LTF 39: Remembering the 6 Types of Suffering of Samsara in General

Nagarjuna begins by explaining what we need as the support for our spiritual path. The first thing is confident belief. Confident belief, which is sometimes translated as “faith,” is very much emphasized in the Buddhist teachings. It doesn’t mean the sort of blind faith that we might have in some other systems. Instead, it relates to the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths that we were speaking about – namely, having confidence that samsaric rebirth is really what suffering is about, that samsaric rebirth is the cause of our suffering, as Buddha explained, that it is possible to actually achieve a stopping of these causes, and that there is a state of mind (the understanding of voidness and so on) that will actually bring about that stopping. 

In other words, we need to be really confident that there is such a thing as liberation and such a thing as enlightenment, that there is a way, as described by Buddha, to actually achieve that, that it is really possible for us to achieve that individually, each of us, and also – if we are following the Mahayana path – that it’s possible for everybody to achieve that. If we don’t believe everybody can achieve it, it is pointless to try to help everybody to achieve it. It’s only when we have really strong confidence in this that we can really seriously put our hearts fully into the practice of the spiritual path.

As we discovered when looking through these sixteen aspects, it’s not so easy to really be convinced that liberation and enlightenment are possible the way it is described in Buddhism. Not easy to be convinced what they actually mean, what, actually, is the way to get there, and whether that way will actually bring liberation and enlightenment about. That’s why Nagarjuna mentions that in the very beginning. 

Then he mentions the six things always to keep in mind, which are, first of all, the Buddhas, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Dharma indicates what we are trying to achieve. The Buddhas are those who have actually achieved enlightenment in full. And the Arya Sangha are those who have achieved it in part and are on the way to achieving it in full. So, we need to keep that in mind all the time – what we are aiming for and the fact that there are actually those who have achieved it. 

The next three things that we need to keep in mind are generosity – so, helping others, taking care of others in terms of giving; ethical discipline – restraining from negative actions and engaging in positive actions and actually helping others; and the gods because they remind us of cause and effect – that if we create positive causes, we’ll achieve positive results, like the happiness of the gods. 

These are the things that serve as the support of the path. And Nagarjuna starts out with that discussion. 

Then he introduces the essence of the path, which deals with the six far-reaching attitudes of generosity, ethical discipline, patience, perseverance, mental stability, and discriminating awareness. 

In the brief account of that, which is what we are dealing with here, first, Nagarjuna speaks about what we need to adopt. And what we need to adopt are the various forces and powers that we are going to use, specifically on one stage of the path, although they are important all along the path. These five are, again, confidence – belief in fact – in terms of the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths; perseverance to stick with the practice; mindfulness, which means to always hold these sixteen aspects in our awareness; absorbed concentration in order to stay focused on them completely; and discriminating awareness, discriminating what’s correct and what’s incorrect. 

Smugness

In order to make progress on the path, not only do we have to adopt these things, but we also have to rid ourselves of certain obstacles. The big obstacle is discussed here, in Verse 46, which is being smug, which means being satisfied with just partial progress on the path, with what we have done, and being a little bit arrogant about it. “That’s enough. I’m pretty good, and what I have achieved is good enough.” That’s this English word “smugness.” 

That could apply, for instance to just thinking in terms of the initial scope of motivation: “I want to be able, in all my lifetimes, to have a precious human rebirth.” OK, it’s a pretty big accomplishment to actually have confidence in rebirth the way it is explained in Buddhism and to wish to have a precious human rebirth in each lifetime so that we can continue to follow the path. But we could also think of it just in terms of being able to be with our Dharma teachers and our spiritual friends and so on, which is very nice. But what we don’t want to do is to become smug about that and to think that’s enough – “That’s all I really want – to continue to have a precious human life the way I have now or maybe a little bit better than I have now. And that’s enough. To achieve that would be good enough.” That is what we have to rid ourselves of if we are going to go all the way and work for liberation or, in a Mahayana sense, for enlightenment. 

We want to be liberated from having uncontrollably recurring precious human rebirths, which, although they are very necessary, that’s not the final goal. And the way that we overcome that smugness is by thinking of the various disadvantages of samsara, the various types of suffering of samsara in general, of uncontrollably recurring rebirth. In this verse, which reads:

[46] I have not gone beyond sickness, old age, or death, or being parted from what’s pleasing, or beyond what my karma will do to me.” Through the gateway of its antidote, repeatedly thinking like that, you won't become smug. 

The first line of the verse, “I have not gone beyond sickness, old age, or death or being parted from what’s pleasing,” refers to thinking about the eight types of suffering of a human rebirth. We discussed those last week: birth, old age, sickness, death, being parted from what we like and what’s pleasing, being with what we don’t like, not getting things that we like even though we try to find them, and then the tainted obtainer aggregates that we continue to have, which are in the nature of suffering. 

