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19960206GRAA5P

III

From the Hinayana point of view you enter the path of accumulation as soon as you develop the very strong determination to be free which in Mahayana is taught in the ‘common with the medium level.’ From the Mahayana point of view in order to reach the first path, you must have developed the bodhimind. Without the bodhimind there is no way you can get onto the Mahayana path. Everything we are doing now is therefore not an activity of the path level, but preliminary to it. However, we have to present the five paths at some time. You need that knowledge, it would not be right to study Buddhism for years and not know that. The other reason is that, if by chance you do reach the path, you know where you are. These are the two reasons why we are doing this teaching.

On the path of accumulation we collect positive karma in order to break the ice and free ourselves of samsara. Right now we only think we are seeking liberation. Truly, 90% of us will have some kind of interest in the subject, but basically – I am sorry to say that – it is not the real thing.

What spirituality is and what it is not

I was watching ‘Good morning, America’ at around about 6 30 a.m. There was a show on about Colorado, about ice-skating. The people that were interviewed said how great it was. It was amazing that the sky was so blue, the air was so fresh and the snow so great and if you don’t see the spirituality in that, you must be dead. That is the indication of what level of spirituality we are looking at. I am not saying that the feeling is not good. But if you take that kind of feeling to be spiritual, it is pathetic. I am not saying that ‘Good morning, America’ is pathetic, but that what was said there, must be a very low level of spirituality. For me spirituality must go way beyond that. It must be GATE GATE PARAGATE … gone, gone, gone beyond. It has to be, otherwise we are losing all values. We are not looking for some wonderful feeling here – that is the ‘love and light’ business. For those people it may be fine. But spirituality must have two purposes: cutting the negativity within the individual and delivering the individual to a higher level. And with that I do not mean higher altitudes in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, but the levels where you cut the uncontrolled power of the delusions that we experience day after day, hour after hour, week after week, year after year, life after life. We have the opportunity to cut that. That should be the least to aim for and if possible, one should aim for the ultimate state which a Buddha reaches. That is a spiritual path. This is not something that you can reach at a higher level of altitude, where is the air is a little different, or where you see some beautiful things. Last weekend we went to Chicago and by the time we drove past Lake Michigan, you could see that beautiful mist coming from Lake Michigan. The temperature in Chicago was minus 10, and one side of the lake was frozen, while the other side was not. So you could see blue mist going up, and after a while white steam. It was really a beautiful thing. You could call that spiritual too, but it is some kind of mystical type of thing.

The spirituality we are talking about is something else. We need a spiritual path that makes a difference to the individual once and for all. We are not looking for some nice little thing. You could go up to Tibet and sit in front of Mt. Kailash for a year. You will definitely get a lot of different feelings there. There is cold air, it is very dry, if you want mystical feelings, you can get them there. But that is not going to liberate the individual at all. We need some kind of benefit for ourselves. We are not looking for any temporary physical, emotional or mental benefit, but for something that really liberates the individual, so that the physical, emotional and mental aspects are taken care of by themselves. In plain Christian language, we are looking for the liberation of the soul; in Buddhism I can’t say soul-liberation, because theoretically it would not be right.

Liberation means liberating the individual from the control of the delusions. These are obstacles to mental development. If you clear them out, you are in the awakened state. You are liberated, or awakened. That’s why Buddha is called sang-gye. The clearing away of the delusions will automatically lead the individual to the awakened state. Therefore ‘love and light’ does not work in Buddhism, nor does the Colorado spirituality of fresh mountain air. It is no doubt beautiful, but not necessarily spiritual, and there is beauty within samsara too. Samsara also has beauty and if you sit there too long admiring it, you will get problems too. The beautiful feeling will change. If you put ‘Good morning, America’ up into these mountains for two weeks, they will know it. They will lose that beautiful feeling completely. The samsaric beauty is changeable suffering. It is nice and pleasant, no doubt, but it is also suffering of change. Do not make a mistake. Don’t confuse spirituality with this sort of thing.

Unfortunately, the level on which the American people treat spirituality is extremely low. Not only low, it is a very pathetic situation. We have to realize that. The word ‘spirituality’ is a very rich word. Its scope is tremendous and it has a tremendous amount of benefit for the individual. Americans have the saying, ‘Do not settle for second-best’. Well, here is a great opportunity. Right in front of you, there is this tremendous opportunity. While having that enormous capacity to understand and move yourself and make a difference, if you settle for less than best, then it is very unfortunate. But the majority of people do, because they don’t get it, they don’t know what spirituality is. And in between that, half cooked and half raw, a million different teachers come around and everything will be called spiritual. If you burn some incense, it smells different, and people will call that spiritual. Some people will have fifteen different types of incense that they can put around. So you can have fifteen different types of spirituality! If you beat a drum, it becomes spiritual. Anything non-mechanical will be made into something spiritual. This really goes too low and too far. It really does not pick up the value contained in the name. This is important to understand.

