We have been working on Nagarjuna’s text Letter to a Friend, which he wrote in order to present the Mahayana path to his friend the king. In this text, he outlines the basic Mahayana teachings. He starts with some introductory material and, then, according to the outline we are following, he presents the main material, which covers the six far-reaching attitudes, or six perfections.
With the sixth of these, far-reaching discriminating awareness, there is a presentation of the three higher trainings, which are necessary for developing far-reaching discriminating awareness, or wisdom. These are the trainings in higher ethical discipline, higher concentration, and higher discriminating awareness itself. The training in higher discriminating awareness we need to develop both for achieving liberation and for achieving enlightenment. For both of these goals, the discriminating awareness – namely, the understanding of voidness – is the same; it’s just that the motivation is different.
Within the discussion of the discriminating awareness for gaining liberation… actually, according to the outline, the discriminating awareness is for overcoming the disturbing emotions. That entails, first, overcoming attachment to this lifetime and, then, overcoming attachment to all future lifetimes or samsara in general, which is where we are now.
In that discussion, first, there is a presentation of the specific sufferings of a human rebirth and, then, the general types of suffering of samsara, which is what we are in the middle of discussing. The aim of all of that is to develop renunciation as the motivation for gaining the discriminating awareness of voidness.
Nagarjuna presents the six general sufferings of samsara that are always mentioned later on in all the lam-rim texts. Many of the verses that he has here are quoted in the later Mahayana lam-rim texts. The six sufferings of samsara are:
[1] We have no certainty of status, which means that we’re always going up and down in terms of rebirth and in terms of this lifetime – in other words, there’s no certainty of the status of others: sometimes others are our friends, sometimes they are enemies, sometimes they are our mothers, sometimes they are our children, etc. So, there is no certainty of the status of anybody in relation to us.
[2] There is never any satisfaction; we can never have enough of what we like.
[3] We have to fit into new rebirths repeatedly. We have to fit into new situations again and again; we have to start all over again in terms of being a baby, and so on.
[4] We have to change our status repeatedly from exalted to humble, from high to low, within different rebirths as well as within this lifetime.
[5] We aren’t able to rely on delightful company, namely, friends, etc.
[6] We have to forsake our bodies repeatedly.
Last time, we discussed how delightful company or friends can’t be relied upon and the suffering, the dissatisfaction, that is associated with that. That was Verse 70:
[70] Having for a long time experienced the pleasure of the touch of the breasts and hips of maidens of the higher rebirth realms, once again you’ll have to entrust yourself to the unbearable touch of the implements for crushing, cutting, and subjugating in the hells.
So, sometimes we have very nice friends, and it’s very nice to be with them. But they can’t be relied upon to last forever; inevitably, we will have to part. We discussed that quite in full last time.
So, let’s go on to the next verse, which deals with not being able to rely on delightful places; they have no essence. This is verse 71.
Verse 71: Delightful Places Cannot Be Relied Upon
[71] Having dwelled for long on the heights of Mount Meru, with the (most) bearable pleasure of bouncing at the touch of your feet, once again, you’ll be struck with the unbearable pain of wading through smoldering embers and a putrefying swamp. Think about that!
Always, in these verses, Nagarjuna contrasts the pleasures and delights of a heavenly realm, a heavenly rebirth, with the horrors of rebirth in some sort of hellish state. If we can relate to that – very nice. If we can’t, we can think instead in more general terms of very nice situations and very horrible situations and that these are not something that we can rely upon.
This is the general situation of samsara, isn’t it? We rent a very nice place to move into, and it seems very nice. But we usually rent it without having spent a night there, so one doesn’t know how noisy the neighbors can be at night or how noisy the street can be at night. So, what originally seemed to be a very nice place could turn out to be a very horrible place. And even if it is very nice in the beginning, new neighbors can move in who are very, very noisy. Or like in my situation, a café can move in downstairs on the ground floor of the building. Where I live, the café has outdoor tables all summer long with very noisy guests. It’s open till three 0’clock in the morning, seven days a week. So, a very nice, wonderful, peaceful bedroom facing the street becomes a very horrible place to sleep in at night because of all the noise. So, places can’t be relied upon. Neighborhoods change.
Pollution can come. The world was such a nice, so-called clean place so many years ago, and now the environment is starting to really turn very difficult with global warming, etc. So, even the beauties of nature aren’t something that can be relied upon. Various areas get cut down.
