We are studying this very great text by the Indian author, Nagarjuna, which is one of the earliest summaries of the Mahayana path. It’s the forerunner of the lam-rims, the graded stages of the path, that the Tibetans developed on the basis of Atisha’s work. So, we find in here all the various teachings and explanations that are incorporated in the graded stages of the path. In other words, it covers the major points of the sutra teachings.
We saw that there are many ways to organize the text into an outline, but one particular outline that we’re following organizes it into, first, a preliminary discussion of the essentials of the path and, then, a more detailed discussion of the six far-reaching attitudes, or the six perfections. We are in the discussion of far-reaching discriminating awareness, or the perfection of wisdom. Without going into all the different subsections of it, it is basically divided into a presentation of the three higher trainings that we need in order to develop the discriminating awareness of voidness: the higher training in ethical discipline, the higher training in concentration, and then the higher training in discriminating awareness itself.
Within that discussion, there is a division between how to gain liberation and then how to gain enlightenment. To attain either of these, we need the same understanding of voidness. Then, within the discussion of gaining liberation, we have (1) how to turn our minds from the things of this lifetime and (2) how to turn our minds from the whole of samsara – in other words, the two levels of renunciation that Tsongkhapa presents in his Three Principal Aspects of the Path.
Turning our minds from being interested just in this lifetime correspond to the initial scope of motivations in lam-rim – aiming to improve our future lives. We have covered that section. In it, we found the presentation of death and impermanence and the precious human life and wanting to take advantage of that. Within the discussion of the enrichments, or opportunities, that we have, we had the discussion of relying on the spiritual teacher.
Now we are in the discussion of how to turn our minds from the whole of samara, which corresponds to the intermediate level of motivation in lam-rim – developing renunciation for samara in general. For that, we need to look at all the different types of suffering and develop complete disgust for that – that we’ve had enough; we don’t want to continue to generate this for ourselves. So, we not only turn our minds away from wanting to get better rebirths, we also turn our minds away from samsara altogether – to get liberation from that.
We discussed last time the problem that is involved with that, which is that, despite the fact that we want to gain liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth, we still want to have precious human rebirths in every lifetime until we gain liberation. We discussed how that sometimes can present a little bit of a conflict in terms of what are we aiming for, especially on an emotional level, because it’s quite easy to get attached to a precious human rebirth, to always having precious human rebirth and all the opportunities and the relations with the spiritual teachers and so on. However, that doesn’t need to conflict with the aim of gaining liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth.
So, we discussed that last time. And that is part of the initial section here, which speaks about the sufferings of humans. That’s verse 65:
[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.
Now we are on the larger discussion, here, the main discussion, which speaks about the six different types of sufferings of samsara in general. This, again, is a topic that is presented in the basic lam-rim teachings, the graded path teachings. We find that the great Tibetan texts are always quoting the verses from Nagarjuna that come next. These are the source – the way that Nagarjuna formulated it to his friend the king in this letter.
The Six General Sufferings of Samsara
The six sufferings of samsara in general (just to list them) are:
- Having no certainty of status
- Having no satisfaction
- Having to fit into new rebirths repeatedly
- Having to change status repeatedly from exalted to humble
- Having no friends
- Having to forsake your body repeatedly
We’ll discuss each of them. There are one or more verses for each of these points.
These are things that we really need to reflect on and take to heart because, as difficult as it is to develop sincere interest in future lives, to take that seriously and to actually do something to ensure that we will continue to have precious human rebirths, it’s much more difficult to think in terms of liberation – and even more difficult to think in terms of bodhichitta if we take all this on a serious level and look at feeling this on an emotional level sincerely. In other words, it’s not simply that we want to overcome the various ups and downs and problems and difficulties that we experience in this life; we want to overcome rebirth altogether, which obviously depends on having confident belief that there is such a thing as rebirth.
Anyway, let’s start with the first suffering here, in verse 66. This is the suffering of having no certainty of status that others are going to have in relation to us.
Verse 66: The Suffering of Having No Certainty of Status
[66] Since a father (can be reborn) with the status of a son; a mother, with the status of a wife; those who have been enemies, with the status of friends; and the reverse situation can occur (as well), because of that, there’s no certainty at all in samsaric states.
As I said, this is a verse that appears in almost every lam-rim that we come across. There are many stories, of course, that go together with this. I forget if it was Buddha or one of the arhats who told of coming across a situation of a family and seeing that the son had been the father in the previous lifetime, that the mother of the previous lifetime was the fish that the husband was eating, and all this sort of thing.
This is very true. In terms of rebirth and the connections that we have with others, then, naturally, although everybody has been our mother, everybody has also been our enemy, has been our son and our daughter, our husband and our wife, and everything like that. That status changes all the time. Sometimes we are the older one; sometimes the other person is the older one. If we think in terms of infinite time, then, naturally, everybody, at some point, has been in all these different types of relationships with us. Sometimes we have closer karmic connections with others, so we come close together in more than one lifetime.
