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19931203GR12L11

0:00:00.0…end of the 12 links of dependent origination. When you look at the 12 links, and especially let’s say a rebirth in a lower realm, let’s say an individual’s negativity led to rebirth in a hell realm or hungry ghost realm or animal realm and finally the 12 links are completed over there and that’s why normally we say that there is a hell realm, but that hell realm is impermanent. We always say that.

The way the 12 links show how to take rebirth, either positive or negative, it is the same thing. There is no difference. An animal rebirth is just as impermanent as a hell realm or hungry ghost realm rebirth. We see animals dying, which is ending their life. That cycle is completed there. Likewise, that cycle will also complete for a rebirth in the hungry ghost realm. Although we don’t see hungry ghosts they die too. It takes much longer than we would expect, but they die. So do the hell beings. So if you go to hell, hell is impermanent.

0:02:27.7 With that the cycle completes. That’s why the second chart, which we provided shows how it works. In the end there is always death and decay. That’s how it ends, even in the hell realm and hungry ghost realm. How it works in the animal realm we can see it. Looking at the lower realms, the complete circle of the 12 links, gives you Buddha’s complete teaching of ‘common with the lower level.’ Seeking freedom from the sufferings is the ultimate aim of the ‘common with the lower’ level. The completion of the 12 links in the lower realms and how it functions and what is happening, the total picture, if you look, is presented by looking at the lower realms. The animal realm is very easy to see. We see how they are born, how they grow, how they die. And all you have to do is to project yourself as being that animal, a particular goat, cat or dog, whatever is close to you and look at that circle and look around. That will completely give you that picture of how the animals live.

0:05:00.8 That’s not meant in the scientific way of how animals are born and live from the outside, but looking at the individual from inside as you are born as cat and then see what happens with the total circle of the 12 links. Also if you trace them back, instead of going clockwise, trace them back anti-clockwise it really gets back to point one. That’s why it is a circle. My idea originally, was not to present a circle, but two crescent moons overlapping, so that consciousness goes in between. But Dr. [Kronenberg] insisted that nobody would then know that it was still a circle. He said we had to draw a circle. That’s fine. He is the driver, with the steering wheel in hand. So that’s how you got the circle here.

0:06:33.8 The idea here is not necessarily the result part and the causal part. The circle gives you a better picture, rather than this way [demonstrates] and then you can search this way or that way, whichever you go. We have a saying in Tibetan

Ye ne chi ne a ma pa le tse ne

Ye ne chi ne a ma pa le do ne

The Tibetans joke: if you go from the right you will reach the lady who sells the cookies. If you go from the right you will reach the lady who sells the cookies

So it is a circle. Whether you go clockwise or anticlockwise, you get to the same place.

If you look in that way, that gives you exactly how life functions. Totally. Whatever life it maybe, animal, hungry ghost, hell being. You also see that the end is always suffering and problems. Nobody ends their life with joy, whether in the human realm, animal realm, hungry ghost realm, wherever you look you will find that it ends in pain. Whoever dies they die with pain. Yes, they say “He or she died peacefully, with a lot of people around and so smooth”. Yes, smooth, no doubt, peaceful, maybe, but there has to pain, otherwise how do you separate? The apartment is no longer useful, you have to go. That has to cause pain. Then the individual can no longer bear the pain and has to go out of it. That is called death, disconnection.

0:08:45.8 Whatever it might be, how beautiful, how wonderful it may look, you may draw a picture or print a picture of how beautiful somebody died, bla, bla, bla, yes, we have to do that, and society demands it and it is etiquette. We also like to do that. Not only that. Over here you go one more beyond that. You take the body to the morgue and funeral home and there they put on make-up and comb the hair and dress it up and make it look great. That is how we like to project. We human beings have that tendency, because we like to remember it that way, we like to go away that way, we like to present it that way. However, the reality is the other way around. The guy died, the woman died. It was not a beautiful party they went to. That is the truth. That’s what it is.

0:09:51.2 The total point here is that no matter how glorious a life might have been, when it ends, it ends with pain. That goes for everybody, right? It includes the spiritual masters, the political leaders, the military generals, the rulers, the wealthy and the poor, whoever it might be, life always ends that way. As a matter of fact, for every glory there is the opposite side too. But lets not go there. It’s all there. In any case, every life ends with difficulty and pain. It is the same for human beings and animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings, and it is the same for the demi-gods and samsaric gods. They all die in the same way.

