We are going through this text by Nagarjuna, which is a letter that he wrote to his friend the king in which he outlines the main points of the path to liberation and enlightenment. I was just looking through it, and although it is considered one of the earliest sources of Mahayana teachings, in fact, the vast, vast majority of it speaks about the teachings that are in common for both liberation and enlightenment. There are only a couple verses in it that actually speak about the voidness of all phenomena, which is necessary for attaining enlightenment. So, although one can say that it’s a Mahayana text and the source of Mahayana, we have to be quite careful in looking at this because it speaks mostly about what’s in common for both Hinayana and Mahayana.
There are many different outlines that have been made of this text. The outlines are made by the Tibetans who, of course, classify this as primarily an early Mahayana teaching. Therefore, as in the outline by Mipam that we are following, it divides it – after an introductory discussion of some of the important basic points – into a presentation of the six far-reaching attitudes.
We have to realize that even these six far-reaching attitudes (in fact, there are ten) are asserted both in Hinayana and in Mahayana. The difference is what the motivation behind them is – whether it’s renunciation of samsara and the wish to attain liberation or bodhichitta, the wish to achieve through enlightenment for benefit of all. So, even these six are in common with those who would seek the goal of liberation alone as well as enlightenment.
Now, of course, we could follow a Mahayana path to liberation and then go beyond that to enlightenment. The Mahayana way of following the path of liberation is to aim for liberation as a temporary goal, as a stepping-stone, on the way to enlightenment. I think that when we look at the main part of the text that speaks about these common teachings, we can understand it in this way – as being a Mahayana text.
In the discussion of the six far-reaching attitudes, we are up to far-reaching discriminating awareness, or the perfection of wisdom. It presents that in the context of the three higher trainings: the higher trainings in higher ethical self-discipline, higher absorbed concentration, and higher discriminating awareness. Those are necessary for achieving either liberation or enlightenment. In the lam-rim, the graded stages of the path, those are presented as part of the medium scope, the scope of those who are aiming for liberation. The discussion of the third training, the training in higher discrimination awareness, is divided into (1) how to extract ourselves from the disturbing emotions and (2) how to set out toward enlightenment.
We’ll take a look in a little while (maybe not today or maybe starting today) at the presentation of setting out toward enlightenment. There, as well, it doesn’t seem to speak specifically about bodhichitta; still, it speaks of aspects that are held in common between those who aim for liberation and those who aim for enlightenment. It’s only at the end, where there is a description of the result of all of this, that we get a description of Buddhahood. There, this ultimate goal is clearly identified as Mahayana.
We have been going through how to extract ourselves from disturbing emotions. In that, we spoke about turning our minds from our concerns with this lifetime to future lifetimes and then turning our minds from our concerns with the whole of samsara. That corresponds to the initial and intermediate scopes of motivation, or aims, in lam-rim, the graded stages of the path. We have covered most of the section concerning turning our minds from our concerns with all of samsara. There, we went through the faults of samsara in general and then the faults of each of the various rebirth states that we could be born into, the various uncontrollably recurring samsaric existences we could have.
Now Nagarjuna sums up this entire section with two verses, Verses 103 and 104.
Verse 103: No Rebirth State Is Without Suffering
[103] Since recurring samsara’s like that, there’s no wonderful rebirth as a celestial, a human, a joyless realm being, a clutching ghost, or a creeping creature. So know that rebirth is something that turns out to be (no more than) a vessel for numerous harms.
This points out that the basic problem – and also that which distinguishes the Buddhist identification of suffering from that of other religious or spiritual systems – is the third type of suffering, the all-pervasive affecting suffering. That refers to uncontrollably recurring rebirth, our samsaric existence, with these aggregates, these tainted aggregates that come from disturbing emotions and karmic aftermath.
Motivated by disturbing emotions, we commit karmic actions that leave karmic aftermath that is then activated by more disturbing emotions. So, we get uncontrollably recurring samsara with these tainted aggregates that continue to perpetuate further confusion, unawareness, and so on, and that act as a basis for experiencing the first two types of suffering, the suffering of pain and unhappiness, known as the suffering of suffering, and the suffering of change, which refers to our ordinary happiness that never lasts and always comes to an end; it is never satisfying, and we always want more, and so on. That’s referred to here by Nagarjuna saying, “Rebirth is something that turns out to be (no more than) a vessel for numerous harms,” which are the harms of the first two kinds of suffering.
This is the case no matter what type of rebirth we might get, even if it’s one of the better rebirths as a celestial, a god, in a god realm or as a human (it doesn’t mention here the asuras, the would-be divine, but that was mentioned in the previous verse). Obviously, there is no wonderful rebirth in any of the worst rebirth states as a joyless realm being (a hell realm being), as a clutching ghost (it’s translated from the Chinese as a “hungry ghost”), or as a creeping creature, an animal that crawls on the floor, like a cockroach or something like that.
We need to recognize that this is what we really need to aim for – to overcome the suffering of continuing to generate, because of our unawareness, or ignorance, more and more rebirths (so-called tainted rebirths) with tainted aggregates. They’re tainted by these disturbing emotions and karmic aftermath that perpetuate more and more suffering. This is what we want to get out of. We develop the motivation to get out of that by thinking of all these different types of sufferings (as Nagarjuna has mentioned): the general suffering of samsara and the sufferings of each of the individual states.
Nagarjuna goes on and completes the thought with Verse 104.
Verse 104: The Necessity of Extinguishing Further Compulsive Rebirth
[104] So, even if a fire has suddenly broken out on your head or your clothing, give up trying to cast them off, and make effort instead for the sake of trying to extinguish further compulsive rebirth. There’s no other necessity more superior than that.
