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19960116GRAA5P

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In the Tuesday teachings we do different things. On the one hand, we try to give you a good solid practice. At other times we try to give you a lot of different information about Buddhism. A solid practice is very important and people need it, but also a lot of people are not familiar with some of the Buddhist structures and terminology. That’s why recently we talked about the mantra TAYATA OM GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA, which basically gave you the background of the five paths. We talked about it in simple, short terms.

This subject is part of the curriculum of studies in the Tibetan monasteries. Today I was looking for a short text on the five paths and was surprised how deeply I would have to address the subject philosophically to make sense of it. I am not even sure whether we can talk a lot about the five paths. But we have to at least mention them, otherwise you might tell others later, ‘I have studied in Jewel Heart with Gelek Rinpoche for months and years’, and if they then ask you about the five paths you have no idea. That would not be right. So I will try to make it as simple as possible. In Jewel Heart we always talk with the aim in mind to prepare for Vajrayana Buddhism. Everything is geared towards a practice of Vajrayana. We only pick up the absolutely necessary parts of the Hinayana- or Theravada teachings.

You may not be very familiar with Buddhism in general. The most popular type of Buddhism available in South-East Asia is actually what we call Theravada or Hinayana. The kind of Buddhism that was available in China and in early Northern India, etc, is the Mahayana Buddhism. That is further divided into the Sutrayana and Tantrayana. Basically, Tibetan Buddhism is Mahayana Vajrayana Buddhism. The Chinese or also the Japanese type of Mahayana Buddhism have no Vajrayana influence.

Buddhism is very deep and has a lot of different teachings. All come from the one Buddha, without a doubt. But when Buddha taught, the teaching was only suitable for the individual people he was talking to at the time. A lot of followers of the Buddha interpret that as ‘skilful means’ or ‘wise means’. That is what he did. He taught individual people what was relevant to them, what they were capable of understanding and what they needed in order to deal with their lives. So to some people he taught Vajrayana, to others the sutra Mahayana, to yet others Hinayana. Then, after Buddha, his followers tried to sort it all out and that is why we have now all these categories like Vajrayana, Mahayana, Hinayana, etc. However, all of the different systems have some absolutely necessary things, and all of those have to be included into the Mahayana, because the Mahayana is the great vehicle. It claims to deliver the practitioners to enlightenment, not just to personal liberation, like the Hinayana. The Vajrayana is a very sophisticated, fast, supersonic vehicle. However, you have to have the necessary foundations and training to be able to make use of it. Therefore the absolutely necessary parts of the Hinayana, and also the necessary parts of the sutra Mahayana, like love and compassion, have been included into the Vajrayana framework.

When you talk about the divisions, like the five paths, ten bhumis and even the eight-fold path, you have to understand that there is a Hinayana way of counting these and a Mahayana way. Hinayana and Mahayana both, present the system of the five paths – with the same names. Though they are not completely separate, it are two paths. Even the Vajrayana has five paths, but these are totally different and are not even called ‘five paths’.

PATH OF ACCUMULATION

The first path which they both present, is called the ‘path of accumulation’. Basically, the path of accumulation is the period in which the accumulation of merit is emphasized. You can call it also luck, or fortune, and it includes purification. Unless a person is lucky enough, he or she can never practice or benefit from Buddhism at all.

How to get onto the Path

How do you get there? To begin with, you come here every Tuesday to listen to the teachings. Whether or not you meditate on those, I have no idea, but the idea is that you are supposed to do that. Whatever information you get here, you should think about it in your own time and find out if any of it is suitable for you and then make use of it. You should use the teachings as tools to make some difference in your lives. Just don’t completely forget about it. If you don’t remember anything, then it is not worthwhile. If you just want some good entertainment you are better off watching the David Letterman show. If you want a difference in your lives, remember it and think about it. Check if it is relevant to you: does it reflect something in your life, and if so, do you need to change? This teaching is trying to provide you with some kind of mirror in which you can see certain things about yourself. That is one of my expectations.

