The Four Noble Truths
We are studying and practicing with a text by a great master, Dharmarakshita, called Wheel of Sharp Weapons. This is a text which deals with changing our attitudes, cleansing or transforming our attitudes, training them to be more positive. In other words, purifying out the negative attitudes, and transforming them so that they become positive ones. We saw that this text fits within the Buddhist tradition, of course, and particularly in the Mahayana tradition, which is the tradition that is sometimes translated as the Great Vehicle or Vast Vehicle. It’s vast because it has the largest scope: it deals with trying to benefit everybody and it deals with the greatest, most vast goal, which is to become a Buddha to be able to benefit others as much as is possible. In order to follow that path, we need to have a background, a foundation, and we started speaking about that last week.
The Buddhist teachings fit into the general structure of the Four Noble Truths, as they’re usually called – or four facts – that any highly realized being would see are true. This is that we all face problems and various difficulties, as we know. In terms of our ordinary lives, we have problems with others, we have problems with our own emotions going up and down, we get frustrated, we don’t get what we want even if we try very hard, and a lot of things happen to us that we don’t want to happen. Even when we have happiness, that doesn’t last and it’s not satisfying; we always want more. Our body and our mind just seem to attract problems like a magnet. We get sick, we get tired, we have to do so many things, we forget, and so on; we get angry, attached, and so many difficulties come up. That’s the first true fact.
The second is that we can see that these problems have a true cause. The cause of it is our confusion: our confusion about the effect of our behavior, our confusion about reality; how we exist, how others exist, how everything exists. Because we think primarily in terms of a solid entity – “me” – that is somehow inside our head, or somewhere inside talking – this voice that we hear in our head. We think that that exists independently of everything, and because we identify with that “me,” we then feel that we have to be in control, we have to control everything around us, we have to always get our way, we are the most important one. If we don’t get our way, we get angry, and we get frustrated. In order to get our way, to get what we think will make us happy, we become very greedy, and attached, and so on, and this causes our problems. It causes us to act in all sorts of destructive ways. Even when we act in a positive way, often it is because of attachment – “I’m going to be kind to you because I like you and I want you to like me.” Our motive is infected with self-cherishing – only to get something for ourselves – and that always brings more problems.
These are the true causes of our problems, and Buddha said that it is possible to achieve a true stopping of them. We can get rid of these problems by getting rid of the causes – not just get rid of it for a little while but get rid of them so that they never happen again. In order to do that – that’s the third truth – we need to follow a, or develop, a way of thinking. A “path,” it’s called; but that refers to a pathway of mind, a pathway of understanding, and acting based on that understanding. In other words, if we understand that this – these fantasies that we have of impossible ways of existing, of “me” and “you” as if we were these solid entities, like ping pong balls or something like that – is not referring to anything real. This isn’t how we exist. The way that we exist is interrelated with each other. It’s not that we are independent, unrelated beings that have to have their own way, but we’re all related to each other, we’re related to our environment, and interdependent on each other.
We do exist, of course. You exist and I exist, but how do we exist? We exist as interrelated; not as these entities, as if they were encapsulated in plastic, by themselves. If we can understand that this false view that we have of ourselves is just complete garbage, then that’s the exact opposite of believing in that. You can’t believe that it’s completely ridiculous and also believe that it’s true at the same time. So, if we can get rid of this false belief, and understand how things actually exist, then all the problems that come up from this false view will no longer occur.
In the language that’s used in the text, we refer to this false view as self-grasping – grasping for a solid “me” or a solid independent “me” – as opposed to just the interrelated conventional “me” that actually exists. Based on that self-grasping we have self-cherishing – spoken about a lot in the text – in which we cherish ourselves: “I am the most important;” “I have to have my way;” “I’m the only one.” These are the two big troublemakers that this text talks about and that we need to get rid of: self-grasping and self-cherishing.
