Review
We are going through the graded stages of the path for developing ourselves spiritually. These stages are divided into different levels of motivations. There is the initial level motivation, which is to work for future lives, to gain better and better rebirths, specifically, precious human rebirths, in order to be able to continue on the path. Then there is the intermediate scope of motivation, which is to get rid of all rebirth, all samsaric rebirth, and to gain liberation. Then there is the advanced scope of motivation, which is to go beyond even that to gain the enlightened state of a Buddha so that we can be of best help to everyone.
We saw that we develop these motivations stage by stage. Each stage is based on the one before. We can’t skip any. If we do, then there are serious drawbacks in terms of our way of practicing and our own development.
Initial Scope
We started with the initial scope. Without going into tremendous detail, we spoke about the precious human rebirths that we have – how we are free from the states of no leisure and how we are able to work on ourselves, to develop ourselves spiritually. How fortunate we are that our lives are enriched with all the various opportunities to receive teachings, to practice and grow. But these circumstances are not going to last forever; so, we think about impermanence and, specifically, about death. Death can come at any time, and it will come for sure. At the time of death, whenever that happens, nothing is going to of any help to us except the positive potentials that we have built up during our lifetimes as a preventive measure to avoid worse rebirths.
If we look objectively at our states of mind and behavior in this lifetime – let alone previous lifetimes – we can see that we certainly have acted destructively and been under the influence of disturbing emotions far more often than we have acted constructively. What would follow from that, naturally, would be a worse state of rebirth.
Then we looked at the sufferings and problems and limitations that we would have if we were born in one of the worst states. We looked at being reborn as a trapped being in a joyless realm (so-called hell realms), as a clutching ghost (so-called hungry ghost), and as a creeping creature, an animal. Looking at those quite seriously and imagining how awful it would be to end up in one of those situations, we develop a healthy sense of dread and fear. It’s not an unhealthy sense of fear, which is based on feeling helpless and hopeless, feeling that there’s no way out. Instead, it’s a healthy sense, which is that we see that there is a way to avoid that. We really don’t want to have one of these worst rebirth states, and we would try very hard to avoid that happening.
We saw that the way to avoid it is to put a positive, safe direction in our lives by striving to attain what is known as the deepest Dharma Jewel. In other words, the direction that we want to go in is that of (1) a true stopping of all these sufferings and their causes so that they never arise again and (2) the true pathway mind, the true state of mind, that will bring that stopping about – so, resulting in liberation from these sufferings and their causes. These exist in full on the mental continuums of Buddhas and in part on the mental continuums of the Arya Sangha, the highly realized beings who have had non-conceptual cognition in general of the four noble truths and, in particular, of voidness.
We saw that on the initial level, we are primarily focusing on the suffering of suffering, which is the suffering of pain and unhappiness as characterized by the lower realms. In order to avoid that type of suffering, we need to avoid destructive behavior. So, we try to get rid of our unawareness, or confusion, about behavioral cause and effect and to see that destructive behavior leads to the unhappiness of these worst states. We looked quite in depth at karma, this whole process of cause and effect, and analyzed the factors that make various actions, both destructive and constructive actions, have stronger or weaker results. That concluded our discussion of the initial scope of motivation.
In conclusion, we take future lives completely seriously and aim to really work to benefit them. This is a twofold process because, on the one hand, we need to build up positive causes by engaging in constructive behavior, but at the same time, we need to avoid destructive behavior. It’s not enough just to do constructive things, to say, “Well, I’m doing a lot of constructive things, but I’m not really paying attention to self-control and avoiding destructive things.” That’s not the way to do it. The way to do it is to put equal emphasis on avoiding the destructive things. In fact, in terms of the traditional explanation of the initial scope, the main emphasis is on avoiding destructive behavior based on understanding what the results of it would be in terms of future lives and wanting to ensure that we continue to have precious human rebirths in order to continue on the path.
Intermediate Scope
Then we started the intermediate scope of motivation, realizing that no matter what type of rebirth we have, one of the better states or one of the worst states, it will still be a basis for up and down suffering. We’ll continue to have some suffering of suffering, even as human beings with precious human rebirths, as well as the suffering of change, which is our ordinary happiness, a happiness that never satisfies. So, we want to develop renunciation of the basis for all of this, which is uncontrollably recurring rebirth.
