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19860405GRJHNLSAS 1

SELF AND SELF-LESSNESS

Welcome to whatever you may call this, a seminar, a workshop or a symposium. What are you calling it? You don’t know? So welcome to the sort of gathering we don’t know. The subject we are supposed to discuss here also we don’t know, because it is the ‘lessness’; self and selflessness. Lessness is what? Nothing! So, welcome to the talk on the subject of nothing.

Establishing the basis of the self

Actually, the subject of nothing is one of the fine subtle points of the Buddhist view or the Buddhist method to gain a strong personal development in the spiritual path. Before we touch that, we have to touch a little bit of the basic Buddhist background. You all know that the self is the basis of all functioning and selflessness is the profound viewpoint. The basis of all has to be established first. The basis of all means the I or self. Whatever name you use doesn’t matter; it is borrowed terminology anyway. But understanding is very important. So, first the self has to be established, the question of what really self is and what the self does.

The continuation of the person

The self, or let me call it the I, is a phenomenon on which I function. It is the basis of my functioning. I have come from a previous life, I am staying here and function and I will go to my future life.

I have come from a previous life; that has to be established. I have come from a previous life, because in this circle of existence – according to the Buddhist thought – there is no new-born. Whatever number of persons exists in this circle, that is it; there is no new-born. If there would be a newborn, than there would have to be a beginning. Buddha has emphasized there is no beginning. As a matter of fact, this question was raised to the Buddha: ‘When and where has it started, the I of the person?’ Buddha chose to remain silent rather than to answer it. And the reason why he chose to remain silent was an indication that there is no beginning. So, every person, whoever is in samsara, always has been there. Yet, there can be an end to samsara. Buddha has very clearly said:

There is no end, yet it is not endless.

When he said: ‘There is no end’, he meant no end at the beginning side. In the sutras is clearly mentioned: ‘There is no end, yet it is not end-less’. meaning: there is no beginning-end, but there can be an end. The end will be an individual end, not a collective end.

I must give you an idea of how we have come from a previous life. I cannot prove it to you in black and white like two plus two equals to four, however there are many ways to point at it. We are definitely a continuation. We are also impermanent. When I say we are impermanent, it means we are changing. I am referring here to the subtle impermanence,

not to the rough impermanence. The rough impermanence you may understand as death, the subtle impermanence is changing from minute to minute. From minute to minute we are changing, yet we are continuing. A continuation of discontinuity – that is how human nature functions. When there would be a starting point, there could not be a continuation. For a change to occur there has to be something before that. If there is nothing before, how can it be changed? So, it is continuation, like yesterday’s man has a continuation in today’s man.

This life. Take Marianne. Today’s M is a continuation of yesterday’s M. Right? Yes! Yet today’s M is not yesterday’s M. Yesterday’s M is a passed M and today’s M is the present M and tomorrow’s M will be the future M. Today’s M cannot be yesterday’s M. Today’s M cannot be tomorrow’s M. But it is M; it is continuing. If there is no continuation than you have a totally different person. But M is not a totally different person; it is the same person. So, it is a continuation. Do you get my point? That continuation of the three days will also cover three weeks, will cover three months, will cover three years and also can cover three lives, if you like to. Okay. The childhood of today’s M is the result of the young, little baby M. That is a continuation too. So, the baby M, the baby born, is the continuation – now you may not call it M – of the person in the mother’s womb.

In between death and rebirth. Now comes the difficult point. How does that person get into the mother’s womb? Here is the difficult point. I am not educated in the western sciences, I have no idea what explanation they give, but whatever I know, I’ll tell you. Just the combination of a father and a mother does not produce a child. It is also necessary that a being enters in it. You get my point? If no being has entered, there is no person. No way.

Where does that being come from? It hasn’t grown in there. It is the spirit, or whatever name you give it. A being without form has to enter into that. That baby-being has a karmic connection with the father and with the mother, and also his own karmic causes have ripened to be born as a human being. Also his time has come. The being makes contact and somehow gets stuck in there. In our terminology we call such a being a bardoa. The bardo is ‘the state in between’. It is the state in between death and birth. Not necessarily the moment you die you will be reborn immediately, nor necessarily you won’t be reborn immediately. It depends on the karma of the person and on whether the immediate causes are available.

