Renunciation
renunciation (Tib: nge-jung)
Literally “definite emergence". The state of mind not having the slightest attraction to samsaric pleasures for even a second and having the strong wish for liberation. The first of the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment. Cf. bodhicitta and emptiness.
Renunciation The wish to be released from samsara.
Janussonin: I hold that there is no one who, subject to Death, is not afraid or in terror of Death.
The Buddha: There are those who, subject to Death, are afraid and in terror of Death. And there are those who, subject to Death, are not afraid or in terror of Death.
Renunciation is not a wish to abandon our family, friends, home, job, and so forth and become like a beggar; rather, it is a mind that functions to stop attachment to worldly pleasures and that seeks liberation from contaminated rebirth.
We must learn to stop our attachment through the practice of renunciation or it will be a serious obstacle to our pure spiritual practice. Just as a bird cannot fly if it has stones tied to its legs, so we cannot make progress on the spiritual path if we are tightly tied down by the chains of attachment.
The time to practice renunciation is now, before our death. We need to reduce our attachment to worldly pleasures by realizing that they are deceptive and cannot give real satisfaction. In reality, they cause us only suffering.
This human life with all its suffering and problems is a great opportunity for us to improve both our renunciation and our compassion. We should not waste this precious opportunity.
The realization of renunciation is the gateway through which we enter the spiritual path to liberation, or nirvana. Without renunciation, it is impossible even to enter the path to the supreme happiness of nirvana, let alone progress along it.
To develop and increase our renunciation, we can repeatedly contemplate the following:
Because my consciousness is beginningless, I have taken countless rebirths in samsara. I have already had countless bodies; if they were all gathered together, they would fill the entire world, and all the blood and other bodily fluids that have flowed through them would form an ocean. So great has been my suffering in all these previous lives that I have shed enough tears of sorrow to form another ocean.
In every single life, I have experienced the sufferings of sickness, ageing, death, being separated from those I love, and being unable to fulfil my wishes. If I do not attain permanent liberation from suffering now, I shall have to experience these sufferings again and again in countless future lives.
Contemplating this, from the depths of our heart we make a strong determination to abandon attachment to worldly pleasures and attain permanent liberation from contaminated rebirth. By putting this determination into practice, we can control our attachment and thereby solve many of our daily problems.
And who is the person who, subject to Death, is afraid and in terror of Death? There is the case of the person who has not abandoned passion, desire, fondness, thirst, fever, and Craving for sensuality. When he comes down with a serious disease, the thought occurs to him, "O, those beloved sensual pleasures will be taken from me, and I will be taken from them!" He grieves and is tormented, weeps, beats his breast, and grows delirious...
Furthermore, there is the case of the person who has not abandoned passion, desire, fondness, thirst, fever, and Craving for the Body. When he is touched by a serious disease, the thought occurs to him, "O, my beloved Body will be taken from me, and I will be taken from my Body!" He grieves and is tormented, weeps, beats his breast, and grows delirious...
Furthermore, there is the case of the person who has not done what is good, has not done what is skillful, has not given protection to those in fear, and instead has done what is Evil, savage, and cruel. When he comes down with a serious disease, the thought occurs to him, "...After Death I am headed for the destination of those who have done what is Evil, savage, and cruel." He grieves and is tormented, weeps, beats his breast, and grows delirious...
Furthermore, there is the case of the person in Doubt and perplexity, who has not arrived at certainty with regard to the True Dhamma. When he comes down with a serious disease, the thought occurs to him, "How doubtful and perplexed I am! I have not arrived at any certainty with regard to the True Dhamma!" He grieves and is tormented, weeps, beats his breast, and grows delirious. This is another person who, subject to Death, is afraid and in terror of Death.