When I first went to India, I lived in Dalhousie, which is a hill station just immediately north of Dharamsala, in the next valley system. It was absolutely gorgeous, beautiful. It was on a set of very high hills, which were about three thousand meters or something like that. There was a valley on one side going out to Punjab (you could see the rivers), and on the other side, there was the big Chamba Valley. Then, about 70 km away, there was a huge, huge range of very high Himalayas, which went all around. On the next hill of the ridge of hills that Delhousie was on – that was the highest hill – you could go to the top and stand there and have a 360-degree unobstructed view all around with all the mountains in the Punjab and so on. It was absolutely spectacular.
Then what happened was that the Indian army decided that this was a perfect place to have a radar station and a helicopter landing pad for monitoring who knows what. So, then that whole beautiful area became restricted. It was impossible to go there. You can still live in Dalhousie, but you can’t go to this other area where there is the spectacular view and… finished. That was it. So, lovely places can’t be relied on. That was a very good lesson in that for me because that was one of those most beautiful places I had ever been to.
The point here, I think, as with all the other verses that we’ll have in this section, has to do with what we are aiming for in life. What are we aiming for? If we are aiming just for some sort of worldly pleasure, such as a nice situation, nice friends, a nice place to live, and so on, and we count on that as our source of happiness – it’s going to let us down. It may give us some sort of temporary, superficial happiness, but then we go back to the earlier forms of suffering of samsara – that there’s never ever any satisfaction; there’s never enough.
I have one friend who is very wealthy. We were roommates at Princeton together. He lives in Salt Lake City in America (I hope he doesn’t mind me telling about him). He lives in an enormous house, the largest house I have ever been in. He also bought a house in San Francisco for the weekends. He and his wife fly there most weekends. This is a house with an indoor swimming pool and a view of the San Francisco Bay and stuff like that. Who knows how much this house is worth. It belonged to some rock stars before they bought the place. I’ve stayed there. It’s unbelievable. A really nice place. But it’s not enough. He is not satisfied because he doesn’t have a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Poor thing! There are other pieces of property that do have that view as well.
So, no matter what kind of place you have, it’s not going to satisfy; it’s never going to be enough. Even if it is enough in terms of its location, then there will other things that you’ll find wrong with it. That’s always the case. This is the nature of samsaric existence. Like we were discussing with friends, we can have the most wonderful friend, but we make unreasonable expectations of what this friend is going to provide for us. It’s never going to work; we are going to have suffering. “My friend will always be available for me and will always help me out,” and so on, as if we were the only person in our friend’s life, as if we were the center of the universe. But people have their own lives and other things that are going on besides us in their lives. And friends drift apart.
What one has to understand and realize is that this has been going on forever with us, given beginningless rebirth. If we are young, it might not be so often in our lives that we have been disappointed, but as we get older, it has likely happened a few times, so we understand a little bit better. But regardless of when in our lives we look at this samsaric situation, if we can think in terms of previous lives as well, then we can see that it’s just another relationship, just another place where we are living, just another this and just another that. Sure, we have to live somewhere. Sure, we have to have friends. But when we are under the influence of the disturbing emotions and the karma that impulsively gets us into difficult situations and impulsively causes us to act on the basis of our delusions, we’re just going to have more problems – even if it’s nice for a little while.
So, renunciation – the adjective that is used to describe the emotion that goes together with it is the Tibetan word for “disgust.” We just feel disgusted. We say, “Enough already.” Now, what is it that we have had enough of? As I say, we still need to live somewhere, and we still need to have friends – obviously. But what we’ve had enough of are these false expectations, these projections. This is, I think, very, very important to realize.
Discussion
To Have Renunciation, Why Do We Need the Understanding of Voidness? Why Is the Understanding of Impermanence Not Enough?
We had this discussion in our teachings of Shantideva’s Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior. If you recall (those of you who were there), there was a big discussion in the ninth chapter on discriminating awareness (perfection of wisdom) in which Shantideva argued that the understanding of impermanence, of change, the understanding that things never remain static, was not sufficient for gaining liberation – that we needed to gain the understanding of voidness in order to gain liberation. I think this is very relevant here because if we think just in terms of impermanence – “Well, any friend that I have is going to be impermanent. We come together for a short time, and then we will part. And then there will be another one. Any place that I live is also going to be impermanent. Of course, things are going to change; they will go from nice to not nice and so on. But that’s impermanence. So, I can deal with that” – that’s not enough. That’s not what renunciation is based on.
Now, what’s important is to understand why that is not enough. Does anybody have any idea why that is not enough? Why don’t we think about it for a minute or so.
OK. So, why is the understanding of impermanence not enough here (impermanence meaning change, of things eventually coming to an end)?
