Welcome to the SC Dharma Group Teachings PageColumbia TeachingsGeshe Dakpa Topgyal: The Four Noble TruthsDateline: Columbia - December 7, 2001 Geshe Dakpa Topgyal December 7, 2001 The Four Noble Truths When we carefully study the Fourth Noble Truths, we can see the entire spiritual approach of Buddhism, which includes the paths and the bhumis, the antidote to delusions and karmic obscurations and the four types of dualities. With the means to overcome delusions and dualities, ordinary perception becomes purer and purer, not only in terms of quality but in the way we perceive reality. We become more capable of actually perceiving reality; we become exposed to reality, rather than imposing on reality. The Four Noble Truths are the essence, or bottom line, of Buddha’s teachings in Theravada, Mahayana or Trantrayana. Without an understanding of the Four Noble Truths, Buddhist practice is meaningless. It won’t bear spiritual truth. With an understanding of the Four Noble Truths, higher Tantric realization comes naturally. Without a proper understanding of the Four Noble Truths, it is difficult to get a complete picture of Buddha’s teachings. Without a proper understanding of the Four Noble Truths, your understanding of Buddhism is piecemeal, not complete. Without a proper understanding, you might say, "Here is my room for shamata meditation, and here is my room for vipassana." You would have to change rooms, change the cushion. What makes dharma practice Buddhist practice is an understanding of refuge and an individual experience of what refuge means to you and how it brings back to you some spiritual effect on your mind. What makes dharma practice Buddhist practice is an understanding of refuge, an experience of refuge and what the three jewels mean to you. Secondly, we could say what makes dharma practice Buddhist practice, what makes it an antidote to our delusions, is an understanding and experience of renunciation. Without an understanding and experience of renunciation, one could say whenever we engage in dharma practice, it will be corrupted by the eight mundane thoughts or concerns: We are happy when good things happen, unhappy when good things don’t happen. We are happy when we are praised, unhappy when we are criticized. We are happy when we gain what we want, unhappy when we lose what we want. We are good when we feel good, bad when we feel bad. As long as our dharma practice is corrupted or polluted, it is almost impossible for our dharma practice to be an antidote to our delusions. What makes our dharma practice not only Buddhist practice and an antidote to delusions but a Mahayana practice, too, is great compassion and bodhicitta. This especially makes Tantric practice fruitful and effective: great compassion, or mahakaruna, and bodhicitta. What makes dharma practice unlimited, unbiased and impartial is the realization of emptiness. All this – compassion, and bodhicitta and emptiness – will be discussed when we study the Six Perfections, the fundamental or main precepts for those who have generated great compassion and bodhicitta. The purpose is to dedicate your entire life to the service of others. But, in order to be effective in your service to others, you need the Six Perfections. Without the practice of the Six Perfections, generating great compassion and bodhicitta, you won’t be effective helping others. Sometimes in books the words "compassion" and "bodhicitta" are used interchangeably, used as synonyms. They don’t mean the same thing. Compassion is one of the mental factors. Bodhicitta is prime mind or consciousness. In Buddhist psychology, there are 51 mental factors and seven prime minds or consciousnesses. This is not like Zen, where there is big mind or universal mind that we all share. Compassion is a cause of bodhicitta. Compassion is not part of bodhicitta but a primary cause of it. A cause cannot be part of the result; maybe in the West, but not in the East. Dharmakirti wrote the Pramana Varttika. He was the greatest Indian logician. In the Pramana Varttika he explained not only the law of karma, but the entire law of cause and effect and what is meant by cause and effect, what’s necessary for something to be a cause of something, what things are involved and needed to be the effect of a cause and their relationship. A cause cannot be part of an effect. If a cause could be part of its own effect, then the relationship between cause and effect would be deceptive or destroyed. So compassion is the cause of bodhicitta, but is not bodhicitta. The compassionate mind or the bodhicitta mind is obtained through practice. They are not part of the untrained mind. Until we reach Buddhahood, compassion and bodhicitta will remain a state of the nonperceiving or nonapprehending mind. They are not a part of knowledge, but have to obtained by practice. Compassion itself is non-perceiving mind; it doesn’t have any apprehending object. Hypothetically, we could say we all do have compassion or bodhicitta, but what does this compassionate mind perceive? Our knowledge as a human being is gained through pain and suffering. When we think, think, think, we will reach a deeper understanding or knowledge of compassion. At the beginning our understanding of compassion is fabricated. At some point, it will become unfabricated, innate, a feeling that arises complete with mental joy, a wish for all living beings to be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. And when that feeling becomes part of our mind, that is compassion. Does that feeling perceive suffering? The need to relieve that human being from suffering? Or is it a mere feeling, with nothing specific perceived? Compassion is a pure, empathetic or sympathetic feeling, a wish or desire for others to be free of suffering and the causes of suffering, in which there is a full force to take action. Now, if we really have that sympathetic feeling, does that sympathetic feeling really perceive something, or is it mere feeling? I’m not asking about a compassionate person. "Compassionate" refers to a person, one who has a feeling of compassion. I’m asking about compassion itself. Question: You’re saying the feeling itself doesn’t discriminate? Answer: That feeling itself is called non-perceiving mind. Does a feeling itself perceive? No, a feeling doesn’t perceive anything; a feeling remains mere feeling until we reach Buddhahood. Again, compassion is a pure sympathetic or empathetic feeling, a wish for others to be free of suffering and the causes of suffering with the full force to take action. One who has compassion is a compassionate person; one who has boddhicitta is a bodhisattva. The Abbhidharmakosa says compassion is a mere state of feeling; it does not perceive. The first stage is non-perceiving, but through cultivating that state of feeling, compassion becomes a part of our mind, of our thinking process, so it is