Review
We have been going through the graded stages of the path, the levels of motivation that we need to develop one after the other in order to reach the three spiritual goals as outlined in Mahayana Buddhism. We start by aiming to attain one of the better rebirths, specifically a precious human rebirth, so that we can continue on the path, then to overcome all uncontrollably recurring rebirth completely, to gain liberation, and, finally, to attain the enlightened state of a Buddha. We are going through the various points step by step.
Initial Scope
We have covered the initial scope of motivation. We started with appreciating the precious human rebirths that we have, recognizing that we have a short respite, or break, from the worst states in which it would be very, very difficult for us to make any type of spiritual progress. We are very fortunate that we are free of these and that our lives are enriched by many wonderful opportunities to develop ourselves spiritually. We looked at how difficult a precious human rebirth is to attain, how rare it is, and what the causes for attaining it are.
Then we considered death and impermanence, recognizing that the opportunities that we have now will not last. We will definitely die, and we never know when. Nothing is going to be of help in terms of future rebirths unless we have made preparations in the sense of having taken the preventive measures to avoid a worse rebirth. We saw that that means building up the positive habits of the Dharma. The Dharma is something that will hold us back from suffering. It’s what the word “Dharma” literally means: “to hold back,” “to restrain.”
We looked at what could follow if we haven’t taken preventive measures. This could be rebirth in one of the worst states. We looked at what it would be like to be a trapped being in a joyless realm (so-called hell realm), being overwhelmed with physical pain; what it would be like to be a clutching spirit (so-called wandering ghost), being absolutely overwhelmed with hunger and thirst, never being able to satisfy our needs, always living in fear; and what it would be like to be a creeping creature, an animal that is hunted, eaten by other animals, exploited by man, and so on.
This is something that we certainly want to avoid. We develop a healthy sense of fear of that. It’s not a crippling type of fear that makes us feel helpless and hopeless, but a healthy type of fear that makes us really want to avoid something harmful. We don’t want it to happen, but we know that there is a way to avoid it. That drives us much more strongly to actually take some preventive measures.
The most general preventive measure that we take is to put a safe direction in our lives, which is what refuge is all about. The deepest meaning of that is to go in the direction that will bring us (1) to a state in which all the disturbing emotions and the karmic potentials that have been built up by acting on them and so on are completely eliminated, completely stopped; and (2) the state of mind, the understanding, the so-called true path, that will bring that stopping about and that will result from eliminating all these obscurations from the mental continuum. That is the deepest meaning of the Dharma. The Buddhas are those who have achieved these in full, and the Arya Sangha are those who have achieved them in part. That’s the direction we want to go in. We want not just to worship and praise those who have achieved it but, being inspired by their example, to actually develop these states of mind ourselves based on recognizing the Buddha-nature factors within us that enable us to achieve these true stoppings and true pathway minds, the so-called third and fourth noble truths.
We saw that the first thing that we need to do to go in that direction is to avoid destructive behavior because destructive behavior is the main cause of worst rebirths. Destructive behavior is based on the unawareness of behavioral cause and effect, not knowing that if we act destructively, we will experience suffering as a result – unless, of course, we purify ourselves of it, get rid of it.
We looked in depth at the whole presentation of karma. We saw that there are many, many factors that affect the heaviness of the result of our behavior, whether destructive or constructive behavior, many factors that can make a result stronger or make it weaker. At the conclusion of that, we resolved to try our best to exercise some sort of self-control – based on understanding. So, it’s not based on fear, obedience to the law, the wish to please our teacher, or anything like that; instead, it’s based on the discriminating awareness that discriminates between what’s helpful and what’s harmful. Specifically, we are talking about what’s helpful and harmful to ourselves. This is because when we act destructively – what that really means – we are acting self-destructively. We never know what the effect of our behavior will be on others, but we know for sure what the effect will be on ourselves in terms of the habits and tendencies that we build up on our mental continuums and the types of behavior that will follow based on those habits and tendencies.
So, in the beginning, the main thing is discipline, ethical discipline, what in the West we call self-control. Because we see that acting in destructive ways is really going to cause a lot of problems – problems not just in this lifetime but in future lifetimes as well – and because we want to avoid them, we are certainly going to try our best to refrain from this type of behavior. And if we absolutely can’t control ourselves, we then at least try to weaken the force of the negative potentials that are built up.