According to the Buddha’s experience, you should not recognize anything less than perfect freedom as spiritual at all. Anything below that is considered to be just lucky karma. If you do something nice, it will create causes for another beautiful, comfortable life in samsara. Negative karmas will give you negative results. Positive karma can be divided into three categories: real positive karma, unshakable positive karma, lucky karma.

Buddha never accepts anything as spiritual, unless it is capable of delivering the individual to the total liberation from delusions. That is spirituality. We have to be very careful, especially those of us who have the chance to tap into the extremely rich experience that Buddha left with us, whether it be Theravada, Mahayana or Vajrayana. First you have to know it yourself. Then you can help another person and through that another four or ten people will find out. That is how we have to let people know what spirituality is really all about. Otherwise every single damn thing will become something spiritual.

I used to know a guy in New York. It was an agent for somebody who used to come to New York once a month to give a workshop for two days on weekends. They would teach you there how to cross a street that is on fire. They would put burning charcoals on the street and let you walk across. It cost you $200 and the money was collected three months in advance. They used to get between seven hundred and fourteen hundred people regularly. At the end of the workshop half the people could walk across the fire. They did not get many blisters, actually. But they could not walk the distance back. Once was enough. They called that ‘Spiritual fire walking workshop’ or something. Things like that mean nothing. All they will teach you is a little concentration and they teach you to tell yourself that through your mind power you could regard that fire as water and that water would not burn you at all. So they work with very strong mental suggestions which effect the reaction of the body. That is the bottom line. Of course they also had beautiful decorations and they chanted mantras and you spend twenty-four hours doing that, so naturally that makes you feel different, it makes you charged up and then you walk across. That is what you can get for $200 – walking across the street!

Anyway, all that is not a spiritual path – at least not something that Buddha accepted as spiritual path. You can’t say it is not spiritual, because then all the New Age people get worked up. What Buddha accepted as spiritual path will make a difference to you life after life. It should control your delusions. Even in the case of very devoted people who say millions of mantras from morning till evening – if these activities don’t make a difference to your anger, attachment, hatred, jealousy, etc, then the best you will get out of that will be lucky karma, nothing else. You may be saying Highest Yoga Tantra mantras for twenty-four hours a day three hundred and sixty-five days per year, but even then you are simply creating lucky karma, nothing else.

What a spiritual development has to do, is to make a difference to your whole life once and for all and beyond that, life after life. I am using that terminology, because I come from there, and that is my title. That is a joke. But the truth is, that is my background and that is why I am talking to you about that. Accept it or not, when you die, it is not the end. For sure, it is not the snuffing out of a candle light. We are going to continue; no matter whatever may happen, good or bad, we will continue. There is absolutely no question. The clear sign that we will continue is the kids of today. If you look at today’s kids, how they perceive, how they act, how they function differently, you’ll see that some kids are extremely gentle, while others are extremely rough. They may be from the same parents, but still the kids have different characters. Even twins will have different characters. The simple reason is, they are bringing that with them through the experiences from their previous lives. It are previous experiences and habitual patterns and addictions. They have forgotten how it used to function exactly, but it is all there. The moment the external conditions arise, they know how to get angry, how to fall in love, how to get attached, how to play games. They will know how to be good, they don’t have to be told. That is the clear signal for us. We will be repeating the same thing again and again and again. It is not like blowing out a candle. We will be back. We will be functioning. That’s why the spiritual value is a karmic value, and not only an ordinary karmic value, but one that makes a difference to the experience of samsara.

That’s why even the Hinayana will not accept that anybody is on the path, unless the person develops the total and strong determination to be free. That means to see the faults of samsara life after life, knowing that the individual will be repeating life after life. Knowing that and wanting to be free from the control of samsara, that is the determination to be free. And that has to be developed with unshakable conviction. It is easy to say, ‘I am interested. I do want to get out of samsara’. Saying that does not make the difference. We could even brainwash ourselves to think that way, but even then it won’t work. The only thing that works is knowing it clearly; first knowing it intellectually, then meditatively experiencing it and then building up the unshakable commitment on the basis of the combined knowledge and meditative experience. Once you have done that, every positive karma you create will be that of the first path, even in the Hinayana, where you don’t even have the bodhimind.

