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19960319GRAA5P

VIII

PATH OF MEDITATION

We have a chart of the paths. (The original chart, on which Steve based his, was worked out by some of my teachers in India and is presented in one of Dagyab Rinpoche’s books. ) The chart is structured into base, path and result, according to what level of practice people are on. Basically, until you reach a level where you really join the path, the period before that has been labeled ‘base’. It is the base on which we will build up the practice. At the moment we are nowhere. There is no development, we are just lay-people [non-specialists] on the base level. That goes for the Hinayana and the Mahayana. In Vajrayana, you also have the divisions into base, path and result. Everything that we are using as an exemplary practice, like the ordinary death, bardo and rebirth, is called base. When you are actually entering the generation- and completion stages, you are on the path. When you finally get to the highest level, almost to the achievement of Buddhahood, you are at what is called result stage. Similarly, here there is the same kind of division.

If you take one step backwards, you have the practice of emptiness and acquaintance with emptiness. The practice of emptiness should equal the entrance to the path and the mundane paths, according to the chart.

Entering the path covers the path of accumulation of merit. It is the base stage as well as the entrance. In the beginning you go through what is called ‘mundane paths’, the beginning- or lay stages. This covers the path of accumulation and the path of action or preparation. These are mundane, ordinary or lay paths.

Above that, the path of seeing is called supreme or supermundane path. This is where the division is made between being an Arya or not being an Arya. Before you become an Arya you are on the mundane levels, thereafter you are on a supermundane level.

According to this chart, the path of seeing is divided into the absorption stage and post-meditation stage which we have called aftermath. To call it ‘illusion-like aftermath’ is correct, however in this context it has too much of a Vajrayana influence. So lets stick to the terminology of absorption stage and post-meditation stage. After coming out of the absorption on emptiness, you are not absorbed any more, so again you perceive all the mundane or ordinary appearances.

Next comes the path of meditation. This is not only acquaintance with emptiness, but also a supermundane path. There should be nine divisions on the chart. Each of these represent one bhumi. Actually, translated from Sanskrit bhumi means ‘ground’, or ‘land’. So you are a landlord or land-owner.

In this context bhumi means stage. It shows that you have a certain kind of establishment. You are well-established and you can be on any of these nine stages. All of these nine stages have particular names. The first one is called ‘Extremely joyful’. This is at the level of the path of seeing. Then follow nine stages on the path of meditation. All these nine stages are divided into small, medium and great levels. Each one of these are further divided into initial, actual and final stages. Because of all these sub-divisions it is good to be able to look at a chart. On the chart these are called initial, middle-final and final-final.

On the path of meditation you have seen the emptiness and you are fighting with the subtle delusions. All the gross delusions have been taken care of by then. On the meditative path you first encounter the gross delusions on the initial stage, then the middle level delusions on the middle-final stage, and on the strongest meditative path, the final stage, you are taking care of the subtle delusions. It is easier to cut out the gross delusions compared to the middle level delusions. The hardest to cut out are the subtle delusions. In order to cut the gross delusions you only need a small, weak or not fully matured meditative level. With that you can overtake and manage or handle the gross delusions. We may think that, when the delusions are gross, they are hard to handle and that it may get easier when we are dealing with the subtle ones. But it happens the other way round. The gross delusions are easy to handle, the subtle ones are much more difficult.

When we look at ourselves, when we handle our problems,– let’s say we deal with our anger, attachment or jealousy – sometimes we may feel that a particular delusion comes out so strong that we hardly can handle it. We felt that we were doing okay, until suddenly it became difficult. What really happened though was not that your delusion has become stronger, but that you have cut down the gross part of it and you are reaching now to the deeper down levels of the delusions. The deeper you go down, the more subtle it becomes. Sometimes we may even feel that we cannot handle it, that is becomes too strong. Again, it is not that the delusions become stronger, but because we are cutting deeper into them. That is why it is difficult to handle them. It is like a stain in the wood. I have a funny stain in the wood floor in the living room. There is a big jet-plant, which is watered regularly and because of the green carpet people don’t notice when the water spills onto the floor. Over some time the water has soaked through the carpet and created a big stain in the wooden floor. When you scratch it with a knife, the surface level of dirt, paint and wood comes out very easily. Then, when you reach the wood itself and want to remove the discoloring in it, it becomes very hard.

