Explore/Chapter 2 - Confession of Negativity: Difference between revisions
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To fall asleep and then awake refreshed. (verse 55)<ref>Stephen Gethin, Wulstan Fletcher, and Helena Blankleder (Padmakara Translation Group), trans., ''Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend: With Commentary by Kangyur Rinpoche'' (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2005), 49.</ref> | To fall asleep and then awake refreshed. (verse 55)<ref>Stephen Gethin, Wulstan Fletcher, and Helena Blankleder (Padmakara Translation Group), trans., ''Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend: With Commentary by Kangyur Rinpoche'' (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2005), 49.</ref> | ||
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Continuing with this theme Śāntideva warns us against letting our guard down and feeling too much at ease. | |||
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Khenpo Kunpal gives some very emotive commentary to this verse, imploring us not to forget that death can come at any moment. | |||
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|quote-text=What guarantee can anyone give that we will not die today and that death is nothing to be afraid of? There is no one who can give us such assurance, not even a Buddha. What escape is there for us from the horrors of death? It is said in the Bhadrakaratri-sutra: | |||
What man is sure he will not die tomorrow? | |||
This very day you should prepare yourself. | |||
The great hordes of the Lord of Death— | |||
Are they not your faithful friends? | |||
Death, our own death, is coming. How can we relax in careless ease? It is highly inappropriate to rest at our leisure, eating, drinking, and amusing ourselves. As Ashvaghosha once said in his Shokavinodana: | |||
Of all those born upon this earth | |||
Or in the upper realms, | |||
Did you see, or hear, or even doubt, | |||
That some were born that have not died?<ref>Fletcher and Blankleder, ''Nectar of Manjushri's Speech'', 114–15.</ref> | |||
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Pema Karpo makes a very interesting point in his commentary about how the force of the antidote ties in with the three higher trainings, and he relates that to a very famous verse from ''The Pratimokṣa Sūtra''. | |||
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|quote-text=In terms of the manifest realizations of the three higher trainings, ethical discipline is the dam which acts as an antidote to hold back the manifest causes of negative actions, that is to say non-virtue. The mind acting as an antidote (concentration), which is empowered with that (ethical discipline), suppresses nonvirtue such that it cannot intrude. Wisdom destroys the seeds of the nonvirtue, which are completely uprooted such that they can never arise again. These three trainings are explained in the three pitakas. The meaning of this is summed up in ''The Sūtra of Individual Liberation'': | |||
Commit not a single unwholesome action, | |||
Cultivate a wealth of virtue, | |||
Tame completely your own mind— | |||
This is the teaching of the Buddha.<ref>Pema Karpo, ''Lamp for the Middle Way'', 19 (e-book). https://dharmacloud.tsadra.org/library/?post_types=book,book_author&search-terms=A+Lamp+for+the+Middle+Way:+A+Commentary+on+the+Bodhisattvacharyavatara&subjects=any&view=list/</ref> | |||
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