THE ORDINARY OR OUTER PRELIMINARIES Sometimes look at the wealth and possessions of others; Seeing how pitiful they are, you will cast off samsaric ambition In brief, examining the nature of everything in all its multiplicity, You will destroy the delusion of clinging to any of it as real The asuras The pleasures and abundance enjoyed by the asuras, the demigods, rival those of the gods However, from previous lives they have a strong propensity for envy, quarrelling and fighting The effect of those past negative actions is that no sooner they take their present form than they start to experience intense feelings of envy Even within their own realms, there are disputes between territories and provinces, and they spend all their time fighting and quarrelling among themselves over such disagreements But worse, looking upwards into the realm of the gods, they can see that the gods have the ultimate in wealth and possessions They also see that all the gods' wants and needs are provided by a wish-fulfilling tree-whose roots, however, are in their own realm At that they are seized with unbearable resentment Donning their armour and grabbing their weapons, they set off to make war on the gods As soon as the gods see what is happening, they proceed to the Forest of Aggression, 64 and in their turn put on armour and take up arms The gods keep an elephant with thirty-three heads called Supremely Steady Their king, Indra, rides on the central head, with his ministers all around him on the thirty-two other heads Inconceivable divine legions of irresistible splendour surround them, raising their mighty battle cry As the battle begins, they let loose a rain of weapons-vajras, wheels, spears, giant arrows and so on Their magical power gives them the strength to haul huge mountains into their laps and hurl them down as missiles Because of their past actions, gods are seven times taller than men, but demigods are much smaller than gods Gods can be killed only by cutting off their heads; any other wounds they receive are immediately healed by their divine ambrosia But demigods die, as humans do, when a vital organ is hit They are therefore bound to lose the many battles that take place When, among their other strategies, the gods dispatch an elephant called All-Protector, crazed with liquor, a wheel of swords fastened to its trunk, the demigods die in their hundreds of thousands Their corpses tumble down the slopes of Mount Meru to fall into the Great Exuberant Lakes below, whose waters are suffused with the colour of blood In this realm of the asuras, with their constant fights and quarrels, there 92 THE DEFECTS OF SAMSARA is no freedom from suffering Meditate on their lot from the depth of your heart The gods The gods enjoy perfect health, comfort, wealth and happiness all their lives However, they spend their time in diversions and the idea of practising Dharma never occurs to them Throughout their lives, which may last a whole kalpa, they not have that thought even for an instant Then, having wasted their whole life in distraction, they are suddenly confronted with death All gods of the six heavens of the World of Desire, from that of the Four Great Kings right up to the one called Enjoying the Emanations of Others, have to undergo the sufferings of death and transmigration There are five signs that foreshadow the death of a god His body's inherent brilliance, usually visible from a league or several miles distant, grows dim His throne, upon which he never before felt weary of sitting, no longer pleases him; he feels uncomfortable and ill at ease His flower garlands, which before had never faded however much time passed, wither His garments, which always stayed clean and fresh however long he wore them, get old and filthy and start to smell His body, which never perspired at all before, starts to sweat When these five signs of approaching death appear, the god is tormented by the knowledge that he, too, is soon going to die His divine companions and sweethearts also know what is going to happen to him; they can no longer approach, but throw flowers from a distance and call their good wishes, saying, "When you die and pass on from here, may you be reborn among the humans May you good works and be reborn among the gods again." With that they abandon him Utterly alone, the dying god is engulfed by sorrow With his divine eye he looks where he is going to be reborn If it is in a realm of suffering, the torments of his fall overwhelm him even before those of his transmigration have ended As these agonies become twice and then three times as intense, he despairs and is forced to spend seven gods' days lamenting Seven days among the gods of the Heaven of the Thirty-three are seven hundred human years During that time, as he looks back, remembering all the well-being and happiness he has enjoyed and realizing that he is powerlessness to stay, he experiences the suffering of transmigration; and looking ahead, already tormented by the vision of his future birthplace, he experiences the suffering of his fall The mental anguish of this double suffering is worse than that of the hells In the two highest divine realms, 65 there are no obvious sufferings of 93 THE ORDINARY OR OUTER PRELIMINARIES death and transmigration However, when the effect of the actions which sent them there is exhausted, these gods fall into the lower realms as though waking from sleep Such is their suffering As Lord Nagarjuna says: Know that even Brahma himself, After achieving happiness free from attachment In his turn will endure ceaseless suffering As fuel for the fires of the Hell of Ultimate Torment Wherever we are born throughout the six realms, therefore, everything has the nature of suffering, everything multiplies suffering, everything is an engine of suffering-and there is nothing other than suffering It is like a pit of fire, an island of murderous ogresses, an oceanic abyss, the tip of a knife or a cesspit There is not one tiny moment of peace to be found According to the Sutra of Sublime Dharma of Clear Recollection: Beings in hell suffer from hell-fire, Pretas suffer from hunger and thirst, Animals suffer from being eaten by each other, Humans suffer from having a short life, Asuras suffer from wars and quarrels, And the gods suffer from their own