The Four Revolting Thoughts
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Hello and a truly warm welcome to whoever has come to sit down in the Double Doge virtual restaurant and to listen to this episode about the Four Revolting Thoughts. This podcast isn't very old, but I have several times had occasion to mention the foundation practices or the preliminary practices, the ngendro, as we say. When we speak of them, the thing that usually comes to mind is what we call the special preliminaries, including all those prostrations, refuge and bodhicitta prayers, purification mantras, mandala offerings, guru yoga, and so forth. Lots of color, lots to enjoy. But today, I think it's time to look at the four ordinary or common preliminaries, called that because they are not specific to any particular tradition, preliminaries for Buddhist practice as a whole. And it's only on the basis of these preliminary practices, these common ones, that the special preliminaries make any sense.
So let's today take a quick look at these four, namely the precious human birth, impermanence and death, action and fruit, which is also just called karma, and fourthly, suffering. Let me say right here at the beginning, it would be great if you would pause to like this podcast, to subscribe to it on whatever channel you use, to tell your friends and to generally support it. That would be great. Thank you in advance. When these four thoughts have sunk in, the student should be ready to genuinely take refuge in the three jewels. That's the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, as you probably already know. The four thoughts are supposed to make us turn away from the cycle of suffering and towards the Dharma, which is why they're called the four thoughts to turn the mind.
They are intended to bring us to a state of revulsion at the endless suffering and bondage in which we find ourselves, which is why I like to call them the four revolting thoughts. The four repulsive thoughts might also be quite a good term. But there is something that is preliminary even to these four very basic level thoughts. Sometimes this point is just somehow understood, but coming from a non-Buddhist background and culture, as many listeners like myself will be, it might be worth pointing this one out. It's something that was made clear by the very structure of an important text written by Gampopa. I'm referring to the Jewel Ornament of Liberation, or the Dagpog Tajin. Gampopa flourished around the turn of the 12th Common Era century, and he is widely looked on as the main disciple of Milarepa. It must actually be said that Nevertheless, that his style of teaching and life was largely very different from that of Milarepa.
Milarepa had been a wandering yogi, living on alms and dwelling in caves and such places, while Gampapa represented the monastic side of Tibetan Buddhist life, the institutional side. He founded the Khaju monastic order, a large part of which would become the Karma Khaju of today, as well as other important branches of the Khaju. Gampapa did only stay with Milarepa for a fairly short time, and there are those who feel that Milarepa's long-term and very close disciple, Rechongpa, is more deserving of the title of Milarepa's chief disciple. Rechungpa, however, did not found any large or wealthy institutions, so power and money have largely given Gampopa that title. Be that as it may, Gampopa did wonderful work, and one of the fruits of that work was the text I referred to before, the Jewel Ornament. This was one of the first major texts of the class known as the Stages of the Path, or Lamrim.
Some three centuries later Tsongkhapa, who founded the Gelug school, of which the Dalai Lama is the best known representative, if not technically the head, made his own version of the Lamrim genre into a major pillar, a flagship teaching, if you like, of that school. But to return to Gampapa's version, it's worth giving some thought to the fact that before getting into the four revolting thoughts, he points to the main thing behind all of this, the, in Sanskrit, something like Tathagatagarbha, or in Tibetan, something like Sanjin Yingpo, the Buddha essence. Texts may not necessarily refer to this at an early stage,
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