Precious Human Life

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By Venerable Dipananda

Respected members of the Mahasangha , dear upasaka/upasika and admirers of the Buddha dhamma, a very good evening to you all. It is an honour for me to be here this evening.

Before I begin my speech, I would humbly like to express my sincere gratitude to our respected Shifu, the founder and Abbot of Than Hsiang Temple and the International Buddhist College , for making this Dhammaduta tour possible. My thanks are also due to all the members of IBC and Than Hsiang Temple. I would also like to take this opportunity to show my appreciation to the organizers and participants of this gathering.

This is not preaching but sharing of my little knowledge that I have acquired in IBC. I have chosen to talk about the precious human life this evening because firstly, if we do not know how to appreciate and live this human life, we cannot proceed on to practice the Dhamma with the little time we have on this earth as a human being. So, in this regard we see the Buddha had appreciated this human life, and preferred it to the life of a Deva or Brahma or beings in any other realm. Why the Buddha gives so much importance to the human life over that of a deva and brahma should be carefully considered.

Common people might think it is because human beings are developed in various fields of knowledge, arts, and so on, but it is not what the Buddha said. One may become very rich or knowledgeable in various ways, but this does not help him or her get rid of problems like birth, old-age, sickness and death. The reason why the Buddha says this human birth is precious is because it is as a human being that that we can understand what is good and what is bad, what is happiness and what is suffering. By understanding this we try to avoid suffering and make an attempt to get happiness. We get happiness through the practice of Dhamma .

Once, the king of the dragon world, Nagaraja Erakapatra , approached to the Buddha. He was waiting for a long time to meet the Buddha to get the dhamma from him. When the Buddha was asked to explain the dhamma , he said:

Kiccho manussapatilābho

Kiccham macchāna jīvitam
Kiccham saddhammasavanam

Kiccho buddhānam uppādo.

Hard is it to be born a man;

Hard is the life of mortals.

Hard is it to gain the opportunity of hearing the Sublime Truth,

And hard to encounter is the arising of the Buddhas.

These are the four points that he spoke to the Nagaraja as being the most precious thing in a life. This Nagaraja was a human being before, but he lost the opportunity of using that life correctly. Nagaraja was very intelligent. He knew that he was suffering for a long time and was waiting for the Buddha to emerge on earth. When the Buddha appeared, the Buddha explained to him that he had lost a precious human life. Even when the Buddha preached the dhamma to Nagaraja, Nagaraja would not be able to practice it because he was not a human being. So the Buddha appreciated this human life and preferred it to that of others such as a Deva or Brahma .

The Buddha said if you are born in heaven or hell or in any realms other than this human world, you cannot practice the dhamma . In heavenly realms, the beings are too busy enjoying themselves, spending the merits they have accumulated in their previous lives. They do not have time left to think about or practice dhamma . In the hell realm, they have to undergo so much suffering that they do not have even a single moment to recall the name of the Buddha. So the Buddha said this human life is so rare that it cannot be explained in words. Even if it is explained, common people, for the lack of intelligence, will not understand it.

This human life is unquestionably a rare one. We can understand its importance from the explanation given by the Buddha to a group of newly ordained monks:

The Buddha asked, “What do you think monks, if there is a yoke with a single hole in it, and there is a turtle with one eye living in the ocean; and that turtle comes up on the surface of the ocean once in a hundred years, is it possible for that turtle to see the sun through the tiny hole of the yoke?”

The monks replied, “O! Venerable, this is impossible. This is not possible. Because the turtle does not know where is the yoke? And there are many big waves in the ocean.”

Then the Buddha said to the monks, “No! Monks, this is also possible. But if you lose this precious human life, then you are not going to get it back again.”

Imagine how rare this human life is! Rare too is a human life free from the eight disabilities:

(1) the world of hell being,

(2) animal world,

(3) the world of hungry ghost,

(4) formless realm and the realm of mindless being,

(5) you have to be free from being born in a state or country where there is no chance to hear the true dhamma of the Buddha,

(6) defects in the five aggregates,

(7) wrong views, and

(8) born in a time when there is no Buddha in the world.

