All language subtitles for Discovering Buddhism Module 03 - Presenting the Path

Discovering Buddhism

Presenting the Path

Buddhism is a comprehensive system

that shows us how to transform our minds

from a state of suffering
and dissatisfaction

to one of extraordinary joy,
awareness and contentment.

Vast in scope and profound
in its implications,

Buddhism accommodates every
kind of mental disposition,

but retains a laser-like
precision that shows us

what is to be accepted
and what is to be rejected.

It was realized and embodied
by a human being like us.

2500 years ago an Indian prince named
Siddhartha from the Shakya clan

decided to give up his kingdom to
search for a way out of suffering.

Because of his relentless
determination to find ultimate freedom,

he came to understand
the nature of his mind,

and in turn, the ultimate
reality of all phenomena.

He was then called Shakyamuni Buddha.

In this show we will learn about
the historical Buddha's life story,

the spread of his teachings,

and about the stages of
the path to enlightenment.

MOTIVATION

In the following presentation, you are
about to hear a great deal about the life,

the accomplishments and the
teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha,

the historical Buddha.

Now the Buddha worked very hard
in order to attain Enlightenment.

And the impetus behind that hard work

was his strong motivation
to achieve ultimate freedom

and to benefit all living
beings as much as possible.

And so remembering that we
have discussed in the past

the importance of our own
motivation and modeling

after the historical Buddha himself,

now before receiving these
teachings set in your own mind

a strong motivation to be able
to traverse this spiritual path

to reach Enlightenment as quickly as possible
in order to benefit all living beings.

TEACHERS

Venerable George Churinoff is American born
and is a fully ordained monk
in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

He holds a degree in Physics from MIT and
a master's degree in Buddhist Studies
from the University of Delhi
and has studied at major Tibetan institutions

He's a skilled translator of Buddhist texts
and has taught at FPMT centers
worldwide for over 20 years.

One format that the life of
Buddha is often presented in,

in the Mahayana tradition,

is the presentation of what
are called the Twelve Deeds.

The twelve deeds are said
to be the same activities

as all of the thousand Buddhas who
will appear during this fortunate eon

and this world system, they all engage
in these same kinds of activities.

They won’t have exactly the same lives,
they’ll be born in different ways,

but they’ll have a certain format
of their life that will be similar.

And so for that reason,

you might think it’s something
that happened in the past,

but it’s going to happen in the
future, so if you know about it,

you can be prepared when
Maitreya comes and others.

In the Mahayana scripture,
it’s said that the,

the Buddha himself, the first
deed is his leaving of Tushita.

The handing over the
teachership of Tushita,

the residency there to Maitreya,
who will be the next Buddha.

And the second deed is
entering into the womb.

The Buddha entered into the
womb of his future mother,

and at that point she had this dream,
very spectacular and pleasant dream,

of a six tusked white
elephant entering into her.

And upon exiting the
womb, upon his birth,

the Buddha was able to
stand up, this young boy,

was able to stand up immediately
and walk, seven steps.

The Buddha himself
showed, Siddhartha himself,

showed himself to be incredibly adroit
and expert in many different things.

The next deed is called,

sporting or enjoying with
a harem or retinue of wives.

Every kind of pleasure,
every kind of sense pleasure,

food, warmth, various castles
were built within the walls of the,

of the temple, of the city,
the royal city, for Gautama.

And it’s during this point
that he is now manifests,

what we might notice in the world,
when people get a little bit bored.

He wants to go out of the
temple, on his first journey out,

he did see some individuals, and on
successive journeys he saw at various times,

old people, sick people
and a dead person.

Each time he would ask his attendant,

"What is this, I’ve
never seen this before,

what is this old person
bent over and so forth?

With a cane, what’s wrong with him?"
and his attendant would say,

"This is an old person, this happens",

and Siddhartha would say "Well, is that unusual?
Are there many of them?"

And he would say
"This happens to everyone.

Everyone, you know, this
is the fate of everyone."

He saw someone who
looked like a renunciate,

someone who is seeking
the meaning of life,

seeking to transcend birth,
death and aging, you know,

aging, death, sickness, the things
that the Buddha had perceived.

This supposedly was the element
now, that began to coalesce,

that clicked in Siddhartha’s
mind "This is what I should do,

I should leave home also."

