The Four Common Foundations
You should contemplate briefly on the Four Common Foundations before each of the Ngondro practices or any other practice that you do.
The four analytical meditations are on four subjects in accordance with the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of the Nyingma and Kadampa schools. The Nyingma School is the oldest school. It came about in the early 7th century, and the Kadampa, or the New Schools, arrived in the middle of the late 10th and early 11th century. Over time, they became known as the Sakya, Gelug, and Kagyu schools. All of the Buddhist schools and teachings in Tibet were simply Buddhism - there was no old or new this or that; there were no names as there was no division - there was just Buddhism. After the 10th century a revision of the teachings occured when re-establishing Buddhism after its subjugation by a hostile king who was a follower of the pre-Buddhist religion of Bon. He assassinated his brother because he was a dharma king, and then persecuted all Buddhists, forcing them to give up Buddhism to practise Bon. He also desecrated the scriptures, shrines and temples; and the monks and nuns were forced to disrobe.
In each of these four lineages, particularly the early Kadampas and Nyingmas, the sequence of meditating on the four common foundations was: first, the precious human rebirth; second, impermanence; third, the law of cause and effect; and fourth, the shortcomings of samsara. This is the sequence you will find in the Graduated Path to Enlightenment and various other teachings. However, in this Lamdre Tsog-Shey lineage teaching which also belongs to one of the old Kadampas, the meditation on the sequence is slightly different.
The sequence is altered so that you first meditate on the shortcomings of worldly existence in order to arouse sadness and renunciation from the unsatisfactory nature of worldly existence. You need to meditate on these sufferings of the world to induce conviction in the futility, suffering and pitiful nature of worldly existence. They say you should first bring that practice to mind in order to develop a strong sense of renunciation.
Then secondly, you should meditate on the preciousness of the human rebirth. If you have already meditated on all the six realms of existence and their unsatisfactoryness, then you will be able to compare it to your own human rebirth, and see how precious it is. If you have no understanding of the suffering of the world, then you cannot know how precious is this life's opporrtunity to change it. Most people fail to recognise the preciousness of their rebirth because they do not believe that the world is full of suffering. They then over-personalise their life and go too far in being negative about their life.
The third meditation is on impermanence and death. When you are more thoughtful of impermanence and death. your awareness of the shortness of time, and of life in particular, is increased; therefore you begin to prioritise your practice. Even while recognising that their life is very precious, people still tend to believe that they have plenty of time to do a few more things, particularly fruitless things, which shows that they are not fully appreciating preciousness. When you realise impermanence daily you will know how to extract the maximum out of every hour.
Fourth is the teaching on the law of cause and effect: the wholesome qualities of good karma and the unwholesome effects of negative karma. In order to know this you need to know which one of these two you should practise, and which one you should renounce in order to reduce suffering.
If you enter into the dharma, the path and the practices that you learn increase your positive habits. By practising the dharma you learn to disengage from certain habitual patterns that you do not like doing but which you find yourself doing one too many times. You do not know how to break the habit, you do not have the circuit breaker; but the dharma totally breaks the pattern, and then you no longer feel that you have to do those things. You are busily doing your practice - you do not have idle time because you know that time is short and life is even shorter. Dharma practice makes your life meaningful, not only at the time you are doing something, but even the day after; and that is why Ngondro practice is very important: it helps you to not waste your time.
First Common Foundation - the unsatisfactory nature of worldly existence
As you come in to the session you sit down in the right meditation posture and it says here to consider the frustrations of samsara. You briefly think about the futility and the senseless nature of worldly existence. What countries are doing to each other and what some supposedly loving people are doing to each other, to themselves and what they are doing with their time. Just look at them and you feel so sad; whether in this country or another country it is no different as long as people are deluded they are no different. There is not a single place that is perfect everybody is deluded; even in Switzerland they are deluded. People take so much trouble to get to these wonderful countries and when they get there they have all of these things but they are hollow inside. There is so much there but with so little value inside that is not worth what they are doing with themselves.