That was the initial scope.
Intermediate Scope
We’ve started the intermediate scope of motivation. Here, what we are looking at is not simply to bring about more fortunate rebirth states so that we can continue on the path but to gain liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth altogether. We see that no matter what type of rebirth we take, whether better or worse, we will still experience a lot of problems and limitations. We therefore want to get out of that, to overcome that. We want, instead, to continue as arhats, as liberated beings, and not be subject to all the suffering and problems that come with any type of samsaric rebirth.
And just as we needed on the initial scope of motivation to overcome the unawareness of cause and effect to avoid worse rebirth states, we need, here, on the intermediate scope, to overcome the unawareness of the nature of reality. From a Hinayana point of view, that’s the unawareness of how we exist, and from a Mahayana point of views, it’s also the unawareness of how all phenomena exist. The aim of overcoming this is to avoid activating certain types of karmic potentials that we have built up on our mental continuums. This we will get to in more detail when we discuss the mechanism called “the 12 links of dependent arising,” which describes how rebirth takes place. We want to avoid activating those potentials at the time of death in terms of clinging to happiness and to not wanting to lose it, clinging to overcoming suffering and all of that, making a big, solid thing of them and a big, solid thing of the “me” that is doing this and that I have to protect. We want to avoid that at the time of death.
This is going to tie in very, very much with tantra. In anuttarayoga tantra, the highest class of tantra, we want to transform and purify the whole process of death, bardo, and rebirth so that we don’t activate karma at the time of death, but instead, bring about the understanding of voidness and generate something different from what’s activated by karma and ignorance.
The way that we start with this intermediate scope is by focusing in much more depth on the first and second noble truths – in other words, true suffering and true causes of suffering. In the presentation of true suffering, we look at the suffering of pain, unhappiness – all the suffering of the lower realms and the general sufferings that we’ve been discussing. Then we look at the suffering of change, our ordinary happiness, and at the suffering of the higher realms. Finally, we look at the all-pervasive suffering of having the types of aggregates – a body and mind – that, unless we are liberated, we will continue to have, rebirth after rebirth, and that are the basis for experiencing the first two types of suffering.
This is the way that this material is presented in some of the later lam-rims. In Tsongkhapa’s presentation, it is not exactly like this.
The Six General Sufferings of Samsara
The first sufferings discussed are the six general sufferings of samsara. We’ve gone through those already. These were:
- The shortcoming of having no certainty – no certainty what type of rebirth we are going to have.
- The shortcoming of having no satisfaction – we are never satisfied in terms of any type of ordinary happiness that we have. We never have enough; we always want more.
- The shortcoming of having to forsake our bodies repeatedly.
- The shortcoming of having to fit into new rebirths repeatedly.
- The shortcoming of having to change status repeatedly, going from exalted to humble within one lifetime or from lifetime to lifetime. We’re constantly going up and down, up and down, which is the nature of samsara.
- The shortcoming of having no friends – there is no guarantee whatsoever that, as we go from lifetime to lifetime, anybody will be able to go with us, that somebody can always be our friend. Basically, we are born alone, and we die alone.
Sufferings of the Better States of Rebirth – The Sufferings of Humans
Now we are up to the sufferings of the three better states of rebirth – those of human beings, the sufferings of what’s translated as the “anti-gods,” though I think that “quasi-gods” is probably a better term; and the sufferings of the gods.
Participant: What about calling them “demigods”? It’s an established term in Greek.
Dr. Berzin: But I don’t know what a demigod is. “Demi” means “half.”
Participant: Half human, half god.
Dr. Berzin: I don’t think they are quite like that. “Quasi” refers to the fact that they think that they’re gods. They would like to be gods, but they’re not. And they are always jealous of the gods. Sometimes I translate it as “would-be divine” (Skt. asura), those who would be divine. And the divine beings (Skt. deva) are the gods.
Anyway, we start with the humans.