And he takes his hair, his
beautiful royal locks with his sword,

cuts them off, and it’s said
that that’s one of the relics.

He goes off, seeking teachers,

seeking the answer to
sickness and old age and death.

And even though the teachers
themselves were very fond of Siddhartha,

recognize him as a prince,
saw his great qualities

and the fact that he achieved their state
even though they were the teacher,

he’d achieved the same realization
they did in a very short amount of time,

they asked him to stay on
and teach their disciples.

He refused and went off
to try to find an answer

to this riddle that he had encountered.

Sometimes living on just a
small berry from the tree a day.

The Buddha became, Siddhartha
became, very emaciated.

So, at this point the
Buddha himself is beginning

to recognize that he’s
not making any progress.

The Buddha went to bathe in the river,

found himself very weak, couldn’t
even get out of the water.

He began to worry,
what’s going to happen.

He began then to beg for some food.

Now the Buddha is invigorated,
Siddhartha is invigorated,

and he seeks now a
place to do meditation.

Then sits down on this cushion
of grass with the determination

"Until I achieve the essence of
enlightenment, I am not rising."

So this is now the
demarcation of the next act,

which is called the defeat of
mara, or the defeat of the maras.

Mara is someone who, it could
be part of our own being,

our own mind, or it can
be something external,

that hinders our spiritual development.
that hinders our spiritual development.

That evening he achieves
his enlightenment,

which is now called the next
deed, under the bodhi tree,

that evening, completely transformed,

eliminating from his mind,
all the vestiges of ignorance and

any kind of insufficiency in abilities,

and spends the next seven weeks,
without moving very far away.

Buddha says "well who should I teach?

Oh, those five disciples
with whom I spent six years,

their minds are only, their
dharma eye is only slightly covered

with the dust of ignorance."

So he travels, knowing where
they are, to the deer park,

near Sarnoff, and he
begins to teach them

the very first discourse
on the Four Noble Truths.

And this is the beginning of this deed,

which is essentially the next
long period of the Buddha’s life,

so many decades teaching.

For the rest of his life he
spent many decades teaching,

turning the wheel of dharma.

Finally took the aspect
of passing away, dying,

passing into Paranirvana.

So that in a nutshell, just
as sort of an introduction,

is a little bit about the life
of the Buddha, the twelve deeds.

Born in Sweden, Venerable Karin Valham met
the Dharma at Kopan Monastery
in 1974 where she ordained.

For over twenty years she has inspired
thousands of westerners with
her teachings on Buddhism at Kopan.

This is something you hear again
and again, Lam Rim, graduated path.

Lam means path and rim
means graduated or graded.

Step by step.

And this way of
practicing is very specific

to the Tibetan Buddhist
presentation of the path.

If we think a little bit
about the history of Buddhists,

because the Lam Rim contains all
the Buddha’s teachings on sutra.

There are two paths,
the sutra and the tantra.

Buddha’s path on sutra, is
divided up, the Hinayana attitude,

and the Mahayana attitude.

The Hinayana and Mahayana path,
they are both included in the Lam Rim.

The main difference between
Hinayana and Mahayana,

is mainly in the attitude,
the purpose and the goal.

In the Hinayana one, you motivate
oneself for one’s own liberation.

In the Mahayana attitude, the
attitude is seeking enlightenment,

for the sake of all living
beings, the more universal goal.

And for that, we train
ourselves in renunciation,

bodhicitta and the correct view.

Of course, actually to obtain enlightenment,
one also has to practice tantra.

They say that one cannot obtain
complete, full enlightenment without,

at some point, the
practice of highest tantra.

If you look aside from the attitude,

the actual practices of Hinayana
and Mahayana go together.

They’re not sort of two
completely separate paths.

So the Lam Rim contains
all of the teachings.

The Hinayana spread to different
countries like Sri Lanka,

Thailand, Burma, and Vietnam
and they flourished there.

Later on when the Mahayana
flourished, that spread to China,

Tibet, Mongolia and the Northern
countries, and flourished there.

So anyway, the great
Atisha, he came to Tibet.

He wrote the first
Lam Rim, the graduated path.

Taking all of Buddha’s teachings,

but putting it in a very clear,
step-by-step approach.