This is an image that is often used in other texts as well where it says that shravakas and pratyekabuddhas (I don’t have the exact quote here, but you find it in the Thirty Seven Bodhisattva Practices) would ignore a fire that has broken out on their heads and would cast off concern for that and work just to overcome samsara. In other words, overcoming this lesser type of suffering will not bring us ultimate happiness. That’s not what we want to cast off – our ordinary suffering. Even animals do that. And it’s not that we want just to cast off our ordinary happiness. Other religions teach that as well by advising us to give up worldly pleasures in order to gain eternal happiness in paradise. Rather, what we want to cast off is further compulsive rebirth. As Nagarjuna says, “There’s no other necessity more superior than that.” That is what the most necessary thing to do is.
The Difficulty of Developing Sincere Renunciation of Samsara
Renunciation (before we leave that topic) is, as I have frequently said, not an easy one to develop on a sincere level. Most of us want to overcome the suffering of suffering. It’s quite obvious that nobody really enjoys that. The suffering of change, our ordinary pleasures or happiness – that’s much more difficult to want to give up. To give that up, though, to renounce that, doesn’t mean that what we are just left with suffering and pain. That’s not the point – to give up worldly pleasure so that we just suffer all the time and that, through suffering and pain, we achieve liberation, purifying ourselves with this pain. This is not the Buddhist path. It’s a path that is followed in stages.
We have seen that all along. First, you wish to overcome the suffering of suffering, the gross suffering that we have in the worst rebirth states. And then, even if you have a lot of worldly pleasure, you see that that doesn’t really satisfy. Then you become disgusted with the whole thing and want to give it up.
It’s very interesting. I just returned from a weekend seminar that I gave in Moscow. Waiting for the Aeroflot flight back to Berlin from Moscow, I was in the waiting area in the airport. There were two little groups of people that caught my eye and really reminded me so much of these teachings on renunciation. One was (I saw them holding their passports; they were Polish) an older man, maybe in his fifties, and the other was a younger man, maybe in his twenties. They were attending a little boy. The little boy was, I would guess by his size, five or six years old. He was in a carriage. I saw them later lift him up, and he was very, very, very seriously defective in terms of his body and his mind. When they picked him up, it was like draping a cloth over their arm. He didn’t even have the ability to hold himself straight. He always had his mouth completely open, a totally vacant look in his eyes that were just looking up and snot constantly coming out of his nose. Every few minutes, the older man had some sort of spray of air or something like that that he would have to spray into the child’s nose and into his mouth in order for him to continue breathing.
You look at this life that this child has, whether he is conscious of it or not, and you look at the suffering, even if you are not thinking in terms of the hell realms – this is really heavy, heavy suffering. It was a very moving example of compassion as well because I saw them sitting on the plane as well, and they laid this little child out on one of the seats, and every minute, they had to attend to it and watch to make sure that it was still breathing. You thought that maybe these people, this family… somebody had to stay awake all the time, all night long, to spray air into this child’s nose and mouth because it was constantly producing all this phlegm. The child was just completely out of it, lying there with this blank look on it’s face and not able to do anything with its body, although I did notice it could move its legs a little bit. This made me think, really, of the worst rebirth states.
There was a couple in the waiting room as well. I imagine that it was a Russian man speaking German with a Russian accent and a German woman. The man was, I would guess, in his late fifties. He had a huge belly, white hair, a little white goatee, and was covered with these ostentatious, really thick gold chains that stuck out around his neck and his arms and stuff like that, like the nouveau riche Russians with the worst taste whatsoever. He was wearing some sort of pseudo cowboy, white jacket with sequins on it. It was really, really loud and gaudy. The girl was maybe in her late twenties – so, young enough to be the guy’s daughter. She was wearing a mini mini-skirt with these really high leather boots with really high, thick soles and so on, and a very skimpy low-cut top. The guy was standing there with his hand on her ass, just clutching it and squeezing it in front of everybody in the airport and talking really loudly in this German with a Russian accent.
I was going, “Oh, my god. Here is a wonderful example of a god-realm type of thing. Supposedly, this is pleasure – the gold jewelry, the pretty girl and all of that.” How totally disgusting this was. Also, how appropriate objects for compassion the two of them were… because, obviously, the girl allowed this. These people needed as much compassion as the family with this totally non-functional child. And that really makes you think, when you see such extreme examples like this, of renunciation, “I wouldn’t like to be reborn as that child or in that family. And I certainly wouldn’t like to be reborn as this guy with the gold jewelry and the girl.” Then one starts to think, “Is there some alternative? Is there something else besides this?”
Even if we are a little bit happy that we are not living in those two extremes, we could also go to the extreme of being a little bit arrogant and proud, thinking, “I am not like that.” Still, with a wonderfully endowed precious human rebirth, we still have our everyday sufferings. They’re not as extreme as that, but like any human being, there are the sufferings of not getting what we want, of standing in endless lines, wasting… There were so many hours wasted at the airport and in the incredible traffic in Moscow. And the air there, the pollution, made me and everybody that I met there very weak in energy and so on.
So, even having a precious human rebirth… what are you going to do with it? You can work to achieve liberation and enlightenment, but still, you are going to be in a samsaric situation with its ups and downs. Anywhere you go – even if you go into a wonderful retreat in the countryside with beautiful clean air and all the facilities and stuff like that – still, there is suffering. Still, there is that.
In the winter, I did a retreat in a wonderful place like that in the countryside. And I had the most terrible allergies because the room had some sort of wallpaper and thing on the wall that was covered with dust that I didn’t really realize that I was allergic to. So, I was coughing, having problems with my throat, and sneezing the whole time. So, even in the nicest circumstances, one has these tainted aggregates that are born from karma and disturbing emotions that are just going to be the basis for more suffering. So, one really, really needs to develop renunciation of this and want to get out.
