Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand

A Concise Discourse on the Path to Enlightenment

Pabongka, Trijang, Michael Richards

• Publisher: Wisdom Publications
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780861715008
• eBook ISBN: 9780861719457
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

Pabongka Rinpoche was one the twentieth century's most charismatic and revered Tibetan lamas, and in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand we can see why. In this famous twenty-four-day teaching on the lamrim, or stages of the path, Pabongka Rinpoche weaves together lively stories and quotations with frank observations and practical advice to move readers step by step along the journey to buddhahood. When his student Trijang Rinpoche first edited and published these teachings in Tibetan, an instant classic was born. The flavor and immediacy of the original Tibetan are preserved in Michael Richards' fluid and lively translation, which is now substantially revised in this new edition.

PART ONE

THE PRELIMINARIES

KYABJE PABONGKA RINPOCHE

DAY 1

Kyabje Pabongka Rinpoche, a peerless king of the Dharma, spoke a little in order to set our motivations properly for the teaching to follow. He said:

So be it. The great Tsongkapa, the Dharma king of the three realms, has said:

This opportune physical form

Is worth more than a wish-granting gem.

You only gain its like the once.

So hard to get, so easily destroyed,

It’s like a lightning bolt in the sky.

Contemplate this, and you will realize

All worldly actions are but winnowed chaff,

And night and day you must

Extract some essence from your life.

I, the yogi, practiced this way;

You, wanting liberation, do the same!

In all our births from beginningless time till the present, there has not been any form of suffering we have not undergone here in sa˙s›ra, nor any form of happiness we have not experienced. But no matter how many bodies we have had, we have obtained nothing worthwhile from them. Now that we have gained this optimum human form, we should do something to derive some essence from it. So long as we do not examine this life, we will feel no joy whatsoever in finding such a supreme rebirth, and would probably be happier on finding some pennies; we will not feel at all sorry if we waste this optimum human rebirth; we would probably feel much more regret if we lost some money. But this physical form we have now is a hundred thousand times more valuable than any wish-granting jewel.

If you were to clean a wish-granting jewel by washing it three times, polishing it three times, and then offer it at the top of a victory banner, you would effortlessly obtain the good things of this life — food, clothes, and the like. You may obtain a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, even a hundred thousand such gems, but they cannot do for you even the smallest thing that you can achieve by means of this rebirth, for they cannot be used to prevent you from taking your next rebirth in the lower realms. With your present physical form you can prevent yourself from ever going to the lower realms again. Moreover, if you want to achieve the physical rebirth of a Brahm›, an Indra, and so forth, you can achieve it through your present one. If you want to go to pure realms such as Abhırati, Sukh›vatı, or Tu˝hita, you can do so by means of this present physical rebirth. And this is not all, for you can even achieve the states of liberation or omniscience through this present rebirth — unless you don’t practice. Most important of all, through this physical rebirth you are able to achieve the state of Vajradhara [the unification of the illusory body and great bliss] within one short lifetime in this degenerate age; otherwise it would take three countless great eons to achieve. Thus, this rebirth is worth more than one thousand billion precious jewels.

If you meaninglessly squander this rebirth that you have managed to obtain, it would be an even greater pity than if you had wasted one thousand billion precious jewels. There is no greater loss; nothing could be blinder; no self-deception could be greater. Protector ⁄h›ntideva said:

No self-deception could be worse

After gaining such a chance

Than not cultivating virtue!

Nothing could be blinder!

You must therefore try to extract essence from it now. If you don’t, you are sure to die anyway, and you cannot know when that will happen.

We are now attending this Dharma teaching, but none of us will be left in a hundred years’ time. In the past, Buddha, our Teacher, amassed the two collections [of merit and primal wisdom] over many eons, thus obtaining the vajra body. Yet even he, to the common appearance, went to nirv›˚a [beyond suffering]. After him, there came scholars, adepts, translators, and pandits to both India and Tibet, but they have all seemingly departed this life. Nothing is left of them but their names to say “There was this one and some other.” In short, there is no one you can produce as an example of a person who death has spared. How could you alone live forever? You have no hope of being spared.