0:11:33.5 Look at that chart and also the other chart, with the 33 divisions or something. They all look like corporate charts, very good. Is it 51 subdivisions? There are even 2 occasional hells. All of these, whether 51 or 33 or however many subdivisions of realms, for all of them the end is pain. That’s why Buddha says: as long as you are in samsara it always ends with tragedy and pain. It is impermanent, it will rot. It may become flesh again and then again rot and that way it will circle and circle and circle.

0:13:52.8 The point that I want to make today is that when we concentrate on the lower realms with the circle going round it will give you the total picture of how insecure and impermanent our life is. How difficult it is and particularly when we look at the lower realms, how painful and miserable it is. As long as we are in that life we have to experience that very pain. If we become a dog, even the pets we keep today, how much difficulties that dog has to experience! We will have to experience the same thing. There is no difference between the dog we see today and when we become a dog. There is no special arrangement. That’s what it is.

We don’t want to become that dog. We don’t want to be locked in the house all the time, nor do we want to get kicked out of the house all the time, nor do we want to be tied to a tree all the time. On top of that we cannot express all the difficulties we experience. At most we can bark. Whether people can understand or not, our communication is limited to that. No matter how intelligent the dog might be. That is pain. And we are not safe from that – yet. We are not a dog just know. We know that. But there is a tendency to be able to become a dog next time. There is no guarantee that will not happen. So seeking freedom really means freedom from that.

0:16:20.2 The essence of the ‘common with the lower’ level is seeking freedom from the uncontrolled events that govern our life. That covers the circle in the lower realms.

If you look at the circle in the human life and the demi-god’s and samsaric god’s realms, you see ups and downs, joy and pain, misery, problems, as well as mental, emotional and physical joy. It all comes one after another and you know which is going to hit you. That is normal human behavior. You may be happy at this moment, high as the peak of the Himalayas and suddenly you find yourself at the bottom of the Himalayas. Something like that. You never know which one is going to hit. You may be smiling and enjoying yourself just now and next minute you could be crying, with a long face. All that happening is the ‘common with the medium’ level.

0:18:00.8 Whatever joy or suffering we get in life is impermanent, always changing and we have no control. And it ends with suffering, pain and misery. The big grand total is that it always ends in pain. That again we have no control over. There is joy, there is pleasure, there is pain, there is misery, but we have no control, we go through with that. It is like you are on a boat in the middle of the sea in some kind of storm. You never know what is going to happen, whether you swim or sink, whatever it is. You go. That’s what happens.

There is joy in life, I am not denying. There is a lot of joy. You can get a lot of kicks. There are lots of nice things and lots of bad things, all of them together. There are lots of nice things, that’s why it is called a higher rebirth into the higher realms. There is a lot more pleasure. Don’t think that Buddhism tells you that every pleasure is pain. No, no, no. Pleasure is pleasure. We do experience them. We mix them together. That’s why we have ups and down, emotionally, physically, all of them.

0:20:04.0 If you look more, particularly the physical feelings, no matter how much we go up, it has to go down. It has to conclude at the lower states, otherwise you wouldn’t die. You would live forever, right? But we all have to die. That’s how it ends. If you look at that, it will give you the Lam Rim’s ‘Common with the medium’ level. The essence is that wherever we are reborn, whatever happens, it gives you the total idea of suffering. When you begin to look at this and there are 52 different place to go and each one of them has problem, the next obvious question is: Where else can I go where I don’t have these problems? That is called: seeking liberation.

0:21:08.6 You are looking at the possibilities of where you can go. The maximum possible ways of how you can get reborn. This chart says 52. Then you see that each of these 52 places has problems and is not problem-free, including the samsaric god realms and even the form and formless realms, right up to the peak of samsara. That almost looks like a vegetable state. The joy is so joyful, and you remain there for a long, long time. There is not so much wisdom or intelligence, it is almost like those people who take drugs and almost feel nothing. There is not so much difference there, except it is not influenced by chemicals, but by karma and lasts very long. That is the only difference, otherwise it is the same thing. And when that karmic power, that meditation power, ends, then that experience will do down, way down, terrible, because all the good karmas you had were all combined together and made it as long lasting and as numb as possible. So you have exhausted tremendous amounts of good karma and then you go down terribly into the lower realms. That’s why Buddha, from his experience really pinpointed that and said,

It is very nice to go high up into that level, but don’t go there. You will be wasting your time and your energy. The moment you get power of concentration, don’t sit on it, but cut through and become totally free.

