practice as possible in this lifetime? No, it can’t possibly mean that. Is it to get as much money, love, fame, and so on that we can? Well, that’s part of working for this lifetime – working for worldly purposes. What about working to get the results of the Dharma in this lifetime? Is that working for this lifetime?
Participant: Yeah.
Dr. Berzin: Is it? Well, what about the tantra teachings that say you can achieve enlightenment in this lifetime? Is that a form of working for this lifetime?
Participant: When you talk about working for this lifetime, are you assuming that we believe that there are future lifetimes but that we’re working just for this lifetime? Or are you assuming that we believe there are no future lifetimes and that we’re working only for this lifetime?
Dr. Berzin: Well, yes, that’s a very good question. What’s the difference?
Participant: Your view.
Dr. Berzin: Right. So, you could believe there are future lifetimes but still think, “I don’t care. I’m just going to have as much fun as possible in this lifetime.” That would be a rather foolish view, wouldn’t it?
The teachings on the shortcomings of not being mindful of death assume that one already believes that there are future lives. That’s central to the whole of the teachings. This is something that we really need to take into consideration when we do these meditations. So, the point is that, even though we believe there are future lives, if we don’t think of death, we’ll think only of this lifetime. We won’t think to practice the Dharma, which, by definition, means working for future lives, improving future lives, and beyond – “beyond” meaning aiming for liberation and enlightenment.
Participant: So, if we’re not convinced of the existence of future lives, this meditation won’t work.
Dr. Berzin: Well, the underlying assumption is that we are convinced that there are future lives. But unless we’re mindful of death, we’ll only work for this lifetime. We won’t do any Dharma practice to help future lives and to avoid worse rebirths.
Participant: I thought of an example: There is a very important exam that you need to take in half a year’s time. You know that you need to study, but you think, “Oh, I’d don’t want to think about it. I’d rather think of other things.” Then the exam comes and – sorry – you fail!
Dr. Berzin: Yeah. But if you are mindful of the fact that the time of study will be finished and that you will have to take the exam, then you will study. So it’s like that.
Is this something that we could work with? Can we accept that Dharma is defined in terms of future lives and that it’s not just “be a nice person and don’t hurt others”? If we do accept that, then we would be interested to know what we have to do to avoid worse rebirths and to gain better ones – which would then lead us to the next steps in the lam-rim.
Participant: It seems to me that this line of reasoning doesn’t really suit us because we don’t have an inner conviction in rebirth. Our problem’s more that we aren’t really convinced of rebirth. But maybe we can try to presume it and go that way.
Dr. Berzin: That’s what I was saying at the beginning: we have to presume that it’s true.
Participant: Another approach would be to use our awareness of death to find out if there really is rebirth. Thinking about death is maybe the point at which we could start to think about rebirth. For example, we could think, “Well, I’m going to die one day. I don’t know when. So when is the time to find out about rebirth? If I’m interested, it’s now.” So, we can use our awareness of our own deaths and the uncertainty of the time of death to explore this issue of rebirth.
Dr. Berzin: Right. This is another benefit that’s not in the list: The more that we think about death and the more seriously we take the fact that we are going to die, the more we would think about what comes after death. Is there rebirth? Is there not rebirth? Is there just heaven and hell? Is there just nothing? What is there?”
All of this just comes back again to the importance of taking rebirth very seriously. Understanding rebirth, as you recall, is all-dependent on understanding that mind is beginningless and endless, as well as understanding the nature of mind, of voidness, of cause and effect, and of continuities. This is very interesting, isn’t it – that to really understand rebirth, we already have to have a very deep understanding of the Buddhist teachings. So, even if we’re just starting to study the teachings, we would have to presume that it’s true, wouldn’t we?
Participant: At what point in the curriculum and to what extent do people in the Gelug tradition, for example, study the reasons that are given for rebirth?