That’s why to get on the path is not a joke. It is something very hard and difficult, and very strong. Each one of us can sit down and meditate. That does not mean we are on the path. We only joined the path which leads towards the path.

The first path is called path of accumulation, because in there you don’t accumulate just any good karma, but positive karma that will go towards liberating you from the cycle of existence.

I just remember something funny. In 1977 I was in Texas. A very dear friend of mine, a woman, was teaching there how to get into the cycle of existence. She used to give workshops there and we did a number of things together. I was of course teaching how to get out of the cycle of existence. My point is, that we are already in the cycle of existence. We don’t have to learn how to function there. We have attachment, which will glue us to the samsara and will not let us get out. No matter who or what it may be, it is attachment. The beautiful part of the attachment will draw you in. There is pleasure, it is wonderful and you don’t want to separate from the experience. At the same time, that will glue you to samsara. It doesn’t take much time. It happens in a minute or so, and you will be glued tight.

I often share a story about one of my late masters, Kyabje Gomo Rinpoche, from whom most of my Vajrayogini teachings come. He was a funny person. He did not act like a rinpoche. He was also known as the ‘father of Home No. 15’. For a long time people did not know at all that he was a big incarnate lama. He had a small number of very solid students. Two of them were officials of the former Dalai Lama. They left from Tibet in about 1955 or 1956 and went to India. After Gomo Rinpoche came out of Tibet, they followed him to Northern India. They were all Vajrayogini practitioners. At some point they decided on dates at which the individual practitioners would die and they set everything up. These Tibetan officials had a cook-servant, whom they sent back to Kalimpong ten days ahead of their scheduled day of death. That is quite a long train journey. Travelling by train in India is not easy. Those of you who have been there, will know it. You have to make your reservation a month ahead and even then you can lose it. The conductors will play tricks on you. They will even eat your train-ticket up, when they ask you to show it. Then you have to pay them extra money so that they will let you go.

Anyway, those two officials were supposed to die almost the same day. One of them did die on schedule. Gomo Rinpoche was at home, doing his usual thing like looking after the kids, when somebody came and told him that so and so had died and would he please say some prayers. Nobody came and told him about the death of the other official though. He was supposed to die at about 10.00 a.m. that morning. Rinpoche started to get nervous. Finally he got up and went to that person’s house, to see what had happened. The people in that house told him, ‘Oh, this morning he got sick and they had to take him to hospital.’ Rinpoche found out that he was at the American Hospital and he decided that he had to see this guy by hook or by crook. He was in the Intensive Care Unit and somehow Rinpoche was able to sneak in. He asked his student, ‘What happened?’ and the guy said, ‘I started to get all the signs of death, but then all of a sudden they reversed back, and it was so painful and I was screaming and yelling so much, that the people found me and took me to hospital and now I am here.’ Rinpoche could not figure out what could have gone wrong. The only thing he noticed however, was that his student was wearing a brand new, nice-looking shirt. He asked him, ‘Oh, where did you get this shirt from?’ His student then said, ‘Oh, it is a nice one, isn’t it. Do you like it? A friend of mine gave it to me the day before yesterday, so I put it on this morning’. So Rinpoche said, ‘Yes, I do like that shirt, please give it to me.’ Now his student hesitated, ‘Yes, but I really, really like it.’ Rinpoche kept on insisting, ‘I really want that shirt, and if you don’t give it to me, you are terrible and we will have nothing to do with each other any more.’ So finally he took if off and gave it to him, and Rinpoche tore it apart in front of him that same moment. After that, this student could go very easily. So a simple, little attachment for a shirt can hold you back.

