Sufferings of cyclic existence

The dukkha of samsara

• The eight sufferings and the three types of dukkha
• A realistic look at the defects of cyclic existence
• Explanation of renunciation and the determination to be free
• Is and is not

Essence of Refined Gold 29: The first noble truth (download)

Questions and answers

• How can we prevent the deterioration of the mind in old age?
• Why is being born in the form or formless realms considered an upper rebirth?
• Discussion of creating virtue and non-virtue
• How do the pure lands relate to the form and formless realms?

Essence of Refined Gold 29: Q&A (download)

Let’s start by generating our motivation. Let’s remember how precious it is to have this opportunity to hear the teachings and to practice the path. And then to make a great determination to use this opportunity to its fullest extent and for that reason to aim for full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.

Last week we started talking about turning the mind and the path common to the person of  the intermediate capacity, and we were specifically talking about birth, aging, sickness and death last time. We talked about all four of them and got them all done at once. What is more miraculous is that we all lived to this week, because we have no idea how long we’re going to live and what’s going to happen. But we all made it to this week.  

The third Dalai Lama continues on, and here he’s talking about some specific ways in which beings suffer or have duhkha:

Human being suffer in many specific ways. Some meet with bandits and theieves and lose all their wealth. Their bodies are pierced by weapons or beaten with clubs and so forth. Some suffer heavy punishments at the hands of legal authorities after having comitted crimes. Others hear dreadful news or rumors of distant family and friends and suffer terribly. Or they fear the loss of their wealth and possessions and are sick with worry.

Here he’s really talking about how easy problems come to us. We don’t want them but they come. So, the third Dalai Lama is talking about meeting with bandits and thieves, losing our wealth, being injured and beaten, being punished by legal authorities, hearing dreadful news about loved ones. And all these kinds of things he mentioned are things we either have experienced ourselves or other people we know have experienced them. And the thing is, although nobody wants these kinds of difficulties, they come automatically without asking.

Why do they come automatically without asking? It’s because we’ve created the cause for them through our destructive actions in previous lives. That’s why we meet with all of these things. 

He continues on:

Others suffer from encountering people and situations that they do not wish to encounter. And still others suffer through not getting what they want. For example, although someone may try to farm a piece of land, drought, frost or hail may destroy his crops. He may work as a sailor or fisherman but a sudden gust of wind may result in his ruin. If he goes into business, he may lose his investment or after much effort make no profit. He may become a monk but one day have to face the sorrow of having broken his discipline. In short, having taken a samsaric human form, under the force of karma and afflictions, you must face the sufferings of birth, sickness, old age, death and so forth. As well, you use your precious human life largely as an instrument to produce more causes of more rebirth and for greater misery in the future.

Here he listed other difficulties that we run into in our lives. Basically, the problems the we don’t want come even though we try to ignore them. And then so many of us want certain things, but we can’t get what we want. So, he used examples of people trying to plant crops or doing business or whatever and then losing their crops, losing their ships, losing whatever. But it’s the same thing in all of our lives, whether we’re employed or unemployed: we try to get what we desire and we can’t always get it.

And this happens on a daily basis. It’s a very interesting thing. From the time you get up in the morning, watch all the difficulties you get that you didn’t ask for, and then all the things you wanted that you didn’t get. Usually, it begins with “I want more sleep,” but we don’t get that.[laughter]  What we get instead is a loud alarm clock. “I wanted tea that tastes a certain way, but it’s too strong or it’s too weak. I wanted breakfast to be like this, but I couldn’t get what I wanted. I wanted a nice peaceful day at work, but such things are like rabbit’s horns: you can’t find it anywhere.” So, all the time, we’re not getting what we want, or on those rare occasions when we do get what we want, it usually doesn’t meet up to our expectations and how we think things are going to be.

