Welcome to the SC Dharma Group Teachings PageColumbia TeachingsGeshe Dakpa Topgyal: The Four Noble TruthsDateline: Columbia: Aug 3, 2001 Four Noble Truths Two schools, Theravada and Mahayana, and their teachings (the Four Noble Truths) are the essence or bottom line of Buddhism. If you understand all about the Four Noble Truths and what the Four Noble Truths teach, it's very possible you will have a clear understanding of what Buddha teaches. There's more to do in our lives than simply struggle for survival. If we spend our lives searching for temporary satisfactions, then our human life is almost the same as creatures' lives. If we misuse our human life and human capacity by only looking for material satisfaction, ignoring our inner world of consciousness, then we will live and die like other creatures. Buddhists see this as unfortunate. Buddhism teaches there is more to life than simply struggling for day-to-day survival. Our studies and practice can bring inner peace. That real peace or inner happiness starts in our mind, not with material objects. Material objects can become a source of pain and suffering based on the way we perceive them. And if we perceive the physical world with a deluded mind, the world becomes a source of pain and suffering. The first two Truths deal with suffering. The first Truth establishes the truth of suffering, the second the origin of the cause of suffering. The Truth of Suffering is very important to understand. We're not really talking about physical pain and emotional suffering. We're talking about deeper levels, not obvious to the ordinary mind. The first Truth identifies three kinds of suffering: the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and the suffering of pervasive conditioning. The suffering of suffering refers to all kinds of unpleasant experiences associated with the physical body and with the mind that ordinary beings see as undesirable. The suffering of change and the suffering of pervasive conditioning are difficult to understand because many of us misinterpret them not as pain, but as joy or pleasure. Much of our daily emotional pain comes from not recognizing pleasures as sources of pain. All our pleasurable experiences are sufferings of change. All sensory experiences, all sensual pleasures are sufferings of change. To our ordinary mind, pleasurable experiences seem real joy or happiness. So this is difficult for us to accept. But, if we analyze all our pleasurable experiences, we see they comply with the nature of suffering in two ways. All pleasurable experiences give us instant gratification, but the same satisfactions then cause us trouble. That's because the same satisfactions turn into pain or the cause of new suffering. Sooner or later the same satisfactions cause a craving for more, and the more we enjoy, the less pleasurable the pleasure becomes. We go, go, go, and at the end, what? Dissatisfaction. Disappointment. Confusion. So we call this the suffering of change because the pleasure never lasts long and never meets our expectations. We always think complete satisfaction can be attained when we reach the object of our desire. We think this is how we will be fulfilled. But attaining the object of our desire will leave us looking for more. All our pleasurable experiences are no more than scratching itchy skin. When we first scratch an itch, there is a little bit of joy, definitely. To enjoy that little bit of joy, then to look for more itchy skin is ridiculous. But that's how we experience pleasure, and it's really silly. These pleasurable experiences are seen as pleasurable because, when we experience the pleasure, for a brief moment we are not in intense suffering. That's all. That's it. Then, a new problem comes. If we carefully analyze this, we can come to the conclusion that pleasurable experiences are temporary. And they leave us more dissatisfied. Disappointment and frustration arrive because the more we enjoy, the less pleasurable our pleasure becomes. When that happens, whom do we blame? We blame others. In reality, this or that person, this or that object is not the cause of the problem. The main problem comes from our mind. We have over-expectations, which people cannot meet. Since our expectations go beyond what's possible, the real problem is our own unrealistic expectations. First, our mind creates something. Then our mind projects this creation on external things or objects, and our projection becomes real to us. If our projection is realized in an attractive way, we become attached; if our projection is realized in an unpleasant or unattractive way, we become repulsed. So our mind is attracted to or repulsed by its own creations. We are victims of our own minds. We are victims of our own creations. Question: Does form really exist? Answer: Form exists to the ordinary mind. If we go deeper, the cup becomes unfindable. First, we look at the cup, then molecules or color or shape. What is really left in that object that exists as cup? Nothing is there. That very inability to find a cup, that undetectability is called emptiness. Understanding that all pleasurable experiences are a source of frustration makes sense of Buddha saying, "Life is suffering." Many people, when they hear, "Life is suffering," think that Buddhism is depressing or negative. But, if we think how pleasurable experiences become frustrating and create frustration, confusion, and disappointment, it is possible to make sense of Buddha saying, "Life is suffering." There are other kinds of suffering: the suffering of not getting what we are looking for, the suffering of getting what we are looking for; the suffering of too much togetherness, the suffering of too much loneliness; the suffering of changing one's status. We suffer when things change. And we have no guarantee of health, of good relationships with others, of power, of material possessions. We always live with some form of insecurity, and we always have to look for some form of external protection. One of the obvious signs of an unenlightened being is insecurity and the need to look for protection from the physical world. In brief, I could say what we are looking for from the physical world and what we