and#8220;What does it mean to be human?and#8221; We have choices and possibilities, pleasure and pain. Our FBA Dharmabyte is an exploration of the balance of karma and karma vipaka. From the talk and#8220;The Preciousness and Rarity of Human Lifeand#8221; by Dhammadinna, the second in a five-part series from Tiratanalokaand#8217;s retreat on the and#8220;Four Mind Turningsand#8221; of the Tibetan tradition.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
What does it mean to be human?
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] So yesterday we looked at the four mind-turnings collectively, and today we're going to start looking at each one individually. Starting with the precious human birth. And yesterday I said that I thought this was a good place to start because it's such a positive take as it were on human life, human birth, human body. And I said it, the reflections hopefully would lead us to appreciation, gratitude, self-confidence, faith and motivation to practice. And I don't know, but I get the impression from many, many retreats that we Westerners often find it quite hard to value our life, our experience. We're quite sort of conflicted sometimes, and have all sorts of conditionings which affect the way we look at our lives and ourselves. So hopefully this very positive take might help us to begin to overcome that if we suffer from self-doubt, etc. So you could say this talk was subtitled, what does it mean to be human? Because that's what I'm going to explore, what does it mean to be a human being? And I'm going to explore it from a traditional Buddhist point of view, what the traditional Buddhist point of view thinks is a human being. But I think it would be quite interesting for us to sort of look at that and think, well is that what I think a human being use or a human life is to kind of become from very different... I mean we humans have the same consciousness, we come from very different cultural contexts and so on, from when these teachings were developed. So it's not just what it means to be a human being in a human body. The precious human birth is a translation of a term in Tibetan which I've put up here, I don't know how to pronounce it. I think this is the more phonetic one, Dalior, Dalbior, something like that. So that term is used not just for someone with a human form, but for someone with a human form or birth with the eight freedoms and the ten endowments and the three kinds of faith. So it's a very kind of highly endowed human existence. And it's that the human form, the eight freedoms, the ten endowments and the three kinds of faith which we're going to explore today. They're all on your sheets, I don't worry. So this is the traditional take on the precious human birth. We're also going to look, and this is traditional, we're going to look at the human birth, the human realm in comparison with beings and other realms. So kind of implicit, and I'm making it more explicit in this, is the six realms of the wheel of life. So we're looking at a particular realm, we're looking at the human realm, and the other realms of course are the long lived gods, the Azeras, and then the lower realms, the hungry ghosts, the hell beings and the animals. And within the six realms, the human beings or the human realm is not unique, in a way it's just one manifestation of this kind of flow of psychophysical energy. So Buddhism says consciousness is what's most important, mind of consciousness is most important, that's what precedes and determines beings. So life streams of psychophysical energy, carrying karma and karma vipaka, determine your realm, your body, your birth and your experience. So human realm is just one realm in that kind of cycle of the six realms, and the universe and the traditional Buddhist point of view, teams with consciousness. And I think it's worth making the point when we're thinking about what is a human being that because of that kind of model, whether you look at it cosmologically or psychologically, the six realms, Buddhism does not think that the human being is different in kind from other life forms, which is I think something that I have not been too general here, but the judo Christian tradition, because human beings have a soul, there's a difference in kind between us and different life forms, I don't know if people still think that. So this model, human being is just different, is different in degree rather than a kind, it's one manifestation of consciousness, which comes into being independent upon karma. And in that six realm model, all beings have put in nature, all beings have the potential for enlightenment, but this is a dual liberation starts with this, says this, and then says, and I think this is, follows through, traditionally looking at the precious human body. But the precious human body with its freedoms and endowments and its faith is the most conducive realm, state, birth, from which to realize enlightenment. So the human body is like a precious vase capable of containing the elixir of immortality, as a quote. So just that's sort of general about our human form in relationship with the six realms, we're going to probably come and look at the six realms in more depths in the talk on samsara. So traditionally, and I think this is also true, it's not just traditional, it's true of our human existence, the human realm has distinctive features in comparison with the beings in the other realms. I think one of the main things that we have as human beings is we have self-reflexible ways, so we have the ability to choose and therefore change. And that's considered rare and priceless, and one of the privileges of human life, hard one, and it comes with responsibilities, you know, if you can choose, you have responsibilities to choose well, and it comes with possibilities for enlightenment. So we can choose and change and we can affect our experience, we can kind of channel, can't we, our mind stream along more and more skillful channels. So choice and karma are kind of equivalence, choice, karma, intention, motivation, volition, direction, we modify our karma and karma will park us through choice. And the distinctive feature of the human realm in comparison with the other realms is we have that ability, we have a balance of karma and karma will park us. So we can, you know, in the gap we can choose a new direction, we can change a habit, we can kind of get off the wheel to some extent and onto the spiral. So we have that ability to create fresh karma but parka. And if you look at the other realms in comparison, their realms purely of karma but parka, so the lower realms, the realms, the hell realms and the hungry ghosts, are realms of reaping the fruits of previous unskillful actions in their painful realms. And I think you can include the Azores in that, they're not always mentioned, sometimes they get left out. The god realm, the long of god realm are purely pleasurable, so they've got realms of pain, realms of pleasure, so purely pleasurable realms where they're reaping the consequences of previous skillful actions. So the balance of karma and karma with parka in the human realm and a balance of pleasure and pain and that's that balance, the other realms are imbalanced in both those ways. So if you're in one of the other realms, your kind of, the way you get out of that is either your karma exhausts itself and that no one's in any realm forever. It's not that kind of fatalistic. Either your karma exhausts itself and other calmers come into fruition, which make you take you into a new person, maybe a better one. Or you need outside help. So that's why you have the buddha or have a catastrophe appearing in the six realms and offering what that realm needs or what those beings need. You can create fresh karma in the other realms, but unfortunately it's usually along the line that you're already going. We know this, don't we? If you look at it psychologically, if you're already in a not-reskillful mental state, you're more likely to do something unskillful and you're likely to dig yourself in deeper. You know, it's sort of downward spiral, hopefully not a path of no return, but you know, more and more difficult to get out of. So those are the two distinctive features of being in a human realm. We have this kind of ability to choose and change and we have this balance of karma and kambupaka, we can change the direction of our lives and a balance of pleasure and pain. So for us, we experience both pleasure and pain, whereas in the other realms, it's either one or the other. And not too much pain in the human realm, in a truly human existence, it's not too much pain, it's enough pain. It doesn't overwhelm us, it's enough pain to kind of make us think about Zenxara and the nature of life. And you know, that maybe we're caught up in a pleasure, pain cycle, and maybe we're attached to things that are pleasurable, which don't bring this lasting happiness. So, you know, the amount of discontent that we experience can kind of motivate us to practice. And, well, there's also pleasure, which we can enjoy things, and you know, that opens us up to the uncondition. We can respond to beauty, nature, friendship, other people, and eventually to the transcendental. And we've got that balance in the truly human realm. And I think the kind of the small amount of pain or misery also kind of works against the human poison, which is pride, isn't it? So if we get to kind of, we go into a bit of a God realm for a bit, and we get to sort of up ourselves that we're having a great time and everything. Well, sooner or later, it'll end. And then we'll, yeah, that pride will be transformed, to some extent. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] You You