You meditate that even if you are wealthy there is no real happiness, it temporarily helps but sometimes it bars the very happiness that you seek and it becomes the biggest obstacle. People's obstacles are their comfort, so the demerit of wealth and position is that it becomes an obstacle to even meeting the dharma because people are so cocooned and protected. What then is the merit of wealth, fame and youth? We think that youth is great however the youthful don't think that they are great. They wish that they were older, a bit richer, that they have some influence and that they don't have to put up with old people giving them orders. Youth has no satisfaction and youth suicide is on the rise, yet people want to look young when they are not. When they are young they want to pretend that they are old, they want to get into some happy hour place, saying they are nineteen when they are actually sixteen and then they feel unsatisfactory because they can't get in. People are getting confused and they can't wait to get deluded so there is no satisfactoriness in youth.
In addition, where is the satisfactoriness of the older ones, the richer ones? There is no satisfactoriness in the couples' people think that when they are single they should have somebody. They are always looking for Mr. or Ms. Perfect, but of course when you meet them it becomes perfect suffering. There is no Mr. Perfect there is only the perfect counterpart to make your suffering worse, so there is no satisfactoriness in relationships. Even with or without children, those without children wish they had children but they have no understanding what it is like to have children: There are a lot of joys and so forth but when the parents are deluded then even the children are unsatisfactory. When you are not deluded everything is satisfactory but when you are too attached to your children you want to control them, you want them to do this and not that, not go there but come home at this hour and not that hour.
Unsatisfactoriness doesn't come from wealth or youth or from your partner or having children or no children, unsatisfactoriness comes from your afflictions. This is why you meditate on the defects of samsara, samsara itself is not a place it is the deluded beings that make samsara what it is. Therefore, the first common foundation is meditating on the unsatisfactoriness all of the things which most people aspire to become or to possess. They wish they were wealthy and that they had a higher position; they have no idea how unsatisfactory the higher position is. Most of the CEO's are CEO's in stress, they are the chief executive officer and the chief executive sufferer of stress, there is nothing to be gained from being successful in a high position. There is no satisfaction and that is why you should meditate on this. Whatever your experience is in the world, meditate briefly on the unsatisfactoriness of all things as long as your mind is deluded there is no satisfactoriness in the world. That is why you firstly meditate on the unsatisfactoriness of worldly existence because it is very powerful. If you don't have that you are not sitting there with the right attitude, you are sitting there for the wrong purposes. Your own things distract you and then you are not doing the practice, your mind is here but your heart isn't in it because your mind is distracted.
The first common foundation is not only meditating on the unsatisfactoriness of the human rebirth but more so on an animal rebirth. Just think about their life; a morning, an afternoon when are they happy, safe and peaceful? They have no certitude as to when, where and with whom they will be safe. They don't know if the nest that took a long time to build will still be there as nobody regards their home as a home. There is no certainty as to where they dwell or where their food is going to come from. Even the very appearance of their bodies becomes the cause of their destruction, they have no freedom and they have no rights.
When you really think about their suffering then you realise the preciousness of life and at the same time you develop compassion for these beings because you know they are suffering. What must it be like to be an animal for a day let alone for eighteen years? To be a kangaroo that many love; however they don't feel loved at all, they don't feel that they are the national animal of Australia. They are the national logo on top of parliament but if their numbers don't suit the government they cull them. You can see on the road how satisfying their life is. People bump into them and that's it, it's not their road and too bad because you have to go quickly The mother roo crossing the road may be going to do some grazing so she can feed her young but who respects her needs, so slow down to avoid the destruction of life. You need to meditate not only on the unsatisfactoriness of human life but also on our nearest neighbors and the understanding of the suffering that they have in a day, a week, a month or their whole life.
Then you think about the spirits, the hungry ghosts, hell beings, demi gods and devas. When you read the teachings you induce a great sense of motivation to not create the causes to be reborn in such a life or even as a human being when the world is so troubled. How many are happy human beings in pleasant places and times? Most of them are not, most of them are always trying to get out of one place to go to some other place without realising the pervasive nature of suffering caused by greed, hatred and ignorance. Therefore meditating on the frustrations of samsara is very good to motivate yourself to practice.
If you don't have the first conviction you are less likely to be attracted to the dharma and to practice it. If you are meditating and practicing it is because you wish find a remedy to the afflictions that are the cause of suffering.
