LTF 38: Remembering the Sufferings of Humans – Avoiding Smugness

I’ll list the eight and then we can look at them individually. These are the sufferings of:

1. Birth, 
2. Old age, 
3. Sickness, 
4. Death, 
5. Being parted from what we like, from what’s pleasing, 
6. Meeting with what we don’t like, with things that are not pleasing, 
7. Not getting things we like even though we try to find them, 
8. Having tainted obtainer aggregates. 

That last one is added in some of the lam-rims (Tsongkhapa adds it in his Lam-rim chen-mo), though it is not in some of the other versions of the lam-rim.

Let’s look at these one-by-one.

Birth

There is, first of all, the suffering of birth. Now, in some of our Western psychologies, we speak about how wonderful it would be to return to the womb, and how nice and comfortable and secure and warm and all of that it would be. But if we actually thought about it in the way it is described in the lam-rim, to be locked in a tiny container, a box, for nine months, where it’s completely dark, and we are upside down most of the time, submerged in water, and we can’t really breath or move around freely – especially as we grow, it becomes tighter and tighter and tighter – we wouldn’t consider that great fun or very nice. We probably would just be very, very anxious to get out of there. And the process of being born, getting out of a womb, is obviously very, very painful and traumatic. They describe coming out of the birth passage as being pressed between two mountains. And if they have use some sort of forceps to pull us out by the head or something like that – that really is very nasty. What’s the first thing that happens to us when we are outside? We get hit so that we’ll start breathing. And it’s cold. And one could imagine that having been in the dark for nine months, the sudden exposure to the big lights of an operating theater or whatever must be also quite painful and traumatic. So, there is no need to romanticize whatsoever about being in the womb and being born. It is not a pleasant process at all, and not something that anybody in their right mind would look forward to in terms of the next rebirth. 

Does that make any sense to you to think about it that way? 

Then being a baby – my goodness! How horrible to be an infant and to be totally dependent on your mother and other people for absolutely everything and not being able to express yourself – what you want or don’t want. All you can do is cry. And you’re going to the toilet all over yourself, and so on. You don’t know how to do anything. Certainly, you have to learn everything – how to walk, how to talk and these sorts of things. I mean, really, if you think about it now – how boring. If you had to spend the next two or three years doing that, I don’t think any of us would want to, would we? 

So, this is what we have to look forward to if we will be reborn as a human being. It’s not like an animal, although we shouldn’t glorify being born as an animal, But if you think about it, deer and other animals can walk within a few seconds of being born. How long does it take a human being? We’re really hopeless and helpless as small babies and as small children. That’s not very nice at all. And it takes such a long time before we become mature enough to be able to take care of ourselves. Going through childhood and going to school again and that whole process – I don’t think most people would want to go through all of that again. And then there are the teenage years and all the things that are involved with that. 

I’m always reminded – I went to my high school reunion. Do you have reunions here in Germany, where the people who graduate in a class together from high school meet after ten and twenty and thirty, forty years? The last one I went to was the forty-year class reunion. There were people who were in their late fifties or approaching late fifties. Some of them had already taken early retirement. What I was amazed at was that some people looked back at their high school years as the best years of their lives. One can’t even imagine what their lives must have been like as adults for their high school years, from fourteen to eighteen, to be the best years of their lives. They certainly weren’t the best years of my life. 

Anyway, these are the sufferings of birth. And I think we need to include here the suffering of being a child as well. People don’t take us seriously. They tell us we when have to go to bed, and “eat your vegetables,” and all this sort of thing. It’s really not so pleasant at all. That’s the first type of suffering.

This is why Tsongkhapa adds at the end of the list having the type of body and mind (the tainted aggregate factors) that we have because they will continually be the support, the basis, for experiencing all these sufferings. This is the all-pervasive suffering. Especially if we want to have precious human rebirths… well, we need precious human rebirths in order to be able to continue making progress along the path. But very few human rebirths are so-called precious human rebirths with all the opportunities to study, to follow spiritual path, and to be receptive to and interested in it. That’s fairly rare. But in order to experience a precious human rebirth, we still have to go through all the sufferings that are listed here. That’s part of the package. So, we shouldn’t glorify this precious human life. On the one hand, we glorify it for its preciousness and what it is useful for, but on the other hand, we want to go beyond that, to liberation and enlightenment. 

I think it’s quite easy to get, in a sense, almost stuck on the initial scope of lam-rim motivation, which is very, very difficult to develop in any case on a serious level of sincerity – really taking rebirth absolutely seriously, having total confidence that rebirth is true. Then, of course, we want to continue having precious human rebirths. If we ever reach the stage where that really is deeply true to us and we are actually doing something to try to ensure that we continue having precious human rebirths, it’s very easy to get stuck at that level. 