Suffering of Birth
Here, we start with the suffering of birth. The suffering of birth refers primarily to what it’s like to be in a womb as a human being – how stifling, uncomfortable and claustrophobic that is. This is quite a different view of life in the womb than the one we have in the West. In the West, we have this romantic notion of returning to the womb and feeling secure, warm and protected. Here, the images that are used are of being locked in a tiny closet where we’re hardly able to move. We’re kicking and floating around in our own waste. And every time that the mother moves, we bounce up and down and get dizzy. If the mother eats something that is too hot or too cold, we feel it. If she rolls over and lies on her stomach, we feel crushed, etc. How unbelievably uncomfortable this is. And how awful it actually is to go through the process of being born – being squeezed, as they say, between two mountains as we are being shoved out of the womb. How painful and unpleasant that is. And how absolutely shocking it is to be exposed to the air, the change in temperature and all of that. The first thing that happens is that somebody hits us. Then we start to cry so that we start to breath properly. This is certainly not something that anybody in his or her right mind would want to experience, is it?
The meditations that they suggest for this suffering is to imagine yourself in a tiny, tiny constricted space – upside down, probably – being bounced up and down and so forth, and imagining how utterly unpleasant that would be.
So, let’s imagine that.
[meditation]
Also, I think what would be interesting to consider is what this would be like for an arhat. An arhat taking rebirth as a human would have to go through the same type of thing. That just shows that the situation itself of being in the womb doesn’t necessarily mean that we would have to experience unhappiness and suffering in it. Undoubtedly, unless we are arhats, we will experience suffering and unhappiness. But as arhats, we would go through that process without any suffering at all.
This is quite interesting to think about, especially if we think about it in terms of what we could do to approximate an arhat’s experience of being in a womb – which would be to develop equanimity. Think of being on an Indian bus, being absolutely packed in like sardines and still having equanimity – so, not suffering, not feeling uncomfortable. However, at our level now, which is the first level of thinking about this, we think about how absolutely awful this would be and how we would want to avoid it.
[meditation]
Any comments?
Participant: Undoubtedly, it would bother me to be in that tiny space and to be bounced up and down. But I wonder why it would bother me.
Dr. Berzin: That’s an interesting question: Why would it bother you?
Well, think back to our analysis of karma. Why would it bother us? What does it mean for something to bother us? It means to experience it with unhappiness. What is the cause of unhappiness?
Participant: Previous negative actions?
Dr. Berzin: Right, previous destructive behavior. If we have built up negative karmic potentials, we will experience unhappiness. So, here is a situation of being confined, which due to the negative potentials we’ve built up, we would experience with unhappiness. But if we haven’t built up the negative karmic potentials, or if we’ve purified ourselves of them and have gained liberation, there wouldn’t be any potentials that could ripen in unhappiness. So, we wouldn’t experience any unhappiness or suffering in the womb. That’s why I was saying that the situation itself, experiencing being in the womb, as horrible as it seems to us now, doesn’t necessarily have to be an experience of suffering. What it is, is an experience of extreme limitation. This is what I was thinking about because the next point is to think about being a baby and about how absolutely awful that is.
The Limitations of Being an Infant
You have a tiny little infant now [speaking to participant]. Does it seem like fun to be an infant and to be totally helpless? All you can do is cry when you want something.
Participant: So far, it seems difficult for him.
Dr. Berzin: He’s about six weeks old now. Do you imagine what it’s like to be him, to be your little baby boy?
Participant: Sometimes I think about how I was once like this. It’s really so hard to imagine.
Dr. Berzin: It’s not only that you were like this but that you can – if you’re lucky – be like that again. After all, you might be a baby rat or a baby chicken.
Participant: It’s hard to imagine, actually.
Dr. Berzin: It’s hard to imagine. But I think it’s very helpful to try to imagine what it would be like to be an infant again. We’re totally helpless and totally dependent on the kindness of somebody to take care of us. Think about that. And think about how we would then really hope that we do have somebody to treat us kindly and to take care of us – which, of course, would then motivate us to create the causes for that, which is to take care of others.
[meditation]
And then imagine being a little kid again and having to go to school again, having to learn everything all over again and all these sorts of things. Do we really want to do that again and again and again? How boring.
Participant: The problem, I think, is that we are not bored enough with it. There’s a lot of entertainment involved.
