What is samsara and nirvana?

• Buddhist tantra
• Goals of different Buddhist traditions
• Divisions of Mahayana
• Foundations of Vajrayana
• Two types of renunciation
• Bodhicitta: real motivation of tantra
• Self-compassion
• Guided meditations

Let’s set our motivation and think about why we’re here. What is our reason, our motivation, for joining this course? We’re learning about the teachings of the Buddha. When the Buddha gave his teachings, he did so with compassion for all living beings. He really wanted to help all of us to be free of all our suffering and also the causes of suffering, which are mainly afflictive states of mind, such as greed, hatred, jealousy, ignorance. And he knows it’s possible for us to be free of these painful, disturbing states of mind.

He did it himself. He made his mind free of all of these, and he knows that we can do it too. And that’s why he taught. All his teachings are really for that purpose of helping us be free of these disturbing states of mind, which are the cause of suffering. And he wanted to help all living beings do this. So, as we listen to and learn about these teachings of the Buddha, let’s try to do it with the same motivation the Buddha had when he gave the teachings: the wish to benefit all living beings, to free them from suffering and the causes of suffering, to help them find genuine happiness and the causes of happiness.

Really feel you want to learn these teachings and practice them so that you can be beneficial to all living beings and help yourself and all living beings reach the state the Buddha achieved, the state of enlightenment.

Background on tantra 

Welcome everyone to this course, which is called Introduction to tantra. Tantra is a big subject and very complex, and I don’t want you to think that I am an expert in this subject. There’s a lot I have to learn. And also in terms of practice, my level of practice is still very much at the beginner level. But I was asked to teach this course and I’m happy to share some things that I’ve learned with you. And anyway, it’s just a beginner’s course, an introductory course, to try to learn more about what tantra is. And also we’re talking about Buddhist tantra.

There is tantra in Hinduism, but I’m not qualified to talk about that. I haven’t studied that, so don’t expect me to know about Hindu tantra. We’re just looking at Buddhist tantra. And in the past, like in Tibet and also in India, tantra was not taught in a public way. It was taught only by teachers to some of their disciples who they felt were ready to learn about tantra. There are some reasons for this, because for one thing, people can sometimes misunderstand tantra and misuse it. And also it is an advanced level of practice. It’s not really for beginners. So, the teachers would wait until they could see that a student had practiced a lot and was developed in their practice, and then they got to the point where they were ready to practice tantra.

That’s how it was in the past. But then in recent years—in the West, for example, partly because of the internet, mass media, and many books available—there’s already a lot of information available about tantra. And unfortunately, some of that information is incorrect. It’s erroneous and can be misleading and can even be dangerous. Unfortunately, if somebody gets a hold of information about tantra, and they try to practice it on their own without the guidance of a teacher, it can actually be harmful rather than helpful.

So, it’s kind of unfortunate that there is so much material available on tantra; some of it is actually incorrect. And many Western people don’t know what is correct and what isn’t correct. That why the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan teachers have said that instead of keeping the real teachings of tantra secret and exclusive, it’s better to make them more available so that people do have the correct understanding, the correct information, about tantra. And that can help to clear up some of the misunderstanding. 

In this course, we’re just going to be looking at tantra in general, we’re not going to go into specific details about the practices, because to be able to actually do the practices of tantra, it’s necessary to first receive initiation from a qualified teacher. What I’ll be talking about is just what is tantra in general, how it fits into Buddhism, what’s the reason or purpose of practicing it, what are the prerequisites to practice it, and so on. It’s kind of an overview of tantra. And I made an outline, which is available in Spanish as well as in English, that contains just the main points of what I’m going to be talking about.

Divisions of Buddhism

We’ll start by looking at how tantra fits into the general framework of Buddhism. I’m sure many of you have heard Buddhist teachings before. Some of you have been listening and practicing for many, many, many, many years. But there might be some of you who are kind of new to Buddhism and still not know knowledgeable about all the different aspects of Buddhism. So, I’m going to kind of start with some basic things. And if you have heard these teachings before, try not to be bored or unhappy because it’s important to hear the same teachings again and again and again. We need to hear them and think about them and meditate on them again and again, in order to make our mind really familiar with them. 

Buddhism began in India, more than 2500 years ago. And it started with the Buddha who we call Shakyamuni Buddha in our tradition. In other traditions, they call him Gotama Buddha. Those are just two different names for the same person. There are actually many buddhas; it isn’t that there’s only one buddha for all of time, but there are many, many buddhas. That’s why we give a specific name to the Buddha who began these teachings. He became fully enlightened and then he taught for about 45 years, which is quite a long time. And the teachings that the Buddha gave, if you put them into the form of books, it’s like a big stack of books, like an encyclopedia, or maybe a few encyclopedias. There were many, many, many teachings that the Buddha gave. And, there are also many practices within the Buddhist tradition.

But we talked about two general traditions or divisions of Buddhism. The terminology that’s used for these in the traditional text is the Hinayana and the Mahayana, but the term Hinayana isn’t used so much these days. You find it in the old texts, the philosophical texts, but it’s not such a nice term to use, because it literally means lower vehicle or lesser vehicle. So, it sounds a little bit like putting down that tradition. In the countries where that tradition is practiced, they use the term Theravada, which means the tradition of the elders. That’s the tradition of Buddhism that you find mostly in Southeast Asia, countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, and then Laos, Cambodia, and so on. It practiced in many of those Southern Asian countries.