Dr. Berzin: I don’t really know. Now, don’t quote me on this, but I think there is some passage about this in Pramanavarttika, by Dharmakirti. But that isn’t studied until one is well along in the geshe program. At which point it’s studied depends on the monastery. But, in any case, it’s fairly advanced. Certainly the ordinary practitioner who’s not training to become a geshe or a khenpo wouldn’t study it.
Participant: I expect that they have a gut feeling from birth that there is rebirth.
Dr. Berzin: Right. They might not understand it, but they believe that there is such a thing. I think that that is more the case in the Asian cultures than in our Western cultures. We could say that it’s part of our culture to believe in heaven and hell, but how many people really believe in it?
Participant: Heaven is also some sort of rebirth.
Dr. Berzin: Right. And hell. It’s an afterlife, as we call it. It’s just a different concept of afterlife in that there’s only one afterlife. Also, it’s eternal.
Participant: What about Westerners nowadays who become interested in Buddhist meditation, the emptiness teachings, and these kinds of things but who aren’t interested in reincarnation and don’t believe in it? Actually, you would have to say this is not Dharma.
Dr. Berzin: Well, that’s what I call Dharma-lite. They’re doing it just for this lifetime. It’s certainly beneficial. However, there’s no guarantee of getting results in this lifetime.
The point that I wanted to make before about working to get the results of Dharma practice in this lifetime through tantra, because it’s a speedier and so-called easier way to attain enlightenment, is that that is just an excuse for laziness. As many of my teachers have said – they put it in very down-to-earth terms – “You want enlightenment cheap, without having to put in a great deal of effort, and to get instant results, and that’s not going to happen.” It is theoretically possible to achieve enlightenment in this lifetime, but the reason for wanting to follow that type of path is to be able to benefit others as quickly as possible. It’s not because we just want to benefit this lifetime. And even though it’s theoretically possible, we shouldn’t have the expectation that we’re going to succeed. We need to have the willingness to work for three zillion eons in order to be able to help others. If we’re able to do it in one lifetime – wonderful. But we’re not going to give up just because we aren’t able to achieve it in one lifetime. Chances are that we won’t.
Getting back to what Karsten said, if we’re doing the Buddhist meditations because we think they are beneficial, but we’re closed to the idea of future lifetimes – so, we’re just doing the meditations for this lifetime – all we’re doing is practicing some form of psychology. So, don’t call that Buddhism. We’re just using some ideas that are taken from Buddhism. But if we’re approaching these meditations in an open-minded way – “I’m open to the idea of rebirth, and I’ll see. I’m not able to understand it now, but I’d like to understand it better, so I’ll leave the door open” – I think that’s fair enough.
So in order to put these teachings on being mindful of the shortcomings of not being mindful of death into practice, we need to understand that what we’re talking about when we say that we won’t be mindful of the preventive measures. “Mindful” (dran-pa), as you recall, is the same word as “to remember.” So, we won’t remember the teachings concerning what we can do to take care of future lives.
Taking Preventive Measures for Future Lives
Now, maybe we need to know a little bit of what’s coming up ahead to understand what it means to take care of future lives. On the most basic level, what it means is to refrain as much as possible from building up negative habits and tendencies and to build up constructive, positive habits and tendencies. The habits and tendencies we build up will carry over into future lives. Even if we are older, we still want to train, to learn new things, to practice, etc. We shouldn’t think, “I’m too old to learn anything,” because even as older people, we can still build up and strengthen beneficial habits that will then carry on into future lives.
The point here about not being mindful of future lives because we’re thinking only of this lifetime and are not being mindful of the fact that we’re going to lose this opportunity has to do with being mindful of the fact that we have the opportunity. “I have this opportunity. I may be seventy years old, but I’m still alive. I still have a precious human life, and I can still do something with it.” So, the meditations on being mindful of death are based on recognizing and appreciating the precious human lives that we have now. “I have that human life now, but I’m going to lose it, and I don’t know when. It is possible to do something that will benefit my future lives – namely, the Dharma. I can build up more positive habits, refrain from negative ones, do purification, and so on.” If we’re not mindful of death, we won’t do that. I think this is the point here. So, it’s never too late. Well, if death actually comes, then it’s too late. Then we die with regrets, regretting that we haven’t built up these habits.