[Participant comment cut]
Right. So, Andrea says the danger here of just thinking in terms of impermanence is that it might lead to a nihilistic point of view – that everything is going to change, so why bother getting any friends or making your place nice that you are going to live in, anything like that. Is that what you mean by nihilistic? A very negative attitude. Anyone else?
[Participant comment cut]
Right. So, what she is saying is that if you only think in terms of impermanence and change, you still could grasp at something that is changing as being solid and truly existent. So, the attachment is still there. Therefore, one needs to go further and analyze what the person is.
This is what I would agree with because, although nihilism is a danger when thinking in terms of impermanence, nihilism is also a danger with the analysis of voidness as well – if either of them is done incorrectly.
So, I think that attachment is, at least in my view, my understanding of it, the biggest problem. If you only think in terms of impermanence – “Well, this relationship isn’t going to last, so I will use it for whatever I can. And when I am finished using it, I’ll throw it away and get another one – because it is not going to last. So, I’ll find another one and then another one and then another one and get as much as I can out of it” – you still have the expectation that a friend or a place is going to give you the ultimate happiness and security that you want. And if it’s not this friend or that place, it’s another friend or place. So, OK, you can deal with the fact that it has to change – but the attachment is still there; the expectation is still there. It’s just that you throw it onto a different person and a different place every few months or years. You follow?
Anybody else have some thoughts on this?
Participant: One has to see that the things are changing all the time in order to really develop disgust with the situation that they are changing. Otherwise, it’s like, “OK, all these things are changing – nice.” So, one does not see what the suffering is about – this changing.
Dr. Berzin: He is bringing up the point about developing disgust here and seeing what the suffering is. I think there’s suffering in thinking that it will last forever and never change – “We are going to live happily ever after forever” – and also that there is suffering in making a friendship or a perfect place to live into a solid thing. You can get suffering on both levels, and you can develop disgust on both levels as well.
But for gaining liberation, I get disgusted that… I mean it’s really boring that I have to start all over again with every friendship. You could look at it as exciting adventure, but after a while, you have to get to know somebody and all of that.
[Participant comment cut]
And you have decorate the place where you live, and you have to move, and you have to pack. It’s really boring. So, you get disgusted with that. But that is not the disgust that we are talking about when we’re talking about wanting to gain liberation.
Remember, with impermanence, or nonstaticness, there are two aspects. One is that things change from moment to moment; the other is that things get closer and closer to their end and, then, end. So, when you think, “OK, today it will be nice; tomorrow, maybe not. My friend is busy today…” (you know, things going up and down) – that’s understanding impermanence on the level of moment to moment change. But to realize that a relationship is going to end at some point is another level of understanding impermanence – that the relationship grows closer and closer to its end, like this lifetime.
But regardless of which of these levels – even if its both – we understand impermanence on, we could still be attached to the idea that there is going to be the ideal place to live, the ideal circumstance, the ideal job and the ideal friend or friends, even though it changes, even though the specifics change.
Yes, you want to say something?
Participant: There’s still the feeling of being the center of the universe.
Dr. Berzin: Exactly.
The Importance of Applying the Understanding of Voidness to Oneself
This is what I was going to mention – that one can think not so much in terms of the impermanence of the person, the friendship, the living situation and so on but in terms of the voidness of these things. We’ll get into what voidness means, but the voidness of it is that none of these things exist as some self-establishing “thing” out there. But even if you understand that, if you haven’t applied the understanding of voidness to yourself, then you can really go to a nihilist or a semi-nihilist position: “None of the world exists. Nobody has any true existence – except me.” Right? It’s the solid “me” that wants to have the security of a friend or the security of a nice place to live or a good job. That’s at the center of the whole problem. That’s why it is important to apply the understanding of voidness equally and to apply the same voidness to oneself, to others and to situations – so, to all phenomena.
That’s a danger that comes in with voidness meditation – that you only apply it to the external things out there. “I am really upset with this person. They disappointed me,” blah, blah, blah… whatever. So, you analyze the voidness of that other person, and you deconstruct it: “What is it that I am angry with? It’s a stream of aggregates that are changing, and everyone is influenced by a million different things. And the person is just what the label of the person refers to on the basis of all of that. So, what is it that I am so upset about?” OK? So, you can deconstruct like that, but you’re still left with the solid “me,” which is exactly what you were saying – that I am still the center of the universe.
One has to analyze the “me” who wants all of this stuff. As emotionally difficult as it might be to deconstruct our friend or our lovely house or our lovely car or computer or whatever, it’s more emotionally challenging to deconstruct ourselves. That’s what renunciation is dealing with.