Then the second line, “I have not gone beyond what my karma will do to me,” refers to the different types of suffering of samsara in general, specifically the six types of suffering. This week, we will be discussing these six sufferings of samsara.

Having No Certainty

The first of these is no certainty. There is no certainty in samsara (uncontrollably recurring rebirth), no certainty of what type of rebirth we are going to have and what type of relative position the various people that we know and have connections with are going to have in relation to us. There is a famous story. I don’t remember all the details of it, but somebody’s former parent is born as their child or born as their dog… these sorts of things. The situations, the relationships we had in our former lives change. There is no guarantee what type of rebirth we are going to have. We don’t have any control over that. There is no certainty. There is no certainty where or how our friends are going to be reborn as well, people that we know and love. 

Also, I think, we can take this on a moment-to-moment basis as well – that there is no certainty of what we are going to feel like in the next moment. Am I going to feel happy? Am I going to feel unhappy? Am I going feel like doing this? Am I going to feel like doing that? Never mind there being no certainty as to what’s going to happen to us due to external circumstances meeting with the internal circumstances. In other words, there is no certainty of what karmic combination is going to ripen next. And this is quite terrible, isn’t it? You never know. So, there is no security.

When we look at what’s quite difficult in our daily lives, in our samsaric lives, I think there is an over-riding sense that most of us feel of insecurity, isn’t there? What is insecurity based on? Of course, it is based on a misconception of a solid “me” that has to be made secure, but the external circumstance of it is that we have no idea what’s going to happen next. That is a big disadvantage of samsara, a big type of suffering of samsara. It’s important to recognize that, I think. 

As I say, one can reach the level at which we think, “May I have precious human rebirths all my lifetimes. May I always be connected with the Dharma. May I always be connected with fully qualified spiritual teachers,” and so on, but then be attached to that and not remember the disadvantages of that precious human life. It’s not that we want not to continue to have precious human lives, but this is the interesting combination that we need to make. And it is a delicate combination – wanting the precious human rebirth but not being attached to it by remembering the disadvantages of a human rebirth and the disadvantages of samsara in general. So, to put those together, if I may say, is not so easy. 

What do you think of that? When you think of both the advantages and disadvantages of something, can you still aim to achieve it and aim to go beyond it? This is what we are trying to do. We want to achieve a precious human rebirth, but we do not want to get stuck with that. We want that to be a stepping-stone, to go beyond. 

How can we wish to achieve something and, at the same time, wish not to be attached to it? That’s the delicate thing, isn’t it? Why don’t we think about that for a moment. 

Any comments? Any thoughts? 

Participant: It’s a bit like, if you go to the cinema, you need a ticket to get into it. You don’t go to the cinema to get a ticket, but you need a ticket to get into the movie.

Dr. Berzin: But the point is, you don’t go just to get a ticket; you go to actually get into the movie. So, having a precious human rebirth is like the ticket. But that’s not our objective; the objective is to use it to get into the movie. That is a good analogy, an appropriate analogy. 

But I think the question really is in terms of attachment and this issue of no certainty. There is no certainty that the person who is your friend today will continue to be your friend. Things may change. They may no longer want to be with you, or they may act in a very unpleasant type of way so that you don’t want to be with them anymore. There is also no certainty in terms of the situations for studying the Dharma with a precious human rebirth: teachers may die, or they may go away. Or we may not be able to get a visa to continue to stay in India, for example, and have to leave. Obstacles come up; sickness comes up. There is no certainty. We may no longer even feel like practicing the Dharma. I have seen this with many people – that they were quite interested, but then after awhile, they lose their interest. So, there is no certainty that even our interest will continue. 

Participant: I think there is also this point of always planning for the future. “What will I do next summer? Will I do that or that? And what about my future? Will my pension be enough?” It goes on endlessly, making these plans. But when you see there is no certainty at all, it can, if you really think about it and take it seriously, be a relief from all this worrying about the future.

Dr. Berzin: Right, if we realize that there is no certainty in samsara, then, in a sense, it is a great relief. We are relieved from that worry.

Participant: You can take it lightly.

Dr. Berzin: You can take it more lightly. But I don’t think that means that you don’t make any plans. I love the Persian saying, “Trust in God, but tie your camel.” [Laughter] So, take some sort of precautions about the future, but be flexible, and don’t spend all your time planning the tiny details of it. But to have a general idea is not bad.

Participant: And not being so uptight about it.

