Eight freedoms
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Eight freedoms (Skt. aṣṭakṣaṇa; T. dal ba brgyad དལ་བ་བརྒྱད་) are identified within some ngondro practices within Tibetan Buddhism.[1] These freedoms represent: Freedom from the eight states where there is no opportunity to practise the Dharma:
- hells
- preta realms
- animals
- long-living gods
- uncivilized lands
- incomplete faculties
- with wrong views
- a buddha has not come
Commentary
Dudjom Rinpoche states:
- Those who are born in the three lower realms suffer too intensely and have too poor a physical support to have the opportunity to practice the Dharma. The gods in the world of desire are distracted by their attachment to the pleasures of the senses and have little disillusionment, while the gods in the world of form and in the formless world are mostly perpetually high on concentration, so they too have no opportunity to practice the Dharma. There are also those who are born in worlds devoid of a Buddha, that is, in places to which no Buddha has come; those who, even though born in a world to which a Buddha has come, are barbarians in border regions where the Dharma has not spread; those who, even if born in a place to which the Dharma has spread, have wrong views and do not believe in past and future lives, in the fact that actions lead to results, or in the Three Jewels; and those who are born completely dumba and are not intelligent enough to be able to undertake what is right and reject what is wrong.
- These, then, are the eight states of lack of opportunity. Of them, the three lower realms and long-lived gods are nonhuman states, and the other four are human states in which there is no opportunity to practice the Dharma. To be free of these eight states of no opportunity constitutes freedom...[1]
Alternative Translations
- Eight liberties