Buddhist Motivation and Aims
Now, in order to develop ourselves on any type of spiritual path, we need to have some sort of motivation that’s driving us to do that. When we speak about motivation in Buddhism, we find that that has two aspects. One is the aim: what are we aiming for? The second aspect is the emotion behind it. Usually when we speak in our Western languages of motivation, we only speak in terms of that emotion, but in Buddhism we specify these two aspects: what are you aiming for and why are you aiming for it? What’s the reason, the emotional reason behind it? This is something which needs to develop gradually, in stages.
We could think just in terms of this lifetime – that we want to make things better now, for example – but it’s of course very difficult to just improve things instantly. So we might think more in terms of trying to improve things later on in our life. We do that automatically if we have some sort of insurance policy or some type of pension plan. We think in terms of the future. But we can also think in terms of not just ourselves and our own lives; we can also think of the future of our children and want to improve things for our children. Even if we don’t have children, we could think to want to improve things for future generations, and that would be some sort of aim that we would have. We might think of that in terms of the emotion that’s behind it. There can be several emotions behind it. One can dread of it getting worse – we don’t want it to get worse. We don’t want, when we’re an old person, to have no place to stay, and no money, and nobody to take care of us, and so on. Because we really don’t want that to happen, then we take some steps now to avoid that, by saving money or whatever we do for the future.
If we’re thinking in terms of our children and future generations, it could also be motivated by sincere concern for them – wanting them to be happy, and not to suffer because the environment is completely polluted and there are no resources left. These are very legitimate aims and legitimate motivations that we could have. But when we speak of the Dharma – which is the Sanskrit word for the Buddhist teachings – these are not really considered Dharma aims. These are considered aims for this lifetime, which are things that we would start with. But actually, in an Asian context, they take all of this for granted; they start the next step after that. But for us here in the West, I think it’s important that we start at this level of thinking in terms of future and this lifetime, and future generations and so on. It is, I think, very valid to think in those terms.
But from a Buddhist point of view, what we think of beyond that is our own future lives – not just the future lives of future generations but our own future lives. This is based on the understanding that our minds, or mental activity, is something which is a continuum – moment to moment to moment. It makes absolutely no sense that that mental continuum just starts from nothing, and that at the time of death, it just ends with nothing. If it’s continuing from moment to moment to moment, and it’s driven on by the grasping to continue to live – which is something that is quite instinctive, quite strong in all of us – then there’s no reason why that mental continuum will not continue to generate future moments. Of course, that mental continuum needs some type of physical basis, and the physical basis of this body will eventually fall apart; but that mental continuum will continue on future physical bases. It itself has a certain amount of very subtle energy that’s always with it, and this is going to connect with the sperm and egg of parents and continue to generate future bodies, and continuity of future lives. It’s basic Buddhist belief, and one can go quite deeply into trying to understand the logic behind this.
Taking Past and Future Lives into Account
I don’t know if we really want to go that deeply into it at this point. We could explore that later, if you like. But an awful lot of this text is based on this belief of past and future lives, because when we speak about karma, which is a big topic discussed in this text, then that’s speaking about our impulsive behavior. We act in certain ways; the feeling comes up to act in a certain way, and then the impulsive energy, and we actually do it. Or impulses of energy come up and we get into situations in which things happen to us. Buddhism says this comes from a cause; it’s not that these things are arbitrary. They come from various habits, various instincts, and so on, and you can’t always trace these patterns to behavior in this lifetime, and because of that we have to bring in past lives. We have acted in certain ways in previous lives, and this has built up certain habits. This can be reinforced in this lifetime by the way our parents were, the way we were brought up, our society, and so on, but that doesn’t explain it completely because not everybody responds in the same way.