I think, just simply, of the example of myself with the Serkong Rinpoche line. There was the old Serkong Rinpoche. I was his student. I was much, much younger than he was. I translated for him and was his secretary and helped him in many ways. And he taught me and helped me in many ways. Now, the situation is reversed in terms of age because the young one is nearly twenty-three, and I am much older than he is. So, the situation and the dynamics of the relationship are very different. I still respect him as teacher, and I hope to be able to learn from him. I’m hoping that, in my next lifetime, I will be able to really study with him – unless I live very, very long and he becomes a great teacher very soon. But the longer I live, the more my role with him has the flavor or tone of a fatherly situation, whereas the previous Serkong Rinpoche had more of a fatherly role toward me. So that, at least, from my own personal experience, is quite clear. In that situation, we’re both very close and very warm, friendly and loving toward each other.
But it can also be that the situation changes in gender. Sometimes the two people are the same gender; sometimes they are different genders. Sometimes there are sexual aspects that are there; sometimes they are not be there. Not only that, but the situation in terms of being friendly or unfriendly can also be there. That’s one of the major points that is emphasized in equanimity meditations if we’re thinking in terms of previous lives – that those that we are most attracted to or most loving with could have hurt us very much in a previous life and could hurt us again later in this lifetime.
In fact, those that we are the most attached to are the ones that hurt us the most if they ignore us, if they reject us, if they don’t pay enough attention to us, if they say something a little bit cruel. They hurt us much more than somebody who is a total stranger saying something like that to us. In that sense, someone that we are very close to can become an enemy. Certainly, we see that with divorces. Similarly, someone that we didn’t like can become someone that we do like. A stranger could become a good friend. Every friend that we have started out as a stranger. Also, we can lose contact with people. Somebody that we were very friendly with as a child could be a complete stranger to us as an adult. You might not even recognize them, which is often the case. So, like that, there’s no certainty of status with others.
This is a point that is going to come back again and again – that you can’t really depend on others. You can’t depend on the fact that they’re always going to be your friend, that they’re always going to be your loved one. That’s not an easy thing to accept, especially when there is strong emotion involved there, whether on the positive side of attachment or the negative side of dislike and hostility. I think it was Shantideva (if I remember correctly) who said that you’re born alone, and you die alone. So, you only have your own mental continuum to depend upon in terms of the positive or negative forces that you’ve built up, the positive or negative habits that you’ve built up, you know, engaging in constructive actions as taught in the Dharma and building up positive force. That’s the only thing that you can really rely on. And that will be repeated over and over again in this section concerning the various types of sufferings of samsara.
OK. So, that’s this verse. Any comments or questions or observations about that from your own experience? Surely, we’ve all experienced that, at least within this lifetime – that we part from friends. We feel very close to somebody at some point, but later on, it changes, doesn’t it? It can. There can be someone that you didn’t really get along with or didn’t really know, but after a while, you learn to appreciate them, and you become good friends. Relationships between people change. It may not be that the father becomes the son – though it’s hard to really know what’s going on with that.
OK. Do you want to reflect on this for a minute or two? Let’s do that.
In What Ways Does No Certainty of Status Affect Us?
Now, the point here is not just to accept the fact that the status of others in relation to us is going to change and that there’s no certainty to that. The point is what follows from that on an emotional level and what kind of effect it has on our engagement in the spiritual path. What follows from that? Anybody?
Participant: There’s nothing to rely upon.
Dr. Berzin: Well, yes, there’s nothing to rely on – therefore, not being so attached. And you develop disgust. Disgust means you’re completely tired and bored with depending on others, depending on the situation with others as being stable and as something that’s going to give us security and bring us happiness ultimately. So, it lessens our attachment. It certainly lessens our expectations.
When we have the false expectations that somebody will always be our best friend, that we’ll always be together in all our lifetimes and will go hand in hand into enlightenment, and then a year later or something, they become involved with something else or fall in love with somebody who is not interested in the spiritual path and they go off or whatever, then we are very, very unhappy. So, this is the point: why are we always projecting these expectations on others in these relationships, even marriage relationships? We want to overcome that, to get out of that.
Now, when you think in terms of liberation from samsaric rebirth – that’s a very radical getting out of that, isn’t it? As an arhat or a Buddha, life is very, very different. Very different. You have a body made of light, and you’re emanating all over the place. You’re not with family and close friends, sitting around and having a good time. It’s very different.
That’s really the issue here – how seriously we take that. I think that most of us certainly don’t take it seriously – aiming for liberation and enlightenment. We don’t really have an idea of what in the world that actually means! Even if we knew what it meant, would we actually want that? No, most of us don’t. We want to be with our loved ones, with our friends, with our partners in all our lifetimes, and with the gurus and, you know, precious human life – if we’re thinking in terms of future lives.
So, it’s a really radical step to go from the initial scope to the intermediate scope in lam-rim. It’s also a very radical step to go from just regular, no scope to the initial scope. But I think it’s a more radical step to go to the intermediate scope and even far more radical to go to the advanced scope – actually, really wanting to help every single being in the universe. That’s unbelievable. Inconceivable. It’s important not to trivialize any of these goals and the level of mind that is implied here.