There is another interesting example. It was during the period of Guntang Tenpai Drömei in the 1700s in the Amdo area. He was a great, learned master. There was an old monk, who was very attached to the butter that is used for butter tea. He got very sick, but still he went to the monks’ meeting every morning, where butter tea was served. After some time he could not even carry his cup any more. Instead he used a huge cooking utensil, kept that in a bag and hung the bag around his neck. Then he had two younger monks holding him upright, while he went to the monks’ meeting to get his butter tea, so he could save some tea butter. A simple, crazy attachment. Everybody thought that he was a crazy guy and something was wrong with him. The most famous spiritual master at that time was Gungtang Jampelyang. He heard about that story and he happened to know that monk. So he decided to go and see him. All the monastery officials, as well as the Gungtang labrang staff, were deadly against the famous Gungtang Jampelyang visiting that crazy old monk who had such strong attachment for butter tea and who could not die for years because of his attachment to butter tea. But Guntang Jampelyang went anyway and asked him, ‘How are you feeling, Gen?’ – that means ‘elder master’. He said, ‘Well, I am sick, but I don’t want to miss the monks’ meetings, because I like this tea. I never miss it, even though it starts at 5.30 in the morning. After the tea is served, I can’t stay very long, because I am sick, so I leave. But I never missed a single day.’ ‘Oh, that’s very nice!’ said Gungtang Jampelyang, ‘And did you collect a lot of tea butter?’ and the monk enthusiastically said, ‘Yes! I have collected a lot of butter lumps.’ Then Gungtang Jampelyang said, ‘Did you hear the rumors from Tushita Pure Land, that their butter is far better than ours? I heard about this, and also the amount of butter you get there is far bigger than here.’ The monk got a bit curious and asked, ‘Are you sure?’ Gungtang Jampelyang said, ‘Yes, I heard that from my teachers and I think it is true.’ Then the old monk said, ‘I would not believe it, but since it comes from Gungtang Jampelyang, it must be true.’ That old monk died two days later, believing that he could get more and superior butter in Tushita Pure Land.

That is how even a simple, little attachment works. So it is the glue of samsara. We know that and use that also in our lives. Sometimes we tell people, ‘Hang in there, help is on the way.’ So we appeal to the will power of the attachment to be able to hang on. Attachment is nothing but an emotion and so is anger. These little emotions make that much difference in one’s life. In the spiritual path, attachment, etc, obstruct us. That is why they are labeled ‘delusions’ and ‘obstacles’. As long as we have attachment to something that we think is wonderful, we are in trouble, whether it is the beauty of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain atmosphere, or whatever, it will hold us back. As long as you have any attachment, you are not really seeking freedom. Even if you know intellectually, in practice you won’t have it, because attachment stops you.

In order to get onto the path, you have to move from guru devotion to embracing the human life, to impermanence, to the knowledge of samsara in general and from there to the determination of liberating yourself from all ignorance.

Some people say it is the delusion of dualism, that you think there is something beautiful, but there is nothing beautiful. That is wrong. There is beauty. But the beauty is beauty because of collectivity. It is not beauty by nature. I am not talking about nature as in our physical environment. That also just exists collectively. The beauty of the Colorado mountains is also collective beauty. The same goes for the beauty of Lake Michigan. It depends on the cold air, the water, etc. Combined together, it produces that beautiful steam you can see. The collective beauty of the Colorado mountains depends on the cold, the clear weather, the snow, dry air, the breeze, etc. There is nothing wrong with that beauty. The mind perceiving that as beautiful is not a mistaken mind. Some people go too extreme, saying, ‘There is no beauty, it is just our delusions telling us that it is beautiful.’ That is wrong. If you think like that, you are losing the relative truth. In relativity, it is beauty.

But getting attached to that is stupid, because it is impermanent. It changes. Enjoying it is great, appreciating it is wonderful. If you fall in love with that atmosphere it is fine. That’s okay. Love is okay, attachment is not okay. If you appreciate and enjoy something, it is okay, it is love. But if you go one step beyond that and you want it, and you want it for your eyes only – as they say in the James Bond movie ‘Golden Eye’ – then it becomes possessiveness. It becomes messy, it becomes attachment. Attachment is no good; love is good, very good. The samsaric problems we have today all come from attachment, hatred, jealousy, or all of those together. And ultimately they all come from ignorance, from not knowing reality, not knowing about collective existence.

You have every right to enjoy, to appreciate. You don’t have to shy away from it. You don’t have to feel guilty about enjoying or appreciating something. It is your absolute right. You don’t have to shut yourself away from that. If you do so, you are a fool. A lot of people tell themselves, ‘I can’t do it. I am a spiritual person, if I do it, I take it away from somebody else, I take it away from nature.’ That is stupid compassion. It is idiot compassion. Openness, an open mind is: you get it, you worked for it, you deserve it, you enjoy it. Like Allen Ginsberg says in a poem about rich, fatty food in developed nations. But you have to know in yourself which emotions are at play – attachment, anger, jealousy. You have to know what is love and what is attachment, what is anger and what is patience, what is hatred and what is compassion. The bridge in between is recognition, appreciation. You see beauty. You want to fall in love? Fine. But don’t have attachment.