And the classic example of this is falling in love, isn’t it? [laughter] That’s what our society has billed as the “be-all-end-all,” and we’ve all fallen in love, and we think it’s the greatest thing in the world—for a certain period of time. And then afterwards it’s like, “Huh…I thought this guy was going to do it all, and he didn’t.” And then we’re just continually disappointed with people, and the relationship is not nearly as good as we thought it was at the beginning. We thought we were going to be in this hyped up state of romance for as long as we lived, but the other person burps and farts and leaves their dirty socks around and cracks bad jokes and everything else. They just aren’t what we thought that they were going to be.

This happens again and again, right? But the idea behind hearing this is not to get depressed. It’s not to say, “Oh, she’s right; life really sucks. I might as well die.” That’s not the purpose of it. Please don’t think that way. It’s not why the Buddha gave his teaching. The Buddha gave this teaching so that we could see clearly what our situation is and then know that there’s a way out of it. That’s why he taught us.

If the only alternative was just to curl up in a fetal position or overdose on something, Buddha didn’t need to attain enlightenment for that. The whole reason he did all of this is because there’s a way out of the system of cyclic rebirth. And so he wanted us to see our situation clearly so that we would be motivated to get out of this situation. That’s why he did all of this. So, this isn’t a reason to get depressed but rather to see clearly and say, “You know, I keep on trying to get happiness this way, and I just can’t get it. Samsara is not what it’s cracked up to be.” And then from there, we start asking ourselves, “Well, what causes it?” And I’ll talk about that in a little bit.

So, when he said that in short we have the suffering of birth, sickness, old age and death, he was talking about not getting what we want, getting what we don’t want and being disappointed.  And it’s also just the fact of having a body and mind under the control of afflictions and karma. So, these are the eight kinds of duhkha of human beings.

And then he said:

As well, you use your precious human life largely as an instrument to produce more causes of lower rebirth and for greater misery in the future. 

So, not only is this present life a container for the ripening of negative karma that we created in the past, but in addition, we use this life to create more karma to experience more duhkha in the future. It’s kind of this weird situation where you’re not only getting it from the past but in our ignorance we’re also creating more of it for the future. That’s really what’s tragic about the whole situation. At least when we experience the results of our negative karma we’re finished with that karma; what’s more frightening is that we keep creating more of it. When we see that, that’s when we realize how very precious this opportunity is and how it’s so important to make use of it. 

Three kinds of duhkha

He continues on:

A samsaric form is merely a vessel holding the suffering of pain, the suffering of transient pleasure and the all-pervading suffering. 

This is another breakdown of duhkha into three different kinds of duhkha. The duhkha of pain are the different things we were talking about previously: birth, aging, sickness, death, not getting what we want and so on. It’s all those kinds of physical and mental pain that all beings, whether they know the Dharma or not, experiences; that’s called the duhkha of pain. Everybody wants to be free of that—even the kitties, even the grasshoppers, even the ants. Everybody wants to be free of the duhkha of pain.

So, the wish to be free of that kind of duhkha is universal for sentient beings. We don’t really need the Dharma to have the aspiration to be free of it. But the second and third types of duhkha are things that you need some kind of spiritual practice in order to be aware of and to want to be free from.

The second type is the duhkha of transient pleasure. This is also sometimes called the duhkha of change. This is what in our ordinarily language of society we call “happiness.” So, on one hand, we look at it and we say, “Things aren’t so bad. You know, there’s chocolate cake and vacations and promotions and the beach. There are all these things that are going to make me happy that I want to get, that I want to own.” We spend a lot of time searching for all these things, thinking they are going to make us happy. But they don’t. We get them for awhile, and they seem to make us happy, but if we have those things for a long period of time then we actually wind up being unhappy.

The reason we wind up being unhappy is that these things themselves are not in the nature of happiness. They are the nature of duhkha. The classic example is that you’re sitting in the meditation hall, and your knees hurt and your back is aching, so all you want to do is to stand up. When the bell finally rings and you stand up, you think, “Oh, this feels so good. I am happy.” But what’s actually happening at this point is that the suffering of the hurting knees and the aching back has disappeared, and the suffering of standing up has begun, but it’s very small.

