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19960213GRAA5P

IV

On the three levels of the path of accumulation we are trying to get wisdom, but we have no signal of wisdom at all. On the first stage of the path of action we begin to get some kind of heat of wisdom. So before the wisdom-fire burns there is the development of heat. The second level is the level of peak. Heat is not enough. When you rub two stones or two pieces of wood, you get heat and when you keep on rubbing it gets hotter still. If you don’t continue rubbing, the heat will disappear. In the same way, if you don’t continue to work on the wisdom, the heat of wisdom will disappear. Constant effort is absolutely necessary.

The effort at this point is still on the Lam Rim level. People may think that they have done Lam Rim already. But far from it. You may have understood something. What a few of you may have, is some understanding of the Lam Rim points, following from listening to the teachings or from reading. That does not constitute having done the Lam Rim – not even a single point. That is not Lam Rim development. You have to analyze that more and get some better understanding. You have to come to the realization that ‘Oh, that is what is really meant. That is what it means in my life, now it makes sense’. When you have got this insight, the second level of understanding is reached. Then you have to meditate more, concentrate on the results of your analysis, until you get meditative experience. All this you have to do with every stage of the Lam Rim, point by point. These are the sorts of efforts you are expected to put in, even at the level of heat of the second path of action. At the moment, in this teaching, we are mainly focusing on the path you are taking, and how you transfer from one level to the next. But the effort you are supposed to put in to sustain this development, is still practicing the same old sutra Lam Rim and tantra Ngagrim. Those are the stages you have to follow.

By putting in constant efforts, we will get some signs of development. Usually, when people get some sign of development, they get very excited and there is no danger of withdrawing from the practice. Up to this level of heat however, the problem is that there is not much encouragement and inspiration. Efforts are mainly sustained by people pushing each other. But by the time you reach the level of heat, the inspiration is there. You get signs of the wisdom fire to be burnt. Up to this level, your positive efforts are not continuous. There are many interruptions by negative actions, emotions and thoughts. Your anger, hatred, jealousy and attachment will come up. All the issues that you normally have will still come up here. If you see the negative emotions arising at the level of heat, it is nothing unusual.

The next level is that of ‘peak’. The peak of a mountain is its highest point. In this case it means that from then on every action that you undertake will be a positive action. According to the Buddhist terminology there is no more negative movement. It has become stable and grounded. That is the best level, the peak level. No more interruptions, no more anger, attachment, jealousy, etc. All these are gone at this level. But still the imprints are there. The negative emotions may not be there directly, but their influence still continues. The gross anger, hatred and even the gross ignorance are gone. Therefore you don’t create any more negative karma at all. Because of that you have developed an immune system against falling into the lower realms. That is guaranteed. No negative emotions means no negative actions. Without those, no negative karma is created. Without that, there can be no result. The old karma is being purified and you don’t create any new karma. Some people say there is no more karma at all. That is bullshit. Even the enlightened beings have karma – positive karma. You can either create positive or negative karma, nothing else. So from the level of peak onwards, since you don’t create any more negative karma, you are only left with positive karma. Therefore you will get positive results constantly. Very simple and grounded. Don’t look for some kind of mystical revelation, where something hits you and you have gone beyond karma. That is not true. Some Tibetan teachers may even tell you that you can go beyond karma, but that is mistaken. They may be thinking something else when they make that statement, but in itself it is mistaken.

In Pabongka’s Liberation the palm of your hands is a mention of people who believe that they have gone beyond karma. They think they can sit on Buddha’s books, put them under their bed, etc. They try to prove to people that karma does not affect them. But that is an act of complete ignorance. They don’t know what they are doing and they are misleading others too. Nobody goes beyond karma, not even Buddha.

Once, during Buddha’s life time, a war broke out between his own caste, the Sakyas and another group. This is 2500 years ago and must have looked like what we watch in some movies today, perhaps like some native American tribes fighting each other. Buddha and some of his disciples were able to see the results of the war before it started. They knew that many of the Sakyas were going to be killed. So Shariputra or Maudgalyana, one of them, said to Buddha, ‘I could pick up one of my hair pores, and with that pick up all the soldiers that are coming to fight the Sakyas and throw them far away to the other side of the ocean. Should I do that?’ But Buddha said, ‘No. They are going to suffer and they are going to die today. That is their karma. You cannot intervene.’ His disciples could not believe it. So Buddha said, ‘All right, I show you.’ So with his magical power he picked up three kids. One he placed in the samsaric god realms, another one he kept near to himself and the last one he put somewhere else. Even Buddha himself had a terrible back ache that day and he said, ‘This is the left-over karma.’ The caste of the Sakyas had created the karma collectively and had to experience the results that day. By the evening, the battle was over and a lot of the Sakyas had died. The three kids Buddha had removed from the battle area had also died. No soldiers had come to slaughter them, but somehow, something happened. All three of them had accidents and died.