How does one gain liberation? It’s with three higher trainings (which will come in a few verses from here). We focus again and again on the understanding of voidness. In order to stay focused on that, we need concentration; in order to develop the concentration, we need discipline. So, we need these three higher trainings: discipline, concentration, and the understanding of voidness.
OK? Think about that for a moment.
Any comments or questions?
[Pause]
If We Sincerely Develop Renunciation, How Would Our Daily Lives Be Affected?
What is the main point? How do we deal with this whole situation of renunciation while thinking about the sufferings of samsara? How do we deal with it? What I mean by that is, how do we deal with our daily lives, with our relationships, with where we live, our jobs, and all these sort of things while having the state of mind of renunciation? What would that mean? Anybody have any idea? If we really develop renunciation, how would our daily lives be affected?
Participant: We would not cling to anything.
Dr. Berzin: Right. We wouldn’t cling to anything. Would we still be involved?
Participant: Yeah. But in a very relaxed way.
Dr. Berzin: We would be involved in a very relaxed way, with no expectations and no disappointment, which is one of the big instructions that’s always given regarding meditation. We meditate without expecting anything to happen and without being disappointed if nothing happens. But does that leave us just passive?
Participant: It opens the door to being active in a much more vital way.
Dr. Berzin: Can you explain? How?
Participant: We are not so occupied with all the emotions, not involved…
Dr. Berzin: We are not occupied with all the emotions; we are not so involved.
Participant: [Inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: So, does that mean that we become an emotionless android, that we have no feeling whatsoever?
Participant: You are much more with the persons around you because you are much more open.
Dr. Berzin: So, you’re much more with the people that you are with because you are more open and can act in a wiser way.
Participant: One develops more the positive emotions – compassion and things like this.
Dr. Berzin: So, you develop more of the positive emotions. What if the other person doesn’t respond in a similar way?
Participant: Then you don’t cling to the idea that you are always successful with what you are doing.
Dr. Berzin: So, you don’t cling to the idea that you are always going to be successful.
Then we have the various lojong teachings, the attitude training: we accept the loss on ourselves and give the victory to others. And if someone that we’ve been so kind to and have treated like our own child repays us with being very cruel and nasty and so on, we regard them as our teacher, or we regard them as a sick person. There are all these verses in the lojong literature. Those are helpful. They are. But then what often happens is that we get a bit fed up with that.
Because I developed this sensitivity training program, I sometimes feel, “Enough of being Mr. Sensitivity. When do I get something?” rather than always being the understanding one, always being the one that gives victory to the others, and so.
Participant: That’s not easy.
Renouncing the Expectations We Have
Dr. Berzin: That’s not easy! So, grasping for a solid “me” is going to come up again. This is my point. Even when we try to put all of this into practice, the habit of the “me”… well, you know, “I’ve done my best, but come on! Give me something in return.” It’s difficult because we know that any demand that we make is just going to make things worse. Any expectation we have is going to make things worse. Then the renunciation has to be aimed at that. But often we feel resentment about that.
[Participant comment cut]
Right. She is saying that then we bring in the relation with the spiritual teacher. That is a very good point. One can think of someone who is really very highly developed. In my case, I think of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the way that he is. He is constantly moving around, constantly with different people, and he doesn’t seem to have any expectations. That can be very inspiring and inspiring to think that they started the way we did.
[Participant comment cut]
Lydia is pointing out that when we have more life experience as an older person, we are not so attached. We’ve learned from our experience. Well, some people as they get older don’t learn, and they give up. Others become bitter. But some do become wise.
Participant: [Inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: But it’s easy to become bitter and just give up.
Participant: It depends on the understanding.
Dr. Berzin: It depends on our understanding. That’s right. The more experience we have, the more we learn. This is why I was saying that, even if we are a young person without very much experience, it is important to try to use the Buddhist understanding of beginningless rebirth – that this has been going on forever. This isn’t the first time; it isn’t the last time. If we don’t do anything about it, it’s not going to be the last time.
Mariana?
[Participant comment cut]
Right. This is an important point. Mariana points out that we still enjoy things for what they are without making a big deal out of it, without having expectations. We still enjoy them even though we realize that they won’t last or that they have no essence. Well, that’s very true. If you think of the example of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he is laughing all the time and always delighted to see anybody. So, this is a good example.
Participant: I think also, when you are with people, it’s much less.
Dr. Berzin: Yes. So, we can think in terms of the effect we have with others. If we are depressed – “Nothing has any essence. Nothing has any meaning. It’s all impermanence. Everybody is just a bag full of waste products” – that is not going to make others very happy to be in our presence.
