LTF 54: Disadvantages of Samsara; the Sufferings of Human Rebirth

We have been going through this text by the great Indian master, Nagarjuna, which is a letter that he wrote to his friend in India, the great king. First, he has some introductory material, and then he discusses the six far-reaching attitudes, or the six perfections. This is one way of dividing the text; there are many other ways of dividing it. In any case, according to this way of dividing it, we are in the discussion of far-reaching discriminating awareness, or the perfection of wisdom. That can be divided into the three higher trainings: the training in higher ethical discipline, the training in higher concentration, which are necessary preparations in order to follow the third training, the training in higher discriminating awareness.

Within the training in higher discriminating awareness, we can try to get the understanding of voidness, or emptiness, with either (1) the aim of gaining liberation from the disturbing emotions, which is basically the state of liberation, or nirvana, or (2) with the aim of reaching enlightenment. In the discussion of aiming to gain liberation from the disturbing emotions, we talked about (1) overcoming our concern with things of this lifetime and (2) overcoming, or turning our minds from, our main concern being with the whole of samara itself.

We finished last time the discussion of how to turn the mind away from things of this lifetime, which would correspond to the initial scope of lam-rim, the initial scope of motivation. Now we are ready to begin turning the mind from the whole of samsara, which is equivalent to the intermediate scope of lam-rim. And in the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma (which is another way of classifying this material), we have dealt with (1) appreciating the precious human life, (2) thinking about death and impermanence, (3) thinking about the laws of karma (behavioral cause and effect) and taking refuge, and now we are up to (4) turning the mind from samsara, in other words, thinking about the disadvantages of samsara.

So, all this material can be classified and divided in many different ways. Nevertheless, these classification schemes are all referring to exactly the same material; they’re just different ways of dividing it and presenting it.

First, there’s a verse of brief introduction and then a detailed explanation. For the brief introduction, we have verse 65.

Verse 65: Contemplating the Disadvantages of Samsara; the Seven Sufferings of the Human Rebirth

[65] Good sir, develop disgust for recurring samsara, the source of manifold sufferings, (such as) a poverty of (getting) the things that you want, death, sickness, old age, and more. Listen to even just some of its faults.

This refers to the list of seven types of sufferings that are the sufferings of humans. They are usually referred to as the suffering of humans, although I would imagine that many of the other life forms experience them as well. But particularly, in relation to humans, we have the sufferings of birth, the sufferings of sickness, old age, and death, the suffering of being parted from what we like, the suffering of meeting with what we do not like, the suffering of not obtaining the things we like even though we try to find them. This is the standard list of seven.

Tsongkhapa, in his presentation, adds the obtainer tainted aggregates as being of the very nature of suffering. That refers to the all-pervasive suffering of samara – that we have the types of aggregates (body and mind) that are received from ignorance (unawareness of reality). They’re mixed with the unawareness of reality, and they perpetuate more. So, they form the basis for all the other types of suffering here.

But let’s focus on these basic seven. Nagarjuna, in his text here, only mentions four of them: the “poverty of (getting) the things that you want” – so, that’s not obtaining the things we like even though we try to find them. Then, he mentions “death, sickness, old age and more.” “More” refers to the other ones, which would be birth and so on. So, let’s go through these.

[1] The Suffering of Birth

In general, birth in Buddhism, like in the twelve links of dependent arising, refers just to the moment of conception, when the whole thing actually starts. But within the larger context of human life, birth can cover the whole period in the womb and the actual birth outside of the womb.

All of that is something that, in Western romantic thought, we sometimes romanticize or idealize. We have this idea of returning to the comfort, safety and warmth of the womb. But if we actually think of it, we are submerged in water most of time upside down. We are confined in a very small space and can’t move very well. We are always kicking; it’s very cramped. When our mother eats something that is too hot or too cold, we suffer. If the noise is very loud outside – that also can freak us out. If she gets hit in the stomach or that area, it could affect us very badly. If the mother has sexual intercourse, especially in the later phases of the pregnancy – that certainly can’t be very pleasant for the fetus inside getting banged around and so on.