It’s the suffering of standing up because at some point after standing for a long time, you’ll be exhausted and all you’ll want is to sit down. So, standing up—which used to look like happiness—has now become a misery of its own kind, and now we want to sit down again. When we sit down the duhkha of standing up has disappeared the duhkha of sitting down is just beginning, and it’s so small that we call that happiness. 

If we look in our life, this is what’s happening all the time. Take the example of employment. When you’re unemployed all you want to do is get a job. “I want a job, I want a job. I feel so insecure in how I’m going to pay my bills. I want a job.” So then you get a job, and you think, “I’m so happy I have a job.” What’s happened is that the duhkha of being unemployed has dissipated, and the duhkha of having a job is still small. But then you work and you work and you work. You work for one year and six years and twenty years; you’re working 9 to 5 then 9 to 9. You just keep working and at a certain point you think, “I wish I didn’t have to work. How nice it would be to not have a job.”

 So, what was happiness becomes unpleasant. Then you lose your job due to some cutbacks and one part of your mind think, “Oh good, I lost my job. Now I don’t have to work. I don’t have a job anymore. I’m happy.” And that works for a short period of time until you again get the anxiety of being umemployed. So, you get a job again, and it’s nice for awhile and then it goes bad and you wish you didn’t have it. We’re constantly looking for something, but whatever we get that we think is going to bring us happiness doesn’t really make us happy in the end. And if we do it long enough it becomes really unpleasant.

Let’s go back to the situation of falling in love: at the beginning you’re with “Prince Charming,” and you want to be with him all the time, but after awhile, you start to think, “I want some space. Give me some space. Get this guy away from me.” You just want to be alone, so then you’re alone for awhile and then you start thinking, “I’m so lonely. Where’s my Prince Charming?” You get back with him, and you’re together for awhile, and then you start fighting over the same-old-same old and it’s “Give me some space” again. 

We can see how this works. We’re constantly looking for some kind of lasting happiness, but all we’re getting is transient pleasure, which is in the nature of duhkha because it doesn’t last very long. That’s what worldly pleasure is: it’s in the nature of being unsatisfactory. 

This is something that, to some extent or another, all spiritual traditions recognize. That’s why all spiritual traditions speak of some kind of renunciation from sense pleasure. If we look across the board, all spiritual traditions say to withdraw yourself to some extent from seeking happiness from outside—from sense pleasure. They advise us to be moderate in our physical needs, to not be greedy with our material property. They are all teaching those kinds of things. It’s because all spiritual people can recognize that transient happiness is not everlasting happiness. So, that’s the second kind of duhkha.

The third kind is the all pervasive duhkha; it’s sometimes called “compounded duhkha.” This refers to having a body and mind that are under the influence of afflictions and karma. Just due to having this physical body and the mental aggregates, our situation, in and of itself, is unsatisfactory. Why? Even if we’re sitting here right now and not experiencing any great suffering, with the slightest change we can go into the suffering of pain. We’re living on the edge all the time of having great mental and physical suffering. And it’s a result of just having the body and mind that we do.

Our mind is filled with afflictions, so all it takes is hearing a few words, and we get very unhappy. Or we remember a certain thing in our life, and we get very unhappy. It happens just like that; we don’t have to do much. It’s similar with physical sensations—things we see or hear. We’re always on the edge of encountering something unpleasant. So, just that situation of being conditioned phenomena is unsatisfactory. 

The benefit of seeing the big picture

We’re conditioned by ignorance, afflictions and our previous contaminated karma. Being conditioned by all of these factors never gives us any kind of true peace or happiness or a true space where we can say, “Now I can finally relax. Now I’m safe.” That’s why all of cyclic existence, no matter where we’re reborn, is unsatisfactory. Because everywhere in cyclic existence you have at least the all-pervading, compounded suffering—if not the suffering of transient pleasure and the suffering of pain.

