Archive Result

19860910GRJHNLSAS1

0:00:09.6 Rimpoche and audience chanting OM MANI PADME HUM

0:04:03.3 Tonight, I believe the subject is self and selflessness. It is important and tricky and a difficult subject of Buddhist studies and the spiritual path.

0:04:51.3 Dutch Translation (DT)

0:05:29.0 Self and selflessness is dealing with the wisdom part. In the spiritual field, let me put it this way, when one wants to achieve the ultimate position, which we call enlightenment, that is a place of total knowledge. Everything that has to be purified has been purified. Anything that can be obtained has been obtained. Everything to be known is known. That is what total enlightenment is. Sometimes you wonder whether you like to be that or not! (laughs).

0:06:43.3 DT

0:07:36.7 The word enlightenment in Sanskrit is Buddha, don’t ask me what that means, I have no idea. But in Tibetan it is Sang gye. Sang means everything has been purified, delusions, imprints of delusions, non-virtues, bad karma, everything is totally purified. Gye is total knowledge. If it exists it is known to the enlightened beings. If it is not known by enlightened beings then it does not exist – something like that. Do you follow? So seeing everything totally.

Not only seeing all phenomena as phenomena but also seeing the relative part and the absolute part of it together, without contradicting or blocking each other. I do not know if this terminology is making any sense to you or not, but I hope it does. This relative and absolute, in the ordinary level, no matter how highly a person may be developed, as bodhisattva, quite high up, but they will not be able to see the absolute and relative together.

0:09:41.8 At total enlightenment level they are seen together. That is why totally enlightened. In other words, to make it very simple to you, whatever qualities you can think of God, it’s almost the same quality that enlightened beings possess, except the totally enlightened beings may not be a creator. That’s all.

0:10:22.8 DT

0:12:31.5 When people are spiritually interested and would like to achieve spiritual development, what do we look for? What will be our aim? What should we look to achieve? That total enlightenment level is the ultimate aim introduced by Buddha. Many of you might have been at my talk last night. Remember, last night I talked about the lowest category of the aim of a spiritual person. What should they aim to achieve? How do you put all your energies in that direction? And today we are talking about the highest aim. I mentioned yesterday, people interested in spiritual development must have a certain aim. They must have some goal where they are going to go. Once you have the goal you find out how to go there. That will automatically follow.

0:14:00.4 Here also the same thing. The highest goal in the spiritual field according to Buddhism or Buddha’s teaching is total enlightenment, the ultimate enlightenment level. The question now rises whether it is feasible for people. Yes, it is. Also the question rises: is that feasible within my left-over life, whatever it may be, 30 – 40 years or 10-15 years or whatever.

The answer is also yes. It is feasible and so many of them have achieved it and why can’t you and I? There is no reason. Incidentally, when you look at Buddha, it is looking at the highest level and all this. On the other hand, a few thousand years before, I tell you, between Shakyamuni Buddha and ourselves, there was no difference. As much as we are intelligent, that much Shakyamuni Buddha was intelligent. As much as we are stupid that much Buddha was stupid. He was not buddha then, so he was equally stupid. However, by chance that fellow had an opportunity, really, and he was able to channel his energy, in other words, he got things together. And we could not put them together. So unfortunately, he has now become a buddha and we are left out.

0:16:17.5 This is unfortunate. Actually, we should have been there and he should have been left out. If that happened it would be fortunate for us. But it is not, because he became buddha and we have to look up while he is looking down. Why? I am sorry I don’t want to use bad language, but he got things together, and we did not. We were unable to put things together, even today, many of us, although we have realized that material things are not that beneficial.

They are not the total answer. We don’t get satisfaction, we get dissatisfaction and all this trouble. Especially in the West we are lucky fellows, we know that much.

0:17:42.5 So you also know that the spiritual is the answer, however, you don’t know what spirituality is. You really don’t know. You just go somewhere, sit, think nothing and do whatever the others are doing, look up and down and all sorts of funny things and you call that spiritual. That’s why I say we don’t have things together. We don’t know what we are doing, although we are doing something. Buddha, on the other hand, got it together and was able to progress and became Buddha. So he stared to relay his own experience, telling others, “I did this and this thing happened to me and when I did that, that thing happened to me.” That is what Buddhism really is.

0:19:04.8 Buddhism is not some supernatural God-made religion. Not at all. It is based on the experience of the Buddha. When he started putting his energies together in the proper direction he experienced difficulties, he also experienced advantages. So he started relaying that to us and that is really Buddhism.

0:19:46.2 DT

0:23:15.0 So his experience is Buddhism. Now when you look into Buddhism you will find a lot of different Buddhisms nowadays. You will find Theravada Buddhism, which has commonly developed in places like Sri Lanka and Thailand and so forth, and you also find Mahayana Buddhism, which is developed in China and all these areas and Vajrayana Buddhism, which is developed through Tibet, Mongolia and all these different areas. Then in addition you have Zen Buddhism and all these different things. When you look at them, they look very separated sometimes. But when you look carefully, it is all one Buddhism. Within this one Buddhism it has all been worked out very carefully. I have a personal experience on this. Very interesting and not out of place to mention. Sometimes people think, “This is Theravada Buddhism and we have nothing to do with Mahayana.” Sometimes they say, “This is Mahayana Buddhism and we don’t accept Theravada.” Sometimes they say, “Vajrayana has a lot of completions of its own.”

0:25:22.9 But what really happens is when you look at Buddha, how he worked, how he had his energies channeled together, you will find that all these principles – not everything but the principles – of Theravada, of Mahayana and of Vajrayana have been channelized in such a way that one brings the other up. Do you get me? Let me put it this way. Buddhism introduced Vajrayana or Tantrayana. Do not misunderstand. The moment I say “tantra” people get a lot of funny ideas. In different countries people get different ideas. Do not misunderstand. It is one of the best techniques available for one individual to obtain total enlightenment within one’s life time. The shortest, quickest and best, the most delicate and most dangerous path is the Vajrayana, the tantric path. Without going through the tantric path there is no hope at all of getting total enlightenment within the life time in Buddhism.

0:27:26.0 When you take that as tantric path then the Mahayana principle of total service rendered to others, total selflessness, altruistic attitude, is becoming the base on which you go to the Vajrayana. Without that Vajrayana doesn’t work at all. Now you get some better idea?

The Mahayana principle is altruistic service, no selfishness whatsoever, totally rendering service to others altruistically. How can you develop that altruistic mind, how to become that, without taking the principle of the Theravada? Seeing the problems of the self, renouncing the cycle of existence, without that there is no way to develop the Mahayana practice at all. When you look at it from that angle, one is pushing the person forward to the other stages.

0:28:53.1 Buddha himself was very clever, an extraordinary teacher. When he started to talk he talked to the people to their level of understanding. He did not go over their heads. He could have easily gone over their heads using different Sanskrit words and things like that. He could have easily done that, but he didn’t. He only taught to the people where he understood he could reach. That’s why I said: he was a great master.

When he talked to the people to their level of understanding he talked to their capacity. Some people will not be interested for whatsoever in the altruistic attitude. They don’t care, they are only interested in “I should get liberated, I should not have problems. Why should I care for others?”

0:30:08.7 For that he taught the Theravada teachings. That’s all. Nothing beyond. But some people who not care for themselves, but also for others, think, “How can I help them? I can see my friends are having problems, my relations, the persons I care for, my dearest, my nearest, I see problems with them. How can I help?” So for them, the Mahayana has been taught. But they don’t understand anything about rituals and so forth. Buddha cut it there for them.

0:30:52.4 Then for those who are even more intelligent, who can understand mantras and yantras, tantras and all this, he is also gave the Vajrayana. Now, when you look from the Vajrayana angle, you see all of them working step by step towards enlightenment. But if you look from the other angle you only see what you are supposed to see. You don’t see beyond that. You get my point?

Now, what did Buddha do, throughout Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana? To take the major principal efforts to lead towards enlightenment he took two things: one is method, the other is wisdom.

Method can be any different methods. The other is wisdom. These two are carried in principle from beginning to end. Buddha himself gave the example: when a bird wants to fly it needs two wings. With one wing there is no way it can cross anything. When the person wants to cut the cycle of existence they need method and wisdom. This is now Buddha channelized his energy towards these two directions, these two efforts.

0:32:41.2 DT

0:38:34.7 That’s why we are talking about Theravada and Mahayana and the different spiritual aims. The Theravada aim is the arhat level and that is their ultimate aim. Mahayana, whether the Sutrayana or Vajrayana part, has total enlightenment as aim. Lower that that is the lowest spiritual goal: to have a better future life. These are the three levels of people on the spiritual path, the different levels of goals and according to the goals the methods will be directed, the energy will be directed. This is how one works.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, from the beginning, not the lowest quality, for that you may not need it, but from cutting through the cycle of existence to total enlightenment you have to have both, wisdom and method. Let’s not talk about method today at all, because we talk about method so many times. You can get a lot of books and all sorts of things. So when they chose the subject of self and selflessness for today, that is dealing with the wisdom part.

0:40:14.0 The wisdom part is the famous Buddhist emptiness, really, everybody knows about emptiness and talks about emptiness. But I am here to tell you that emptiness is not empty. Emptiness is full. On the other hand fullness is empty. Buddha himself said in the Heart Sutra:

Sug tong pao – tong pa nyi suk so……Form is empty, emptiness is form. There is no other emptiness than form, there is no other form than emptiness. I may have said it a bit wrong, sorry. I am very bad in English. I never learned this language, I am really terrible in it. But that’s it. So emptiness is full and full is empty.

0:41:55.3 From the method point of view there is the Hinayana, Mahayana, Vajrayana division. But from the wisdom point of view there is no division. The wisdom that comes from the level of Hinayana goes through Mahayana and goes through Vajrayana – everywhere. Wisdom is the emptiness, the famous Buddhist emptiness.

0:42:24.0 Now the question remains: if form is empty and empty is form, what does that mean? I am empty. What does that mean? It does not mean that I am not there. I am very much here. I am here, I am talking, you are here, you are listening. You are sitting, right? So what does that mean? That’s why I am saying: emptiness is not empty, emptiness is full. Although I am empty, I am here, I talk, I walk, I speak. That is very important. I came from my previous life, I remain in my present life and I will go to my future life. So which is that I? Are there two different I? The I that is empty and the I that is existent? If there are two different I there has to be two different selves, there has to be two different persons. Is that right or what is it? These are the questions. If you talk about self and selflessness we have to discuss that.

0:44:12.6 DT

0:48:14.3 Another question we have to deal with: why is this emptiness necessary? Why is not love, compassion, renunciation, discipline and all this enough? What is the need for this wisdom part? One of great early Indian saints and scholars, Dharmakirti, said in his Pramanavartika, the root text of one of the five famous subjects that the geshes study:

Cham so mung pa gye ne chir

Shing tu nye pa tab gye ring (spelling??) 0:49:48.6

Love and compassion, etc, are not the direct opponent to ignorance.

Therefore, no matter how much you have love and compassion,

You will never to be able to touch ignorance at all.

0:49:56.4 In other words, love and compassion, etc, are a wonderful thing to do and absolutely necessary and one should and must have it. But love, compassion, renunciation, etc, will not be able to damage our ignorance, they will not be able to clear the ignorance at all. Why? Because it is not the direct antidote. Does that make any sense to you? I hope so. Many people are not shaking their heads. So probably it is not making sense. Okay, I will make it simple.

0:50:53.1 What do people in the spiritual field do? We will overcome the delusions, because they are the blockage for our development. They block us from going up. So we have to get them out in order to get ourselves developed. From the beginning I told you that a lot of people just sit and do all sorts of things and postures and don’t know what they are doing and that is not spiritual. That’s what I keep on telling you. Why? Because actually being spiritual means to cut your delusions. What does a spiritual person do? What is your real enemy? The delusions, like anger, hatred, lust, attachment, jealousy, all these are delusions and we want to get rid of them.

0:52:08.8 They are things to be thrown away, to be purified. When you want to get rid of anger, you need a direct antidote to anger. You cannot take the direct antidote of attachment and try to get anger out. It will not work. If you want to reduce anger you need the direct antidote of anger, in that case it is patience. You have to apply patience. That is true. If you are upset and angry, be patient, then you don’t get angry. Simple, very simple. Like that. If you get too much attachment, there are things to be meditated in order to get over it. Every one of the delusions has their direct antidote. Each direct antidote, when you apply it, the negative forces stop. When they stop positivity is built and that is your advantage, your virtue.

0:53:48.1 Now the root of all of them, anger, attachment and all of them, is ignorance. You might have read it. I have across a lot of Western Dharma people and other spiritual people and they say that everything we see and do is delusion, there is no truth, no this thing and that thing and they talk about duality. They talk all these different things with half understanding and half not understanding. We do that every day. But where does all this come from? Ignorance. That’s what they are talking about. We are influenced and totally created out of ignorance. Therefore, everything we see is wrong. You might have read a lot of books that say that everything is delusion and everything we see is not correct. Many people ask me that question all the time. What they are really talking about is this ignorance. Because of it’s influence everything, whatever we perceive, we will not perceive correctly.

0:55:05.4 That is ignorance, which creates all our suffering. What is ignorance? Stupidity, not knowing, what else? True, but it is not the ordinary not knowing of knowledge, it is not just lack of education. It’s more than that. We are ignorant of ourselves, of our true nature, of our true existence. That is the basic ignorance we have.

That basic ignorance produces a big self, a big I, a fundamentally important big dictator sitting behind you somewhere at the back, directing every movement in his or her direction, making the self so important. You get me? That is the basic structure of our ignorance. What does that ignorance of I, the person? From “I” it develops “my”, then my friends, my nearest and my attachment and from that “my” it also develops my enemies and my hatred. You get me? All this starts from this big dictator sitting at the back somewhere. That’s the big I that we perceive and that is the basis of our ignorance.

0:57:38.1 It is not a point of knowledge, but we are getting the wrong perception of everything. This is our basic ignorance and it is the root of our life cycle. From I comes my, my friends and my attachment. For the sake of my friends and my attachment then I do bad things, this, this, this and so on. For the sake of my enemies, in order to punish or hurt them, I do this, this this, including killing and destroying and everything. This is how the basic structure of ourselves functions.

0:58:31.4 That’s why this is called ignorance: not knowing the true functioning of the human being, of true life. Maybe I am going overhead. If that is going overhead I will change, but I hope not. The choice of the subject is such that I have to talk about self and selflessness now.

0:59:19.0 DT

1:05:17.5 Then what happens is that this total big fact dictator type of I, which is just really how we perceive, the moment we look deeply [you cannot find it]. If you are not looking, without thinking, just looking at “I did this, I did that”, there is no issue. But the moment you know there is a big I, through which I start developing my hatred, my attachment, my anger, then the moment you start looking deeply inside you will not find that I at all. This is only if you look for that. When you don’t look in you won’t know. The moment you start looking in you will find it very difficult to find that I, because you are told that is the wrong I. It is the big guy and when you start searching for the big guy you will never find him, not through the body, through the mind, through everything. You will not find it.

1:06:43.3 A lot of people will think, “Yes, yes, I know, the I is the mind.” Nobody will say “The I is the body”. But no, mind is mind, it is not I. If that were so, there are so many different minds in every person. There are 52 divisions for mind. So there have to be 52 different I, but there are not 52 different persons. So the mind is not the I and the body is not the I. So then keep on searching. The moment you start searching you will not find that.

1:07:26.7 But it is still there, dictating from behind and you perceive that as I. That is our basic ignorance and how it functions. Emptiness will see the emptiness of that I. But it is not empty of the I on the basis of which we function, on the basis of which we work and create causes and results. That’s not the I that is not there, but the I which is independent, self-creator, big director. That is the I that that we are less of [empty of].

1:08:19.3 Now the question rises: how can we find back? How can that be true? How do I know? Buddha has given the most important reason: the king of logic. That is dependent arising. Every phenomenon is dependently arising. It exists in dependence on different parts and parcels together. So it is called dependent arising. When certain parts and parcels do not exist, if they missing, then the thing cannot stand by itself. So I am also dependent arising. My existence is very much dependent on my parts, my body, my mind and my name. Gelek exists, when Gelek’s body and mind is there and when somebody, a correct person, labels that “Gelek”. Then Gelek exists. If the label is not there, it is somebody else, not Gelek. You get me? If my body is not here I cannot feel, so I cannot be here. If my mind is not here the body won’t talk, really, the body will not function. Therefore, my existence very much depends on my mind, my body and my name.

1:10:26.9 If one of them is missing I do not exist. You get me?

Audience: inaudible….

Rimpoche: Very good, I tell you simply, very easy: the name, the label is the most important thing. We cannot ignore that. If the name is not there, it can be a mistake, it could be A, B, C, D, E, F – anybody. I can be Tom, Dick, Harry, whoever. I cannot be Gelek. Gelek’s existence depends very much on the labeling. It is very dependent on that. If that is not there it goes wrong.

1:11:33.4 Now, after labeling, without checking, if someone walks through and says, “Hey, here comes John!” as though John exists from his own true nature, walking through. Actually, the existence of John is dependent. John is very much dependent arising, on his body, his name, his everything. So labeling is very important. If it is not labeled then somebody comes, but not John. In your mind, in his mind, somebody is existent, but not John. You get me?

Audience: ..inaudible….

1:13:24.6 Rimpoche: Don’t think of somebody else, think of yourself.

Audience: …inaudible….

1:13:49.1 Rimpoche: Well, if I don’t think I cannot speak. The existence of the person depends very much on the combination and particularly, labeling. Now the question rises: if the label is so important, why can’t we label brass as gold and pillar as pot? Ordinary brass is that yellow metal. You can label that as gold. So the label is important. The substance of metal is there. So why can’t we label brass as gold? [We can’t, so] labeling is important. If we can label brass as gold we all can become very rich that way, right? So why can’t we? Because if you do that it will be contradicted by a true mind, a mind that acknowledges true knowledge. If we label brass as gold, others will say, “You are crazy, you are wrong.” Right, you will become crazy? Because an independent, true mind has contradicted that. So it was wrong labeling. That cannot be done. So if call John George, he will say, “No, I am not George, I am John.” So this labeling has been contradicted by a true mind.

1:16:13.2 Therefore, not only existence of the body and not only existence of the mind and not only the existence of the label, but it has to be labeled on the correct basis by a correct authority, or correct person. If the wrong person labels, again it doesn’t work.

1:16:49.1 DT

1:21:19.1 For example, if you see Ronald Reagan walking into this door you will say, “Hey, the President of the United States walked in.” Why? Because we think the President of the United States, by nature, exists in Ronald Reagan. We call him the President and he will acknowledge, “Yes, I am the President.” So the moment we see him we perceive him as this big President. But actually, if you look carefully, his presidency is dependent arising, in such a way that he has to be elected by the correct people, the people of America. If he is not elected by the people of America but only by the Republican Party, then he is not yet President. Then they will not label him President and he will not think he is and people will not say he is President. He will only become President when the public has elected him. Then only he will acknowledge and function as President, but he does not exist as President from his own nature. He is dependent arising.

1:23:06.7 If he is not dependent arising, if his presidency did not depend on the labeling by another person, then the moment he is born his parents would have said, “Hey, the President has been born”. But they don’t, no President was born. He became existent as President only when the combination and conditions were established. That is the sign that he does not exist from his independent nature as President.

1:23:50.9 So do we. I only exist based on the combination of my body, my mind and my name. Only because of the combination of that I do exist. The moment one of them is missing Gelek will not exist. This is the sign that Gelek is not something existing from his true nature. So the independent self “Gelek” is no longer existing anywhere. You cannot find it, neither in the body, nor in the mind, neither outside nor inside. It is not there at all. So it is the same for all, Tom, Dick and whoever it may be.

1:24:56.2 That the “less” of self, of the person. That is actually the self that should be destroyed by wisdom. That independent, self-existent self – when you see that this is not there, you are beginning to see in the direction of the emptiness of the person.

Now, another thing. You may think that the table is existent because of the combination of the top and the legs. If I take the legs off and the top away, then I see there is no table. So I see the emptiness of the table? That’s rubbish. That can be seen even with the eyes. The emptiness of this particular thing means more than that. You understand now? Yet, emptiness is not empty. On the other hand it should be able to function as the basis of karma. I am empty of an independent self; however, I do exist, I do function, I am the base of karma, I am subject of karma. I came from my previous life, I still live in this life and I will go to my future life. I talk, I walk, I eat. So I am still existent. The independent self is gone but I still exist. How does that work?

1:27:25.0 It is simple, we have to bring together two things: the relative part and the absolute part. I do not exist absolutely. If I do exist absolutely I should exist as an independent self. But I don’t, therefore I depend. If I depend on a walking stick it is a sign that I cannot walk by myself. I need help. I depend on a walking stick. Similarly, when I depend on the parts and parcels of existence then I do not exist by myself. In absolute reality I do not exist by myself. However, I do exist at the relative level. So it is good enough to be existent. If one exists at the relative level it is good enough to exist. But if you do not exist in the absolute level it is not good enough not to be existent. That is the whole trick of emptiness.

1:29:11.1 DT

1:33:11.0 Again, relatively it is good enough to exist. Even if you do not exist absolutely, it doesn’t matter. If you do not exist absolutely it doesn’t matter, but it is not good enough not to exist absolutely.

1:33:28.3 DT

1:34:10.4 Sorry, we have a very difficult subject tonight. So I am trying to make it as simple as possible and give you some idea. I do not know whoever has chosen the subject tonight, but that’s what it is. I assure you I did not make the subject. Although I am seeing you for the first time, I am sure many of you are familiar with Buddhism, however, tonight the subject happens to be a bit difficult. That doesn’t mean that every part of Buddhism is that difficult, not at all. As a matter of fact, the basic principle in Buddhism is very, very easy. In our normal traditional way we don’t introduce emptiness like this at all. Before we introduce emptiness we introduce impermanence.

1:35:10.0 Then we introduce the subtle impermanence and from there we see the changing of every minute and every second. Then from there we introduce the level of emptiness. Therefore, it is done after a background of four, five years and if then we talk about emptiness it will make some sense.

1:35:44.7 End of tape