I think that one of things that we need to examine in ourselves is, “What am I thinking when I practice Dharma? When I’m practicing to be kinder, more ethical, etc., am I thinking just in terms of the results I could experience in this lifetime, or am I thinking in terms of longer-term results?” According to the teachings on karma, most karmic results are not going to be experienced in this lifetime. So, if we’re thinking that we are going to get results in this lifetime – for example, from being generous, we will be wealthy; we will not be poor – we might be very disappointed.
This, then, gets into an even more difficult question. We’re most likely not going to experience the karmic results of the various actions we’ve committed in this lifetime, except, possibly, for certain very, very strong ones. There’s a list of very strongly motivated positive and negative actions directed at those who have helped us the most or who are most worthy of respect that can ripen in this lifetime. But the karmic results of most actions don’t ripen in this lifetime. So, then, how do we become convinced? Do we just go on faith? “I’ll be a good person, and I’ll be rewarded in my next life.” Are we working on that level of Dharma?
Why don’t we take some time to think about this and examine in ourselves: When I’m being ethical, when I’m trying to help others, when I’m trying to develop compassion, love, patience, etc., what is the aim? Am I thinking to improve this lifetime? Am I thinking to just please my teachers? Am I thinking just to be a good boy or a girl? Am I thinking of future lives? Am I thinking of liberation and enlightenment, but I want it cheap, right now? Or do I have a more realistic idea of liberation and enlightenment, realizing that it’s going to take many lifetimes and that I’d better prepare by making sure that I continue to have the opportunities to work toward it?
When we really take liberation and enlightenment seriously, we realize we have an awfully long way to go and that we will continue to need precious human rebirths in order to reach those goals. So, it really is absolutely necessary to work to understand this and to follow the practices of this initial scope to ensure that we continue to have precious human rebirths. And as we’ll see later in the teachings, what that basically comes down to is safe direction (refuge), ethics, and karma.
So let’s think about these things for a few minutes. Honestly, seriously, what is my aim in doing any Dharma practice? How mindful am I of death, and how much of a role does it play in my life? That’s not exactly a meditation on this point, but it is, I think, a basic, fundamental issue that we have to think about.
[meditation]
Refraining from Destructive Behavior
OK. What came to my mind was that it’s very easy to think of the positive things that we can do to benefit our future lives. I think of the example of my teacher the old Serkong Rinpoche. Well, he was a tulku, so his was a special case. But what he did before he died was to choose the people who would be taking care of him in his next lifetime. He put a great deal of effort into creating strong bonds with his young disciples. He had them start to take care of him when they were teenagers. He even brought a nine-year old into the household. In that way, he established a close link with the people who would be helping him in his future life. That’s one very positive thing that one could do in terms of the future.
However, if we look ahead to the topics that are coming up in the lam-rim, we can see that the main thing that we want to do is to avoid things getting worse. So, the emphasis really is on “I really don’t want my future lives to be as a hell creature, as a desperately clutching ghost, or as a creeping creature on the floor. Therefore, I’m going to refrain from negative behavior.” How much do we do that?
Even though I might take future lives seriously, if I’m in a situation in which I am tempted to take something that was not given to me or to act in an aggressive or hostile way in order to get my own way or whatever, do I refrain from doing that action because I don’t want to have worse circumstances in future lives? Or do I just think about this lifetime and the short-term benefit of getting what I want? In other words, do we only go halfway? We think of benefitting future lives in terms of building up positive things, because that’s a little bit easier to do, but we don’t want to give up our negative things. However, the emphasis here is on refraining from these negative things because we don’t want our future lives to be worse. This, I think, is a very crucial point, especially considering how this meditation fits in with what comes next in the lam-rim.