To go to the next level of motivation, the intermediate, or middling, level of spiritual motivation, is quite difficult because then you think, “Well, precious human rebirth… yeah, I’ll be with my friends and my loved ones, and I’ll study with the teachers. And this will be great!” It could easily be a basis for attachment. “May I always have a precious human rebirth and study with the gurus, and be with my friends and loved ones in all my lifetimes” – there’s the catch. It’s where attachment comes, although you can’t say that that’s negative because it is part of the larger package of aiming for a precious human rebirth. Nevertheless, one has to remember the downside of human rebirth in order to go beyond wanting a human rebirth and to develop the wish for liberation. 

In order to gain a precious human rebirth, you don’t need to have the understanding of voidness. You don’t need to have that kind of discriminating awareness. All you need, basically, is ethical discipline and some of the other far-reaching attitudes like generosity, patience, perseverance, and concentration… and a little bit of discrimination. But that’s not the main thing. Main thing is ethics, ethical discipline – restraining from negative actions and engaging in constructive actions – plus making prayers. In other words, you have to want to have a precious human rebirth. You dedicate the positive force to that. Otherwise, it’s too vague. It’s very important to dedicate. 

So, in order to gain that wish for, at least, liberation, if not enlightenment, which would be the basis for putting all our energy into gaining this discriminating awareness of voidness, we need to think about these different types of suffering, what is known in the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma as “the disadvantages of samsara.” So, the first suffering of human rebirth is birth. That’s a drag. It’s not very nice. 

Old Age

The second one in the standard list here (Nagarjuna changes the order of the list a little bit) is old age. Old age, when you are very young, seems quite distant. It’s hard to really relate to it and to appreciate and understand the sufferings of old age, although you might see it in other people. But when you start to get older, you realize it very, very well. I can certainly attest to that from my own personal experience. It’s a very unpleasant thing to get older. On the one hand, sure, you have more experience and you have more knowledge in life You are more mature, and you can deal with all sorts of complicated issues more easily if you have led a constructive type of life. But you don’t have the same type of energy that you had before. You get tired very easily, your eyesight gets weaker, your hearing gets weaker, you… I mean, sickness is listed here separately, but you certainly get sick more easily. And your joints ache, your bones ache, your back hurts… all these sorts of things. 

We older people here in the class can tell you that that happens and that it’s not very pleasant – aside from the fact that you also don’t look as attractive as you did when you were younger. In your mind, you still would like to attract a young person. But if you look in the mirror, you see that this is a bit absurd. Very often people look in the mirror when they are old, and they can’t even relate to who they see: “That’s not really what I look like. I would just as soon not look at myself in the mirror and still have the self-image of when I was younger and my hair wasn’t grey, or I didn’t have to color my hair in order to hide the grey,” as some people do. And then there are the wrinkles and your teeth falling out and getting fatter and not being able to keep a nice figure any longer. All these things happen. That’s the suffering of old age. 

In some societies, people respect elderly people; they have a very respected position in the society. In other societies, unfortunately, older people are looked down upon; they are seen as useless. They don’t really produce anything. They are a drain on the economy. They are thrown away in nursing homes, which is not very nice at all. No matter how extravagant the nursing home might be, still, it’s very, very depressing to be in a nursing home. 

Participant: China and India used to be the countries where it was better, but now…

Dr. Berzin: Right. Now, I think, it’s getting a little bit worse. China, certainly, more quickly worse than India. 

And in the nursing home. The most depressing thing about a nursing home (aside from the fact that you usually only see old people who are dying, which is very depressing) is that you know that your next stop is the grave. You are now one step away from the cemetery. That, in itself, is depressing. 

So, one shouldn’t think of old age as being something to look forward to – although, as I say, there are certain advantages to being wiser, more experienced and not getting upset so easily about things, and so on. 

Also, in the West, older people tend to become very lonely because young people find it uncomfortable to be in their presence. This is very, very difficult. Some people, as they get older have less and less patience, especially for noise and little children. So, that isolates them even more. Some older people become more fixed in their ideas, less open-minded. 

Also, what I didn’t mention, but what is probably the most unpleasant aspect about getting older is that your memory fails. Your memory gets weaker and weaker, especially when it comes to remembering people’s names, remembering what you walked into a room to get, remembering where you put things and spending hours looking for something. Really quite horrible, I tell you. I know that from my own experience. I call it “I’m having an Alzheimer moment.” It feels just absolutely horrible. “I know that I have this paper. I know that it is somewhere in this house, but I cannot find it” – that, for me personally, is the worst suffering. That’s a hell – to spend a couple hours searching for something that I know is there, but I cannot remember where I put it. So, these are the glorious sufferings of old age. Not something to look forward to.

As a friend of my mother in her retirement village (which is the step before the nursing home) used to say, “Well, if you don’t like old age, your only alternative is to die young. So, don’t complain.” That’s very true. That’s very true. It’s part of growing older. In order to deal with it, I think the only thing that you can do – again, from what people in my mother’s retirement village used to tell me – is to laugh about it. One needs to develop a sense of humor about forgetting people’s name, forgetting what you came into the room to get and these sorts of things.