My point is, nobody is above the law, even not Buddha. Even if you are enlightened, you are not above the law, because karma is a natural law. The simple reason why you have escaped the lower realms on the peak level of the path of action, is that you do not have any more negative emotions and therefore don’t create any negative karma. Therefore no negative results. That is how you develop your immune system. That is better than a scientific explanation. I am joking. But it is all very grounded, logical and it makes sense. That is true Buddhism. You may try to explain things with mystical events, but even those can only occur if the karma for them to happen has been created. That is the key even for mystical things to function. It is so important to be grounded. There are no surprises. Clairvoyance can be developed, either karmically or through concentration. The karmically based clairvoyance is temporary. The moment that karma is exhausted, the person will lose that clairvoyance. It can happen in the individual’s life. Yesterday’s great clairvoyant may know nothing tomorrow. It happens. That person then has to pretend to be seeing something. Spiritually developed clairvoyance does not disappear, because you apply constant efforts to push it further. You keep on adding up on that karma. That is why it continues.

At the level of patience you can no longer fall back, because you constantly put in efforts. You don’t get tired, you don’t get burnt out, you don’t lose it, you don’t freak out, you don’t get fed up, you don’t get upset, you don’t get abrupt, etc. That is why it is called ‘patience’. You don’t get negative emotions. Whatever happens, you can take it. Without negative emotions you don’t create negative results. So therefore you have the immune system.

In addition to that, you are not afraid any more. You will not be afraid even of the subtle emptiness. You know, we are always afraid of losing something – everybody is. We all have fears. Sometimes we don’t even know what we are afraid of. But the fears that we have, are fears of losing: losing ourselves, our identity, our friends, our near and dear ones, fear of losing our good name, our prestige, wealth, fear of losing life, fear of getting hurt. We constantly have fears. Our fears will continue up to this level. This is the level where there are no more fears. The reason is, you know you have nothing to fear. You are not going to lose your attainments. You know you have no more negative emotions left. Without any negative karma to be created, we don’t have to be afraid of anything. We are not even afraid of subtle emptiness. People have a fear of emptiness, because they can’t understand the difference between nothingness and emptiness. Before you get to this level you can really get afraid of emptiness, thinking you will be annihilated. Sometimes you see in science-fiction movies that people go back and forth in time, and they get suddenly thrown into some different life and are totally lost. It is like they are going through a curtain and come out somewhere else. The fear of emptiness at the level of the second path corresponds so such an experience. At the moment, we don’t have that problem, because we only have knowledge of emptiness intellectually, and we rely on theoretical explanations of what selflessness and emptiness is. We don’t have anything more than that. When you reach the level of heat on the second path, you really get a feeling for the depth of emptiness. That is where you get close to that curtain, through which only a few brave individuals can go, not so many. At the level of patience, you lose all your fears, because you know what is going on. You really become a hero, a brave person with a big heart. You are not going to be afraid of being generous, of being moral, of being patient, of being diligent, of meditating and you are not afraid of wisdom, nor are you afraid of ignorance. We at our level, are afraid of wisdom as well as of ignorance. We think that wisdom is great and ignorance is bad, but we have no way of knowing, so we are afraid of everything. We are afraid of God and we are afraid of evil. It is true, because we don’t know either one of them. It is as simple as that. We can talk about them and label them, but these are only words for us. What we know of God is what we have heard others say about him. That is our best reason and beyond that we don’t have anything. But at the level of patience of the second path, our reasons will change. We know why God is good and evil is bad. That is why this level is called ‘patience’.

When you lose your patience, you are losing it to negative emotions. That is very true. So nervousness is bad, because the individual will lose.

Patience really has a lot of good qualities. It is one the most difficult things to accomplish. Buddha said, ‘There is no hardship like patience. There is no negativity as heavy as anger.’ It is very hard to be patient. We would find it hard to watch a stick of incense burn down from beginning to end without moving. We would probably scream. That is how we know what level of patience we are on.

From the level of patience, then, you are automatically transferred to the level of ‘Best Dharma’. That level you are on at that point is the best you can get in samsara. There is nothing that could be better than that on an ordinary path. That is why it is called ‘best of Dharma’. On the level above that, you will immediately enter the third path.

The Hinayana system says that you only remain on the level of Best Dharma for the period of time it takes to snip your finger. You obtained it and at the same time there is no longer a reason why you have to continue, because your own interest in self-liberation will not let you stay long. You want to move on.

In the Mahayana system it is different. The purpose of the Mahayanist is to be of service to others. So even having reached that level, a Mahayana practitioner will remain for a number of lives, in order to carry out services and help other beings. As soon as you have secured the immune system for yourself, you go out and begin to help others.

