Reading from 'Song of the Four Mindfulnesses' by the Seventh Dalai Lama
"....To have all the eight qualities and ten endowments of a perfect human rebirth is almost a unique chance..."
Those of you who don’t know, read about the eight qualities and ten endowments. The information is in all Lamrim texts and also in Lamrim teachings.
But just briefly this:
the ten endowments are divided into two: five from the point of view of time and five from the point of view of the individual. It is actually very obvious: I can see, I can hear, I can understand. I can communicate. Time wise, Buddha’s teaching is still alive; we can still connect with the living tradition and obtain total enlightenment. These ten endowments give us the opportunity.
The eight leisures are also easy to follow. If you are in the hell realms you have no time to practice. As a hungry ghost you are too hungry to practice. In the animal realms you are too dull to have an opportunity to practice. If you are reborn in the samsaric god realms, there is too much pleasure, so you won’t be able to practice. In the demi-god realms there is too much anger and jealousy; so you won’t have an opportunity to practice.
But in the human realm we do have the opportunity. "...and it is also extremely rare to hear the complete teachings and to have time to put them into practice." This is true. Let’s say this was the 1930s in America or anywhere in Europe. If you were to look for Buddhism you wouldn’t find anything at all. Also, in a couple of decades from now it won’t be here anymore either. This is really the period in between where you can really gain something. In the second half of the 1900s and now in the 2000s there is a unique opportunity because something had happened in this country to open it up. We have to thank the people of the 1960s for that. They opened up the human mind to this possibility. It was the beatnik poets and others who tried to explore the human mind. If they hadn’t done that in the 1960s we wouldn’t be doing this today, for sure. The opportunity has come to us just at the right time ~ Gelek Rimpoche, The Four Mindfulnesses, 2009, p. 13 https://www.jewelheart.org/
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