Expanding the Scope of Our Efforts with Tonglen
Yes, thinking of others is important, which brings me to another point that I wanted to bring up, which is that we can also, in the situation, do tonglen – a giving and taking practice, which is a very, very difficult practice. I don’t think we should be naive about that and trivialize it. It’s to think (this makes the transition to Mahayana), “I’m not the only one in this situation. I have expectations of friendships or of places where I live. It’s never going to work; there’s no essence to it at all.” So, we think of everybody else who is doing the same thing. Maybe they don’t have the same expectation of us as we have of them. “I would like a really close relationship, and they don’t,” for example. Or “They want a really close relationship, and I don’t.” Both of those are difficult situations. But everybody is in the same situation. So, we think in terms of tonglen, which is that it’s not just my personal problem: it’s everybody’s problem. And whatever solution there is to that is not just a solution for me: it’s a solution for everybody.
So, we think in terms of expanding the scope of who we are dealing with, with regard to this problem, and expanding the scope of giving the solution to everybody. This helps very much when we have this feeling of “Poor me. I’m tired of being Mr. Sensitivity, Mr. Mahayana, who is always giving the victory to the others,” which, believe me, happens when you’re trying to practice this stuff.
[Participant comment cut]
Right. So, she is saying that sometimes there are parents and others who don’t want this and who make interference and is pointing out the difficulty of dealing with people who make more and more demands on us and who get very annoyed when we deal with the situation calmly and so on. I am always reminded of the statement that my sister made to me after I’d been in India with the Tibetans for the first few years and came home the first time. Her remark was, “You are so calm, I could throw up.” In other words, it really annoyed her that I was calm. My sister isn’t like that now. This was many years ago. And, yes, it’s true. You, in a sense, have to put on an act with these people. That’s true.
But I think there is a difference between what we do privately in meditation – if we have the peace to be able to do the meditation, which can be difficult in some situations. I remember a friend of mine who lived in Yugoslavia before the fall of communism. She lived in this one room, a little flat, with her mother, and her mother’s television and radio were on all the time. There was no peace and quiet to be able to meditate or do anything. The only time she could really be alone was in the bathroom on the toilet, which is where she did her meditation. So, it can be difficult. You do, of course, have to assert yourself in some sort of way. This tonglen practice is something that is always done in private; you don’t let other people know what you are doing. That’s just how your attitude is.
But in terms of openly dealing with a situation – for instance, this other person is ignoring you or taking advantage of you or being inconsiderate toward you – whether it’s a parent, a friend, a lover, or whomever – do you say something or not? Or do you just calmly accept it and do tonglen and don’t get upset and let them walk all over you? This, I think, is the type of situation we’re talking about. It could also be at work, like with a boss. What do you say to the other person?
Talking about Emotionally Difficult Topics without Becoming Upset
Now, what’s difficult is to say something without being emotionally upset. That’s very difficult because, once you start saying something, of course, the emotions come up. What are you going to say? “Well, I’m not really upset and so on. For your benefit, I can take it. But if you are with other people, you should try to be more considerate.” Well, that doesn’t work. That sounds really weird. “I am doing it out of compassion for you and compassion for other people that you relate to so that you don’t hurt them. It’s OK; you can walk all over me because I won’t get hurt.” That’s not very good policy to follow, although one might tend to do that if one is an aspiring bodhisattva.
So, how do you say to somebody, “You know, you really hurt me by what you said or by what you did. That really was very inconsiderate”? How do you say that without being emotionally upset? And to just say it in a totally calm voice, as if you were reading a script from a play – that doesn’t work either. There has to be feeling there. So, how to have that feeling without being upset? This is very difficult.
[Participant comment cut]
She is saying that we need compassion and wisdom together – the two wings of the bird. Yes, but I think you are still going to get upset when you say to the other person, “Look, you really hurt me by what you have been doing. You have really been inconsiderate, and I think that you should change,” or “Don’t treat me like that.” That sounds like a big ego trip – me, me, me. So, one understands that “I am not asserting an ego trip here,” but in a sense, you are. I can’t say that I have mastered this; I certainly haven’t. So, I can’t give you any insight into how to really do it well.
I think the first rule, though, guideline #1, is don’t do it when you are really upset. Guideline #2: choose a time when the other person is not busy or upset. Otherwise, it is idle chatter: you are saying something at the wrong time. You have to know when the right time is to say it.
