In reflecting on the life insights shared on this website, once again the Buddhist teaching known as the Four Mind Changings, or Four Reminders, came to mind. As shared earlier on this website, they are as follows:
(1) Precious human birth
(2) Impermanence and death
(3) Karma: cause and effect
(4) Suffering of samsara
These Four Reminders can serve as a foundational understanding for everyone, regardless of faith, because they provide a description of the way reality works. In other words, they can serve as a basis for correct perception and spiritual practice.
Without this foundational understanding, we are subject to common misperceptions of reality which inevitably cause confusion, stress, dissatisfaction, and suffering. We need, therefore, to radically shift our basic perception of reality.
As we contemplate the Four Thoughts — integrating their deep wisdom into our awareness — we transform our mind and heart, thus bringing about an essential and needed shift in our perception and in our way of living.
In this way, the Four Mind Changings help to purify ignorance, delusion, and attachment, and will continually strengthen and clarify our spiritual practice.
By contemplating the Four Thoughts we also overcome the eight mundane worldly concerns (attachment to gain, pleasure, fame, and praise; aversion to loss, pain, bad reputation, and blame); we find the inspiration to transform our non-virtuous behaviour; and we are motivated to embrace those aspects of life which are of true and lasting value.
This excellent foundational teaching brings greater insight, wisdom, loving-kindness, and compassion – the very heart of Dharma or spiritual practice.
Source: Based on “Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind Toward Dharma” in The Heart of Dharma Collection. Used with permission from https://sourcepointglobaloutreach.org/what-we-offer/
The Four Reminders
(1) This human existence with all its freedoms and endowments is extremely difficult to attain.
It enables one to accomplish the meaning of one’s being.
Having attained such a precious existence,
If one does not accomplish benefit at this time,
How could one achieve this perfect treasure in the future?
(2) The three realms are as impermanent as autumn clouds.
The births and deaths of beings are like a dance performance.
Flashing by like lightning in the sky, the life span of beings
Races swiftly like a waterfall over a steep mountain.
(3) When the time comes for even a king to depart,
Neither his riches nor loved ones, relatives, and friends will follow.
Wherever beings abide, wherever they go,
Karma alone follows them like a shadow.
(4) Overpowered by existence, craving, and ignorance,
All beings–humans, gods, and beings of the three lower realms–
Circle unwittingly in the five realms of existence
Like the spinning of a potter’s wheel.
The three realms blaze with the sufferings of old age and sickness,
And there is no protector from the raging flames of death.
Born into cyclic existence, beings dwell continually in ignorance,
Circling like bees trapped in a jar.
Source: Khandro Rinpoche. This Precious Life: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on the Path to Enlightenment. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications, 2003. (Translated by Jetsün Dechen Paldrön and edited by the Dharmasri Translation Group, Baltimore, 2001)
Website: the-four-thoughts.org
Alexander Peck has created a website covering the Four Thoughts in more detail. The website link is: http://the-four-thoughts.org/
The Four Reminders are a fourfold preliminary practice to inspire our mind toward Dharma meditation, which involves thinking about:
(1) The preciousness of human life,
(2) The impermanence of life,
(3) The suffering nature of the world, and
(4) Karma, the cycle of causation.
(Tulku Thondup. Enlightened Journey: Buddhist Practice as Daily Life.)
