Welcome to the SC Dharma Group Teachings PageColumbia TeachingsGeshe Dakpa Topgyal: The Four Noble Truths (review)Dateline: Columbia: August 17, 2001 I will repeat a little bit. The first of the Four Noble Truths is the truth of suffering. Many of our human problems arise from the way we deny the facts of life or reality. We deny the impermanent nature of our life or reality. We knowingly and unknowingly deny the reality of constant change. We have expectations. We have expectations about our health, our friendships, everything. When our expectations are not matched, we have problems. Primarily, there are three types of suffering. The suffering of suffering. The suffering of suffering describes physical and emotional discomfort. Physical and emotional pain are suffering; this kind of suffering is obvious to us. The suffering of change. This includes all our sensory experiences, our sensual pleasures. Pleasure, in fact, is not real joy, but merely a brief moment when we aren’t experiencing intense suffering. And sensory pleasure leads to more problems. The more we enjoy, the more we need. We try to make the pleasure bigger and bigger, but in the end, we are frustrated, and the pleasure disappears. This is not really pleasure, so we call this "the suffering of change." The suffering of pervasive conditioning. From the moment of birth, we are subject to sickness, aging and death. Everyone’s life is subject to these changes in well-being. This is called the suffering of pervasive conditioning. Animals understand, and try to avoid, the suffering of suffering. The second type, the suffering of change, they cannot perceive. They do not have the capacity to understand this as suffering. Initially, humans have problems understanding this, too. Contemplation and analysis are required. Understanding comes when your life experiences match your intellectual understanding. Then you see all your sensory pleasures are not really pleasure. Ancient non-Buddhist schools understood pleasure was not real happiness, but believed that the solution was to go into deep samadhi and remain for eons. Unfortunately, when you return, the problems return. In the meditative state you can have joy and confuse that with liberation. But when you come out of samadhi, you replace that joy with pleasurable experiences and generate a false view. If you are really searching for liberation, you must understand the suffering of pervasive conditioning. Birth itself is the cause because it makes us subject to all these problems. Thus, our main spiritual target is to stop birth; that is the only way to attain liberation. Don’t misunderstand this as renunciation. We aren’t talking about renouncing the material world and the suffering of suffering and the suffering of change. We’re talking about renouncing the suffering of pervasive conditioning, which is the root of the other two kinds of suffering. Any form of life is subject to these three sufferings - the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and the suffering of pervasive conditioning – and this is called samsara. All things, all material objects in day-to-day life operate under the control of delusions and distorted thoughts that serve as the source of pain and suffering. We will suffer as long as we remain under the control of delusions and distorted emotions and thoughts. We try to see things and objects the way we want to see them. We want them to perform the way we want or act the way we wish. This is what we call control. As soon as our minds release that wish, the object can become a source of joy. As long as we experience delusions and distorted emotions or thoughts, people and objects remain a source of pain. Our deluded mind limits our joy. Without changing our inner expectations and perceptions, we have no means of changing the physical world. Therefore, the main emphasis in Buddhism is changing the inner world, achieving a spiritual transformation. This spiritual transformation is nothing more than making our perceptions purer and purer until we are capable of seeing reality as it is. The second of the Four Noble Truths is the truth of the origin of suffering. This has two parts: delusion and karma. We have already discussed karma. The Sanskrit word for delusion is "klesha." Delusion or "klesha" means any aspect of the mind that, once fully arisen in the mind, makes a person unhappy. Anger is an example. As it arises, the person feeling anger also feels very unhappy. He or she loses control, loses the ability to act in a skillful way, and becomes an obedient student of anger. Delusion arises as the mind is disturbed. So any state of mind that actually disturbs you is called a delusion: anger, attachment, hatred, resentment, pleasure. All arise from the false notion of self or a sense of "I." We mistakenly create a self. And that self has three characteristics: independence of body and mind, a sense of being unitary or single, and a sense of being unchanging or eternal. First, we are concerned with that self when we say "I," or "my body," or "my mind." We take that body or mind as a possession, and we assume the "I" or self is the owner. Under the influence of anger, we see that self vividly in our mind and are concerned with what we perceive as affronts to that self. Second, we see the whole rest of the world as somehow against our "self." We look at the world with a funny expression, when something happens that we don’t like, as if the world rose against our self. That’s why when you meditate, it’s important to smile at the world. Third, we see the self as unchanging. Around eight or ten years old, we perceive a self that, from then on, doesn’t change as we age. That I or self or myself appears to our mind as unchanging. Intellectually, we understand that our body looks different at different ages, but our experience of the self seems unchanging. This is a false notion or misperception of the self. These three problems force us to see a gap between ourselves and others. Then we divide the whole world into two, ourselves and things and objects having to do with the self. We think the rest of the world has nothing to do with us. That is a big problem. These delusions arise from the false notion of self. And they give rise to the two most powerful emotions we experience, anger and attachment. Anger arises because we believe an event or object or person has nothing to do with us. Attachment arises because we think an event or object or person has everything to do with us. In anger, we experience one hundred percent dislike; we want the object or person out of our sight or hearing. When we’re angry we say, "Get out of here." When we are attached, we