Remembering Our Motivation
Participant: When I refrain from doing something destructive, I’m not thinking about how doing it could result in bad rebirths or something like that. I think that I don’t do it because, in the past, I thought about these issues and made a decision to refrain. It’s the same with positive things. When someone asks me for help, I don’t think that helping them will result in higher rebirth or liberation and enlightenment. I think that I help because I had decided to help when I was thinking about it in the past.
Dr. Berzin: You’re saying that previously, in this lifetime, you made the decision, to refrain from engaging in negative behavior and to engage in positive behavior. At the time that you made that decision, you were thinking in terms of future lives. So, you had the appropriate initial scope motivation. But, now, when the situation actually arises to refrain from doing something negative or to engage in something positive, you’re not necessarily remembering your motivation; you’re just thinking, “I made a promise; therefore, it is my duty to uphold that promise and that decision. I want to keep my word.” Well, is there any fault or danger in that?
Participant: It’s not exactly about wanting to keep my word. It’s that I had made the decision in the past, and now I have a strong feeling that this decision was a good decision and that it was a reasonable decision. I don’t remember the original understanding, but I remember having had it.
Dr. Berzin: That is similar to taking a vow. I’ve taken a vow, whether a lay vow or a monastic vow; I’ve made the decision to keep it. Now, is it just a matter of keeping that vow? “I know that I was serious when I took that vow, so now I’m just going to keep it.” I think the danger there is that the motivation can become a bit stale. There’s also the danger that keeping a vow then becomes more about the discipline of keeping it rather than the reasons for keeping it.
Participant: The problem is remembering the motivation, to remind oneself from time to time. But it’s sometimes difficult to remind oneself when in a particular situation.
Dr. Berzin: It is difficult, especially since the motivation needs not only a rational component but also an emotional one. The emotional one shouldn’t be underestimated.
This is something we’ll be dealing with when we come to the teachings on refuge, safe direction. The motivation for taking refuge – the emotional component of it – is fear. Now, “fear” is a very heavy word. The emotion, really, is dread: “I really don’t want my future lives to be worse and to lose the opportunities I have now. I really don’t want that.” Fear makes us feel hopeless – that there’s nothing we can do. I think that’s the difference. With refuge, though, the dread of worse things happening is always coupled with the conviction that by going in this safe direction, we can avoid getting into worse situations in future lives. So, the feeling of dread is not one of hopelessness at all.
I think the emotional component needs to be reinforced so that when we stick to our decisions or enforce our vows, we don’t do it with an almost army-like discipline: “I made the decision. It was a rational decision, and now I will keep it!” That can make us very mechanical. Also, I think it makes our resolutions quite hard to live with, doesn’t it?
Participant: We also need to be able to adapt to each moment.
Dr. Berzin: Exactly. Being too much of a disciplinarian doesn’t allow for flexibility. It makes one stiff.
Participant: It depends on whether you still relate on an emotional level to the decision you once made.
Participant: Although I think it’s good to remember sometimes why I made this or that decision, I think it’s just practical not to have to go through a line of reasoning every time. For instance, if I’m deciding whether or not to order meat, I could go through the line of reasoning I went through years ago when I decided not to eat meat, or I could simply remind myself, “I just don’t eat meat.”
Dr. Berzin: Right. Well, this is the value of a vow: it liberates one from indecision. So, if we’ve taken a vow not to eat meat or not to drink alcohol, then we don’t have to make the decision every time. It becomes so natural that we just don’t do it. But I think that it is important to remind ourselves from time to time why we are abstaining and to renew our enthusiasm for it.
Participant: When it comes to Dharma practice, I understand that this is going in the right direction and that I want this and not that. But when I’m doing the practice, the motivation is not really there. And when it’s not there, the practice is flat.