To start the whole process of developing the motivation of renunciation, the determination to be free from samsaric rebirth, we need to look more specifically at the first and second noble truths, true suffering and its true causes, how that suffering comes about. The suffering that we are looking at here is the suffering of uncontrollably recurring rebirth, the so-called all-pervasive suffering that just pervades the other types of sufferings, the suffering of suffering and the suffering of change.
The Six General Shortcomings of Samsara (Continued)
We’ve presented this in the way that it is presented in some of the lam-rims – each of the lam-rims has a slightly different way of organizing the material – by looking, first, at the suffering of samsara in general. We have gone through the first two types of shortcomings, or sufferings, the suffering of no certainty and the suffering of no satisfaction. Now we are up to the suffering, or shortcoming, of having to forsake our bodies repeatedly. This one fits in with the next shortcoming, which is having to fit into new rebirths repeatedly.
[3] Suffering of Having to Forsake Our Bodies Repeatedly, [4] Suffering of Having to Fit into New Rebirths Repeatedly
When it comes to having to forsake our bodies repeatedly, the main thing, I think, that we have to look at is our attachment to and identification with our bodies. We are going to have to give our present bodies up. How willing are we to do that, and what is the suffering of doing that?
The next suffering, as I said, is having to fit into new rebirths repeatedly. That means that we have to get used to another body and all the things that go with that type of body. There is absolutely no guarantee that we’re going to have human rebirths, let alone precious human rebirths. We could take rebirth as a rat, a cockroach or any of the other types of life forms. Whatever type of body we have, we get very used to it. But, then, we have to give it up again. As it says in the texts, the number of bodies that we have had to take and give up would reach as high as Mount Meru.
Let’s think about this for a moment or two – having to give up this body and having to give up whatever body that we have over and over and over again. I think one way to imagine this is to think about times in our lives when we’ve had to give up one situation and fit into a new one. Maybe we’ve had to move or change jobs. Maybe when we were kids, we had to move to a new school. Whatever the situation might have been, try to recall how insecure you felt and how difficult it was to adjust at the beginning. It’s painful to leave what we are accustomed to and painful to fit into new situations, isn’t it? And if that’s painful even while in the same body, imagine how much more difficult it would be to have to change bodies as well – especially considering that at the beginning of a rebirth, we’re babies; we’re totally helpless at that stage
[meditation]
To appreciate how attached we are to our bodies and how much suffering would be involved in having to give them up, we imagine that we’ve died, are in the bardo and are able to look back and see our old bodies being cremated or being eaten by worms. How would we feel about that? It’d be pretty heavy, wouldn’t it?
[meditation]
The horrible thing is that every lifetime is going to end with having to give up the bodies that we have. This is something that has gone on with no beginning, and if we don’t do anything about it, it’s going to go on with no end, over and over and over again.
[meditation]
To go back to the first type of shortcoming, no certainty – there is no certainty as to what kind of body we’ll get next time. And whatever kind we get, we will have to fit into it, get used to it, whether it’s an animal body, a ghost body, a human body, a male body, a female body, one that’s healthy, one that’s deformed, one that’s pretty, one that’s ugly, one that’s in a kind family, an abusive family and so on. There’s no certainty.
[meditation]
OK. Any thoughts, any comments?
Participant: When imagining having to move to other places, other situations, I thought about how difficult it is sometimes to love something that you don’t know.
Dr. Berzin: Could you explain that?
Participant: For example, when we go to a new school, we want to love the people we don’t yet know. Or when we get into a new apartment, we want to love and take care of this place that we don’t yet know. Or to love a new routine… I was thinking that maybe it’s difficult because we have to give a lot of ourselves to learn new things. We have to make a lot of effort without knowing what to expect. We cannot have a lot of expectations because we are not used to the thing. And we don’t know what good things we can expect. We can only go forward and try to learn, try to adapt, try to deal with the challenges. I think it’s about trying hard without having big expectations and without being sure of what’s going to be.
