Dhammapada and the Jataka Tales; 22-February-2008 (Day 1 of 7; Afternoon) - Dalai Lama Audio Teachings on Tibetan Buddhism Podcast

The two texts His Holiness the Dalai Lama is to teach belong to the Six Major Texts of the Kadampa Tradition: the Jatakas and Udarnavaga (Dhammapada); Asanga’s Bodhisattva Grounds and Maitreya’s Ornament of Sutras; finally, Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life and Compendium of Trainings. His Holiness clarifies that his approach to presenting the Buddhadharma is first to describe its benefit and second how to put it into practice. All sentient beings yearn for happiness, but not all know how to achieve it. Clearly, material development counts for a lot, but not if it increases your anxiety. More important is having a calm mind. Recently doctors have demonstrated that medication alone does not affect a cure; calmness of mind also has a role to play. Cultivating love and affection, warm-heartedness in our relations with others is a source of inner calm. His Holiness contrasts religious views of a creator god, the self and so forth. Buddhism has no use for a creator god, seeing instead that everything is subject to dependent arising, the existence of causes and conditions. Likewise, the self does not exist the way it appears, that is, as a singular, independent entity apart from the body and mind. The self is described as a merely designation on the basis of these. With regard to the Four Noble Truths, the existence of suffering, its causes, of which ignorance is principal, its cessation and the path to that; it is clarified that whereas mind has no beginning or end, ignorance does have an end. Beginning to read the Udarnavaga, a compilation of the Buddha’s advice that, as the Dhammapada is a major text of the Pali tradition, the first chapter concerns impermanence.