It is like that with the delusions. The more subtle delusions are much, much harder to get. They are deeper ingrained. They are soaked deeper into our character. In the example I have given, the stain almost became part of the wood. Likewise, the delusions are very deeply ingrained in our consciousness. That is why they are difficult to deal with. It is important to know that, otherwise you may think that it is getting harder and your delusions are getting worse and you are defeated. In reality you are making headway. The gross delusions are actually removed and you are getting to their main stream. Finally, it is extremely difficult to make it completely stainless. (In the case of the unwanted stain in the wood, the carpenter would sand it down quite a bit, then stain the wood new and polish it, rather than trying to get the nasty stain completely out of the wood.) The last part of delusions left with you are the subtle ones. The less matured meditative levels challenge the gross delusions, then the middle level challenges the middle ones, and finally the strongest, fully matured meditative levels will remove the last subtle delusions.

Although we ourselves are still only on the pre-path, whether we are practicing the ‘common with the lower level’, the ‘common with the medium level’, the Mahayana level or any of the mundane paths, even on the initial levels we are dealing with the delusions. Sometimes we make up our mind very strongly and decide that we will do this and that. After a while we change our mind and think that we may not be able to do this and that. This and even much stronger and deeper battles go on within the individual. When you challenge that with your practice, you are removing the gross levels and you are probably cutting deeper into the delusion-levels. That is why you clash. The second level of the delusions is harder to get rid off than the first level. Since we have not reached the level of no more fall-back, it seems to us that, as we work our way through more subtle levels of delusions, they are getting stronger and stronger. But with a part of your mind you will acknowledge and know and see what is really happening. That will be the clear indication that the delusion has not become stronger, but you are cutting deeper into it.

When you are getting to these difficult phases, it is necessary to practice even stronger, and not to become weaker. Simply realize that at the end of the process, it is going to be good and better for you. The problems we have are the ones that we have been having forever. They have been giving us nothing else but suffering. It is time for change – enough is enough. With these thoughts you make yourself stronger. And you have the opportunity, because you see it. Although you may feel that it is too difficult and you want to give up, you also know what you want to do, you know your direction, you are not lost, you clearly see the obstacles. The ability to see this is itself an encouragement and you also know that you are coming to a deeper level of the delusions, you know that you are through the gross portion of them. So try to be grounded.

There are a number of people who do not challenge the delusions, but instead just stick with the ‘love and light’. That is the term Trungpa chose for that condition. Within that frame of mind you are not dealing with the delusions. Any difficult points you prefer to avoid and you would like to be happy-go-lucky, sitting on a cloud and looking at nice things. People like to engage in chanting and singing. Instead of tackling the deeper problems, they switch the focus, they praise the Lord, or sing other devotional songs, or they throw themselves into a mantra retreat where the whole focus is put on how many mantras you can say. If you say mantras with strong concentration, while dealing with the delusions, then that is okay. But just simply chanting, singing and praying and saying mantras is perhaps not much better than ‘love and light’. It is not dealing with our situation. It is an attempt to avoid the deeper problems and try to live in between somewhere. It is as good as smoking pot, trying to be high, or snuffing cocaine. It is very similar to that. You may not be using chemical substances, but you try to get into some kind of artificial semi-Dharmadhatu state. The real problem then is actually avoidance. Either you know the problem, but you cannot handle it, or you are afraid of handling it, so you just avoid it. There are different reactions for different reasons. You have room to move on the ‘common with the initial scope’, ‘common with the intermediate scope’, and even on the great scope, Mahayana, and on the mundane paths, you can do a little bit of this and that. But when you reach the path of seeing there is no more avoiding, you have to challenge the delusions.

Audience: Can you give some more concrete example of the more subtle levels of delusions?