In the animal world too there is so much suffering. Among the animals the stronger one is trying to kill the weak ones and so on. In the world of hungry ghosts ( petaloka) , the beings have a huge stomach but a tiny throat. They cannot eat even a single grain of rice. In the formless realm or Arupa loka , you have consciousness, but no matter [in a sense] or the matter is too subtle to be perceived. Thus, in the formless realm, we do not have the body for practicing the dhamma . In the realm of ‘mindless' beings, they have form but their consciousness is too fine for the practice of the dhamma .

If you are born in a state where there is no chance to hear the dhamma , you cannot practice the dhamma . There are many people who do not know what is good and what is bad, they just do whatever they like and they feel that that is their life. If you have any defect in the five aggregates, if the hearing sense is defective, one cannot hear the Dhamma and therefore is disadvantaged in receiving, learning and practicing Dhamma. If we carefully consider these eight disabilities, all of us or most of us here are free from seven of the eight at least.

Many may not be free from wrong view. We may become Buddhists and practice Buddhism for a long time, but still we can have some sort of wrong views. What kind of wrong views can we have? The Buddha said if you are a Buddhist or if you practice Buddhism for a long time, it does not mean that you will certainly attain nibbana . The Buddha mentioned in many places in the Tipitaka, especially in the Kalama Sutta :

“Do not go by revelation or tradition, do not go by rumour or the sacred scriptures, do not go by hearsay or mere logic, do not go by bias towards a notion or by another person's seeming ability and do not go by the idea, ‘He is our teacher.' But when you yourself know that a thing is good, that it is laudable, that it is praised by the wise and when practised and observed that it leads to happiness, then follow that thing.” Angguttara Nikaya. I, 188

There are five wrong views in Buddhism.

1. Mitya drsti [Wrong View] - except the view of the Four Noble Truths, belief in Karma and rebirth, and Dependent Origination [ Paticcasamuppada ], all the other beliefs that we have on the earth are considered to be wrong views.
2. Satkaya drsti [view of self] - It does not matter whether one is a Buddhist or not, but if one has the idea that ‘what I say, what I think are right and others are wrong; I am a right, proper Buddhist, others are not', this is considered to be the Satkaya Drsti .
3. Antagraha drsti [the view of extreme] - The most common examples of this are Sassata drsti and Uccheda drsti . Sassata drsti is believing in the existence of the self, for example, a permanent, unchanging and everlasting self that continues to be reborn until the attainment of enlightenment. But the Buddha said there is no self that is permanent or everlasting. Uccheda drsti or Nihilism or Nihilistic idea, on the other hand, includes materialistic viewpoint.
4. Drsti paramarsa is adherence to particular views. For example, we may know many things or hear many beliefs, but we stick to only one belief. And we say that this belief is the only right one, other beliefs are not, and by following this particular idea only can we attain enlightenment and so on. This sort of belief is called Drsti paramarsa .
5. Sila-vrata-paramarsa is adherence to Sila and Vrata . For example, as a traditional Buddhist, we always think that whenever we go to a temple, we have to take the Five Precepts and whenever we have time we have to do chanting especially in the morning and evening or before we sleep. This is a good practice, but if you take this practice as an end not as a mean, then you have the problematic wrong view. This practicing Sila or worshiping the Buddha becomes bondage for you.

If you are free from the eight disabilities mentioned above, then you have what is termed the precious human life. The question then is should we protect it when we have it?

What does protecting precious human life mean? The Buddha explained that this is not our first life. We have died and been reborn countless times. Each time we are reborn, we perform some actions through our body, speech and mind and all the actions become karmic force [ samskara ]. These karmic forces are with us. So, we have the potential to be good and also we have the potential to be bad. Usually, deeds are done in accordance with the conditions that prevail at the time. We do not think of what is good and what is bad; what should be done and what should not be done. Actions performed without mindfulness are those generally governed by greed [ lobha ], hatred [ desa ] and delusion [ moha ]. Without right mindfulness [ samma sati ] and not looking deep into the causes and conditions of our actions, good and bad karmic forces are accumulated and the bad ones may become obstacles. We know that we all will die one day. What we do not know is the time of death. The time is uncertain. So, now the question is whether living for many years is important or living a single moment with proper mindfulness is important?