And then the other tradition is called Mahayana. And literally, that means the great vehicle. That’s the form of Buddhism that you find nowadays in Tibet. Northern Asian countries, like China, Japan, Korea, Tibet, Mongolia, and Vietnam have both traditions; they have Mahayana as well as Theravada. Those are the two main divisions of Buddhism. And there are many similarities between them. They’re all based on the Buddhist teachings, such as the Four Noble Truths, the importance of living ethically, working on one’s mind in meditation, and so forth. But there are also differences between them. And one of the main differences between these two traditions is the goal of one’s practice—what it is that one is trying to achieve. 

In the Theravada tradition, the goal one wants to achieve is nirvana, or liberation. This is a state of mind where one is free of suffering and the causes of suffering—one’s mind is free. And the way to achieve that state is basically by practicing what are called three higher trainings: ethical conduct—living your life in a way that you don’t do harmful things, and you do beneficial things as much as you can—concentration—training the mind to stay focused or concentrated on a virtuous object, so that you can stay on that object longer and longer periods of time without being distracted—and then the third higher training is wisdom.

There are different kinds of wisdom, actually, but mainly, this is referring to the wisdom that understands selflessness, the absence of a real solid I, or self. That’s the most important thing to understand in order to free the mind from its own suffering and the causes of suffering. That’s just an overall, very general explanation of that path. For those following the Theravada tradition, they want to attain nirvana, or self liberation: a state of personal peace, freedom from all suffering and the causes of suffering. 

And then the goal of the Mahayana path is the attainment of full enlightenment, which could also be called buddhahood. That’s the state the Buddha attained. And it does include nirvana, liberation of the mind from suffering and the causes of suffering, but it’s a further state; it’s a higher state. And the whole purpose of attaining that state of full enlightenment or buddhahood is to be able to help all other beings. So, the real goal of someone following the Mahayana is helping all living beings. And this is based on seeing that all living beings have suffering, and yet, nobody wants to suffer. Everybody wants to be free of suffering; everybody wants to be happy. And so, you feel strong compassion and love and the wish to help all living beings.

And the best way that you can help all living beings is by developing your own potential for enlightenment, buddhahood. And then as a buddha, you are in the best position where you can help all living beings. For someone who’s following the Mahayana path, that’s their goal. Their goal is buddhahood for the benefit of all living beings. And the practices they engage in are mainly developing bodhicitta—that’s the aspiration to become a buddha to help all living beings—and practicing the six perfections of giving, ethical conduct, patience, joyous effort, concentration and wisdom. Those six are the main practices for someone following the path to enlightenment. And a person who aspires to become enlightened and is working to become enlightened for the benefit of all beings is called a bodhisattva.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in recent years, has been using different terminology instead of Hinayana and Mahayana. He uses the terms from the Pali tradition and the Sanskrit tradition. That’s mainly because of the language that the scriptures are preserved in. With the Theravada tradition in Southeast Asia, their scriptures, their texts, are mainly in Pali. And in the Mahayana tradition, the language that conveyed the Buddhist teachings was Sanskrit. But then, like in Tibet, they translated the text from Sanskrit into Tibetan. And in China, they translated them into Chinese and so on. But the basic language was Sanskrit. So, that’s just a very general introduction about these two main traditions of Buddhism. 

Divisions of the Mahayana

And now let’s focus on the Mahayana, because that’s the tradition of Buddhism that went into Tibet and spread throughout Tibet. And Mahayana, in turn, has two divisions. One is called Paramitayana, which means vehicle of the perfections or perfection vehicle. And another term, a synonymous term, is Sutrayana, or sutra vehicle. And then the other division of Mahayana is Vajrayana, also called tantra. So again, those are synonyms: Vajrayana and tantra. There are other words as well, other terms that are used for tantra, but we’ll look at those later. But it’s important to understand that Vajrayana or tantra is a branch of Mahayana. Because some people think that tantra is like a third vehicle—a separate tradition, a separate vehicle of Buddhist teachings.

It is important to understand that it’s actually part of the Mahayana. It’s a branch of the Mahayana. Because what that means is that anybody who’s practicing tantra, ideally, they are practicing tantra because they want to become a buddha. They want to reach enlightenment, buddhahood, for the benefit of all living beings. But it’s a different way of attaining enlightenment than in the Paramitayana. And so, we’ll look at the differences between those. But remember that Vajrayana and tantra are the same thing. They’re just different terms for the same thing, different names for the same thing. 

Quick doesn’t mean easy

Vajrayana is sometimes called the quick path, the speedy path, because it contains certain special practices that enable one to attain enlightenment more quickly than if you follow the Paramitayana or the Sutrayana path. And this is a little tricky, because people, especially Western people, like to do things fast. We want to get things over with as quickly as possible. We want the shortcut. So, people are sometimes interested in tantra because they think, “Oh yeah, that’s faster than Sutra. I want to get to enlightenment really, really quickly.” But saying that tantra is faster doesn’t mean that it’s easier. It’s tougher. It’s actually more difficult and requires a lot more dedication and commitment.