mindlessness In sarhsara there is never a pinpoint of happiness And Lord Maitreya says: Just as there are no good smells in a cesspit, There is no happiness among the five classes of beings 66 The Great Master of Oc;lc;liyana says: It is said that in this sarhsara there is not as much As a pinpoint's worth of happiness to be found But should one happen to find just a little, It will contain the suffering of change The more you reflect on these and other similar passages, the more you will realize that no matter where you are reborn, from the summit of existence right down to the deepest hell, there is not even the tiniest interlude of real comfort or happiness It is all without any meaning Think about sarhsara and its sufferings until you have no desire for it any more, like someone with a bad liver being offered greasy food Do not be content with merely hearing about these torments and 94 THE DEFECTS OF SAMSARA understanding them intellectually Take them upon yourself mentally and experience them with all your imagination until you are really convinced of them Armed with that degree of certainty, avoiding negative actions and take pleasure in positive ones will come naturally to you without your having to force it Nanda, Lord Buddha's cousin, was very attached to his wife and did not want to renounce the world Even though, by skilful means, Lord Buddha persuaded him to enter the Dharma and become a monk, he did not follow the precepts He was about to run away, when the Buddha miraculously transported him to the top of a snow-mountain and showed him a one-eyed she-monkey The Buddha asked Nanda, "Which you find more beautiful, this monkey or your wife Pur:H;larika?" "My wife," replied Nanda "A hundred or a thousand times more!" "Good," replied the Buddha "Now let us go to the realm of the gods." When they arrived, the Buddha sat down and told Nanda to go and have a look around Each god lived in his own palace, surrounded by many young goddesses, and enjoyed inconceivable pleasure, happiness and abundance However, there was one palace with numerous goddesses but no god Nanda asked why, and was told, "In the realm of the humans, there is a man called Nanda, a cousin of the Buddha, who is following monastic discipline This action will lead him to be reborn among the gods, and this palace will then be his." Nanda was overjoyed He went back to the Buddha who asked him, "Did you see the gods' realm?" "I certainly did!" "Good Which you find more beautiful, your wife or the young goddesses?" "The daughters of the gods are much more beautiful," replied Nanda; "indeed, their beauty surpasses that of Pu1,1c;larika by as much as her beauty surpasses that of the one-eyed monkey we saw before." Once back on earth, Nanda observed monastic discipline perfectly Then the Buddha addressed the monks "Nanda has renounced worldly life in order to be reborn in the divine realms," he said, "but all of you have become monks in order to go beyond suffering You and he are not on the same path Do not talk to him any more Do not be intimate with him Do not even sit on the same seat as him!" All the monks obeyed, and Nanda was very upset He thought, "Ananda is my younger brother; at least he will still have some affection for me." But when he went to see his brother, Ananda got up from the seat and 95 THE ORDINARY OR OUTER PRELIMINARIES moved away Nanda asked him why, and Ananda told him what the Buddha had said Nanda was heartbroken At last the Buddha came to him and said, "Nanda, will you come to see the hells?" Nanda agreed, and the Buddha transported them both there with his miraculous powers "Go and look around," he said So Nanda set off to explore, visiting all the realms of hell, until in one place he came across an empty pot with a blazing fire crackling inside it and a large number of the Lord of Death's henchmen all around He asked them why there was no one in the pot "There is a young cousin of the Buddha called Nanda," they replied, "who is practising monastic discipline with the intention of being reborn as a god After enjoying the happiness of a celestial realm, when his merit runs out he will be reborn here." Nanda was terrified He returned, and thought things over To be born among the gods in the future and then to end up in the hell-realms made no sense, so he developed a real determination to seek freedom from sarilsara Having seen the hells with his own eyes, he never did anything that transgressed the precepts even slighdy, and the Buddha extolled him as the disciple with the best control over the sense-doors • We not need to go so far as to see the hells with our own eyes A simple picture is enough to frighten us and reinforce our desire for liberation It is for this reason that the Buddha asked that the five-fold wheel representing sarilsara be drawn at the doors of the saligha's assembly-halls •• As Lord Nagarjuna said: If just to see pictures of the hells, to hear descriptions, Or to read and think about them brings you such terror, What will you when you experience there The full, inexorable effects of your actions? Reflect, therefore, on all the different kinds of suffering in sarilsara From the depth of your heart, tum away from all the ordinary goals of this life Unless you give up worldly activities completely, whatever Dharma you may claim to be practising will not be the real thing As Ati~a was about to leave this world, a yogi came to him with a question "After you have gone, should I meditate?" "Even if you do, will it really be the Dharma?" Ati~ asked him • Controlling the sense-doors means not allowing oneself to be seduced by the objects of the senses •• This diagram can commonly be seen at the entrance of Tibetan temples 96 ... As a pinpoint's worth of happiness to be found But should one happen to find just a little, It will contain the suffering of change The more you reflect on these and other similar passages, the. . .THE DEFECTS OF SAMSARA is no freedom from suffering Meditate on their lot from the depth of your heart The gods The gods enjoy perfect health, comfort, wealth and happiness all their lives... is a young cousin of the Buddha called Nanda," they replied, "who is practising monastic discipline with the intention of being reborn as a god After enjoying the happiness of a celestial realm,