So, the example that’s often used is being locked inside a small space for nine months, not being able to move very well, not being able to get out. And we of course go to the toilet and everything like that in that space. Would we like that or experience that as actually very unpleasant? Actually, if we think about that, that’s not something to look forward to.

Also, the whole process of getting born as a human is likewise not very pleasant. Think about it: we are squeezed or pressed between the mother’s loins, or whatever the technical term for that is, as she is giving birth to us. It’s described as like being squeezed between two mountains. Not at all very pleasant. And when we come out, it’s completely cold compared to being in the womb. It’s very unpleasant, and we cry. Crying is not an indication that we’re very happy, is it? So that would be the suffering of birth.

Why don’t we spend a minute just thinking about each of these. Try to imagine actually experiencing them. Are those things that we would really like to experience? Or are they things that we’re determined to get rid of? In other words, the whole point of this is to develop disgust for this type of uncontrollably recurring situation. Actually, we would be fortunate to have this type of rebirth compared to rebirth in one of the joyless realms and so on where, maybe, we don’t have this particular form of a birth. Nevertheless, wouldn’t it be better to be able to continue on a path, to be in a situation in which we can continue to help others, in which we don’t have to undergo this? That certainly would be far better.

So, the whole point of this is to develop the determination that, although we would like a precious human rebirth as a stepping-stone for being able to work further toward liberation and enlightenment – because it’s the basis that’s most conducive for working to reach liberation and enlightenment – and to help others best, nevertheless, we’re not attached to it. We don’t glorify it. What is attachment or longing desire? Attachment and longing desire are when we exaggerate the good qualities of something or make the bad qualities into good qualities. Then, of course, we’re attached to it.

What is the basic good quality of a human rebirth, a precious human rebirth? It is that it is, as we were explaining the characteristics before, the basis for being able to do spiritual practice. But we also recognize all its down points, all its disadvantages, so we’re not attached to it. And we want to use the precious human rebirth to go beyond precious human rebirths. It’s like in tantra – that we use desire in order to destroy desire, to get rid of it. So, here, we want to use the precious human rebirth in order get rid of this type of rebirth. What we try to develop, then, is a realistic attitude about what is involved with gaining a human rebirth so that we, basically, renounce that. We want to get out of that. OK?

So, we imagine being confined inside a dark womb, upside down, for nine months, not being able to get out. And if we want to extend this, we can think about the suffering of being an infant. That is not very pleasant. We have no control over our bowels, so we’re constantly soiling ourselves, which means that, for a while, we have to walk around with it inside the diaper, all smelly and terrible. If we want anything, all we can do is cry. We don’t understand anything that’s going on. We’re totally dependent on others; we can’t do anything for ourselves. Then, as a child, we have to learn everything again, go to school again, take examinations and worry about our grades, worry about graduating and all these sorts of things. So, let’s have a realistic idea of what is involved and not glorify it.

So, let’s think about the suffering of birth.

[2] The Suffering of Old Age

The next suffering that comes in the list here is old age. Old age… again, in the twelve links of dependent arising, aging starts from the moment right after conception. But normally, when we think of the suffering of old age, we think particularly about becoming an elderly person. And becoming an elderly person is not very nice, I must tell you from experience.

I’m not that terribly old, but being sixty-two, I certainly am experiencing a little bit of what happens. And what happens is that you get tired more quickly, you don’t have the same amount of strength and energy, your hearing gets worse, your sight gets worse. And in general, you get sick much more easily, and you don’t recover so quickly. And as you get older, you tend to forget things. You forget people’s names. You walk into a room and forget what you walked into it for. Some of you are experiencing these things already. And you forget where you left things. Then you have what I often call an “Alzheimer’s moment” in which you spend an hour looking for something, which can be unbelievably frustrating. These are the various things that happen.

You are no longer attractive to the people that you find attractive. You shouldn’t think that an older man finds an overweight older woman sexy. The young people are the ones that they still find sexy – the same as when they were in their twenties. That doesn’t change. But what does change is the fact that people in their twenties look at you and see you like their parent or grandparent, and they don’t find you attractive in the slightest. So, that is very unpleasant. Or very disappointing – put it that way.