A bardoa is a different person, different from what we think it is. A bardoa has a tremendous karmic power. According to the Abidharma, the Buddhist metaphysics, it has a tremendous karmic power. By that power it goes everywhere, not blocked by doors or walls. Bardoas do have a body, but that body is not a physical body of bones and flesh like we have; it is a mental body. It is a subtle body, yet it has a shape. That shape is not visible to our human eyes. It is visible for persons who see ghosts. Seeing ghosts is not necessarily spiritual, neither is it necessarily bad. Certain people have that karmic power and some ghosts purposely try to show their form; that is why they see them. That is nothing to be shocked by. Similar to people who have the karmic power to see ghosts, spiritual developed persons have the power to see everything, so they also see them. Otherwise they are only visible among themselves.

What does a bardoa look like? It does not look like in his previous life. We always have a picture of a deceased person according to the previous-life look. But the bardoa carries the future-life shape. So, when people tell you, ‘I see your father’ or ‘I saw your great-great grandfather the other day’, it is a big question whether that is really the great-great grandfather or not.

I don’t mean those people are all telling lies. They definitely see them in the shape of the parents or great-parents or whoever they see. But the question is whether that is the very person or not. My answer is: No! This may be shocking. You may say: ‘Is the person lying? No. However, it is not the person. For 99,9% sure. 100% I cannot give, because there are some cases. But for most of them it’s no.

What happens is this. Every human being is born with spirits that hide under the cover of the human being. Those very spirits are always with you; they live under your shadow. It’s like the body and the body-aura. Some of them help you, some of them harm you. Everything is known to them. No matter how secret you may keep something, they have that knowledge. Whatever question you may put, they have the answer. An exception are religious rituals that have been protected by higher power; there they can’t come in. I am sure a number of you have seen that during certain initiations some gifts are given to the spirits and they are sent away. So, whatever happens during that period is not known to these spirits.

If in the level of vajrayana, anybody tries to come in and tell you: ‘I am your grandfather’, the first question you ask is: ‘When my grandfather took initiations at such and such a lama’s place, what name he got?’ In 99.9% you get no answer. They’ll tell you, ‘I was not there’, or ‘I was not allowed in’, or ‘I was sent out’. This is the sign that this very spirit, which claims to be the person is not that person. The spirit is not lying. These spirits function under the shadow of that very person, so they carry the name, they carry the identification, everything. Therefore this is the sign that it is not that very person, it is a different [being]. Unfortunately human life is shorter than their lives, so when the individual dies, those very spirits don’t die. They then remain without any shadow or protection, so they respond to all sort of things for a while. After some time their time is up and they will die. That is why – as you may have noticed – in some places at a certain time the spirits are very active, and sometimes certain people may tell you the spirit activity is going down. That means their time is up, or they change their lives and will also be another being.

Bardoas have a mental body, so they don’t get stuck anywhere. Wherever their mind goes, their body reaches. When you and I have to travel, our physical body has to be dragged along either by train or by plain or whatever. But as a bardoa you don’t have to, because though a bardoa has a shape, it doesn’t have a ‘material’ form made out of atoms, like we have. They have a mind-body, a mental or astral body. Wherever their mind reaches their body reaches. As we sit here we can definitely think of the streets of New York or the streets of New Delhi. Right? The moment you think of the streets of New York or New Delhi, you can get some kind of a picture, following the sound or following what you have been seeing before.

There are two things. You can build understanding following sound and you can build understanding following form. E.g. if you have been somewhere and you’ve seen something, you have a memory built. Or you have seen a picture of something and you have the memory of it. The moment you use the name again, the mental idea clicks to your previously built mental picture of it. That is the second way of understanding. If you don’t have any physical picture, you build up some kind of picture by hearing about it. That is called understanding following sound. These are two important points of mental functioning: following words and following forms you get a picture in mind.

That very picture will be flashed back in your mind the moment you use the word, say the name of a New-York street. You understand? So, the moment a person with a mental body gets that flashback, he reaches there. That is the beauty of a mental body. This goes for enlightened persons, it goes for ghosts, for samsaric gods, and for bardoas. They are all the same in that. Bardoas have karmic power, it is not spiritual power. Persons who have spiritual power can reach somewhere and can function there, because of their spiritual power. But those who do so because of their karmic power, are limited in the things they can do. The moment that karma is finished, they can no longer do it.

This is how the bardoa can go to any place he wants to, without any trouble, except for one place: wherever he or she gets stuck on the future birth.

Rebirth. How does that future birth happen? If you are going to be born as a man, you feel attachment to the female. You already have a strong attachment to both parents together and in case you will be born as a man, you have strong attachment to the female and you enter in [the union]. The moment you enter in it, you see nothing but the small little organ of the father, nothing else. So you get angry or shaking. The bardoa or mental body depends on karmic power. It is not strong; any shock will make it die. So, the direct cause for a bardoa to die in the bardoa-state will be one of these shocks. Therefore, the moment they die their mind is stuck in there and that is how the being enters into [a new body]. The moment the being enters into it, the person starts functioning.

So, that very being is the continuation of this bardoa. This very bardoa is the continuation of whatever his previous life was. Because the moment someone dies, it is not like a candle being blown; there is continuation. If it were a blown-out candlelight, it would be finished. Right? It is not like that, it continues.

Twenty years ago it was very difficult to talk about the continuation of life, particularly to scientists. Today educated scientist cannot say it is rubbish; they have to think twice, because there are too many evidences. Just now you and I may not carry any memory of a previous life at all, but there are a number of people who have flashbacks of a previous life, particularly at childhood. Many evidences there are, many. Also people have been reporting very clear incidents. There are many people who are able to recognize every single person they knew in a previous life, what they said, what clothes they wore, who their parents were and how they died. So you cannot deny it. Whether you accept it or not is a different matter.

Circling in the circle of existence

So, there is continuation. Where do these people come from? Not necessarily human beings remain on the human level and not necessarily animals stay on the animal level. And not necessarily samsaric gods will stay at the god level. It is always changing. There are a lot of people who think that human consciousness is higher consciousness and that it is always going up. But according to the Buddha it is not. You go up, you fall down, you go up, you fall down. That is samsara, the circle of existence. The end of high up is low down; the end of low down is high up. It is always circling. It also could be direct up, direct down. Could be. So, not necessarily human beings will come back as human beings or remain human beings forever. It all depends on your karma. We call it karma and that now has become universal language.

Karma is the natural law and its functioning totally depends on the individual. It doesn’t depend on anybody else. It does not depend on the Buddha nor on anybody else what is going to be my future. You get my point? It certainly does not depend on Buddha. If it would depend on Buddha, I would be very lucky, because how can Buddha do something bad to people? As I am one of the people I therefore would have a good future. Right? Unfortunately no! Unfortunately it does not depend on the Buddha; it totally depends on me!

Now the question is: How? When it totally depends on you, why don’t you do something good? Why don’t you do something nice for yourself? That is the question and that is the problem too: wanting to do something good, but not be able to. Why you can’t do something good? Number one: you don’t know. Number two: even if you know, you can’t do it. Why not? Because you are used to; you are not used to do good and you are used to do bad. Everyone of us is. Bad things we do not have to teach to children; they’ll pick them up automatically. For good things they have to take efforts. Why bad things we pick up easily and good things we don’t pick up easily? Because we are used to it, not only in this lifetime, but many lifetimes. You repeat your own character, because you are used to it. Whatever way you like to live, if you keep on living that way, you get used to it. Then even if you try to be nice, after a few days you repeat the same thing again; it automatically goes in that direction. That is the explanation why people do bad things. For good things you have to take hardship, efforts, try to correct; for bad things you don’t.

Ignorance and wrong view. How come we are so much used to bad things? Because of our ignorance and because of our wrong view. The ignorance makes the wrong view. Wrong view is: what is not true we accept as true; what does not exist we view as existing. That wrong view we have from the beginning. That very wrong view makes us do all sort of bad things, all the time. For example, I do not exist truly, but I accept myself as existing truly. Therefore that very I will develop [the idea of] my. When you have an I there, you have a my. The moment you develop my, you have developed my friend, i.e. the one I am attached to, and my enemy, i.e. the one I hate. By attachment and hate you do all kind of things, you act like a monkey with or without realizing. You do everything just because of these two. Attachment and hatred are there because of wrong view and wrong acceptance [of myself as being truly existent].

Now the question comes in: if we are continuing life after life and if – as Buddha has mentioned – there can be an end, how can we get to that end? How can we get that circle ended? That is what we are concerned about, more than about selflessness. You get my point? Whether it is a self or it is selfless, what difference does that make to me? What does make a difference to me is how I am going to be better off. That is what we are more concerned about (unless you want to make it philosophically clear, but that is a different matter all-together).

What is the method to end this circle? A lot of people may say: ‘Buddhism has so much emphasis on love, compassion, discipline etceteras, so these are the methods to end the circle of existence. Not at all! Neither the discipline, nor the love, nor the compassion works on this. I cannot say totally not, but as was very clearly mentioned by Dharmakirti in his root-text of logic, Pramanavartika or Ascertainment of Valid Cognition,

Love, compassion etceteras are not the direct antidotes to the ignorance

and therefore do not cut the circle of existence.

If somebody says: ‘I have been meditating on love and compassion for eighty years and I did not cut any samsara’, I will not be surprised. Surely not, because you are doing the wrong thing. Cutting samsara, ending the life of the circle, is only possible by understanding and applying wisdom. The wisdom part works on this.

You may raise the question: ‘Are in this case love and compassion, and discipline not necessary at all? They are also necessary. Why? Let me talk to you according to the Buddhist view.

Choosing a spiritual path

As a person interested in spiritual development you have an ultimate aim. Right? A person without aim is not in the spiritual path. You may have an aimless aim, a goal-less goal, that doesn’t matter, that is different matter altogether, but you must have an aim or goal. If you don’t have an aim, you are not following a spiritual path, you are just moving. We have a saying in Tibetan:

Even if you are carried and washed away by the stream or current,

you still think you are swimming.

You may have no power at all, you may be swept away by the powerful water, but you still think you are swimming; that is exactly what happens when you don’t have an aim; you don’t know what you are doing, yet you are still doing something. Or you are sitting in the car, you drive on every highway available and you don’t know where you are going. Those are exactly what happens when you have no aim. A lot of people think that is great. Yes, it looks great; you cover all the roads and you burn all your petrol and it is great on your pocket, but you get nothing. That’s it. Driving in your car on every highway is okay. You waste a little time, you waste a little money, you waste a little car, and you lose one or two days; that is all. But if you do that on the spiritual path, you are losing tremendously! You don’t know how expensive it is and you are paying for it. You have tremendous values in your life, a value of your time, a value of your opportunity, and you are losing all of them. And that very value, that very opportunity, that very chance you never get again; 99,9% certain not.

By sheer luck you might have got this life; you’ll never get it again. Buddha has given an example. A blind tortoise lives in the ocean and a yoke drives in the ocean. The blind tortoise comes up once in five hundred years only. If he were not blind, he could look around and see where the yoke is and then come up, but he is blind. The chance that the blink tortoise puts his head in that yoke is the chance for a fortunate human rebirth. Such an opportunity, such a valuable life we have. You waste that by going everywhere; you reach nowhere, you just go, go, go. That’s what happens, particularly in the West, where you have a lot of different spiritual trips.

Spiritual trips which have an aim, a purpose, where people have gone, where people have reached, which have a value, fine, wonderful, you need them. I am not saying Buddhism is the only way. No! There are hundred-and-one ways. But if there is nothing in it, no aim, no goal, nothing, if you just move, move, than you waste your time.

I saw people on a spiritual path – as they call it – where they teach you how to become a cloud. You keep on meditating that you become a cloud, and that is it. They will also teach you how to walk on the fire. But what do you get? You don’t become a cloud. When you walk on the fire, you have at least some excitement, you get little bruises on your leg and you walk across. That’s all. They teach you the whole day that you can walk on the fire and you are meditating that the fire is cool and icy and that your feet are this and that; you keep on thinking that for the whole day and in the evening they will let you walk across the fire. But mind you, you have to pay over hundred US dollars for that. And that is called spiritual. Walking and gaining bruises, that is no spiritual gain, is it? Really, I feel sorry for that. It is wasting a lot of time and energy. If you can afford to waste the money it doesn’t matter, but time and energy is more expensive than money.

So for any spiritual path, whatever you follow, you must see it has a good aim. You must see whether people have followed it and whether somebody has reached that goal. Is it possible or not possible? These things we have to look into first. You cannot take a spiritual path like a dog takes liver. Well, even a dog, if you throw a piece of liver to him, will smell it before, so why can’t you do that? You get into trouble and once you get into trouble it is very difficult to correct it. A wrong guide and wrong teachings can definitely do bad things.

There is a story about this, the story of Angulimala. During Buddha’s lifetime, somebody was taught: ‘If you can kill one thousand people within one week, you will be totally liberated.’ This person carried a knife and started killing everybody. After some time the whole village had run away, because he was killing them all over. And of every person he killed, he cut the thumb and put it on a string and wore it. That is why he was called Angulimala, ‘garland of thumbs’. After some time he had killed nine-hundred ninety-nine persons; he only was short of one to fill up the thousand. We all know that by killing thousand people you don’t liberate yourself, don’t you? Every sensible person knows that, but that is what happened because of a wrong guide.

Sometimes it can happen that somebody teaches you to do dirty things which you may consider a great sacrifice. Under a romantic title they make you do something funny and you think that you are doing something great. In reality you may totally be wasting your life; moreover you accumulate a tremendous amount of non-virtues or – in plain language – sins. And who is going to be responsible? Who is going to pay for it? Only you, only me, the one who is doing it. Nobody else. Sooner or later, today or tomorrow, this life or next life, you will definitely be paying it with your own flesh and your blood. That’s what happens we do when we have the great opportunity to do something wonderful, something fantastic, to gain permanent happiness, totally off the pain and the sufferings and instead of that you act the other way round. How wasteful it will be! Where are you going to get that chance again? This is really a sad thing. For that one has to be careful.

Therefore, following the spiritual path is nice and wonderful, but following the right spiritual path is something one has to take care of. Nobody else will take care for you. Everyone now is advertising in newspapers, saying: ‘I am the great one, my system is wonderful, this is the best.’ Whether it is Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, ‘newism’ or whatever, they will say: ‘This is the greatest, this has ever existed’ and bla bla bla. So is it for you to judge, because you have only one life. You don’t have two lives; you have only one life. What are you going to do with it? Waste it? Or are you going to achieve something? The choice is yours. So better see to it. Really this is very important.

And when the time comes to die, what did you gain out of this life? You have to see it. Therefore it is very important that when you choose a spiritual path, you choose it nicely, correctly, properly. See whether you are getting any benefit out of it or not. See how much time you have passed on it, and look whether the amount of time you passed on it and the benefit you got are in balance. You check with yourself. If you did not get benefit, you must crosscheck: did you do it correctly or wrongly? If you are sure you did everything correctly and you got no benefit, then there may be something wrong with them. Then don’t stick to it. Try to find something else, or try to find out what was wrong and correct it. Otherwise you waste all your time.

So, if you are carried by the water and you think you are swimming, and you keep on swimming till death comes, you get nowhere. That is very important, particularly for spiritual followers. That is my personal suggestion for spiritual friends.