Critical Situations and Realization of Emptiness

Verses 18 through 24

Brief Review

We have this incredibly precious human life, on the basis of which we can attain liberation and enlightenment. It’s very rare to have such a rebirth. It passes quickly and can end at any moment, so we need to take full advantage of it. To do so, Togme Zangpo advises us to live in seclusion, far away from our homeland, to make progress on the path.

As we make progress, each of the motivations of the lam-rim builds on the previous one. They need to be secure and sincere, otherwise the advanced level will only be superficial.

First, we aim for better rebirths, specifically precious human rebirths, to be able to continue on the spiritual path we’re on. With death and impermanence in mind, knowing that it’s hard to attain liberation or enlightenment in one lifetime, we aim to achieve another precious human life. To be able to do this, we need to make sure that we have a good influence in our lives. Thus, we rid ourselves of misleading friends, and rely on fully qualified spiritual mentors.

Then, we put a safe direction in our lives, by taking refuge from the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. We go toward the true stoppings and true pathway minds that the Buddhas have achieved in full, and the Sangha in part. To ensure that we don’t have worse future rebirths, we refrain from destructive behavior.

Even if we continue to have precious human rebirths, or even celestial rebirths in a god realm, those lives will still entail a huge amount of suffering. It’s still samsara, and whatever pleasures or happiness we happen to experience, are totally fleeting. They’ll never last, and they’ll never satisfy us.

This is an important point, because with the initial level of motivation, it can be easy to become very attached to the precious human life. We could just pray to always have the most wonderful rebirths so that we can be with our friends and spiritual teachers, or to always be able to study the Dharma because it’s so beautiful and lovely. This is still attachment to samsara. Not only do pleasant things have the suffering of change, but the all-pervasive suffering exists in each moment too. We’ll have confusion in each moment, and that will constantly perpetuate the ups and downs of samsara.

As difficult as it is to sincerely, from the depths of our heart, aim for a precious human rebirth, it’s even more difficult to work sincerely for liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth, without attachment to human life. We should in no way trivialize renunciation, which means giving up samsara itself. No matter how wonderful our Dharma friends or spiritual mentors are, it is all impermanent. We can’t stay forever with anyone. Milarepa couldn’t stay forever with Marpa. He had to leave, and that’s the difficult part of attachment.

We aim for a precious human rebirth as a stepping-stone to liberation and enlightenment, or as a useful ship, as Togme Zangpo refers to it, to take us across the ocean of samsara without attachment to the ship. When we get to the other shore, we get off the ship and have no qualms about leaving it behind.

The advanced level of motivation is even more difficult. Once we’ve attained liberation, it’s easy to just relax and enjoy the experience of untainted happiness that goes with it. At the advanced level, we think of everybody else, all our mothers, and we aim with bodhichitta to work even more. With voidness and bodhichitta, engaging in the six far-reaching attitudes, we work to reach enlightenment to benefit everyone.

We need to overcome the two extremes of samsara and nirvana. This is actually very difficult, and requires us to recognize that precious human rebirths and liberation are just stops on the way to enlightenment. There’s no way we can gain enlightenment without these stepping-stones.

Nowadays, we can read, hear and learn about the graded stages of the path relatively easily. But just because we’re familiar with the stages, it doesn’t mean it’s easy to internalize or feel the successive levels of motivation sincerely. It could take many years! To really, truly feel them is a great achievement, even the initial level.

It’s repeated over and over again that the only way forward is to first listen to the teachings, then study and think about them until we gain an understanding, and then to meditate on them, to integrate them into our lives. It’s only through this process that we’ll sincerely feel these levels of motivation, and not just know them superficially.

Togme Zangpo then takes us through the two methods for developing bodhichitta, and after this, starts to explain bodhisattva behaviour, first on how to deal with harms. Through various verses we’re told of the importance of having patience and not becoming angry, and the practice of giving and taking. In this practice, we take on the sufferings of others, and we dedicate to them the positive potentials of our own constructive acts. Rather than responding with criticism and negative thoughts to the harm others do us, we instead praise their good qualities. Another method is to regard those who harm us as our teachers, who allow us to recognize and correct our own shortcomings.

Top