Dr. Berzin: Just to repeat, when we make a change, we want to try to get to love the new place, the new job, the new apartment, and so on, but we don’t really know what the situation is going to be like. In the beginning, perhaps, we can provisionally give our love and try to fit in, but the only way to do that successfully is not to have any expectations or to project onto the situation. That’s true. I think we have to be very open to what is there and be willing to love it, to like it. But we may not like it.
Participant: When we are in a new body, the effort is to love this new body.
Dr. Berzin: That’s very true. Even if our bodies are in some way deficient – for example, we’re born blind or deaf – we need to try to make the best of them. We need to treat our bodies kindly and to use them as best and as fully as we are able.
I always think of these people who have palsy. They can’t control their movements, and they shake all the time. One sees them here in wheelchairs. They have to be slightly strapped in; otherwise, they could bang their heads. They have no control, and it’s difficult for them to speak. Once, here, in Berlin, there was something like a symposium with people like that –their minds were perfectly normal. They spoke about their sex lives. They spoke about the usual human things that people experience. What would it be like to have that type of rebirth and to fit into that type of body, to come to be at peace with that and to be able to do whatever we can to make the best of it?
Not Taking Future Precious Human Rebirths for Granted
I think this is a very important point with the lam-rim – not to take for granted that we are going to have such wonderful, precious human rebirths every time. We could be in quite awful situations. And here, we’re talking just about human situations. Imagine being a chicken in one of these prison-like chicken farms where our beaks are cut, we can’t move, and we’re just fed only to be made into dog food at the end. How awful that would be. Well, we already thought about the suffering of the worst rebirth states, but, here, the point is to realize that we will likely have to go through that again and again and again. And although we need to learn to make the best of any situation, how wonderful it would be if we didn’t have to. That’s the point. It’s to recognize that this is something that we would really like to get out of.
As I have frequently said about renunciation, the emotion that goes with it is not one of fear, not one of anger, and not even disgust, though we have that on the way to developing renunciation. I think we have to go beyond being merely disgusted with samsara: we have to be deeply, deeply bored. “Enough already! It is so boring and disgusting to have to do it over and over again. I want out.”
Participant: Jangtse Choje Rinpoche, when he was in Munich, described it as a sadness, an immense kind of sadness. He said that if you look at all the samsaric madness going on, you feel a sadness about it.
Dr. Berzin: Is he talking about looking at it in terms of other people or in terms of oneself?
Participant: He was saying that trying to get samsaric happiness is like trying to balance two or three strawberries on top of each other: you can never do it.
Dr. Berzin: So, it’s never going to work.
Participant: It’s a nice picture, actually.
Dr. Berzin: Well, samsara is sad. It’s sad that we are in this samsaric situation. But would just feeling sad about that motivate us to try to get out of it? Or would we just get depressed? Why would we not get depressed?
Participant: There is a way out.
Dr. Berzin: It’s because there is a way out. So, it’s exactly the same as the reason why we wouldn’t have a debilitating type of fear when thinking of the worst rebirth states: we see that there is a way to avoid it. So, when thinking of the sufferings of samsara, we see that there is a way to avoid them. Therefore, we don’t get depressed about how awful the situation is, thinking, “It’s going to go on forever, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Sadness, I think, in this case, is most effective when thinking of others – thinking how sad it is that they are in this situation. That would motivate us to help them.
Also, I would describe seeing the suffering of change, trying to find samsaric happiness, a little bit more strongly as seeing how pathetic it is. It’s not just sad: it’s pathetic. We’re trying to get a little bit of happiness, but whatever happiness we get is never going to last, never going to satisfy. What are we trying to accomplish? We eat a nice meal; we’re just going to get hungry again.
All these different aspects are helpful. I think, though, that one has to be careful to avoid misunderstanding and feeling really sad and gloomy and pessimistic about all of this. How would we avoid that?
Participant: I guess in the short term, you could avoid it by being realistic about whatever happiness you do have, being realistic about its scope, what it really can or cannot do for you and, in the long run, seeing that there is a solution, which is getting out of samsara.
Dr. Berzin: That’s very good. Whatever ordinary happiness we have, we need to be realistic about it, not overestimate or exaggerate it, not expect too much out of it and enjoy it for what it is.
Participant: And to remember what has happened before, when we had it.
Dr. Berzin: Also, we remember what is going to come later – that it will end. I think that’s especially true when it comes to deeply emotional relationships. So, we see that this type of happiness is not a solution, but we also see that there is a way to avoid or overcome all of this.