Attachment to Precious Human Rebirths
Again, this is very difficult because we tend to be attached to the precious human rebirth, which, after all, is just a stepping-stone on the way – a necessary stepping-stone but not the final goal. For many of us, if we manage to get to the initial scope of motivation (which is very, very difficult) and are really working to benefit our future rebirths and to ensure that we continue to have precious human rebirths, it’s usually with a great deal of attachment to it – “I want, in all my lifetimes, never to be separated from my friends, my loved ones and my Dharma teachers,” and all of that sort of stuff. We have a lot of attachment there.
The teachings from Aryadeva (Four Hundred Verses), the ones where he talks about impermanence, are very, very helpful. He asks: what is the cause of people parting from each other? The cause is them meeting each other. Meeting somebody is the cause for you to part. That’s like the teachings on subtle impermanence. What is the cause of your computer breaking? The cause of it is that it was made in the first place. If it was put together, it’s going to fall apart. What is the cause of your death? The cause of death is birth. That’s the ultimate cause of your death: you were born. If you were born, you will die.
The fact that you are with friends, that you are with loved ones, that you are in a nice situation – that you came together – is dependent on the causes and conditions to come together. And those causes and conditions are not permanent; they change and are affected by other causes and conditions. So, that situation cannot possibly last because what supports it will change; therefore, the situation will change.
“Friends who are long time together will always have to part.” It says that in so many texts and so many teachings. Like leaves blowing in the wind, they sometimes come together, but then the winds of karma blow them apart. So, even that is not something that is reliable. And putting all our hopes and faith in our friends, in our situations, in having teachings available and all of this sort of stuff – these are not things that we can count on or depend on.
So, what do we want to achieve? We want to achieve liberation from all of this. Liberation is the goal of so many different religions, whether they call it liberation or salvation, salvation into a heavenly realm or… In various Indian religions, it’s what’s called moksha. It’s the same word, “liberation.” But then Aryadeva also points out, “Well, what is this liberation that these other systems are talking about? Is that really liberation?” What liberation would really be from the Buddhist point of view is to get rid of this all-pervasive affecting suffering. It’s all-pervasive because these tainted aggregates – body, mind, emotions, and so on – pervade every moment of our experience. And it’s affecting in the sense that it affects what we experience.
All of that, of course, depends very much on our understanding of what liberation would actually be like and what the alternatives would be. That brings us to the next verse of the text.
Are there any questions about this?
Renunciation Is Based on a Deep Understanding of the Four Noble Truths and Buddha-Nature
As I say, renunciation requires an awful lot of work for it to be not only sincere but also deep enough so that it really is what Buddha means by renunciation. The literal term for it when translated is ngejung (nges-'byung), which means “to become definite,” “to become certain.” That’s the word that’s used – to become certain. So, determination. To become certain about what? That I want to give up all this suffering, to get out of it. And I am determined to become free. So, the mind is very firm about that.
This idea of becoming very firm, very definite, is also a very important factor here because it is based, of course, on having no indecisive wavering. But not only that. Why would we have indecisive wavering about it? It’s not just because of our attraction to the various aspects of samsaric existence. It’s also because we doubt (1) that liberation is possible and (2) we doubt what would happen if we were liberated and didn’t have these kind of aggregates and all these incorrect views, which are classified in the sixteen incorrect views of the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths (we have gone over these) – that there is no such thing as liberation or that liberation is only temporary, or that you can get rid of the causes of suffering temporarily, but they are going to come back… all these incorrect views.
We have to become certain about these sixteen aspects of the four noble truths: (1) what suffering really is, (2) what its cause really is, (3) what a true stopping of it really is and that such a stopping is possible, and (4) that the true pathway mind – the understanding of voidness, or if we speak in general, the four noble truths, or the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths – will really bring that liberation about. When we are convinced of all that, then, you can really have renunciation. Then you are determined to be free because you are confident that it is possible. You know what it involves, and you are confident that you can attain it, which of course, brings in the whole discussion about understanding the purity of the mind and Buddha-nature – that mind is not stained permanently by these disturbing emotions and karmic impulses and so on. So, it requires quite a great deal of understanding to become convinced that it is possible to become liberated and then to have an understanding of what is possible after liberation, of what that would be like.
Nagarjuna goes on. Now, according to Mipham’s commentary, we are in a new part, a new, larger part of the outline. Remember that we had in the three higher trainings, under the training of higher discriminating awareness, how to extract ourselves from disturbing emotions (that was both this lifetime and all of samsara – so, the initial and medium scope aims). We’ve finished that now. Now he is onto how to set out toward enlightenment.
For this, Mipham has in his outline one verse regarding having confidence in liberation, the result (so, having confidence that liberation is possible, what it is), and then a number of verses talking about practicing the true pathway minds as the cause for that (so, what will actually bring this liberation about). That’s something that can be understood in the text, as I was saying at the beginning, both within the context of liberation, merely liberation, and within the context of enlightenment. So, it can be understood as both.
Verse 105: Having Confidence in Liberation, the Result We Are Aiming For
[105] With ethical self-disciplines, discriminating awareness, and mental stability, attain a high state of nirvana, pacified, tamed, and without any stains, with no aging, no dying, and never depleting, parted from earth, water, fire, and wind, sun, and moon.
This is a verse that has many, many different levels of implications. Many, many different levels. First of all, what is being reiterated here is that, for attaining liberation (and also, it is to be understood, for enlightenment), we need ethical self-discipline, discriminating awareness, and mental stability. So, these are the three higher trainings.