The one real, secure, lasting state of happiness is nirvana. That’s why another word for nirvana is “peace” and why we aspire for liberation. We want to end the afflictions and the karma, and as Mahayana practitioners, we not just want to do this for ourselves but we want to attain full enlightenment so we can also help others attain it as well. When you think about this it’s very powerful, and it makes us look at our life in a whole different way. Because sometimes we’re so locked into our view of life, our view of things. We feel like we’re a real being sitting here, and we look at everybody else in the room, and they look like they’re real people, too. “There’s a real person there; there’s a real personality. They’ve always been whoever they are now.” We don’t look at people and see them as an infant or as an old person; we don’t see them as a karmic bubble. We don’t see them as a body and mind that happen to have some association in dependence on which we’re giving the name “Sam” or “Joe” or “Suzan” or whoever.

We don’t look at people like that. Instead, we think: “There’s a real me here,” “There’s a real them here,” “There’s real chocolate cake, real pizza, a real resort holiday here.” We think all these things are real, and we just have to get what we want and get rid of what we don’t want. We are so habituated with that worldview, and that is what we really have to work at changing in our practice. We have to work on developing a real worldview that sees the big picture. When we can see the big picture we don’t get locked into these small things.

For example, if we see the big picture then if somebody says something very rude and nasty to us, instead of feeling like, “Oh, my feeling are so hurt because they said this mean thing to me,” we can instead remember that there isn’t a real person that said that to us, just a body and mind that is conditioned by afflictions and karma. Their mind is conditioned by afflictions and karma, so of course they’re going to say things that I find unpleasant. And my mind is conditioned by afflictions and karma also, so of course whatever they say to me I’m going to find unpleasant because of my own conditioning. So then you don’t take the situation so seriously. You don’t read so much into the situations and make such big deals out of them. 

The realms of existence

The third Dalai Lama continues:

Because cyclic existence is by nature all-pervasive suffering, you never know any joy or happiness, not coded or embraced by misery and frustration. 

No matter where we’re born in samsara, no matter what great privilege we have at any particular time, it’s somehow “coded or embraced by misery and frustration” in that it’s not going to last.

We could be born in the richest family and have the most perfect education and a perfect family that never quarrels—the whole fairytale-Cinderella-whatever it is—but we’re still in samsara and there’s no lasting happiness. Even Cinderella is under the power of the afflictions and karma. So, even if you get taken to the palace to live happily ever after you still get sick and die. And you still have to fix everything that breaks in your palace. The more things you own, the more they break and the more you have to fix. No matter where you’re born, there’s no actual peace. 

The Dalai Lama continues:

In the realm of the demigods, beings suffer from constant fighting, killing and wounding each other. Above that, in the realm of the desire gods, when the five signs of oncoming death manifest the beings suffer more than the hell denizens.

So, above the human realm you have the demigod realm, and these beings have some kind of celestial existence, but they also suffer terribly from jealousy. As the story goes, on Mount Meru, the center of the universe, the top part is where the gods live. They get the great views and have the really nice weather. The lower part of the mountain is where the demigods live. These beings have a better life than those in the hell or human realms, but still, they are the low folks on the mountain. They look up to the gods who have better pleasure than they do. And the real thing that gets to the demigods is that the gods have all these incredibly fruit trees that they grow and eat from, and it makes them feel blissful. The roots and trunks of these trees, though, are in the demigod realm.

It’s like when you have a tree that grows over your neighbor’s fence. All the good stuff, the fruit, is in the god realm. This infuriates the demigods who think, “Wait a minute! Part of this tree is in our realm; we want this delicious fruit. You can’t have it!” So, they’re always attacking the gods, and there’s all this fighting and misery. Even though they have it quite good, there’s still no peace in their minds because they are so jealous. We know human beings like that, don’t we? They have fantastic possibilities in their life, but they see somebody who has more or better and then they just burn with jealousy. They can’t enjoy what they have.