So that’s the picture. If you go to any of those places in samsara, there will be problems and in the next one you have no idea where it’s going to go. All the circles will come again and again and you will reach to the bottom all the time.

0:24:22.3 The next question then: obviously, if we are intelligent and care for ourselves, as we all pretend to do is: is there something else? Of course, Buddha says: Yes, nirvana. That is out of the circle. Get out of that circle. That will get up and down all the time. In the old days, before electricity, they had these old water wells. A wooden stick was above it with a rope going down into the well and a bucket hanging from the rope. You send the bucket down and if fills with water. Then you have to put in effort and pull it up and up and up and when it reaches the top you can get the bucket of water. When you send it down, you let the bucket drop down and it goes very fast pprrrrrrrrrrrrrr down. Just like that. Like the bucket you are kept tight in there. And like the bucket coming up you have to put in a lot of effort and you have to pull the whole bucket of water up and when it goes down it goes down without any effort. That is the example.

0:26:17.3 Going up is with problems, going down is without problems. Why do we have problems going up? Because we have to go against our addictions. We have no problem going down, because that suits our addictions, like anger, hatred, jealousy and very comfortably zooommmm, we go down. That’s what it is. Going against that is like swimming against the current, trying to lift yourself up. But in the circle of life, going up and down and up and down is no point. That’s why Buddha said: the freedom, the liberation is outside of the circle. Get out of it. That is the picture.

0:27:19.2 Not only that. You see yourself in the 12 links in the lower realms and higher realms. Then you see your friends, the people who are with you, who you care about, your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, your children and your parents and so forth and you see them in the same condition, you don’t see any difference at all. When you see their condition you begin to feel the pinch, you can feel the compassion. Compassion has to be felt. It can’t be just lip service. Lip service compassion, as we Tibetans say is only above this [indicates] and then you may say “O poor thing, how sad” and it is only above this. In English we call that lip service. And that won’t do. When you feel the pinch that it’s not only you but the person you care about, this one and that one and looking around and noticing, “Oh my God, we are all in the same boat.”

0:28:53.6 So first you have to feel the pinch and look at the different people, that’s how you really develop your compassion. Otherwise it is lip service, which will not reach you anywhere. You have to beyond lip service and then it is compassion.

I told you the first day that I will show you how the 12 links work with the Lam Rim. That’s what it is. The essence of Lam Rim is the “common with the lower’ level, ‘common with the medium’ level and Mahayana. That’s what the 12 links show you. Not only that, the 12 links also show you the Vajrayana, but I can’t talk about that here. But it exactly shows you.

I guess that’s it. That’s how the picture of reincarnation, of lives and lives, good and bad ones. We have not talked outside the circle, we have talked only in the circle, 52 different places.

0:30:32.8 That’s the Lam Rim, that’s the picture of our life, the story of our reincarnation. That’s that. As Walter Cronkite used to say: That’s the way it is.

Audience: If every samsaric venture ends in suffering, and if for every joy we experience there is more suffering, because of the nature of samsara…

Rimpoche: There is suffering that goes along with the joy. Whether it directly corresponds I am not sure.

Audience: If that is the picture then every effort we put into worldly happiness, be it maintaining a lasting relationship, working for material well being in this life would at best be a waste of time and worst laying up a future store of suffering, directly proportionate to the joy we experience. Given that, why would we even try, at the same time as practicing Dharma, to maintain lasting relationships, be members of the community, develop something like a house or career or anything like that? If that is all in opposition

Rimpoche: 0:32:59.9 Very good question. Really true. But on the other hand, you have a life and you have to live it. You can’t be a pauper for the rest of your life. It is not good for you, not good for your children, not good for your community, not good for your friends. Get it? Okay, so you have a life and try to live it reasonably good. No Dharma person would like to be a Rockefeller, I am sure no one has that in mind. So you need a reasonable, respectable life. That is necessary, for me, my children, my companion and friends. Without that I would be a failure. If you do not know how to handle this little one material life, which you can watch and see and follow, then the question of handling life after life is out of the question. Out of question, to tell you the truth.