If we were arhats, liberated beings, and we continued to appear in human form so as to continue on the path to enlightenment, we would undoubtedly have to go through the stages of being a baby, growing up and so on. But what would be different? We wouldn’t have attachment, which means that there wouldn’t be the suffering that’s normally involved in the process of dying and taking another rebirth. Our rebirths wouldn’t be under the force of karma and the disturbing emotions. We wouldn’t have any more karmic potentials that could ripen into unhappiness or happiness, our ordinary happiness. Would we feel nothing? No. Either we would have a non-disturbing type of happiness, being free of all the disturbing emotions and so on, or we would have a numbness of feeling, which we’d have when we were in the higher meditation absorptions.
As I’ve said, I think it’s important to understand what would come after being liberated from samsaric rebirth. Otherwise, it’s a big unknown. And to think about getting out of something without knowing what we would be getting into after we got out makes for a very insecure situation, doesn’t it?
But to really appreciate these points about having to give up one’s body repeatedly and having to fit into new rebirths repeatedly, one has to think in terms of the beginningless mental continuum going on forever – which will continue to go on in a samsaric way forever unless we do something about it – and not just limit oneself to thinking in terms of this lifetime only. It’s bad enough to have to give up the body of this lifetime… but to have to do it over and over and over again?
[5] Suffering of Having to Change Status Repeatedly from Exalted to Humble
Also, just think – to introduce the next suffering, the shortcoming of having to change status repeatedly from exalted to humble: we have precious human rebirths now, and we have been working a little bit, but not really, really hard, to do positive things, but we’ve done a lot of destructive things, committed under the influence of a tremendous amount of lust, greed, anger, and these sorts of things, which means that we fall to horrible rebirth states. Then it’s going to take such a long time before that negative karma wears off and we get another precious human rebirth. When we do, we waste it, again. And then, again, we fall.
So, we’re talking not just about what can happen in one lifetime. In one lifetime, usually, things go up and down: we don’t always succeed or always fail. What we’re talking about is how samsara goes up and down in so many different ways. So, try to look at these points from a greater perspective.
Participant: Sorry, I didn’t really understand this point.
Dr. Berzin: The point here is that everything goes up and down. We might do some positive things in this lifetime, but if we have done a tremendous number of negative things, we’re going to fall into worse situations. That negative karma will eventually be worn off, and we’ll get into better situations once more, but then – again – we’ll go down to worse situations. It’s not as though the way out of samsara is a linear progression. If we stay in samsara, if we continue to have uncontrollably recurring rebirths, things are always going to go up and down, up and down. That makes for a very insecure situation, doesn’t it? The point of realizing that is to be dissatisfied with that situation and to see that this is something that would be great to be over with, to get rid of.
So, this suffering isn’t just about being very wealthy and then losing all our money in the stock market or having a very high-paying job and then losing it or getting laid off and being unemployed. That, of course, is included here, but it has to do with even more.
We could be in really good health, but then we get into a car accident and are crippled. Or we could be really poor, but then a rich relative dies and leaves us a lot of money – so, going from low to high. Or we could have learned so much, having had a really good education and become so skilled, but then we die and have to start all over again as babies and learn everything once again. How utterly boring. We even have to learn how to walk again.
[meditation]
OK, any thoughts you would like to share?
Participant: I feel aggressive: “What a pain in the ass!”
Dr. Berzin: This is what I was saying about our emotional response to all this, which is that one of the stages that we go through is feeling anger about it – “This is really stupid. I really don’t want this” – and being annoyed.
But being annoyed about it means that there’s a slight disturbance in the mind. It’s not such a stable mind for getting out. And being afraid, even if the fear is a healthy one, is, I think, a little bit too rough a state of mind. The same thing with being disgusted. That’s why I said that, at least in my way of thinking about it, one eventually reaches a stage of boredom, which is a much calmer state of mind. “I’m just so bored with this that I am going to do something. I’m going to get off my rear end and do something about it.”
Participant: But aggression has the energy: “I need to do something about this!”