Dr. Berzin: And not being so uptight and worried about it. Certainly. But it’s not that “God will provide,” so just trusting that everything will work out OK, because that negates cause and effect. You want to create the karmic causes by acting constructively and so on that will bring about not just happiness in samsara but also liberation while, at the same time, realizing that there is no certainty of how things are going to ripen because samsara will continue to go up and down all the way till liberation. That’s why I am saying, you accept that you need a precious human rebirth. You need to put in the causes for the future and so on, but you combine that with a lack of attachment, realizing the drawbacks of the whole thing. “I accept that this is what I have to do, but, of course, there won’t be any certainty, and, of course, I won’t to be able to stay with my friends, and friendships may end, relationships may end, teachers may go away and die,” and so on. 

Renunciation

Participant: I was thinking about renunciation.

Dr. Berzin:  Well, this is exactly what this is all about: renunciation.

Participant: My point is that thinking about next life and becoming a human again is very important, and I have actually kind of internalized it in a way. But at the same time, you think, “OK, I have to give this up.” To reach that stage seems like an attainment. But then you say, “OK, now I have to actually go with that.” 

Dr. Berzin: Right. I would agree. That is the case in my own experience as well. It took an awfully long time to begin to take future lives seriously and to make some sort of effort and put in some causes directed toward future lives. But to go the next step, to think in terms of liberation – that really brings…. Then you need to have confidence in the sixteen aspects of four noble truths, confidence that liberation actually is possible, that there is such a thing, and that there is a way to achieve it, and you need to become convinced of the first noble truth, the sufferings – the disadvantages – of samsara. That, I think, is far more difficult than wishing to have a precious human rebirth, to be with your gurus and to be able to study Dharma every lifetime. That you can have on the basis of attachment. 

Participant: Especially, in the West because thinking in terms of future lives is totally alien, and becoming enlightened is also quite alien. And probably, we don’t suffer enough because, most of the time, we have quite comfortable lives.

Dr. Berzin: He is saying that it is especially difficult in the West because we don’t usually think in terms of future lives or believe in that. We certainly don’t believe in enlightenment; we don’t even understand what it means. And we don’t suffer enough. I would add that we don’t suffer enough physically, but I think that in the West, we suffer mentally and emotionally very much, especially from things like stress. That’s almost universally experienced in the West  – stress, tension, pressure.

Participant: I think, also, when I listen to people suffering…

Dr. Berzin: Yeah. All you have to do, as she says, is listen to any of your friends, any of your relatives. You’re really bothered to hear their stories.

Participant: And suffering.

Dr. Berzin: And they are suffering. They are. Their suffering, of course, looks trivial if we compare it to somebody living in Baghdad. But to them, to those living here in the West, it’s quite horrible.

This step of renunciation is not an easy one, not at all an easy one. Nevertheless, you still want to have a precious human rebirth. It would be misunderstanding renunciation to stop working for that, for the precious human rebirth. You want to continue working for the precious human rebirth. It’s the same as working for enlightenment: you want to continue working for liberation while you are working for enlightenment. You can’t achieve enlightenment without gaining liberation. You can’t achieve liberation without getting precious human rebirth. 

Participant: It’s quite funny, but when I hear these old stories from the Buddha or maybe just from the old times, it seems that people were really convinced that they could reach enlightenment in their very lifetimes. But nowadays, people tend to say, “Well, OK, I will just make some good karma.” Even the monks, probably, say, “OK, I will make some good karma, and next life – then I do it.”

Dr. Berzin: Well, I don’t know. You are saying that it seems as though, at the time of the Buddha or maybe five hundred years later, people seriously thought in terms of getting enlightenment in their lifetimes, whereas, now, people don’t really seem to take that so seriously. They think more in terms of planting seeds for future lives the way that monks do. That’s very true. But His Holiness always emphasizes that it’s unrealistic to think we can gain enlightenment in this lifetime, although theoretically it’s possible. But then we get our hopes up and become very disappointed because it’s almost impossible to achieve enlightenment in this lifetime, although theoretically it’s possible. But the chances of us putting in enough effort in this lifetime or that we’ve put in enough effort in the previous lifetimes so that it’s going to happen are unbelievably rare. And usually, when we are seriously thinking, “I am really going to get it in this lifetime,” we are basically being lazy; we don’t want to put in the work. So, we get strength from thinking that, actually, it is going to take three countless eons. 

Now, the problem is, what happens when you want to practice tantra? In the advertising of tantra, it says you can achieve enlightenment within one lifetime in the highest class of tantra. So, again, although, obviously, it is theoretically possible, the point is that for tantra, you want to follow something which is much more radical and much more drastic as a method. So, renunciation in tantra is far stronger than in sutra because what you are renouncing, in addition to samsaric rebirth and so on, is the ordinary appearance of things, how our mind ordinarily makes things appear. So, you want to replace that. 