If you don’t know how to handle the jigten, the samsaric society, life style, etc, it’s not going to help you. 99.9%, with the exception of some crazy wisdom people, then you won’t be able to handle a spiritual life either. If you are disorganized in your material life you will be also disorganized in your spiritual practice. The patterns of the individual, how you handle one thing are for sure the same as how you handle another. With the exception of 1%. Everybody would like to be part of the 1%, but it won’t be. Then it wouldn’t be 1%. That’s really true. That’s the reality.

0:36:24.3 I don’t believe it’s a waste of time and I don’t believe it is a waste of energy. I do believe that if you can handle that, along with benefit for others, with good motivation, then you may be working for maintaining your life, pay your bills, but if you make it with the good motivation of giving a service, of helping others, then you don’t have to have the idea of making money. The money will come without grabbing and crying for it. You fight for the opportunity to serve others, you fight for having more runs to the airport so that you can help more people. You fight for serving the people, rather than fighting for $30 or $40 or whatever. You get that as a side effect. This is the truth.

0:37:41.4 That is the trick. As I said the other day

Gang zhi chi nam me ga tar pa ye

Tak po gyal lo me pa la so gye

If you know how to handle, even if you remain totally in the family life, with kids and obligations and all this, you can liberate yourself, like for example Marpa and others. I don’t remember the other half of the verse, but the meaning is that if you do not know how to handle it, then even if you run to the forest and go under the ground into total retreat from society, friends and so forth, you will be the same old woodchuck or groundhog when you come out. The groundhog goes underground during the winter. So it is the same thing.

This is the difficult part, how to balance. This is the art to be known how to handle one’s life. Here you can make every effort. Every work that you do you can use. Of course you have to make money. We are in this society, which is totally false. To tell you the truth it is totally false. You cannot deny that. But billions of people are following that society and if you try to rebel against that – you can rebel to a certain against, but you cannot change the total set up of the society, which is based on the economic system. Unfortunately this is the society we live in. Whether it is the communist world or capitalist world or whatever world you may call it, they are all totally false. They are built on an economic system which is again false. That’s how you live in the family life and have a Dharma practice, so that the next time things are different.

0:40:34.9 Even though you wear the same thing. You eat the same thing but it is different. Some earlier Tibetan teachers used to take snuff. One of them was asked, “Why are you taking so much snuff?” He said, “Hey, your snuff and my snuff are different.” Really true, then the other one said, “Why is it different?” “You are just taking snuff for the sake of getting a kick out of it. But when I am breathing in the snuff I am taking the suffering of all sentient beings. When I blow the air out I am blowing all the joy to all the sentient beings.” (laughter). So it has become an exercise. The base of the soup makes the difference. It’s the same old snuff, same tobacco, same dust, mixed together provided by the same person, put in the same bottle, taken by two different individuals with different attitudes. That makes the difference. That’s the art of life.

0:42:11.0 I really think so. It is really true. I am not just saying it for the sake of saying it, but that’s really how it is.

Audience: We were talking about beings who take rebirth at the peak of samsara and it seems to me that it requires an awful lot of karma to have such a birth and yet it seems such an undesirable place to be. I don’t think that anyone would consciously aspire to be there. What are the reasons for taking such a rebirth?

0:42:56.6 Rimpoche: There are people who are addicted to alcohol and they are not inspired to drink more. They want to cut it out. Those who are smoking cigarettes all say, “I like to cut it out”. We hear that from every single person who smokes. There is no inspiration going on. The problem is that when you are addicted you don’t have strong will power to cut it. You say, “I will smoke one and after that I will stop. After this packet I will stop. After that……but it turns out the packet will continue, the smoking will continue, the lungs continue to get dirtier. Nobody is inspired, but it goes on.

0:44:06.6 The person who has trouble with their companion will definitely not be inspired to have another problem. But they go through it again and do the same thing again. You see they are married three times and divorced three times and so forth. That’s exactly what it is.

Talking about suffering and pain, I believe tomorrow is a talk for the victims of HIV

Audience: It is going to be at 6.30 pm at Rackham, there is a candle lit service and different community speakers….

0:45:13.5 end of file END OF SERIES