We have this discussion of karma, and past and future lives. We would want to benefit those future lives because we think in terms of how things could get worse than they are now, and that would be really awful, if they were worse. In order to avoid that, we see what the causes are of things getting worse, and that would be acting destructively. First, what we want to do is have some sort of direction out of that. A direction out of that, in Buddhist terms, is indicated by what’s called the Three Jewels of Refuge: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. What is that? That is referring to the actual state on our minds, on our mental continuums, in which there would be no more problems. We’d have complete stopping of all these problems, and we would have all the understanding and so on that would bring that about and would result from that. That’s what we’re aiming for – the direction that we want to go in. The Buddhas are those who have achieved that completely – they teach the way to do that; and the Sangha is referring to the highly realized beings who have achieved that in part and help us by their example. That would be the direction that we want to go in – we want to try to become like that. Sometimes it’s called refuge, and actually it’s putting a direction in our life – a safe direction in our life, a positive direction in our life. Then we want to avoid acting negatively, which would negatively affect our future lives. That’s the first step.
The second step – and that’s a difficult step – is to actually get into thinking this way in terms of past and future lives. That’s not an easy step at all for most of us, to really believe that. But in order to work with that, we think of the precious human life that we have now. We have so many opportunities to be able to develop ourselves: we’re not living in a war zone; we’re not living in some sort of horrible famine in Africa; we’re not completely mentally deficient; we’re not being tortured. We’re free from the grossest types of problems, and we have all the opportunities to be able to advance, and to improve ourselves. This is fantastic, but it’s not going to last. We have to think in terms of death, that death can come at any time. There’s no certainty of when it will come, but for sure it will come, and we’re going to lose this opportunity that we have. What’s going to be of help at the time of death is not how much money we have and not how much possessions we have; friends aren’t going to be of any help either. The only thing that’s going to be of any help is confidence that we will continue going in a positive direction, and be able to further make progress, and enjoy positive situations and circumstances. That’s the only thing that really is going to give any comfort at the time of death, because everything else you have to leave behind. It’s just the positive habits that we’ve built up. It’s in terms of that way of thinking that we would act positively – not just in terms of this lifetime, because you act positively in this lifetime, and you may get the results, or you may not get the results. We can’t guarantee that things are going to work out.
A lot of people in Tibet, for instance, who are great practitioners, did all sorts of positive things, and then the Chinese invaded, and they were thrown in concentration camps, or they were shot. We don’t see the results of our behavior all the time in this lifetime. We may or we may not. One has to think in terms of a longer period of time of future lives as well. Buddhism broadens the mind to think in these larger lengths of time, and not to just limit ourselves in thinking of just this body and this lifetime. That also, of course, is very helpful in terms of relating to other people as well, because we then identify anybody with the particular life form that they have, or age that they have, or gender that they have, or anything like that. The mental continuum, in each lifetime, depending on the karma, it is going to generate a certain type of body. This allows us to be able to relate to anybody, including animals and insects even, because we see that they are just an individual mental continuum – we are all individuals – and they have suffering, they have problems, and so on. It helps us to overcome just thinking, “I can only relate to people my own age, or my own background, or my own culture.” “We’re all just sentient beings” is the jargon.
Then – just very briefly because we’ll start with first level today – we think that no matter what type of rebirth I might have, still there are going to be problems. No matter how happy I might be, there are problems. We look at so many rich people and, mentally, they have terrible suffering, a lot of emotional suffering. We can’t find anybody that is free from suffering in our ordinary type of world. People go high, and then they fall down, moods go up and down – everybody has the same type of problems. So, the aim is liberation – we want to get free from all of that; and the emotion behind that is a type of disgust: “I’m determined to be free, I’ve had enough of this.” It’s really so boring to have to go through being a baby, and having to learn everything all over again, and growing up, and being a teenager, and finding a partner, and finding work, and getting qualified, and then getting old, and having to deal with sickness, and old age. That really is boring. We might have our pleasures in life – that’s true; but as we all know, they don’t last. We can’t guarantee what you’re going to feel like tomorrow, or what you’re going to feel like in the next minute, and we never have enough.