Until then, it is not recommended to go out and help others. Because if you don’t know what is good for yourself and others, it is not worth getting yourself into trouble. It would be worse than idiot compassion. Our mind also tricks us. Sometimes we feel compelled to do something bad, something we should not be doing. Then we even use compassion as an excuse. This is the worst excuse you can ever use, but people do it very often. It is worse than idiot compassion. Idiot compassion, while being idiotic, has at least some compassion. But this is even worse. Our intention is totally self-oriented, but we go and use compassion to get what we want. We will say, ‘Oh, these people really need help and nobody is helping them, so I will do it.’ What you really want is something else, but you do it under the cover of helping others. On top of that, you yourself are not immune, plus you will pick up negative habits. So what you are doing is, you are destroying your own development, your own stability, everything. You are throwing yourself and everybody else in the water, together.

You know, it is like this monkey story. There is a monkey hanging from a branch above a lake and another monkey is hanging down from his arms and a few more like that, trying to take the moon out of the lake. It is this traditional Indian story: The monkeys saw the reflection of the moon in the lake. They talked to each other, ‘Hey, did you see, the moon has fallen into the lake!’ So they decided, ‘We are the monkeys, the most intelligent animals, we must go and pick up the moon. We must save the world.’ So they wondered how to do that and came up with the idea that one monkey would hang from a branch of a tree that reached over the lake. Another monkey would be held by this monkey and so on, until there was a chain of monkeys reaching down to the lake. The last one was supposed to pick up the moon. However, the weight of all these monkeys hanging down from the one branch was so great, that the branch snapped and all the monkeys fell into the water.

That is exactly what you are going to get, if you try, without having secured the immune system for yourself, to go out and do all sorts of things. Everybody is going to land in the lake. So in the Mahayana system, the time when you go and help others, is at this level. There is no more fear, because your immune system will protect you. You can go out and do for others what needs to be done. That is not crazy wisdom, but still it is okay.

PATH OF SEEING

In the Hinayana system you automatically transfer to the path of seeing, the third path. Here you become an extraordinary person. You meditate on emptiness and totally eradicate the dualistic view. That means that at this time the emptiness and yourself, the observer of the emptiness, are like water in water. It is not somebody projecting emptiness and trying to see it. It is like water poured into water. You cannot separate them, or divide. So it is non-dual. If you pour milk into water, or water into milk, that can still be separated. The Indian milk suppliers know how to do this. They will swear to you that they did not put any water into the milk. But what they do is they put milk into the water! In the traditional Indian teachings they will tell you, that when you pour water into milk, or milk into water, the turtles can separate them. But water poured into water, no one can separate. That non-dualistic perception happens on the path of seeing.

The path of seeing is so-called, because you are seeing the nature of reality directly, face to face, without any interruptions. It is an experience of oneness, no separation of perceiver and the object being perceived. The perceiver and the object, everything becomes oneness. That is called par chen mi lamba – there is no obstruction at all. You become an extraordinary being. Until then, you are an ordinary person;` even though you may be able to fly in the air like a bird, or remain under the ground like a worm, or under water like a fish, even then you are ordinary. On the level of the path of seeing, whatever you may be, man, woman or child, you are an extraordinary person. There is complete absorption. It is so strong, that to that particular person at that time, nothing else exists. Everything is absorbed into that moment, gone, oneness. That does not mean that there is nothing else outside of that, but to that person nothing else exists. That is why there is no obstruction. In the Mahayana system you also reach the first bhumi.

At that moment there are no more obstacles, all opponent forces to the realization of emptiness are overcome. When you rise from that state, when you relax, you may have some difficulties in the aftermath. However, all obstacles to achieving that realization are completely and once and for all overcome. The example for that is: not only have you thrown the thief out of your house, but you have also shut the door. So on the level of direct perception of emptiness you throw the thief out the door, and at the level of the aftermath, you shut the door.

At the level of the aftermath, you are not completely absorbed. You wake up from the meditative state, and you function normally. However, you have a little difficulty adjusting. The walls will move away. At this level, you can walk across the water and through the walls. So sometimes, when you go near a wall, the wall moves away. Sometimes you walk through. The door maybe shut, but suddenly you are in the next room and someone shouts, ‘What’s happening?’ That is the difficulty of the aftermath. It takes some adjustment. After all, you are not enlightened. You have just encountered the nature of the reality, the truth.

Questions and answers

Audience: What is the difference between the levels of patience and best of Dharma on the path of action?