There are two levels of impure appearance. One is the appearance of true existence, which, obviously, is the deepest one that we need to get rid of. But then there is, on the conventional level, the appearance of things as they appear in their ordinary, usual forms. We don’t see them in a more elevated form; we only see things with their disadvantages and as the bases for complaint and so on. So, to give up, to be willing to give up, how our minds make things appear, to renounce that – my goodness. That is extraordinary, extraordinary to actually do that. 

We might theoretically say, “OK, I’ll do that.” But to actually do that? Who in the world visualizes themselves as some Buddha-figure and everybody around them as Buddha-figures and mandalas and does that all day long? I really wonder. We don’t even want to do that. It’s very tiring. So, to think it’s going to come so quickly and so easily, without unbelievable effort, is naive, very naive. 

We need to make this delicate balance, on the one hand, of wishing and aiming for the precious human rebirth, and on the other hand, remembering the disadvantages of samsara and the human rebirth but also seeing the human rebirth as a stepping-stone – without attachment. We need to somehow work on putting that together to see that aiming for something and being attached to it don’t necessarily go together. Not being attached to it doesn’t mean that you don’t aim for it. OK? 

Of course, what helps with that is thinking about these various disadvantages, which on a conventional level, is that there is no certainty about what is going to happen and so on; so, you can’t depend on anything. Then, of course, on a deeper level, if you think in terms of the voidness of a precious human life and the voidness of the self – that, of course, goes much deeper. OK, that’s the first disadvantage or suffering of samsara in general: there is no certainty.

Getting No Satisfaction

The second one is that there is no satisfaction. “I can’t get no satisfaction,” as the song goes. We are never going to be satisfied. We are never going to be satisfied that we have enough friends, enough money, enough attention, enough love. It’s never enough. So, it can never satisfy. “I’ve had enough eating for this lifetime.” No, of course not! “I’ve had enough pleasure, I’ve had enough entertainment, I’ve had enough sleep – I don’t need to sleep anymore.” There is no satisfaction. That is really not very nice. So, no matter how much we have, it’s not going to last, and we want more of the things that we like. That ties back with one of the disadvantages of the human rebirth – that we can’t get the things we like, even if we try to find them. So, we can’t get satisfaction, even if we are trying to find satisfaction. 

Participant: Can the insight that you never can get enough be helpful? Because when you realize that, then maybe it gets less.

Dr. Berzin: To answer that question, you would have to have experienced really getting the insight that you can never be satisfied. What I always recommend and try to think about is to imagine that you have what you want – then what? Suppose you had a room full of ice cream, the entire room was full of ice cream, and you are in it. Then what? Or imagine you were with the person that you are so attracted to and attached to and that they were glued to your body twenty-four hours a day. Then what? Then what are you going to do? That, I find, is helpful. Is that really going to bring you ever lasting happiness? No. You’ll want something else. So, you’re not satisfied. So, it comes back down to the same thing: there isn’t anything that can give satisfaction. Well, also, that’s based on thinking of a solid “me” that wants to get satisfaction, isn’t it?

Participant: I think that if you had all the ice cream you wanted, then you would want… I don’t know, mustard with hot dogs, or something like this.

Dr. Berzin: Right. If you’ve had enough ice cream, then you’d want something else. Or when we are around somebody all the time… this happens in marriages so often. You finally get the person to be your marriage partner, and you are with them all the time. Then, it becomes boring, and you look for somebody else, an extra-marital affair. It’s become too ordinary. I don’t know. If I realized that I will never get enough of another person or some food… usually, our attachments to a person are much stronger than to a type of food. If I realized that I can never be satisfied, would I be satisfied with only as much as I can get and not try to get more? It’s a hard one. That’s a hard one. 

From Aryadeva’s Four Hundred Verses, it says very nicely that people coming together in samsara are like leaves falling from a tree in the autumn – that the leaves fall off, and the winds of karma carry them in different directions. For a little while, they will stay together, blown together by the wind, but inevitably, the wind will separate them. So, if you realize that, then you try to enjoy the time that you have with somebody without clinging. You’re satisfied with that. 

But then the question is, are you going to be active in this process, or are you passive in the process? Are you going to try to make it happen? Do you call the person, or do you wait for them to call you? Do you suggest, “Let’s meet,” or do you wait for them to suggest? Or do you wait just in the chance that you’ll happen to meet at the same restaurant at the same time? That’s the area where attachment and not being satisfied and so on come up and where usually the most pain comes up because if you are the active one, always suggesting, the other person sometimes says, “No.” So, then you go back: there’s no certainty in samsara. Or if you are the passive one, waiting for the other person to call – they don’t call. So, can we be satisfied just with what we have? 