Sickness

Next is the suffering of sickness. That certainly is something that most of us have experienced. It’s very rare that somebody goes through life without having sickness. There is sickness of the body. There are toothaches (how much do we enjoy going to the dentist? Not terribly much). We can have accidents. This body is very, very frail. All you have to do is stick some sharp object into it and it breaks. It gets cut and bruised so easily. It’s actually very weak, in a sense. 

I always find it very funny to see these bodybuilders who want to make their bodies so, so strong and their stomach muscles so hard. And you think, “What are they doing? They are building up causes to be reborn as a turtle. They’re going to have stomachs as a hard shell – a turtle.” I was always reminded of that. I used to have a roommate once who was a bodybuilder. But even if our bodies are like that, they won’t stand up very well to a truck or something like that, which can easily hit us and damage us very, very severely.

So, sickness… pain. You cut yourself and all your blood runs out. It really is quite pathetic. We can get sick so, so easily from the smallest little thing. All you have to do is drink a little bit of water in India and there you are. One gets sick very, very quickly. So, there is physical sickness, but there’s also mental sickness. It’s not usually discussed in the texts, but that, too, is something quite terrible. People who have terrible phobias, who are irrationally afraid of this or that, or people who have addictions – these are real sickness, not to mention schizophrenia and paranoia and all of that. These, as well, are terrible. 

As I say, this is part of the package of having this type of body and mind. There is always that rather nasty line, “If you didn’t have a head, you wouldn’t have a headache.” That is true. Having a body, having a mind like we have as human beings – these are going to be subject to all of these sufferings.

Death

The next one is death. As it says in text, “Everybody who has ever been born has died, so what’s so special about me?” Aryadeva said that in the Four Hundred Verses, if I can remember correctly. What do I expect – that I am not going to die? And it doesn’t matter how many friends we have, how much money we have, how many possessions we have, what type of high position we have, whether or not our work is done (Shantideva said that one), “when the Lord of Death comes, we will wet our pants, and there will be nothing that we can do.” It’s quite pathetic. So, there’s death. I think that, of course, it’s important to face death, not to deny death. So many people in Western cultures deny death. They don’t want to talk about it. It’s a taboo topic. That type of denial just makes death even more frightening. 

I think the Buddhist teachings about it are quite lovely. Whether or not we believe in rebirth, the Buddhist teachings do describe the death process, what happens as we die, so it becomes less frightening. If we have an understanding of rebirth, well, then it would be even more frightening to know, if we have only done destructive actions, that we will be reborn as a cockroach or in some sort of hell realm. But I find quite nice the descriptions of the stages we go through as we die and how the consciousness withdraws from the body. Those are very, very helpful. Particularly in the anuttarayoga (that’s the highest class of tantra) practices, one rehearses, in a sense, the sequence in our imagination so that we become more and more familiar with what happens as we die. It’s the same process that happens when we fall asleep. Although, usually, it happens so quickly when we fall asleep that we don’t pay attention to it and don’t notice it. And if we do pay attention to it, then we don’t fall asleep. So, that’s the thing that is so difficult about sleep yoga and dream yoga: we wake up when we are trying to do it. 

In any case, it makes it less frightening if we have some idea of what happens. Then, of course, if we have an insurance policy in terms of having built up a great deal of positive force from what we have done in this lifetime and we have actually activated it with our dying thoughts… That’s really very, very crucial – what goes on in our minds right before we die. If we die in a fit of anger or self-pity or screaming with pain and this sort of thing, it is not very helpful. It doesn’t activate positive karma. Instead, it activates negative karma. 

But if we are able die with dignity and peace of mind and thinking quite clearly of Dharma… Usually the most beneficial thought is bodhichitta at the time of death: “May I continue to work toward enlightenment to try to benefit everyone.” That’s the number one, best thought to cultivate as we are dying. Then, “May I not be parted from the precious teachings, the precious qualified teachers, and may I continue to have precious human rebirths so I can continue on the path.” These sorts of prayers are very helpful to have when we die. And then we can die with a little bit of confidence that, in most likelihood, we’ll be able to continue on the spiritual path. But as I say, we need to realize that, even with a precious human rebirth, all of these sufferings are going to continue there, and we want to go beyond that.

Why don’t we take a moment to think about these first four type of sufferings – birth, old age, sickness, and death – and how, even if we have precious human rebirths, we still are going to experience these things. So, having a precious human rebirth isn’t our final, ultimate goal or aim. OK. And when we talk about renunciation, it’s not that we’re just renouncing being reborn as a cockroach. We want to have renunciation of the whole samsaric deal. OK? 