Now, of course, we can do a more Dharma-lite version of this. And that is beneficial, of course. “Yes, I want to get rid of all problems in this lifetime. And yes, I know I shouldn’t be so dependent on others and have expectations.” That can help us tremendously in this lifetime, but that’s not the full thing. That’s not the full thing. But at least, we would try to have the Dharma-lite version of this, which would be to get absolutely disgusted with the fact that we project the expectation on others that our relationships with them will stay the same – because the status, the relationships, will definitely change.
Questions
What Will the Buddhist Teachings and the Mahayana Path Be Like Eons from Now?
Participant: Maybe it’s a strange question, but I was just wondering: you talk about eons and eons, and hopefully we will be reborn in a human form and probably also on another planet or maybe in another universe. So, this whole Mahayana path, will it somehow manifest in the future in the same way as we experience it these days – like with the monks in red-colored robes and all this kind of stuff? Do the texts say anything about this?
Dr. Berzin: So, Karsten has an interesting question. If we are thinking in terms of endless time and how it’s going to take three zillion eons of building up positive force to reach enlightenment… well, what will the situation of Buddhism and the Buddhist teachings be like during that vast period of time when we will be reborn in various other universes, hopefully as some sort of humanoid species and able to practice the Dharma and so on? Well…
Participant: Excuse me. One question. Why do we reject all the other species? Human species are very good, but I wouldn’t mind being a giraffe or a monkey. I would really like to be like that.
Dr. Berzin: Right. OK. So, there’s a side question here as to why we emphasize humans.
Participant: It seems very possessive to want to be what we are if we want to be liberated from it. Don’t you think so?
Dr. Berzin: Well, she says, “Shouldn’t we be liberated from that?” In a sense, you are right, but in a very different sense. Yes, we need to be liberated from our attachment to the human form. And as Buddhas, we would be able to manifest in any form in order to benefit others. That’s very true. However, before that, while we are still under the influence of disturbing emotions and so on, if we are born as a giraffe or a monkey, there is very little spiritual practice that we could do in that type of life form – especially if we are born as, let’s say, a cat that is constantly catching and torturing and killing mice and these sorts of things or we are born as some sort of insect that’s caught and eaten alive by another insect. There is very little that we’d be able to do in that lifetime that would help us to go further on the spiritual path. And not only that, there is very little we could do to benefit others. For that reason, the precious human rebirth with all the opportunities and freedoms that we have of not being in these worst states is the most beneficial for going further and being able to actually help others. But you are right that, ultimately, we have to renounce, as well, the precious human rebirth and the human form. That’s part of this whole thing of the renunciation of samsara.
But to get back to Karston’s question, there are a thousand Buddhas that are predicted to come in this particular eon. But we’re talking about zillions of eons, and there are many eons in which no Buddhas come. Now, one has to qualify that – that maybe no Buddhas come to this particular universe. One would have to say that Buddhas will come somewhere because there are countless universes. But each of the Buddhas will teach differently. There’s only a certain number of Buddhas that are predicted to teach tantra in this thousand eons, for example. So, the methods will be slightly different.
Will they all teach the four noble truths? Probably they will. I haven’t heard anything specific about what Maitreya Buddha will actually teach. I don’t really know. There are the texts by Maitreya that Maitreya revealed that include the most famous commentary on the Prajnaparamita Sutras, Abhisamaya-alamkara, (the Ornament or Filigree of Realizations). So, obviously he teaches about voidness. Buddha-nature is in another text that’s by Maitreya, Uttaratantra. So, there’s some indication. But the methods would be slightly different because they would need to suit the times and the disposition of the beings that the Buddhas teach.
Maitreya, if I remember correctly, comes when the human lifespan is much, much longer than it is now, which will be sometime way, way in the distant future. Whether it’ll be on this planet or some other planet is not so clear. So, again, it’s important not be so attached to the form of some particular ritual or something like that but, instead, always to go to with what the essence of Buddhist teachings is. And the essence is always the four noble truths – recognizing what really is the suffering situation of samsara, what really is the cause, what really would be a situation of being free of it, and what really will lead to that and, also, what type of motivations are involved, what type of understanding and insights are involved in being able to get that type of freedom. These are the basic points. It’s not when, in a ritual, you ring a bell and how many water bowls you set up, how many candles and these sorts of things. All of that is very, very secondary.
Why Is It Said That Future Buddhas Will Attain Enlightenment in Bodh Gaya and Teach in Sanskrit?