It’s hard to actually accept that because we don’t actually see ourselves in the mirror all the time, unless we walk around all the time with a mirror, looking at ourselves. But most of us don’t have a clear concept of what we look like to other people. We still have a self-image of being maybe in our twenties when, in fact, we look like grandma or grandpa. It is difficult to understand how other people are responding to us like grandpa and grandma when we don’t actually view ourselves in that way.

So, these are some of the problems that are involved. And when you really get old, you have a lot of difficulty breathing, usually. You get senile, and you can’t do anything. I’m thinking of my aunt, who is ninety-five. Her sight is quiet poor, so she can’t read anymore. That’s very difficult. She really can’t walk around very much. She has a walker, so going outside and doing the type of things that she liked to do she can’t do. Although she and my uncle, who is ninety-seven, still live in their own house by themselves and take care of themselves, it’s very difficult for her to do anything in the kitchen. Even carrying dishes from the kitchen to the dining room table is difficult for her. That’s very frustrating and very difficult to accept – one’s limitations. One just can’t do the things that one used to do.

You can’t eat what you used to eat; either it doesn’t agree with you or it will make you fat very, very easily. When you were young, you could eat as much cake and chocolate and things as you liked. And when you are older, even just eating what would be considered a normal three meals a day… in my case, I gain weight if I eat three meals a day. So, that is suffering. That is a problem.

Also, as you get really old, a lot of people find it very uncomfortable to be with you, and they don’t want to hang out with you. If you are in an old age home, a nursing home, people feel very uncomfortable going there and visiting you, especially if you are sick. If you are starting to get senile, nobody wants to come see you, so you are very lonely. A lot of older people are extremely lonely and don’t have any human contact. One of the nicest things that one can do for an older person is to just hold their hand – have some sort of human contact – because most people don’t really like to do that with older people. So, you feel very isolated. Very, very unpleasant. You tend to repeat yourself because you forget what you just said, and people don’t have very much patience for that. There’s a whole long list of most unpleasant things that come with old age.

I think the real difficulty is accepting it, accepting the limitations that you have. It’s hard to grow old gracefully, as it were. A lot of people find it very difficult to retire from work. They feel useless. They are no longer needed. They are bored… unless they have a lot of Dharma activities that they can do. But even Dharma activity – you might not remember it. And that’s difficult. Going to teachings might be very difficult.

I have a friend who now finds it very difficult to go to teachings, for instance, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama because it’s too crowded. She walks with canes and a walker, and being in a big crowd, she might get pushed over. It’s very uncomfortable and actually dangerous for her to go into such a crowded situation. She can’t go to India very easily anymore and certainly not to teachings in Dharamsala where you have to sit on the ground. How can you do that as an older person? Especially there, where the people find it fun… Tibetans find it fun to push. They do. They think it’s great fun. That doesn’t make it very easy if you are walking with canes and need some sort of help.

So, one should not think that growing old is a lot of fun. There are certain societies that respect older people.

Participant: There were.

Dr. Berzin: No, there are Asian societies that respect older people, the elders.

Participant: Which ones?

Dr. Berzin: The Chinese.

Participant: Now in China, it’s gone.

Dr. Berzin: You think it’s gone? Maybe, I don’t know. I wonder if that’s gone in Taiwan.

Participant: It’s gone.

Dr. Berzin: In Korea it’s gone? Respect of older people? They’re destroying that?

Participant: No, they respect older people…

Dr. Berzin: In India, they respect older people.

Participant: In China, the older people are very frustrated now.

Dr. Berzin: I see. So, you find that in modern China, the communist values have taken over – that when you are no longer productive to the society, you are considered useless and are not respected. Well, that’s a shame because, certainly, in Confucian culture, traditional Chinese culture, the older person was respected very much.

There is also the image of the old wise woman or old wise man. That is true if you’re not senile. When I think of the real advantages of being my age, it is that I have so much experience; I know how to do things. A young person doesn’t know anything in terms of having the life experience of dealing with all the different possible problems that can come up. They don’t know from experience what works and what doesn’t work. I have all my years of learning behind me, so I can draw from a very great wealth of knowledge. All the languages… I spent so many years learning all these Asian languages. Now I know them. So, you have a foundation upon which you can do very, very productive work.