Attachment goes to the extreme. Sometimes, when people say, ‘I love you’, they mean ‘I want to control you, you are mine, I own you’. All this is extreme attachment. See the signs of attachment. They are only known to yourself. To have a free spirit is a wonderful thing to live with. Appreciate everything, but do not fall into attachment. Be patient with everything, do not get angry. Don’t be jealous, but be appreciative. That’s how you should live your life. You need self-appreciation too. If you have that, you will take care of yourself. If you don’t have it, you will probably stand without shoes outside in the cold. On top of that, understand the difficulties of samsara. Don’t try to solve your problems one by one. Try to solve them together. Some of them may be very powerful, you may have to deal with these one by one. But the majority, try to solve them together. Try to challenge ignorance. Try to gain some wisdom. Put all your positive efforts, of purification and accumulation of merit, towards that. That’s how you catch the path.

Once you have caught the first path, it is a matter of going through the small, medium and big levels of that path. The small level is wisdom only following from learning, listening, from picking up information. That learning, followed by your own analysis of it will become the medium level and after a while you will be able to meditate and some kind of semi-shamata will be able to concentrate strongly on the results of your analysis, which is the big level of the path of accumulation of merit.

PATH OF ACTION

Now we want to go on to the path of action. When you move from the third level of the first path to the lowest level of the second path, it is the first time that you feel the heat of the wisdom. That is why the first level is called ‘heat’. The example I gave during the teachings on the GATE GATE mantra was that of making fire by rubbing two stones together. This is a traditional example. You have to think like the native Americans. When you want to make a fire that way, before you can get a spark, you have to create a little heat by rubbing the stones together. Once you have heat and you keep on hitting the match lock – or flint – you can get sparks and these will start the fire. Similarly, when you try to generate wisdom within you, first you have to get to the heat level. So the first level of the path of action is called ‘heat’.

Even at the level of heat, anger can sometimes arise. When you lose control, say someone is really bugging you all the time, when you lose your temper, it is all right, it is normal. If you do not occasionally lose your temper, you must be either a bodhisattva or some strange fellow who does not even know what good or bad is. So that can happen even on that level. There are points where you can lose your virtues totally due to anger.

The second level of the path of action is called ‘peak’. Why? Because the virtues that we have created, will continue. There is no more point where you could lose your virtues. You don’t give in to anger any more, you don’t submit yourself to attachment, not even for a moment. There is a totally positive karmic continuation at that level. That is why it is called ‘peak’. There are no interruptions through negative emotions any more. Until you reach that level, your emotions will continue, you will lose to anger, to attachment, to jealousy. But don’t worry. Don’t give up! The key is not to give up, but to continue. No matter how many times you fall, get up and walk. That is how the babies learn to walk. We have to do the same thing. We are like babies. We are trying to learn how to function in our lives without negative emotions. So we fall all the time, three hundred times a minute. But we should be able to get up three hundred times a minutes too. That is the key.

The next level is called ‘patience’. Your patience has built up so much, that you will never again have to go to the lower realms.

Sö tob yang dro yang me tong – patience obtained, no lower rebirth.

This is where the immune system develops. On the third level of the second path you perfect your immune system against falling into the lower realms.

Whether you fall into the lower realms in future depends on your emotions. If you are interrupted by anger or hatred in your mindstream, that means you have not yet reached the level of ‘peak’. And if you have not reached that, you will also not reach the level of ‘patience’. Therefore you have not yet developed the immune system against falling into the lower realms.

That is how you can watch yourself, how you can check your own spiritual development. It is like a war. On one side are the negative emotions, on the other side the positive forces. At stake is your own freedom from the negative emotions. You can win that freedom or give up and fall down. This war is what you have to fight within yourself, between your negative emotions and positive virtues. Gurus, the Dharma and the Sangha, are only there to support. The real work has got to be done by yourself, because you are responsible for yourself, no one else is. If the responsibility for you could be taken by others, the Buddhas would have done so a long time ago. They would have liberated all of us millions of years ago. But we are not liberated. That is the clear sign that we are responsible for ourselves. To get liberated, this human life is the best opportunity, because of its capacity, because of the positive conditions. We have that opportunity right now. That’s why I said, ‘If we settle for second best in the spiritual path, it is really a pity.’

I did not go into detail about what the levels of peak, patience and best of Dharma are, but I did tell you the symptoms, how you can find out what level you are on.

Questions and Answers

Audience: What do you mean by your statement, not to work with our problems one by one, but to solve them all together?