Don’t think that it’s easier. Maybe it’s a bit like if you want to go to the top of a mountain, and there are a few different roads to get there. One road is more slow and gradual and maybe easier to travel on. Another road is very, very, very steep and also maybe dangerous. You could fall. You have to be kind of more fit and a better climber to be able to take the fast path. So, it doesn’t mean that it’s easier. And another thing is people sometimes think that it’s a question of choice—that they can choose. “Oh, I want to practice tantra. I want to practice Vajrayana. And I can leave aside the Paramitayana.” But that’s not true.

Most of the practices of the Paramitayana form the basis, the foundation, for Vajrayana. We can’t skip those. We can’t leave those aside and just jump right into tantra. I think some people try to do that right away from the beginning of their practice of Buddhism. They think, “Oh, tantra—that’s really cool. That’s really speedy. I’m just going to do that.” And then they jump right into that without having a firm foundation in the basic practices of Mahayana like the Paramitayana. And it doesn’t work. You can’t do that. You won’t be able to reach enlightenment just by practicing tantra and not practicing the basic things in Paramitayana. 

The three principal aspects of the path

So, what I’m going to do starting today is to talk about those basic teachings and practices just in case some of the people listening are new and haven’t heard these teachings before. And even for those who have heard them before, I don’t think it hurts to hear them again. I’m going to talk about what are called the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment. These are said to be the three things that we really need to understand, and not just intellectually, but to really understand with our whole being. We need to practice them and get some experience of them as the basis for the practice of Vajrayana. If we don’t do that, we might try to practice Vajrayana—maybe we take initiations and we do recitations, sadhanas, and so forth—but it’s not going to be effective in bringing us to enlightenment.

They may help to a certain extent, but they won’t really be the causes for enlightenment if we practice them without a good foundation in the three principal aspects of the path. So, I’m going to give some explanation of these three, and we’ll do some meditation on each of them as well. The three principal aspects of the path are extracted from the lamrim. Lamrim is sometimes translated as the stages of the path to enlightenment or the graduated path to enlightenment. In our tradition, in the Gelug tradition, that’s the main thing that we learn, study, and meditate on in order to bring about a transformation of our mind and bring our mind to the state of enlightenment. There are different versions of lamrim texts.

Probably the longest one was written by Lama Tsongkhapa, and it’s been translated into European languages. I know there’s a Spanish translation. I think it’s in three volumes—three quite big books. Also, you can find it in English, French—many, many European languages. We have these books of Lama Tsongkhapa, and it’s wonderful. I really recommend that if you have the chance to buy these books, to get teachings on them, that you read them again and again and again.

One time I was attending teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and he was giving teachings on this text. In Tibetan it’s called the lamrim chenmo: the great stages of the path to enlightenment. And he said that he has read this text 72 times. I was like “Wow!” And that was probably 10 or 15 years ago. So, by now, he’s probably read it even more times—maybe 100 times. That just shows that it isn’t enough to read that book just once and then think, “Oh, I know that. I can put that aside and do something else.” It’s meant to be read again and again and meditated on again and again in order to bring about this transformation of our mind from where we are now as an unenlightened being to where we want to get to as an enlightened being. 

Anyway, that’s probably the longest version of the lamrim, the stages of the path to enlightenment, and then there are others that are shorter. One of the shortest lamrim texts is also by Lama Tsongkhapa. And it’s called The Three Principal Aspects of the Path to Enlightenment. I’m sure you have that one in Spanish as well. It’s more like a prayer. It has a certain number of verses, and you’re just reciting these and reminding yourself of these.

The three principal aspects of the path are like the essence of the lamrim, the essence of the whole path to enlightenment. So, the first of these three is sometimes called renunciation. That term is sometimes used. Another term is the determination to be free. You can take your pick which of those terms you prefer. I think for some people, the word renunciation—I don’t know how it sounds in Spanish, probably the same as in English—sounds like you have to give up your happiness. You have to give up your pleasure. You can’t enjoy life.

You can’t have any fun. So, it sounds like not something people are very interested in. Some people may feel like, “Oh, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to have renunciation.” But that’s not the real meaning of renunciation. It’s actually not easy to understand the real meaning of renunciation. But it really means renouncing suffering. That’s what it is we’re renouncing. We’re not renouncing pleasure, happiness. We are renouncing suffering and the causes of suffering. That’s what it is we want to get away from, that we want to free ourselves from.  The other term, determination to be free, maybe has a more positive connotation. Because what it’s saying is, “I want to be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. I am going to do it. I’m going to free myself.”

You have this strong determination, this strong commitment, to do whatever you have to do in order to be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. It’s mainly an attitude in your mind rather than a way you live your life. Some people might have the idea that if we develop renunciation, we have to be like Milarepa. You’ve probably heard of Milarepa—a great Tibetan yogi. He lived a very difficult life. He lived in caves most of the time, and he was almost naked. He just had this piece of cotton to wear. I don’t know how he even survived living in high mountains with just a piece of cotton to wrap around himself.  But he had a very strong power of meditation. He could keep himself warm and keep himself alive. But still, it was a pretty difficult life. He didn’t have much to eat. Mostly he ate just nettles that would grow in the mountains around him. They said his skin turned green because he ate so many nettles. 