This is one of the disadvantages of being a child – not having a wealth of knowledge and experience to be able to benefit others. You can’t do anything. What a waste of time. You’re just playing and fooling around. And then you have to learn everything all over again. So, if one has the bodhisattva ideal very strongly within oneself, then sometimes as a young person… I know I had this: I couldn’t wait to grow up. I wasn’t very satisfied being a child. You want to be able to master and learn all these things so that you can actually do something with it. One has to be very patient with cause and effect and just build up further causes for it.

Participant: This is only true for someone who actively works to develop themselves. Most people as they get older…

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, Jorge is pointing out that it depends on what we do with our adult lives. We can build up bitterness and prejudices and become very close-minded and set in our ways as we get older. But I’m talking about someone who is really into Dharma practice. But if that’s the case that someone becomes close-minded and so on – that’s even more suffering of old age. I was talking about a more optimal situation in which one has been practicing Dharma one’s entire lifetime and devoting oneself to helping others.

Even if you’re not practicing the Dharma… Let’s say you’re a doctor. The more years that you are a doctor, the more experience you have. This is certainly the case. For example, a good friend of mine is a brain surgeon now. But he is a young brain surgeon and has a lot to learn. He doesn’t have the experience of doing many operations to know that when this goes wrong, you do this and that, and so on. He has to always ask an older, experienced surgeon what to do. But as you get older and have ten, twenty, thirty years of experience, then you know how to deal with any situation that comes up.

Someone like that, hopefully, wants to continue learning more and more and expanding more and more. And when you can’t do that anymore, it’s very frustrating. Very, very frustrating. Very difficult. I wonder how I personally would deal it if I started to become senile and couldn’t do what I do with the website anymore… and don’t remember. That would be quite, quite awful.

I always have a very good example from my own mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease, when she was still capable of communicating. After a while, she wasn’t able to communicate anymore because she couldn’t connect more than two or three words; it was all nonsense what she was saying. But she went into a nursing home. Already she had a great deal of speech difficulty and couldn’t make any friends. Why couldn’t she make any friends? She couldn’t communicate with anybody because she couldn’t say a whole sentence. She couldn’t even say half a sentence without all sorts of nonsense or disconnected words coming out. But I remember one time that I visited her when she managed to connect a few words. What she said was, “Look what I’ve become. Look what’s happened to me. I’m not really even a human being anymore.” So, it’s awful. That’s certainly not something to look forward to. And we would just hope that somebody would take care of us and not just throw us away in the garbage, as it were.

[3] The Suffering of Sickness

Then there is the suffering of sickness. Well, the suffering of sickness is not very nice. At the moment, I’m getting over a cold. Even with just a simple cold, you’re sneezing all the time, you’re coughing, you feel tired, you feel weak, your eyes are watering. What in the world can you do? Even when you try to do something, you’re not very efficient at doing it. You just don’t feel like doing anything. And that’s just with a simple cold.

What happens when you’re really sick? Let’s say you’re HIV positive or you have cancer. Not fun. Not fun at all. You have to have chemotherapy and radiation, and your hair falls out and you feel nauseous all the time, and everybody looks at you as if you are already dead. That’s awful. Absolutely awful. If you’re HIV positive, nobody wants to have anything to do with you in many cases. They certainly don’t want to get really close to you because they are afraid you will infect them. So, how would you feel about yourself if you were in that situation? Really, really awful.

Sickness is something that is inevitable. And it’s not just sickness. How about tooth problems? We all experience them. Not very pleasant. Root canals and all these sorts of things are not pleasant at all. All of that is part of the package of a human rebirth, isn’t it?

Now, it’s not mentioned here, but if we think in terms of aging from the point of view of the twelve links of dependent arising – aging, there, starts the second moment after conception, the second moment of our lives – we can, I think, include within that all the sufferings within a lifetime. So, that’s probably where having to go to school and the whole teenage trip of being accepted by others, finding a girlfriend or a boyfriend, worrying about what you look like, and all that sort of stuff…

Participant: Being susceptible to peer pressure.