The Second Common Foundation - A precious human rebirth
The second common foundation is realising the preciousness of your human rebirth which is to motivate you to appreciate your life. When you comprehend the suffering of worldly existence particularly of the other six realms of existence then you realise how precious your own life is. You definitely know it is precious because if anything is precious to you it is this life. Then you realise that your life is the result of so many good things, you don't remember what you, did but yet you haves merited this life and it is quite amazing.
If you make a positive comparison you can find it very inspiring to see how blessed you are with the life that you have. It is quite remarkably different from that of many other sentient beings or for that matter even among human beings. You then have a deep appreciation for your life as a precious human rebirth. With a positive assessment of your life and seeing it as very precious you can then make a strong resolution to put it to good use without being overly disappointed by the sufferings of the world:
With inspiration and the positive qualities that you currently have, you have the ability to put a dent in the suffering and the causes of suffering of not only yourself but also for all of those around you. The first conviction can leave you feeling overwhelmed but the second conviction actually lifts you up from that feeling of being sunken into suffering, it gives you a breathing space. With a positive outlook you have the ability, to see and to realise how fortunate and blessed you are and that is what we traditionally call realising the preciousness of the human rebirth. It is particularly important to address issues of sadness, depression and loneliness that people may have with this life's temporary difficulties and that a remedy lays within this second conviction.
You may have been saddened and dismayed by the first common foundation but with the second common foundation that dismay has turned into gratitude. You have gratitude for your life and the sadness that you felt has now become compassion. That's why the Buddha's teachings aren't there to make people sad but to make people compassionate. Compassion is not a virtue on its own, it is a positive emotional quality that you can engender when you know and understand the causes of suffering. When you think about our wildlife you are filled with compassion, you can tell because every single hair pore is sensitive to the well being of those animals; when you have that then you develop compassion. You can do that as a human being but others can't and that's why you realise your life is so blessed, because you can do something, no matter how small it is.
Karmically it is very difficult to create the causes to be reborn as a human. It says that many lifetimes of good moral deeds accumulated again and again has merited you to be reborn as a human. Someone with a precious human rebirth sometimes feels very troubled to create the right causes for even this life's happiness let alone for yet another human rebirth. To create the causes for another human life to occur appears to be very difficult, even to make this precious life to be a happy life is hard. Therefore, the chances of repeating the karma that will bless you to have another human rebirth that is as precious, as timely and as fortunate as this one how easy does it seem.
Metaphorically the teachings give the example of a needle on the floor in the middle of the room; you throw a bucketful of peas in the air and see how many of them sit on top of the needle point. Not a single one or maybe one and so the chances of having even a single pea sitting on the needle are very slim. Alternatively, what are the chances of a blind turtle in an immense ocean surfacing once every hundred years and putting his neck through a single floating yoke with a hole in the middle of it?
You have to realise how rare it is for the blind turtle to put his neck through the hole and how difficult it is to obtain a precious human rebirth and yet you have succeeded and then you feel so blessed. By meditating on this and the comparison to other human beings you realise that a precious human rebirth is very rare. Most human beings are merely human beings in form only. A precious human rebirth has many characteristics and qualities that are conducive, to openly receiving the spiritual teachings such as the dharma. Then you appreciate that and then you turn your life from what it is towards a more meaningful direction.
Look at the number of people on this planet, you can count six billion and out of that count how many have a precious human rebirth, very few. Then look at the number of animals, insects and other things in the world, there is no. comparison as to how many animals and insects there are in relation to humans and in particular to precious human beings. The purpose of meditating on the difficulties of gaining a precious human rebirth is to make you assess your life and to think again about how best you can utilise it. In addition, when you know that it is very rare then you know the second point of realisation. "I am going to make it meaningful and achieve enlightenment; I can accrue lots of beneficial factors, if I put this into good use as I have the same potential as the Buddha and Milarepa, as well as the great many teachers who have shown this in their life." You realise you have a precious human rebirth and that you can make it meaningful too. You have to set your mind on it and do it. That is the benefit of thinking that your life is rare and therefore very special. It makes you to do special things so that less than meaningful things do not sway and distract you; and that was exactly the initiative that Shakyamuni Buddha - Prince Siddhartha took.
