Chapter 1The Difficulty of Finding the Freedoms and Advantages

Before Patrul Rinpoche even begins to teach us about the preciousness of human life, he does something unexpected. He pauses and tells us how to listen. Not later, not as an appendix, but right here at the threshold of the entire path. The way you receive these teachings, he says, matters as much as the teachings themselves. The finest nectar, poured into a filthy vessel, becomes poison. The deepest wisdom, heard with a distracted or self-serving mind, loses its power to transform.

This tells us something important about the tradition we are entering. In the Nyingma lineage, and throughout Tibetan Buddhism, the inner disposition of the student is considered inseparable from the teaching itself. You do not simply collect information. You open yourself to a living transmission, one that has been passed from mind to mind in an unbroken chain stretching back to the Buddha himself.

So before we consider the main theme of this chapter -- how astonishingly rare and precious your human life truly is -- let us attend to Patrul Rinpoche's guidance on becoming a worthy vessel for the Dharma.

How to Listen: Attitude and Conduct

The Right Attitude

Every time you sit down to receive teachings, study a text, or engage in practice, begin by examining your motivation. Why are you here? What is driving you?

If your motivation is to gain protection from illness, misfortune, or the difficulties of this present life, Patrul Rinpoche is blunt: this is not the authentic path. If you are practicing in hopes of gaining fame, recognition, wealth, or the admiration of others, this is even worse -- you are trading the priceless jewel of Dharma for baubles. As the great Dagpo Rinpoche warned, unless Dharma is practiced in accordance with Dharma, the teachings themselves become a cause for lower rebirth.

Even the aspiration to secure a pleasant rebirth for yourself -- as a human or a god in the next life -- falls short. And the wish to attain personal liberation, freeing yourself alone from the ocean of suffering while leaving behind countless beings who have shown you immeasurable kindness, is too narrow.

What, then, is the proper motivation? It is bodhicitta (byang chub kyi sems), the mind of awakening -- the aspiration to attain complete, perfect Buddhahood for the benefit of every single sentient being, without exception.

Consider this: throughout beginningless time, you have wandered through every conceivable form of existence. In the course of those countless lifetimes, there is not a single being who has not, at some point, been your own mother or father. When those beings were your parents, they thought of nothing but your welfare, protecting you with great love, giving you the finest food from their own mouths, the warmest clothes from their own backs. Every being you encounter -- the person sitting next to you, the insect on the windowsill -- has cared for you with that same fierce, tender devotion in some past life.

And now, every one of those beings wants to be happy. Not a single one wishes to suffer. Yet in their confusion, they do not know how to cultivate the causes of happiness -- the ten positive actions -- and they cannot seem to abandon the causes of suffering -- the ten negative actions. Their deepest wishes and their actual behavior run in opposite directions. They are, Patrul Rinpoche says, like a blind person abandoned in the middle of a vast, empty plain.

So tell yourself: "It is for the sake of all these beings, my former mothers and fathers, who are tormented by the miseries of the six realms, that I am going to listen to the profound Dharma and put it into practice. I will lead every one of them to the state of complete Buddhahood."

This is the bodhicitta motivation you should cultivate every single time you engage with the teachings.

The Three Supreme Methods

Patrul Rinpoche introduces here a framework that will accompany you throughout the entire path, known as the three supreme methods (dam pa gsum). Whatever practice you undertake, whether great or small:

Before beginning, arouse bodhicitta. Let your aspiration for the welfare of all beings be the ground from which the practice grows.

During the practice, rest free from conceptual fixation. Do not cling to the practice as solid and real, nor grasp at your own goodness as something to be proud of. Let it be like a dream, vivid yet insubstantial. This protects the merit from being destroyed by circumstances -- by anger, by regret, by showing off.

At the end, dedicate the merit. Seal the practice by offering whatever benefit has arisen to the awakening of all beings. Merit dedicated in this way is like a drop of water added to the ocean: it will not be exhausted until the ocean itself runs dry.

These three methods are the essence of the entire Mahayana path. Every positive action, from the most elaborate ceremony to a single recitation of om mani padme hum, becomes a cause for complete Buddhahood when it is embraced by these three.

The Attitude of the Secret Mantrayana

Within the Vajrayana, or Mantrayana -- the path of sacred mantra -- there is an additional dimension to how we hold our experience while receiving teachings. The Mantra Vehicle is distinguished by its view that the teacher, the assembly, the place, and the teaching are not ordinary and impure, but are recognized in their true nature.