Dr. Berzin: Being susceptible to peer pressure, which may be, in fact, very stupid, but it’s something that we’re very influenced by. That’s not very nice at all. Then, finally, going to school – you have to learn everything all over again, the examination systems, getting into the right school, getting the proper education (if you really want to be able to do something). Then there’s finding work, finding something that you like, something that’s challenging and, then, all the difficulties – if you’re planning to get married – of finding the right person. If you’re going to have children, then there are all the difficulties involved with raising them – like when your children are sick, when your children don’t turn out the way that you would like them to. These are very difficult. Very difficult to deal with. Also dealing with difficult people at work, the neighbors, these sort of things – not so nice.

[4] The Suffering of Death

Then we have death. A lot of people are terribly frightened of death. You could die in pain. You could die in complete confusion. Just the fact that you have to die and that you never know when causes, for many people, a great amount of suffering. You have to leave everything, and you don’t know what’s going to come next. The next rebirth could be quite awful. There’s no way of telling.

So, that, again, is a great deal of suffering, even if you believe in reincarnation, even if you have practiced a lot of Dharma for the time of death. You could be worried, “Will I be able to remember it when I am actually dying? Will I not freak out? Will I be able to really maintain a calm state of mind and die with the appropriate, proper thoughts?” You might not. That’s why His Holiness the Dalai Lama, very surprisingly, said that all these incredibly complicated tantric practices for what you do at the time of death are actually not the best thing to do at the time of death unless you are a super, super practitioner. He said that you are going to be too worried and too concerned – “Am I going to get it right, and will I remember everything and do it properly.” And because you would be so preoccupied with all the details of it – because it’s so complicated – you might die in a very frustrated state of mind, which would not be very good at all. Therefore, it’s better to die with bodhichitta in one’s mind. It’s much easier, less confusing, and much safer. Then everything else would be included from having practiced it your life. That was His Holiness’s advice, which I think is incredibly helpful. Very, very helpful. So that’s the suffering of death.

[5] The Suffering of Being Parted from What We Like

Then we have being parted from what you like. Well, what do I like? I like my friends. Can you be with them all the time? No. One is parted from them, parted from whatever it is that you like. You can’t have it forever. People move on. Situations change, like being young and healthy – we are parted from that. Simple things – friends and lovers die or leave us, or they move, or we lose our jobs. So many things like that happen in our lives. That’s part of it, isn’t it? Part of the whole human trip. Parted from what we like.

[6] The Suffering of Meeting with What We Don’t Like

Then we meet with what we don’t like. What is it that we don’t like? Sickness, old age, death – that’s for sure. What else don’t we like? Noisy neighbors, people who don’t like us, people who bother us, our computer not working… all of the computer problems that we face these days. We meet so many things that we don’t like. I just met with coughing; I have a little bit of a cold. Then my voice goes. That’s certainly meeting with something that I do not like, something that I would like not to happen. Regardless of my not wanting it happen, my not liking it to happen, it happens. Doesn’t it? What can you do? Learn to live with it? That’s true. But that’s not the ultimate solution – to just learn to live with the difficulties of life. What one wants to do is learn to live with it, yes, but without getting depressed, and to just accept it. OK, I banged my foot, and now it hurts. Well, what did I expect? It’s winter, and now it’s cold. What did I expect? Its summer, and now it’s hot. Again, hello! That’s what happens in the summer: it’s hot. All these things happen with a human rebirth, and it’s important to remember that and not idealize it.

[7] The Suffering of Not Obtaining the Things We Like

So, we meet with what we don’t like, and we don’t obtain the things we like even though we try to find them. How many times do you see a very attractive person and would like to do all sorts of things with them or have some sort of relationship with them, but that person is not interested in the slightest? We don’t obtain what we would like, even though we try to get it. I’m sure that’s happened to most of us many times. I’d like to get a lot of money, but I don’t get it. I’d like to get a better a job, but I don’t get it. I’d like to get a better grade in my examination, but I don’t get it. I’d like to lose more weight, but it doesn’t happen. I don’t get it. So many examples of that, aren’t there? This is part of the frustration of this precious human rebirth.

