The Three Principle Aspects of the Path Part 3

Renunciation might be one of the most misunderstood concepts in Buddhist practice. For many Western practitioners, it can sound like a call to abandon everything we hold dear—our relationships, our work, our simple pleasures. But what if renunciation is actually an invitation to something far more liberating? What if it's about recognizing where we place our attention and energy, and choosing to redirect that toward genuine freedom rather than fleeting satisfaction?

In this third installment of my series on the Three Principal Aspects of the Path—Je Tsongkhapa's pithy Tibetan Buddhist text—we're diving deep into the first of these three principles: renunciation mind. This is the foundation upon which the entire Mahayana path rests, and without it, even the most advanced practices lack the fuel they need to truly transform us.

Understanding the Three Principal Aspects

Before we go further, let me give you some context. The Three Principal Aspects of the Path—or Lam-so Nam-sum in Tibetan—was written by Je Tsongkhapa, one of the most remarkable scholar-practitioners to emerge from Tibet. When you look at his life story, which I covered in part one, the sheer amount of time he spent in retreat is almost beyond belief. Yet somehow he also wrote volumes of dharma texts and taught extensively. He accomplished what seems like several lifetimes of work in a single life.

I chose this text because it's direct, pithy, and immediately applicable to practice. It covers the entire Mahayana path through three main principles: renunciation mind, bodhicitta, and emptiness (or non-dual wisdom). Each of these is a vast world unto itself—entire lifetimes of practice compressed into essential teachings.

Unpacking Verse Four

Today we're looking at verse four, which addresses how we actually generate renunciation mind—how we produce it as an experience that transforms and changes our life. The verse goes like this:

"The freedoms and advantages are rare and there's no time to waste. Reflect on this again and yet again and dispel attachment to this life. To dispel attachment to your future lives, contemplate repeatedly the unfailing effects of karma and the suffering of samsara."

There's a lot to unpack here. What Tsongkhapa is pointing to are what's known in various Tibetan traditions as the Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind. These four contemplations are:

1. Precious human rebirth

2. Death and impermanence

3. Karma (cause and effect)

4. The suffering nature of samsara

They're called "thoughts," but really they're four categories of contemplation that we engage with in meditation to transform how we think about ourselves and the world. We use analytical meditation, often merged with resting meditation, until we develop not only conceptual conviction but an actual felt sense—where we start to see ourselves and our purpose in the world differently.

Why These Teachings Are Challenging (And Worth It)

I'll be honest with you: this is challenging territory. Most of us as practitioners work with the four thoughts on a daily basis for our entire lives because they continuously feed how we relate to attachment, aversion, and our sense of meaning and purpose.

This area is usually quite challenging for modern Western practitioners for a few reasons. First, some of this is a bummer. It's a useful downer, but still—we often come to meditation wanting bliss and positive experiences. What these four thoughts produce instead is sobriety, a clear-eyed view of where our attachment is misleading us. They do ultimately produce peace, but maybe not the temporary happiness we think we should get from meditation.

The other challenge is that we often prefer the shinier objects—emptiness, nature of mind practice. These can certainly serve as gateways. But what's harder to get excited about is developing renunciation mind because we actually have to look at all the messy parts of our life, our motivations, our actions.

I've been reflecting on these four thoughts for about twenty-four or twenty-five years now, sometimes more intensively than others. I've gone through many stages—from aversion and struggle to periods of guilt. Often I would see where these teachings pointed out I was taking a wrong path, and I'd think, "Oh, I'm doing everything wrong. I'm a terrible practitioner."

But here's what I want to emphasize: there's no need for guilt. Sobriety and honesty are different from guilt. We can simply observe, "Okay, this is something I want to correct. There are certain elements of conduct I want to improve." And we don't have to expect it to happen overnight. We need patience and compassion with ourselves.

Actually, when you really think about it, these four thoughts are compassion. They're based in compassion because they're trying to turn us away from attachment to momentary happiness, which actually causes suffering when we examine it closely. They're also trying to steer us away from creating the causes that would propel us into future states of being that are full of pain.

A Note on Rebirth and Karma

The last two of the four thoughts—karma and the suffering nature of samsara—do imply that we already accept, or at least can have some openness to, the idea that the mind is something beginningless and endless, that it doesn't just end when this body ends. This is a fundamental Buddhist belief upon which these teachings sit.

You don't have to believe that, by the way—I'm just sharing this context. But if the mind has no beginning and no end, what happens to it when we die? From a Buddhist perspective, the mind goes into another birth until we attain enlightenment, where the causes of birth are finally cut. That's the whole point of the Buddhist path.