One point, of course, is that when we aim for liberation, it’s not that we say, “I don’t want to have a precious human rebirth: I only want liberation.” That’s a mistake. What we are aiming for is liberation, but as a stepping-stone, until I reach liberation, “May I continue to have precious human rebirths.” That’s provisional. We want to continue having them all the way to liberation, but as stepping-stones, as something that is a necessary thing, yet understanding what the drawbacks of even a precious human rebirth are so that we don’t become obsessed and attached to it. It’s a very delicate balance. It’s not so easy. 

OK. Any questions so far? 

Participant: If you have meditated a lot in your life or, maybe, you are even a meditation master, does it affect the likelihood of getting things like Alzheimer or mental illnesses?

Dr. Berzin: I don’t know exactly. I am trying to think of examples here, certainly of the elderly lamas that I have known. I must say I have not experienced any of them having dementia. They certainly have physical problems. They certainly get cancer. And so many of the Tibetans have diabetes. That’s incredibly common among Tibetans. They just can’t handle the Indian diet. And then often they die of complications from diabetes. But I haven’t seen those whose minds become weaker. 

Mind you, Serkong Rinpoche was only sixty-nine when he died, but Serkong Rinpoche used to tell me a few years before that, that he could remember everything he had studied. His memory was perfect. Many people say that if you exercise your mind all the time, the chances are less that you will develop dementia. But then there are certain scientists that say that certain aspects of dementia and Alzheimer’s are genetic. So, I don’t know if you could overcome genetic types of things.

Participant: Yes, you can.

Dr. Berzin: Can you? 

Participant: It depends.

Dr. Berzin: It depends. There is genetic recoding, of course, but I mean just without that. 

Participant: For Alzheimer’s, especially, it’s a complex. It’s difficult to research because it’s not just genetic. It’s genetic too, but environmental factors and your habits and nutrition and so many other things play a role.

Dr. Berzin: Well, yes. With Alzheimer’s, as Jorge, our medical biological researcher, says that many factors are involved with Alzheimer’s, genetic factors as well as behavioral, environmental, diet, and so on. That’s for sure. 

From a Tibetan medical point of view, there are three types of sicknesses. There are those that are genetic, or hereditary, which are the most difficult to cure. Then there are those that arise dependently on other things – what you eat, whether you catch a cold, have an accident, and these types of things. Those are our ordinary types of sicknesses. And then the third kind are sicknesses that are caused by harmful spirits.

Participant: Outside?

Dr. Berzin: Outside harmful spirits. From a Western point of view, I think we could include things like shell shock. Shell shock is what people in the army or even people in a war zone experience. They are so overwhelmed by the horrors of what they see and what they experience that their minds and their bodies just break down. I think that would fit in the category of diseases caused by harmful spirits.

Leaving aside what is purely genetic, if you exercise the mind, as the great meditation masters and practitioners would do, especially with the very complex meditations in tantra… those, I think, are the most complex. They entail incredibly detailed and complicated visualizations that change very, very quickly, and you have to develop different states of mind in quick succession as you go through a sadhana. Sadhana is like a script of a meditation. It could be well over a hundred pages long. Plus, the Tibetans have them all memorized as well. So, reciting something like that from memory plus your mind actively doing the meditations is an unbelievable mental work out every day. This, I think, helps to keep the mind sharp. 

Participant: I would think that shamatha meditation does not necessarily affect this.

Dr. Berzin: Right, this is what I am saying. Shamatha – sitting and focusing with single-pointed concentration on the breath – exercises the mind in a very different way.

Participant: There was this study published by Matthieu Ricard last year. I don’t know if you know Matthieu Ricard, the French monk. He has this study where they proved by something called “functional MRI” that meditation on compassion exercises neuroplasticity, which means that new connections are created in the brain. So, I would guess that should help Alzheimer’s. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. Meditation on compassion builds up neuroplasticity in the brain, which means more brain connections. And that’s the exact opposite of Alzheimer’s, which is less neuroplasticity. So, that might be very helpful. Meditating on compassion is also a fairly active meditation, but a different type of activity than going through a sadhana. A sadhana has compassion meditation as part of it. But there are many ways of doing compassion meditation. It could be done in a very active type of way. And it also moves very much the feeling aspect. Whether hormones or whatever are involved with that, I am not quite sure. But it could help. It could help.

Discussion about Spirits

Participant: What about the harmful spirits? I want to know more about the spirits being harmful. 

Dr. Berzin: Well, it really depends on how seriously we want to take the existence of other life forms besides human and animal. From a Buddhist point of view, there are many other forms of life that we can be reborn in. And by “life,” they’re not talking about life in general, such as biological life, which would include plants. Buddhism speaks about living beings that have minds and that can act with motivation and intention and experience the results of that behavior. So, they have a will, in a sense. That includes not only humans and animals but also spirits (so-called ghosts), whether harmful or not harmful, and hell creatures (more literally, trapped beings in the joyless realms). There are also the would-be divine beings (the so-called the asuras) and the divine beings (the devas, the gods). So, everything depends on how seriously we take that.