So, the demigods think, “If I was in the god realm and had all these beautiful fruits, and girlfriends and boyfriends, and lovely music and everything like that, then I’d be really happy.” But if you are born in the god realm, you are experiencing all the sense pleasure deluxe by the power of your good karma. That means that your good karma is burning up, and you have all this incredibly happiness and bliss, but because everything in samsara is temporary, this, too, must come to an end. At some point in their very long lives the gods begin to see signs of their impending death. They were beautiful and young and attractive for so long and now their body starts to get wrinkled and old. They start to have a very bad smell. So then their friends don’t want to be around them anymore. And they used to have all these flowers and garlands adorning them, and the flowers wilt. So, nobody wants to be with them because they’re ugly and they smell bad. They just get ignored. 

And then they have this clairvoyance seeing what their future life is going to be. So, here they have this spectacular life with all of this pleasure, and they’re in the process of dying all alone—because their friends have all walked out on them—and seeing their future lower rebirth. They’ve used up so much of their good karma without having made more good karma because they were too distracted by the sense pleasures. So, they understand that they are going to leave this place of great pleasure to be reborn as a hungry ghost who has a huge stomach and a thin neck and who can’t get the food and drink that I want as I go here and there trying to get what I want. It all just turns into pus and blood. This is what the gods experience as the die all alone while their friends are cavorting with all the rest of the gods.

They say that in the god realm the suffering at the time of death is so much worse than the suffering in the hell realms. And you can see why. So, even if you are reborn in a good situation for a long time, still there’s nothing lasting and reliable or solid in it. There’s nothing we can count on. 

As their splendor fades and they are shunned by the other gods, they know boundless mental anguish. 

That’s referring to the desire realm gods. 

Still higher in samsara are the gods of the form and formless realms, and although they do not experience the suffering of immediate pain, those of the first three levels have the suffering of transient pleasure, and those of the fourth level and of the formless levels must endure all-pervasive suffering which is likened to an unruptured boil.

So, above the desire realm gods are these other two realms of gods called the form realm gods and the formless realm gods. You get born in these two realms by the force of  your meditative concentration. Even as a human being, as your developing single-pointed concentration, once you’ve developed samatha, by perfecting your concentration you enter into the first jhana. Then you develop the second, the third and the fourth jhanas. These four jhanas, or levels, of concentration—of single-pointedness—are called the four form realm absorptions. And then above that you have the four formless realm absorptions, where your concentration gets even more subtle. 

Those are called infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness and then neither perception than non perception. That last one is also called the peak of samsara. So, you get born in all of those states through the power of developing these different concentrations—for example, as a human, developing samatha, developing the meditative absorptions—without having the renunciation of cyclic existence. So, you don’t make any effort to develop the wisdom realizing emptiness, and that results in getting completely blissed out in these meditative concentrations, and you’re happy to just stay there and enjoy them. 

They say it’s so incredibly blissful with the single-pointedness that you just stay there and think, “I’ll develop the wisdom realizing emptiness later. I’m too blissed out now.” They just get stuck in these levels if they don’t have renunciation and wisdom. So, in the first three of the form realms, they still have a factor of pleasure, so they experience pleasure and happiness. By the fourth jhana they have subdued that mental factor of pleasure. This is interesting because we usually really want pleasure, don’t we? We want the mental factor of pleasure. “Give me pleasure; give me happiness ASAP!” 

But when you develop these very refined states of concentration that kind of pleasure has a certain restless quality to it. It’s not completely smooth. It’s kind of like when you get something you really wanted, and you get this rush of feeling, like “Oh, goodie!” You think that’s super happiness, but if you pay attention to that mental state, it’s not. Your mind is very restless and disturbed. In comparison to the smoothness and the peace of the fourth jhana, or the formless realms, these lower jhanas are inferior. So, if people are just interested in developing these states of concentration then they just leave behind the first jhana, second jhana and third jhana. When they reach the fourth jhana they have the mental factor of equanimity, so they don’t have that kind of happiness that’s a little bit restless.