The higher training in discriminating awareness, or wisdom, is what actually gets rid of the root of suffering (the origin of suffering) and the suffering itself. That’s the understanding of voidness, ultimately. That’s the sharp ax that can cut the root of samsara. But then we need mental stability, higher absorbed concentration, in order to stay focused with that discriminating awareness. So, if we want to cut down the root of a tree, a sharp ax is not sufficient: we need to have good aim in order to always hit the same point. Ethical self-discipline is necessary in order to have the concentration and to correct our minds when they wander off or become dull. That’s analogous to having the strength to pick up an ax. Even if we have good aim and a sharp ax, if we don’t have the strength to use it, it’s not going to work. This is the commonly cited analogy that is used for these three higher trainings. For cutting the root of a tree, we need these three.
As I said, the three higher trainings are usually presented in the context of what we need to gain liberation, but obviously, we also need them to attain enlightenment. The only difference is the motivation, the motivating aim – whether it is just for liberation or whether it is for enlightenment for the benefit of all.
With these three, Nagarjuna says, “Attain a high state of nirvana.” Nirvana, the Tibetan translation (mya-ngan-'das), means “a state beyond sorrow,” beyond all suffering. The Sanskrit word “nirvana” means literally something that is “blown out” or “extinguished.” So, it is a state that is “pacified, tamed, and without any stains.” “Pacified” means that all the disturbing emotions, all the karmic impulses, and so on have been pacified – are gone.
There are several nirvanas here. We can talk about the nirvana of liberation, or we can talk about the nirvana of enlightenment.
Nirvana of Liberation – Pacification of the Emotional Obscurations
For liberation, what is pacified are the obscurations that prevent liberation. These are the emotional obscurations. Those refer to the disturbing emotions and attitudes and their tendencies. Also, we would include in here karmic aftermath and the tendencies of karma. Tendencies of karma…
There is a difference between tendencies (that’s the word “seed,” literally) and habits. Habits are… I prefer to call them “constant habits.” The tendencies ripen just occasionally. For instance, if we have a tendency of anger, it’s not that we are angry every single moment of our existence. So, a tendency ripens only occasionally – sometimes we are angry; sometimes we are not. On the other hand, a constant habit ripens constantly, all the time – such as the habits of grasping for true existence, impossible existence, which cause the mind to make an appearance of true existence, or impossible existence, all the time, every moment. So, that’s the difference between the two.
With the nirvana of liberation, we get rid of the three kinds of suffering of samsara – the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and the all-pervasive suffering (so, tainted aggregates). So, no more rebirth, samsaric rebirths. All of that is pacified. We’ve gotten rid of the causes of samsara, of these sufferings, and the suffering itself. And tamed… the mental continuum is tamed, so it doesn’t produce anymore of this. And it’s without any stains, meaning without the stains of these emotional obscurations.
Nirvana of Enlightenment – Pacification of the Cognitive Obscurations
When it comes to enlightenment, what is pacified are not only the emotional obscurations but also the cognitive obscurations.
When the mind, because of these habits of grasping for true, impossible existence, projects appearances of true existence, what does that mean? True existence means that things exist from their own side, by their own power, in boxes, in categories corresponding to the words for them. Words and concepts refer to things. The word “blue” does refer to blue. But light doesn’t exist from its own side, in a box. It doesn’t appear as one kind of box that is “blue,” with a big, solid, plastic coating, and as another box that is “red” and another one that is “purple” and so on. When we perceive the world and others as truly existing in boxes that correspond to what’s in the dictionary – this word and that word, this thing and that thing – then we don’t see the inter-relation of everything. That’s a cognitive obscuration; it obscures our cognition of the interrelatedness and interdependence of everything.
Now, if we can’t see that, then we can’t see all the causes from beginningless time for why each individual person is suffering the way they are, what each person’s capacity is and so on. Nor will we be able to see the consequences or results of everything or anything that we might say to this person to help them and what the ramifications will be not only for them but also for everybody that they interact with forever from then on. If we could stop seeing things as being encapsulated in plastic, in these boxes, we’d see the inter-relatedness of everything. For that, we have to get the mind to stop projecting these solid lines around everything, these appearances of true existence. And it is the habits of grasping for true existence that cause the mind to project these false things, these false ways of existing. Those are the cognitive obscurations. So, all of that is pacified when we attain the highest state of nirvana, enlightenment, and the mind-stream is tamed. Then, it will never produce any of that again and will forever be without any stains, even of these cognitive obscurations.
Then it says, “no aging, no dying, and never depleting.” We can understand this on the usual samsaric level in terms of the twelve links of dependent arising (which Nagarjuna will list in a few verses from here). Those are the last two links of the chain of dependent arising. So, we are not going to have a samsaric rebirth with aging and dying – that type of situation.
But we can also understand this as referring to the fact that the state of nirvana is forever, so liberation is forever. It’s not going grow old, it’s not going to die or end, and it’s never going to deplete. In other words, it’s never going to run out. This is something that is static, permanent. It’s a state – a parting forever of these “fleeting stains,” to use the jargon. That parting is forever, so they are not going to come back. That parting itself doesn’t do anything; it’s just a fact. So, it’s forever. It’s like when we have died from a specific rebirth, the fact that that lifetime is over never changes. That lifetime doesn’t come back.
Nirvana With and Without Remainder According to the Non-Prasangika Schools
It’s also a state that is “parted from earth, water, fire and wind, sun and moon.” This is a very interesting line because it could be understood in so many different ways. One way is on a sutra level. We speak here about nirvana with remainder and without remainder. In the non-Prasangika schools, including the Hinayana schools, nirvana with remainder is what an arhat or a Buddha achieves when they achieve liberation or enlightenment within their lifetime. But they still have a remainder of the tainted aggregates that they had from birth. Nirvana without remainder is what they achieve when they die, having attained nirvana during that lifetime. Then they no longer have these tainted aggregates. So, they are parted, at that stage without remainder, from “earth, water, fire, and wind” – so, the elements of the body – and from “sun and moon,” which would refer to experiencing the usual daily and yearly cycles of samsara. So, it is a state that is without any of that.