My own view on that is that I think it is very unfair to Buddhism to reduce all of those to human states of experience. That falls in the category of what I call “Dharma-lite,” like Coca-Cola Lite. It’s not the Real Thing Dharma. And although there are vestiges from rebirths in these different realms that we could experience in a human rebirth – for instance, being tortured as a vestige of a hell rebirth, it’s not fair to reduce these types of rebirths to human experience. 

The way that I understand it and like to explain it is in terms of the whole spectrum of experience. To look at the spectrum of, for instance, seeing or hearing – the type of hardware (body) that human beings have can only experience a very small part of those spectrums. There are many animals that can see things in the dark that humans can’t see. Dogs, for example, can hear sounds that humans can’t hear and so on. So, just because a human body can’t experience something doesn’t mean that there are not other types of bodies, different types of hardware, that can experience beyond the range of what we can experience. Certainly, animals can smell far better than humans can. They can smell things that are very, very faint, which we can’t smell. 

By extension, on the spectrum of pain and pleasure and what goes with that –happiness and unhappiness – the human body is also very limited. When pain reaches a certain level, we fall unconscious. So, the body can’t experience more intense pain then that limit. The same thing with pleasure. Usually, what happens is that we destroy the pleasure. Think in terms of an orgasm. The pleasure gets greater and greater until it gets so great that you have an even greater urge to destroy it, basically – to have the orgasm. Or think in terms of an itch, which is actually intense pleasure. If you can have the self-control and patience to analyze it, you can see that it’s intense, super pleasure, but one that is so horribly pleasurable that you have to destroy it – you have to scratch it. I find it really difficult to speak about itches without my head starting to itch. 

Participant: Enjoy it.

Dr. Berzin: Enjoy it. Well, that was how I dealt with it. For many years, I had a chronic itch on the top of my head and neck, and that was the only way that I could handle it. It itched unbelievably a great deal of the time, so I regarded it as pleasure. If you look at it that way, you can try to relax and just enjoy it. It’s not easy. Otherwise, you just scratch until you start to bleed, which doesn’t help either because then it just continues itching even worse. 

If we look at it that way – that the hardware of the human body is limited in terms of the spectrum – there is no reason to think that there can’t be other types of bodies that could experience further on the spectrum of pain and pleasure than we can. This is how I think of the other life forms described in Buddhism as being possible. For me, that makes it acceptable. Otherwise, it’s very difficult for most Western people to relate these other realms. 

Participant: The Mauritian people believe.

Dr. Berzin: Mauritian people believe in spirits. In Mexico, I am sure they believe spirits. India, Africa… most places in the world. Certainly, in the West as well. So, Buddhism would speak about that. Some of them have terrible suffering. It’s not pleasant to be a spirit or a ghost.

Participant: In Mauritius, when someone dies, you have to let them stay nearly two days, I’m told, before getting buried. Here, as soon as people die, they just throw them away.

Dr. Berzin: Our student from Mauritius is saying that in Mauritius, people believe in spirits. Mauritius has a very strong joint African and Indian background. There, when somebody dies, they are not taken from their home for a few days, whereas in the West, you are usually taken immediately to a funeral parlor. And if you are in a Muslim country, you are buried almost immediately. The Hindus as well. They burn the body almost immediately.

Participant: Not all.

Dr. Berzin: I found that in India, at least where I was living, they did that. And I would imagine that a lot of that has to do with the heat, the climate. In any case, Buddhists also say that you need to leave the body for some days so that the mental continuum will leave the body in a peaceful way; it still sort of hangs out for a while. 

Then it becomes an interesting discussion. The Tibetans have a very, very complex system of different types of ghosts and spirits. A lot of these spirits I think, come from the Indian culture, but an awful lot of them are added from the Tibetan native culture. Then, on top of that, even more are added in Mongolia to the Tibetan Buddhism that they got. So, you have a wide variety of spirits. Also, there are spirits of the mountains, and spirits of the trees, and all of this. So, how to relate to those? 

I think one needs to be careful in the sense that they may exist. There are some people who say that they can see them. The old Trijang Rinpoche used to say that he could see the so-called hungry ghosts. Serkong Rinpoche used to say that sometimes as well. We’d be in a place, and he’d say, “Oh, there are a lot of nagas here” (which are these half snake, half human type of invisible creatures). So, I don’t know. 

There are the oracles, which enter into a medium and speak. They’re spirits – many of them, not all of them. And certainly, His Holiness the Dalai Lama takes it absolutely a hundred percent seriously that there are such beings. And I’ve certainly seen mediums in trance, with oracles speaking through them that are very, very convincing. 

Participant: [Inaudible]

Dr. Berzin: In Mauritius, I would imagine that you have quite a lot of that.