So, he had a pretty tough life. And we may think that’s the meaning of renunciation: “I have to live like that—really strict and all by myself and almost no food, almost no clothes, almost no comfort.” But that’s not the meaning of renunciation. Renunciation is really a state of mind, a mental state. It means we are choosing to refrain from and overcome the causes of suffering. The causes of suffering are mainly afflictive states of mind like ignorance, greed, hatred, and so forth, and karma. We want to overcome those. We want to free ourselves from those.

The eight worldly concerns

There are said to be two kinds of renunciation or two levels of renunciation. The first one is called renunciation of this life. And the terminology can be a little confusing because again, it sounds like it’s saying you can’t have a life. You can’t enjoy yourself. You can’t do anything that’s enjoyable. But that’s not the meaning. The meaning of renunciation of this life is mainly renouncing what are called the eight worldly concerns. Sometimes they’re called eight worldly dharmas. These are a set of eight mental states. They can be divided into four attachments and four aversions: four things we’re attached to and four things we have aversion for.

The four things we have attachment for are gain or acquiring things. We want a lot of things. This is like most people in the world. They want money. They want things. They want a nice house, a lot of clothes, a lot of shoes, jewelry, stuff. So, this is referring to wanting material things and then putting a lot of time and energy into getting a lot of material things. That’s one kind of attachment that people tend to have. And we’re happy when we get things. Either we buy things for ourselves or people give them to us, and we’re really happy about that.

We want that experience again and again. And the opposite of that is having aversion to loss—losing things—like when something we like breaks down or it’s stolen or lost, then we’re very unhappy. We don’t like that experience. We don’t like losing things.  But loss could also be, “I want something, but I can’t get it. It’s too expensive”—or whatever the reason. It’s missing out on things that we would like to have. When we face that kind of experience, we are unhappy.  We feel happy when we have the chance to gain material things. We feel unhappy when we lose or don’t get material things that we want. So often our mind is swinging between these two. Even on a daily basis, every day of our life, we may have these experiences of being happy when we get something and unhappy when we don’t get something. Does that sound familiar? Have you ever noticed that? We need to pay attention to our mind and try to recognize these states of mind when they come up. 

And then the next one is being concerned about pleasure—pleasant experiences and unpleasant experiences. We have attachment to pleasant experiences, which mainly refers to sense pleasures: pleasures we experience with our five senses. Our five senses are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling sensations in our body. Whenever we have a pleasant encounter with any objects of these five senses—we see something beautiful; we hear a beautiful sound; we smell a nice odor; we have a nice taste in our mouth; we have a pleasant sensation in our body—then we tend to be very happy about that. We crave to have more of that. And much of our time and our energy goes into trying to get more and more of these pleasant experiences. 

And the opposite is whenever we have some unpleasant experience—we see something that’s not attractive; we hear unpleasant noises; we smell unpleasant odors; we taste unpleasant tastes; we have unpleasant feelings in our body, like pain, discomfort—then our mind gets unhappy and maybe even angry. And maybe we even act out and do something harmful, something aggressive, to whomever or whatever seems to be the cause of that unpleasant experience. Again, if we pay attention to our mind, we’ll probably notice that it’s swinging back and forth between these experiences of attachment to pleasant experiences and aversion to unpleasant experiences. 

This sounds just like normal—normal human life, normal human behavior. But if we are overly concerned about these things then a lot of our time and energy is spent on them. And that leaves less time and energy for the practice of Dharma. But also these eight worldly concerns can lead us to engage in harmful actions—non virtuous actions, negative actions. People even steal or lie or cheat in order to get the pleasant things that they want or to get away from the unpleasant things they don’t want. So, it’s just a question of how much attachment we have, how much concern we have, about these different kinds of experience. They can create a lot of problems in our life and especially in our practice of Dharma. 

And then the next pair of the eight worldly concerns is praise and blame. When other people praise us, when they say nice words, like “Oh, you’re so wonderful; you’re so beautiful; you’re so handsome; you’re so smart”—whatever it is—then we like that. We like to hear words that are pleasing to our ego, to our sense of I. When we do we feel very happy. We’re very happy. And we like that person; we want to keep that person around us as much as possible and get more of those nice words. But then when we have the opposite experience, when we hear words that are more critical, blaming, or criticizing, or putting us down, then we become very unhappy. Our mind goes down and becomes unhappy. And we probably don’t like that person, and we want to stay away from that person, and they become like our enemy. We might even do harmful things to that person.

So again, the problem is these attitudes of attachment to pleasant words of praise and aversion to unpleasant words of criticism, and it’s what we do with that—how we respond when we have those kinds of experiences. 