The teacher embodies the essence of all Buddhas. His body is the Sangha, his speech is the Dharma, his mind is the Buddha. The place where the teaching occurs is not merely a room but is seen as a pure realm -- whether Akanishtha, the Copper-Colored Mountain of Padmasambhava, or the Eastern Buddhafield of Vajrasattva. The assembly gathered to listen is recognized as dakas and dakinis, male and female Bodhisattvas. The teaching itself is the Great Vehicle, and the time is the ever-turning wheel of eternity.

These are the five perfections (phun sum tshogs pa lnga), and they are not wishful thinking or pretense. They are a way of recognizing what is already true. Every being in the assembly is pervaded by Buddha nature, just as every sesame seed is full of oil. The teacher's wisdom mind is inseparable from the dharmakaya. We are not pretending a donkey is a horse. We are learning to see what has always been the case.

Conduct: What to Avoid and What to Cultivate

Having established the right motivation, Patrul Rinpoche turns to the conduct appropriate for a listener. He uses a vivid and memorable image: the three defects of the pot.

The upturned pot. If you are physically present but your mind is elsewhere -- wandering, daydreaming, distracted -- you are like a pot turned upside down. No matter how much nectar is poured over it, nothing goes in. You may sit in the teaching hall for hours and leave having heard nothing.

The pot with a hole. You may listen attentively in the moment, but if you retain nothing -- if the words and their meaning drain away as soon as the teaching ends -- you are like a pot with a leak. The nectar passes through and is lost.

The pot containing poison. You may listen and remember, but if your mind is saturated with the five poisons -- attachment, aversion, ignorance, pride, jealousy -- then even the sacred Dharma becomes contaminated. Like nectar poured into a vessel full of poison, the teaching cannot fulfill its purpose.

Beyond these three defects, Patrul Rinpoche identifies six stains to be avoided: pride (believing yourself superior to the teacher), lack of faith, lack of effort, outward distraction, inward tension (concentrating so rigidly that you become dull), and discouragement when a teaching is long or physically uncomfortable.

He also warns against five wrong ways of remembering the teachings: grasping at beautiful words while ignoring their meaning; dismissing the words as unimportant and claiming to grasp only the "naked meaning"; remembering without genuine understanding; remembering teachings out of their proper order; or remembering them incorrectly.

As an antidote, he tells the story of Ananda teaching his student Srona to meditate. Srona struggled terribly -- sometimes too tense, sometimes too relaxed. When he went to the Buddha for advice, the Buddha asked him about his former skill as a vina player. "When did your vina sound best?" the Buddha asked. "When the strings were neither too taut nor too loose," Srona replied. "It is the same for your mind," the Buddha said. With this advice, Srona found the balance and attained realization.

Listen, then, like a deer entranced by the sound of music -- completely absorbed, every pore tingling, your eyes moist with feeling, not a single extraneous thought breaking through.

And when you listen, practice the six transcendent perfections (paramitas): prepare the place and make offerings (generosity); keep your conduct respectful and clean (discipline); endure any physical discomfort without complaint (patience); let go of wrong views and listen with genuine enthusiasm (diligence); remain undistracted, focused on the teacher's words (concentration); and ask questions to dispel doubts (wisdom).

The Teaching Itself: How Rare This Life Truly Is

Now we arrive at the heart of the chapter. Everything that has come before -- the motivation, the conduct, the way of listening -- has been preparation for this single, shattering recognition: the life you are living right now, as a human being with the capacity to hear and practice the Dharma, is almost inconceivably rare.

Patrul Rinpoche approaches this recognition from four directions: the nature of the eight freedoms, the ten particular advantages, images that illustrate the difficulty of obtaining such a birth, and numerical comparisons.

The Eight Freedoms

The Tibetan word dal ba -- freedom -- means having the opportunity to practice the Dharma by not being trapped in one of the eight states where such practice is impossible.

Four of these states are non-human. Beings born in the hells are consumed by unrelenting heat or cold, with not a moment's respite in which a thought of Dharma could arise. The pretas (hungry ghosts) are tortured by insatiable hunger and thirst. Animals are caught in cycles of predation and servitude, too bewildered to distinguish right from wrong. And the long-lived gods (tshe ring lha) are absorbed in blank, mindless states of concentration for vast kalpas, emerging only to fall into lower realms when their karma is spent.