There’s one image, one exercise, I used to teach, which I haven’t taught in a long time. Imagine our loved one to be like a wild bird that comes to our window. When the wild bird comes to the window, we can we can be very, very happy and enjoy the beauty of the moment when the wild bird is there. But the wild bird is going to fly away. If we try to capture the bird and put it in a cage, it’s going to get frightened and want to fly away even more. If we actually succeed in putting it in a cage, it’s going to be miserable and probably die. So, just enjoy the time when the wild bird is there. And when it goes off… well, we expected that the bird would go off at some point. I find this image to be helpful, but it certainly isn’t easy. 

Participant: There’s also this one – that when there’s a meeting, there’s a parting. So, in the meeting, the parting already is.

Dr. Berzin: Right. This is what’s called subtle impermanence – that the cause for parting is the meeting. If you never met, you would never have parting. So, when we have the meeting, every moment, the parting is getting closer and closer. 

Participant: It’s like when you are born, you have to die.

Dr. Berzin: Right, the cause of death is birth. 

Participant: When you think about it, it makes things easier to accept. It’s just the fact.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Exactly.

Participant: It’s just the fact. If you like it or not, it’s just the fact. So, it’s better to accept it than to go against it. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, it’s the fact, and it’s best to accept that if we meet somebody, it’s going to end; there is going to be a parting. 

The art of it, of course, is to enjoy the time that one has with the person. But as I say, then it gets into the thing of, are you going to be active in the process or passive in the process? Are you going to try to arrange circumstances in which you can continue to meet? Or do you just do nothing and expect that the other person does something? And when you do take the initiative and suggest that you meet and so on, how do you do that without getting hurt when the other person says “no”? They are not going to agree to everything that we ask. Very, very difficult, I must say. Very painful, usually. 

This issue of there being no satisfaction in samsara – this is a topic that we could go more and more deeply into in our thinking. And what are the consequences of actually understanding and accepting that it is true? And how would we integrate that into our lives, and what would that mean to integrate it into our lives? Can we be satisfied with our position at work and not try to advance? Could we be satisfied with the salary we make and not try to get more? 

Expectations

Participant: If you are satisfied with what you have or with what the circumstances are, isn’t the word “satisfaction” kind of misleading? To me, it kind of implies that you have an expectation – that things are meant to be a certain way. So, I just move my expectation, not to a higher salary or whatever but to what I have, and try to have the feeling of satisfaction with that.

Dr. Berzin: So, doesn’t the word “satisfaction” have to do with expectation? If we are satisfied with something, it means it has met our expectation. So, if instead of always having higher and higher expectations, we shift our expectations to what we already have or to what is available. Then we have satisfaction, and it’s not so painful.

Yes, in a sense, it goes back to the line, “What do you expect from samsara?” So, you don’t have high expectations for samsara. But there are two meanings of the word “satisfaction.” One is having the expectation fulfilled, and the other one is having enough of something so that you don’t want more. Now, those two meanings are related to each other, that’s true. But the emotional quality of them is slightly different, I think. 

But if you realize that you can’t get any satisfaction… there is another point that comes to mind. If you realize, when you are looking for a partner, that you are never going to find prince or princess charming on the white horse, then you can be satisfied with whomever it is that you find – or finds you – instead of always looking for somebody better, as if you are going to find somebody who is perfect. There is nobody who’s perfect. There is no perfect job. There is no perfect apartment. 

Participant: Even if you find somebody who is perfect, it’s not sure that they’ll be there forever.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Even if you find somebody who is perfect, there is no certainty. They will change.

Participant: Or they will go away. 

Dr. Berzin: Right, they will go away. They will die, and they will also change. They don’t just exist in a bubble not being influenced by other things.

Participant: Recently, I saw a movie on the internet, and there was a kind of spiritual person in it. He said that the reason why we’re never satisfied is because, actually, we are kind of void. And because we can’t be with it, we have to fill that voidness up with many, many things. We can’t just look at this naked reality and say, “OK, I am empty in this kind of way.’ We are constantly taking things and stuffing the hole with them. So, it’s quite an interesting image.

Dr. Berzin: So, you saw on the internet an example of how it is, if we are void of true existence and empty in that sense, that we can never actually be filled and, therefore, that we can never be satisfied. That’s true, if we think in terms of a solid “me,” that it is like an empty bag, and if we put enough things in it, it will be filled; then, we will be satisfied. That’s a misconception. It’s not that we are an empty bag that could be filled. There is nothing that could be filled. No matter how much we add, there isn’t a thing there that could be filled and could be satisfied. Yes. That’s definitely the deeper way to understand that there is no way that we can ever get satisfaction. 