Participant: Is it meant literally that the future Buddhas will gain enlightenment in Bodh Gaya and that they will teach in Sanskrit? I mean, it’s written in the texts but it’s…
Dr. Berzin: Right. Well, first of all, the texts don’t use the words “Bodh Gaya.” It’s Dorje Den. Dorje Den is the “Seat of the Vajra,” literally – Vajrasana. “Vajrasana,” that also could translate as the “vajra posture.” So, the deeper meaning of achieving enlightenment in Dorje Den (Vajrasana) has to do with achieving enlightenment through highest anuttarayoga practices. Even on the sutra path, it says that to go from the tenth bhumi to enlightenment, you have to get to the subtlest level of mind in order to get rid of the final traces of the cognitive obscurations, the ones preventing omniscience. So, at that point, you have to engage in the path dealing with the winds and energies, and that’s represented by the term “vajrasana,” the “vajra posture” or the “vajra position.” So, that’s how we understand that. It’s not that literally in Bodh Gaya, India, is where everybody is going to achieve enlightenment. Bodh Gaya just represents the place, in a sense.
Will they teach in Sanskrit? That’s a difficult question. A very difficult question, actually. Sanskrit is the holy language of India. It’s considered so sacred, basically, because of the Vedas, which were not written in classical Sanskrit but were written in Vedic, which is an even older language and significantly different from classical Sanskrit, just as Hindi is different from classical Sanskrit.
So, what actually does that mean? I’ve never heard a clear explanation of that. I would tend to think that (these are just my own ideas) when it talks about the Arya Land… India is called the “Arya Land,” the land of the Aryas. Well, that could be taken to mean the land of the Aryans who were the Indo-Iranian people that invaded India. They are called Aryans – so, the Arya Land. Or it could be taken literally to mean the Aryas, those who have nonconceptual cognition of voidness and the sixteen noble truths. Literally, “Sanskrit” means “the ornamented language” because it is very flowery, has a very elaborate grammar and is very, very poetical. So, literally, the word “Sanskrit” means “adorned language,” and the Tibetans call it Legjarkay (legs-sbyar skad) – so, “well put together,” a “well-fashioned” language. But it is the language of the Arya land, so it is the Arya language.
So, what is language? Language is communication with the winds, with the breath. So, I would think that one could (again, this is just purely my own idea) understand that the Buddhas would all teach in Sanskrit, although I’ve never seen a place where it says they will all teach in Sanskrit. But if we were to say that, then we’d have to say that, yes, they teach in the tantra method of shaping the winds – according to the tantra explanation that language is a shaping of the subtle winds to be able to communicate. That is actually what Sambhogakaya is according to anuttarayoga tantra. Sambhogakaya is the subtle form that the Buddha uses to teach aryas. So, that’s just one explanation off the top of my head of how we could understand that.
What Role Does Ritual Play in Buddhism?
Participant: What is the role of rituals in the Buddhist teachings?
Dr. Berzin: That is a very good question because there are many different cultural adaptations of Buddhism in all the different societies that it traveled to and that adopted Buddhism and in all the different time periods and the different parts of society in which it was adopted. So, the way that it was practiced in different places is quite different. There are very elaborate ceremonies and rituals among the Tibetans. Many of the Japanese forms will have quite elaborate rituals, the Chinese as well. Southeast Asia will have fewer rituals, but you can’t say that they have no rituals whatsoever.
What is the actual role of ritual? I have never seen a Tibetan explanation of why there are rituals. It’s just sort of the way in which things are done. Now, if we look at it from an anthropological or sociological or psychological point of view (I don’t know which word would be appropriate here), a ritual is giving a form to a certain devotional aspect. One can feel a great deal of devotion, a great deal of emotion, but if there’s no form to express it in, it can sometimes become difficult for people. And to have to create your own form of expressing it is also not so easy. So, rituals serve the function of expressing certain spiritual, devotional feelings – like setting up an altar and arranging flowers, prostrating, offering a mandala, offering this bowl with all the rice and things. You offer that with the idea, “I’m going to offer everything to be able to benefit others.” So, actually doing something physically gives some form to it.
Also, ritual is helpful for being able to connect to a tradition. For many people, it’s very important to feel that they are part of a long tradition. It’s like belonging to a family, in a sense. It fills a very primitive need in people – “primitive” in the sense of being a very deep, old need, not primitive in the sense that it’s savage. So, it fulfills the need of belonging to a tradition. “This is the way that people have done something for generations, so now I’m continuing that. There are others in my same tradition who are also doing that.” It builds up a fellowship. Everybody is reciting certain prayers together and doing certain things together.
But the actual details of rituals – that’s hard to say. There are a lot of rituals that are done as offerings. If it’s done in a certain way, you’ll hear explanations that say that this is “pleasing” to the Buddhas, “pleasing” to the deities, the Buddha-figures. But then you really wonder: does a Buddha really care whether you do something this way or that way, whether you ring the bell at this point or that point? It seems awfully trivial that a Buddha would even care – that how you do things would make the slightest difference to a Buddha.
These are very important questions, actually, particularly with Buddhism coming to nontraditionally Buddhist cultures in other parts of the world. How important is it to follow the ritual to the exact letter? There are some people who are very, very traditionalist and can get very, very attached to ritual and doing things exactly, exactly. There are others who are looser with that, more flexible with that.