experience one hundred percent liking, and we make an effort to obtain the object or get closer to the person. Jealousy is a more complicated emotion because it has an element of attachment, of anger, of liking, of disliking. It can be very confusing. Anger, attachment, and the false notion of the self are called "the three poisons of the mind." The false notion of the self prevents us from seeing reality, constantly distorting our perceptions. The false notion of self gives rise to generic images of things and objects, which we confuse with the object itself. Take our example of seeing a rope and believing it is a snake. In appearance, the rope may match our generic image of a snake. Everybody knows this is a misperception. The question is: How does this misperception happen? It’s not that we see a snake as a rope, but that we believe in the generic image we instantly refer to without analysis. We grasp or cling to the appearance we believe in, making the appearance of the rope one with the appearance of a snake. Ninety-nine percent of our misperceptions are mistakes in appearance. The rope, the basis of our mistake, is still there, still a rope. But it becomes the basis of our consensual or conventional reality. Consider this cup. Everyone agrees, regardless of culture or language, with the necessity of the cup. It holds fluid. The necessity is there whatever we call a cup. Its function has nothing to do with its name or label. It is necessary to understand this to understand where delusions come from. We must understand where delusions come from because we need to destroy the false notion of self. When we are finally able to see the false notion of self as the root of delusions, we can understand that delusions create karma. And the force of delusions and karma create samsara. So birth itself is the cause of pain and suffering. According to the Abhidharmakosa, written by Vasabandhu, there are 26 delusions, six of them root delusions. (Vasabandhu and his brother Asanga lived in the fourth century. One wrote a pivotal text on Buddhist psychology, the other on Buddhist cosmology.) The 20 secondary delusions are the side effects of the six root delusions. Attachment is one of the root delusions. Stinginess, for example, is one of the 20 secondary delusions. Similarly, anger is one of the six root delusions. Hatred and malice are symptoms or side effects. Pride is one of the six root delusions. Haughtiness is a symptom or side effect. The six root delusions are attachment, anger, deluded doubt, pride, ignorance, and wrong views. The 20 symptoms are hatred, malice, outrage, haughtiness, stinginess, laziness, jealousy, non-conscientiousness, etc. <XXX> Attachment is a very tricky emotion. Attachment is an emotional feeling of intimacy or closeness. When attachment arises in a mild form, it mixes with pity or compassion. So there is a similarity between attachment and compassion. But there is an important difference: While both are feelings of intimacy, there is an element of looking for self-fulfillment in attachment. When that is not met, the feeling of closeness disappears. However, with compassion, you are not looking for self-fulfillment. Regardless of the person’s behavior, you will never lose that feeling of closeness. With compassion, you experience, with full force, your desire to avoid harm. You want, instead, to help. You are ready and prepared to help, regardless of who the person is or what the person has done. You feel a deep concern about the person’s well-being and happiness; there is a willingness to avoid causing harm and to help. When attachment arises, it can end up causing more problems than anger. Anger will never bring attachment. But superficial love can bring hate. "Real" love has no element of self-fulfillment. It is based on who the person is, rather than what that person will bring back to you. Among non-Buddhists, Mother Theresa is one of the best examples of someone expressing real love. She experienced joy when she took care of lepers. We would run away. We make distinctions, seeing ourselves as superior, others as inferior. We need the ability to see ourselves in others, to see ourselves undergoing what others go through. That kind of love never brings back pain, only joy. Five independent attachments exist. By "independent," I mean that each has its own object. The five are form, sound, taste, touch, and smell. Each has its own object and is consumed by that particular object. A sixth attachment is sexual attachment; it is the strongest because it has all the elements of the five independent attachments. Think, analyze, compare. Consider your own personal experiences, and you’ll see that sexual attachment includes form, sound, taste, touch, and smell. Each attachment causes its own unique negativity or problem or complication. Each attachment distorts the mind. Question: How do you explain a drug addict's attachment to drugs or an alcoholic's attachment to alcohol? Answer: The main cause is form. The pleasure is gained from the form of a drink, whether the addiction started from taste or from how it feels to be drinking. Question: When you move beyond taste to craving, what form of attachment is it? Answer: Originally the attachment develops from taste; later on, you become addicted to the continuity of pleasure. Question: I’m confused because you’ve named the five senses, but I thought mind would be included. Answer: Each sense perceives a special object, but the information goes back to the mind through the senses. So attachment ultimately is related to the mind, not the senses. When we see an attractive form, what becomes attached is the mind. We receive information through the senses. But it is not the senses that become attached. The senses send information back to the mental consciousness. From the second moment on, you’re already distorting the information and becoming emotionally attached. When we see an attractive object, our sense perceives it as it is, and that information goes to the mental consciousness and is distorted. Our mental consciousness perceives the object as more than it really is or less than it really is. If you see the object as inherently attractive, with inherent qualities to make you feel good, there’s the problem. The mental consciousness become attached to the object of the senses. And it is always mistaken. It always sees the object as less than it is or more than it is; it always under-estimates or over-estimates. If our emotional response would match perfectly what the object is, we wouldn’t have problems. Source: South Carolina Dharma Group Contact: Claudia Smith Brinson Phone: 803-799-4901 E-mail: csbrin@infi.net |