Now, I know karma can be a sticking point for many people. Often when people push back against karma, what I find is they're working with a misunderstanding of what it actually means. Karma often gets dumbed down into this more theistic perspective, like it's something permanent we're stuck in that someone did to us. Many of us reject that because it smells like other authoritarian spiritual paths.

But it's not like that at all. Initially, the Buddha taught karma as a teaching on compassion. It's a subtler form of relative truth about how things work. Here's an analogy: if someone told you, "Putting your hand on a hot stove is going to burn you," you wouldn't think they were being an authoritarian religious zealot. You'd say, "Thank you for telling me that."

Karma is basically that—a compassionate instruction that if we engage in harmful actions all the time, we're going to experience the results of that at some point. It's about understanding cause and effect so we can make wiser choices. I actually think karma is good news because it means I have a choice. I can create my future self—whether that's twenty years from now or in a next existence.

The First Thought: Precious Human Rebirth

Let's look at each of these four thoughts more closely. "The freedoms and advantages are rare" refers to the eight freedoms and ten advantages that make up having what's considered a precious or perfect human rebirth. Essentially, these come down to having all the qualities and freedoms necessary to practice the dharma.

Some of these freedoms include things like not being born in an animal realm or hungry ghost realm—types of existence characterized by intense suffering and no capacity for dharma practice. One freedom is simply having the capacity to understand and work with the dharma, to have interest in it.

I've found this first of the four thoughts to be genuinely positive for my life. Initially, I struggled with appreciation for this human life I have. We go through so much pain and challenge—sometimes life can feel like a burden. But when we actually reflect on its possibilities, that we can attain enlightenment or awakening, that we can work hard and accomplish meaningful things, we see that this human life is incredibly precious. It's not like any other experience.

When we look at animals in the wild—not pets, who are a small percentage of animals with much more luxury—life is a constant struggle. A small fish in the ocean constantly has things trying to eat it. It's not a fun existence, at least from my perspective. This doesn't mean animals are bad or less worthy than us. The difference is simply what we can do with a human body.

Through reflecting on these freedoms and advantages, on the possibilities and rarity of human rebirth, we start to gain momentum, juice, energy. It's better than someone throwing ten million dollars into your bank account. When you really reflect on it, you see it's priceless, something you can't put a price on.

This is how we start to generate renunciation—by wanting to use our human birth for the dharma, to create causes of happiness and awakening.

The Second Thought: Death and Impermanence

This leads into impermanence, recognizing that this body has a time limit. These teachings aren't meant to scare us. They're meant to sober us up so we realize we need to use this life for dharma practice. Because when we die, if we come to even a slight conviction that perhaps the mind does move on, we need to ensure we're placing ourselves where the mind can continue into another human existence and keep practicing.

That's the very least of what a dharma practitioner aims for. Best case scenario, we attain awakening at the time of death through Vajrayana means. But in these teachings on renunciation mind, we're at least trying to avoid falling into states that don't allow us to practice dharma. We reflect on death and impermanence until it becomes visceral—until we truly don't know when death will happen and recognize it can happen anytime.

The Third Thought: Karma and Cause and Effect

As I mentioned earlier, this is about recognizing that cause and effect functions on multiple levels. Modern science agrees you can't have an effect that's not in accordance with its cause—you can't have a chili grow from an apple seed.

Similarly, the Buddhist principle is that how we act with our body, speech, and mind has repercussions on body, speech, and mind—not just in this life but in future existences. We experience the results in certain types of births, in how we use our speech, in what our mind is like, in what we encounter.

This might sound like bad news, but I take it as good news. I'm being informed compassionately that I have a choice. I can actually choose what I want to create. That's how to think about karma in a positive way. I can create my future self, whether that's twenty years from now or in a next existence.

The Fourth Thought: The Suffering Nature of Samsara

This is a big one. It includes understanding the six realms of existence we move through, and recognizing that when Buddhism speaks about suffering, or dukkha (a more accurate term), it's not just gross suffering. It's also what we think is happiness but changes quickly. Therefore, is it actually happiness? And there's the body itself being pervaded by dukkha.

We have three types of suffering: the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and all-pervasive suffering. But "suffering" isn't really a great translation for dukkha. It also means stress, dissatisfaction—all the subtle ways we experience pain. Not only what we'd normally call painful, but also when we thought something would work out and it didn't. That's painful, right?

The point of all this is to gain understanding that samsara itself is a prison we want to emerge from. Now, here's a crucial warning: when we take these teachings as dogmatic and authoritarian, it sounds like somebody telling us we're bad. But that's not the point at all. The point is to see the situation we're in clearly, to become sober to it, and then to cultivate renunciation mind—the wish to emerge from samsaric existence.