Dr. Berzin: Entertainment – we could be involved in playing games and so on. We could be terribly spoiled. But I’m looking at the situation from a Mahayana point of view.
From a Mahayana point of view – wanting to be able to benefit others – what a colossal waste of time it is to be really old, which is a suffering that we’ll come to. Then, if we happen to be reborn as a human, to have to spend all that time in a womb. What in the world can we do in a womb? Nothing. People are suffering out there, and we’re there in a womb, just swimming around being cramped. Then we’re babies. Again, there’s nothing that we can do to help others. And then we have to get an education again; we have to relearn everything. And it probably won’t be until our twenties – if we’re really fast – that we can start to do something at all significant. That really makes these things even more awful – thinking what a waste of time! I think this makes it much stronger. They always say that the Mahayana motivation is the strongest. Thinking of others’ suffering motivates us much more strongly than just thinking of our own suffering.
So, think about that: what a waste of time.
[meditation]
Then the interesting question becomes, can we avoid it? And what does it mean to avoid it? And why, as a Buddha, for example, would one go through that? Why would one manifest like that?
Participant: I don’t agree that this is completely useless. I see how many people love babies. They make adults happy. They make others happy. Many people want babies. And when they have them, they are delighted. The grandparents are delighted. So, it’s not a complete waste of time.
Dr. Berzin: You bring up a good point. Is it a complete waste of time, or could we do something as a baby, even as a fetus? Although we wouldn’t actively be doing something as a fetus, the fact that we are one causes other people to be happy. If the parents want to have a baby and the grandparents want to have grandchildren, our being in a womb brings them happiness. Mind you, it’s worldly happiness, not ultimate happiness. Nonetheless, we bring them happiness. So, as babies, we certainly can be a circumstance for their happiness to ripen – although we might not bring our parents happiness when we wake them up in the middle of the night.
But is that really our aim – to bring worldly happiness to others? What about the nature of worldly happiness? It’s certainly better than bringing pain and unhappiness to others. Absolutely better.
Participant: Yeah, so it’s not a complete waste.
Dr. Berzin: However, as far as helping others toward liberation and enlightenment is concerned, there is very little we can do during this period. And bear in mind, we bring discomfort to our mother when she is pregnant with us, and we cause her a lot of pain giving birth to us. This is the case even if she is happy with having a baby.
What Could a Buddha Do as a Baby?
Then the question is, what could we do as Buddhas? Buddhas do manifest like this. What is the classic answer? We’re showing others by example how we can go through ordinary life and do something significant in terms of gaining attainments and helping others. Would that be better than just staying in some Buddha-field teaching arya bodhisattvas, Sambhogakaya style? These are interesting questions to think about if we’re going to take Buddhahood seriously. What would it be like? What are we aiming for? As Buddhas, would we want to be in somebody’s womb?
Participant: You wouldn’t suffer, so you might as well.
Dr. Berzin: We wouldn’t suffer and, as in the case of Buddha’s mother, we wouldn’t cause her any pain or discomfort. But what about wanting to help others all the time? Now, as you say, we could bring worldly happiness to others. But could we bring ultimate happiness to others while in a womb?
Participant: But a Buddha can be in different places at the same time.
Dr. Berzin: OK, very good. If we really are Buddhas, we are manifesting in zillions of forms simultaneously. So, just because one emanation is manifesting as a fetus in a womb, then as a baby wetting its pants and so on doesn’t mean that that’s the only emanation that we have. Does it?
Participant: That’s how it is said.
Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s how it’s said. That, of course, gets into the whole question that I think I’ve raised several times of whether or not we really believe in all the qualities of a Buddha. They sound pretty fantastic – “fantastic” not in the sense of “wonderful,” but “hard to believe.” And just to say that they’re hard to imagine – and therefore, beyond imagination, beyond words, beyond concepts – doesn’t help us very much to understand. So, what are we left with? If we want to help others as Buddhas, can we just sort of pop out of thin air, emerge from a lotus? Even if we emerge from a lotus (I think Guru Rinpoche emerged as a baby from a lotus), what could we do? Within a Buddhist context, when we think of a type of suffering, we also have to think that it is possible to get rid of it, to overcome it. And when it’s possible to overcome it, it’s not that we just overcome it and then – nothing. We overcome it and… then what? What’s the alternative? What is the alternative if we want to help others? Think about it.