What often happens, at least in my case, is that if you wait for the time where you’re calm and not upset, you don’t care anymore. “OK, it’s not so upsetting; so, why should I say anything? I’m OK.” So, it’s only when you are upset that you feel like saying something. But if you say it when you are upset, you’re usually going to say the wrong thing and make it worse because then the other person gets defensive.
I don’t know a good answer – I really don’t – to how you deal with it. Even if you send a letter or email – who knows the mood that they are going to be when they read it. There’s no way of telling, no way of knowing. So, it really depends on the other person. If the other person is into Buddhism and into these various ideas, then you could explain the whole dilemma to them. If they are not, then it’s pointless, isn’t it? And with your boss at work? With the boss at work, I think that you just have to be objective about it – that these are my rights, here is the contract, and blah, blah, blah. Just be quite objective about it without attacking and so on. But also, I think, you have to be prepared to lose.
I think it is difficult really to integrate renunciation, real renunciation, into regular life. The classic way would be to give up everything and to become a monk or a nun and to live in a cave doing intense meditation all the time. Well, you can bring all your disturbing emotions with you to the cave. You’re just changing your clothes. And not eating at night and not having sex doesn’t necessarily do very much to counter strong disturbing emotions. That just maybe makes for less difficult circumstances. This is a tough one.
We have talked a lot, or at least, I’ve talked a lot, about rebirth and how important and difficult it is to sincerely believe in and be convinced of rebirth – to take really seriously that what we do now will affect our future lives and that, therefore, we need to do something that’s going to really contribute to continuing to have a precious human rebirths so that we can work further on the spiritual path. To really have that deep in our hearts is not an easy one.
I think even more difficult is renunciation of samsara – to understand what samsara is and to really renounce it. And it is not just the regular sufferings of samsara listed here that we need to renounce. Tsongkhapa, when he gives the list of the sufferings of samsara with renunciation, adds the suffering of repeatedly having the type of aggregates that are the basis for all of this. That’s what we are renouncing, really: uncontrollably recurring rebirth. And it is so difficult to imagine what in the world that really is. What that would be like?
Participant: One starts with relatively easy things. One starts by renouncing the things that one sees bring suffering. “Ah! There’s this and this and this that works as a cause of suffering.” Then you say, “I’m fed up with this suffering! I don’t want it anymore.” Then it’s really easy to renounce because one is fed up with it.
Dr. Berzin: Mariana is pointing out that we need to start easy. I know that sometimes I emphasize too much how difficult these things are. The reason why I emphasize that is that a lot of people trivialize renunciation and just jump immediately to Mahayana, “Ah, I love everybody. I am going to help everybody,” and so on and skip these stages, which are really not to be skipped.
What Mariana points out is that, of course, we start on a modest scale. So, we think of some particular suffering – let’s say, being too fat, being overweight. “I go on a diet, and I lose some weight. Then I put it back on. Then I lose it again, and I put it back on. Then I lose it, and I put it back on again. And I’m fed up with this!” Mind you, changing our eating habits and our exercise habits is very difficult. It’s not easy. But we start with that as an example – “I am disgusted with this. I am fed up with being overweight, not feeling well and always having to buy larger clothes and all of this. Enough!” But then we really need discipline. And we really need the mindfulness to stick to it and not get disgusted with the diet and the exercise – which happens. “I’ve been sticking to it, but then today, something went poorly in my life, so to hell with it. I’m going to go out and have some ice cream to make me feel better.” That happens. It certainly happens to me, I confess.
[Participant comment cut]
Ice cream is not too bad. Right!
Participant: If you choose the right ice cream. Yoghurt, not chocolate.
Dr. Berzin: Yogurt, not chocolate. Here, in Berlin, we have too good an Italian ice cream.
Participant: But then also you have to renounce beating yourself up.
Dr. Berzin: Then you have to renounce beating yourself up without going to the extreme of treating yourself like a baby.
Participant: [Inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: No, no. You enjoy the ice cream. You enjoy the ice cream. The point is to not to have it every day.
Participant: So, two or three balls and not ten.
Dr. Berzin: Right, two or three balls and not ten.
So, living with renunciation is not so easy. But let’s go on to these other verses so we don’t spend more classes on them because, basically, the same points are being presented here.
The next verses are that delightful activities can’t be relied upon and have no essence. In the outline, it always says that these things have no essence. That indicates that the understanding of voidness is needed here. They can’t be relied upon: they’re not permanent.
Verses 72 and 73: Delightful Activities Cannot Be Relied Upon
[72] Having been served by maidens of higher rebirths, and having frolicked, staying in pleasurable and beautiful groves, once again you’ll get your legs, arms, ears, and nose cut off through grove-like places having leaves like swords.