Participant: They’re talking, really talking. And after that, people just leave the door open for three days just to get rid of all the…

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, in Mauritius, they leave the door open for three days so the spirit of the dead one leaves.

Yes, as I say, there are spirit rebirths. When one is in the bardo, which is the in-between stage for seven days that can repeat up to seven times – so, forty-nine days – there are…. It’s a little bit strange because, according to Buddhist theory, in bardo, you take on the form of your next rebirth. It’s not that you’re stuck with the form of the rebirth that you just died from. So, I always wonder about the experiences of people who have visits and conversations with the spirit of their dead ancestor – their parent or whatever. What in the world is that? I could imagine it could be a spirit – that there is so much attachment to the previous life that you are reborn as a spirit in that shape. That could be possible. Then, of course, some of these are malevolent, and some of these are beneficial, like many of the oracles. 

The place where I had the most experience of them is Singapore and Malaysia. There, they are like the local psychologists. People go to them for advice. And the theory that I have for that is that, in that area, tantra used to be practiced, but it was based on the Chittamatra views, which are not the deepest philosophical view of voidness. His Holiness always says that if you meditate on tantra and you imagine yourself in the form of these various deities without bodhichitta or without the proper understanding of voidness, it acts as cause to be reborn as a ghost in the form of one of these figures. 

I don’t know about in Mauritius because it is not really a Buddhist society, but in Malaysia and Singapore where you have the Chinese Buddhists, many of them get together and channel laughing Buddha or channel Maitreya or something like that. What in the world is that? I think that what they are channeling are the spirits of these tantric practitioners who used to visualize themselves in these forms but who also had a great deal of compassion and wanted to help others. So, they are reborn as a spirit in that form. How do they help others? Through a medium as a type of oracle. I can’t think of any other explanation. I mean it really is a very unusual phenomenon.

Participant: Where is this?

Dr. Berzin: Singapore and Malaysia. Especially Malaysia, but both places. 

Participant: For Muslims in Mauritius, when somebody dies, then, after forty days, many people come together and you have a feast to release the spirit.

Dr. Berzin: Forty days?

Participant: For Mauritian people, it’s forty days after. For the Indian people, it’s seven days after, I think.

Dr. Berzin: What about the Africans? 

Participant: The third day, you have also a meal.

Dr. Berzin: What about the Africans?

Participant: There are no Africans in Mauritius.

Dr. Berzin: There are Africans. I thought there were some Africans. 

Participant: A mixture.

Dr. Berzin: It’s a mixture. Right. 

Participant: It’s really the tradition.

Dr. Berzin: That’s true. OK. So you’re saying that… 

Participant: The Chinese are also like this. The Chinese go to the cemetery and they bring everything that the person liked.

Dr. Berzin: Oh, yeah. That’s quite the Chinese custom. So, our Mauritian…

Participant: Like a picnic.

Dr. Berzin: Yeah, yeah. So, our Mauritian friend is saying that in Mauritius, the Muslims, after forty days, make a feast for the dead person. There are some people who actually see the spirit. The people of Indian origin do this after seven days. The Chinese follow the Chinese custom, which is to burn paper money that the spirits will use in the afterlife (this is from Taoist beliefs), and food, and these sorts of things. It’s not far from burying your slaves with you in your pyramid. That also sort of fits into that custom, doesn’t it? 

Yeah, harmful spirits could certainly be the case. I know of people who were acting quite crazy in many ways. And certain ceremonies were done by very great tantric masters in India, and they got rid of the harmful spirit. The person changed really quite dramatically. So, I must say, personally, I do believe in that stuff. But if people don’t believe in that, to push it on them makes them think it’s just superstition, and they can develop a very negative thought. In that case, it’s best agree with them, to say that, yes, it’s superstition and not insist. 

Participant: But to ascribe everything and anything to that is also…

Dr. Berzin: Right. To ascribe everything to that and to say everything is… you know, “I failed my exam because of the influence of an evil spirit,” whereas you didn’t actually study. So, yes, you can use that as an excuse. You could use that as an excuse for burning people, like burning the people who were accused of being witches in the Middle Ages. So, one has to be very careful with all of that. 

But I think there is something behind it. Every culture has a belief in ghosts and spirits. 

Participant: The Christians in Mauritius don’t believe in that.

Dr. Berzin: Do the Christians in Europe ever…. Well, the Christians in Mexico certainly believe in that.

Participant: Yeah, but this devil…

Dr. Berzin: The devil, right. They certainly believe in the devil. And they are always exorcising the devil from you. So, that’s the same thing. 

Participant: I know in my place, where I come from, in the Schwarzwald, south of central Germany – my grandfather, he told me that, actually, they had a kind of oracle, like a spirit. So, they are practicing secretly, you know, channeling ghosts and other kinds of stuff. But the church, of course, they were not allowed to know about it. And then they would come and…

Dr. Berzin: Right. So Carston is saying that his grandfather said that they certainly had groups that were into spirits and channeling and this type of thing.