We want to get out of that completely. That doesn’t mean that we stop existing. We want to continue to exist, of course, but in a different type of way. It’s not so easy to relate to, as I was discussing a little bit last week, what it would actually be like to be free of this type of rebirth. We speak in terms of having a body made of light and so on, from the energy of the mental continuum – it’s hard to imagine what that would be like. But anyway, this is what we would try to aim for: “Although I would like to continue always having a precious human life, nevertheless that’s only a stepping stone. What I’m really aiming for is to get free of all of this.”
Now, that’s not a sufficient aim either; that’s just a temporary goal. The main goal that we’re looking for here is, once we are in that liberated state, to go further and further, and eventually become a Buddha so that we can help everybody else get out of this terrible situation that they’re in. This is driven by love – the wish for others to be happy; compassion – the wish for them to be free of their suffering; and taking some responsibility to actually do that. As we progress toward this liberation and enlightenment, we try to help others as much as we can. This is the path of a bodhisattva, as it’s called: somebody who’s aiming for becoming a Buddha. This text is speaking about that bodhisattva path, with that type of motivation, that type of aim, which is basically all these aims that we’ve been speaking about, but in a steppingstone type of manner.
The real aim that we’re aiming for is to become a Buddha so that we can really help everybody as much as possible. Now, in order to do that we’re aiming for liberation so that we aren’t always just compulsively acting out the situations of our karma, and we have no control over what we’re experiencing, and our emotions, and so on. By the way, it’s not that we’re aiming to have no emotions. We’re aiming to have positive ones, not the negative ones. Gaining that liberation – well, it’s not going to happen so quickly or so easily, so we want to continue having precious human lives in all our lifetimes, and not have things get worse. We are living this lifetime and so, obviously, this lifetime as well we want to improve later on and think in terms of future generations because we’ll be one of the future generation as well. So, we aim for all of these, with the emotional background of really not wanting things to get worse – we really dread that, we really don’t want that to happen; seeing that there is a way out of that – having this safe direction; disgust with the unsatisfactory situation; and real concern for others and their being in a similar type of situation. This, in very brief form, is the Buddhist path. It’s what this is all about – what the background is of this text and the practices that are outlined in it.
When we speak in terms of the Dharma path, they always say that it starts with thinking of future lives. Now, I don’t think that we have to limit our spiritual path to that. I think we can start earlier in terms of our aim. Whether you call it a Dharma aim, or you don’t call it a Dharma aim – that’s really a word. What difference does it make? It’s just how you define it. Traditionally, because people in the Asian culture that this developed in all believed in rebirth, it was a common belief that was taken totally for granted. Everybody thought that way; it’s not even a question. The difference here is whether your aim is just to try to get as much money as possible, and power, in this lifetime, or if you’re thinking further. There really isn’t any discussion in the texts that I’ve seen in terms of wanting to benefit future generations – future generations of other people. If you think about it, it would be there, but it’s not specifically mentioned. We want to benefit others, which is certainly the Mahayana aim. We want to benefit them not only in this lifetime, but we want to benefit them in their future lifetime, so that means future generations. It’s certainly there. We could say it’s a Mahayana motivation, couldn’t we? But it’s the level of the Mahayana motivation that I think is easier to accept as Westerners.
If we want to benefit everybody, we are part of that; we are one of everybody, we are included in everybody. If you want to benefit future generations, that will include our own future rebirths as well. But usually, when we think of future generations in the West, I must say that most people would think in terms of the environment, and the development of technology, and so on. It wouldn’t be so much thinking of the psychological wellbeing of future generations or emotional wellbeing of future generations. It’s more the physical aspect. Here we would think equally of both, with probably more emphasis on the emotional and psychological side. That’s something I think is actually very important, because we developed technology, and usually in the planning stage, one doesn’t consider what’s going to be the emotional effect of it on people. You have the cell phones, and so people walk around completely dependent on them, holding them in their hand all the time, which is really weird. People are playing with them all the time, and it means that you can interrupt somebody at any time, which is actually very selfish: “I should be able to contact you, and you should be available for me anytime whatsoever.” It has a very big effect, actually, on our interactions with others. All the digital machinery and so on makes life easier, so to speak, but it makes it far more complicated, and far more frustrating, and it produces many more causes for getting angry with the machines when they don’t work.