And then the last pair is about reputation. We’re very concerned about what people think, what kind of reputation we have. In general, in society or in the community where we live, we want to be known as a good person who is smart, and capable—whatever kind of qualities you want people to see in you and think you have. And often, the way we behave is our attempt to portray ourselves in this way, as a certain kind of person. We want people to see us in that way. And I don’t do any social media—I don’t have Facebook or anything like that—but I’ve heard that this is a big thing. And like with Facebook, people put up certain photographs of themselves, and they might even edit the photographs to make themselves look more attractive than they really are, and really happy, and really successful.

They give this impression of “I’m such a great person; I’m having such a great life; I’m so wonderful.” But a lot of it might be very false, a lot of it might be fabricated. But it just shows that people are very concerned about what kind of image they put across to others. And they’re even willing to lie and give misinformation just to get people to think they’re wonderful. So, that’s attachment to reputation—wanting to have a good reputation. And then the opposite would be aversion to not having a good reputation or to maybe having a bad reputation. We’re horrified at the thought of people thinking we’re stupid; we’re incapable; we’re unattractive; we have faults—we really, really want to hide those things about ourselves.

We don’t want people to see those things in themselves. This concern about reputation is the hardest thing to give up, the hardest thing to overcome. In Pabongka Rinpoche’s book, Liberation in the Palm of the Hand—another Lamrim book—he says there might be a meditator in a cave, wearing very dirty old clothes and eating really, really poor food and not sleeping, just spending all his time meditating. He doesn’t seem to have much attachment to comfort and nice food and so forth. But in his mind, he might still be thinking, “I hope the people down there in the village know that I’m here and meditating, and they have good thoughts about me.” So, that shows that even a person who’s a monk and very knowledgeable about Buddhism and trying really hard to practice can still have that attitude in their mind of being concerned about what other people think. They say it’s very, very difficult to overcome that. But it’s not impossible; we can do it.

Antidotes to the eight worldly concerns

One of the best antidotes to these eight worldly concerns is meditating on impermanence and death—really understanding that our life is not going to last forever. This person who I am is something very transitory, very impermanent. We live only for a certain number of years and then we die. And we leave everything behind—all our possessions, our money, our body, our friends and our families. Everything in this life has to be left behind when we die.  And if we have a lot of attachment to all of these things—if we’re attached to our possessions, if we’re attached to people, if we’re attached to our body, if we’re attached to our reputation, and so on—then that’s going to make it very difficult for us at the time of death to be able to just let go of all these things and then move easily and smoothly to the next life. 

Contemplating impermanence and death takes time. It’s not something that will happen right away. But the more we get familiar with these facts of life—the truth of impermanence and the truth of death—then it will be easier to let go of these attachments, these eight worldly concerns. So, that’s the main meaning of renunciation of this life: giving up our concern or attachment to these eight worldly concerns.

In case some of you are wondering why I’m talking about this and not about tantra, if you’re thinking, “I joined this course because I want to hear about tantra. I don’t want to hear about the eight worldly concerns,” it’s because there are dangers if we engage in the practice of tantra without haven’t overcome the eight worldly concerns. And we can see this in the stories of teachers. There have been quite a few kind of scandals in the last many years concerning Buddhist teachers who reached a certain level of popularity and fame and had a lot of students. And maybe they were very good teachers who were able to explain things very well and were very inspiring to their students. But then we hear stories of sexual abuse or teachers using their students for their own sexual gratification or abusing drugs and alcohol, money, and power. So this shows that even if you know a lot about Buddhism and about tantra, even if you have a great deal of knowledge and have been practicing for years and years and years, it’s possible that your mind can still be trapped by these worldly concerns. You can still be attached to fame and reputation and pleasure and gain and so forth.

This shows the danger of just skipping over this part of the practice, and jumping into tantra and doing tantra practice. If your mind is still not free from these eight worldly concerns, then things can get really bad for yourself as well as for your students, and also for the reputation of Buddhism. When these stories get out in the media and in society and so on, then people can lose faith and trust in Buddhism, and some people even give up their practice. They say, “Buddhism doesn’t work; it’s not genuine. It’s not real.” And that’s very sad, very, very, very sad. So, it is important that we look carefully at our mind and be honest with what’s going on and really look out for these eight worldly concerns. Because if they are there in our mind and we don’t deal with them, and we just pretend they’re not there or think it’s not important, then there is that danger that our practice may become corrupted. It could become polluted by these concerns, and then our behavior may even become harmful to others. 

The second kind of renunciation is called renunciation of samsara, and this is a broader and deeper level of renunciation or determination to be free. In case anyone’s not familiar with the term samsara, it’s sometimes called cyclic existence. It refers to the situation we ordinary beings—those of us who are not enlightened, those of us who haven’t reached nirvana—are in. We’re in this situation called samsara, and some people may get the idea that it’s something external, like an external place in the world. We may think samsara is the ordinary world, like planet Earth, or we may think Barcelona is samsara—something like that. Sometimes we get that idea. 

But it’s not a place. It’s not a physical place or a physical location. The real meaning of samsara in the Buddhist texts is this body and mind that we have, which is not free from karma and afflictive emotions. That’s not so easy to understand.It takes time to understand that. But I’ll just use myself as an example. I have this body that was born a certain number of years ago from my mother—and as soon as we are born, in fact, as soon as we are conceived, we already have a mind, a consciousness. It isn’t something that arises later, but it’s already there with us as soon as we come into this life. And our mind didn’t just start existing in this life, but it existed before in another life. So, before this body was born, my mind was in another body, having a different life, having different experiences. And before that, it was in another body, and before that, it was in another body, and so on and so forth. 

