[Buddha-l] 8 Freedoms and 10 Favorable Circumstances

[Alex Wilding]

Hal Cooper wrote:
> I am looking at The Songs of  Khakhyap Dorje from a book titled The
> Rain of Wisdom. It was published by Shambala back in 1980.
One of my favourites. I try to read it once every couple of years.

> One passage goes like this:
(Sorry for snipping words of Khakhyap Dorje!)

> In general, this body endowed with the eight freedoms and the ten
> favorable circumstances
> Is more excellent than the Wish-fulfilling Gem.
> Obtaining this body,
> I know it to be the power of unperverted merit."
>
> What are the Eight freedoms and The Ten Favorable Circumstances?  Are
> these lists particular to Tibetan Buddhism? So, is it saying this
> human rebirth is more excellent than a Gem that could grant any wish?
> Human rebirth trumps the Wish-fulfilling Gem.

Mike has already given you the list, although I am more familiar with an
interpretation of the last one (where Mike says "others having love in their
hearts") is that there are those who will support practice. Specifically,
that might mean that there are sponsors or almsgivers through whose aid one
might, for instance, go into a long retreat.

But I think you were looking for a bit of context. In the Kagyu systems (and
I have been led to believe that this is much the same in the other Tibetan
schools) formal engagement with the teaching starts exactly there. Leaving
aside the "special preliminaries" we begin with the ordinary preliminaries.
The four ordinary preliminaries are also known as the "four thoughts to turn
the mind". The first of these four is the teaching on precious human birth.
(The others are impermanence and death, the effects of karma and the
ubiquity of suffering.) The teaching on precious human birth has three
parts: recoginising it, appreciating its value and appreciating its
scarcity. Recognising it is where the eight freedoms and ten endowments come
in.

However, it is not saying that a "human rebirth is more excellent than a Gem
that could grant any wish". It is saying that *the tiny proportion of human
births that meet the 18 conditions above* are more excellent than a Gem that
could grant any wish. That is the second part of the teaching on precious
human birth: *if it is used properly* it gives an opportunity to achieve
liberation. For any other purposes, the mythical gem would come in damned
handy.

Expressed in lists like this it may seem dry, but it does, in its context,
have a certain cogency and clarity, and the formal structure makes it
relatively easy to rehearse it all inwardly and in that way to take it to
heart at, say, the beginning of a long retreat.

Mike's "peaceful land" is a point that I have heard as "central country",
and probably does call for interpretation. If we take "peaceful land" as a
working interpretation, then of course Richard's comment that he was "born
in a war-mongering nation" etc. may well be true, but is not quite what is
meant here. One might indeed wonder whether America is a place one would
choose to be reborn in, but the point here is, I think, entirely down to
earth and practical rather than moral: do you have the opportunity to study,
meditate, or whatever else it is you think your practice requires, or are
you constantly at risk of being bombed out of your village, having limbs cut
off by people who don't like you, being starved out of your home and so
forth? I would hazard that most Americans would be in the first group. One
out of 18 is a start, I suppose.

All the best
Alex W