Four states afflict humans. Those born in regions where the Buddha's teaching has never penetrated -- called "border countries" or "barbarous lands" -- have no access to the Dharma, no matter how intelligent they might be. Those holding deeply wrong views, fundamentally opposed to the Dharma, have their minds sealed shut against the path. Those born during a dark kalpa -- an age in which no Buddha has appeared -- have never even heard of the Three Jewels. And those born with severe mental or speech disabilities that prevent them from comprehending, studying, or practicing the teachings also lack this opportunity.

Patrul Rinpoche tells the sobering story of the monk Sunaksatra, who spent twenty-five years as Lord Buddha's personal attendant. Despite this extraordinary proximity to an awakened being, Sunaksatra harbored nothing but wrong views and not the slightest genuine faith. After death, he was reborn as a preta in a flower garden. Proximity to the teaching is meaningless without inner receptivity.

The Ten Advantages

Being free from the eight unfavorable states is necessary but not sufficient. You also need ten positive conditions -- five that relate to your own makeup and five that depend on external circumstances.

The five individual advantages are: being born as a human (the advantage of support); being born in a place where the Dharma exists (the advantage of place); having intact sense faculties (the advantage of faculties); not having a lifestyle that fundamentally conflicts with the Dharma (the advantage of intention); and having faith in the Buddha's teachings (the advantage of faith).

Patrul Rinpoche takes care to explain that "central region" is defined not merely by geography but by the presence of the Dharma. India, where the Buddha walked, was once the center. But when the teachings vanished there, even Bodh Gaya became a peripheral place. Tibet, once called a "border country," became central when the Dharma took root there through the efforts of the great Dharma kings -- Songtsen Gampo, who introduced writing and built the first temples; Trisong Detsen, who invited Padmasambhava and established Samye monastery; and their successors. A central region is wherever the living Dharma of transmission and realization still shines.

The five circumstantial advantages depend on conditions beyond your personal situation: a Buddha has appeared in this world; that Buddha has taught the Dharma; those teachings still exist and have not died out; you have entered into those teachings; and a spiritual friend has accepted you with compassion and guides you on the path.

We live in what is called a "bright kalpa" -- a Good Kalpa (bskal pa bzang po) in which a thousand Buddhas will appear. Our teacher, the Buddha Shakyamuni, has come, has turned the Wheel of Dharma on three levels, and his teachings still endure. But the teachings will not last forever. And even now, during the period of their survival, they are fading. We have arrived, Patrul Rinpoche says, somewhere around the seventh or eighth of ten periods of decline, in an age of increasing degeneracy.

The story of the great Indian master Smrtijnana illustrates how fragile the connection to the Dharma can be. This extraordinary scholar came to Tibet because his mother had been reborn there in a hell realm. But his interpreter died during the journey, and Smrtijnana, unable to speak a word of Tibetan, ended up wandering the province of Kham as a shepherd. He died there without benefiting anyone. When Atisha later heard the story, he wept and said there was no greater scholar in all of India, East or West.

Even the presence of a living Dharma tradition is useless if you do not enter it. And entering the Dharma does not merely mean requesting a teaching. It means developing genuine renunciation -- the heartfelt conviction that all of samsara is without real meaning -- and the sincere determination to be free.

Longchenpa's Sixteen Additional Conditions

The omniscient Longchenpa, in his Wish-Granting Treasury, identified sixteen additional factors that can silently rob you of the opportunity to practice, even when you appear to have all the freedoms and advantages.

Eight are called "intrusive circumstances." These include: being overwhelmed by the five poisons (intense anger, craving, and so on); being too stupid to understand the teachings; falling under the influence of a false teacher who leads you onto wrong paths; being consumed by laziness and procrastination; being so weighed down by past negative karma that nothing seems to work; being enslaved by others who prevent you from practicing; taking up Dharma merely to protect yourself from this life's dangers; and practicing the Dharma hypocritically, as a means to gain wealth and prestige.

Eight more are called "incompatible propensities": being so tightly bound to worldly commitments that there is no time for practice; having such a depraved nature that even a genuine teacher cannot set you on the path; feeling no alarm at the prospect of lower rebirth or the sufferings of samsara; having no faith in the teacher or the teaching; delighting in harmful actions; having no interest in spiritual matters; breaking one's pratimoksha (monastic) vows after having taken them; and breaking one's Vajrayana samaya commitments.