[meditation]
Discussion
What do you think?
Participant: The wondrous stories about the birth of some sages are inspiring – like Padmasambhava being from a lotus or Buddha being born from the side of the body, not from the womb.
Dr. Berzin: It’s also said that when Buddha was born, he took seven steps and said, “Here I am.” Again, does one take this literally? Is this all symbolic, or is it to be taken at face value? That’s a completely different question. In any case, it can be inspiring to think about being born in some sort of miraculous way. But what about just being ordinary?
The thing that comes to my mind is that a bodhisattva and, of course, a Buddha are willing to be reborn in a hell, in the worst type of situation, in order to benefit the beings there. Therefore, in order to benefit humans, a Buddha would go through all the stages of a human rebirth so that others could relate to him or her.
So, now we come around to compassion. Out of compassion, one would not only take rebirth and go through all these limitations but also emanate as other forms at the same time in order to benefit others. I don’t know. I personally find it quite difficult to take all these stories literally – like taking seven steps and saying, “Here I am.” Surely, the seven steps represent something. In any case, there are certainly people who take that quite literally.
In any case, certainly, the aim of this meditation, here, on the suffering of birth, of being a baby, being a child, is to imagine it in the ordinary way in which we experience it and to see how horrible it is, rather than to glorify it. We need to look at it quite objectively. And objectively, it certainly is a very unpleasant experience, especially the aspect of being bounced up and down in the tiny space of a womb and being almost being squashed going through the birth canal at birth.
Participant: I was thinking that human life is always limited and related to suffering. But maybe we can see that being in these situations also gives us a chance to build a more constructive life. So, we could see all these difficult processes as challenges. From the time that we are babies, we are always in the process of becoming more constructive people so that we can help ourselves more and help others more.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, that’s the whole point of the precious human rebirth – to continue to have that type of rebirth that so that we can continue on the spiritual path, becoming more and more constructive and helping others more and more. The point here, though, is that that’s not the end goal – just to go on. It’s very easy, as I’ve pointed out, to get very attached to wanting to go on, especially when we have the naivety of thinking that we’ll always be with those we love. We saw this in our discussion of the general sufferings of samsara: “I want to be reborn and to have my old friends and my old teachers back, and I’ll just continue.” So, basically, there is a lot of attachment there. And that will bring more and more problems.
Participant: Once, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said that, realistically, to become a Buddha, will take most of us some eons, three or four eons, I think he said. So, maybe you would need to be somewhat attached to a human life. But to me, it seems there’s no way around it. Being in a womb and all these things is what’s going to happen for the next eons – if I’m lucky. So, then I have to be a little bit relaxed about it and at ease with it because, realistically, that’s what I’m going to have to do.
Dr. Berzin: Now he makes a very interesting point. His Holiness the Dalai Lama points out – and not just His Holiness but every text points out – that we are going to need to build up three countless eons, three zillion eons of positive force, in order to build up enough positive force to attain enlightenment through sutra methods. So, realistically speaking, we are going to need to continue to have precious human rebirths over and over and over again. Now, the conclusion that you seem to be drawing from that is that we therefore need to have some attachment to the precious human rebirth.
Participant: No. Not attachment to it but to be at ease with it.
Striking a Balance between Wanting Precious Rebirths and Wanting to Be Free of Rebirth Altogether
Dr. Berzin: Yes, we want to be at ease with it. But there’s a delicate balance to be struck here between the different levels of motivation. When we graduate from the initial scope motivation of wanting to gain a precious human rebirth and go on to the intermediate scope of wanting to gain liberation from all samsaric rebirth, do we no longer want precious human rebirths? How do these two motivations go together?
Participant: I find that the first motivation is one that I can understand and really be motivated by… also the third motivation. But somehow I don’t feel attracted to the second one.