With Dharma, you’re trying to make connections with as many people as possible, so that in the future you’d be able to benefit more and more people because you have some sort of closer connection with them. That’s why you visualize, when you do various practices, that there are a million people around you. It’s not just the people sitting in this room, but there are millions of people that are listening, you imagine, and benefitting. That acts as a cause for actually being able to reach more and more people. His Holiness the Dalai Lama comes and 25,000 people go for a talk.
Why would you want to make peace and stop war? You could think in terms of this lifetime – that people in this lifetime then wouldn’t be killed in wars. You could think in terms of future lives – if we finally get over war, future generations won’t have to experience war. You can think just in those terms, or you can think in terms of how the people now are going to be reborn – they’re going to be the future generation, and they won’t have to experience wars. So actually, it works as a motivation whether you think in terms of future generations, of people being completely new people coming from who knows where; or you think of them as continuities of people now, of beings now. I think if you think in terms of them being continuities of beings now, it’s easier to relate to them. You feel more of a relatedness, as opposed to future beings that don’t exist at all now. I think psychologically that works. “Why should I care about future generations,” some people might think. Well, the future generations are going to be the continuities of you and all the people that you know – then I think it’s a little bit easier to feel some responsibility.
Appreciating Our Precious Human Life
We do this in stages, as I was starting to explain, we work with graded levels of aims, and the emotional motivations behind that. The way that we usually begin that in the Buddhist training – the way the Tibetans do this – is to think of the precious human life that we have, followed by thinking that it’s not going to last forever. We want to take advantage of it while we have the opportunity – before we grow senile, or get hit by a car, or develop cancer. The first thought, then, is in terms of appreciating how fortunate we actually are. If we don’t appreciate that, and we feel sorry for ourselves because we have this little pain, or this little problem that’s not going well in life, which we all have, then we just degenerate into feeling sorry for ourselves, and we don’t do anything positive. We complain to other people. Nobody likes to hear complaints: we don’t like to hear other people complaining; they don’t like to hear us complaining either.
We think about our precious human life. We think of the worse situations that we could be in, that others are in, and appreciate the fact that we are not in that situation; we are free from that. This is the way that it’s usually approached. I think that’s very helpful. It’s like feeling that you have a big, heavy weight off your back that could be there, and you feel, “Wow, I’m free of not living in Baghdad now, with all the violence. How horrible that would be to be there.” All the violence, and all the destruction that’s gone on – really a hopeless situation – and there wouldn’t be very much that we could do even for our basic education, let alone any spiritual development there. So, we think, “Wow, that’s fantastic that I’m not living there.” Or “I’m not living during World War II” – how horrible it would have been had we been living here in Berlin in World War II. That would not have been fun at all – to be a child then, or to be an adult. Or right after World War II, when the conditions were so difficult here. How fortunate we are that we’re not living then, in those times. How fortunate we are that we are not starving in Africa. How fortunate we are that we weren’t living where the tsunami hit. How fortunate we are that we have some level of health. Any problems that I might have seem very small compared to some of these really heavy things that other people experience.
This is the general line of reasoning here: the way of thinking is to see how much worse it could be, and how fortunate I am that I’m not like that, and that I do have opportunities to further myself. There are spiritual teachings and paths available. For those who grew up in East Germany during the DDR (German Democratic Republic) times, there was very little available, and it was very dangerous. I used to teach underground sometimes in East Germany. The only thing that was allowed was martial arts. I used to teach quite a lot in the former communist countries, underground, and just to have some sort of book about Buddhism was a bit dangerous. How fortunate we are that we’re not in that type of situation. We have opportunities. There are teachers available. There are courses available. There are so many books available – maybe there are too many books available.