And who is the person who is not afraid or in terror of Death? There is the case of the person who has abandoned passion, desire, fondness, thirst, fever, and Craving for sensuality... who has abandoned passion, desire, fondness, thirst, fever, and Craving for the Body... who has done what is good, what is skillful, has given protection to those in fear, and has not done what is Evil, savage, or cruel... who has no Doubt or perplexity, who has arrived at certainty with regard to the True Dhamma. When he comes down with a serious disease... he does not grieve, is not tormented, does not weep or beat his breast or grow delirious. This is another person who, subject to Death, is not afraid or in terror of Death.
— A IV.184
Now at that time, Ven. Bhaddiya Kaligodha, on going to a forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty dwelling, would repeatedly exclaim, "What bliss! What bliss!" Many monks heard him... repeatedly exclaim, "What bliss! What bliss!" and on hearing him, the thought occurred to them, "There's no Doubt but that Ven. Bhaddiya Kaligodha is not enjoying the holy Life, for when he was a Householder he enjoyed royal pleasures, so that now, on recollecting them, he is exclaiming, "What bliss! What bliss!" They went to the Blessed One... and told him... and he told a certain Monk, "Come, Monk. In my name, call Bhaddiya, saying, "The Teacher calls you, my friend."
"Yes, Lord," the Monk answered...
Then Ven. Bhaddiya went to where the Blessed One was staying and, on arrival, having bowed down, sat to one side. As he was sitting there, the Blessed One said to him, "Is it true, Bhaddiya that, on going to a forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty dwelling, you repeatedly exclaim, "What bliss! What bliss!"
"Yes, Lord."
"What do you have in mind that you repeatedly exclaim, "What bliss! What bliss!"
"Before, when I was a Householder, maintaining my reign, I had guards posted within and without the royal apartments, within and without the city, within and without the countryside. But even though I was thus guarded, thus protected, I dwelled in fear — agitated, distrustful, and afraid. But now, on going alone to a forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty dwelling, I dwell without fear, unagitated, confident, and unafraid — unconcerned, unruffled, my wants satisfied, with my mind like a wild deer. This is what I have in mind that I repeatedly exclaim, "What bliss! What bliss!"
Source
This teaching was given at Vajra Yogini Institute, France, in 1982. It is an excerpt from Lama Yeshe's book The Essence of Tibetan Buddhism, Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, Boston, 2001. Edited by Nicholas Ribush. Printed in the September 2001 issue of Mandala Magazine.
We would all like to be free from ego mind and the bondage of samsara, but what is it that binds us to samsara and makes us unhappy? It’s not having renunciation. So, what is renunciation? What makes us renounced?
The reason we are unhappy is that we have extreme craving for sense objects, samsaric objects, and we grasp at them. We are seeking to solve our problems, but we are not seeking in the right place. The right place is our own ego grasping; we have to loosen that tightness, that’s all.
According to the Buddhist point of view, monks and nuns are supposed to hold renunciation vows. The meaning of monks and nuns renouncing the world is that they have less craving for and grasping at sense objects. But you cannot say that they have already given up samsara, because monks and nuns still have stomachs! The thing is that the English word “renounce” is linguistically tricky. You can say that monks and nuns renounce their stomachs, but that doesn’t mean that they actually throw their stomachs away.
So, I want you to understand that renouncing sensory pleasure doesn’t mean throwing nice things away. Even if you do, it doesn’t mean you have renounced them. Renunciation is a totally inner experience. Renunciation of samsara does not mean you throw samsara away because your body and your nose are samsara. How can you throw your nose away? Your mind and body are samsara--well, at least mine are. So I cannot throw them away. Therefore, renunciation means less craving; it means being more reasonable instead of putting too much psychological pressure on yourself and acting crazy.
The important point for us to know, then, is that we should have less grasping at sense pleasures, because most of the time our grasping at and craving desire for worldly pleasure does not give us satisfaction. That is the main point. It leads to more dissatisfaction and to psychologically crazier reactions.