Karma and afflictions

Buddhism says there’s no beginning to this situation. It didn’t have a beginning. We can keep going back further and further and further—thousands of years, millions of years, billions of years—and not find a beginning to this process of being born, living a life, dying, again being reborn, living, dying, and so on and so forth. It just keeps going. And the main causes of being in this situation are two things: karma and afflictions. Karma refers to the actions that we create as we go through each life. Some of these actions are virtuous, like helping people, being generous, doing spiritual practice, and so on. Some of the actions that we do are non virtuous or negative, like killing, stealing, lying, harming others, and so on. So, every day, we are creating many different kinds of karma.

Every time we do an action, it leaves imprints on our mind, and it’s those imprints that bring about our future experiences—mainly in our future lives. Where we are born each lifetime, the kind of body we have, the kind of experiences we have: all of this is the result of our karma, not the result of a god. Many people in the world believe there’s a god who created us, a god who put us here and is kind of controlling the whole situation. Buddhism says it’s not a god; it’s mainly our karma that makes the world go around, that causes us to be born and live and die and go through all the experiences we have. We actually have within our mind many, many, many karmic seeds—probably zillions. You can’t even count them.

All the actions that we’ve done in our past lives are still left there in our mind in seed form. And those become the cause for us to continue having experiences again and again. The other main cause of samsara is the afflictions or delusions. These are mental states—states of mind—that are basically incorrect. They’re mistaken. And often they are quite negative; for example, they are full of anger, hatred, greed, jealousy. These negative states of mind are the things that motivate us to create karma. Whenever we do an action, it’s always motivated by certain states of mind. And if these states of mind are negative or deluded then that’s what makes it negative or bad karma.

But we also create good karma. We have the wish to help somebody, for example, and then we act out of that motivation and do something helpful, like we give money to someone who’s poor, give food to someone who’s hungry, give medicine to someone who’s sick, and so on. Those are examples of virtuous karma. But the karma that we create, whether it’s virtuous or non-virtuous, is always under the influence of ignorance that doesn’t understand the true nature of things. And that’s the main thing that keeps us in samsara. And this is true even when we create virtuous karma that becomes the cause of a good rebirth, like right now we’re human beings, and this is a good rebirth. We’re very fortunate that we are human beings in this lifetime. We must have created some good karma in the past to be a human being and have food to eat and a roof over our head and clothes to wear and so on. We’ve created good karma in the past.

But even that good karma was created under the influence of ignorance not understanding the true nature of things. And that’s the main thing that keeps us being born in samsara again and again and again and again. That’s the thing we have to overcome if we want to be free of this situation and stop taking rebirth and stop having suffering and problems. We have to overcome ignorance. Each of us has a body and a mind, and right now we are in a good situation. Having a human body and mind is a good situation, but it’s still within samsara. And what that means is that our body and mind—our life—is not free from but under the control of karma and delusions.

Samsara is not something outside of ourselves; it’s right here. It’s this body-mind combination that we have, which is not free from karma, not free from afflictions, delusions, greed, hatred, ignorance. The causes and conditions that give rise to this body and mind are karma and afflictions from the past. And right now in this life, we are under the control of karma and afflictions because in our mind, there are karmic seeds, and we are creating more karma all the time. And we have these afflictive emotions in our mind. We’re not free from karma and afflictions now. And then the things that we are doing day-by-day are creating the cause for more of the same in the future, for more samsara in the future. It’s like we are trapped. We are trapped in this situation where we don’t have real freedom. 

The meaning of real freedom in Buddhism is what we call nirvana, or liberation. This is a state of being free from karma and afflictions, and not having to die and be reborn again and again, not have to experience any more suffering. Then oneself is in control, rather than being under the control of karma and afflictions. It’s not so easy to understand. It actually takes quite a bit of time, study, and reflection to understand what samsara is. But we do need to understand what samsara is so that we can realize the need to be free of it, so that we can generate the wish to be free of it and then do what we need to do in order to be free of it. And in the Mahayana tradition, what we want to do is not just free ourselves from samsara, but we want to help all living beings be free of samsara. But we still have to understand what samsara is so that we can help sentient beings be free from it. We have to understand what samsara is, and we also have to understand the escape route. What is the way to get out? What is the means to be free of samsara? 

Guided Meditation

I thought it would be nice to do a little bit of meditation to get a deeper experience of what I’m talking about. Because it’s very important that we do have to have a good understanding of samsara, and the need to be free of samsara, and the need to help others be free of samsara so that actually becomes the motivation for practiticing tantra. That’s the real motivation for practicing tantra. 

Let’s get into a good position for meditation. It’s good if you can sit with your back straight, but let your shoulders relax, let your arms relax, let go of any tension you may have anywhere in your body. Just be aware of your breathing flowing in and out for a few minutes to settle your mind down in case there are other thoughts swirling around in your mind. Let go of those. Put those aside. Just be here and now.