Dr. Berzin: So, this is where one could use this aggressive energy in a positive way. The problem with using aggressive energy to motivate us to do something is that it doesn’t always lead to thinking clearly about what to do. One has to combine that strong energy with internal calmness and clarity of mind. It’s like with martial arts: externally, one has to be very aggressive and forceful, but internally – to do martial arts properly – one has to be completely quiet and calm. This is not that easy to achieve.
It’s the same thing when we do tantra practice with the forceful deities. We imagine ourselves as these very ferocious figures with flames and fangs, trampling on various things that represent our disturbing emotions, our selfishness and so on. So, we try to harness and use a tremendous forceful energy, but to do this practice, we have to base it on an understanding of the voidness of all of this so that, internally, we are completely calm. That is represented very nicely by the Buddha-figure Yamantaka. Yamantaka is a very strong, forceful figure on the outside. In Yamantaka’s heart is Manjushri – so, internally, very peaceful, calm and clear. So, one tries to combine the two aspects. And in Manjushri’s heart is a tiny, tiny syllable to keep us very, very focused. So, there’s this tremendous energy on the outside and this clarity and absolute focus on the inside.
One needs a balance of all these things. But yes, we have to have a tremendous amount of energy to overcome our laziness about doing something about being in this samsaric situation.
Mind you, though, at this point, we already have the discipline to refrain from destructive behavior. We already have the initial scope. So, here, with the intermediate scope, what we are thinking about is beyond that – that even with all this discipline, we’re still bound to samsara. Discipline is not enough.
Participant: You are addicted to samsara.
Dr. Berzin: We are addicted to samsara.
Participant: Even after having given up acting in destructive ways.
Dr. Berzin: Even after having stopped engaging in destructive behavior, we are addicted to samsara.
[6] Suffering of Having No Friends
Being addicted to samsara is why the next suffering, the last one in this list, the suffering of having no friends, is quite significant. We are addicted to having friends, having our teachers and having a comfortable precious human rebirth – so, the good things of samsara. Those things, too, we’re going to have to give up repeatedly. We’re going to have to give them up over and over again. We may never see these people again. And even if we see them again in a future life, the person who is our friend now could be reborn as a dog or as a fly that lands on our nose. What makes us think that we are going to be great friends, husband and wife, lifetime partners or whatever in future lives? As they say: we’re born alone; we die alone.
So, this addiction to the good things of samsara is something that’s very, very important to overcome because it’s based on the naivety of thinking that we will always be able to keep these relationships, even in future lives.
Participant: In the case of a friend, it doesn’t even depend on us.
Dr. Berzin: Obviously, what type of relationship we will have with other people doesn’t depend only on us; it depends on them as well.
The image that Gungtang Rinpoche uses in his Training for How to Meditate on Impermanence is that of leaves falling from a tree and being blown by the winds of karma. For a little while, the leaves may fall together, but eventually, they are going to blow apart.
Accepting Things for What They Are; Not Having Expectations
Participant: Wouldn’t dealing with this situation just be a matter of living in the present? After all, things change anyhow.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, we can only live in the present because that’s where we are.
Participant: And then we accept the present without expectations.
Dr. Berzin: That’s exactly it: accept the present without having expectations.
I travel around a lot, teaching. That’s a very good situation for learning this. That was especially so in the past, when I traveled a lot. Every few days, I was in a different city or a different country, with completely different people. I always traveled alone, and I had to fit in. I had to leave behind the situation that I was in and fit into the next situation. They could be unbelievably different situations: one day I was in Asia, the next day I was in Europe, the next day I was in Africa. Completely different situations, completely different languages, customs, food…
Participant: You could be well known and exalted in one place and not known in another.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, I’ve had that situation. In one place, people come to me, wanting my autograph. I’m signing books, I’m on television and all these sorts of things. Then in the next place, nobody knows who I am. Most people don’t have this type of experience.
Participant: The changes happen so quickly.
Dr. Berzin: Right. But it illustrates that one has to live in the present, accept the situation that one is in, not cling to it, and realize that it is impermanent.
Participant: Also, when you get old, the body is not as much fun as it used to be.
Dr. Berzin: That’s absolutely true. But unless we have a very painful cancer or something like that, we don’t want to give that body up. But even with a painful cancer, there aren’t many people who would choose death. There is still the thought, “I’d like to keep this body and to be in good health, rather than to give it up and go off into the unknown.” Don’t you think?