My own teacher, Serkong Rinpoche, was very flexible. And that appealed to me very much. Very, very much. For instance, there are certain rituals, initiations, in which you’re supposed to use a certain vase and to use it in a certain way in the ritual. So, when I traveled with him in the West and there was a ceremony that required that, Rinpoche didn’t bring his ornate, traditional vase with him. He just used a milk bottle. I remember him using a milk bottle. And I’m sure he would have used a Coca-Cola bottle if there’d been no milk bottle. What difference does it make? So, he was of that mentality, which I absolutely loved.
Once, we were at a Zen center in the United States. One doesn’t expect this, but the Zen people are actually into Manjushri very much. So, they asked for an initiation of Manjushri. Rinpoche just sat on the floor, on one of these mats like everybody else, and he did it with no ritual whatsoever – no ritual implements. It was in a style that was very accessible to these Zen practitioners. So, he wasn’t attached to the ritual. Yet, he knew the ritual perfectly. Someone like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, however, has to uphold a certain tradition, so he does all the rituals exactly to the letter.
Then there’s the question of whether or not there is a benefit to upholding a tradition. And that gets into the whole question of cultural identity. Like with the Tibetans – their cultural identity is very much connected with all the rituals. Then, of course, you can apply the teachings of voidness: Is there a solid, permanent, truly existent identity to anything, including a culture? So, there are many different levels on which one could discuss the rituals. I think that probably a middle path, a middle path plus flexibility – having the flexibility to go in both directions: the flexibility to do it perfectly and the flexibility to relax it, depending on the situation.
Participant: There’s something I’d like to ask in connection with the tantra practice in the seminar that you gave. You said that visualization of all the graphic details should not be the main thing emphasized.… Rather, it could be more helpful to focus on what the details represent and make that as perfect as possible so as to meet the needs that would be there when you reach enlightenment and have to handle all the requests and people that come in from others needing your help and guidance. So, maybe ritual can also be a practice to adjust to all these needs that will be there when we attain enlightenment.
Dr. Berzin: This is a very good point. He’s bringing up the discussion that we had one weekend on tantra. I was explaining that with visualization, one has to be a little bit delicate because you can become a fanatic with visualization. You can over-emphasize that and over-emphasize all the details and forget the state of mind that you are supposed to have with that in terms of compassion, voidness, and stuff like that. The purpose of visualization… there are many different purposes. One is to build up a cause to have the physical body of a Buddha. Another, given all the different details and things, is that it opens your mind to try to keep in mindfulness all the different things that the details represent – the arms and so on. This is a way to help you keep all these understandings simultaneously in your mind. Also, if you’re going to become a Buddha, you need to be able to help everybody at the same time, which means being aware of everybody’s situation at the same time. So, you need to open the mind to be able to keep your mindfulness on more and more things happening at once. Visualization helps with that.
So, you were asking whether ritual is something similar to that. And, yes, this is another very good point: you want to be able to coordinate body, speech, and mind. That’s very important – to have the body, speech, and mind all focused on doing something that will be constructive and beneficial to others. That’s why the Tibetans always do all the rituals and recitations out loud. Even when they read, they mostly read out loud, though not all of them.
Participant: Very loud.
Dr. Berzin: Very loudly. That keeps you awake. Also, they visualize millions of beings around them listening and benefiting from what they are reciting out loud. The children especially recite out loud so that that they keep awake because they usually do that late at night. And it helps with young energy to scream at the top of your voice. Then it becomes a game almost as well. So, it’s a little bit fun, which is important for educating children.
In any case, you recite verbally. With your mind, you are doing the visualizations and all the different things that the visualizations represent – voidness, compassion, bodhichitta, etc. Then with your hands, you are doing ritual movements with the instruments and with the mudras (the hand gestures) and all these other things. So, it’s coordinated, which requires a lot of concentration. Not so easy. It uses a different part of the brain, I must say.
From my own experience… now, I’m not a big ritual person at all. And maybe that’s a little bit of a fault in myself, although I learned a lot of the rituals. And when I did retreats and so on, I did them according to the rituals. But in my daily practice, I don’t do the rituals that much. A little bit, not very, very much. In any case, I did a little bit of martial arts training a couple of years ago, and now I’m going to a fitness club and doing some physical training exercises in water aerobics and other types of exercises. I must say that a lot of it is very complicated. Complicated movements. It’s not as complicated as a dancer having to learn all the movements of a dance, but it requires a very different type of memory to remember, to keep in mind. Your hands are doing one thing in one direction, and your feet are doing something in another direction. And when your right hand is here, your left foot should be like that, and your right… That is not easy for me to do.
Participant: And your breathing also.
Dr. Berzin: And your breathing as well. You’re supposed to breathe in at a certain point and out at another point, plus keep your balance and not fall over.
Participant: And with some yoga, you also…
Dr. Berzin: Right. Right. Well, I'm just speaking about that physical level. If you’re only trained mentally and verbally, it’s very, very difficult. Physical training requires a very different type of concentration, and we need that type of concentration as well. It also entails different types of memory. It’s very interesting that there is certain body memory that makes it feel just right to move in a certain way. It’s certainly like that with writing Chinese characters. I studied Chinese for many, many years. How do you learn Chinese characters? You learn by writing them over and over again. So, you remember them in terms of how you write them, how your hand moves when you write them.