These are the seven main types of suffering of a human rebirth: birth, old age, sickness, death, being parted from what we like, meeting with what we don’t like and not obtaining the things that we like even though we try to find them.

Discussion

Wanting a Precious Human Rebirth and Wanting to Be Liberated from Rebirth Altogether – How Do We Put Those Two Motivations Together on an Emotional Level?

Now, what’s really difficult here and very delicate is that, on the one hand, we want a precious human rebirth, and on the other hand, we want to renounce samsara, to renounce the precious human rebirth. So, how do we put those together? That’s the real delicate point here. We want to get free from samsara, free from rebirth; nevertheless, we want a precious human life in order to be able to get out of samsara. How do we do that on an emotional level? Any ideas?

Dirk?

Participant: Using it as a stepping-stone.

Dr. Berzin: Using it as a stepping-stone – the precious human rebirth as a further step. Yes. How do you do that in meditation? And what emotions come up? That’s the theory – that yes, I know what I would like a precious human rebirth for. But how do you actually do it? What do you feel?

Participant: [Inaudible]

Dr. Berzin: OK. So, we can take it a step further, beyond the initial and intermediate scopes of lam-rim motivation, and go to the advanced scope and say, “I recognize the sufferings of a human rebirth, but I take it on in order to benefit others so that I can really help others.” Would you feel that?

Participant: Not easy.

Dr. Berzin: Not easy. Not easy at all.

Participant: [Inaudible]

Dr. Berzin: Dirk says to be grateful for what we have (that’s appreciating the precious human life) and to look forward to enlightenment. But that’s not so easy. The point here is, of course, to take advantage of and appreciate what we have now so that we use it. But what about in the future? What are your prayers for?

Participant: If I cannot go out of samsara in this life, if I don’t have a choice to go out, do I need to realize emptiness to gain a precious human rebirth

Dr. Berzin: So, what Jan suggests is that we think in terms of “May I be able to gain liberation. But if I don’t gain liberation (and not just liberation but also enlightenment; those are two quite separate things), may I at least get a precious human life because within garbage, I at least want the most useful garbage.”

That is OK, but I’m dealing here with the issue of attachment. This is why I’m bringing this up. I think that, on a practical level, when we are actually trying to do this in our daily practice and to feel something sincerely, that, usually, what is there – that is, if we actually think of rebirth and actually believe in it and actually get to that initial scope, which is very difficult to actually feel sincerely on an emotional level – is, “I want a precious human rebirth. I want to be able to continue. I don’t want to go down; I don’t want to have some horrible rebirth. And I want all the conditions that will enable me to continue on the path, to meet with the Dharma really easily and quickly, to have all the support to be able to get the best education with the best teachers, to have Dharma friends and Dharma teachers.”

But what about attachment to all of that? Attachment comes together with all of that. “I’m really attached to that” is what usually comes up, if we look at ourselves honestly. “I would really like to be with my same teachers, even if they are in a different rebirth. And I’d like to be with my same Dharma friends, even if we are all in different rebirths.” So, attachment is there. That’s why I’m asking: how do you work on this on an emotional level?

Here, what I think is necessary is to follow what Atisha first outlined, which is the graded path, lam-rim. You first develop this, and then you qualify it with renunciation – so, step-by-step. First, you develop this thing really sincerely, that “I would like to have a precious human rebirth in all my lifetimes until I attain liberation and enlightenment”… well, liberation. After liberation, you wouldn’t have a samsaric type of birth, depending on which tenet system you accept. Some tenet systems say that, in Mahayana, you achieve liberation and enlightenment at the same time. That’s Svatantrika. In Prasangika, you achieve liberation first and then enlightenment. But whatever it turns out to be – how do I know? – I certainly would like a precious human rebirth all the way until then. But when you actually can feel that, you want to qualify it by thinking of all the disadvantages that come along with such a rebirth. And countering the attachment would be there.