Rinpoche: Strong anger or attachment will not give you any room to acquire knowledge about it. You don’t know what is happening. Even if you have some intellectual knowledge, you will forget it. You are not aware of it. The subtle anger is weaker; however, it has a greater effect on us, because it operates on a deeper level. At our stage it might not be strong enough to affect our meditative level. The subtle delusions manifest in different ways. Somehow the balance of our life is not completely smooth. It is not completely smooth anyway. What happens is, you see the problem but you cannot help it. As long as you are able to see and observe it, it is a clear indication that the delusion is not that strong, not that gross. It is a little more subtle and comes back all the time. If you then don’t oppose it, but let it take over, after some time, you will even have no more awareness of it all. When your knowledge of it has been forgotten, it has taken over. Your opponent has taken over. You have not yet developed an immunity. That will not develop until the level of patience on the second path. As long as you have the knowledge and the wish to do something about it, but you somehow can’t help it, you are dealing with the subtle and middle-level delusions. If you can’t manage, the trick here is the guru-devotional practice. It is the only key which makes it work. Somehow – I don’t understand how – that works. Tsongkhapa himself has said,

When you try to memorize the words, and you cannot do it. When you try to think of the meaning of the words, and you cannot think anything. When you try to meditate, and nothing happens. At that time you have to depend on the supreme field of merit.

That is the me nga, the advice. In western language, you would say, this is the key, or the trick or the twist. You know, it is the final touch. It is knowing the right moment at the right point, knowing which button to push right at this moment, knowing exactly where the problem lies. In Tibetan we call such advice me nga. Some people translate that as ‘secret advice’, some as ‘whispered tradition’, and there are other translations. But it is the final touch which makes it work. Whenever you have problems with the bouncing back and forth of the delusions, switch your practice back to the guru-devotional practice and then try again. Don’t leave it there, don’t try to just get to joyful states – that would become ‘love and light’. You can leave it, but you must come back and try again, or try together with guru-devotion.

It is like this: Imagine you are having a fight with a couple of guys in the street. You are about to get beaten up and you realize that you are not going to manage. Then you run back home, get some help, go back and fight them again.

The Ten Bodhisattva Bhumis

Looking at the chart, we can see all the ten bodhisattva bhumis: Extremely Joyful, Thoughtless, Luminous, Radiant, Difficult to overcome, Forward facing, Far reaching, Immovable, Perfect Intelligence, Cloud of Dharma

These are the ten supermundane stages. Don’t let me talk about each of these stages, it would equal two years of full-time study in the monasteries. At least that is what it was for me. Each one of these stages has a preliminary, actual and aftermath stage. So it becomes thirty different levels. There is no extra efforts from the point of view of the individual [in that there is no new type of practice required]. Whatever you have gone through on the path of seeing, if you just keep on meditating on those lines, the individual stages will automatically change. You will automatically transfer from the initial stage of the first bhumi to the actual stage, then to the aftermath stage and on to the initial stage of the second bhumi, and so on. What is happening here is you are becoming stronger and stronger and stronger. In equal proportion to that your delusions are becoming weaker and weaker and weaker. In other words, you are tracing the subtle delusions more and more. The moment you have defeated a certain level of delusion, your development through the stages has become stronger. That is how it works.

All the bodhisattva bhumis, apart from the first one, are part of the fourth path, that of meditation. So there are nine, each again divided into three. Actually, since Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana each have the same structure of presenting the five paths, the naming of the stages and their sub-divisions has to be very general and broad, to accommodate each vehicle. Therefore they are divided into the initial, actual and final stages every time. The division into the ten Bodhisattva bhumis however, only applies to the Mahayana.

The first bhumi is called ‘Extremely Joyful’. It is so-called because here you are sure that you are becoming a fully enlightened Buddha. When you realize that, of course you become very joyful. You know that you are definitely going to make it.

