Tibetan Buddhist Lamrim: Developing Renunciation for Samsara
To be happy in this life, you must work toward improving your next one.
Developing renunciation for samsara is a fundamental aspect of Tibetan Buddhist Lamrim teachings. Renunciation in this context refers to a sincere and strong desire to be free from the cycle of birth and rebirth (samsara) due to its inherent suffering and unsatisfactoriness.
In the traditional Lamrim sequence, it’s the only meditation in the Intermediate Scope. Many practicing Buddhists consider Renunciation for Samsara as the defining characteristic of Buddhism, the one thing that sets their practice apart from other spiritual paths.
Most people become interested in Buddhism because they see the serenity and peace of mind exhibited by many practitioners, and they want that for themselves. People want to enjoy peace of mind in this life, whether they have future lives or not.
To sincerely enter the Buddhist path is to renounce this life and begin working on improving future lives. Of course, in the process, this life improves dramatically, and that motivation sneaks into every practitioner’s psyche. But in order to achieve peace of mind in this life, the motivation must be to improve future lives—one of life’s enigmas.
Developing renunciation goes together with aspiring for a meaningful and spiritually oriented life. Practitioners seek a higher purpose and aim for lasting happiness through the pursuit of liberation.
Renunciation is not just an intellectual understanding but a way of life. Practitioners strive to live mindfully, making conscious choices and avoiding actions that perpetuate samsara.
Recognition of Suffering: The first step in developing renunciation is recognizing the pervasive suffering and dissatisfaction within samsara. Practitioners reflect on the unsatisfactory nature of worldly pleasures and achievements.
Lamrim teachings emphasize the suffering of birth, aging, sickness, death, and the various forms of physical and mental anguish experienced by all sentient beings.
Contemplation of Impermanence: Meditating on the impermanence of all phenomena, including one's own life, is an essential aspect of renunciation. Recognizing the fleeting nature of existence fosters a sense of urgency to break free from samsara.
The Four Noble Truths: Lamrim teachings draw on the Four Noble Truths as a foundational framework for understanding suffering and its cessation:
The Truth of Suffering: Identifying the nature and causes of suffering within samsara.
The Truth of the Cause of Suffering: Recognizing attachment, ignorance, and negative karma as the root causes of suffering.
The Truth of the Cessation of Suffering: Aspiring for liberation and the cessation of suffering.
The Truth of the Path to Cessation: Identifying the path, including ethical conduct, meditation, and wisdom, as the means to achieve liberation.
Motivation for Spiritual Practice: Renunciation serves as a powerful motivation for engaging in Lamrim's progressive stages of meditation and contemplation. It forms the foundation upon which practitioners build their spiritual journey towards enlightenment.
The Intermediate Scope of Lamrim signals an important transition. The practitioner established a solid base with the Initial Scope meditations and feels the futility of chasing short-term worldly pleasures in this life. With renunciation for samsara, they are ready to walk the joyful path to enlightenment in the Great Scope of Lamrim.
Meditation on Developing Renunciation for Samsara
As long as you cling to the idea that lasting satisfaction and happiness can be found by pursuing worldly attainments, you will remain unhappy chasing after the Holy Grail that doesn’t exist. Once you accept the futility of chasing happiness with worldly pursuits, you are ready to enter the Buddhist path—and find the happiness you gave up pursuing.
The mind creates samsara. The mind naturally pursues fleeting happiness, objects of desire, fame, and other attainments in the false belief that happiness will not be fleeting. This false belief motivates all selfish actions that inevitably lead to unhappiness—the opposite of what you intend.
When you renounce the pursuit of happiness through worldly deeds, your selfish desires are replaced with a selfless desire to help others—through actions like writing anonymously about Buddhism on the internet. These selfish actions provide the happiness you could never find when you were seeking it directly.
Contemplation
Consider what you read in this post and focus on the following first-person narrative:
In this life, I experience disappointments constantly, obtain things I don’t want, and I must endure the suffering of birth, sickness, aging, and death. I can’t escape these sufferings unless I liberate myself from samsara.
I must abandon samsara and attain the supreme inner peace of liberation.
Object of Meditation
The determination to abandon samsara is the object of meditation.
You should hold this determination in your mind for as long as possible.
When you are out of the meditation session, you should feel a strong desire to practice moral discipline, meditate, and learn to follow true paths to cessation of sufferings.