But the thing to realize – and what we are talking about here – is that samsara has this disadvantage. What is samsara? If you think in terms of a solid “me” – that’s samsara, isn’t it? If we’re thinking in terms of a solid “me,” there can never be security. There is no certainty, and there can never be satisfaction. You could ask the question, “Would you be satisfied when everybody becomes enlightened, when everybody is liberated?” Would you be satisfied? Or as a Buddha, would you then be bored?

Participant: That’s a good question.

Participant: Why start with this difficult question?!

Dr. Berzin: Right. Better to start with a small thing. But the point is, is satisfaction ever possible? I don’t know. 

Participant: I think you just lose it out of focus.

Dr. Berzin: What do you mean “you lose it out of focus”? 

Participant: It’s not on your radar anymore.

Dr. Berzin: What’s not on your radar anymore? 

Participant: Satisfaction.

Dr. Berzin: Right. When you become a Buddha, the issue of satisfaction is no longer an issue; it’s no longer a concern. That’s exactly right. You are not thinking in terms of satisfaction because you are not thinking in terms of a “me” who could be satisfied. So, there is no object that could possibly give satisfaction, and there is no “me” who could possibly be satisfied. 

But we need to think of it on a conventional level as well – that no matter what type of precious human rebirth we have and so on, we will not be satisfied; we will want more. We will want to be with our teacher even more, we will want to go to even more teachings, we will want to have even more friends, love, and even more people looking at my website! Never satisfied. Want to be able to help even more people…

It’s interesting because one of the tantric vows is never to be satisfied with the level of attainment that you have achieved, never to feel that you have done enough meditation on bodhichitta or that you have done enough meditation on voidness such that you don’t have to do anymore. Instead, “I have to go all the way to enlightenment with it.” So, there, not being satisfied has a positive connotation, doesn’t it? 

Participant: I think His Holiness also makes a division between positive and negative desire. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. Correct. His Holiness has made the difference between positive and negative desire… or desire for positive things and desire for negative things, to put it more accurately. 

Participant: I think in the beginning, it is not so difficult because there is always suffering left that you want to get rid of.

Dr. Berzin: So, you are not satisfied with getting rid of just a little bit of suffering.

I don’t know. There are people who think, “Life has its up and down. If it didn’t, it would be boring. So, if we can make it a little better that would be enough.” But it’s true that, once it is a little bit better, you certainly don’t feel that it is enough. You want more. That’s true. 

Anyway, that’s the second aspect: there is no satisfaction.

Having to Lose One’s Body Again and Again; Having to Take Rebirth Again and Again

The third type of suffering is that we have to abandon our bodies again and again (this goes together with the fourth one, which is having to take samsaric rebirth again and again). Now, that is not very nice. Of course, if we have some horrible cancer or our body is really old and decrepit and isn’t working anymore, and it’s just a lot of pain, then, of course, we might be quite happy to finish this lifetime and get a new body. But if we think about how we’ve put in so much effort in this lifetime – let’s say, in a Dharma sense – to learn, to practice, to learn different languages, and all these sorts of things in order to get some sort of basis for being able to make some progress… then we have to die; we have to start all over again. We have to go back to school; we have to go back and learn all the languages and do it again. That’s really boring. That’s a big disadvantage, isn’t it? How boring that is. 

You see that with young people. When you are older and have gone through the whole process of learning and trying to get the teachings and so on – like in my case, when I was younger, it was possible to stay in India for a long time; you could get long-term visas, and they had long-term courses at the library in Dharamsala, and so on – and then you look at the young people… On the one hand, they have more opportunities, but on the other hand, they don’t have the same opportunities. Then you look at the process of them trying to get it together and to learn everything that we’d learned in my generation. So, again and again, it hits home a little bit more strongly what the disadvantages are when you see somebody else, a younger person, going through the whole process of trying to get all the pieces together. 

So, this is what is very unpleasant about samsara. The body falls apart; you die, and you have to start all over again. And you are very fortunate if you have a precious human rebirth; then, at least, you have the basis to be able to start all over again. You might not get another precious human rebirth for ten thousand years. You could be reborn as a cockroach or some sort of fish that gets eaten alive by a larger fish. That is the suffering of having to abandon the body again and again and having to take samsaric rebirth again and again.