But when it starts to get into crystal balls and Ouija boards and all of that, then I start to become a bit suspicious. 

Participant: It is difficult in Mauritius to have an idea about all this because we have many cultures. And all these cultures are mixed. One thing that people say is that the dogs in Mauritius bark at night for ten days before somebody dies. If somebody’s dying in the village or the city, the dogs bark ten days before.

Dr. Berzin: Mauritius is a very special place. I’ve been there. It’s a marvelous place and is very multicultural. All of the cultures are mixed together, so it is hard to separate out different customs. But there seems to be a general belief in spirits. And it is said that the dogs in a village, when somebody will die, will know that about ten days before and start to bark. She has seen that this is the case. Often, animals will react if there is a spirit present. Animals can sometimes sense that. That also is known.

Participant: I have heard it. When I was seventeen, I was in Mauritius. There was a young boy who drowned. Ten days before, the dog was weeping all the night by the seaside.

Dr. Berzin: Yeah, I could imagine that. 

Participant: The other extreme are the Thais. Sometimes, Thai can be…

Dr. Berzin: Oh, the Thais are completely into spirits. One of the big activities of the Thai monks is to make amulets for the people to wear around their necks to protect them from harmful spirits. That’s one of the aspects of Thai Buddhism that is not carried over in the Western vipashyana and other movements. But that’s very strong in Southeast Asia. Very, very strong.

Participant: [Inaudible]

Dr. Berzin: Yeah. The Tibetans have these ghost catchers. Which ones were you referring to?

Participant: The ghost houses in Thailand. Also in Laos.

Dr. Berzin: In Laos also? Laos, Cambodia? 

Participant: Did you see any trapped ghosts?

Participant: Before you build a house, they ask the ghosts kindly to move into the ghost house so they have a place for their home.

Dr. Berzin: Tibetans certainly do naga pujas to appease the nagas who might live in the ground before they start to dig and build a house. Certainly, they do that. 

Participant: And during initiations also.

Dr. Berzin: During initiations, a torma is given to interfering spirits to take so that they don’t cause any interference. That’s done every initiation. Also, you do that before you do retreat.

Participant: Building a stupa.

Dr. Berzin: Building a stupa, for sure. It’s hard to know, but anthropologically, this must come from making a sacrifice to please the gods before some sort of event. Certainly, that’s mixed up with this anthropologically. It becomes a very complex cultural thing. But we certainly find these things all over the world. 

Anyway, we have gotten a little far from our topic. 

The various sufferings… certainly, the harmful spirits suffer. And when we have sickness… this is where our whole discussion came from – that sickness can be caused by hereditary things, by circumstances or by harmful spirits.

Participant: Or all of the above.

Dr. Berzin: Or all of the above. I think your question, originally, was whether you can avoid some loss of memory and so on that come with old age by doing intense meditation and exercising your mind. Yes. However, that doesn’t spare you from so many of the other things that happen with old age. 

Participant: Once, a psychologist asked the same question of His Holiness. His Holiness said that, actually, he personally knows some people who are eighty and are very, very clever and also good practitioners. Some others that he knows, even though they were meditating quite a lot, still they get some kind of dementia. So, he also said that it’s hard to say.

Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s why I said it’s a complex issue. 

But, again, according to the wisdom of the people in the retirement village around my mother, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” That usually is in reference to sex. However, it certainly has to do with the mind as well. My mother died years ago, but when I used to go visit her in the retirement village, she loved to watch these quiz shows on television, which I absolutely hated, absolutely despised. She would always ask me to answer the questions to see if I could answer them. But I developed some tolerance for it because I realized that this was exercising her mind – that she was trying to answer the questions. So, even if the questions were about stupid things, like guess how much something cost (this type of television quiz show is popular in America), still, it was exercising her mind, which was good. She developed severe Alzheimer’s anyway and eventually died of Alzheimer’s. Yeah, if you don’t use it, you lose it. 

And that’s certainly true with physical fitness. But let’s go on.

We’ve had the first four of the eight sufferings of a human rebirth: birth, old age, sickness, death. 

Being Parted from What We Like

Then the next one mentioned here in Nagarjuna’s text is being parted from what is pleasing, in other words, being parted from what you like. That certainly happens a lot. You have to move, and you lose your friends, or your friends move away; people grow apart. This one happens as you get older: you might like a certain type of food that you could deal with quite well when you were younger, but now your stomach can’t handle it. Greasy pizzas and these sorts of things that you used to absolutely love – you still love – don’t agree with you anymore. So, you are parted from that. Or you like to travel, but it’s too difficult. There are so many things that we are parted from what we like. For many of us, the most painful thing is being parted from people that we like. Or being parted from a job – we lose our job, money. These sorts of things. We want to get an education, but we can’t afford it… Being parted from what we like. 