When we talk about renunciation, the emotion that is associated with renunciation… the Tibetan word means “disgust.” We’re disgusted with all this suffering, with how boring it is. It goes up and down – happiness, unhappiness. It’s always unsatisfactory – that will come next with the general suffering of samsara. But these things of birth, and having to get an education again, having to go to school again, having to get sick, having to get old and die, and then having to start all over again and worry about whether I’m going to make all the proper connections and so on… I’m still a samsaric creature. So, there is going to be attachment, there’s going to be anger, and I’m not going to get what I want, and… uhh! How disgusting! Boring! Really boring.

It’s like, how you give up addiction to marijuana is by eventually being bored with it. It’s always the same: you get stoned, and you have all the sense pleasures, and you eat a lot, and you dance, and you listen to music, and your mind travels all over the place, and then you fall asleep. It’s over and over and over and over again. It’s always the same. How boring! Isn’t there something else than this? So, same thing with samsara. How boring.

Now, here’s the difficulty – how do you put disgust together with wanting something really strongly? “I want the precious human rebirth really strongly, really sincerely, but I’m disgusted with that as well.” Now, you can do it step-by-step, but eventually, you want to be able to put that together. That, I think, is the difficult part emotionally.

Participant: Or you could compare it with medicine or something. You take it and really want it because you know it’s necessary. But at the same time, you know it won’t make you feel very good.

Dr. Berzin: So, he’s saying that it’s like taking a medicine that might not be so pleasant, but you take it because it’ll make you feel better. It would be like “I’m taking the medicine, and it’s going to have serious side effects, negative side effects. But I want to take it because I will get over the sickness.” That’s one way of looking at it, yes. “I want to take this medicine. It’s going to make me sleepy. It may make me a bit dizzy or nauseous or whatever, but it’ll cure me.” Yes, that would be one way of looking at it. Doesn’t it diminish a little bit, though, the enthusiasm for getting a precious human rebirth? “Well, I’ll take it, but – uhh! – there’s all this suffering.”

Participant: It makes it realistic.

Dr. Berzin: When it makes it realistic, what emotion are you left with? Instead of attachment to the precious human rebirth and longing for it, you are left with disgust for samsara. That’s not a very pleasant type of emotion to be left with. Therefore, what really helps very much is the Mahayana: “Well, I’m disgusted with it, but I really want to help everybody out of love and compassion. I want to gain enlightenment, not just a precious human rebirth and let’s skip liberation because then you’re still left with the attachment.”

Cultivating All Three Levels of Motivation in the Proper Order

First, you long for the precious human rebirth. Then you’re disgusted with the sufferings of samsara – uhh! But then you’re willing to put up with all that because now your major feeling is love and compassion and bodhichitta. These are the three stages. The real art is putting these three motivations together – emotionally. Putting them together intellectually is not so difficult.

And it’s not just love and compassion that we need. That’s a big mistake. Love and compassion have to be together with the initial and intermediate levels of motivation. There has to be a combination of all three: (1) wanting that precious human rebirth; (2) being disgusted with samsara – no attachment and stuff like that; (3) wanting to be able to benefit everybody. You put those together on a sincere emotional level. Good luck.

The only way that you can really do that is, again (it’s brilliant), the lam-rim, the graded stages. You have to really train yourself and also expect that it’s going to take a very long time before you feel these motivations on a sincere emotional level. And they need to be in the proper order; otherwise, the foundation isn’t there, and it will get confused into something else.

Participant: Did you ever hear Serkong Rinpoche, as a tulku, say how he feels about all of this emotionally?

Serkong Rinpoche

Dr. Berzin: Well, the difficulty is there is no word for “emotional” or “emotion” in Tibetan. That’s the problem. So, how do you even ask?

Participant: How does he talk about this?

Dr. Berzin: I don’t know because, first of all, a tulku… he totally believes in that. There are some tulkus who really question. A tulku is a reincarnate lama, somebody who is recognized as a small child as being the reincarnation of a great lama who has died. My own teacher Serkong Rinpoche died. I was very close with him. I was basically with him for nine years as his close student, secretary and translator, and I traveled with him and so on. He died. Later this month, his reincarnation will be twenty-three. I am extremely close to him. I have been very close to him since he was four, when he was basically recognized.

So, what does he feel? Well, he is totally convinced about this whole tulku thing. His Holiness indicated where to find him. But from his side, as soon as he could speak, he’d point to the picture of the old one and say, “That’s me.” So, he had no doubts about that.