This is an interesting thing, with the internet and all the books being available. There is so much information available that it’s too much. You get very confused, and you don’t know how to deal with it all. So it’s not necessarily that things are always getting better with all these advances. That’s what I was saying before: to have all this information instantly available – does that improve the quality of your life? It depends on how you use it. You can get overwhelmed by it and confused. But our point here is that we have a precious human life. We have opportunities, and that’s important to appreciate. Then the next step is to realize that it’s not going to last forever; you could die at any time. For sure we’re going to die. Unless we die young, we’re going to get old. My mother used to live in a retirement village before she died, and I remember one lady there saying that when other people complained about being old, and having this problem and so on, she said, “Well, if you don’t want to grow old, die young.” That’s the only alternative, which is true.
Death can come at any time, and for sure it’s going to come. We want to take advantage of the time and opportunities that we have now. There’s no guarantee that it’s going to last. Let’s think in terms of that. The way that often it’s done in meditation is to think of various difficult situations, imagine that we were in that situation, and then all of a sudden, we’re freed. Like being in a concentration camp, and then all of a sudden, you’re free from the concentration camp, and how fantastic you would feel that now I have the freedom to lead my life in a meaningful way. Or being cured of a disease: you have a terrible disease, and then all of a sudden, you’re cured of it, and how wonderful we feel. “Now I have the opportunity to lead my life, to do something meaningful with the time that I have.”
One example that I was thinking of was the example of being in an unhealthy relationship. Probably many of us have been in unhealthy relationships during our lifetimes, and if we’ve gotten out of those unhealthy relationships, how do you feel? One feels quite liberated. If we’ve been in an unhealthy relationship, and that really has caused so much suffering and difficulties in our life, and then all of a sudden it ends (or maybe not all of a sudden but, anyway, it ends), and we finally get out of that – whether it’s a bad marriage or whatever it might be. Then we can get on with our lives; we feel a great liberation, we have freedom. I was thinking of that as a good example of something that maybe many of us have experienced, since I doubt that many of us have been in concentration camps or something really awful like that.
It’s a feeling of relief: “I have leisure and opportunity, and I want to take advantage of it.” Because if we feel compassion for others – well, how can I help them? If I’m in a terrible situation I won’t be able to help them, so I’m happy, and feel relieved that I now am free of these horrible situations, so I can take advantage of it to use my opportunities to help them. So, it fits together. The question of course is, how can I help them? What can I do to help them? That leads to further and further points along the path. In order to really help them, I’m going to need to overcome getting angry with them; being impatient with them; getting attached to them; wanting something back from them; being naive, not really understanding what’s going on with them; being afraid. How can I really help them if I have all of these limitations? That leads to further development of motivation: “I’ve got to get rid of all of this junk, all of this negative emotional baggage that really prevents me from helping them.” Aside from the fact that when I feel these negative emotions it makes me unhappy, it also creates problems for me, it creates problems for the other person and prevents me from helping them.
But each of these levels builds on the previous one, because no matter how much we think of other people, and “I want to help them” and so on, we could waste our time. If we don’t realize that “I have this precious opportunity to do something now, it’s not going to last forever,” then we could feel strongly about others, but we don’t actually get off of our behinds and do anything. We waste a lot of time. Put it off until tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. If you think in terms of “I have only a limited amount of time left, every day is a day closer to my death,” – which is true, absolutely true, there’s no denying that, there’s one less day left – then it makes us not want to waste time. Now, of course, you have to be not fanatic about it. My favorite Zen koan: “Death can come at any time; relax.” That’s very profound. Think about that. “Death can come at any time; relax.” There’s no sense in being upset and uptight about it, because if you’re uptight about it, and get really nervous, and go crazy about it – “Aah! I could die at any time” – then you’re going to waste all your time. If you realize that death can come at any time, then in order to take advantage of the time that you have, you need to be relaxed about it. You need to relax.