Therefore, not only are you sure to die, but also you cannot be certain when this will happen. You cannot even be sure that you will still be alive next year in the human realm, still wearing your three types of monk’s robes.¹ By this time next year, you may have already been reborn as an animal covered in shaggy fur, with horns on your head. Or you may have been born as a hungry ghost, for example, having to live without being able to find any food or even a drop of water. Or you may have been reborn in the hells, having to experience the miseries of heat and cold, being roasted or on fire.

Your mental continuum does not cease after your death; it must take rebirth. There are only two migrations for rebirth — the upper and the lower realms. If you are born in the Hell Without Respite, you will have to stay there with your body indistinguishable from the hellfire. In the milder hells, such as the Hell of Continual Resurrection, you are killed and then revived hundreds of times each day: you continually suffer torments. How could we endure this if we cannot even bear to put our hand in a fire now? And we will suffer in these hells the same way that we would suffer from such heat in our present bodies. We might wonder, “Maybe the experience [suffering] is different, and easier?” but that is wrong.

If reborn as a hungry ghost you will not be able to find so much as a drop of water for years. If you find it hard to observe a fasting retreat now, how could you endure such a rebirth? And as for the animal rebirths, take the case of being a dog. Examine in detail the sort of places where they live, the way they have to go in search of food and the sort of food they eventually find. Do you think you could possibly bear living that sort of life? You may feel, “The lower realms are far away.” But between you and the lower realms is only that you can still draw breath.

As long as we remain uncritical, we never suspect that we are going to the lower realms. We probably think that we more or less keep our vows, perform most of our daily recitations, and have not committed any serious sin, such as killing a person and running off with his horse. The trouble is we have not looked into things properly. We should think it over in detail; then we would see that we are not free to choose whether we go to the lower realms or not. This is determined by our karma. We have a mixture of virtuous and nonvirtuous karma in our mental streams. The stronger of these two will be triggered by craving and clinging when we die. When we look into which of these two is the stronger in our mental streams, we will see that it is nonvirtue. And the degree of strength is determined by the force of the motive, the deed, and the final step. Thus, although we might think we have only done small nonvirtues, their force is in fact enormous.

Let us take an example. Suppose you say one scornful word to your pupils, for instance. You are motivated by strong hostility and, as for the deed, you use the harshest words that will really wound them. And for the final step, you feel proud and have an inflated opinion of yourself. These three parts — motivation, deed, and final step — could not have been done better! Suppose you kill a louse. Your motive is strong hostility. You roll the louse between your fingers, and so on, torturing it a long while, then eventually you kill it. For the final step, you think “That was helpful” and become very smug. So the nonvirtue has become extremely powerful.

We might feel our virtue is very strong, but in fact it is extremely weak. The preparation, the motive, the main part of the deed, the final step, dedicating the virtue, etc. — all have to be done purely if the virtue is to be very strong. Contrast this with the virtue we perform. First, there is our motive. I think it is rare for us to be motivated by even the least of motives, a yearning for a better rebirth — let alone have the best of motives, bodhichitta [the mind that aspires to enlightenment], or the next best, renunciation. Right at the beginning, we usually aspire to achieve desires related to this life’s trivia; any prayers we make to this end are in fact sinful. Then, for the main part of the deed, there is no pure joy or enthusiasm to it; when we recite even one rosary of o˙ ma˚i padme hÒ˙, for example, our minds cannot stay focused the whole time. Everything is either sleep or distraction! It is difficult to do things well for even the time it takes to recite the Hundreds of Gods of Tu˝hita once. And when it comes to making the final prayers and dedications, we slip back into directing them toward this life. So, although we might feel we have performed great virtues, in fact they are only feeble.

Sometimes we do not prepare properly; at other times we botch the motive or the final step; and there are times when we don’t do any of them properly. Thus only the nonvirtuous karma in our mental streams is very strong; it is the only possible thing that will be activated when we die. And if this is what indeed happens, the place where we will go could only be the lower realms. That is why it is definite we shall be reborn in the lower realms. Now, we say that our lamas possess clairvoyance, and we ask them for dice divinations or prophecies on where we shall take rebirth. We feel relieved if they say, “You will get a good rebirth,” and are afraid if the answer is, “It will be bad.” But how can we have any confidence in such predictions? We do not need dice divinations, prophecies, or horoscopes to tell us where we will go in our next lives. Our compassionate Teacher has already given us predictions in the sÒtra basket [sÒtra pi˛aka]. We have also received them from many pandits and adepts of both India and Tibet. For example, Ārya N›g›rjuna says in his Precious Garland:

From nonvirtue comes all suffering

And likewise all the lower realms.