Having to Change Status Again and Again

The next one is having to change the status again and again from high to low, up and down. That’s the problem that fits in with the no certainty – that sometimes we are in a better position; sometimes we are in a worse position. Sometimes we feel happy; sometimes we feel unhappy. It just goes up and down, up and down. Sometimes we feel like practicing; sometimes we don’t feel like practicing. Sometimes we feel like meditating; sometimes we don’t feel like meditating. Sometimes we feel like coming to class; sometimes we don’t. Obviously, this is talking more specifically about rebirth, so sometimes we have a better rebirth; sometimes a worse rebirth, like in the examples of the gods falling to hellish rebirths and so on. But I think we can relate to this disadvantage of samsara on a daily level as well. So, that really is unpleasant, isn’t it? 

The point here is that we need to accept that this is the way it is and not get depressed by it, not to have great expectations or great disappointments. This is where perseverance comes in – that no matter what, whether things are going well or not going well (the eight worldly Dharmas come in here as well), whether you are praised or criticized, you just continue. Why do you just continue? That’s based on confidence in the four noble truths – that it is actually possible – and also based on some motivation. Here, the motivation is renunciation. But even stronger would be bodhichitta, realizing everybody has this situation. 

That’s the thing. When we think of the disadvantages of a precious human rebirth and of samsara, it’s not just ourselves that have the experience of these disadvantages: it’s everybody. Everybody has that, which is very helpful to remember when we envy or are jealous of somebody else – “Oh, they have it so good, and I have it so terrible.” They are experiencing the exact same sufferings of old age, sickness, death, no certainty, having to leave the body again and again, being reborn again and again, and never being satisfied. It’s amazing.

I have a friend who has an enormous, enormous house in Salt Lake City. It’s an absolutely huge, unbelievable house. He also has a second house, a weekend house, in San Francisco. He flies there every weekend. That house has a view of San Francisco Bay; it has an indoor swimming pool and the whole bit. But he is not satisfied because that San Francisco weekend house doesn’t have a view of the Golden Gate Bridge; it has a view of the other side of San Francisco Bay. 

Participant: I can understand that, actually!

Participant: I couldn’t deal with it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s too difficult to deal with!

But it’s interesting. It’s very interesting. I mean, he is aware that this is absurd. This is the nice thing. He just remarks that you are never going to be satisfied. He looks at the people who have these unbelievable mansions on the other side of the hill with the other view, and he has the envy; he wishes his house were situated there. So, no satisfaction.

Participant: But sometimes, I find it good to really think whether one really wants to change places with this other person. When one has this sort of envy and thinks this other person is much better off…

Dr. Berzin: Right. Do you really want to change places with the other person?

Participant: When one thinks, “Really, do you want to change?” some doubts come about  the other person’s life being really so much better.

Dr. Berzin: Yes, this is very true. When you look at the other person, wondering, “Would I really like to change places with this person?” and you look more deeply at their life, you find that they have a lot of suffering too. They have the same sufferings. Sometimes, even worse. Or as I said, imagine that you got your wish. “Now I have the house that is facing the Golden Gate Bridge. Now what? Suppose I am then looking at the Golden Gate Bridge twenty-four hours a day for the next twenty years. Then what? Am I going to be happy? I got my wish.” That, I think, is very helpful. Imagine you got your wish – but horribly, like some nightmare level. 

Participant: I actually had kind of a similar situation last night. I was sitting in my room, and everything was cleaner. Everything I ever wanted to clean up, I cleaned up. There was absolutely nothing to do in the evening. I was just sitting there. Then I looked at it, and I said, “I’m not happy.” I have always been looking for this day, looking to be in this kind of cleaned up room. I always thought my suffering came from a not cleaned up room – but it was clean. And then I thought of all these samsaric seeds that are around that will make the whole thing change. Today or next week, all the dust will come down and so on. 

Dr. Berzin: So, you finally got it all clean, and you weren’t happy. Then you had the insight that, of course, it’s going to change as well. The room will get dirty again. Dust will fall. You’ll have to eat, and there will be crumbs and so on. 

Yes, that’s true. When you get what you want, you are not satisfied. It doesn’t actually bring happiness. Then the question is, can you enjoy what you have? Or are you just depressed at everything – “Everything is miserable. Everything is suffering. Everything is worthless”? Or can you enjoy whatever there is? Can you enjoy imperfection? I think it is important to be able to enjoy it. You don’t want to go through all of life being unhappy. 

It’s a little bit like getting older. Excuse me for always using examples from my own experience, but as you get older, you become forgetful of things. Short-term memory gets weaker. When you want to say one word, another word comes out. These sorts of things. The only way to deal with it is to laugh at it, to find it funny. Otherwise, it is just too depressing and frustrating. “I can’t remember why I came into this room, what I came in here to look for” – and you laugh. 