The thing is not to be a fanatic, and not to be scared out of your mind that death can come at any time. “Relax” doesn’t mean to sit back and just watch television and do nothing. “Relax” means that your energy is going smoothly, and you’re not uptight. Your energy is more relaxed, it’s smoother; you’re not freaked out and panicked. It’s like if there’s an accident: if you’re panicked, you’re not going to be able to deal with the accident. You have to be relaxed and calm. I’ll give an example from my own life. I’m doing this huge website project; it’s absolutely impossible that I can finish it in this lifetime. So I think in terms of next life. If I think of all the things that I need to do to work on it, it could drive me crazy. I’m 61; how much more time do I have left to work on the thing before I can’t even remember my name? That’s no joke. But I have to be relaxed about it. If I’m not relaxed about it, I won’t accomplish anything.
You have a precious human life – you can lose it; you will lose it. There’s no doubt about that. Everybody that has been born, has died. There’s this lovely joke. What is the definition of birth? A sexually transmitted disease with a 100 percent mortality rate. It’s very true. Death will come for sure, and we want to take advantage of it. We take advantage of the opportunities we have now because, from the Buddhist point of view, in future lives we could have a much worse situation. What’s going to be of help at the time of death? A very good Buddhist practice is to imagine that this is our last day, and are we prepared to die at any time, because then you don’t want to have unfinished business. If there’s something that we want to tell somebody – for example, that you love them – well, tell them. Don’t wait. The point is to be able to die without regrets. How prepared are we to be able to do that? Do we feel that we have done well with the time that we’ve had of being alive? Have I used my life in a helpful way? What have I done with my life? Let’s think about that for a while. It’s a sobering thought.
Cultivating a Safe Direction
Have we led a meaningful life, and if we were to die today, how would feel about that – about our life, and how we’ve used our time? If we find that we haven’t led our lives in a very meaningful way, then we think, well, what can we do about it? There’s no point in being angry with ourselves or feeling depressed about it. The point is to do something about it – to try to put some better direction in our lives, try to make it a little bit more meaningful. What can make our lives more meaningful is to continue to try to grow – to try to develop ourselves more, ultimately to be able to benefit others more as well. That’s the only thing that will really give us any comfort, or confidence, if we’re about to die – that we’ve been going in the right direction. If our energy has been going in this positive, safe direction, it will continue going in this direction in future lives as well.
That’s what we speak of when we speak of refuge, or what I like to call “safe direction.” We go in that direction of working on ourselves – the direction of eliminating all the causes of our problems, of our unawareness, our ignorance, our disturbing emotions, and so on – and to gain more and more positive qualities: more understanding, more wisdom, more compassion, and so on. That’s the direction I want to go in – the way the Buddhas have gone in full. They’ve taught how to do that. It’s the way that those who are very far advanced on the path have gone in part, as highly realized beings. That’s the first decision that we come to: do something with this precious life. It’s not going to last forever, so put some sort of positive, safe direction in it. Because if we lead a life which is meaningless, and going nowhere – just trying to get more and more money just to survive – and then you die, what’s the point? It’s not very fulfilling.
These is the initial type of thoughts that we have on this Buddhist path, and then that leads to the discussion of karma, which is very central to this text. If we want things to not get worse in future lives, we have to avoid what would make it worse, which is basically acting negatively, acting destructively. The text speaks so much about how, if we’re experiencing difficult things, it comes from destructive behavior that we’ve done in the past. So, we need to try to do the opposite of that destructive behavior. It goes through many examples of difficult things that we could be experiencing, and the destructive behavior that might have caused that. But we’ll continue with that next time.
Dedication
Let’s end here with a dedication. We think whatever understanding we might have gained, may this go deeper and deeper, and act as a cause for being able to be of best benefit to everyone, reach enlightenment, and help everyone as much as is possible.