As I said before, whatever action we perform has a resultant effect. If someone talks bad about me, it is very natural for me to get angry. But from the perspective of the Buddha's teachings, this is wrong. If he or she does not talk bad about you, you then have no chance to practice patience and compassion. So, that particular person creates the condition for you to practice patience and compassion. In getting angry, we miss the chance to practice Buddhadhamma .

There is an excellent example of this in a Jataka story. Once, Buddha Shakyamuni was born as a prince in a royal family. Everybody was very happy to have a prince in their country. But the king was not so happy because everyone was so happy that they had almost forgotten the king. Once, the king passed by the queen, the queen did not show respect to the king, because she was feeding her son, the bodhisattva. The king became very angry and ordered his executioner to execute the prince. During the execution, his mother, the queen was crying very hard. The little prince thought how dearly his mother loved him. He felt sympathetic to his mother. But he felt sorrier for his father for his ignorance and appreciated his father for giving him the opportunity to practice patience and compassion. To return this opportunity given, the prince vowed that one day, he would preach the truth to the father so that he could attain enlightenment. He was so compassionate to his father.

We common people usually do not practice this. We see things superficially and do not go deep into the causes and conditions. In the D hammapada it is mentioned that “Better it is to live one day virtuous and meditative than to live a hundred years immoral and uncontrolled”. So, this is not so much as living for a hundred years but living each and every moment in meditative mindfulness.

The third most precious thing that the Buddha explained to the king of dragon world, the Nagaraja , was that to gain the opportunity of hearing the Sublime Truth is not easy. You may become a human being, but not necessarily your human life is precious because if you do not practice the dhamma then you cannot claim your life to be a precious one. There are many people who are behaving worse than animals sometimes. So, not every life of a human being is a precious one. Not all human beings can get the dhamma . Of course there are many reasons. For example, if you born in a place or country where there is no dhamma , no monk to preach the dhamma , no religious books to read or if you born in a time when there is no Buddha, then there is no hope for you to get the dhamma . And if there is the Buddha, there is the sangha , and there are books explaining the dhamma , but if your kamma is not ripened yet, if you listen to the dhamma , you may not attain enlightenment.

During the time of the Buddha the chief attendant of the Buddha, Venerable Ananda, asked the Buddha: ‘being an all-knowing one, could the Buddha save all sentient being from this so called samsara ?' The Buddha replied, “No! It is not possible, because their kamma is not ripened yet.” Then he gave an example, he went on to a village nearby and he was preaching the dhamma to a lady. He went in front of the lady, but she moved away, and again the Buddha went in front of the lady again she moved away. The Buddha pointed this out to Venerable Ananda, “I am trying to explain the dhamma to this lady, but she is not listening to me. She is not in a position to understand me. Because her karmic forces are not ripened yet.” But still there was no harm listening to the dhamma , although she did not understand it. This seeing the Buddha and listening to the Dhamma becomes seed for her. One day in one lifetime she will surely remember the name of the Buddha; she will understand and practice the dhamma .

This happens because of the lack of awareness of what is good and what is bad. Usually we define good and bad as what is good for me, for my organization, for my society, for my country. What is bad is something that is not good for me or I think that this is not good and this is bad. But as the Buddha explained, an action that is good and beneficial for oneself and others is good and the opposite is bad. In the Rahulavada sutta of Majjhima Nikaya the Buddha said to his son, Rahula, “Rahula! Before you perform any action through your body, speech and mind, think whether the action is beneficial for yourself and others. If it is not, then do not do it.” This is the definition of good and bad in Buddhism. By knowing this one practices the dhamma .

