It is getting more difficult to find time for Dharma practice nowadays.
by Khenpo Tashi
This age is called Nyigma-nga (Tibetan). Five degenerations. The word nyig-ma means like the filtered essence of dirt. It is very, very concentrated dirt.
From the very past, all their dirt and mud had been filtered, drop by drop, until you get only very concentrated dirt now, in the present. It means barely any virtue left, all dirt. That is Nyig-ma.
Nga means five. So, five kinds of very concentrated dirt, or ‘five degenerations’.
What does that mean? One thing in the present age is that we can find no time to give to our Dharma practice. How true is this? Check.
So, because we spend little time for our Dharma practice, does this mean that we have a lot of remaining free time? NO! It is the opposite. We have so much things to do. We have the habit of always doing something. Thus, nothing is left for the Dharma.
And we don’t find the Dharma important at all.
That is one big obstacle to Buddhism. How can Buddhism be useful for us, how can it tame us, if our time are always filled up with something?
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The five degenerations are:
- Lifespan – shorter lifespans of beings and more sicknesses
- Time – decreasing quality of all things, food and harvest are more affected by drought, less nutritious, etc
- Emotional afflictions – the householders are less virtuous, more strife
- View – the ordained Sangha (monastic community) are less virtuous, wrong views proliferate
- Experience – decline of wealth, physical form, health, intellect