Does Nirvana Without Remainder Mean the Mental Continuum Completely Ends?
Now, it’s very interesting – this thing without remainder. Does it mean that, literally, in the Hinayana systems, the mental continuum of an arhat or a Buddha completely ends when they die? It’s very interesting. When I was in Thailand, there was a great Thai master whose name escapes me at the moment (it began with a “P”). I met him, and I asked him about this. He said that, actually, what it means in Theravada is that the continuum of the mind in its ordinary, samsaric form comes to an end, but that, otherwise, it continues.
Yogavachara Tradition within Theravada and Orthodox Theravada
Very recently, I became informed about another aspect of Theravada. It’s called the Yogavachara Tradition within Theravada. This is sometimes referred to as “tantric Theravada” in the Western literature. This apparently was the most popular, widespread form of Theravada in Southeast Asia up until the nineteenth century when there was a very strong reform movement in Thailand, which went back to a very orthodox form and then spread to other areas in Southeast Asia.
This Yogavachara form was especially strong in Cambodia and in northern Thailand. In Cambodia, with the Khmer Rouge in the seventies – that killed it off almost completely. But there were some Western scholars that did studies of this tradition before the Khmer Rouge, so some of it is preserved. And that seems to have been the much more dominant tradition. The history of it is a little unclear, but probably, it had been going since the eleventh or twelfth centuries, and it probably had been influenced somewhat (although it is not very clear; there is a lot of speculation) by the monks who left the monasteries in northern India at the time of the invasions and who then moved to northern Burma and northern Thailand and so on. These monks at the great monasteries practiced not only Mahayana but also tantra.
Anyway, in this tradition, there are very elaborate, complicated visualizations involving the syllables of the Pali alphabet (like we use seed syllables from Sanskrit) for basically generating at the navel (sounds like Kalachakra, doesn’t it?) a little Buddha that will then be the form of a Buddha that you take after you die, having attained nirvana, so after this gross body is no longer there with parinirvana. This is what continues afterwards. It’s very interesting. And instead of the five Dhyani Buddhas and the five places on the body (they have slightly different places on the body), they have the five Buddhas. Shakyamuni is the fourth Buddha of this eon; so, they have the first three Buddhas, then Shakyamuni makes four and Maitreya is the fifth. These are the five Buddhas that they have. Very, very interesting. I just learned about this a couple of weeks ago – that some scholarship has been done on that.
Participant: There are eighteen schools of Theravada?
Dr. Berzin: No. You have the eighteen schools of Hinayana. These are known as the eighteen nikayas in Sanskrit. Nikayas are bodies of literature or traditions. So, another scholarly term that one could use for these traditions is Nikaya Buddhism. Theravada is one of them.
Within Theravada, there are many different schools, divided according to the country it spread to, and within each country, there are several sub-schools. It has quite a different history in India – in South India to start with, Sri Lanka, then Arakan, which is the coast of Burma on the Bay of Bengal (which is quite a separate area), and then northern Burma, southern Burma, northern Thailand (that was the Lan Na Kingdom), southern Thailand, and then Thailand when it was unified, Laos, and Cambodia. I believe also Yunnan in southern China. Then you’d have to speak about Funan, which became South Vietnam, and then Indonesia. So, there are these many, many different forms of Theravada. And within each of them, there are many sub-divisions and a long history. This is an area that I am not so familiar with – the intricacies of the history. But it is as complicated as the history of Chinese Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. There are many, many variants.
But this seems to be a division that was quite prominent between orthodox Theravada and this more popular, non-scholarly form of Theravada called Yogavachara.
My point is that nirvana without remainder is taken to mean – certainly from a Mahayana point of view or a Prasangika point of view (put it that way), which criticizes the Hinayana position – that there is an absolute end to the mental continuum and aggregates.
Participant: Maha suicide.
Dr. Berzin: Maha suicide in a sense. This is clear from Aryadeva’s Four Hundred Verses where, in fact, he has a verse refuting that this could be possible – that the mental continuum comes to an absolute end. But we see, even within Theravada, that there can be understandings of this that are actually quite similar to what we would find in Mahayana (not referring to Prasangika but the non-Prasangika Mahayana), which postulate that for an arhat, the mental continuum continues after liberation. And obviously, so does that of a Buddha.
Participant: What does the average Theravada monk tell you?
Dr. Berzin: I don’t really know. I haven’t had that much contact with average Theravada monks. I have no idea. The average Theravada monk, again, is different in each country in terms of what they study – those that study at all.
In Thailand, the main emphasis is on studying vinaya. This is the main thing that they study – the rules of discipline. You also have the forest monk tradition. You have the village monk tradition. The forest monk tradition does more meditation in terms of shamatha and vipashyana. But those that study study vinaya.
In Burma, traditionally, they primarily study abhidharma. But I must say, when I visited Burma a few years ago and went to one of the schools where supposedly they were studying, I looked at a commentary, a Pali commentary, which according to Western scholars, is the most outstanding Burmese commentator, the people there had never even heard of the author. That surprised me very much. So, I wonder how strong the tradition in Burma is, given the present political situation in Burma.
In Cambodia, Buddhism was pretty much destroyed after the Khmer Rouge. Maha Ghosananda tried to revive it a bit. What has been reviving there, however, is the orthodox form of Theravada, certainly not this Yogavachara that was there before. In Sri Lanka, perhaps, they have the broadest study, but I don’t know how extensive that is either. There is a difficult political situation in Sri Lanka as well. In Laos also, things are difficult under the communist regime when it comes to study.