And then when you get to the four formless absorptions then the mind is so refined that you stay in single-pointed meditation for eons. It’s called “formless” because you don’t have a gross body. Even in the form realms, they have a body, but it’s not a body of flesh and blood like ours. It’s kind of more like a light body of some sort. By the time you get to the formless realms, there’s no gross body at all. So, they don’t have the suffering of pain or the suffering of transient pleasure, but because they’re not free of ignorance, afflictions and karma, they still have the all-pervasive, compounded suffering.

That means that they, too, will one day crash down and be reborn in a lower realm. In fact, they say that all of us have been born in the form and formless realms before. I find that quite interesting because when you’re sitting on your cushion you feel like, “I can’t concentrate, and I’ve never been able to concentrate.” Well actually, in samsara we’ve been everything and we’ve done everything, so we’ve had all these states of single-pointed concentration before. We were born among the form realm gods and the formless realm gods, and we experienced this bliss of concentration for eons and eons and eons. And where did it get us? It was great bliss, but we’re still here? Why? Because there was no renunciation, bodhicitta or wisdom realizing emptiness. Those were absent in the mind, so we just got lost in the bliss of samadhi. Then we got born in lower realms again. 

And this all-pervasive suffering the third Dalai Lama likens to “an unruptured boil.” That’s a great image, isn’t it? Have you ever had an unruptured boil? It’s a little sore and a little sensitive, but the big thing about the unruptured boil is that you know what it’s going to be like when it does rupture. So, your mind can’t be peaceful because you’re hanging there right at the edge of the smallest, tiniest thing hitting the boil and then experiencing all of the pain when it ruptures.

They say that for the beings who have full renunciation, the compounded suffering that we have just by being born in samsara, because their minds are so perceptive and so well trained—because they understand what compounded duhkha is—it’s as painful for them as when we get a hair stuck in our eye. That’s a very uncomfortable thing, isn’t it? When we have a hair in our palm we don’t even feel it, so that’s like us at our very gross level. We don’t even see that this is duhkha, so it’s like a hair in our palm. If you take that same hair and put it in the eye, that’s how undesirable compounded suffering appears to those beings who are intent on liberation.

The joy of renunciation

So, by seeing that so clearly, they really have a strong impetus to practice the path to gain liberation. This is actually the first principal aspect of the path. Sometimes it’s called renunciation, and sometimes it’s called the determination to be free. The literal translation is “definite emergence.” It has a factor of leaving behind, and it also has a factor of going towards. When it’s translated as “renunciation,” what we’re leaving behind or giving up is not pleasure. We’re leaving behind, we’re renouncing, these three kinds of duhkha and their causes.

 It’s really important to be aware of this because otherwise we think of renunciation as going to a cave and eating nettles, where it’s too hot or too cold, and there are cobras and everything else there. That’s not very pleasant. That’s not renunciation. You can live in a cave and have lots of attachment. And being poor isn’t necessarily renunciation. What we’re renouncing is the three kinds of duhkha. What we’re renouncing and giving up are the first two Noble Truths.

That’s one aspect of it, and then the other aspect is that we’re going toward liberation. So, there’s a aspiration to be free; there’s a determination to attain liberation. These two things—the giving up of samsara and the aspiration for nirvana—come together. It’s important to remember that because then we see that it’s not just giving up duhkha. Because some people say, “You Buddhists are so negative. You just want to get out of samsara and to stop taking rebirths. What do you want—just nothing? Is that what nirvana is—just nothing?”

That shows that they haven’t really understood what nirvana is, and that’s a real big misconception of Buddhism. We’re not just saying, “Life stinks; I’m going to go somewhere else” or something like that. “I’m going to be a bump on a log.” It’s seeing very clearly the unsatisfactoriness of being under the influence of afflictions and karma. It’s seeing the real happiness that comes from being free from them and then renouncing—wanting to give them up—and attaining the last two of the Four Noble Truths: True Path and True Cessation.