Dr. Berzin: Let’s give a classic example: daily meditation. That’s one I know very well. I’ve been doing a daily meditation practice for about forty years. I never miss a day. It’s become something I don’t have to think about. There’s no question in my mind whether I’m going to do my morning practice when I get up or not. It’s like brushing my teeth; it’s part of my routine. It’s like what not eating meat is for you. At the beginning of every meditation session, it’s said very clearly that one needs to reaffirm one’s motivation. It is so easy just to go, “blah, blah, blah” and not to have any feeling whatsoever. Now, does that daily meditation have a benefit even if we just go “blah, blah, blah” with the motivation? I think that it does. You can’t say it has no benefit. Does it have optimal benefit? Probably not.
So, I think we can extrapolate from this example that no matter how advanced we are, no matter what super meditation we’re doing, it’s absolutely necessary to start every meditation by reaffirming our motivation. Now, does that mean we have to reaffirm our motivation with every single Dharmic action that we do during the day? That’s difficult, isn’t it?
That gets us into the explanation of unlabored bodhichitta, which is what we attain when we reach the first pathway mind of building up, the path of accumulation. With unlabored bodhichitta, we don’t even have to think about the motivation. We don’t have to build it up – it’s already there. Is it there in a mechanical sense? No. It’s there in a deeply felt emotional sense. We might ask, “Well, if I’m feeling all this emotion of compassion and so on, how can I do anything?” That’s an interesting question. But, obviously, there are people who have a deep emotional feeling of compassion and who do work to help others.
Participant: I don’t think it’s a disturbing state.
Dr. Berzin: No, it can’t be a diturbing state.
Participant: For example, parents can be very compassionate toward their children; nonetheless, they get things done. Actually, it’s because of their compassion that they get things done.
Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s a very good example. That’s the example that’s used. With unlabored bodhichitta, though, that compassion is extended to absolutely everybody equally.
This awareness of death and not wanting things to be worse in future lives and to lose the opportunities we have now is something that should be so ingrained. If it is, then we will avoid negative behavior.
Now, we could add to that that, “I want things to be OK in future lives, so I’m going to do positive things – but not without also avoiding the negative things.” Doing positive things is much easier than avoiding the negative things, isn’t it?
Participant: But if you really think about it, you can’t think about it only in one way. You wouldn’t only think about doing positive things and not also think about avoiding negative things.
Dr. Berzin: That’s true. But I think that if you don’t think it through – and there’s a great possibility that you wouldn’t think it through – then you could take the lazy man’s way out, which is that “I’ll do positive things, and, in my time off, I will do negative things. I won’t stop doing my negative things.”
Participant: That’s strange.
Dr. Berzin: Strange, yes, but extremely common.
Participant: Could you give an example?
Dr. Berzin: An example would be going to the fitness club for my health but still eating lots of sweets.
Participant: Could you be generous on the one hand and stingy on the other?
Dr. Berzin: Yes. You could be willing to give change to the various beggars in the subway but not at all willing to share your chocolate or something like that. So, you could be perfectly happy to share something that you don’t like but not happy to share something that you do like.
The List of the Six Shortcomings
So that brings us to the end of our class. We have a whole list here of shortcomings of not being mindful of death:
- We won’t be mindful of the preventive measures
- Even if we’re mindful of them, we won’t put them into practice
- Even if we do practice, we’ll not do so purely
- We’ll lose our determination to practice earnestly at all times
- By our destructive actions, we’ll disable ourselves from gaining release from samsara
- At the time of death, we’ll die with regrets
I think we have seen from the first one that all of the shortcomings are very much based on the understanding that Dharma is something we do for future lives and beyond. It’s assumed that we believe in rebirth and that we’re going to go on, so we have to relate to the meditation on death as much as possible in those terms. Just thinking, “Well, I’m going to die, and so I need to be a kind person. Then I’ll be able to look back on my life when I’m dying and think, ‘Well, I’ve been a nice person. I can die with peace of mind. Others will remember me kindly,’ and these sorts of things." That could work, but it would be a very Dharma-lite version of the meditation. Not that it would be wrong to do it like that, but I think we need to make a clear differentiation between Dharma-lite and Real Thing Dharma.