Category: Artifact

From “Words Of My Perfect Teacher” ( A guide to the preliminaries for the “Heart-essence of the Vast Expanse” from the Great Perfection)
By: Patrul Rinpoche
Chapter 1 “The difficulty of finding the freedoms and advantages” herein outlined

I. The proper way to listen to spiritual teaching

The proper way to listen to spiritual teachings has two aspects: right attitude and right conduct.

1. Attitude

Right attitude combines…

(1.1) the vast attitude of the mind of enlightenment, bodhichitta,

While doing what is positive, whether of major or minor importance, apply the three supreme methods. Arouse skillful means of bodhichitta to ensure accumulation of positive merit, avoid conceptualization so merit is not destroyed by circumstance, seal action by dedicating accumulated merit.

(1.2) the vast skill in means of Secret Mantrayāna.

“The teacher is the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. The teacher is the one who accomplishes everything. The teacher is Glorious Vajradhara.”

“All beings are Buddhas, but this is concealed by adventitious stains. When their stains are purified their Buddhahood is revealed.”

2. Conduct

Right conduct is described in terms of what to avoid and what to do.

2.1 What to avoid

2.1.1 The three defects of the pot: listening but distracted (pot that leaks), listening without remembering (pot upside down), listening with wrong attitude (pot tainted) 

2.1.2 The six stains: pride, lack of faith and effort, outward distraction, inward tension,  discouragement

2.1.3 The five wrong ways of remembering: remembering the words but forgetting the meaning, remembering the meaning but forgetting the words, remembering but not understanding, remembering out of order, remembering incorrectly

2.2 What to do

2.2.1 The Four Metaphors: Think of yourself as someone who is sick, the Dharma as the remedy, of your spiritual friend as a skillful doctor, and as diligent practice as the way to recovery

2.2.2 The six transcendental perfections, the application of: generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, concentration, wisdom

2.2.3 Other modes of conduct: all forms of disrespectful behavior should be avoided

II. An Explanation of how difficult it is to find the freedoms and advantages

The main subject of the chapter, explained in four sections

1. Reflect(ing) on the nature of freedom

In general, here, “freedom” means to have the opportunity to practice Dharma, not born in one of the eight states without that opportunity: 

“Being born in the hells, in the preta realm, as an animal, a long-lived god or barbarian, having wrong views, being born when there is no Buddha, or being born deaf and mute; these are the eight states without freedom .”

2. Reflect(ing) on the particular advantages related to Dharma

2.1 The five individual advantages

Reflect on the particular advantages of Dharma.

As Nārgājuna explains them, “Born a human, in a central place, with all one’s faculties, without conflicting lifestyle and with faith in the Dharma”

2.2 The five circumstantial advantages

“A Buddha has appeared and has preached the Dharma, His teachings still exist and can be followed, There are those who are kind-hearted towards others.”

2.3 The eight intrusive circumstances that leave no freedom to practice

2.4 The eight incompatible propensities that leave no freedom to practice.

3. Reflect(ing) on images that show how difficult it is to find the freedoms and advantages

”The Buddha declared that like a blind sea turtle that once every one- hundred years surfaces can perchance  place its head within a yoke adrift upon a shoreless sea, this human birth is more difficult to obtain.”

4. Reflect(ing) on numerical comparisons

…

Human life is called a “precious human life” only when it is complete with all aspects of the freedoms and advantages. These freedoms and advantages do not come by chance or coincidence. They are the result of an accumulation of merit and wisdom. This present life is the turning-point at which you can choose between lasting good or lasting evil. If you do not make use of it right now to seize the citadel of the absolute nature within this lifetime… it will be hard to obtain such freedom again.

“Although I have won these freedoms, I am poor in Dharma, which is their essence.

Although I have entered the Dharma, I waste time doing other things.

Bless me and foolish beings like me
That we may attain the very essence of the freedoms and advantages.”

“In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” –John 1:1

“The Gospel In Brief: The Life of Jesus” by Leo Tolstoy, a fusion of the four Gospels into one, according to the real sense of the teaching.”

Herein an outline thereof and synthesis of teaching therein.