The next verse continues this:
[73] Having basked, with celestial maidens having beautiful faces, in Gently Flowing (Heavenly Rivers) having lotuses of gold, once again you’ll be plunged into Uncrossable Infernal Rivers with intolerably caustic boiling waters.
Nagarjuna is quite heavy here, as I say. Over and again, he contrasts heavenly pleasures – here, the pleasurable activities of frolicking with these beautiful maidens – with the activities of getting your arms and legs cut off in the hell realms. And rather than bathing in beautiful rivers with lovely ladies, that you’ll be plunged into acid type of boiling waters, etc.
This illustrates, according to the outline, that activities can’t be relied on and that what you are doing is not always going to be nice; you get fed up with even the nicest work. We dealt with friends and with places of living. This would probably deal with jobs, if we translate this into our daily activities. And that activity can’t be relied upon. You lose your job, and then, all of a sudden, you have to do something really horrible that you don’t like just to survive. It’s really boring and awful. This is quite common. So, you can’t rely on an activity.
And it’s not only that it’s not permanent, that it’s not going to last forever; it’s also that it has no essence to it. In terms of the voidness of the activity, it’s just an activity. In other words, the person doing it, the objects of the action and the action itself – there is nothing solid there; they just arise dependently on each other. It’s just another moment of experience, so you don’t make big deal out of it and don’t expect it to be so wonderful.
What about the activity of helping others? It can be very frustrating when other people don’t want to be helped or when our help fails or when we want to help but have no idea what will help. “I don’t know what to advice you.” That often happens, doesn’t it? Someone comes to us with a problem and “I don’t know what to do.”
Participant: But then at least one can listen and then maybe say, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know.”
Dr. Berzin: Exactly. What helps very, very much is letting the person share the problem and being sympathetic, being understanding, and letting the person know that they are not alone. Yes, that’s a great help. That’s a great help. And it is a problem if we think that we have to be able to fix everything, as if we were like Almighty God and could fix everything. Likewise, if we have a problem and go to somebody, it could be quite alright to just let them share what they have to say. You know, “Lend me your ear and listen to my problem” – without necessarily expecting a solution from them. That helps. So, activities can’t be relied on.
The next verse is that great wealth can’t be relied on. This refers to objects of enjoyment. The objects of enjoyment, according to our outline, could be understood either as pleasurable sense objects or as wealth. We could also take this suffering to refer to the body – the suffering of having to forsake our bodies over and again – because our bodies are the main object that we enjoy, given that the body is the basis for enjoying pleasurable sense objects. The verse reads:
Verse 74: Wealth Cannot Be Relied Upon
[74] Having attained the extremely great pleasures of the desirable sense objects of the celestial realms, and the pleasures of the state of a Brahma, which are free of attachment, you’ll have to entrust yourself, once again, to an unbroken continuum of sufferings from having become the fuel of the flames of (a joyless realm of) unrelenting pain.
Again, we have the contrast of a heavenly situation with a hellish situation. We have the type of body that is the basis for experiencing great pleasure, great happiness and so on with all the senses. But then, what happens – to think in terms of this lifetime – we get psoriasis or some other skin problem, and our bodies become vehicles of torture, itching all the time. Or we get sunburned, and our bodies give us tremendous pain. Or we can get cancer. That also gives us great pain. Ultimately, we have the suffering of having to leave this body that we’ve become very, very familiar with. Then we don’t know what kind of body we are going to get after this. It could be the body of a cockroach. Not so nice. Not so nice. So, the body can’t be relied on.
And we always have to leave it. If we always have to leave it, why get so attached to it? That’s the part of the renunciation. There are many levels that we can take this at. There is the very trivial level of people who are, for example, so attached to their hair – that it has to be like this or like that and so on, which is particularly strong among many teenagers. One of our friends here in the class who is nearly bald is pointing to the attachment to having hair. That also is there. You have to forsake the body anyway, so what difference does it make?
It’s a funny thing when somebody dies in the West. We have this custom of putting them into nice clothing, putting make-up on them and making them look really pretty in order to put them in the ground to be eaten by the worms. Funny.
But again, the body is a vehicle, and we need to take care of the body because, otherwise, we’ll have problems. We can’t really help others, can’t really do very much, if we don’t take care of our health and our bodies. But it is really boring, in terms of uncontrollably recurring rebirth, that we put so much effort into this body and that we then have to forsake it and get another body and another body and another body. And the type of enjoyment that we can have with this body is not something that can be relied upon.
Then, also, Nagarjuna speaks about how even splendor cannot be relied upon – that we have to forsake that as well.