When you truly want to make your life meaningful then you know how precious it is. Likewise, any other person who has dedicated their life in this way, such as the great masters who have all done a similar thing but on a smaller scale and are not as well know as the Buddha. They didn't achieve enlightenment in the way that the Buddha did but otherwise they were all inspired and made their life meaningful. Therefore, that is the second common foundation, the difficulties of obtaining a precious human rebirth, realising the meaningfulness of it and then resolving to embark on the path of dharma.
The Third Common Foundation - Impermanence and Death
The third point is that if you are going to make your life more meaningful when are you going to do it? Even though your life is rare, precious and meaningful yet it is just as fragile as everything else is. Every container has best before date on it but you don't have that, you don't have a best before on you, so you could be worse off at anytime if you don't practice. At least the jam in the jar you know is good to use for another two years, it at least has some definite lifespan: However, does any human being have a definite lifespan? No, so that is what you have to think about.
The law of impermanence and death is to induce diligence into your practice of the dharma.You know your life is precious, very rare and you are special but what are you going to do with it? When are you going to practice? In the winter you think you will do it in the summer and if you are in a cold place you think you should go to a warm place, when you are on your own you wish you could do it with many other people and when you are doing it with other people you wish you could be on your own. You can never quite make up your mind as to the appropriateness of the time of doing the practices. Sometimes you become a little bit complacent and lazy and not actually do anything, this life is so precious but you are not doing very much with it. You get a bit of food, clothes, shelter and medicine but that's nothing special even birds and the wildlife can look after that without doing twelve years of study.
If you haven't had the realisation of impermanence and death you have the attitude of, oh yes death is so certain and yet people think it won't happen to them just yet. Most people die at unexpected times and places; on the way to a place or to do something, they never had the opportunity to get there and that is the danger of wasting time. You need to increase your motivation at the beginning of the session to do the practice wholeheartedly, so you focus your concentration and then it becomes much sharper.
If a doctor tells you that you have cancer and that you only have five months to live he is really brave telling yqu that. If he is a Buddhist doctor he would say that we in the medical profession believe that you have only five months to live, but as a Buddhist would like to tell you that you will die at anytime. I mean that is a normal prognosis about life whether you are a doctor or pot. It is very brave to say that you have five months to live but if you realise impermanence you are far ahead of time. Moreover, who would be worrying about any tests because how many people without any illness perish just like that. Like a hot air balloon, ballooning is very dangerous, it looks like it is going to dropout of the sky at anytime if the gas is not blowing, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzwhap and that's it.
How much hot air of karma do you have to live a long life? The balloon has at least got a tank, where is the tank of your long life, how do you know you are guaranteed to live long? When you realise this it increases your urgency and then you prioritise our time. Then you really begin to focus on your practice, you trim down many things and you don't have many desires, you only have one aspiration and then you become the decider of what to do with your time.
It is a tragedy to waste a precious life and with a growing sense of conviction you realise that death is so inevitable and that it is getting closer. Some teachings say it is uncertain but I dispute that I think it is certain, certainly getting closer and closer. It is not uncertain, if there is one thing that is certain that is death, whether you walk, lie down, run fast or hide in a cave, wherever you go death is going to follow you. However, the irony of that is that most people just don't realise that it is coming, as if it is something that you can put off like many other good things you put off doing. Death has its own timeliness and you need to realise the urgency of the situation.
However if you have certain commitments in your life they should be treated with respect. You reduce and prioritise, it makes you to enter the path of dharma and travel on the path. It doesn't meant that you don't take care of those responsibilities you might have to your elderly relatives, to your young children and to those in your care, you do all of that; but you learn to prioritise. You will reserve the right to practice; you are not going to trade that off just to do some things with other people when it is totally contradictory, to the spirit of your practice. You love them but if you don't like it don't do it, even with the loved ones. It is a very powerful renunciation, renunciation means being able to break, to make a difference in terms of drawing a boundary that has consistency. It is not just to push the other away but also to be able to reserve your own spiritual freedom. You value your freedom so much yet you are losing your freedom to some other person and then neither of you get any benefit from each other, all you will succeed in doing is losing your freedom even to practice.