Outline Thereof

Introduction: Knowledge of Life
1. The Son of God
2. God is Spirit
3. The Source of Knowledge
4. The Kingdom of God
5. True Life
6. False Life
7. The Father and I are One
8. Life Outside of Time
9. Temptations
10. The Struggle with Temptations
11. The Farewell Conversation
12. The Spirits Victory over the Flesh
Conclusion: The First Epistle of John the Evangelist

Synthesis Therein

Division of the teaching in the Gospel into the above twelve chapters (or six, since each pair of the twelve may be taken as one):

Jesus Christ’s proclamation replaced faith in an external God with a knowledge of [true] life:

1. Man, the son of God [infinite source], is powerless in the flesh and free in the spirit,
2. And therefore man should work not for the flesh, but for the spirit.
3. Every person’s life sprang from the spirit of the father [and is of divine source],
4. And therefore the will of the father [truth] is life [of reason] and goodness for all people.
5. The satisfaction of personal will [is not necessary for true life and] leads to death, the satisfaction of the father’s will favors true life,
6. And therefore, in order to receive true life, Man must renounce the false mortal life on earth and live by the spirit.
7. The true food of everlasting life is the fulfillment of the father’s will and communion with him [mortal life is food for true life],
8. And therefore only life in the present is true life [outside of time].
9. The illusions of temporal life conceal from people the true life of the present,
10. And therefore, in order to not fall into temptation, one should be united with the father every hour of one’s life [and strive to destroy the deception of the temporal life of past and future].
11. Individual life is a delusion of the flesh. True life is [life outside the individual,] a common life for all people [and is expressed in love],
12. And therefore, there can be no ill for the man within the father’s will, who lives in common with others and not his own individual life. The death of the flesh is unification with the father.

The Lord’s Prayer:

As Christ’s whole teaching, stated in most concise form,

Our Father	Man is the son of the Father
Which art in heaven	God is the infinite spiritual source of life
Hallowed be Thy name	May the Source of Life be held holy
Thy kingdom come	May His power be established over all men
Thy will be done, as in heaven	May His will be fulfilled, as it is in Himself
So also on earth	So also in the bodily life
Give us our daily bread	The temporal life is the food of the true life
This day	The true life is in the present
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors	May the faults and errors of the past not hide this true life from us
And lead us not into temptation	And may they not lead us into delusion
But deliver us from evil	So that no evil may come to us
For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory	And there shall be order, and strength, and reason

Select etymology:

spirit  Middle English “life, the animating or vital principle in man and animals,” from
esperit  Old French “spirit, soul” from
spīritus Latin, original meaning “breath, breathing” and hence “spirit, soul, courage, vigor,” “a breathing (of respiration, also of the wind), breath;” also “breath of a god,” hence “inspiration; breath of life,” hence life itself  from
*(s)peis Porto-Indo-European (PIE) root “to blow”

Compare with:
Lung (Tibetan: རླུང rlung) “wind or breath” and a key concept in the Vajrayana traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, a concept that is particularly important to understandings of the subtle body and the trikaya (body, speech and mind).

The distinction between “soul” (that which gives life to body) and “spirit” (that which transcends the body) mirrors that between “psykhē” and “pneuma” in Classical Greek:
psykhē  “cold air”, hence “breath of life” and “soul” from PIE root *bhes- “to breathe”
pneuma “breath, motile air, spirit” from verb pnéō  “to breathe”.

God  Old English “supreme being, deity” from
*guthan Proto-Germanic (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch god, Old High German got, German Gott, Old Norse guð, Gothic guþ) of uncertain origin; perhaps from
*ghut- PIE “that which is invoked” (source also of Old Church Slavonic zovo “to call,” Sanskrit huta-“invoked,” an epithet of Indra), from
*gheu(e)- PIE “root “to call, invoke”

Word Old English “speech, talk, utterance, sentence, statement, news, report, word,” from
*wurda- Proto-Germanic  (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian word, Dutch woord, Old High German, German wort, Old Norse orð, Gothic waurd), from
*were- PIE “speak, say”

Logos “the divine Word, second person of the Christian Trinity,” from
logos Greek “word, speech, statement, discourse,” also “a computation, account,” also “reason, judgment, understanding,” from
*log-o- PIE suffixed form of root *leg- “to collect, gather,” with derivatives meaning “to speak,” on notion of “to pick out words”

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” – John 1:14