Rinpoche: Best of Dharma is like a gate you go through, or rather, zoom through. For the Hinayana level that is true. Their practitioners have not interest to enjoy or waste time at that level. Therefore they just zoom through. On the Mahayana level, however, the bodhisattvas are now quite active, because they are the young-blood bodhisattvas, that are keen to go out and help. They are more active than the older ones. For bodhisattvas that is a long period. Some remain for lives. How it works with these stages, is that when one stage has been perfected, you transfer to the next. So the perfection of the patience level becomes the best of Dharma. It is not like entering into a different building.

Audience: The difference between levels is then a matter of subtlety. What about the difference between the level of peak and patience?

Rinpoche: The peak- level is the level where negative emotions no longer arise within the individual. The perfection of this level will then become the level of patience, because the immune system against the lower realms has been developed by then. On that basis it is now identified as being on the level of patience. But it is true, the difference is the subtlety. It is not a difference of black and white, it is grey among grey. You can gauge it from the level of results that you have achieved, like from when on the immune system has been achieved, or how strong the concentration is now. Due to such differences the levels are changing.

Audience: So it is not like you see a sudden flash and you know you are on the next level, or you pass a test and graduate.

Rinpoche: Take for example these glasses of mine. When you look from one angle, you can see that they have three different sections, but from another angle, you just see glass. They are called ‘progressives glasses’. There is no executive cut in the middle. That is exactly how the progress works during the stages of the path.

Audience: Regarding these young-blood bodhisattvas on the level of best of Dharma on the path of action. What is the benefit of delaying their achievement of directly seeing emptiness, when they are so close to it and could help sentient beings so much better then?

Rinpoche: There will be a number of people who go on to perceive emptiness directly first. But a lot of them will want to help people then and there. You could call that semi-idiot compassion. But it is not really idiot compassion, because now you can look after yourself. You are not in the situation of the monkeys that fall from the tree, trying to pick up the moon out of the lake. Also, even though you may delay your achievement of wisdom, the method part develops very well. Your love and compassion become much stronger, your efforts at purification become stronger, your efforts at helping others become stronger. Actually, when bodhisattvas help others, their own development moves faster. So the situation is double-sided. By helping others, you benefit yourself. It is like when you are in a service-oriented job. You do something for somebody and when they thank you for it, you say, ‘Don’t thank me, this is my job. I get paid for it.’ Likewise, the bodhisattvas are getting paid for their efforts in a spiritual sense. The more they go out of their way to help, the more their bonus of accumulation of merit increases. They move faster towards the final enlightenment. Their achievement of wisdom may be somewhat delayed. But you have two paths to watch. There are always these two things. It is always a personal choice. Some people always want to do the best. In my personal case, I don’t want to be among the last ones, nor do always want to be the first. I want to be in the middle, where everybody is moving. It is personal choice.

Audience: But when you go on to develop your wisdom of emptiness, that does not hinder or inhibit your ability to help others?

Rinpoche: Not at all.

Audience: Wisdom is the direct opponent to ignorance. On the levels of heat, peak, patience and best of Dharma you have not encountered the wisdom of emptiness yet. How come then, that there is no more ignorance?Audience: In that case, should not the bodhisattva at that level be very determined to go on the path of seeing, rather than to slow down at the level of best of Dharma?

Rinpoche: Yes and no. For example, the Tibetans believe that Dharma books represent Dharma, so they are part of being an object of refuge. Therefore you don’t play with them, you leave them on the altar. At one time, the founder of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition, Drukpa Kunleg, was walking through the streets of Lhasa, carrying a bundle with scriptures strapped over his shoulder. He was chased by a dog. So he took the book from his shoulder, hit the dog and said, ‘The objection to doing that is very strong, but my need to do it is even stronger, so I have the auspiciousness of whacking the book on the dog’s head.’ Just like that, here the objection may be strong, but the need is even stronger.

Audience: What was the Tibetan phrase you used when you described the path of seeing which has no obstructions?

Rinpoche: Par che me lam. That means ‘path free of cuts’. Our problem normally is that our positive efforts are cut, or obstructed, by obstacles. Here there are no more obstacles.

Audience: I read in an introduction to Tibetan Buddhism that there are no separate souls, but only one large soul. Is that right?

Rinpoche: ‘Soul’ is the terminology used by Christians. Buddhists always refer to ‘consciousness’. I do not know what the difference is between these. But there is individual consciousness. You cannot deny that. It is very much there. When you become enlightened, when you become free of everything, at your final enlightenment, you may be joining a huge sea of enlightened consciousness. You will become part of this, yet you still do not lose your individual identity. I believe that is how it functions. You have to accept individual identity, otherwise you would not be responsible for yourself. Either the author’s information on this subject was wrong, or you interpreted it wrong.

Audience: Is there a name for that great collective consciousness? Is that called ‘Buddha’?

Rinpoche: If you want a name, you can call it ‘enlightened mind’.