Verse 75: Even Splendor Cannot Be Relied Upon
(75) Having attained the state of a sun or a moon,
With the light of your body illuminating countless worlds,
Once again you’ll have arrived in the gloom of darkness,
And then won’t see even your outstretched hand.
This refers to the general Indian belief that the sun, the moon, the stars and so on are actually living beings that add light to these places up there in the sky. So, you could be reborn as sort of the light of a sun or a moon, and when the sun goes out, the life of the being inhabiting the sun goes out – that type of thing. Based on that belief, it says, “Having attained the sate of a sun or a moon,” and your body shining like that, once again, you’ll arrive into “the gloom of darkness,” meaning one of these horrible hellish states in which we won’t even see our out-stretched hand.
There are many things, of course, that we could try to relate that to in our regular lives. I know of one example. It’s the mother of a good friend of mine who has very bad eyesight and who is slowly going blind as she gets older. She can hardly see at all. She can’t even go outside now without somebody helping her. How horrible that might be. We relied on this body to be able to see, and then, all of a sudden, darkness. It’s the same thing: we rely on our bodies to be strong and so on, but then we get arthritis, and the body hurts, and we can’t bend over or get up without help. We can’t rely on it. And it has no essence to it at all.
So, Nagarjuna sums up this section with verse 76.
Verse 76: Having Developed the Determination to Be Free, Practice the Three Higher Trainings
[76] (So,) let the positive force from (knowing that samsara) has come to have faults like those make the light of the lamp of your threefold (practice) advance, (otherwise,) you’ll be plunged all alone in an infinite darkness that can’t be stamped out by the sun or the moon.
Nagarjuna is saying here that, as a result of thinking about all these various sufferings of samsara, we develop renunciation. And on the basis of that renunciation, that determination to be free… the word “renunciation,” literally means “determination” – to become certain. And certain about what? It is to get free from all these unsatisfactory situations, from samsara. So, the mind is firm, determined, ngejung (nges-‘byung) in Tibetan. Nge (nges) is certain, jung (‘byung) is to become. That’s renunciation. Then, on the basis of that, what we have to practice is this threefold practice. That’s what we were referring to: the training in higher discipline, higher concentration, and higher discriminating awareness.
The discipline is to refrain from what is harmful, not only in our ethical behavior but in our general behavior – refraining from what is damaging. It forms a basis for concentration – having the discipline to restrain our minds from mental wandering and dullness. Then, with that concentration, we can focus with discriminating awareness not just on impermanence but on voidness. We can then discriminate that things don’t have true, self-establishing natures from their own sides, as if they were sitting there with a big, solid, plastic coating around them, isolated from anything else. There it is – my body, my friend, my house, my work, that I expect is going to satisfy me and a me who needs to be satisfied. It’s on the basis of that.
To “make the light of the lamp advance”… in other words, by practicing these three higher trainings, the light of understanding and the light of liberation get stronger and stronger. And “(Otherwise,)” it says – so, if we don’t do that – we will “be plunged all alone in an infinite darkness that can’t be stamped out by the sun or the moon.” This is ignorance, the darkness of ignorance, the darkness of closedminded ignorance. The sun and the moon can’t eliminate that darkness, the darkness of our minds. The only thing that will eliminate it is these three higher trainings – the discriminating awareness of voidness, which is upheld by concentration, which is maintained with discipline. And all of that is on the basis of renunciation. We have to get free from all of this.
That, then, forms the basis for the Mahayana path of bodhichitta – aiming for enlightenment so that we can help everybody else do this. We are not aiming for it for ourselves alone. It’s possible to achieve it ourselves. This is whole other topic. Are we aiming for something that is impossible, or do we actually believe that it’s possible? And do we even understand what we are aiming for when we talk about aiming for liberation? These are very essential for renunciation. “I can renounce this, but I know there is no way out” – thinking like that is not going to help.
So, these aspects about the three higher trainings are very important. That’s why the understanding of the four noble truths is so important. The four noble truths – there is (1) suffering; (2) a cause of suffering; (3) a stopping of the suffering – that it is possible to stop it, to end it; (4) a way to actually stop it – namely, a pathway of mind, being convinced that it is possible to stop all the suffering of samsara and its causes and that there is an understanding that will get rid of them.
So, that was the section on the general sufferings of samsara. And we talked about how understanding voidness is necessary for turning the mind away from the disturbing emotions and for gaining liberation in terms of our obsession both with this lifetime and with samsara. This is the end of that section.
OK, let’s end here. We’ll go on to the next part next time.