And this is not an outer job. It's an inner job.

Renunciation Is an Inner Transformation

From a Buddhist perspective, samsara essentially comes from our mind—the way we're viewing things, the habit patterns we have. Karma here can be thought of as the imprints that affect how we perceive things. And we can change that. That's the good news. That's why Tsongkhapa recommends generating renunciation—because without it, we won't want to attain awakening or practice meditation seriously, and we won't understand why we should.

For me, this brings genuine purpose. But I should give some warnings: this can go wrong if it turns into hatred toward the world or thinking we have to physically exit the world. This becomes clearer when we study the non-dual teachings or teachings on emptiness later in this text. From the perspective of non-dual wisdom, our world comes from our perception. We're not denying there's some outer reality, but generally it's coming from our perception. And that's good news because it means we can work with it. We can change it. That's what we use the path for.

Ultimately, in verse four, we're seeing practices for transforming our mind so we recognize where the genuine problem is. Here's a reflection: often we blame things on the outside—job, partner, money, traffic, whatever—for our misery, stress, or suffering. But when we actually look in meditation, we see how our mind is oriented. It's how our mind believes things exist. And that is changeable.

Traffic? Maybe not changeable right now. Your perception of it and how you work with it? Definitely one hundred percent changeable, workable. That's what renunciation mind is about—understanding this incredible opportunity we have, understanding where the actual problem is, why we suffer and how, and then starting to change that.

Without this understanding, there's usually very little energy for awakening and enlightenment. Why would we want to achieve it in the first place? Or it becomes some vague idea.

Even the higher teachings on Vajrayana and nature of mind need to come back to renunciation mind. I view this as a circular process. If we really like nature of mind meditation or shamatha or whatever, great—but we can fuel our intention, motivation, and energy toward those higher practices with renunciation mind. In Tibetan Buddhist lineages, we use these in combination. There are many ways to do that. But without renunciation mind, we'll have very little energy or power to actually free ourselves and others.

When True Renunciation Has Been Born

Verse five says it well:

"When, through growing accustomed to thinking in this way, hope for the pleasure of samsara no longer arises, even for an instant, and throughout both day and night you long for liberation, then at that time true renunciation has been born."

Here, Tsongkhapa defines when renunciation has been generated—when we long for freedom from the bondage of samsara. When we recognize what it is in our mind (yes, it plays out in the world, but the main point is recognizing the samsaric mind, what's happening in our perception, thoughts, emotions) and what we're actually learning to transform or abandon.

This is an inner job. The definition of having generated renunciation is when we long for freedom and awakening. Of course, we'll add bodhicitta to that in the next part of this series.

Renunciation in the Midst of Life

For most of us, this is not a quick transformation. It's also challenging because we can go through periods of rejecting these teachings or getting stuck in outer renunciation—thinking it means abandoning the world and going off to some cliff somewhere. That can be fine if we properly understand that renunciation is mostly inner. Then the outer can follow.

But we can also develop renunciation in the midst of our life, in the midst of having a family, holding down a job, trying to navigate modern life. I will say it's quite challenging to do it in that format. I've tried both. I've been a monastic. I've been a lay practitioner before being a monastic. I'm obviously not a monastic anymore—I'm a householder practitioner now with a family.

It is challenging to do this, but it's possible, and I think it's necessary to think of it this way for the majority of us. We're not going to abandon our outer circumstances. We're not going to renounce our house, bank account, job, and family. There's no need to actually renounce that. What we need to renounce is the way we're working with our perception, emotions, and thoughts. We need to renounce the problematic way we work with them through attachment, aversion, and ignorance.

Ultimately it goes to that, and of course that has repercussions in how we conduct ourselves. But these four thoughts really do help in that area. They help quite a bit because an inner wish for emerging from samsara starts to come. And when we merge that with the mind of awakening, or bodhicitta—the wish to attain awakening for the benefit of all beings—it becomes very strong. We have an accurate and sober experience of our own life, and naturally we want to see others attain awakening as well. Then we do our path with that motivation.

Finding Your Way Forward

The journey of developing renunciation mind is lifelong work. It requires patience, compassion with ourselves, and a willingness to look honestly at how we're relating to our experience. But it's also the foundation that makes everything else in Buddhist practice possible.

If you're working with these teachings, be gentle with yourself. Use these contemplations not as a hammer to beat yourself with, but as a mirror to see clearly. And remember: the goal isn't to reject life, but to engage with it more wisely, more freely, with less grasping and more openness to genuine liberation.

The four thoughts that turn the mind are a gift—an invitation to wake up to what's most precious and to use this rare opportunity in the way that serves our deepest aspiration for freedom.