Rinpoche: If we try to solve problems one by one, we will not have enough time to deal with our negative emotions at all. All our negative emotions are rooted in ignorance. So the real challenge needs to be thrown at the ignorance. Cutting ignorance is like cutting a tree at the root. Once you have cut a tree at the root, it will not so easily grow again. Otherwise, if you chop away at the branches, and cut branch by branch, they will just grow back in the next spring. But still, there are certain pressing problems, depending on the individual. Some people have a tremendous problem with attachment. They cannot let go. They have to hold it under any circumstances. People do that very often. If you have such strong attachment, it is bound to bring also the hatred, the anger, the jealousy. Therefore, under such circumstances, you may have to deal with hatred and anger first, and tackle attachment and jealousy later. This depends on circumstances and situations. You may have to do that. But the main idea is to deal with the root rather than the branches. People often say to me, ‘At least it was a good learning experience.’ Once is okay, twice is also okay and even three times is still acceptable. But no more than three times. Otherwise you keep on learning for the rest of your life. You have to tackle all of them together. That does not mean to throw punches and knives in all directions at the same time; you have to aim at the root. When you have cut the root, the whole thing will die. That is actually Buddha’s message. That’s why wisdom is important and that is why all the levels along the path are measured against wisdom rather than against love and compassion.

Audience: You have said that it is okay to enjoy beautiful experiences. But when very strong positive feelings arise, I have the tendency to put the brakes on a bit, otherwise I am afraid I get carried away.

Rinpoche: The idea is, if you have the chance to appreciate something beautiful, go ahead, no need to put the brakes on – as long as you simply appreciate. But if you go beyond appreciation and start hanging on to the experience, try to own it and mess it up, then you have to put the brakes on. Your appreciation will be lost and you are under the influence of attachment.

Audience: So at what point exactly do you have to put the brakes on?

Rinpoche: When you are running at 65 miles per hour, it is okay, 75 miles is also okay, but if running at more than 80 miles, you are bound to get a speeding ticket. If you really only have appreciation, thinking how wonderful it is and if you are enjoying that, it is fine, go ahead. But when you start thinking, ‘I wish I could own it. I wish it belonged to me.’ the moment that thought comes up, you are going over 80 miles an hour. That’s how you can watch your speedometer. If you go over that point, then you start playing funny games and tricks and you have gone way beyond appreciation. You will probably go over 100 miles. If it comes to that, run away as far as you can and don’t even look back. Really true. Unfortunately, that is our human nature. We do that all the time. We play this game between friends, between husband and wife, between girl-friend and boy-friend, between companions, between yourself and your ex-wife, between employer and employee, between psychologist and client, and between everybody. When it comes to the level of playing games, it is time to give it away.

Audience: If there is no difference between the self and the other, how do you keep from becoming the void?

Rinpoche: Because there is no difference, there is void.

Audience: Is it true that when you control karma, you find liberation?

Rinpoche: I don’t really know whether you control karma or not. But what really happens is, when the negative karmas are exhausted, you are only left with positive karmas. When you have only positive karmas left, there will be no negative karmic results. Therefore, when you have reached the third level of the second path, you have developed an immune system against falling into the lower realms. The reason is that there is no more creation of negative karma.

Audience: You said once that attachment arises in relation to the five senses. What about a relationship between mother and daughter? How do you separate love from attachment?

Rinpoche: As long as there is appreciation without wanting to control and own the other person, it is fine, it is pure, it is enjoyable, it is love. The stronger the love, the better it is. The stronger the compassion is the better it is. The stronger the appreciation and the caring is, the better it is. But as soon as it becomes a control issue, an authority issue, and an ownership issue, it becomes messy. Once it has become messy, you are moving from appreciation and love to attachment and emotional garbage.

Audience: Sometimes, we try to create good karma, but somewhere in the chain of events that well-meant action creates negative consequences. How do you explain that?

Rinpoche: That happens all the time, because there is individual and collective karma. Each individual in the United States tries to do the best whatever they can, but Newt Gingrich goes on and creates a collective bad karma. So individually, we may create good karma, but then collectively, we may create bad karma, like in the case of the Gulf War.

Audience: So we are stuck with that negative collective karma then?

Rinpoche: No, you are never stuck. There is always ways and means to purify any negative karma. You cannot purify the collective karma of all Americans, but you can purify the effects of the collective karma on yourself by your own actions. Let Newt Gingrich use our tax dollars for whatever he wants to. Let the dollars go. We can still create pure, positive karma. So we don’t have to worry about it.