Now spend some time thinking about some of the problems that you have had in your life from the beginning of your life up until now. We’re not going into all the details of these problems, not getting all emotional about these problems, but just kind of make a list in an objective way about some of the problems, some of the difficulties you’ve experienced in your life up until now. Do this just to get a sense of how life is not a hundred percent smooth and easy, but it does involve experiencing problems and difficulties.

And now think about some of the problems that you are experiencing presently in your life. It could be physical problems or difficulties or emotional ones, problems with your family, your friends, with work. Again, try not to get caught up in feeling emotional about these problems, but just make a list of them. Some of you might be thinking, “Why are we only looking at problems? There are lots of good things, lots of wonderful experiences in life.” That is true, but do they last? One aspect of samsara is that when we do have pleasant, beautiful, wonderful experiences, they last only a limited period of time, and then they disappear. They stop. They don’t just keep going. 

Then looking ahead into the future, we will probably experience more problems, especially as our body is aging and getting older every day, every minute, every second. That means it’s more susceptible to illness, to pain, and other kinds of difficulties with our hearing, our eyesight, our ability to walk, and so on. And the people we know, love, and care about will also go through problems and difficulties. They will come to the ends of their lives, and we will have to say goodbye to them and lose them. That’s one of the most painful aspects of life: losing loved ones, people we want to continue being there. But we can’t make that happen. We have to say goodbye to them. And we ourselves will come to the end of our life. We won’t live forever. We ourselves will have to face the end of our life, death, one of these days, and we don’t know when that will happen and how it will happen. It’s a big unknown, a big question mark. 

These are just some of the unpleasant experiences that we have as long as we are in samsara, cyclic existence. And why are we in this situation? It’s not up to anybody else, like a god or a creator, but rather, it’s factors within our own mind—mainly ignorance about the true nature of things and other afflictions like attachment or greed, anger or hatred, jealousy, pride, and so on. It’s these many, many different afflictive states of mind.  And these come up without choice or control and motivate us to do actions or create karma, which then, if it’s not purified or cleared away, becomes the cause for future problems, future suffering. We go through this situation again and again and again, life after life. And see if you can get a sense of how samsara is not a beautiful, wonderful place, like a beautiful park. Instead, it’s like a prison, like a concentration camp. It’s horrible. 

See if you can feel a sense of how we deserve to get out of this situation, we want to get out of this situation, we want to free ourselves from it. And that is possible. We can create the causes to be free of samsara. Causes are mainly what are called the three higher trainings: ethical conduct, living ethically, and then concentration—training our mind to stay focused on a virtuous object of our choice—and then wisdom that understands the true nature of everything—of our own self, and everyone and everything around us. All of these things don’t exist in the real, solid, independent way they appear to, but they’re actually empty of that false way of existing. See if you can feel the wish to practice these three higher trainings in order to free yourself from samsara, cyclic existence.

Bodhicitta

Now I’ll just start talking about the next principal aspect of the path, which is bodhicitta. Bodhicitta means the mind of enlightenment. It’s the aspiration to become a buddha, a fully enlightened being, to be able to help all living beings. It is important and it’s essential that we first develop renunciation or the determination to be free as the basis for bodhicitta. Because, as I said before, bodhicitta means “I want to help all living beings become free of suffering and the causes of suffering. And I want to become a buddha to be able to do that.” So, we do need to understand the suffering that sentient beings are going through so that we have a strong feeling of “I want to free them from all that suffering.” And so we do have to have a very good understanding of samsara. What is samsara? Because that’s what sentient beings are stuck in.

Sometimes samsara is compared to an ocean, a big terrifying ocean filled with all kinds of sea monsters and dangers and terrible things. They have this image of sentient beings drowning in this huge, terrifying, dangerous ocean. And we recognize this situation that they’re in and want to rescue them from this. And that becomes a strong motivating factor for then following the path to enlightenment, to buddhahood, so that we can help all living beings. So, we need to understand how we ourselves are in this situation of suffering in samsara. We have to see samsara as a really terrible situation. It’s not nice at all; it’s a terrible situation. And then we wish to free ourselves from samsara. And then we extend that same attitude to everybody else. If we don’t see our own situation in samsara, and how terrible it is and how we must free ourselves from this, we won’t be able to extend that feeling to all other beings.

So, it makes sense that renunciation, the determination to be free, must precede bodhichitta. Another term we could use for renunciation is self-compassion. There’s a lot of talk, at least in America, about self-compassion—how it’s important for us to have compassion for ourselves rather than hating ourselves. A lot of people have hatred or negative feelings for themselves and are very self-critical, self-hateful, and self-deprecating. So many people have thoughts like that: “I’m so bad. I’m so horrible.” They’re beating themselves up over whatever mistake they make. Buddhism normally doesn’t really talk about self-compassion. That term isn’t used so much. They talk about compassion for all sentient beings, but sometimes it sounds like that’s everybody else, but not me, which isn’t true. We do have to have compassion for ourselves, as well as everybody else.

