The teachings here were given on two occasions
by Khenpo Tashi
Buddhism gives us an interesting view of the human condition. Then, it can help us reflect and focus on Dharma.
Five Kinds of Sense Pleasures
In some rituals, we offer the five senses-pleasures (Tib: do-yon nga) to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Why do we offer that?
Because these five are the pleasures that we experience. Beautiful things to see, to hear, to smell, to taste and to touch.
You know, the human world, this human world is very much controlled by pleasures of the five senses. There are many other realms and beings that are not experiencing this condition.
Only the humans are very much under the influence of pleasures. Look at animals. They don’t have to improve their food to taste better and better and better every time. They eat and that is it. They don’t have to invent so many new kinds of pleasing tastes, smell etc.
But for humans, we need to invent better and better tasting food. It never stops. Same for the four other pleasures. So, see how busy everyone is working for very momentary pleasures.
If we don’t check it, all throughout our lives, we will just work for pleasures, what are pleasing to the five senses, and also pleasing to our mind. (READ: The Never-Ending Spinning Samsara)
But these pleasures, when did we become permanently satisfied with them? So, in the human realm, we are very much a servant to pleasures of the five senses.
The Saha World
This world where we are in, this realm, Buddha Shakyamuni called this realm mi je jikten.
Mi je is Tibetan. In Sanskrit, it is called Saha. Jikten is the Tibetan word for world or realm. So, the Saha World.
Mi je – this word is heavy. It carries a lot of meaning. This word means enduring, zo pa or having patience, nu pa or able to endure (in Tibetan).
The Buddha can see so many world systems, he can see the different characteristics of the different beings in those realms and world systems. And when he looked at our realm, he described it as the Saha World. He mentioned this in the Sutras.
But, it is not a good type of “patience” or “forbearance”. Saha or Mi je means the beings of this realm, us, are able to endure hardship and suffering. But not in a good way.
It is like this. We are already full of sufferings and pains, but still, we like the sufferings and pains. We are not interested in leaving them behind. That kind of endurance. We love the causes of the sufferings, the emotional afflictions. We are happy with big and small sufferings.
Then, we find our happiness within the sufferings. Inside the large pile of sufferings, we search for our happiness. That is a contradiction, of course. (Hehe!) How can you find happiness in a pile of suffering? Another way of saying that is that we confuse our happiness and our suffering. (READ: The Source of Problems)
It means, we tolerate something that is intolerable. We mistake the suffering as happiness. Just observe the quality of one’s happiness. It is always near worries and pain. If not, it is short-lived. Our usual happiness are stained with some form of uncertainty or pain.
Age of Strife
Also, this age is called Strife-laden Age of the Five Degenerations (Tib: tso den du kyi nyik mga nga). So, beings of this realm must need to fight. Always thinking of fighting, competing, doing better than another. That is just in the minds of the beings of this realm all the time. They think it is great to always compete. They find satisfaction in competing. (READ: The Five Degenerations)
But of course, there is no end to that. And there’s a lot of sufferings involved there, in competing and fighting. Looking at this one situation alone, how much happiness do we get from competing? See?
Summary
It is like children playing happily in dirty mud. You teach them that there is a way to escape the mud, the dirt, the suffering – but they still choose to swim in the suffering. They like everything about suffering – the causes, the results. It is extremely pitiful. It is a pitiful characteristic of the beings of the Saha Realm.
So, mi je jikten means we are patient with suffering. There is a path out of it, but we do not think of liberating. We want to stay. This is the nature of beings in this realm. Of course, in other realms, beings also share their own different attitudes.