The second stage is called ‘Faultless’. That does not mean that there are no more faults at all, but on that level you don’t break your vows any more. You become perfect in morality. When we talk about morality, we simply focus on how you keep your vows and commitments. That is the basis on which you measure pure morality. We are not talking about sexual preference. When Buddha talks about morality, there is always a conservative interpretation and a liberal interpretation. I like to be liberal. You cannot criticize the conservative viewpoint either, though. Let them interpret things their way. The question of ethics or morality is a very important issue. The bottom line really is keeping your vows and commitments.

It depends on the individual, whatever vows they have taken. Just in order to be a Buddhist you take the refuge vows. These have positive and negative advises. The positive ones are divided into advises relating to Buddha, to Dharma and to Sangha, and the negative ones are divided in the same way. Once you keep your vows intact, you are perfect in your morality. You promise to do this and not to do that. These vows are not something new which has been cooked up recently, but have been laid down by Buddha during his life time.

Each of the different levels of vows have their own commitments, Vajrayana, Bodhisattva and Pratimoksha. When we talk about commitments, don’t think of saying your sadhanas. That is not a commitment. It is the practice. People call it commitment, because you are supposed to do that practice once a day. The reason why you took the initiation in the first place is that you want to do the practice. But that is not a vow, even though you are committed to doing it. The Vajrayana vows are those relating to each of the five Buddha families. That is why you do the Six-session yoga every day, so that, even though you may not adhere to the commitments, at least you have reminded yourself six times. They all go like this: I will remember this six times a day, I will remember that six times a day. In a way the Tibetan masters are so great. They condensed all these vows into these short verses which you can easily memorize and then repeat, almost like a parrot. Even if you are not thinking about them, then, while not being able to push forward and improve your practice, this will actually ensure that they are kept clean and intact. That serves the purpose in Vajrayana. This is why, no matter what difficulties one may have in one’s life, one should never break the commitment of the Six-session yoga – at least put it in the tape recorder and let it play. That is the least you can do, when you are sick or your mind is very depressed, which seems to happen a lot too. And if you want to, you can say or sing it together.

Keeping vows and commitments is the actual practice of morality. Even the attainment of the perfect human life depends on it. The Lam Rim teachings say that this life is very difficult to find, because you need the perfect cause, which is perfect morality. We are actually not that bad. We don’t break our vows that much. Even if we break one or two, even if we break them a hundred times every day, we can purify them. There is no such negativity that cannot get purified. Remember the story of Angulimala, who, after initially killing nine hundred and ninety-nine people, regretted and purified these negative actions and even attained the level of an arhat in that very life time. That does not mean you should go and try to copy Angulimala!

Somebody told me the other day that the special quality of Vajrayana was that, even if you kill a number of people, you can still become enlightened. One should not misunderstand that. Vajrayana gives room even to this sort of people, but that does not mean that Vajrayana practitioners should try that out and see if it actually works. That is not what Vajrayana says. If you can keep your vows pure right from the beginning it is definitely better than to break them and repair them. It is definitely better. It is like a beautiful, antique, China vase. If you break it, you have to take crazy glue and join the pieces back together. It will work, but it is not the same as one that has not been broken.

At the level of the second bhumi, there are no longer any broken commitments at all. You develop some kind of immunity. On that level, the bodhisattvas also have no interest in the lower yanas. That is how it is faultless: there is no fault of wanting to go according to the lower yanas and there is no fault of morality.

The third level is called ‘Luminous’. By that time you have perfect morality, no faults. Your experience is continuously very positive, enlightenment-oriented, so it is called ‘luminous’. It is a radiance, like fires radiates. In the case of fire, the more wood you put on, the more it radiates heat and light.

At the fourth stage there is the beginning of the burning of obstacles, that’s why this level is called ‘Radiating.’ It is also like a mirror. The wisdom begins to shine within the individual. That light eats up the delusions and imprints of the delusions. On the ordinary level we have the problem of anger which consumes our virtues. Similarly, here it works the same way, but in the opposite direction. It is the wisdom fire radiating within you, and unlike the fire of anger, which consumes the virtues, the wisdom fire begins to eat up the negativities. The mirror-like wisdom begins to shine.