always present in our mind. However, until we reach enlightenment, the feeling of compassion remains non-perceiving mind. A "non-perceiving state" means it’s not part of our knowledge or wisdom. As soon as we reach enlightenment, that feeling of compassion becomes knowledge and wisdom. This is a huge difference between an ordinary being and an enlightened being. When enlightened wisdom is infused with the feeling of compassion, saturated, that is called conjoined. As ordinary beings, we can hold that feeling of compassion, but it is not part of our knowing mind. Before enlightenment, compassion is not part of our knowing mind. It will become part of our knowing mind as soon as we become enlightened. The knowing mind is the perceiving mind. Consider hunger. You say, "I feel hungry." Does that feeling of hunger perceive bread? When we talk about hunger we are talking at the level of feeling, not the level of concept. If hunger is at the level of feeling, either it is associated with a physical sensation or it is associated purely with a mental sensation. Only two choices. In both cases, whether physical sensation or mental sensation, both are a feeling. In Buddhist psychology, a feeling is part of perception or conscious. If feeling hungry is part of the mind or consciousness, then it must have all the characteristics of the mind. Then the question arises, is it knowing mind or not-knowing mind? If it’s knowing mind, does it know something? The more relevant question: If it’s a knowing mind, then it must perceive food. I feel hungry; does the feeling of hunger perceive something or not? You need to study this so you can understand that compassion is non-perceiving mind. No matter how profound or deep your feeling of compassion, as long as you are in an unenlightened state, the feeling of compassion will never become part of knowledge or wisdom. Does compassion perceive the suffering of a human being? Or the need to do something for him or her? Does compassion perceive the person or being who is suffering? Or does compassion perceive the need to do something for him or her? If we say one of these, Dharmakirti will come here. We say, "I feel." There is someone who feels; there is something to be felt. There is a duality here, the feeler and something to be felt. When we talk about the feeling of hunger, there is the feeling and the feeler. If there is feeler and feeling, there is something to be felt. Oh yes, Buddhist psychology is crazy. Bodhicitta, in the beginning, is fabricated. At some point, it becomes spontaneous. Bodhicitta is the fabricated or unfabricated inspiration or aspiration to deeply wish to attain Buddhahood by recognizing that attaining Buddhahood is the only true cause to relieve every living being from suffering and the causes of suffering. Without Buddhahood, every inspiration or aspiration is temporary, is limited. When we understand the way to relieve suffering is to think, talk and act to attain Buddhahood, then that is boddhicitta. So the definition isn’t difficult. Here, we are digging, doing research: What does compassion look like? What are the elements? What does bodhicitta look like? What are the elements? In the Abhidharmakosha, compassion and bodhicitta are non-perceiving mind. Compassion and bodhicitta are the two factors that need to be cultivated within our thoughts or mind, aiming to destroy our self-cherishing attitude. Our senses always return to our happiness, our well-being, the "I," which really narrows our way of thinking, our attitude. We are more concerned about I, I, I, thinking that will bring more peace, when it actually brings more suffering. Compassion and bodhicitta are meant to destroy that attitude about the self, the self-cherishing mind. When we destroy that, we don’t destroy who we are; who we are can survive in the normal world. But we worry about this; with our naïve perception we think, "If I don’t care for myself, who will care for me?" According to "Abhisamayalamkara," the cultivation of compassion or bodhicitta will bring tremendous inner freedom, by which one is capable of making sincere emotional contact with others, heart-to-heart contact. This brings inner freedom. And what ensues is a sense of universal responsibility. We understand that biased thoughts and feelings are baseless. Once that understanding comes, it’s very easy to cultivate bodhicitta itself. Remember, there are three kinds of suffering: the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and the suffering of pervasive conditioning. Every human being knows how to get rid of the sufferings of suffering. When it’s cold, we all know how to protect ourselves from the bad weather. So our concern about releasing other human beings from the suffering of suffering is not that effective. If you put time and effort into it, you have the potential to deal with the suffering of change. You can handle it. But no ordinary human being on earth can deal with the third problem, the suffering of pervasive conditioning. The suffering of pervasive conditioning means that our very existence itself is contaminated. The suffering of pervasive conditioning means that our existence is corrupted by delusion, by karmic imprint. With an understanding of this comes a sense of universal responsibility. Until then, we hold someone close because they did something good for us, even though we don’t know what will come tomorrow. And we hold someone distant because yesterday he or she gave us a dirty look. All human beings have the same problems of pervasive conditioning. There are four lines in the text of Lama Chopa, the Guru Yoga or Guru Puja text. It is a prayer or supplication: Since no one wishes to have even the slightest suffering,, Or is ever content with the happiness he or she has, There is no difference between myself and others, Therefore, inspire me to rejoice in the happiness of others. You visualize your guru or spiritual master in the form of Buddha Shakyamuni or Padmasambhava or whatever. You hold this image as realistically as possible and make the wish or prayer, filled and saturated with the meaning of what you recite. This helps in the practice of generating compassion or bodhicitta. No one wishes to have even the slightest suffering. No one wishes suffering that lasts a second. And happiness that lasts hours or days is not satisfying. Everyone is the same. In reality, we are in the same situation. We hold someone close in a wish for happiness; we push someone away in a wish to avoid unhappiness. But if we develop compassion and bodhicitta, we develop a sense of universal responsibility. Then there comes a powerful aspiration to attain full enlightenment. When we hold that awareness of the need to attain enlightenment, we understand that is the only way to release every living being from this polluted or corrupted existence. Source: South Carolina Dharma Group |