So, I don’t really know. But I am certainly not an expert on Theravada. By no means.
Nirvana With and Without Remainder According to Gelug Prasangika
Anyway, nirvana with remainder and without remainder. According to Prasangika as understood by Gelugpa, nirvana without remainder comes first. This refers to the total absorption on voidness, which is the state that an arya achieves before attaining enlightenment. Up until enlightenment, during total absorption on voidness, there is no appearance of true existence. That’s nirvana without remainder; it’s without a remainder of an appearance of true existence. Nirvana with remainder is during the subsequent attainment period when there is an appearance of true existence once again. So, with or without a remainder refers to an appearance of true existence (whereas what a Buddha attains is called “non-abiding nirvana”; it doesn’t abide in any of these extremes). And “parted from earth, water, fire, wind, sun, and moon,” etc., while you have no remainder in the state of total absorption on voidness, there is no appearance of these elements not even conventionally. All you are focused on is “no such thing” as true existence.
But the other interpretation (I haven’t seen this written anywhere, but just looking at it myself, out of the top of my head) sounds very much like the anuttarayoga tantra explanation where it speaks about how the subtlest consciousness withdraws from the gross elements of the body, how the dissolution process occurs as the consciousness gets down to the clear light level.
So, first, it is no longer supported by earth, then no longer by water, then no longer by fire, then no longer by wind. Then you get (it’s not in this order) the white light appearance and the red-light appearance – so, the “sun and moon” – and then what in the Uttaratantra is called “space,” which is the black appearance. And then you get the clear light. So here it says it’s “parted” from all that. So, that could be grosser levels that the consciousness dissociates from as it gets more and more subtle as it gets closer and closer to the clear light state, which is also with “no aging, no dying, never depleting, without any stains, pacified,” etc. So, it might also indicate that.
Also, the “sun and moon,” by the way, are analogies for what is called red and white bodhichittas that are explained in the highest class of tantra. This starts to get very complicated. When you are born, there is something called the “indestructible drop,” which is like the energy kernel of the subtlest energy associated with the subtlest clear light mind. The subtlest level of mind is what goes on from lifetime to lifetime and into enlightenment. That’s what has no beginning and no end. So, that goes on. And with it, there is the subtlest energy wind and this indestructible drop.
It is indestructible in the sense that it goes from lifetime to lifetime; it is not destroyed at death.
I’m not sure how the mechanism works, but when the subtlest mind, wind and indestructible drop take the elements of the embryo as their grosser material basis, the drop becomes associated with the creative energies of the sperm of the father and the egg of the mother. When, the embryo at some point develops the chakras, this drop divides into a white and red portion. The white drop, associated with the creative energy from the father, goes to the crown chakra, and the red drop, associated with the creative energy of the mother, goes to the navel chakra.
When you die, the two come back together. So, when the white one comes back to the heart chakra – that’s the white appearance. When the red one comes down to the heart chakra – that’s the red appearance. When they meet – that’s the black appearance and then finished. So, the “sun and moon” could be referring to that.
You had a question.
Participant: Is that what India calls the kundalini?
Dr. Berzin: No, but kundalini is related to that. Kundalini in the Hindu systems is called chandali in the Buddhist system. Chandali, which literally means “the low-caste woman,” is called tummo in Tibetan. This is a blissful heat that is generated at the navel basically to cause the drop that we were just talking about, the white one at the crown chakra, to melt so that you get subtler and subtler levels of mind.
Kundalini, or the Buddhist equivalent tummo, is related with this phenomenon called “red and white bodhichittas.” Bodhichitta is a mind. Red and white bodhichittas are called “red and white” because of the color, and they are called “bodhichittas” because it becomes a basis for realizing deepest bodhichitta.
We have relative and deepest bodhichitta. Relative bodhichitta aims at achieving the Form Bodies and Deep Awareness Dharmakayas for the benefit of others, and deepest bodhichitta aims at attaining a Svabhava Dharmakaya – the true stoppings on the mind of a Buddha and the voidness of that mind, the cognition of which brings about the attainment of those true stoppings. So, you are giving the name of the result (deepest bodhichitta) to the cause. The cause is working with these drops and bringing them to the heart chakra. This brings about the attainment, the activation, of the subtlest mind, which is the most effective level of mind for gaining the understanding of voidness – so, deepest bodhichitta. It’s called red and white bodhichitta for that reason. But they actually refer to these subtle drops.
So, one can understand this verse on many different levels. One of them even seems to be a proto-tantric level, an anuttarayoga tantra level. This would fit in with the fact that there are several commentaries to the Guhyasamaja Tantra, which talks specifically about this, that were written by Nagarjuna or were at least attributed to Nagarjuna. So, this would fit with that.
Reasons Why Liberation Is Possible
The Emotional and Cognitive Obscurations Are Not Part of the Nature of the Mind
So, we have this attainment of a “high state of nirvana.” Now, that becomes the question. Can we actually achieve that? In order to make our minds confident about liberation, the result we are aiming for (confidence in liberation is the name of this section in the outline), we have to be convinced that it’s possible to get rid of all of the obscurations, all the emotional and cognitive obscurations.
And why is liberation possible? It’s possible because (this is the whole discussion of why a true stopping of suffering and its causes is possible) if suffering and unawareness, or ignorance, and the disturbing emotions, etc. were part of the nature of the mind, then those things would be present at all times. But they’re not present at all times because in an arya’s total absorption on voidness – this nirvana without remainder (according to Prasangika) – they’re totally absent. The mind doesn’t make appearances of true existence and doesn’t grasp for true existence – so, no suffering. So, it can’t be that suffering and the disturbing emotions and the appearance-making of true existence are part of the nature of the mind.