When we talk about the path of accumulation of merit, the following question may pop up in your mind, ‘Look, I have been coming here for a couple of years. I went through the complete Lam Rim teachings, I meditated a little bit – or not so much, but I did something. I also obtained certain initiations and have some commitments and practices to do. Am I now on the first path, the path of accumulation of merit?’ That question is bound to be raised by everybody. The answer to that, philosophically speaking, is ‘No’. So what are we doing here then? We are preparing to get to the first path. Even just to get onto the first path, that itself is considered a very important, very high level spiritual achievement. So therefore, we are not at that level at all.

Look into Lam Rim. Guru-yoga as the root of all development, embracing the human life, recognizing its importance and the difficulty to find it, then impermanence and the attempt to ensure a high future rebirth and to avoid a rebirth in the lower realms – up to that level we are on what call ‘common with the lower level’. That is a complete path in itself. Then you go on to ‘common with the medium level’. Here you realize that it is not good enough to be guaranteed one good future life, because after that the same unfortunate conditions will arise again, repeatedly. Therefore you want to attain complete freedom from all possible sufferings that you have repeatedly experienced. Until your practice has reached that level – until you have developed the unshakable and proper aspiration to seek total freedom, you have not touched the path at all. Once you have reached that realization, you begin to touch the path of accumulation of merit.

So when we say a few mantras or do a little bit of meditation, when we do a little bit of guru- yoga here and there, when there is a little bit of recognition of the importance of the human life, and we know a little bit about karma and about refuge, we are all still not on the path of accumulation. We may do some Vajrayana, but that much does not mean we are on the first path.

When you are actually on the first path, you’ve got a high achievement. Say you are firmly and stable on the path. Looking backwards from there, you have already passed many of the steps of the Lam Rim – you have covered at least all the subjects contained in ‘common with the lower level’. You are already on the ‘common with the medium level.’ When I say ‘you have covered them’, it is not like having attended a course at university. First you have to attend teachings and read books and listen to tapes, etc, but then you have to analyze that information and take the essence out of it. Then you have to meditate, until it becomes an unshakable part of your life. That is the difficult part: to make it part of your life. And to make it an unshakable, immovable part of your life is even more difficult. But without going through this process, you have not ‘covered’ the subjects we are talking about. Your mind must be soaked in them, they must be your way of life, your principles, your mission, your direction. Not only your direction, it has to be part and parcel of what you want and what you are looking for. Then you are sort of getting there.

When it becomes unshakable it means that nothing can swing your mind, nothing can make you do things differently. You have really gotten into it. That requires firstly a good understanding, then a thorough analysis, and then strong concentration on it. Only then it will become part of you. Without that process, the teachings will only make sense on a few occasions. Then you will forget, until some time later something comes back to you. Then that also goes away again. In between that you will get doubts, you will read books by certain strange people and wonder if they are right. You know, all these things will come up. Then you are shaking, your mind will swing. That proves that the teachings have not really soaked in. The point is, if you can go somewhere else and get something better, something that can give you total enlightenment quicker, then it is wonderful. Go ahead! But I am very doubtful, that you will ever find that. The United States is a spiritual shopping center. India, Tibet, etc. are spiritual homes. If you go through the shopping center, or through the home, you will not find anywhere anything else that will give a solid, comprehensive path for one individual to reach full enlightenment. I am not making spiritual propaganda here, but it is true. Wherever you look, you will not find it. There are many great paths, no doubt, especially in the great religions. But none of them will even attempt to introduce a method that leads you to total enlightenment. Which spiritual path presents such a method, apart from the Buddhist tradition?

You first have to be convinced that you have found the right path and then you make that path unshakable and solid. It is not good enough to tell yourself, ‘Now I am unshakably and solidly on the path’. You may pass a New Year’s resolution about that, which is great, but sooner or later, circumstances will arise and overtake you. Conditions will change. The spiritual path will help the individual way beyond the level of material comfort. However, our immediate financial needs are very urgent. Bills have to be paid – that is the first priority. There are a few spoilt-rotten individuals, who do not care about earning money, nor about paying their bills, but that is all just a form of laziness. Whether it is eastern or western laziness, or spiritual or material laziness – it is laziness. This is another obstacle that will prevent you from solidly getting on the path. You may think you are saying a lot of mantras. That may be true, but saying mantras alone will not put you on the path. Period. To get onto the path, you have to practice, to meditate, to soak your mind in it. In order to do that, first you have to receive the path, then you must analyze and thirdly, you must concentrate. If you don’t, you will never get onto it. Any wind will blow you off the horse that you think you are riding.

