Why is the human existence so precious? In Buddhist philosophy, being born as a human being — with a functioning body and mind, in a time and place where the dharma is accessible — is considered extraordinarily rare and extraordinarily fortunate. Not because human beings are special in some sentimental sense, but because the specific conditions required for genuine practice, for the possibility of liberation, are almost impossibly difficult to assemble. We happen to have assembled them. That is worth sitting with.
The Four Common Preliminaries — Part 1 of 4
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Why is the human existence precious? In Buddhist philosophy, being born as a human being — with a functioning body and mind, in a time and place where the dharma is accessible — is considered extraordinarily rare and extraordinarily fortunate. Not because human beings are special in some sentimental sense, but because the specific conditions required for genuine practice, for the possibility of liberation, are almost impossibly difficult to assemble. We happen to have assembled them. That is worth sitting with.
The teaching on the precious human existence is one of the four common preliminaries — the four basic thoughts that form the ground of all Buddhist practice. It is said that a practitioner could contemplate just these four and reach enlightenment. They set the frame not only for meditation but, after a few years of practice, for the whole of one’s life — constantly refocusing a view that, for most of us, gets a little blurry once in a while.
But let me say what I think this teaching is really about at its heart, before we go any further into lists and cosmology. It is about thankfulness. Not the polite, surface kind — the kind that goes deep enough to change how you move through your day. The kind that recognises you are here by no accident, that the conditions assembled because of what has been done across many lifetimes, and that the appropriate response to this recognition is not comfort but action.
Let us look at the teaching carefully. And then let us feel it.
The Eight Unfavorable States
The classical teaching begins not with what we have, but with what we don’t have — and how fortunate that is. There are eight states in which a being cannot practise the dharma, not through any fault of their own, but because the basic conditions for understanding are simply not present. We are not in any of them.
We are not hell beings, suffering from extremes without the slightest break — no leisure, no possibility of reflection. We are not hungry ghosts, tormented by craving so total it consumes every moment. We are not animals — not because animals lack dignity, but because the particular cognitive architecture that makes self-inquiry possible is not assembled in that form. We are not long-lived gods of the desire, form, or formless realms, too absorbed in pleasure and samadhi to feel any urgency. We were not born in places entirely untouched by the dharma, where no teacher has ever walked and the teachings have never arrived. We were not born into views that fundamentally oppose the dharma with a natural aversion that makes it invisible. We were not born in a dark age when no Buddha has come and the qualities of the enlightened ones are unknown in the world. And we do not have severe limitations of mind or sense that would prevent engagement with the teachings.
All these beings lack what the tradition calls leisure, opportunity, surplus, and possibility. To be free of all eight is already to stand among the most fortunate beings who have ever existed. Most of us read this list quickly, nod, and move on. It is worth not moving on.
🔬 The eight unfavorable states are not ancient cosmology. They are a precise description of conditions that are measurably, verifiably real for a very large portion of conscious beings on this planet right now. As of 2024, 244 million children and youth had no access to education at all. Billions live under governments that actively restrict freedom of thought, freedom of religion, and the right to inquire freely into the nature of mind and existence. Many more live in conditions of such severe material deprivation — poverty so grinding, squalor so total — that a thought about anything beyond survival is a luxury completely beyond reach. The tradition’s list is not a catalogue of mythological realms. It is a description of conditions that still define the majority experience of conscious beings on earth today. To have a functioning mind, freedom of inquiry, access to teachings, and the leisure to practise — these are not defaults. They are the exception. The tradition asks us to feel that. Not as guilt. As genuine, energising gratitude.
The Sixteen Unfavorable Conditions
Beyond the eight unfavorable states, the teaching identifies sixteen conditions that can prevent genuine practice even for someone who appears to have good outer circumstances. Eight are internal obstacles rooted in present circumstance: the emotional poisons running so strongly the mind is effectively disabled; the influence of companions who consistently pull us away from practice; distorted views; extreme laziness; a flood of karmic obstacles from past actions; being entirely under another’s control with no freedom of time or energy; entering the dharma only out of fear or material necessity; or practising it purely for status and recognition.
The second eight describe a mind structurally cut off from the dharma itself: deep attachment to body and possessions; a character too coarse and mean to open; no response to descriptions of suffering no matter how clearly explained; no confidence in liberation no matter how beautifully presented; a natural delight in unwholesome action; no more inclination toward practice than a dog has toward eating grass; broken bodhisattva vows; and broken samaya — the sacred commitments to one’s teacher and companions.
When we are free of all of these, we arrive here, practising dharma. The tradition says: be very happy about this. And I am. Genuinely, deeply happy about this.
The Turtle
The teaching offers one image to capture the improbability of all this, and it is one of the most beautiful images in the entire tradition.
At the bottom of a vast ocean lives a blind turtle that surfaces briefly only once every hundred years to breath, he is really relaxed. On the surface of that same ocean floats a single golden ring. The probability of the turtle surfacing with its head passing through the ring is — well, you can feel it. Essentially impossible. And yet the tradition says that probability is far greater than the chance of obtaining a precious human body with all the conditions for practice. Even the lotto has better odds.