But this total absorption on voidness that one gets with the grosser levels of consciousness of an arya (sutra arya and an arya of the first three classes of tantra) can’t be sustained. You get this appearances of true existence once more, during the subsequent realization period after that. So, you can’t sustain the total absorption forever.
The Clear Light Mind Is Naturally Free of All Obscurations
But there is another situation, which is the clear light mind. That also doesn’t have appearance-making of true existence, doesn’t have grasping for true existence. It’s not even conceptual. So, that, by nature, is unstained. And that you have naturally during the death time, the period of death. It doesn’t have an understanding of its own nature, of voidness, but it is naturally parted from all this stuff. So, because it is naturally parted from all these obscurations, from true suffering and its causes, then true suffering and its causes cannot be of the nature of the mind. And if you can get the understanding of voidness with this clear light mind and can achieve it in mediation, that understanding could, with enough familiarity, be sustained forever. Therefore, if that can be sustained forever, it is possible to attain liberation.
What Kinds of Bodies Do Liberated Beings Have?
Now, what kind body would you have? It would be a body generated by the subtlest wind, which is the energy aspect of the subtlest mind. It would be generated by that, not by an involuntary and uncontrollable association with gross elements that are based on karma. Then the interesting question arises…
Participant: Then there is no thinking at all.
Dr. Berzin: Well, it depends on how you define thinking. There is mental activity, but it’s not conceptual. Conceptual means through categories, through fixed categories. It’s not through fixed categories. But the mind functions: it knows things – knows everything, in fact – non-conceptually. It is not so easy to understand what that actually means. But in any case, it knows things non-conceptually.
Now the interesting question arises. If the body of an arhat or a Buddha is made only out of the subtlest energy (“light body” is what it’s sometimes called in relation to an arhat), can anybody see it? Doesn’t it have to be associated with gross elements in order to be visible?
Now, take the case of a Buddha. There’s Sambhogakaya. That is only visible to arya bodhisattvas in a pure land. So, that’s associated with some sort of grosser level of energy – ethereal forms, like in the form realm… no, not the form realm, but something analogous to that (form realm forms are samsaric). This is the real question, actually. And it is not an easy question. Nirmanakaya, however, would be visible to ordinary beings, so it would have to be associated with ordinary elements.
Are the Physical Elements of a Buddha’s Nirmanakaya and Sambhogakaya Tainted?
So, then the question is, when you have a Nirmanakaya and a Sambhogakaya that are associated with grosser elements, are the elements themselves tainted? Just because these Form Bodies are associated with the elements, does that mean that they’d have to get sick? Did they have to fall apart? This is a very interesting question, and I must say, I don’t know clearly the answer. First of all, one has to be really, really careful not to fall to the extreme of a non-Buddhist position of saying that the clear light mind and the subtlest energy are like a permanent soul that goes into a body of gross elements, activates it, and then comes out. That’s certainly not the case. But it’s difficult to understand how it is not that and, yet, activates a body.
Participant: One thing is what the elements are forming. And another thing is how a Buddha experiences it. No? Like if a Buddha gets headache, what does he feel?
Dr. Berzin: Right, Jorge is saying that these elements refer to how a Buddha experiences them. Like when a Buddha experiences a headache, what is he actually feeling? From the Mahayana point of view, he is just demonstrating that as a lesson; he doesn’t really feel any suffering from that.
How the Physical Elements Are Generated
But I think the clue here is how the elements are generated. What is the natal source of the elements? Remember, in Chittamatra we had that the natal source is like the oven that produces the bread. So, what does it come out of? The Chittamatra, the Mind Only School, says that the elements come out of the seeds of karma. Well, Buddhas don’t have seeds of karma anymore. Neither do arhats for that matter. So, for a Buddha, it would have to come out of compassion. What drives the mental continuum of a Buddha is not karma: it’s compassion. Out of compassion, you would say, it generates a form. And that form would have to be associated with the grosser elements in order to be visible to anybody other than Buddhas – so, Sambhogakaya and Nirmanakaya types of forms.
Chittamatra says that physical form comes only from the side of the mind. Prasangika says, “Hey, let’s not go to an extreme here;” (both Prasangika and Svatantrika say this: “don’t go to that extreme”) “the appearance comes from a combination of both external and internal sources.” The Rupakaya aspect of the appearance comes from the side of the mind of the Buddha, the external source are the elements of the material body that is their basis – gross elements in the case of a Nirmanakaya and subtle ones for a sambhogakaya.
Ultimately, we can speak of how the karma of the universe… not the karma of the universe but how the karma of all the beings who are born in the universe influences the type of elements and so on that appear. That karma influences the fact that there are planets and how the stars, the sun, the moon and all these sort of things are in general. But one can’t discount external elements. The external elements themselves… you can’t really speak of them themselves. That was the lesson to be learned from Chittamatra. You can’t speak about them themselves. If you speak about them, it’s in connection with a mind. If you think about them, if you describe them, if you speculate about them, if you perceive them, it’s in relation to a mind. So, it makes no sense for them not to be in relation to a mind. But the question is, are these external elements tainted or untainted? Is it different in the case of a Buddha or an arhat?
Reasons Why the Physical Elements Associated with the Minds of Non-Samsaric Beings Are Not Tainted
From the dzogchen point of view, a natural function of the clear light mind is that it is always making appearances. “Spontaneously establishing appearances” (lhun-grub) is the technical term. But the appearance-making would have to always be in association with external elements. And if the clear light mind that is in association with these elements is untainted, you probably have to say the elements are also untainted. After all, the elements in combination with the mind of a Buddha are not tainted. What’s the definition of tainted? “Derived from karma and disturbing emotions.” The elements in combination with the mind of a Buddha are not derived from karma and disturbing emotions. So, I think you’d have to analyze it like that. I am not sure.