Participant: You know it’s going to fall apart. It’s already starting to fall apart. One starts to accept that it’s going to fall apart.
Dr. Berzin: Well, we accept that it’s going to get worse and worse. But do we really want to leave this body? I am certainly still quite attached to this body. And I really don’t look forward – assuming that I will be reborn as a human – to having to go through the whole ridiculous thing of being a child, getting an education and going through all the traumas of teenage life and so on before I can get back to a stage where I am able do something productive with my life in terms of benefiting others with Dharma work. I find that colossally boring.
Participant: That’s how you feel about it now. But when you are in that rebirth…
Dr. Berzin: When you’re there, in the new rebirth, you don’t know any better. But I must say, I didn’t enjoy being a child at all. Lots of children, I think, want to be adults – maybe just because then they would be able to stay up late and wouldn’t have people telling them what to do.
Participant: I think that if I were an ant in the next life, I would just do all the ant-like things.
Dr. Berzin: Even so, you’d have to fit into the situation of being an ant. Well, that would come sort of automatically as part of the karmic imprints of that particular rebirth.
Participant: Would I be sad about it? I don’t know. I would just be doing the ant-like things.
Dr. Berzin: I think that while in an ant rebirth, you probably wouldn’t be sad. You wouldn’t be aware of that. But if you are thinking in terms of working toward liberation and enlightenment, you certainly wouldn’t want to be reborn as an ant.
Participant: I wouldn’t want to be an ant now.
Dr. Berzin: As an ant, you wouldn’t be able to do very much.
Participant: I doubt that I would really be unhappy as an ant, a bee or whatever.
Participant: I think that they’re too primitive, actually, to be sad because they don’t think about themselves.
Dr. Berzin: Well, they have fear.
Participant: But you need self-awareness in order to be sad.
Dr. Berzin: I don’t know about that. When we’re fearful, are we sad? In any case, there is no way of settling this discussion. We just don’t know. There is no way of measuring or asking an ant to find out whether it is sad. But its life is certainly one that’s filled with suffering and extreme limitations.
You see, one goes through the lam-rim in two ways. One is the way in which we go through it initially, which is to have no idea what’s coming next; we develop each scope of motivation stage by stage. The other way is, after having gone through the whole thing to a certain extent, to go back through all the stages again with the idea that “I want to reach enlightenment to benefit all.” If we have that motivation, we realize that if we really want to benefit everybody, we certainly wouldn’t want to have to go through all the traumas of rebirth and all the wasted time, basically, of being a baby, being an old, senile person and stuff like.
Participant: Maybe you need a lama-searching group to look for you two or three years after you die. They might find you, and you could go into a monastery.
Dr. Berzin: But there is no guarantee, in my case or in anybody’s case, that we will have precious human rebirths again, that anyone will be interested in finding us, that those looking for us will succeed and be able to recognize us correctly, or that, due to all the countless karmic imprints that each of us has built up since beginningless time, the ways in which we were raised and so on, we will have the circumstances that would activate the imprints that would cause us to continue on the path. I know of many tulkus who, in one lifetime or another, have not spent their lives continuing on the path in any kind of active way.
Participant: It’s amazing, isn’t it?
Dr. Berzin: It is amazing. But just because somebody’s a tulku doesn’t mean that the person has purified him- or herself of all negative karma. There are still tons of it, and it can still be activated.
Participant: Rebirth is quite a risk.
Dr. Berzin: Rebirth is a big, big risk. That’s the point. That’s the first point: uncertainty. There is no certainty what cluster of karmic things is going to be activated. There can be some positive things, but there can also be a lot of negative things. There’s always going to be a combination. We might have learned to live with what we have now, which, for many of us, has probably taken a long time – to accept our limitations, to know what our strong points are and to be able to work with them. But before we can really use our strong points productively and not get weighed down by our limitations, our shortcomings, we have to have really gotten to know ourselves and accepted these things and learned how to work with them. That takes tremendous maturity and a lot of time, and, also, the right circumstances, which we may not get in the future. This is what is so awful. So, realizing that motivates us even more strongly to do something about it – something really significant – in this lifetime.