Participant: This is how I remember PIN codes.
Dr. Berzin: Right, you remember PIN codes from… or dialing on a touch-tone phone. Yeah, I remember some of them like that as well.
Participant: The same with playing music.
Dr. Berzin: The same with playing music – if you’re playing a stringed instrument.
Participant: Also the piano players. They remember the movements.
Dr. Berzin: They remember the movements, not the notes.
So, a ritual that involves movement… And there are ritual dances in Buddhism as well. Not very many, but some. These help to train. Likewise martial arts. I mean, the Tibetans didn’t develop it, but it was certainly developed in East Asian Buddhism. One branch of martial arts was practiced within the context of the Buddhist training. One branch, also, with the Taoist training. But with the Buddhist training, it goes together.
Participant: You mean Shaolin?
Dr. Berzin: No, all the various forms of martial arts. Shaolin is just one monastery. In China, you find different styles of doing different types of martial arts. They are connected with the sixteen arhats. They say that each of the arhats had a different style. So, it becomes interwoven into a Buddhist context. As I said, the Tibetans never really developed that.
So, ritual can play many, many different roles. And I think that we need, on the one hand, to be open-minded to it (if we’re turned off by ritual) and, on the other hand, not be too attached to it. I think that, as Westerners or nontraditional Buddhists, many go through a period of falling in love with the rituals and become fanatic with them. I know some who are like that. Then after a while, they become fed up with it. So, one has to always try to follow a middle path. Even in traditions that one thinks are not so associated with ritual, like Zen traditions, there is a tremendous amount of ritual. How you sit, how you eat, how you walk – it’s a ritual. How you wear your robe – it’s a ritual.
Participant: It’s like mindfulness training.
Dr. Berzin: It’s mindfulness training, exactly. Concentration and mindfulness. Mindfulness, you remember, is the mental glue to hold things in your active memory. That’s what mindfulness is – not letting go.
OK, a long side discussion. That was the first of the six sufferings of samsara – no certainty of the status of others.
[66] Since a father (can be reborn) with the status of a son; a mother with the status of a wife; those who have been enemies, with the status of friends; and the reverse situation can occur (as well), because of that, there is no certainty at all in samsaric states.
Verse 67: The Suffering of Getting No Satisfaction
The second type of suffering is that there’s no satisfaction; you can never be satisfied. “Can’t get no satisfaction,” as the song title goes. And this is verse 67:
[67] Each (being) has drunk more milk than in (all) the four oceans, and still, with the succeeding samsaric (rebirths) of ordinary beings, there’s a much greater amount than that to be drunk.
Now, many of these verses could be used to illustrate other types of suffering, but this particular outline uses this verse to illustrate that you can never be satisfied. Everybody, in each lifetime in which we have been born a mammal, we’ve drunk the milk of a mother. There are countless rebirths, and so the amount of milk that each of us has drunk would fill more than the four oceans. That’s from the traditional Mount Meru view of the universe, of a world system, in which there are four oceans. So, we would have drunk more milk than would fill the four oceans, and still, we’re not satisfied. We haven’t drunk our fill of milk. Still, we want more milk. So, “with the succeeding samsaric (rebirths) of ordinary beings” – it’s going to go on and on – “there’s a much greater amount than that to be drunk.”
This is very interesting, if you think about it. You’re never going to be satisfied. There never will be enough sex, there will never be enough food, there will never be enough eating, there will never be enough samsaric pleasure. There will never be enough of our loved ones saying “I love you.” You’ve never heard enough of that. “Oh, you don’t have to say that anymore. I believe you.” Who ever gets to that point? Not at all. Think of your favorite food. How much of it do you need to eat in order to enjoy it? It’s a very interesting question. How much do you have to eat in order to enjoy it? Would a little taste of chocolate be sufficient? Would one peanut be sufficient in order to enjoy it?
Participant: Two liters ice cream.
Dr. Berzin: Two liters ice cream. One lick. Just one lick. Is that enough? For most of us, that’s not enough; we feel we can’t enjoy it. So, how much do we need in order to enjoy it? “Well, I’m full now.” If we eat too much, we don’t enjoy it anymore. But then we want it again. So, we are never going to be satisfied. “And that’s very stupid” is the general feeling that we want to gain when we are talking about renunciation – to say, “This is stupid. This is boring. This is ridiculous.” How many times do we have to get drunk? How many times do we have to go out to a party? How many times do we have to get stoned? Is it ever enough? No! Yet, we just let it go on and on and on. But if we think about it, it’s impossible to gain any satisfaction from this, to be satisfied. “This is just dumb. This is stupid – to place, again, my expectations on these so-called worldly pleasures.”
Now, of course, there are other examples. For instance, one can think, “Is there ever enough hearing of teachings? Is there ever enough…” this sort of thing. But in the teachings on concentration, if you recall, it says that one of the faults in concentration is applying remedies when you don’t need them anymore. Remember that one? Is there ever enough being on guard that your mind stays concentrated? Well, yes, there is enough. Eventually, when you’ve achieved concentration, you have to relax.