Dr. Berzin: So, the initial motivation, wanting to continue to have precious human rebirths, and the advanced motivation, wanting to become a Buddha, to develop bodhichitta and so on, seems a bit easier for you to relate to than the second one, wanting to gain liberation from rebirth. That, basically, is the Dharma-lite way of dealing with the intermediate scope because it takes rebirth only half-heartedly seriously. You’re basically just thinking of having precious human lives forever and, within the precious human lives, being as nice as possible to others and becoming a Buddha as much as you can. That’s fine, but that’s not the real thing. That’s not the full thing. The full thing is thinking really seriously in terms of rebirth and about what powers it, which is the activation of the karmic potentials, positive as well as negative, at the time of death.
Karmic potentials are built up from by acting on the basis of unawareness (ignorance). Unawareness brings on the disturbing emotions, which bring on the karmic behavior, which, in turn, bring on these karmic potentials. Then further ignorance, or unawareness, and further disturbing emotions activate them at the time of death. That is what we want to overcome. We want to get liberated from that whole process. We don’t want to just continue to have precious human rebirths within samsara. Samsara is samsara. Rebirth is rebirth.
The Initial and Intermediate Scope Motivations Are Stepping-Stones
Now, the point that I wanted to make was that, in terms of the lam-rim, these graded stages of motivation, we never stop having the initial and intermediate scope motivations when we have the advanced one. We have them all. They build on top of each other. It’s not that we stop the initial one; it’s that we look at the initial scope motivation as a stepping-stone to the second. Then we look at the first and second as stepping-stones to the third.
So, where we are now, we want all three stepping-stones: “I want to attain enlightenment. Before I attain enlightenment, I, first, want to attain liberation so that I’ll have a start for attaining enlightenment. And in order to attain liberation all the way up to there, I want to get a precious human rebirth. What am I aiming for? I want a precious human rebirth over and over again until I gain liberation, and I want, as a liberated being, to go on and on until I become an enlightened being.” So, we have the whole thing.
What one is giving up here is the initial scope motivation as an end goal but not the aim of the initial scope. The initial scope aim we always keep. Of course it’s going to take eons before we achieve liberation and enlightenment. So, we want to continue to have precious human rebirths, but we want it as a vehicle, as a means, for going further. Just because we work to overcome attachment to the precious human rebirth doesn’t mean that we give up wanting one and aiming for one. There is a big difference between aiming for a precious human rebirth because of the desire to go further and aiming for one because of attachment.
What’s attachment? Remember the definition: we exaggerate the good qualities of something, deny the negative qualities of it, and make a big deal out of it. Attachment means that if we have it, we don’t want to let go of it. And longing desire, which is the other meaning of the Tibetan word, dochag (‘dod-chags), is that if we don’t have it, we want it. It exaggerates the positive aspects and denies the negative. So, one needs to be realistic.
The precious human rebirth is the best vehicle for achieving enlightenment. Whether we think in terms of sutra or tantra, it’s the best vehicle. Does it have its shortcomings? You bet it has its shortcomings. There’s the whole period of being in the womb, of being a baby, of getting sick, of growing old. There’s also frustration, having to figure out how in the world we are going to make a living and support yourself. Then there are all the biological urges: we have to feed it, we have to put it to sleep, we have to take care of it. It’s so fragile; it can break at any moment, fall apart. There are a lot of challenges and a lot of limitations. But we can use it. It is the best vehicle that’s available.
So, it’s not that we have a negative attitude toward the body and the precious human rebirth – that we hate it and don’t want it. It’s not like that. It’s just that we are realistic about it – that this is not the final goal.
Participant: So, even if we are not ready for the third scope, we can make better use of our human rebirths if we have the higher motivation.
Dr. Berzin: Right. We can make the best use of our human lives now if we have the advanced scope motivation of wanting to attain Buddhahood. That’s what motivates us the most strongly and gives us the most strength. It gives us the most strength on our spiritual paths because we are not thinking just of ourselves.
The example is coming home from work with a headache. Because we don’t feel very well, we say, “I am not even going to bother having dinner,” and we just lie down and go to sleep. If we have children, we can’t do that. We wouldn’t do that. We wouldn’t even think of doing that. No matter how badly we felt, we would make a meal for them and take care of them. So, having concern for others gives us far more strength than just having concern for ourselves. That’s the example. And it’s very clear. Very clear.