With the realisation of impermanence, death and definitely time, what you own and what you don't need has become very important, as the less you have the more you focus your on your practice. Otherwise there are many lists of things to do and practice is 37th on the list. You keep busy doing the first five all year and when does your practice, feature? When you haven't realised the significance of impermanence and death your practice doesn't get a lot of consideration.
Henceforth, this third, common foundation is the conviction of great urgency to not fall prey to laziness; instead you strive with the greatest joyful diligence to practice the dharma. When you ask these very perennial, important questions, "What can I do, how do I know that doing this is good as opposed to doing that, what should I do with this life and what should I do every day?" and then you are really seeking. Often you don't know what to do or what not to do, so take refuge and contemplate the law of cause and effect. You need to realise that everything you do has a result, therefore you must know how to create the relevant causes for happiness and that is where the preliminary practices come in. You have to learn how to create the causes for temporary happiness for the day; if you practice every day every day is happy and even on those days when you are unable to do much practice the happiness still seems to last.
The Fourth Common Foundation - the Law of Causality
The fourth common foundation is the conviction of the law of causality. Any effect that, you want to have such as happiness; success or whatever you have to create the relevant causes, you can't experience happiness unless you have created the causes for it. You realise it is not a belief in God, Buddha or anything; you have to create the causes by yourself.
That's why it says it is difficult to obtain the favourable circumstances for the practice of dharma. However, with the recollection of the impermanence of life and the infallibility of karma, you induce upon your mindstream the feeling of sadness and renunciation to do the practice. Moreover, the reason why you meditate on the suffering of worldly existence and beings is because each and every one of them in spite of our temporal differences have been and are our past life's mothers and our past life's fathers. Because of the constant changing of your life you don't remember your past mothers. You have had so many mothers, therefore you say, "I am going to do this practice for the benefit of all sentient beings " because usually you do everything for yourself. Then, you don't have this feeling of guilt of not doing things for or with others. You sincerely wish that this is what I can do at the moment to benefit others and myself, if you really love them this is whom you are going to dedicate to.
You are going to change your attitude towards them by doing this practice and this is a very powerful way to repay their kindness. You resolve to practice the path and that is the best way that you can help. Shakyamuni Buddha as Prince Siddhartha had this thought and had he not thought this he wouldn't have left a very comfortable life to sit under a tree like a kangaroo. Moreover, he did it despite the fact that his family, his kingdom and the people who loved and respected him wished him to stay. They were all very much in his heart but he didn't tell them that, first he had to qualify that by doing it. In addition, this is exactly what wishing to repay the kindness of all sentient beings is, you resolve to practice the path of dharma.
It is good to reflect on these four common foundations before you begin a meditation or practice session.
You need to be thankful for today and look forward to tomorrow. When you rise in the morning it is for the benefit of all sentient beings and you do this practice with that kind of anticipation. You have to keep doing this pattern everyday and then slowly there is a transformation in your mind. It takes a long time to carve a statue out of rock, but the statue is in the rock, you just need to chip away the other parts of the rock and that is what you are doing. You are chipping away the rock to see what is in you that is Buddha-like, dharma-like or sangha-like and that you will,try to manifest it. Every effort that you make, sometimes a little rubbing at other times you use a chisel, but whatever effort you make the smoothness of the statue that is in the rock is going to manifest, that is your Buddha nature.
When you rise up in the mornings happily leap out of the bed of sleep, who wants to sleep when you can wake up, it is just a whole analogy of an Awakened One. It is all so motivating; the intention is to wake up for a greater purpose than normal. Your love and devotion for the dharma makes you to incorporate every behaviour whether going to sleep or rising up in the morning, it seems that your life is part of the dharma and you don't know how to do anything but that.
In addition, there are all of the right actions of the noble eight-fold path, not only when you are doing a retreat or a session but outside of that as well. You will find that your mind has this light and it shines before you like a lamp. It will help you to tell where it is safe to put your feet and then you won't be putting them mistakenly into a puddle. Every step of the practice becomes worthy of mindfulness and your right concentration seems to accentuate your capacity to be that much more mindful during the day with all the other aspects of your life.