Serkong Rinpoche used to use a lovely example for that. He said that if you have bowl of milk on the table and there’s a cat in the room, then you always have to go “shoo, shoo” to keep the cat away from the milk. But if there’s no cat whatsoever, to still stand there and say “shoo, shoo, get away, get away” is ridiculous. You have to stop. So, even with listening to the teachings and meditating, there’s a certain point where you have reached the goal, and then you go on to the next step.
Generating the Feeling of Disgust – Renunciation
In any case, the feeling that we need to generate is disgust. “This is stupid. There’s no satisfaction. It’s a dead end. It’s never going to satisfy. So, why am I placing so many hopes on it, so many expectations?” Does that mean that we don’t enjoy anything? No. We can enjoy, but without exaggerating it, without projecting the false expectations. If we really take renunciation and striving for liberation seriously, we wouldn’t even want to pursue these things anymore. “This is never going to satisfy. This is never going to help. So, why am I trying to find the best restaurant that will serve my favorite food and trying to make enough money to afford going there all the time? Why am I putting effort into that? It’s never going to satisfy me. I’m never going to have enough. So, why even bother? It’s a waste of time. If it’s available, fine. If it’s not available, I’m not going to make an effort to make that possible.” That’s, eventually, what it’s leading to, isn’t it?
Now, that might be relatively easy when it comes to our favorite food. Not so easy when we are talking about physical affection, sex, and when we are talking about friendship. How about friendship? How about the company of others? “I’d like to be with my best friend. Am I ever going to have enough of being with a best friend?” Well, sometimes we get on each other’s nerves, so we need a little bit of space. But then we want somebody – unless we’re hermits. And there are people who are like that, that’s true.
But these things are more difficult. Going out and pursuing friendships and stuff like that just for the sake of warm company and affection is very human. This is the thing that’s so difficult to accept and to understand in this whole discussion of renunciation. What are we renouncing? We’re renouncing being human. We’re renouncing biology. Now, that is tough. In fact, most of us don’t even want to accept that that’s the Real Thing Dharma. What they’re talking about – that’s too much; that’s too radical. Isn’t it? Very radical. But that’s what they’re actually talking about. If we really want liberation from samsaric rebirth, we have to realize that that means no more human rebirth. We go to something else with a body of light that’s emanating all over the place and so on so that we can benefit everybody.
Questions
How Does All This Fit with the Nondual Approach of inseparable Samsara and Nirvana?
Participant: So, how does this fit together with the whole nondual approach – that samsara and nirvana…
Dr. Berzin: How does this fit in with the nondual approach of inseparable samsara and nirvana? There are many different ways of understanding inseparable nirvana and samsara. One is that they are both equally void of true existence. So, they are inseparable in that way. Another is that there are different levels of vibration of energy. So, they can vibrate on a samsaric level, an impure level – namely, with suffering – and also a pure level. So, they’re inseparable in terms of the vibration of energy. You could also speak about it in terms of both the samsaric and nirvanic appearances being the creations of the subtlest wind from clear light mind. There are many levels of understanding it. It doesn’t mean that staying in one’s deluded life of attachment, anger, jealousy and so on is nirvana and that “Therefore, I don’t have to do anything.” It certainly doesn’t mean that. “I’m already enlightened, so I don’t have to do anything.” Well, that could be grossly, grossly misunderstood and abused. Your nature by nature is pure, yes. But that’s beside the point.
So, these are very radical teachings, actually, if you look at them in a very serious way. So, we have drunk more than four oceans full of mother’s milk, and we still haven’t had enough. We have been loved by others and shown affection a million, zillion times. It’s not enough. So, how boring to just continue looking for that. We’ve had girlfriends and boyfriends innumerable times. Where has that gotten us? Nowhere.
Participant: I was just thinking about this because, recently, they were calculating that, just in this lifetime – say, eighty years – somebody who is a real big meat eater eats almost thirty or forty pigs or cows or something.
Dr. Berzin: Oh, more than that.
Participant: Even more.
Dr. Berzin: Many more than that.
Participant: One human eats thirty cows.
Dr. Berzin: Right, right. Exactly. And I think thirty or forty pigs is a small estimation. A very, very small estimation. You’ve eaten a whole herd of cows. How many chickens have you eaten in your lifetime? Unbelievable.
The Tibetans love very graphic images. And in Western fairy tales, we have, for instance, Rumpelstiltskin the dwarf that is able to spin straw into gold (in the fairy tales, there’s a dwarf that can take straw, change it into gold and spin it like cloth). Geshe Dhargyey used to say that we are something like that. We have this perfect machine – the human body – that turns food into excrement. So, if we think how much food have we put in and how much excrement we have produced as a result, and if we piled up all the excrement that we’ve produced in this lifetime… is that the great accomplishment that we have achieved? “What have you done with this precious human life?” “I have manufactured thirty-five tons of excrement!”