If when we are doing things to benefit others, we see that others actually need us, that can give us a very, very strong motivation. It’s not that we need to be needed and have our egos inflated; it’s that we see that we are able to help others and that they need help. Of course, we have to overcome laziness and selfishness, but if we are really into doing things to benefit others, knowing that others really need our help gives us a tremendous amount of strength. This is the point. It’s why we want to have a precious human rebirth. And we just do as best as you can.
Think a little bit further about our topic, which is the suffering of birth – experiencing being in a womb, going through a birth canal and all of that – and then the suffering of being an infant and a baby. Is it worthwhile? Yes. I am not going to glorify it, but considering that this is the best that’s available to me, I’ll take it. I’m not going to glorify it, and I’m certainly not going to look at it as the final thing that I want. I hope that I can build up enough positive potentials and habits now so that in my next life, I can learn really, really quickly and won’t have to deal with all the emotional problems of the teenage years and all of that. And I hope that I’ll actually be able to get my act together quickly enough so I can get back to helping others, doing constructive things, rather than going through a ten or fifteen year period of playing computer games.
Participant: With the intermediate scope motivation, don’t we just think, “This really sucks. I don’t like this human life. I don’t want this anymore”?
Dr. Berzin: Well, yes, but it’s a samsaric rebirth that we are renouncing. It’s the suffering of it and the uncontrollable recurring of it – being born over and over again under the influence of unawareness and the disturbing emotions. We don’t want to have the limitations of this body, but we will still use it to overcome attachment and the whole mechanism of rebirth.
Now, the unspecified components of the five aggregates of a samsaric rebirth are the ripened results of the karmic potentials we have built up. “Unspecified” means that they are ethically neutral: they’re neither positive nor negative. They can be used in either way. Within the context of the analysis of cause and effect, ripened results (rnam-smin-gyi 'bras-bu) come from ripening causes. A ripening cause (rnam-simn-gyi rgyu) is a destructive or constructive phenomenon that will bring about an unspecified phenomenon as its karmic result.
Now, the unspecified components among the aggregates don’t include the disturbing emotions. The aggregates are just the basic hardware. Basic hardware is neutral, neither constructive nor destructive. We can use it in either way. A mind, a body, the ability to experience happiness and unhappiness, to distinguish and these sorts of factors are not in themselves destructive. Still, we have to overcome all of that in order to attain the enlightened state of a Buddha. However, as an enlightened Buddha, one would manifest again in this type of form.
Having Equanimity, Not Aversion, toward the Things We Renounce
So, renunciation – wanting to overcome this samsaric rebirth and being determined to get free of it – doesn’t mean that we despise the thing that we are renouncing. We don’t want to have a negative, disturbing attitude toward it. This is very, very delicate. We are renouncing disturbing emotions, so how can we use a disturbing emotion to overcome a disturbing emotion? Well, there are tantra methods, but they’re certainly not like this.
In tantra, when they talk about using disturbing emotions to overcome disturbing emotions, they’re talking about certain yogic practices of working with the energy system to stimulate a certain thing inside the body that helps us get down to a subtle level of consciousness. So, that’s totally beyond the realm of the disturbing emotions and sexual behavior or anything like that. When we use anger, we are using the forceful energy of one of the ferocious deities in order to be able to direct it against the disturbing emotions. So, it’s not about despising the disturbing emotions; it’s about having a very strong attitude of “get your act together! Stop acting like an idiot, and just cut it out!” It’s not a negative attitude. What is a negative attitude? Negative attitudes and emotions such as anger and hatred exaggerate the negative qualities of something, deny its positive qualities, and then make a big, solid thing out of it and of the “me” who has to be rid of it.
So, the precious human rebirth is something that we want to give up having as an ultimate goal. But just as we don’t want, on the initial scope, to overestimate the positive qualities of it, we also don’t want, on the intermediate scope, to overestimate the negative qualities of it. It’s a very difficult balance – to have, in a sense, equanimity regarding these two aims. Equanimity, having neither attraction nor repulsion, doesn’t mean indifference. This is really difficult – to have equanimity but, at the same time, to have the very strong energy we need to overcome samsaric rebirth. It’s a very mature type of attitude. Try to imagine it. What does that mean?
[meditation]
It’s a very, very interesting, delicate question here.