And he called it, The Three Scopes.

So in Tibet, this really flourished.
So this is what we still practice today.

When you see this Lam Rim
text and Lam Rim books,

it’s all the same way of approaching the
spiritual path and the inner development.

If you really put forth effort,

there is no question

that you can even

become a Buddha

- Geshe Lobsang Tharchin Rinpoche

A native Australian, Venerable Robina Courtin has practiced
as a nun in the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition for twenty-six years.

She is well-known worldwide for
her dynamic teaching style and depth of knowledge.

She's been the editorial director of both
Wisdom Publications and Mandala, a Buddhist magazine.

Today she runs the Liberation Prison Project,
which provides support for Buddhist practitioners in prison
in the USA and Australia.

So Lama Atisha, what he did was,

he presented the essential
points of Buddha’s teaching,

and he presented them
essentially in three stages.

First, second and third ‘scopes.’
They’re called.

‘Scope’ has a very specific meaning.
It relates to the capacity of the practitioner.

The scope or the capability,
as Lama Zopa says.

So the first and second
scopes of the teaching,

they represent, all the teachings,
all the essential points,

in Buddha’s teachings, that we know
as the Hinayana part of the path.

Then the third scope is the
Mahayana part of the path.

The three scopes all
together is all the practices

that a person that is on the
Mahayana path, would practice.

Cause you need to do the first two scopes
in order to accomplish the third.

If you’re a Mahayana practitioner
you don’t just do the third scope,

which is all the compassion.

The wisdom wing is the first two scopes,
the Hinayana part of the path,

and the compassion wing
is the Mahayana path.

All together a Mahayana practitioner
would practice all of these,

cause you need the first two,
the wisdom wing,

in order to accomplish
the compassion wing.

You need both wings,
a bird needs two wings.

So working on the wisdom wing is
where you really work on yourself.

You turn yourself into
this amazing being.

You’re then qualified to actually
do the job of benefiting others.

What we really are
is a potential Buddha.

If it is true, this is our true nature,
this is who we really are,

then we indeed need someone
to show us how to do it,

so we have to have a need for a teacher.

And then there are various ways

that are explained in the text of
how to devote oneself appropriately,

the very heart of which is the idea,
of training our minds to see the lama,

the teacher, the spiritual
guide, as the Buddha.

Most benefit comes to
oneself from this practice.

That point of guru
devotion is put there

by 14th century Lama of this
tradition called Tsong Khapa.

And the third point, the preciousness
of this life that we have right now,

not just to take it for granted,

and this gives it enormous
energy to want to not waste it.

Then the first point that we
discussed in the first scope

was the need to think
about impermanence

but specifically the
impermanence of this very person.

Which energizes to even more
want to not waste this life.

That death is definite,
the time is uncertain,

and that the only thing that can
benefit us at the time of death

is the virtuous imprints
in our mind, nothing else.

This leads us onto the next contemplation,
of the first scope, as we discussed,

which is looking at the logical likelihood
of suffering lives in the future,

given that we have a continuity of
consciousness that is literally beginningless,

given that we are within samsara,
having ignorance and therefore delusions

and therefore being reborn
again and again and again,

and therefore creating negative karma
endlessly as well as positive ones.

So it’s logical, just logical.

There is a possibility
of many suffering rebirths

that our mind could take when it
leaves this body at the time of death.

So Atisha gets us to contemplate
the suffering of the lower realms,

in order to energize us
to have a healthy revulsion

of being born in this way.

This then leads us naturally to the
next point, to turn for refuge to Buddha.

Who’s a person who
existed 2500 years ago,

who gave us the path
which is the actual refuge,

who gave us the path
which is the actual refuge,
the dharma itself,
the methods, the medicine,

to cure our mind, the method to help
our self transform our self,

to avoid suffering in the future,

it leads us then to the
culmination of the first scope,

which is the essence of the practice
which is abiding by the laws of karma.

Learning to know what to do and
learning to know what to avoid doing.

Simply, to avoid suffering and to get
what we do want, which is happiness.

It’s a very practical solution.

Cause one of the things we’re seeing
clearly from understanding karma,

is that we are responsible
for our own suffering

and we’re responsible for
our own happiness, literally.