The fifth bhumi is called ‘Difficult to Overcome’. You are overcoming things which are difficult to overcome, such as doubt. At the beginning level, doubt serves some purposes. Some things on the spiritual path you don’t know and you have to be careful, because you can get onto the wrong path. This could cause a lot of difficulties. Your could waste your life. Although we are not going anywhere else, we have limited time. We cannot afford to waste it. You have to make sure the path you are following is really the right one. You have to find out by yourself. If that path is followed properly, does it make a difference in your life? Is that improving your life, your approach to your friends, to work, to life, to anything you deal with? Is there a difference in the way you used to do things before and how you are doing things now? If it is making a difference, is it getting better or worse? If it is better you can be sure that it is going to work for you.

You cannot wait forever until you take refuge. You should take the time you need, but after a while you have to make a decision. If you do that, you are not going to waste your opportunity. You can start to do the right things without even taking refuge, but there is big difference to doing the right things with taking refuge. A simple example: Without taking refuge, if you are not killing somebody, you are just not killing and that is all. You do not have the karma of not killing. The killing just does not happen. But if you have taken refuge, if you have taken any vow of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, no matter how long you sit around here without killing – you may be sleeping, driving around, gossiping, dancing, or whatever – you still get the positive karma of not killing, because you have the commitment not to do it. Just by not killing you are honoring your commitment of not killing and therefore you have the positive karma of not killing. It is building up. But if you break the vows it makes it much worse. It is a tricky advantage that you can make use of.

There are a lot of problems which are difficult to overcome. People may think, ‘I have no problem with anger, I am okay.’ But all of a sudden something happens and you lose your temper. This is going to happen, for sure, no matter how much you say you will not get angry. The nature of anger is such that, as soon as the conditions are right, it will spark. You may have reduced your anger, made it powerless, but you have not removed its power forever. That is why people, who are in the middle of their practice, which they have been doing year after year, suddenly discover that the delusions are still there, all of them. Basically practice means mindfulness. Many people think that mindfulness has to be practiced in meditation, sitting cross-legged, watching one’s breath, etc. That may be the mindful way of sitting. But basically mindfulness means being always aware of what you are doing and thinking.

But don’t stop in the middle of an intersection and start being mindful! Last time I was in Cleveland, the person who drove me around, suddenly stopped in the middle of a huge intersection. There were no cars crossing at the time. I asked her why she had stopped and she said, ‘Excuse me, Rinpoche, I am in quite a mess. I was thinking of going this way, but that way is probably easier.’

So the true mindfulness is being aware of what you are doing and thinking. Sitting in meditation, thinking about and practicing mindfulness, is training yourself to be mindful. Meditation is not necessarily the physical posture of sitting there and being quiet. Anybody can look at that and copy it. Even in Allen Ginsberg’s song it says,

The first thing you do when you meditateis keep your spine your backbone straightSit yourself down on a pillow on the ground or sit in a chair if the ground isn’t there.

‘If you don’t know how to meditate, just sit on the ground or sit on a chair’. Sitting meditation is very important. It does make a difference. But it is done in order to train your mind, so that, when you are somewhere in the middle of the intersection or in a bar, in a middle of a game of pool or whatever – you can be mindful at that level. Be aware. Being mindful means always being mindful of what you are thinking, what you are up to. Always check your motivation in the morning. The whole purpose of that is to avoid negative actions. We still do them, but that does not matter. We are not perfect. If we were, we would not be here. We would be like Buddha and sit up there. So that is how everyday life should be functioning. You should know how to be mindful. The mind has to know how to watch the mind. Once you have learnt that, you don’t have to sit in meditation posture all the time.

The sixth level is ‘Forward Facing’. If you are a bodhisattva, you have not overcome samsara at this level yet, but you are looking forward to getting out of samsara with certainty. You are going forward to enlightenment. On the first bhumi you are already very joyful, because you know you are going towards enlightenment. On the sixth bhumi, this is further reinforced.

