New Heart of Wisdom - part 2(B) Flashcards
The path of a person of middling scope discusses what we should… (4 things)
- know
- abandon
- practice
- attain
On the path of a person of middling scope, what is it we should know?
Sufferings (meaning those of our future lives).
So that we will develop a strong wish to liberates ourselves from them, and therefore use our present life for the freedom and happiness of our future lives.
What are the four example kinds of human suffering that we face?
Birth, sickness, ageing, and death
Examples of sufferings of (and soon after) birth
e.g. we cannot say “I need food” when hungry, etc. Our mother often has no idea why we suffer. We are helpless.
In what sense can life experience be like being naked in a thornbush?
When we try to move we are wounded by circumstances. People and things are like thorns, no situation feels entirely comfortable. The more we desire new situations the more we’re stuck in situations we don’t want.
In samsara there is no permanent fulfillment of our desires. When we have a problem it’s easy to to think it’s caused by our circumstances. We blame other people, food, government, times, weather, history, etc.
But external circumstances are not the main cause of problems.
On the path of a person of middling scope, what is it we should abandon?
We should abandon Origins, which means our delusions, principally that of self grasping.
Self grasping is called an “origin” because it’s the source of all our suffering. (a.k.a. the inner demon)
What is the function of a delusion
To destroy mental peace, the source of happiness.
On the path of a person of middling scope, what is it we should practice?
We should practice the path.
The stages of the path to liberation can be condensed into three trainings. What are they?
- of higher moral discipline
- of higher concentration
- of higher wisdom
They are called “higher” because they’re motivated by renunciation.
We need to be clean and pure ourself; just having a clean body is not enough. _______ is like a great earth that supports and nurtures the crops of spiritual realization.
Moral discipline
Why is training in concentration so important?
So that we can concentrate on virtuous objects… with distractions we cannot accomplish anything.
What is normally the main obstacle to our Dharma practice?
Distraction (lack of training in concentration)
What is the nature of wisdom (in terms of training in higher wisdom)?
A virtuous intelligent mind that functions to understand meaningful objects such as the existence of past and future lives, kharma, and emptiness.
In what way are the three trainings like cutting down a tree with a saw?
Training in higher moral discipline is like our body, training in higher concentration is like our hands, and training in higher wisdom is like the saw.
By using the three together, we can cut down the poisonous tree of our self-grasping ignorance, and automatically all other delusions (its branches), and then all our other sufferings (its fruits) will cease.
On the path of a person of middling scope, what is it we should attain?
We should attain “cessations”, meaning the permanent cessation of suffering and its root, self-grasping ignorance.
We should develop a strong renunciation of the endless cycle of birth-sickness-ageing-death.
We should meditate on this determination every day, and put our determination into practice.