From virtue come all upper realms

And all happy rebirths.

We cannot be certain — even by means of direct valid cognition — of such things as where we will go in our future rebirths. Nevertheless, our Teacher correctly perceived this extremely obscure object of valid cognition and taught on it without error. Thus we can be certain only by using the Buddha’s valid scriptures for an inference based on trust.

So, if it is so definite that we shall be reborn in the lower realms, from this moment on we must look for some means to stop it from happening. If we really want to be free of the lower realms, we should seek some refuge to protect us. For example, a criminal sentenced to execution will seek the protection of an influential official in order to escape punishment. If we have become tainted by intolerably sinful karma through our misdeeds, we are in danger of being punished under [karmic] law and of going to the lower realms. We should seek the refuge of the Three Jewels [Buddha, Dharma, and Saºgha], because only they can protect us from this fate. But we must not just seek this refuge; we must also modify our behavior.² If there were some way the buddhas could rid us of our sins and obscurations by, say, washing them away with water, or by leading us by the hand, they would have already done so, and we would now have no suffering. They do not do this. The Great One taught the Dharma; it is we who must modify our behavior according to the laws of cause and effect, and do so unmistakenly. It says in a sÒtra:

The sages do not wash sin away with water;

They do not rid beings of suffering with their hands;

They do not transfer realizations of suchness onto others.

They liberate by teaching the truth of suchness.

Thus you should feel, “I shall seek refuge in the Three Jewels in order to be free of the lower realms, and I shall adopt the means to free me from these realms. I shall modify my behavior according to the laws of cause and effect.” This is setting your motivation on the level of the lamrim shared with the small scope.

All the same, is it enough merely to be free of the lower realms? No, it is not. You will only achieve one or two physical rebirths in the upper realms before falling back to the lower realms when your evil karma catches up with you. This is not the ultimate answer, not something in which you can put your trust. We have in fact obtained many rebirths in the upper realms and afterward have fallen back into the lower realms. We are sure to fall back the same way yet again. In our past rebirths, we took the form of the powerful gods Brahm› and Indra and lived in celestial palaces. This happened many times, yet we left these rebirths and had to writhe on the red-hot iron surface of the hells. Again and again this happened. In the celestial realms, we enjoyed the nectar of the gods; then, when we left these rebirths, we had to drink molten iron in the hells. We amused ourselves in the company of many gods and goddesses, then had to live surrounded by terrifying guardians of hell. We were reborn as universal emperors and ruled over hundreds of thousands of subjects; and then we were born as the meanest serfs and slaves, such as donkey drivers and cowherds. Sometimes we were born as sun and moon gods, and our bodies gave off so much light that we illuminated the four continents.³ Then we were born in the depths of the ocean between continents, where it was so dark we could not even see the movements of our own limbs. And so on. No matter what you achieve of this sort of worldly happiness, it is untrustworthy and has no worth.

We have already experienced so much suffering, but as long as we are not liberated from sa˙s›ra [cyclic existence], we must experience very much more. If all the filthy things — all the dung and dirt we have eaten in our past animal rebirths as dogs and pigs — were piled up in one place, the dung heap would be bigger than Meru, the king of mountains. Yet we will have to eat even more filth as long as we are still not liberated from sa˙s›ra. If all our heads cut off by past enemies were piled up, the top o...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Translator’s Introduction
• Pabongka Rinpoche: A Memoir by Rilbur Rinpoche
• The Text
• Part One: The preliminaries
• Part Two: The Preparatory Rites
• Part Three: The Foundations of the Path
• Part Four: The Small Scope
• Part Five: The Medium Scope
• Part Six: The Great Scope
• Colophon by Trijang Rinpoche
• Appendixes
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• Translator’s Dedication
• About the Authors
• About Wisdom
• Copyright