Video 6. Without Renunciation, Meditation on Emptiness and Bodhichitta is Very Shallow
(duration: 4 minutes)
(You can read the transcript of the video below. Alternatively, you can read the same transcript alongside the video by clicking here to download it or view it in a separate window.)
You want to have the realizations only that you like, “Oh, bodhichitta,” “Oh, this.” Only those that you like; you don’t want renunciation, you don’t think of renunciation—the shortcomings of samsara. You don’t think about the impermanence and death of your life, you don’t think. The lower realms, you don’t think. If you never think of these, only of bodhichitta, only emptiness, or tantra meditation, then it is difficult to have realizations, no matter how much you meditate. Without renunciation, bodhichitta, the good heart, bodhichitta, and all those other things are like what I said—putting tsampa[1] on a river. If on a river you put tsampa, sprinkle tsampa, the tsampa doesn’t go down; the tsampa stays up. I f you meditate only on emptiness or bodhichitta, it is just very shallow, no essence, like a seed cover [a husk]. The essence is not there. It is a very shallow experience, very empty. The real realization, the real experience, doesn’t come. So it doesn’t come because you never meditate on renunciation. The basis to develop great compassion, the basis for bodhichitta, is renunciation—the shortcomings of samsara, how samsara is the nature of suffering, and the lower realms’ sufferings. If you never pay attention to that, if you don’t want to meditate on that, if you never pay attention to it, bodhichitta and all those things are just words between your lips. I mean it is just very shallow, not really from the heart, that one hundred percent you really feel it there.
If you do the previous meditations, it lays the foundation—renunciation. The lower realms’ suffering, then the sufferings of samsara, all these things, oh, [these bring] renunciation. The stronger renunciation you have, the more great compassion, the stronger compassion, for others, who are suffering in samsara. You can feel, you can see, how it is unbearable for others, the more you meditate on the lower realms’ suffering. When you have the realization of renunciation, then you are able to develop great compassion toward other sentient beings, feeling unbearable their suffering, so unbearable their suffering. When you are able to generate great compassion, then you are able to generate real bodhichitta. Otherwise, if you only do what you like, then nothing [happens]. However much, however many times, you meditate, not much happens. It is like that because there is no basis.