We, too, are sentient beings, and we deserve compassion. We have to overcome self-hatred and self-criticalness and really have kind and compassionate feelings towards ourselves. So, in a way, renunciation, the determination to be free, is the highest form of self-compassion, because it involves really looking carefully at our situation and recognizing that we are not in a good situation; we are in a terrible situation, because we have karma; we have afflictive emotions. We have suffering; we have problems. And we deserve better than this. We shouldn’t have to be stuck in a terrible situation like this. We have the potential to be free. We have the potential to be fully enlightened. We can become just like the Buddha. We have that ability ;we have that potential, and that’s what we deserve. 

We need to feel that way about ourselves: “I shouldn’t have to suffer. I should be free of suffering, and I should become fully enlightened.” We deserve that. We deserve the best. We need to feel that about ourselves, and then we can look around at others and feel the same way towards them: “All these other beings, they also shouldn’t have to suffer. They also deserve to be free of suffering. They deserve to be happy. They deserve to be fully enlightened, and I want to help them do it.”

The importance of examining the teachings

It is difficult to really understand what samsara is, and then the opposite of samsara, because we have been living in samsara for such a long time. It’s almost like a fish that was born in a fish tank and lived its entire life in the fish tank, and that’s the only world it knows. It doesn’t know any other world. We are a bit like that. We have lived our whole life within samsara, and not only this life, but all our past lives as well. We’ve never known any other way of life, any other experience. It is difficult to know. That’s why in the beginning, we need a certain amount of confidence in the Buddha, a certain amount of trust in the Buddha. 

And we can get that by learning more about the Buddha and his life, his experiences, his teachings, because he is a person who was once in samsara like us. He wasn’t always Buddha, but he started off in samsara with the same kind of problems we have—karma, afflictions, ignorance, suffering—but he found a way out. He found a way to be free of samsara, and then he taught, he gave teachings based on his experience. Buddhists believe that the Buddha is free of samsara, and his teachings show a way to be free of samsara. It’s difficult to be sure of that. It’s difficult to know 100% if that’s true.  People in Asia who are brought up in Buddhist families just have this faith because of their family, their culture. Everybody around them believes in the Buddha, has faith in the Buddha, so it’s very easy for them to believe in the Buddha as well.

But actually, the Buddha himself said, “Don’t have faith in me just because other people do, or just because of what I say. You check for yourself. You investigate for yourself.” He really encouraged his followers to use their own intelligence and check his teachings. And actually, what I’ve heard from some of my teachers is that some of the Buddhist followers, even at the time when he was in the world and he was teaching, would listen to his teachings, and their minds were already quite highly developed. And so, they very quickly gained an actual direct experience of the truth of what the Buddha taught. They gained the wisdom that understands the true nature of things. And then they said, “What you were talking about is true. I can see it for myself.” And then they would take refuge in the Buddha, because they had their own firsthand direct experience of the truth of what the Buddha taught. They saw it, they experienced they too became free of their suffering. 

But nowadays, it’s more difficult. We don’t have the chance to meet the Buddha directly and sit in front of him and listen to his teachings. So, it’s more difficult to have that kind of direct experience. That’s the kind of experience we’re trying to get: that direct experience that allows us to see for ourselves the truth of what the Buddha taught. And when you have that experience, then you know for sure that what the Buddha taught is true, and then you really have faith. But for those of us like myself who haven’t yet gained that direct experience, it’s more difficult.

But many of the Buddha’s teachings do make sense to me, even though I haven’t had the direct experience of everything he taught. For example, if I meditate, and I work on my mind, and I try to decrease my anger, and I try to increase my love and compassion, I can see that it really does bring about a positive transformation of my mind. My mind becomes better, and I become happier. My life becomes better. So, I can see that some of the things the Buddha taught really work. They really are true. And that gives me faith and confidence that other things the Buddha taught are probably true as well. I’m willing to go along, even though I don’t have yet my own direct experience. I’m willing to think that maybe he was right about those things as well. I’m still working towards that. I’m still working towards having a direct experience of the truth that the Buddha taught.

But so far, what I have investigated does seem to be true; it does seem to be valid. I also find that the more I study, the more I learn about the Buddhist teachings and put them into practice, the more my confidence grows. I still have some doubts, but my doubts tend to decrease; my confidence tends to grow. So, that’s very helpful as well just to learn more and think more about the Buddhist teachings, to ask questions. This is very much emphasized in Buddhism, that we should investigate, ask questions, clear up our doubts, and also try it out in your experience and see if it works or not. I guess we could say the function of samsara is to perpetuate itself. Again, samsara means existence that’s under the control of karma and afflictions. And if we don’t try to stop that, it will just keep going. It will just keep perpetuating itself. 

And, of course, everybody has a choice. If you want to continue being in samsara, if you don’t mind it, then you can. You can do that. It’s fine. But on the other hand, if you look carefully at samsara, and you can see it has a lot of faults. It has a lot of problems, a lot of mistakes, a lot of unsatisfactory circumstances, and you feel, “No, I don’t like this. I don’t want to stay in samsara. I want to be free of samsara.”

 And being free of samsara doesn’t mean you go out of existence. It’s just that you have a different kind of existence—an existence that’s much more satisfying, much more pure, much more peaceful. There is an alternative to samsara. So, it’s good to look at the two—samsara and freedom from samsara, nirvana—and then just decide which one you want.