Patrul Rinpoche is unflinching here. The chieftain on his throne, the lama beneath his parasol, the hermit in mountain solitude -- any of these may appear to be practicing the Dharma, but if they are under the sway of these sixteen conditions, they are not on the true path. Before assuming you are a practitioner, check your own mind carefully. Do you truly possess all thirty-four aspects of the freedoms and advantages -- the original eighteen plus these additional sixteen?

The Blind Turtle: An Image of Almost Impossible Rarity

Now Patrul Rinpoche offers us an image so striking that it has echoed through the centuries and imprinted itself on the hearts of countless practitioners.

Imagine the entire cosmos of a billion universes as a single, vast ocean. Floating on its surface is a wooden yoke -- a piece of wood with a single hole in it -- tossed ceaselessly by the waves, driven east, then west, never resting in one place for even an instant. Deep below the surface lives a blind turtle. This turtle rises to the surface only once every hundred years.

What are the chances that, in the single moment the turtle surfaces, its head will slip through the hole in that restless, drifting yoke?

The yoke is inanimate -- it is not seeking the turtle. The turtle is blind -- it cannot see the yoke. The yoke never stays in one place. The turtle surfaces only once in a century. The likelihood of their meeting is almost zero. And yet, the sutras tell us, it is even more difficult than this to obtain a human birth endowed with the freedoms and advantages.

Other images from the scriptures reinforce the point: it is as unlikely as dried peas thrown against a smooth wall happening to stick, or as balancing a pile of peas on the tip of an upright needle.

Reflecting on the Numbers

When you consider the sheer number of beings in the different realms, the rarity of human birth becomes visceral. It is said that if the inhabitants of the hells were as numerous as the stars in the night sky, the pretas would be no more numerous than stars visible in daylight. If the pretas filled the night sky, the animals would number only as many as daytime stars. And if animals filled the night sky, gods and humans together would be as few as those faint stars you can see while the sun is out.

Consider how many insects inhabit a single clod of summer earth, how many ants swarm in one anthill -- there are scarcely that many humans in the whole world. And among humans, those born in places where the Dharma has spread are rarer still. Among those, how many possess all the freedoms and advantages?

Making This Life Count

These freedoms and advantages did not arise by coincidence. They are the fruit of merit accumulated over vast spans of time -- through keeping vows, practicing generosity, and binding those actions with pure aspiration. The great scholar Trakpa Gyaltsen said:

This free and favored human existence Is not the result of your resourcefulness. It comes from the merit you have accumulated.

Knowing this, what would it mean to squander such a life? To have finally obtained this precious jewel and to spend your days chasing food, clothing, reputation, and the eight worldly concerns -- that would be, as Jetsun Milarepa told the hunter Gonpo Dorje, to take something usually described as precious and make it seem worthless.

Patrul Rinpoche drives the point home: this present life is the turning point. Right now, while you are alive and have the freedom to choose, you can direct your destiny -- like steering a horse with the reins. At the moment of death, when the fierce wind of karma chases you and the terrifying darkness of the intermediate state rushes forward, it will be too late. As Padmasambhava said, by the time the ritual card bearing your name is being blessed at your funeral, your consciousness is already wandering the bardo like a bewildered dog.

As a human, your positive actions carry more power than those of any other kind of being. You have the capacity, in this very life, to cast rebirth aside entirely. But the reverse is also true -- your negative actions carry more weight too, and you are quite capable of ensuring that you never escape the lower realms.

This is why Patrul Rinpoche urges: use this life. Practice the Dharma. Do not wait. Be like Geshe Chengawa, who spent his entire life in practice without ever sleeping. When his teacher, Geshe Tonpa, told him to rest, Chengawa replied, "I should rest. But when I think about how difficult it is to find the freedoms and advantages, I have no time to rest." He recited nine hundred million mantras of Miyowa and went without sleep for the rest of his days.

You do not need to go without sleep. But you do need to let this teaching penetrate your heart until it changes the way you meet each day. Meditate on it again and again, applying the three supreme methods -- bodhicitta at the beginning, freedom from fixation during the practice, and dedication of merit at the end -- until the conviction arises in your own mind that this life is truly rare, truly precious, and truly the moment to act.

As Shantideva wrote:

Thus, having found the freedoms of a human life, If I now fail to train myself in virtue, What greater folly could there ever be? How more could I betray myself?