Meeting with What We Don’t Like

Then the next one is meeting with what we don’t like. That happens to us all the time, doesn’t it? We meet with difficult people, we meet with sickness, we meet with losing our job, we meet with our investments turning to nothing or having things stolen. So many things. 

Participant: The computer…

Dr. Berzin: The computer crashes? Yes, that happens. You lose your data. The electricity goes out, or you pressed the wrong button. That happens quite a lot! All of these are examples of dealing with what we don’t like. There is no more chocolate left in the house; the stores are closed… whatever. It’s endless, isn’t it? Noisy neighbors.

Participant: We are not parted from them.

Dr. Berzin: We are not parted from them, right. So, being parted from what we like, and meeting with what we don’t like. 

Not Getting Things We Like Even Though We Try to Find Them

Then the next one is not getting things you like even though you try to find them. That’s a good one. I want to find a job, but I can’t, even though I tried to find one. I want to find somebody who will love me and be faithful and be Mister or Miss Perfect. And I try, but no matter how much I try, no way that I find this person. 

I also remember stories about your sister. You’d like her to act in a certain nice way, but that never happens even, though you try to make it happen. All of that – that goes on. Even in the realm of Dharma, we try very hard to get some sort of attainments, but we don’t. No matter the situation where we try to find a perfect situation, we’ll never find it. So, that’s one of the sufferings of a human rebirth because we always have hope – “This relationship didn’t work out, but the next one will,” “This job didn’t work out, but the next one will,” “This house didn’t work out, but the next one will.” On and on and on.

Participant: This life didn’t work out. [Laughter]

Dr. Berzin: This life didn’t work out, but maybe the next one will. That’s true. That’s true. “This lifetime I am loser; maybe in the next lifetime I won’t be such a loser.” Yes. And then we identify with being a loser in life. 

Having Tainted Obtainer Aggregates

Then, what Tsongkhapa includes as the eighth suffering is having tainted obtainer aggregates, aggregates that are in the nature of suffering. “Tainted” means that they come from confusion and ignorance and all of that. They are tainted in those ways. And they consist of the mechanism that will continue to perpetuate more tainted aggregates. “Obtainer” has the connotation that they will obtain for us yet another set of these aggregates in another body. So, they come from unawareness, contain unawareness, and will bring us more unawareness. That is the basis for all of this. 

With this type of samsaric rebirth, then, no matter what kind it is, we will have to be parted from what we like, we’ll have to meet with what we don’t like, and we’ll have to not get things we like even though we try to find them. 

OK? Again, let’s think about that. 

The main point of thinking about it is to think, “Do I want it to continue forever?” And do we want to not be smug about it (this is the point) and not say, “Well, it’s the best I can hope for, so it’s OK”? Do we want to overcome that and really put all our effort into developing the discriminating awareness of voidness? This is the whole point of this verse. It’s not to become depressed about it but to think, “Yes, this is going to help me to really generate renunciation, to make some strong effort to understand what’s going on in this world and to get rid of my confusion that is perpetuating it.” 

I think, also, one of the main points of thinking about this is to come to the realization, as Lama Yeshe once said, “What do you expect from samsara?” What do we expect? We will be parted from what we want. “I would like to be with this other person all the time, and yet they don’t want to be with me.” So, we are parted from what we want. We want to not be parted, yet we meet with what we don’t like, which is that the other person doesn’t want to be with us as much as we want to be with them. And we don’t get what we want even though we try to find it. “I wanted a perfect relationship with somebody who had an equal feeling as I have, and I don’t get it, no matter how much I try.” And the point is, well, what do you expect from samsara? It’s always going to be like that. 

That’s the horrible truth that we have to accept: it’s always going to be like that. What do we expect? We just the make best of whatever we can find without being overly idealistic about it and overly romantic about it. We enjoy what we can, enjoy what there is, without getting depressed about what it is. 

Then there are the eight transitory things in life, the so-called eight worldly Dharmas, of not being overly excited when things are going well and not being depressed when things are not going well. We enjoy whatever it is while we have it, and we don’t get depressed when we don’t have it because things not going well is going to happen. That’s part of the sufferings of a human rebirth. That’s not a very nice pill to swallow, but that’s the truth, isn’t it? That, I think, is also one of the strong points of meditating on this. In addition, it moves us to develop the discriminating awareness of voidness so that our dealing with the situation is not just based on, “Well, this is the way it is.” Instead, we can go deeper and deeper to try to get to a situation where we don’t experience any of this at all. Then, if we are going to take rebirth as a liberated being… well, having a human body means it’s still going to experience these things, but we are not upset by it at all. OK?

We’ll end here. The next line there, “I am not beyond what my karma will do to me,” refers to the six sufferings of samsara in general – what karma in general will bring us. We’ll discuss these six points next time.