So, simply telling yourself will not do. Telling yourself will help. Then you will get onto the level of ‘pull and push’. That is your first struggle. Once you overcome that, you will become comfortable with it – for a while, until something goes wrong. It is still the level of ‘pull and push’. Once you have got through that, you are on a level where you half understand and half you don’t. That goes on and I think the majority of people here is on that level. That is okay, as long as you do not get off, or the wind blows you off. You have to continue to be mindful and to analyze. Even for me there are many occasions where some things I have heard or have been saying for a long time, suddenly make more sense. There is a recognition of, ‘Oh, that is what it means. That’s why!’ You get that. I even get that after almost sixty years of practice, ‘Oh, it must be that – that is the reason why’. When you get to that level, you will become stable. Now you may get worried and think, ‘My whole life will be spent just trying to get to that level.’ But don’t worry. I have to tell you how long and how difficult the path is, so that you can appreciate in which way the Vajrayana is quick and how it is the vehicle for the jet age. You won’t be able to measure it, if you don’t know how long the usual system of the five paths takes. Therefore it is very important to know that.

In other words, when you have a solid mind and totally commit yourself to total liberation, then you have touched the path. When I use the words ‘total’, I am not talking about the depths of your willingness, but about how much it has become part of your life. No one can change your mind. When I say that, it does not mean that you have to brain-wash yourself. You have to convince yourself, to understand each point of the path. Once you have understood and are convinced, no one will be able to change your mind, unless they are able to give you something better than that.

You really need to get your Lam Rim understanding solidly grounded. There is no more time for fooling around with that. The way to get this grounding is by picking up the outlines, going through the information of each point of the outlines, and meditating on it. You have to try to build it into your life habitually, form a habitual pattern of functioning within that. That is the real essence of the practice. As long as it does not really become a habit of yours, then whatever time you spend on meditation, no matter whatever you do, it will not become part of the practice, because habitually you have not adopted it. Once you have done that, your practice has become solid. It is not that the period of daily meditation has to become part of your life, but that the subjects of these meditations be adopted by you, so that wherever you go and whatever you do, this has become your principle. Whether you go into a bar or a temple at night, or into a classroom or shopping mall in the day time, whether you are digging the ground, or cutting meat, playing with the computer, whatever you do and wherever you go, these principles should be with you. I don’t mean that the daily period of meditation has to become your habit. I have to spell that out, otherwise people only hear what they want to hear. They may think, ‘Oh, yes, I usually do half an hour a day, and this is part of my habitual pattern.’ That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the way you think, how your mind functions: these principles have to have a lot of influence.

Overview of the Five Paths

Why is the first path called ‘path of accumulation of merit’? What kind of merit are you accumulating? You are accumulating merit to open the great wisdom eye. Not the third eye, don’t think that. I am not Lobsang Rampa, who knows how to operate the third eye. Wisdom in this case means the wisdom of emptiness, the true nature of reality. When you know the nature of reality, all the mysteries are solved, the mystery of life, the mystery of the individual. Deep down all the mysteries are cleared. That wisdom is achieved on the third path and that is why it is called ‘path of seeing’. You are seeing the nature of reality, which solves all mysteries and solves all intrigues. Cutting through all of that and seeing the deep, naked truth, is called ‘path of seeing’. In order to be able to open that wisdom eye, you need a tremendous amount of luck or fortune – not money, but positive karma. That is why the first path is the path of accumulation of merit. Important at this level is accumulation of merit as much as possible and purification as much as possible. These two are the major activities. I am not going to talk much about the divisions of that first path. It has actually three different levels. Each one of these is further divided by three parts, small, medium and big. First you reach the small level, then you go do the medium level and then you become the big guy!

The second path is the path of action. You are taking action, so that you can open the wisdom eye. It is action-oriented.

The third path, that of seeing, has two divisions: the actual meditative level, called the ‘path of space-like wisdom’, and, after that, the yoga of illusionary aftermath. When you have seen the truth, you get disoriented and you have to adjust.

When you have adjusted to the illusion-like aftermath, you transfer to the path of meditation, the fourth path. This has nine different levels.