get don't match. This big mismatch is a source of pain. If we see this, the suffering of change makes sense. Compare this to your day-to-day life, and you'll see. In Buddhism, you learn there is a cure. If there were no cure, simply thinking about this would bring additional pain. Our purpose is to understand there is a real cure. First, think about what really went wrong in us so that we have problems, where things are twisted. Second, ask how we twist things. Third, ask how we distort things and events, how we try to explain things to ourselves, but explain incorrectly. We don't explain reality properly. We keep trying to put it together in the way we want to see things, in the way we wish things to be. After studying these things, we can understand what reality is and in what ways we magnify, making things and events bigger and nastier and uglier. We do this to reality until our perceptions are skewed and our experiences are affected, and then we ask others to share our problems. Here is the Buddhist understanding of psychology, of valid and invalid perceptions and what makes perceptions valid or invalid. When a perception becomes invalid, mistaken in regards to what is actual, we must understand that affects our personal experiences. We need to understand this not only intellectually but experientially. That understanding will only come to us through meditation practice. 1. We must understand the nature of mind. What is the mind or perception or consciousness? Is it just brain waves? Or is consciousness separate from brain waves? 2. How does the mind function? Can the mind function without body functions? 3. How does the mind create through its thought processes? We need to understand how and in what way the mind creates and why the mind creates. We are always thinking. There is almost no moment in time when the mind is not creating. According to the Abhidharmakosha and Buddhist psychology, the mind is always thinking because it is always looking for full satisfaction. If our mind was somehow satisfied or happy, there would be no need to think. The more dissatisfied we are, the more we think. We're always thinking, thinking about our unhappiness until we are exhausted. 4. In what way does the mind create and in what form do these creations become real? 5. Once these creations become real, how does this affect our personal experience? 6. Once our creations have affected our personal experience, how does this interfere with our relationship with the rest of the world? According to Buddhism, every phenomenon has a unique freshness. Our ordinary mind cannot experience that unique freshness. We cannot experience that unique freshness because the moment we see something we automatically put into play our conceptual elaborations. Our conceptual elaborations make it impossible to see things fresh because the moment we come into contact with something, our elaborations are already there. We need to enhance the capacity of our mind to experience things as they really are without the interference of our thought processes. Our thought processes always go beyond what an object is. Or we underestimate. Question: What about expectations from prior experiences that we think are reasonable because that's the way reality works? Question: What's the line between useful memory and unrealistic expectations? Answer: Memory in the convention sense is useful to prevent bad consequences and negative results. But, at the same time, if we're trying to know based on past experiences, we're already distorting what the experience is this time. If we're seeing based on past experiences, we can't see something brand new. We say, "Oh, I saw this yesterday," but it makes no difference what you saw yesterday; this is today. Yesterday, you became angry; today you see the same person and bring your anger back. Then it's difficult to give someone forgiveness and accept an apology. Question: Is the most mysterious step between thinking and thinking our thoughts are real? Answer: We should ask how our mind makes thoughts real. When you're in a deep sleep, and you have a dream, a dream dog becomes a real dog to you. If that dream dog bites you, you do not make a distinction between a dream dog and a real dog. Things become real to us because our mind perceives this object or that object real based on its appearance. For example, when there's not enough light to see things clearly, our mind applies generic images. You are walking in an area and carrying information you have heard about this area, "This area is dangerous for snakes. This person got bitten; that person got bitten." At that very moment, you see a rope, curved like a snake. You're confused. You have the generic image. You have the stories. There is not enough light. The rope becomes a real snake to you. You see the rope as a snake purely based on appearances. You are unable to see reality as it is. Question: What is the relationship between thought and the elements of the fundamental world? Answer: Thought has no role in creating the elements of the fundamental world. Question: Where did the elements come from? Answer: The elements are not created by our mind. The wetness of water, the hotness of fire are not created by our mind. Their limitations are created by our mind. An example: Our mind says, "This is a water glass, and this is a wine glass." In 1994, when I was on tour, we traveled the country and stayed in different families' houses. Their kitchens would have many things. Some of my friends would grab a glass to drink water, and our host would be a little bit annoyed because he had applied limitations to the wine glass. His mind made the glass fit only to drink wine, and he would be upset. That is a limitation created by our mind. Every phenomena is limited by us. According to the Mind Only or Cittamatra school, you are right. That school says the mind is the Creator, and all things are our minds' creations. Then the question is, "Who created the mind?" If mind creates mind, creator and creation are the same; action and agent become one. That is a logical contradiction. Source: South Carolina Dharma Center Contact: Claudia Smith Brinson Phone: 803-799-4901 E-mail: csbrin@infi.net |