 Renunciation—the determination to be free—should be a really joyous thing. Sometimes people think of it as, “Oh, I have to renounce. That’s so much suffering: no more chocolate cakes; no more chocolate sundaes; no more pizza. I’m going to suffer practicing the Dharma.”  Uh-uh! That view comes from thinking that those things are the best kind of happiness you can ever have. 

When you really do a concentrated research project on “what is happiness,” you begin to see that the happiness from your pizza and chocolate cake aren’t real happiness. They are just transient pleasure. They are just the duhkha of having those things, but the duhkha is still small. So, you begin to see that while that kind of happiness is nice and enjoyable—“Sure, I can enjoy nice things in samsara”—you start to lose interest in those things because you realize that they are Grade F happiness. We want Grade AA happiness. We want the best kind of happiness you could ever have. We don’t even want Grade B happiness, so we certainly don’t want Grade F happiness. 

Well, when you have a clear mind that can actually analyze “What is duhkha and what is happiness?” then you begin to see that what we call happiness now is kind of like Grade D happiness. Maybe it’s grade C happiness at best. When you see the compounded suffering then you realize that it’s all basically Grade F. And just as you’re never going to get oil out of sand, you’re never going to get any kind of lasting happiness with a mind that is controlled by afflictions and karma. Therefore you’re really going toward something very positive when you generate the aspiration for liberation.

And your mind is so happy because when you’re aimed at liberation then even the things that used to bug us so much stop bugging us because we start to see them as they really are: trivial things. So, even right now, if we think that happiness is chocolate cake then if someone else gets the biggest piece or if they completely ran out of chocolate cake before we get ours then we’re going to be really unhappy. But if we see that chocolate cake is really not that fantastic then we’re not so attached to it. “Yeah, sure, take it.” We’re not going to worry if someone else gets a bigger piece; we’re not going to worry if they run out of cake before we get any. We’re just happy to eat anything that’s going to keep our body alive. 

The mind becomes much less persnickety and much less demanding. We actually have much more happiness in this life when we’re not struggling to get the happiness of this life. That’s because our priorities are really in synch. We have good priorities. We know what’s important and what’s not.

Questions & Answers

Audience: At this moment we have a lucid mind, but nothing can guarantee that in our old age we won’t have alzheimers or be senile. Is there anything we can do now to prevent or counteract that situation in case it happens in the future?

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): I would say that any practice of virtue is good. Virtue creates happiness and non virtue is the cause of suffering. So, I would say any practice of abandoning negative actions and cultivating positive actions would be beneficial. Also do purification in case you’ve created any negative karma to have Alzheimer’s or dementia. Spend some time purifying that. That’s looking at the karmic side. I would also say keeping your mind active now is very important. So, it would seem to me that vegging out in front of the computer or in front of the tv set is not exercising your mind and so your mind grows dull. Look at so many of my spiritual teachers: their minds are very sharp when they’re old. And I think it’s because they’ve been hearing, thinking and meditating on the Dharma their whole lives. 

So, they’ve been really using their minds and thinking about things and investigating. I think that keeps the mind very vibrant. It keeps you awake and alert and can probably help prevent Alzheimer’s and dementia. I would also think that saying the Manjushri mantra would be very good. Manjushri is the buddha of wisdom, and the mantra is:

Om ah ra pa tsa na dhih

When you’re at the monasteries in Tibet or the Tibetan monasteries in India, as the monks are getting out of bed in the morning and going about their daily routine, they are all repeating this mantra. They repeat “dhih dhih dhih dhih dhih” and try to get 108 out in one breath. If you can’t do 108 in one breath, just do as many as you can. But try it: say very quickly, “Dhih dhih dhih dhih dhih dhih dhih dhih dhih dhih dhih.” It wakes your mind up. The dhih is the seed syllable of Manjushri, the buddha of wisdom.
So, I would recommend to people that in addition to setting your motivation each morning—not to harm, to be of benefit and to have the bodhicitta motivation for all that you do—also to say the Manjushri mantra and as many dhih seed syllables as you can. And then as you do that, imagine the seed syllable dhih on your tongue and light coming from all the buddhas and bodhisattvas and absorbing into the dhih on your tongue. When you run out of breath imagine swallowing that seed syllable dhih, and it goes into your heart chakra. I would think doing that a lot would be something that might prevent Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Next time we’ll go into the second Noble Truth: the origin of duhkha. And this is good because when we understand what duhkha is, the next question is “What causes it?” We’ve already said ignorance, afflictions and karma, but I want to go into it a little bit more with the six and the ten afflictions. After that, we can see what the afflictions are and how they arise, and then we can know that the afflictions can be eliminated. Then we learn the Path—the fourth Noble Truth: the Path to eliminate the afflictions. Then we get into how to follow that Path—the third Noble Truth: True Cessations.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: So, she’s saying that she’s always been puzzled why being born in the form and formless realms is considered an upper rebirth because it seems like you’re using up your virtue without creating any new virtue and also possibly creating non virtue. Let me just clarify that part about virtue and non virtue. It is possible to create virtue in the form realms. And in the form realm and some of the formless realms you aren’t creating non virtue because you can’t have manifest afflictions. When you’re in that samadhi itself, there are no manifest afflictions. 

I discussed this with Bikkhu Bodhi, and it seems like beings born in the four jhanas may not always be in single-pointed concentration. So, maybe when they are out of their concentration they might have some manifest afflictions but very, very mild ones. But when you’re in single-pointed concentration all manifest afflictions are repressed, so you’re not creating any negative karma. But you are using up your good karma that you created through the power of concentration to be born there. 

Now, they’re considered upper realms because the level of samsaric happiness they have is much greater than in the human realm. And they don’t have the gross kind of duhkha that we have. They don’t break their ankles; they don’t get cold; they don’t get  headaches; they don’t get stuck by the thorns on Hawthorne trees—there’s nothing like that. And their level of samsaric happiness is higher than ours, so from that viewpoint it’s called an upper rebirth. Form the viewpoint of which rebirth is more advantageous for practicing the Dharma a human rebirth is much better. 

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: So, how do the pure lands relate to these realms? There are different kinds of pure lands, first of all. There is some kind of pure land where the beings who are practicing the Hearer and Solitary Realizer paths—those aiming for arhatship, who are in the fourth jhana—get reborn. They’re called non-returners because they are no longer born in the desire realm. The are close to liberation, so they are born in these pure lands that are part of the fourth formless realm absorption. And from there they eliminate all the rest of their afflictions and the rest of the karma that causes rebirth. They attain arhatship within those pure lands.

Those are some pure lands. Then there are other pure lands that were created by different bodhisattvas and buddhas. What happens is when somebody is practicing the bodhisattva path they make vows or prayers to liberate certain beings, and they establish a pure land where these certain beings can be born. Then, having been born there, they can attain liberation there. For example, there’s Amitabha’s pure land. That’s probably the most well known because you can be reborn there even if you’re an ordinary being now. In other words, you don’t have to have any complete realizations to be born in Amitabha’s pure land. You certainly need to have created a lot of good karma and done purification. And you need to have some renunciation, some bodhicitta, pure ethical conduct, and some understanding of emptiness. You need to have made a lot of strong aspirations and dedication prayers to reborn in Amitabha’s pure land called Sukhavati.

Once you’re born there then you never fall down into these samsaric realms. When you’re first born in Amitabha’s pure land you do not take rebirth by the power of afflictions and karma, but you are also not out of samsara either. You are born there, and then you practice and attain enlightenment there. Then there’s another pure land called Akanishta, Vajrayogini’s pure land. To be born in that on you generally have to have some kind of spiritual realization. And then other buddhas set up different pure lands. Many believe the pure lands are where the arya bodhisattvas stay. So, bodhisattvas who have realized emptiness abide in the pure lands.

The nice thing about the pure lands is that they say everything there is conducive for your practice. On the other hand, they say that having a human body like ours, when you practice Vajrayana, can actually lead to enlightenment more quickly than being born in a pure land.