Participant: It’s good for the farms.
Dr. Berzin: Good for the farms.
So, that’s interesting to think about. What do we want to use this precious human life, the precious human body, for? We can do a lot more than just be a factory for excrement. Yes, we have eaten many, many animals, many chickens – poor chickens. And we have eaten many vegetables as well. And as this verse says, we have drunk an unbelievable amount of milk, and there will never be any satisfaction. So, the sense of disgust that this is stupid is the emotion that we want to develop here – that this is a dead end, that it’s going nowhere. That’s samsara. Those are the disadvantages.
Is a Buddha Dependent on Biology? What Do We Mean by Biology?
Participant: [Inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: So, she’s asking if the status of a Buddha is something that is totally independent of biology. In a sense, you would have to say that, when a Buddha manifests, he would have to depend on biology in the sense that a Buddha would appear in a human form looking like other humans and go through the human life cycle. So, in that sense. But a Buddha doesn’t have to be born in a biological form. A Buddha can manifest as a bridge. There are all these stories about what a Buddha can manifest as. A Buddha can manifest as anything.
Now, it depends on what you call biology. If you want to call the subtlest mind and the subtlest energy biology, biological factors, then, yes, a Buddha would be dependent on that. It depends how you want to define biology. From the Mahayana point of view, does a Buddha have to get sick, get old and die and so on? Well, hey, he’s supposed to have liberation from birth, death, old age and sickness. So, the Mahayana explanation is that a Buddha is just demonstrating that. It isn’t that a Buddha is uncontrollably forced to do that by biology. Instead, he just demonstrates it so that other people can relate to him.
Participant: [Inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: Right. So, she’s asking, “Don’t you have to have some relation between mind and matter, between mental and physical states?” Some Western philosophies make them totally separate, but she always thought that Buddhism saw an interdependence between the mental sphere and the natural, or material, sphere. Yes, that’s why from a tantra point of view, they always speak about the mind and then the physical basis for the mind, which is the subtlest energy. So, if you want to call that biology, yes. If by biology, you mean that, then, yes, a Buddha’s not independent of biology. If by biology, you mean the normal, samsaric biological laws of a human body, then, no. Buddha’s not dependent on that.
Yes, Buddhism says that the mind and the physical basis for mind are inseparable. Even in the formless realms, there’s some sort of subtle energy that is associated with mind. And beings cannot live without an environment in which to live. You can’t have an environment with no beings or have beings with no environment. There can be the environment of the sun and so on with no beings actually living on the sun. That’s something else.
And there’s evolution. So, in a world system, there will be a certain point when there are no beings in that world system. But within the totality of all universes, there will always be mind and not just biology but also physical places. Mind has to be somewhere. So, Buddhism is very holistic in that sense. They don’t speak in terms of a transcendent type of presentation in a very absolutist type of way like with a collective unconscious, although, maybe you can find some Buddhist philosophers that tend somewhat in that direction.
OK. We only have a few more minutes, so why don’t we reflect on this verse rather than go onto the next.
[67] Each (being) has drunk more milk than in (all) the four oceans, and still, with the succeeding samsaric (rebirths) of ordinary beings, there’s a much greater amount than that to be drunk.
When you think about this, think about the object or person or affection or love or whatever it is that you are most attached to and about whether there is a possibility that you will ever have enough if it? If there isn’t, then what’s the point of this obsession? What is your attitude toward it? OK?
So, we’ve looked at the first two types of suffering of samara. The first is that there is no certainty of the status of others. We see that especially when we think in terms of countless lifetimes. Why am I so attached to the people of this lifetime? Why am I so attached to the type of relationships that I have with them in this lifetime? There’s no certainty. I have these friends in this lifetime, these people that I’m related to, these relatives, these people that I have difficult relationships within this lifetime, and next lifetime, it’s going to be a different set. And even if it’s the same beings, the relationship will be different. So, why be so caught up in the situation now? It’s almost like a roll of the dice, isn’t it? Why am I so caught up with a hand in cards… with this hand of cards, with this roll of the dice? It’s going to be different beings, different situation. There’s no certainty. It’s not going to last; it’s always going to change.
Even with the second type of suffering, the friends that I have now, I’m never going to have enough – never enough good times with them, never enough affection with them, never enough “I love you.” It’s never going to be enough. So, again, this whole thing is stupid, it’s boring. I’d like to get out of this. It just produces suffering. What is the suffering? The suffering is the ups and downs. Sometimes I’m so depressed because I’m not getting what I want. Other times I’m happy, but it doesn’t last, and then I’m frustrated. And what’s the basis for it? The all-pervasive affecting suffering of this continuing samsaric rebirth and the influence of karma and the disturbing emotions that bring that karma about and that activate that karma. I want to get out of that, to be free from all of this – so, renunciation.
Actually, the word “renunciation” in Tibetan (nges-'byung) isn’t really what the word means in English. The word literally means “determination,” the determination to be free. Your mind is determined to give this up and to attain liberation.
OK? Next time, we’ll continue with this discussion.