After the path of meditation you reach the level of ‘no more learning’, which is the total enlightenment.

We will, in the following Tuesdays, go through these five paths in some more details. We will introduce each path and its principal meditations and also the principal obstacles that you have to get rid of on each particular path.

In a way you could call this an advanced teaching. It is unlike Lam Rim which is the kindergarten-type of level, where we bring people into the practice. When you are getting into the five paths themselves, it is a little bit advanced. Still for new students it will be beneficial to hear about that. And the people who are more familiar with the path, will actually be able to look at Lam Rim and Vajrayana and fit them into this frame work. Then you can see where you are yourself. Today’s talk was a very rough orientation to what these five paths will be.

Buddhism in everyday life

Buddhism is very interesting. It can be condensed into something like one hand-full and yet the complete path is contained within that. It can be presented in huge detail which fills the universe and still you will not be able to comprehend. Seeing that the year is 1996, it will have to be the ‘one hand-full’ presentation. The essence of Buddhism definitely does not depend on how much you meditate, how many mantras you say, how important you are. Actually, in Buddhism, everybody is extremely important. Each and every person will make a difference, not only to themselves, but also to others. The others, that is the very person next to you – not necessarily here in the meditation room, but at home. It is your companion, your friends. That is where it begins to make a difference.

How you make a difference depends only on how you think. It does not matter how you dress or how you walk, or whether your are conservative or liberal. Your thoughts and actions should be guided by love and compassion, for yourself and for others. Compassion for others is very important, but you also cannot forget yourself. Don’t leave yourself out. If you leave yourself out, but try to develop love and compassion for all sentient beings, it won’t work. That would be idiot compassion. There is no such person called ‘all sentient beings’. If you leave your own experiences out and then say, ‘Oh, poor dog’, ‘poor cat’, or ‘poor rat’ or whatever, it becomes idiot compassion, because you are excluding so many others, including yourself. Your compassion will be just lip-service. You should never exclude yourself. In principle, in practice, even for the practice of love and compassion, ‘I myself’ is the most important object, whether you like it or not. Even for the great bodhisattvas, the ones who are selfless and totally dedicated, when you ask them, ‘Who do you think should be totally enlightened?’, their commitment also is, ‘I would like to become a fully enlightened being, so that I can perfectly help others’. So the purpose may be to help others, but ‘I’ am the one who has got to do it, who will be enlightened. I am not driving everyone to enlightenment and wait until the end. That would be idiot compassion again – although I can’t really say that, because Avalokitesvara’s compassion is supposed to be just like that. It is said that his compassion is like a white lotus and better than any other compassion. But in practice, if you exclude yourself, then it does not become right. If you cannot do it, nobody else can. So love/compassion is your direction, your mission, your purpose. You have got to do it. You cannot exclude yourself from the objects of compassion. You have to have love and care and compassion for yourself and others.

The love-and compassion-oriented mind is very important. So when you wake up in the morning, think the way Allen Ginsberg has put it, ‘I am happy not yet to be a corpse’. Think that you are happy to be alive and that you want to set up this day to be a good day, that you want to be good and kind to all beings. You have to include yourself in that all. If you don’t, it is not all, it would be ‘all except me’. You have to do what is relevant for you. Your primary duty is to help yourself and your companions, the people dependent on you, the people who rely on you. That becomes your responsibility. That is first and foremost. You cannot sit on your cushion and saying ‘all sentient beings’, while not recognizing that your blue jeans are catching fire. You have to make up your mind every morning and determine that for the next eighteen or sixteen or fourteen hours, whatever your amount of waking hours are for that day, you will not waste that time. True, you have got to do different jobs in order to make a living, pay the bills, feed your family and yourself. But think, ‘I will do that with the principle attitude of love and compassion’. Then you can pray to the enlightened beings, ‘Help me that I will be able to do that’, or if you want, you can say, ‘Help me, God!’. That will also do. If you make up your mind in this way every morning, that will be the guiding principle for the next twenty-four hours of your life. It is better to maintain in this way a twenty-four hour-commitment every day than trying to keep a life-long or even week-long or month-long commitment and let it become watered down. If you do it every day, that is better. It does not matter if you miss a few days. This is a helpful, easy way to function in every day life.