Self Renunciation

“Most of us do not know what renunciation means. We are disturbed when we hear about giving up attachment to sensory pleasures, which we take to mean having to suffer in order to achieve inner liberation. “This lama is forcing me to suffer instead of making me happy.” But renunciation does not mean that we must give up happiness or that it is desirable to suffer. On the contrary, our aim is to achieve a state beyond suffering. The root of all problems: difficulties in communication and relationships, neurotic fantasies, expectations, frustrations, doubts and so on, is the mind that clings to pleasure. This grasping mind is the result of our basic misconceptions about reality, and it is this grasping that causes human beings to suffer. With this mistaken approach even taking a meditation course can cause suffering. If at the beginning you expected that by the end of the course you would be blissfully enlightened, you would only be sadly disappointed.

The aim of our daily life is to satisfy each physical desire as it arises—day after day, month after month, year after year. We try to achieve happiness by perpetuating something that is essentially transitory. This expectation, stemming from a misconception, can never be fulfilled, and is therefore totally irrational. It is impossible to achieve ultimate happiness until we develop a genuine aversion to this instinctive grasping at pleasure. Unless this grasping mind is subdued, it is farcical to say “I am seeking inner liberation.” The methods for subduing the mind might sound simple, but they are almost completely inaccessible to most people; they find them so difficult to practice.

One way to understand how the grasping impulse functions is by observing how we react when we hear the names of our home town, and friends and relatives, or the sound of our own name. Strong attention and interest automatically arise in our own minds. When the great yogis and saints of Tibet discovered this uncontrolled reaction in themselves they gave up their homes and families in search of ultimate tranquility. The trouble with remaining near our home, the source of our attachments, is that we have intensely pleasurable attachments with the place where we learned to smoke, drink, and have marvelous parties with our friends. It is our symbol of sensory gratification and our minds cling to these memories. Even if we ourselves are not particularly attached to our friends or relatives, they are usually attached to us. The solution is relinquishment. Relinquishment is not merely physical departure but, much more to the point, inward detachment from the pleasure and involvements of home. This is renunciation…

It is foolish to believe yourself spiritually motivated if you allow your mind to be driven here and there by attachment. This is like the behavior of a monkey that spends the entire day jumping around. When you watch that monkey you think how ridiculous it is but fail to realize that you are doing exactly the same thing yourself. Your own distracted mind cannot stay still for a moment, but skips from one desirable object to another. If you examine yourself you will realize that this is an accurate description of your own life, and not just one more philosophical concept. It is an objective account of the way your mind functions…

The enlightened beings’ freedom from all mental and physical pain cannot be reached without renouncing attachment to sensuous pleasure. Yet we have inexhaustible appetites for good food, drinking and talking with friends, lying out on the beach or hiking in the mountains. We dedicate most of our life to pleasure. It is clear we have not yet followed Buddha’s advice to jettison our absurdly mistaken belief that transitory pleasures are the source of true happiness. These pleasures have no solid or enduring quality, and there is absolutely no point in pursuing them so feverishly…

Although we may think ourselves seekers after truth, very few of us are entirely convinced of the need to destroy our misconceptions. It is as if our minds were split in half, one half determined to subjugate attachment, while the other half goes on wavering. The result is a mind like a yo-yo, constantly bobbing up and down. Half the mind wants to enjoy the beach, while the other half tries to meditate. We lack the firm, indestructible mind…

At all social and cultural levels, everyone flounders in a morass of delusion. The poor think the rich happy, while the rich despise the poor, thinking them the most miserable beings. In reality, both views are wrong, since they are based on the superficial conclusion that contentment is entirely dependent upon physical comforts. The opposite is in fact the case. For all beings happiness is to be found in the mind that does not pursue physical comfort…

Even if you are not a great yogi with indestructible meditative powers, you should at least develop the simple but clear understanding that you were not born on this earth for the sole purpose of gratifying your sense desires. This understanding can generate a power of determination to give up attachment. This determination alone becomes the cause of your future liberation from suffering. When you reach that liberated state of consciousness even a catastrophe will not affect you. Inescapable disasters happen all the time in this troubled world. Each of us therefore has the responsibility of attaining for himself a level of consciousness conferring immunity to all hardships…

How was it possible for the great Tibetan yogi Milarepa to live happily alone in his Himalayan cave with no possessions, and only nettles to eat? It was possible because he had no desires. You see, suffering is not found in external objects, in a cave or in our body. It is our ignorant mind that is miserable. We can emulate Milarepa by renouncing the grasping mind as he did while at the same time continuing to lead lives free of undue hardship. We have the opportunity to do our inner work for liberation without having to struggle under harsh conditions in the mountains. The only requirement for gaining the tranquility and contentment of Milarepa is a mind freed from attachment.

When we say liberation depends on a non-attached mind, it does not mean that you must throw all of your belongings into the ocean straight after this talk. However, there are different levels of practice according to individual capacities. There are certain times when remaining in contact with the objects of attachment can give rise to great conflict. In such cases you should separate yourself physically from those objects. Generally, however, a transformation of your inward relationship with desirable objects is enough. To think that samsara consists of external objects—the world, your own body, or other people—and then to cast them away, is completely mistaken. Samsara is within you. If you do not transform your attitudes you may go away to meditate in a cave, but samsara will still be there with you…

What can we do to get rid of attachment? One excellent practice for training the mind is to replace concern for self with concern for others. Usually we cling to our own well-being, worrying only about me, me, me. We do not allow space in our minds for others, although we may utter empty words of concern for them. This attitude can be changed first by observing how such a self-centered mind brings only harm, and then by practicing a method of thought transformation in which we exchange the objects of our concern: we cherish others instead of ourselves. Another powerful method of thought transformation is the equilibrium meditation, in which an equal feeling for all beings is cultivated. This is achieved by eliminating our usual feelings of attachment for friends and hatred for enemies through logical reasoning. By such means we can see how friends and enemies are equally kind and helpful, and thereby learn to feel only compassion and love for them, and for all others.

A third method is called giving and taking. In this meditation we dedicate all our material possessions, good qualities and merit to others, and take upon ourselves all their problems, pains and sicknesses. These sufferings are drawn into our hearts in the form of black smoke. This technique causes the ego to tremble with fear because it always wants the best for itself and tries its hardest to avoid the slightest discomfort. Constant practice of these meditations will help to destroy this self-centered ego…”

~ Lama Thubten Yeshe was born in Tibet in 1935. At the age of six, he entered Sera Monastic University in Tibet where he studied until 1959, when as Lama Yeshe himself has said, “In that year the Chinese kindly told us that it was time to leave Tibet and meet the outside world.” Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, together as teacher and disciple since their exile in India, met their first Western students in 1965. By 1971 they settled at Kopan, a small hamlet near Kathmandu in Nepal. In 1974, the Lamas began touring and teaching in the West, which would eventually result in The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition. Lama Yeshe died in 1984.