This is not hyperbole. It is an invitation to sit quietly and actually feel what it means to be here. Reading these words. With a mind that can understand them. In circumstances that allow for practice. Alive in a time when the teachings still exist and teachers still walk the earth.
The turtle surfaces. The head passes through the ring. You are here.
The Ten Blessings of Human Birth
Having established what we are free from, the teaching turns to what we actually have. The ten blessings of human birth fall into two groups — five personal blessings, and five blessings from others.
The five personal blessings: we have a human body, free of the eight unfavorable states. We were born in a land where the dharma is taught. Our senses work and we can understand what we hear and read. We have entered the dharma and our associations are wholesome. And we have genuine confidence in the three jewels — we have found something to trust.
The five blessings from others: the Buddha came and taught in our age. The great teachers who transmitted the profound and extensive dharma appeared in our era. The Buddha’s teachings have not declined — they endure. The teachings have many followers, living examples who keep them alive. And there are generous people who give so that others might practise. We are not alone in this, and we are not materially abandoned.
It has been said that the people who actually practise the dharma are as rare as stars visible in daylight. If you are reading this and you practise — even imperfectly, even occasionally, even with doubt — you are a daytime star. That is not a small thing.
🔬 Here is where science arrives with something remarkable. The tradition says the human body is the primary tool for awakening — it calls it a golden pot, and says that even when broken it retains great worth, because as long as we are alive we can still learn and practise. Neuroscience now confirms this in a way the Buddha could not have known. Research from Massachusetts General Hospital found that regular meditation practice is associated with measurably increased cortical thickness in the prefrontal cortex — the region governing attention, self-awareness, executive function, and the capacity for self-inquiry that all of practice depends on. The more practice, the greater the structural difference. And in older participants, regular meditators showed cortical thickness comparable to practitioners decades younger, suggesting that sustained practice may actually slow or reverse the neural deterioration the brain would otherwise undergo with age. The tradition was right: this body is a golden pot. The capacity to transform through practice is not poetic — it is physically, measurably real. The only question is whether we use it.
The Heart of It: Thankfulness
I want to come back to where we started. Because all of this — the eight states, the sixteen conditions, the ten blessings, the turtle — it is all scaffolding for one thing. Thankfulness.
Not thankfulness as a pleasant feeling. Thankfulness as a recognition with weight. The recognition that you are not here by accident. That these conditions assembled because of karma — because of good actions across lifetimes, because of choices made in circumstances you can no longer remember, because of the accumulation of what has been done in the direction of wisdom and compassion. This is a two-way street. You earned this opportunity, even if you don’t fully remember how. And that means you have a responsibility to it.
There are people alive today born into poverty so complete and squalor so absolute that the idea of sitting quietly with their own mind, of studying teachings, of having a lama — it is not even imaginable. Not because they are less capable or less deserving. But because the conditions did not assemble. The karma did not produce this particular constellation of fortune. They are the turtle whose head did not pass through the ring this time.
You did. I did. And when I sit with that honestly, what I feel is not pride. What I feel is an almost overwhelming gratitude. For my lama. For the teachings. For the conditions. For the fact that this is real and available and sitting right here in front of me every time I close my eyes and turn inward.
Thankfulness, properly felt, is not passive. It does not sit still. It becomes the ground from which everything else grows — every meditation session, every act of generosity, every moment of patience. Gratitude recognised becomes karma. The circle continues.
“Pay heed that the three never wane: gratitude towards one’s teacher, appreciation of the dharma, and correct conduct.”
— Atisha’s Mind Training, Slogan 46 — as transmitted through the Kagyu Lojong tradition
“My lama often taught that thankfulness is the key to many of the Buddha’s teachings.”
— QP
Understanding why these conditions are precious naturally opens the next question — one that becomes impossible to avoid once the gratitude settles in. If this body, this mind, this teacher, this access to the dharma is so extraordinarily rare, then how long does it last? The answer arrives before the question has finished forming. Not long. Not nearly long enough. This is where the teaching on the precious existence hands us directly to the teaching on impermanence — not as bad news, but as the very thing that makes the gratitude urgent rather than comfortable.
✦ The Four Common Preliminaries ✦
1. Precious Human Existence — you are here
2. Impermanence — What is Impermanence?
4. Suffering — What is all this about Suffering?
When the four preliminaries have prepared the ground → What is Buddhist Refuge?
QUOTES — ATTRIBUTION NOTES
Quote 1: Atisha’s Mind Training Slogan 46. This slogan appears in the Lojong tradition as transmitted through the Kagyu lineage. Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye (1813–1899) wrote one of the primary Kagyu commentaries on this teaching. The slogan itself predates Kongtrul but his transmission is the relevant Kagyu lineage connection.
Quote 2: QP — My own testimony. This is primary source and it is strong. Those who recognise the Lojong slogan above will understand what your lama was transmitting. Those who don’t will simply feel the personal truth of it.
STUDY LINKS
244 million children out of school: UNESCO (2024) —
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