The seventh level is called ‘Far reaching’. By this time you have reached quite far. In the beginning we practiced Lam Rim and so on, and then we have been practicing some kind of Vajrayana practice, be it development stage or completion stage, yoga with signs or without signs. We have pushed forward with a lot of effort and at the seventh level the only possible path to enlightenment is now the combined-together path in the individual’s mindstream. That is why it is called ‘far reaching’. In Tibetan we call it drokpai chek pai lam, the only path, which refers to the combination of bodhimind and wisdom, wisdom being the absolute bodhimind. On this level, all the combined efforts which you are putting in, are direct causes for enlightenment.

The most difficulties are faced on the beginning levels. We put in a lot of hard work. After a while, whatever we do, automatically becomes a cause for enlightenment. It could be wild craziness or well-adjusted behavior, efforts or lack of effort. The individual stage of the spiritual level has become very advanced. Khedrup Je wrote a praise for Tsongkhapa, in which he says,

Even your action of breathing out becomes the perfect cause for enlightenment for millions of people. There is no question about all other efforts you are undertaking.

Everything you do, becomes perfect. This is not because of the high position in the hierarchy, but because the negativity within the individual has almost completely lost ground. Therefore any activity is now positive.

The eighth level is called ‘Immovable’. Nobody can push you around, you become extremely stable, in the sense that whether you apply efforts or not, you are moving towards enlightenment. You don’t shake in your progress. Anything which comes up that is normally negative, does not become negative for that person. This is because the foundation for negativity is completely gone. Just the imprints are still there. Whatever people do then is positive, even if it appears to be negative. The crazy wisdom comes in here. But actually, even if you are at that high spiritual level, you are not meant to behave in the crazy wisdom fashion in the 1990s. It could have been acceptable some time in the 1960s, but not in the 1990s.

The ninth stage is called ‘Perfect Intelligence’. On that level you obtain extraordinary, discriminating wisdom. I don’t know how that wisdom works, one never knows.

The tenth bhumi is the highest bodhisattva level. In the tradition of Drepung Loseling monastery, which relies on Panchen Sonam Drakpa’s textbooks, we say that even Maitreya Buddha is only the future Buddha, therefore he is still a bodhisattva and we put him on the tenth bhumi, the ‘Cloud of Dharma’. Drepung Gomang College, on the other hand, will say that Maitreya is no longer a bodhisattva, that he is only labeled a bodhisattva, but is actually a Buddha. Loseling does not agree. They argue that he is labeled a bodhisattva, therefore he is a bodhisattva and should be on the tenth level. In any case, the tenth level is almost the Buddha stage. There is no big difference. You only need very little effort. You are already sitting on a cloud which is very comfortable. You almost need no further effort and the next stage is the Buddha stage.

This level is called the ‘Cloud of Dharma’. The right cloud will produce the right shower or rainfall. Here this is the right cloud. Love, compassion, knowledge, not forgetting and the right meditative level produce that cloud. That cloud produces the proper rainfall for the right field to produce the right fruit. So a bodhisattva of the tenth Bhumi is recommended as a guide and teacher. That is the time where your compassion and remembrance of all knowledge and the personal experience of the meditative stages are in their optimal combination. This makes the individual fit to be teaching others. These are the three qualities of a teacher: Individual development, knowledge and the ability to remember it, and compassion. If you want to train people as teachers you have to emphasize these three qualities. With these they will become perfect teachers.

Somebody showed me some days ago a magazine called ‘Common boundary’. In the middle of some article it said, ‘Gelek Rinpoche acknowledged that Tibetan Buddhism has a very strong influence of male chauvinist viewpoints and traditions. His statement is far-reaching, but not enough. We would like to see the emergence of different female teachers in the Buddhist tradition. Particularly we look forward to that happening in Jewel Heart.’ Actually in Buddhism there is no problem of what gender a teacher has. It does not matter, if it is a man or a woman. Women can nowadays become full-fledged bikshunis. There is apparently a lineage from Taiwan. I have no idea whether it is a true bikshuni lineage or not. My personal feeling is, that it is not. But short of becoming a perfect bikshuni, you can do anything. You can become a Buddha or an enlightened person as a female. Look at Tara. She does not wear nun’s robes. As long as you can build up the three qualities within you – that is the most important point. Experience is what counts.