Participant: What if you forget to laugh?

Dr. Berzin: What if you forget to laugh? Well.

Participant: Or you forget that you decided to laugh.

Dr. Berzin: If you forget that you decided to laugh, then you get very frustrated and very annoyed. 

We have to learn to recognize the sufferings of samsara and want to renounce it, want to get over it, so that we don’t become smug, which is the point of this verse. And we work to get discriminating awareness but still not be “bummed out” (as we say in English) by samsara, not to be depressed by it.

Having No Friends

The last of the six disadvantages of samsara in general is that there are no friends. This is a heavy one. There are no friends that you can’t rely… Shantideva said that: “You can’t rely on childish people.” Childish people are always going to let you down. The only secure, lasting friends are actually the Buddhas, in a sense. So, it’s very unfair to place our hopes in other people. Sure, we have friendships, but friendships, as you say, inevitably end. It’s inevitable because each of us is subject to all sorts of karmic ripenings and impulses. The person will never be perfect and will never always be there as our friend. They’ll never always be interested in us and care about what’s happening in our lives and so on. 

Then it becomes an interesting point. What is a friend? What are the limitations of friendship, and what can we expect from friendship? That, of course, is a very difficult issue because we are social beings, and when we are alone, we experience loneliness. So, we need friends. We need company. In fact, from a medical point of view, we need company and this type of thing even just to survive. A baby can’t survive without others taking of it. Same thing with a very old person. So, we need some sort of love and affection and attention. But what can we expect from another person? 

Also, of course, different cultures have different concepts of friendship, and different people within the same culture have different concepts of friendship. It’s very rare that two friends have exactly the same idea of friendship. Even in a marriage, it’s rare that the two people have the same idea of what that commitment means. That is a disadvantage of samsara – that the relations with other people who are also suffering in samsara have limitations and drawbacks. That doesn’t mean that we don’t make friends and don’t have friends. 

This is the horrible thing: you can’t take refuge in your friends. You are feeling very depressed and miserable, so let’s go be with a nice, loving friend – and the friend is busy, or the friend is with somebody else and doesn’t feel like it. That’s really terrible when that happens. We feel rejected – “poor me.” Solid “me” has been rejected by the big, solid bad “you.” And then we get very depressed. 

But we need friends. So, again, it comes down to the same issue we were speaking about in the beginning, which is that you wish for something that will be beneficial and necessary on the path, whether it’s a precious human rebirth or having friends that support and help you, but at the same time, you remember the disadvantages – so, not to cling, not to be attached. Still, you wish for it and enjoy what you have, realizing that it can never satisfy, that there can never be enough, yet still trying to be satisfied with what you have. These are very, very delicate things to balance. 

OK? So, let’s spend a few minutes thinking about all of this. To summarize, the six sufferings of samsara are: there is no certainty; there is never any satisfaction; we have to abandon our bodies again and again; we have to take samsaric rebirth again and again; we have to change status again and again, going from high to low – it always goes up and down; and there really are no friends. 

Again, this whole issue of renunciation is intimately tied with understanding and having confidence in the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths. We are not just talking about samsara is horrible – “I hate it; I want to give it up.” We’re also talking about realizing that, at the same time, there is another possibility: it is possible to get out. The mental continuum goes on forever. So, instead of having it be on the basis of building up and activating karma at the time of death and in each moment – so, having the whole mechanism being driven by the twelve links and dependent arising – we try to get rid of that so that the mechanism is driven by compassion instead. 

When the mechanism of continuing existence is based on all these forces that basically come from ignorance and building up and activating karma, then all these disadvantages of samsara are there. Our existence will constantly go up and down; we’ll have to re-learn everything; there’ll never be satisfaction; there’ll be no friends and no certainty, and like that. Therefore, it’s essential to really, really think about these four noble truths. And is it really possible? What would liberation be like? What would enlightenment be like? We don’t want to give something up and then be left with nothing. That doesn’t work. All these things are inter-related.  

This verse deals with what we have to rid ourselves of in order to really put our energy fully into gaining the understanding of voidness, this discriminating awareness. Alright?

That concludes this verse, the brief account of the essence of the path. Next time, we’ll start the next verses, which are the detailed explanation. They actually start with two verses showing that discriminating awareness is the root of all happiness in samsara and nirvana, and then it gets into the main explanation. 

Participant: When did you receive this teaching, and from which teacher did you get it? 

Dr. Berzin: From Geshe Ngawang Dhargye. I don’t remember the exact year. It was 1973 or something like that.

Participant: At the library?

Dr. Berzin: At the library in Dharamsala. But since then, I have been looking at the various commentaries.