In the second scope
we look more deeply,

we look in a more
sophisticated way into our minds

and start to see how even this
life is in the nature of suffering.

It’s much more subtle
awareness we need to develop,

Really it's what we learn
to be our own therapist.

Understand very deeply,
in the context, for example,

one way of looking at this
whole scope is in the context

that we discussed last week,
of the Four Noble Truths.

And their essential point,
that is the third one,

which is Buddha’s assertion
that we can be free of suffering.

So this really prepares us, now, to practice
the second wing, the third scope.

Which is what we do
in relation to others.

The heart of which is the
development of compassion,

specifically, the development of a
very focused highly developed level

of great compassion,
called bodhicitta.

There’s love and
compassion, for example,

these two essential characteristics.

Love is the wish that others be happy.

Compassion is the wish
they don’t suffer.

It takes two different
aspects of a person’s life.

If you love a person,
you’d see the person

and you would be delighting
in their good qualities.

If you have compassion for
a person you just look at the person

and you have sorrow at their
suffering, you wish they didn’t suffer.

You have empathy with
them, their suffering.

Right now, we have the wrong
way of cherishing others.

We do it because they’re our friends,
and we want them to love us,

or cause they can keep me happy. It’s
completely got strings attached right now,

the way we cherish others. This is why too,
when we have our compassion now,

we do have compassion now. We have
compassion that’s based on attachment.

And so it always drags us down. That’s why
even if we’re in the helping professions

we’re being very compassionate,
we get exhausted and drained.

You know, it drags us down,
if we have to help people,

mentally or physically,
we get dragged down by it,

because we still have
attachment to our own needs.

So we’re talking here, of
being way beyond attachment.

Really, extraordinary, really
to go to extraordinary degrees

of genuinely cherishing
others, with no strings,

which is almost
inconceivable in our culture,

cause, in our culture,
ego is the reference point.

And it’s the realization
of the wisdom of emptiness

that uproots, finally,
the instincts of ego.

Which completes the wisdom wing.

And then the work of benefiting
others is what culminates,

completes the active, proactive way
of benefiting others, compassion.

Then that person finally becomes a Buddha,
it’s completely perfected the two wings.

Completed the two wings, completed
the wisdom, completed the compassion.

Spiritual practice means

reducing attachment

to this life

and samsara

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Students

What does the Buddhist path mean to you?

Presenting the path, the Lam Rim

and the way Lama Atisha and
Lama Tsong Khapa put it together,

it’s like the blueprint, it’s sort
of taking all the Buddha’s words

and putting it into the order that we
need to actually apply it in our lives.

And so, if I’m feeling
like I’m a little bit lost,

I don’t really know where
I need to put my energy

and my attention and
my practice, it’s really easy.

The teaching say, and I think
this is really true, you can’t develop

the more advanced realizations if
you don’t have this very basic ones.

I mean if we haven’t coped with our own
impermanence and death and suffering,

it’s impossible to really have
a true motivation to get out,

or even to help others, because
we haven’t really allowed ourselves

to get in touch with
how bad it really is.

To give us the energy
to develop the qualities

to make it as good as
it’s possible to be.

I think the first twelve or
thirteen years of my practice,

I didn’t do it that way, I kind
of was a lot more hit and miss,

and really into trying
these more advanced practices

and thought they were really cool

but I don’t think I fundamentally
was becoming a better human being.

It’s not until I really
went back and thought,

I’m not getting anywhere
as fast as I wanted to go,

so maybe I should do it
the way they explain it,

that you’re really supposed to do it,

and spend a year on
precious human rebirth,

and spend a year on
death and impermanence

until something really
moves in my mind,

so that’s been my experiment
the last three to five years,

and at least from my personal
experience, my internal experience,

I think I’m finally feeling
some shifts take place,

and the thing that
I find really interesting

is that as I focus really
on the beginning steps,

even though I’m focusing most
of my attention on the beginning,

the other areas actually
come more into focus,

it’s almost like
dominoes, a domino effect.

Then it’s just a question
of not being lazy,

and stop wasting time,
and just do the steps.

And then, maybe,
become a Buddha.

Help some people or something.
It’d be great, I’d like to do that.

Please dedicate the positive energy generated
by listening to these teachings,

so you can quickly attain Enlightenment
for the benefit of all beings.