If we have thought about this deeply enough, we begin to look at the causes for our suffering. This – the true causes – is what will come next, after we’ve looked at the suffering of the humans, the anti-gods, and the gods. Then we start to get into all the disturbing emotions, unawareness and so on to see how can we get rid of those causes so that we don’t activate the karmic potentials that we have already built up and don’t build up even more karmic potentials. That’s the whole point. But, first, we have to be really strongly disgusted with the suffering of rebirth itself. Then, we have to be totally disgusted and bored with the disturbing emotions that perpetuate it. That’s not easy. None of it is easy because we have laziness, naivety and so on.
Renunciation – Going from Disgust to Boredom
Participant: You said to be disgusted is not good.
Dr. Berzin: We want to go beyond being disgusted, but it’s a stage we do go through. So, first, we get really annoyed. Then we get disgusted. And finally, we get bored. Then it’s the combination of these that gets us to do something – I think. That, at least, is my own way of understanding this. The emotional connotation of the Tibetan term for renunciation is not so easy to translate.
Participant: What is the Tibetan term?
Dr. Berzin: Ngejung (nges-'byung) is the term. The mind becomes “set” or something like that. It’s part of this whole determination to get out. But what is the emotional feeling behind it? This is the important thing. I think that, in addition to having the amount of strength needed to do it, there has to be a certain calmness. I’m thinking of joyful perseverance, one of the six perfections, or far-reaching attitudes. With perseverance, we have a tremendous enthusiasm and strength – “I’m not going to give up.” What is it based on? It’s not based on feeling anger and aggression toward the things that we want to overcome. Instead, it’s based on taking joy in overcoming these things. And the freer we are from them, the more joyful we become.
There are three possibilities, then, when it comes to the tremendous amount of strength we need to overcome something. It could be on the basis of really strong energy and aggression – “I’m going to get out of this! This is terrible!” It could be on the basis of boredom, which is a much calmer state of mind. Or it could be on the basis of a more joyful state of mind, one in which we actually take pleasure in working on overcoming something. So, it’s an interesting thing, I think, how we develop renunciation.
I was just reading some lecture notes on the far-reaching attitudes that I had taken at a course that His Holiness taught in Copenhagen. He talked about polar opposites, like hot and cold. As cold goes down, heat goes up. He was saying that when it comes to suffering, what we want to oppose it with is happiness – and not samsaric happiness. He was speaking about this in terms of tantra – that we want to experience the blissful awareness of voidness instead of the suffering of unawareness.
So, although on the intermediate scope we don’t speak in terms of taking joy in getting rid of samsara, I think that, eventually, that’s the state of mind that we would need to develop, as opposed to a state of mind that’s basically still unhappy. “I am unhappy with samsara; therefore, I want to get out.” Think about that, the difference between “I am unhappy about samsara; I want to get out” and “I am happy about the possibility of nirvana, and I want to get out of samsara.”
Renunciation Is Compassion Aimed at Ourselves
Participant: An intermediate step, I think, might be to have compassion for ourselves.
Dr. Berzin: Definitely. Compassion directed at oneself is what renunciation is. Renunciation, the determination to be free, directed at others is compassion. Now, it’s interesting that we don’t think of renunciation as being a dimension of compassion. But you are absolutely right. If compassion is renunciation aimed at others, then renunciation is compassion aimed at oneself. Isn’t it?
Let’s think about what that could mean. And it doesn’t mean treating ourselves like babies and indulging ourselves. Not at all.
[meditation]
The main thing that comes to my mind in thinking about this is that it’s very important not to be dualistic about this: “I feel compassionate toward me,” as if there were two me’s here. Just as our compassion for others can’t be dualistic – thinking that there’s a separate, solid “me” over here and a separate, solid “you” over there that I feel compassion for. Similarly, when directed toward ourselves, it can’t be in a dualistic manner. And that’s not easy to develop.
Participant: The kind thing would be to find a way out of this situation.
Dr. Berzin: That’s exactly right. In other words, one just adds renunciation to the whole moment-to-moment experience of things and having kindness as the tone that’s there, rather than anger – “How could I be so stupid! How could I be so lazy!” and so on – but without that kindness being aimed in a dualistic way at a poor, suffering little “me” sitting inside my head.