If you have the wisdom and method to handle objects of the five senses perfectly such that they do not bring negative reactions, it’s all right for you to touch them. And, as human beings, we should be capable of judging for ourselves how far we can go into the experience of sense pleasure without getting mixed up and confused. We should judge for ourselves; it is completely up to individual experience. It’s like French wine--some people cannot take it at all. Even though they would like to, the constitution of their nervous system doesn’t allow it. But other people can take a little; others can take a bit more; some can take a lot.
Now, I want you to understand why Buddhist scriptures completely forbid monks and nuns from drinking wine. It is not because wine is bad; grapes are bad. Grapes and vines are beautiful; the color of red wine is fantastic. But because we are ordinary beginners on the path to liberation, we easily get caught up in negative energy. That’s the reason. It is not that wine itself is bad. This is a good example for renunciation.
Who was the great Indian saint who drank wine? Do you remember that story? I don’t recall who it was, but this saint went into a bar and drank and drank until the bartender finally asked him, “When are you going to pay?” The saint replied, “I’ll pay when the sun sets.” But the sun didn’t set and the saint just kept on drinking. The bartender wanted his money but somehow the saint controlled the sun, and didn’t allow it to set. These kinds of higher realizations--we can call them miraculous or esoteric realizations--are beyond the comprehension of ordinary people like us, but the saint in this story was able to control the sun and drank perhaps thirty gallons of wine. And he didn’t even have to pee!
Now, my point is that renunciation of samsara is not only the business of monks and nuns. Whoever seeks liberation or enlightenment needs renunciation of samsara. If you check your own life, your own daily experiences, you will see that you are caught up in small pleasures--we Buddhists consider such grasping to be a tremendous hang-up and of very little value. However, the Western way of thinking--“I should have the best; the biggest”--is similar to our Buddhist attitude that we should have the best, most lasting, perfect pleasure rather than spending our lives fighting for the pleasure of a glass of wine.
Therefore, you need to abandon your grasping attitude and other useless actions and actualize things that make your life meaningful and liberated.
However, I don’t want you to understand only the philosophical point of view. We are capable of examining our own minds and comprehending what kind of mind brings everyday problems and is not worthwhile, both objectively and subjectively. This is the way that meditation allows us to correct our attitudes and actions. Don’t think, “My attitudes and actions come from my previous karma, therefore I can’t do anything.” That’s a misunderstanding of karma. Don’t think, “I am powerless.” Human beings do have power. We have the power to change our lifestyles, change our attitudes, change our habits. We can call that capacity Buddha potential, God potential or whatever you want to call it. That’s why Buddhism is simple. It is a universal teaching that can be understood by all people, religious or non-religious.
The opposite of renunciation of samsara--to put what I’m saying another way--is the extreme mind that we have most of the time: the grasping, craving mind that gives us an overestimated projection of objects, which has nothing to with the reality of those objects.
But you should understand that Buddhism is not saying that objects have no beauty whatsoever. They do have beauty--a flower has a certain beauty, but that beauty is only conventional, or relative. The craving mind, however, projects onto an object something that is beyond the relative level, which has nothing to do with that object, that hypnotizes us. That mind is hallucinating, deluded and holding onto a mistaken entity.
Without intensive observation or introspective wisdom, we cannot discover this. For that reason, Buddhist meditation includes checking. We call checking in this way “analytical meditation.” It involves logic; it involves philosophy. So, Buddhist philosophy and psychology help us see things better. Therefore, analytical meditation is a scientific way of analyzing our own experience.
Finally, I also want you to understand that monks and nuns may not be renounced at all. It’s true, isn’t it? In Buddhism, we talk about superficial structure and universal structure. So when we say monks and nuns renounce, it means we’re trying, that’s all. Westerners sometimes think monks and nuns are holy. We’re not holy; we’re just trying. That’s reasonable. Don’t overestimate again, on that. Lay people, monks and nuns--we’re all members of the Buddhist community. We should understand each other well and then let go; leave things as they are. It’s unhealthy to have overestimated expectations of each other.