I spent a month traveling around the United States with him when he was twenty, and we watched some old videos and recordings of the old one. At one point, he turned to me and said, “Oh, I remember that.” So, he still had some memories of the thing. So, the precious human rebirth has a whole different meaning if you are in a line of tulkus. That’s taken for granted. And wanting to continue a line of tulkus is of course there, present with him, as part of being a tulku. A line of tulkus is based on having that wish.

Renunciation and compassion? Renunciation…

Participant: Not all tulkus have renunciation.

Dr. Berzin: Not all tulkus have renunciation. He does like computer stuff. He does like cameras, video cameras, and these sorts of things. He can turn it off if the main attendant says, “cool it,” basically. He can turn it off, absolutely, a hundred percent. Whether he does that just out of the discipline of listening to his attendant or he really realizes that it is distracting him from his studies, I don’t know. He shows no indication – nor has he spoken about it – of wanting the whole sexual, find-a-partner trip. No way from his side. And he is very critical of that aspect – that monks might disrobe and do that. He’s totally not into that. He’s very humble. He’s not into getting a big position and stuff like that. And compassion is certainly there.

That whole trip around America that we took… somebody had invited him to go on a tour of America, to take a holiday from his studies. I went with him. We spent one month traveling all over America, visiting Disneyland, Sea World, the Statue of Liberty, Hollywood and the whole bit. At the end, what he liked the most of the whole trip was the holocaust museum in Washington – seeing all the exhibits about the tortures, the concentration camps and things like that. He thought that was the best thing of the whole trip because he said that it really reminded him and moved his heart very much about love and compassion. This he said to me. Everything else about America – nothing special, no big deal, even though, when he was in Disneyland, he certainly appeared to enjoy it. Whether I enjoyed it or not is another question. But I went along.

In many ways, his was a much healthier attitude. While he was there, he enjoyed it And OK, I enjoyed it to a certain level, but he certainly enjoyed it more than I did. I mean, also, he was twenty years old. But he wasn’t in the slightest attached it, and in the end, he said, “Well, there’s nothing special about it – no big deal.” That, I think, is a healthier attitude toward samsaric existence. You enjoy what’s there to enjoy without being attached to it, without exaggerating its good qualities. To spend all your time having the attitude that “Everywhere you go, its suffering. And how terrible and awful”– that’s sort of like…

Participant: Like you need to say something deep and meaningful every moment.

Dr. Berzin: Right, let’s say something deep and meaningful every moment. No, not like that. Not like that.

It was interesting. Serkong Rinpoche was just at this science conference with His Holiness in Dharamsala. When he was in America, we had arranged to have private lessons for him from various big scientist friends of mine and some other people who had invited him. He was not interested. He showed no interest in that except for wanting to know how a video camera worked. But aside from that, he showed no interest and wanted to watch kung fu movies, which was what he was interested in.

So, I asked him about the science conference when he came back last week. He said that that he found very interesting. I said, “But you didn’t find it interesting in America.” He said, “Oh, but I was on holiday when I was in America. That wasn’t the time to study science. In my many years of study, that was my one month of holiday.” So, I thought that was a brilliant answer. It wasn’t that he was not interested; it was that this was his holiday time, his time to watch as many kung fu movies as he wanted to – which all Tibetans love.

Why do they love kung fu movies? He told me. I asked him, “Why do you like these kung fu movies? They’re so violent. There’s so much killing and blood and so on.” He said, “What are the alternatives?” Western movies or Chinese movies or any other kind of movies are either some kind of love-sex story, which is inappropriate for monks (he really identifies with being a monk) or some deep and meaningful, emotional Western movie that, as a Tibetan, he can’t understand, can’t understand what they are talking about. He can’t follow it. So, that just leaves kung fu movies. So, that’s what they like. Which I thought was very interesting because every Tibetan monk that I have ever known loves them… and they’re so violent. One thinks of them wanting to watch Disney, Bambi and these sort of things, which is not at all the case.

So that completes this verse in which Nagarjuna outlines the seven sufferings of the human state: