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Soundfile 19901229GRFNLCWR7

Speaker Gelek Rimpoche

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Topic

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Transcriber Wee Lin

Date 28 Mar 2022

0:00:04.3 and while he was asleep he was physically lifted up to somewhere outside quite far away. We have a swarm there and he was put in the swarm three times. That was not a joke. Then they became very suspicious and kept on wondering how the hell did they manage to pick that guy up. He did not believe first and second [time], he never believed that has something to do with the protector. He would never believe that and he held a suspicious enquiry [or what we] call interrogation. We had no idea about that. They would call each and every servant one by one and asked them where they were and who knew. That enquiry went on for days and then the same things repeated three times luckily. Then they approached my father and said please do some puja. They brought some money and asked to do puja and then soon they moved out of the house. The military moved out and the house was made into the Lhasa newspaper headquarter. They made my father and Kyabje Trijiang Rimpoche co editors, editor in chief. A number of people were made editors. I was one of them. By the way I join the rank [of editors]. Ha ha ha. However I have never been in the Chinese newspaper office for a single day. They used to give me 300 silver coins every month as my salary but I have never been in the office for even a single day.

0:02:34.0 We really have a very nice video of the late His Eminence Trungpa Rimpoche. And you know about him. We talked last night. You can learn a lot and even those of you who have not seen him or contact him but you can read his books and teachings. And as I had mentioned to you this technology is sometimes very interesting, you can build connections. So I do hope everybody will be here and watch it. Thank you.

0:03:37.1 The question what I have in mind is how does one really look for a spiritual practice and what does that do to the individual and how do you notice the effect of the spiritual practice. That’s one question I can think of on those lines and another question is, how do we know if a person is highly spiritually developed or are they just simply crazy. That I mentioned the other day too. So the first part on how one enters, how does one make it a spiritual work whatever you do. That’s quite important point. I wonder if Aura could say a few words on that.

And I also like to do something funny and different. How does the spiritual practice affect the individual’s live. I will take that subject away from Aura because I think that is too obvious and I want Louise to answer that. And then I see if I can share some thoughts about the spiritual developed and the crazies.

Audience : inaudible

0:06:22.5 Rimpoche: How do you enter into the spiritual [path] Not enter but what makes the spiritual practice a real spiritual practice. In other words, people have lots of different things that they think are spiritual practice.

Audience: I am having trouble seeing the difference between your first and second question.

Rimpoche: That’s why the first and second question are together. The third one is how it affects the individual. The first one has a little more intellectual thing than the effectiveness on the individual’s experience. Yours is too obvious so I want to hear from Louise.

0:06:22.5 Audience: (not audible)

0:08:38.9 Audience: I’m not sure this is a dressing . I am not really quite sure what the intention of these questions but ……

0:09:13.7 Audience ( giving comments): The first thing that comes to my mind is that we enter the spiritual path because we have no choice. Those first thoughts that came to my mindis that we have no choice, we arrive at a point in our life where we realise that and I think this may happen with people in different ways but my sense about what it means enter spiritual practice versus anything else we might chose to do with our lives. I guess those are the two possibilities, spiritual practice and anything else we might chose to do with our lives. And then of course ultimately the question’s been passed down to is the spiritual practice and then what do we do about our live. ( inaudible) or great dychotomy between what we value and what we think is important on the daily day level and what are the deeper intrinsic level that we know and that there is a real big split between those two things when were in a place that hasn’t begun integration spiritual dimension so that I guess that my sense simply …… Explanation would be that, are values normally made non spiritual perspective are very much focus on the kinds of things that would give us immediate satisfaction but when we look more deeply we realise it will not give immediate satisfaction. What we are really getting is relief from discomfort and then actuality the things that we think will satisfy us by nature we look at those things we are not really experiencing the satisfaction of that thing or experiencing its extension of the dissatisfaction that was pushing us into desiring that. And that we experience this relief from that so we feel oh great now I can rest here and then sooner or later usually sooner than we want, some sense of dissatisfaction or sense of hollowness or incompletion or something isn’t really being fulfilled or I held my cup to fill it but somehow water did not flow into the cup and that my cup still feels empty but somehow my cup didn’t stay full. The sense that I cannot make a connection with what I am really trying to fulfil but I am really trying to satisfy and then that there is a cycle….., maybe I have better try something else or try something different. Let me do this or let me do that or let me swing from …. to enter into our world with the notion that the world will somehow come back and satisfy. That somehow world was there to fulfil that and to give us that what we are working for. And I guess in my mind, there are a lot of doorways to enter this but the doorway didn’t appear soon at the moment is that with transition it happens. There can be over a series of experiences before you in a moment of revelation, it can be some kind of dramatic fashion, is it suddenly there is a dawning or slowly there is the dawning that maybe I am working in the wrong places. Maybe the places that are working aren’t capable of giving me that which I am wanting. Not capable of giving me the satisfaction that I am seeking that are capable of relieving that discomfort which is at the bottom of that seeking. Relieving that sense of meaning less that I am trying to cover up with meaning. I am trying to get a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, a sense of value to my existence and these things aren’t giving me that. They are temporarily deceiving me, saying Oh ya, ok I’ve got it. Then if I got it then how did I lose it or maybe I didn’t have it and all these questions and so I think that what will then take place is a sense that perhaps I need to look at my life itself and my existence itself, I need to look back at myself and see what is really going on and that when I make that shift from looking at the world and saying ok world give me what I need, I am willing to work for it, why don’t give it to me. And I shift into looking inside saying ok or who is in there. What is that whatever it is that’s in there that I haven’t been taking the time to look at and haven’t taken the time to identify or disidentify that I haven’t even given importance to. Who is that? What is that? By knowing what it is, how can I satisfy it? If I don’t know what it is seeking really, how can I give it what it wants. And that when that shift begins to happen and that focus begins to really develop within because we are trapped. There is the sense of rightness, that is experienced that is so …..the deepening of that concepts and that at that point we embark on what would be a focus on our values change from shifting of looking at the world to fulfil some sort of purpose that we are seeking or individual thing or objective to really the question of our being and question of who we are fundamentally then it might senses that spiritual practice is that which is addressing that dimension of our life and if we are addressing that dimension of our life, traditional way in Buddhist terms, anything that goes against delusion, anything that goes again delusion is taking you in the right direction. But in terms of our life’s practice is speaking, spiritually speaking anything that begins with the fundamental reality and probing into that and moving aside from just habituated behaviours and assumptions we never examine. The beginning I think of entering into spiritual path.

0:16:52.2 Rimpoche: Any questions?

Audience: Sounds right.

0:17:04.1 Rimpoche: So what sort of method can touch that.

0:17:21.1 Audience ( sharing experience) : …………..I think from my experience, you have to have a certain amount of luck too, otherwise I think of my first contact with any kind of spiritual direction was quite by luck and … ………………………………

0:22:34.3 Rimpoche: I have been wondering when we discussed last couple of days ago, the different levels we talked about whether your ultimate aim is to become a Buddha and I said it is not right , I mean it is not going work for the people and I’ve been wondering just tell your ultimate spiritual achievement you can become a Buddha, what do you think, wen you said that .What sort of reaction do you get.

0:23:13.8 Audience: All I want is to have a good life, be a good person and be comfortable. That was my original thought. And what am I getting at .What I was doing was liking was hearing in terms of how effective those aspect of my life, the comfort level, the feeling good level , it gives relief to … those levels and so I pursue more deeply than just financially listening, learning the basic fundamentals of the three paths. But when I think .. when I first heard that becoming a Buddha seems so like being in another planet to me that I just couldn’t connect , I just …. Comfort and relief and security

0:24:50.4 Rimpoche: I have a question on that. When you begin to practice in Buddhism, at least what I notice, I don’t know whether you really seek comfort or not. I sort of thought for lots of people, it seems to be a lot more of problems and difficulties and all these sort of things and though it might not have been newly developed, somehow I begin to notice, looks like hell of problem to me rather than seeking comfort and all these.

0:25:35.4 Audience: I thought the answers were good but I wasn’t ready to remove them but I wanted to know I wanted to be able to lose those things, they made sense to me. The very basic stuff made a lot of sense to me, for example the antidote for anger which is patience made a lot of sense to me although I couldn’t do it. It still is very hard to practice that. It is such an automatic response to be angry instead of to be patient in some situations. Logically it fits for me in most logical ways and so I think that’s where we really have to start. There was discomfort, yes but less discomfort in Buddhism than in anything else that I have done because there is no guilt attached to mistakes or having horrible thoughts. There is something that you look at so it’s a lot less uncomfortable than anything else I have encountered.

0:26:51.2 Audience: ………

0:28:41.5 Rimpoche: I am sure quite a number of people came through that way too. That definitely is one way.

0:28:51.8 Audience: When you said about enlightenment being the big thing that I have always …., like the ultimate , I only get enlightened then everything else will the ultimate safety or the ultimate refuge or be able to stop sufferings. And then you said if once, paraphrasing, enlightenment or …..

0:29:48.1 Rimpoche: I didn’t say that. I didn’t say it is not like that. If I have said it then I have made a mistake. I don’t think, I hope I didn’t say that.

Audience: Like the first day here, I can’t recall in certainty what you said. What the comments did to me was made me realise that the concepts of enlightenment that I held was just more like getting better job or getting a bigger car or, I held it in those terms so I thought if I get enlightened than I will have my life handled. I spent a lot of my life looking down different paths to get it handled. What’s real special about this weekend for me is the idea that bodhisattvas is doing it for other people’s world.

Rimpoche; Oh ya . That I hope I said that. Ha ha ha.

Audience: …..

Rimpoche: Oh I see. Ok Ok. Thank you.

0:31:57.0 Audience: …………… It seems to be myself was I have questioned why I am existent in the first place.

Rimpoche: It is very true. Can anybody answer that question.

Audience: ……………… Why am I even here in the first place. What is life? What is it?

Rimpoche: It is really interesting. So what can that get answer. If you are lucky we can get answer but I can’t get answer to that I will continue. If you are not lucky you can even go say, what should I be here, I’d better not be here. I should do something that I should not be here, right? It’s possible.

0:33:12.7 Audience: When you were talking about this business of being a Buddha and might not care even for it …. You said that under the picture, at the time there was always a small picture. I look from you to that picture. There is a picture in the house where I live, that man that is overaged or man like that, very small expression on his face. And I think that ……….. At the time I came into this house, I was not involved in the dharma but I used to look at that picture and I thought what a beautiful face. He has the most incredible luminosity to his face. It’s like barely a shell of body covering this luminosity and I thought how did he get that? And so someone says to you, would you like to be a Buddha and so I said would you like to be the planet Mars? ………. It’s a statue or something you read in a book. You can’t relate to it. But looking at the picture of a man like that who is he still living? Recently within the last 20 or 30 years was walking around in this planet, having dinners and reading books and doing things that we do. That’s why. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Buddha but here was somebody who must have been on to something.

( Audience sharing experience)

0:38:58.5 Rimpoche: Can we get to the last part of the question Louise. You want to share something?

0:39:08.3 Audience: …. Everything that can be said has been said. But I was talking about how it affects you and a little bit of how I came to it. I came to it through suffering and when I met Rimpoche I was still suffering and angry. About the fourth time I met Rimpoche he said something that had a profound effect on me. And he said simply that we have to soften our mind. I left that meaning and I could see Rimpoche’s hand going around like he was softening a piece of dough and I thought to myself, this is one of the roots of this suffering I have. This is hard mind and …, this hard mind that everything’s got to be my way or no way. And then I started to come and listen and as I came and began to learn more and do the practices and listen to Rimpoche, I saw that our perception of the world, what we look out affects how we feel, how we act, are we loving to our neighbours, are we looking at our neighbours with this hard mind without realising the fact that we and our neighbours are one that is inner penetration of all the universe that we all live together and that slowly started to get realisation that my just the way I saw the world made a difference. I was at the time I could go to the store and it would be nothing to have an argument, you know and I come to a place with the cops will treat me lovely.

Something is happening. And it is from this change that I see in myself, in my relationships with those around me, with my family, with my friends who have no interest in this practice but do not stand in my way because they, for instance, my husband sees a difference in me. As I said the other day to someone I am easier to live with. So this is way I am developing and as this comes then that was working on myself then I could start to spread out and look and see that all these beings I was capable of loving. I was capable of loving them, the good ones and the bad ones , rich ones and poor ones, they were all like me, they were trying to be happy, we were all here together so it was for me to have this realisation and to put it in practice is… what can I do. It comes back to all the beings in samsara and their sufferings, you want to help them and they are mother sentient beings and they end up with the end of the thing but what can I do. Only thing I can do is become a Buddha. And that is what I am working toward. I know it is a hard path, it’s a just trying to take it a little bit at a time, not take the whole thing. That’s all I can say about my experience with this practice. Why I stick with it and why I get on a plane and fly out here to sit with Rimpoche in cold weather. Because it has made a difference in my life.

0:44:10.5 Rimpoche: Thank you. I would like to see how personally individual people’s effect and how it works and I think that’s made lots of difference. We seem to be doing this sort of retreat twice a year . That’s the maximum we can handle. As we don’t have our own place as we don’t have anybody to work and Chris and Colleen put everything aside and started working and organising the retreats and things like that and I think that’s the maximum we can do. Just getting together sharing our energies, thoughts and idea,s we will carry something back and when you go out there and hopefully whatever you’ve been able to carry not only learning and practice but also experience and feeling and something different than what you usually have. Be able to carry that and hopefully it will last till the next retreat.

I think with this I should say thank you to everybody and it does make difference and I just sort of thought Louise share her experience and somehow people anger somehow works with you, I don’t know why. A lot of people who began as very angry people somehow gradually will be made soft, lots of them. Openly I am seeing that. And that’s somehow my personal thing. A number of people, like Benjie in India. She used to be a terror. You have no idea how she gets angry. Though the Indians don’t normally show their anger because of culture, they hide that. She went beyond. I can see anything that she will break and throw. She had tremendously improved. Tremendously. You see her a totally different person now, completely different person. And there are a number a people I won’t say, some are, I don’t know why. Don’t think I am not an angry person, I get very short tempered, right?

Audience: I’ve never seen you get angry.

Audience: ……

0:48:08.1 Hopefully I am not getting angry. I was good at that in India. I had to shout because things get done. I have to pretend to get angry. To tell the truth, really I try not to get angry. … slapped me once and I was not angry. Somebody scolded me and he looked like a monkey’s other side. But I was never angry and then after sometimes I started laughing. He would say, “You are laughing at me, get out of here.” “ I’ll catch you. Get out of here.” And things like that. So somehow whatever it is, it affects with others too. I haven’t from you, your personal experience of any effect or not. When we have another opportunity, tonight I think. I would like to hear that.

Claire mentioned to me that there are a lot of improvement and progress made by lots of people compared with last retreat. And that made me happy. I hope you are not buttering me. Ha ha ha. I felt good but I personally observed a number of you really made difference. I notice that for sure. Many of you made lots of difference. And I hope it will continue. If that continues then it’s affecting and it’s been helping and that makes me happy. And that will contribute towards anything whatever, towards world peace, towards your personal peace, towards your personal development, towards service to all beings or enlightened society whatever. All of them this contribute and individual, the question which was raised earlier, the individual makes a difference to the society. Where does the society come from without individuals. It is the collection of the individuals and each and every individual will definitely make its difference towards and each person will make a difference to the others . We have a saying, actually a sutra says, (Tibetan quote) If you’ve been near a gold mountain, then nearby there are lot of gold, becomes gold or becoming gold. In case if you lean towards a poison tree then nearby there will be a lot of poison. (Tibetan quote) In case if you are lying on the poisonous mountain, then nearby will become poisonous. I think that makes difference and that is the purpose of people getting together though it is really difficult and the long way you have to come, on the plane in the cold. But I think that makes a difference. And I hope you keep that, Thank you. We have to dedicate.

0:52:53.6 Anyway I hope you had some benefit …. Not too much ….. As we mentioned yesterday whatever you gain, the most important is not …. although I shouldn’t say that ……… ( inaudible)

And above all most important try, and clear yourself, do something which you know and don’t do something that you don’t know. Try to be clear and straightforward and nice person. And be kind to anybody, be kind and if you can’t be very kind you should not harm. That’s is what the Buddha said.

0:55:07.8 Audience: I was just wondering I never heard the distinction between spirituality and …..

Rimpoche: I wanted to touch on that but …… actually it is a very difficult, number 1, it is a difficult subject to look and judge. Buddha himself had said you should not make judgement on others. Actually Buddha’s advice to the people (Tibetan quote) This is very important. Somehow we have to pick that up and emphasize because everyone of us including myself are always very quick to give advice to other people and pass some kind of judgement on other person. We are very quick at that based on our whatever it is, whatever limited knowledge, training, information that we have accordingly, we are very quick to make judgement on other person.

Buddha said one should not judge anybody unless you are fully enlightened. ( Tibetan quote) Buddha said either you become a fully enlightened Buddha or equivalent to that, then you may make judgement on others. Otherwise one should not make any judgement on anybody because you would never know what it is, who is who and that is very true. And to make it more confused than it already is, there are a great many siddhas or persons who have obtained very high status who behave so crazily including the Tilopa and the famous Naropa. The Naropa Institute was named after Naropa.

0:58:07.2 The great Vajrayogini teaching and initiation tradition what we do is the Naropa style. It came through Naropa. Though Tilo, Naro, Marpa and Mila went through the Kagyu lineage very strong, somehow this very particular Vajrayogini doesn’t go through the Kagyu lineage. Naropa refused to give to Marpa for some reason. Who knows. So it went through the other way round, through Sakya and then can finally came to Gelugpa. So these sort of great [siddhas] like Tilo, Naro all of them don’t look like great persons. I am quite sure they looked very very funny. If you read their biography on what they did. Tilopa was also known as Nyatoa, meaning he went by the river side, picked up some fish, threw it up and then ate it. That sort of funny thing. When Naropa first met Tilopa he got a living fresh fish out of the river and burnt it on the fire, cooked it and ate it. That sort of style and then all of them acted very crazy so causing more confusion for us.

0:59:48.5 Then everybody, no matter whoever it might be including Buddha, have something to say some criticism. Has to be otherwise you are not a human being. If there is no criticism then you must be an image made out of clay or gold or brass. You leave it nicely on the altar, it will not move. So it will not bother anybody unless somebody gets angry and throw it, otherwise it is in nobody’s way. It sits in some corner somewhere. So it will not bother anybody. It won’t touch, it won’t push your button, it won’t do anything. So you will see no problem and so there will be no criticism at all. As long as somebody is a human being, there has to be fault. Otherwise the purpose of coming as a human being will be defeated if it is an enlightened one. All sorts of things has to be done which makes it more confused as it is already a problem.

1:01:12.5 However I think what I look at is what we judge. We can’t judge, number 1, we cannot be judgemental but somehow we have to have some kind of understanding and convincing to ourself. You look at the overall effects of how much benefit they brought to the individual. Are there any benefits? Are there anybody who have been benefitted and how much is the benefit. For me, is it benefitting me or anybody else? Is it effective? That is the mark, an available way for me to judge anybody at my level. I am not a Buddha so I cannot judge. But if it is helping some people and if it is benefitting them, then there is something in that person. It is not just simply a craze. I guess that much I can say because it is now the end of our session. Let it be short. So I would do that. How much benefit that brings people.

First of all I would like to thank all of you for taking trouble to come from wherever you are coming from and spending your precious time to be with us, sharing your energy and if there is any effect it is not from me but from all of you helping each other and that’s what it is. And I thank all of you for that. There are number of people who had selflessly worked for Jewel Heart ever since it was established and even long before Jewel Heart was established brought me all the way from India into the United States and facilitated me to be around and making use of some crazy information that I had and also try to share that with others. Then people who are organising it earlier [before the retreat] and later and in between and during this retreat. It is very nice to be sitting here and enjoying the short seven days but it took a number of people doing a lot of things, the planning, making phone calls and writing letters, when and what. Last night when we were talking, Claire was telling me that we have a very smooth meeting but in order to make that smooth meeting the preparation took a number of hours to prepare, writing down then dispersing and putting it down making it smooth. Each one of them really took lots of work beyond, during and after the meeting. There are also a number of other people who are involved in various things and other sentient beings, human and non-human sentient beings who had been walking around and all of those and I am very grateful and thank you. I was mentioning to Chris and Colleen that this retreat run quite smoothly rather frightening smoothly because we always have some .. here and there, it is part of our thing but I do not know why whatever it is. Anyway thank you and especially thank you to you Chris and Colleen and everybody. I guess that’s about it.

Now we have a smoke puja. Don’t know whether they can make smoke of not, I have no idea. So anyway we make this incense offering so we dedicate all our work and dedicate our past, present and future virtues in general for all for all of us to be able to obtain enlightenment and particularly for peace in the world. Hopefully neither Bush or Sadam Hussein will go crazy and so we will be safe for a while. After the incense offering, we have to come back and then do the dissolving system and dedication.