The other important reason why people do not recognize the Buddha or understand the dhamma is that they have not heard the name of the Buddha even once in their previous lives. During the time of the Buddha, his own cousin, Devadatta, was the most notorious enemy of the Buddha. Although the Buddha had ordained him, he tried to kill the Buddha many times. He did not understand the Buddha and his teachings. And there is one more example of this case. Immediately after the attainment of the Bodhi , the Buddha went under a tree sitting crossed legged in meditation. A very famous, wise and respected Brahmin of the time known as Ganaka saw the Buddha as a calm and serenely beautiful sage. He approached the Buddha and asked, “Who are you?” The Buddha replied, “I am known as the Buddha.” Not understanding what it means, the Brahmin knocked his head and went away.

So, if you do not hear the name of the Buddha even once in your previous life you can not recognize the Buddha although you may see him. In this context I would like to say how fortunate we are! We at least know who the Buddha is although we are not at a stage to call ourselves good Buddhists. According to Buddhism, a good Buddhist is he who is a Sotapanna , Sakadagamin , Anagamin and Arahat . We are trying to be one.

The fourth most important thing that the Buddha explained to Nagaraja Erakapatra is that hard to encounter is the arising of the Buddha . You are born as a human being and you are still alive. You are listening and practicing the dhamma . You know who the Buddha is! After knowing all these, it is very difficult to arouse the Bodhi , the Enlightenment, in you. Here the arising of the Buddha does not only mean the Sakyamuni Buddha, the Gautama Buddha who lived 2500 years ago in India . This is the enlightenment in you. If we look at the life story of the Buddha, we see that the Buddha had to go through six years of self-mortification to find the Bodhi . And we also know that he was perfecting the ten perfections for many Kalpas , many aeons in many lifetimes, but still he had to go through these six years of self-mortification. It took a long time for him to understand what the middle path is that liberates beings from this so called samsara . He practised under two great masters who were considered enlightened sages at that time. After the Buddha had learned from them, he realized that there is still the satkaya drsti in them and he left them. And as soon as he attained enlightenment, he thought of those two masters, because he saw the potentialities of the Buddhahood in them, but they had already passed away. Once a great master mentioned in one of his books that we do not know what the difference between the Buddha-mind and our mind. We usually think we are practitioners of Buddha dhamma , we can become the Buddha or achieve enlightenment. That, of course, is good and positive thinking, but we do not actually realize how far is the distance between the Buddha's pure mind and our imperfect mind. If we know the gap, then we can easily fill up the gap. But this pure mind of the Buddha cannot be compared with anything. It cannot be explained by any language or expression. How pure is the Buddha's mind! This Buddha, as we can see in the Buddha vandana , is [ Vijjacaranasampanno ] endowed with perfect or supreme knowledge and conduct. We sometimes just memorize the Buddhist verses, suttas , and study philosophy such as the law of karma, P aticcasamuppada. If we do not put them into practice, then we will not be able to arouse the Bodhi in us. We have to emulate the life and practice of the Buddha.

There are many masters who followed the Buddha's teachings and practice and succeeded in life. In my country, there is a monk who is respected like an Arahant . He always says to the people, “I followed the Buddha, his life, his teaching.” As we can see in the Buddha vandana , the Buddha is not only a wise personality but he is perfected in practice. Therefore, if we want to arouse the great enlightenment citta in us, we also have to firstly acquire the knowledge and put them into practice. This is the main implication here that we have to understand. In many places in the Tipitaka , the Buddha has mentioned, “I practised this, I became the Buddha, all the past Buddhas practised this same path, they attained the great enlightenment. So, anyone can become Buddha if he or she practices it.” This human life is precious because one can be Buddha only in this human form. We do not find Buddha in heavens or any other realms. This great enlightenment lies within every one of us and we should strive to realize it.

How do we attain enlightenment? The Buddha said, “All evil deeds should be abandoned; Good actions should be performed; Mind has to be purified – this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.” All the Buddhas of the past had followed this simple rule and became enlightened. If we follow this, we also will certainly become Buddha. So, after knowing all these we should be aware of what should be done and what should not be done. Thus we should be able to proceed on to practice the dhamma . We will learn to appreciate this precious human life of ours. We will value each and every moment of the life. Because any time, any moment we can lose it, then we may not have the chance to get it back again.