On the initial scope, what emotion are we working with? We’re working with fear, but it’s a healthy type of fear in that we know that there is a way out. So, there is an emotional component to the motivation. Likewise, with the intermediate scope motivation – there is an emotional component, that of disgust. “I’m disgusted with this. I really want to get out of it.” But, again, it’s a healthy type of disgust. So, this is what we have to differentiate: healthy and unhealthy versions of these emotions. That’s why I was bringing up equanimity as being sort of a basis underlying these emotions. It’s not that we feel nothing.
This is very, very difficult to imagine, let alone to generate. But I think that that’s really what is required. How do we have a strong emotion without it being disturbing, “disturbing” in the sense that we lose peace of mind and lose self-control, which is the definition of a disturbing emotion?
What we want to avoid with both the initial and intermediate level motivations is to be depressed about them. That’s verboten (forbidden). That’s the wrong track. Why? It’s depressing to think that there’s no way out. But when we know that there is a way out, we have great hope. That’s why it’s so important with all of these things, compassion included, to be confident that there is a way out of suffering, that it is possible – and not just to be confident that the Buddhas have achieved it but that I can achieve it.
This gets us back to a very basic meditation – and a realization that we need to have regarding the basic purity of the mind, the potentials of the mind, so-called Buddha-nature: Is it actually possible to achieve liberation and enlightenment? Is there a method that will really bring them about? This is refuge, the third and fourth noble truths. That’s the direction we want to go in. We want to go in the direction of a true stopping and a true pathway mind that will both bring that true stopping about and result from that true stopping. If we are convinced of the third and fourth noble truths, then everything else follows.
Now we are deepening our understanding of the first and second noble truths. On the initial scope, the suffering we looked at was the suffering of unhappiness, particularly the suffering experienced in in the worse rebirth realms. The cause of that suffering was confusion about cause and effect. Now, in the intermediate scope, we are looking at the second two types of suffering, the suffering of change and the all-pervasive suffering. The true causes for them are the unawareness of reality and all the disturbing emotions.
Participant: So, maybe it is not so much disgust that we develop but, rather, a decisive determination.
Dr. Berzin: It’s not so much disgust but a decisive determination. Absolutely. And that is literally the word for “renunciation.” It’s “decisive determination,” ngejung (Tib. nges-'byung). Nges means “certain,” being absolutely certain. And 'byung is that you have become like that – absolutely certain. The emotion that accompanies it is usually described as being this feeling of disgust. I think “disgust” is too strong. That’s why I was saying that it seems as though we go through stages. First, we get angry. Then, we just get disgusted. Then, as I say, I think we get to the stage of being bored. And boredom is a less disturbing attitude. If we’re bored, we think, “Come on! I have to do this again and again and again? I’ve had enough.” There we are – again – in yet another unhealthy relationship. How many times do we have to go through that? How many times do we have to move house? How many times do we have to change schools? How many times do we have to change jobs? We have to fit in again and again. We have to give up what we have and start all over – again and again and again. We do that a zillion times – it gets pretty boring.
How do people eventually give up an addiction, let’s say, to marijuana? It’s pleasurable, but then it wears off. So, we do it again, listen to more music and stuff our faces with more goodies, and it wears off again. We do that again and again and again. Eventually, we get bored with it. It’s only when we get bored with it that we actually give it up. Being angry with ourselves – “Oh, it’s terrible,” and so on – doesn’t work. We have to be bored. It’s so repetitious. Then we give it up. So, it’s the same thing with samsara, I think. We have to become totally bored. But to become totally bored, we have to take future lives really seriously, not just this lifetime. This lifetime is too short – especially if we are a young person and don’t have very much experience in this lifetime.
OK, let’s have a final minute to digest this, and then we’ll end.
[meditation]
I think the final thought about being in a womb, being a baby and so on is that we don’t want to experience these things in the ordinary way. We are going to be experiencing them all the way up to liberation and enlightenment, so may we at least do it in a way that is beneficial to others. That’s the thought we want to have: “I am going through this in order to be able to continue being of benefit to others” – rather than, “Oh, my God. I have to do this again! What a drag!” In other words, we bring in the advanced scope. But at the beginning of the intermediate level, we think, “What a drag. I have to experience these things in the same old, ordinary way.”