Participant: But they will still decay.
Dr. Berzin: They still decay but not because of karma. So, the elements will decay. Why? Well, if they come together, they have to part. So, by the general nature of things, they will fall apart. You could also explain the decaying of the elements of Buddha’s body as Buddha teaching everybody a lesson about impermanence. So, he grew old and died – the body grew old and died. Did he have to? (Maybe that falls into one of those unanswered question that Buddha, would not give an answer to.) Well, in theory, he didn’t have to, but the point is, the only purpose of manifesting is to teach and help others. And to manifest as an eternal form that never changes is not going to help anybody because nobody would feel that they could ever become like that. So, it wouldn’t teach anybody anything. I think you’d have to argue like that.
All of this, the more that you look at it, becomes…
Participant: It’s complex.
Dr. Berzin: It’s complex.
Not Knowing What Liberation and Enlightenment Would Be Like, We Think of Them in Samsaric Terms
But the point of all of this is (to get back to our point) is that if you attain liberation or Buddhahood – which wouldn’t be with this ordinary body and mind – well, then what? And is it possible? What will it be like? If we don’t know what it will be like, then it is very hard to really have our hearts set on trying to become like that, isn’t it? Therefore, by default, we always think of nirvana and enlightenment in samsaric terms – namely, being with my friends, with my gurus, and with ice cream, whatever. We do. I think this is a relevant thing to try to think about, although it’s not, as far as I’m aware, explained in much depth.
What really is going on with the body of a Buddha – a Nirmanakaya and a Sambhogakaya, a Form Body of a Buddha? What really is this? And by extension, the light body of an arhat? Arhats usually hang out in pure lands, according to Mahayana. But that isn’t always the case because if you look at the sutras, the Pali texts, you see that Buddha had a whole gang of arhats around him. Everybody in the first council, the five hundred arhats, got together. Who are they? Arhats with remainder of their tainted aggregates, I guess, not arhats without remainder. So, what about these arhats without remainder? Do they come back? Where are they? Are they only in pure lands? I don’t know.
Questions about Jesus and How We View Other Religions
Participant: Jesus has come back.
Dr. Berzin: Well, again, this raises the question: who is Jesus?
His Holiness the Dalai Lama (and I don’t know if he is being diplomatic here) says that if we look at the actions of Jesus, we’d have to say he was a bodhisattva. There is no question about that. His sole reason for existing was to eliminate the suffering of others. So, that’s a bodhisattva. And bodhisattvas can appear anywhere. Was he an emanation of a Buddha? I think that it would be very, very insulting to a Christian to say, “Well, your Jesus is just an emanation of a Buddha.” That’s very insulting, and I don’t think that’s at all a good answer.
Participant: That’s what the Hindus do with Buddhism.
Dr. Berzin: That’s what the Hindus did with Buddhism. They say that Buddha is an emanation of Vishnu. This is a very inclusivist view of inter-religious relations. It’s saying that we include your religion as some sort of lower form of our religion. We don’t say that by practicing your religion, you go to hell, but we do say that your religion is really part of ours and that ours is supreme. I don’t that’s very fair.
If we look at a pluralist view… I went to this conference on inter-religious relations and Buddhist attitudes toward other religions where these different views were discussed. Anyway, from a pluralist point of view, we don’t try to understand someone else’s religion in our own terms. So, we don’t try to put the figures in their religion into the categories of our religion; we just try to understand their religions in their own terms. We also accept that their religion leads to the goals that they say that they lead to and that Buddhism leads to the goal that it says it leads to. And let’s not try to figure out which goal is higher because it doesn’t matter. If we try to compare them, then, again, we’re trying to understand one in terms of the other. Instead, we just respect each of them. This is the approach that His Holiness the Dalai Lama tries to take, which is very good, whereas others like Thich Nhat Hanh are more inclusivist, saying that “well, instead of having Jesus on a cross, you should have Jesus sitting cross-legged on a lotus because, actually, he was a bodhisattva So, there are these different approaches.
In any case, our topic here, in our section outline, is having confidence in liberation, the result that we are aiming for. And I think that we need to understand, both for liberation and enlightenment, that it is possible, what it is, and what it would be like. And then is it possible for us to attain it? And, yes, we can attain it because we all have clear light minds. That’s the fundamental basis, the fundamental nature: it is unstained. And through, as it says here, “ethical self-discipline, discriminating awareness, and mental stability,” we can attain it, helped by the far-reaching attitudes and the appropriate motivation – either renunciation alone or renunciation plus bodhichitta. And it is possible for each of us individually. Buddha-nature – when we have a clear idea of what that is and we are convinced that we have it, then we can really have renunciation.
I don’t think it is satisfactory to just say, “I want to get out of this” and to have no idea of “then what?” That’s not very stable. Not very stable at all. We want to be able to say, “I want to leave this, and this is what will be after I have left it.” Otherwise, the view is “I just want to leave my life; it’s so miserable. I’ll commit suicide, and then – a big nothing.” But thinking like that, the big nothing is what you think will come next. So, the big nothing becomes a something.
Participant: Because you want to attain it.
Dr. Berzin: Because you want to attain it. You want to attain it, and you think that it will have the quality of “then I will be at peace. I will be at peace in the big nothing.” Doesn’t that imply that there is a “me” that will still be there in the big nothing who will experience the peace?
That brings us to the end of this class. The next section begins, which is practicing the true pathway minds as the cause. Here, Nagarjuna goes into what we need with the seeing pathway mind and the accustoming pathway mind, in other words, the path of seeing and the path of meditation. This gets into the discussion of the seven factors leading to a purified state and the eightfold noble path. We’ll continue with that in future classes.