With experience I don’t mean that you have felt something empty, saw a new star, had a funny dream, or something. I get millions of strange calls like that. Only yesterday somebody told me, ‘I was sitting there, when people were doing their prayers and suddenly I realized that my head was not there. After a little while I felt that my body was not there. My chanting was coming from the navel level – a perfect sound right out of the central channel. What is that Rinpoche? Are you going to encourage me?’ My answer was, ‘If you think I am going to give you a black belt or a red belt, you are wrong. But apart from that, it is not a bad thing.’ So I am not talking about that kind of experience. I am talking about the experience one gains from one’s practice; the practice of the guru-devotional practice, the realization of the importance of the human life, the difficulty to find it, impermanence, refuge, the Four Noble Truths, love and compassion, the six paramitas and the ten bhumis and five paths. When you have the experience of the five paths and ten bhumis, or even just of the Lam Rim stages, then you are able to share that with others – even if it is only one or two or three little realizations. Whatever you have, you can share. That is how you develop. In this regard it does not matter, whether it is a man or a woman, a child or dog, cat or cow, parrot or whatever. Anything, and this is really true, is perfect in that framework.

That is in essence the ten bhumis and the nine stages of the path of meditation.

PATH OF NO MORE LEARNING

The last and final path is that of no more learning. That is the Buddha level. No more learning means no more efforts. As long as you have to learn more, you have to put efforts in. So at the fully awakened stage there is no more effort, there are no more questions, there is no more doubt, no more work to do. All delusions, even their imprints, are removed. Actually, after the path of seeing, on all the ten bhumis, you are mainly dealing with the imprints of the delusions, rather than with the delusions themselves. It is not the gross afflictive emotions, but their imprints. You are no longer dealing with the garlic, but with the garlic smell. That is the traditional example. Garlic smell is harder to get rid of than garlic. You can easily pick up a piece of garlic and throw it away. But the smell lingers. You have to wash the container out, open the window and spray around some perfume. Using perfume is actually just a quick fix. It is like, instead of completely removing the stain from the wood, sanding it back a little and then applying a coat of polyurethane. Masking a smell with perfume is just temporarily hiding it. The traditional Tibetan teachers used to call it ‘the cats’ way’. Cats tend to quickly cover their excrements, thinking that it is not there any more. When you are dealing with the delusions, you cannot entertain that idea. There is no quick fix. You have to get them completely out of your system. The allophatic treatment will not do. It is not a matter of taking an aspirin, temporarily blocking the symptoms and waiting until your virus goes away.

At the Buddha level, therefore, there are no longer any obstacles. There are no more afflictive emotions or even their imprints. Because of that, a Buddha knows everything. Buddhists will even say that a Buddha knows everything in the past, present and future simultaneously everywhere. It is beyond our comprehension. A Buddha is supposed to see individually in one moment all the multi-billions of beings’ thoughts, including those of the non-human beings, and not only the present ones, but those of the past and future too. That was Buddha’s claim. He said that himself. People challenged him and he went on to prove it to them. He told all the people in his area to go home and come within the next day to a specific place, each depositing a separate bag of grains, marked individually and secretly, without telling anyone. The people did that and the next day there was a huge mountain of grain bags piled up in that place. When Buddha walked past, he picked up one bag after another and gave it to the person it belonged to. That is how he tried to prove to them his level of knowledge. In the same way as he knew which bag of grains would belong to which out of a million different families, he told these people, when handing them their bags, exactly what they were thinking. He was reading their minds. This was the external proof of showing them his awakened state. In the Ganden Lha Gyema one verse says,

Your mind has the intellect that comprehends the full extent of what can be known.

If you try to figure Buddha’s knowledge out with a tape measure you are getting nowhere. But if you think about this story of the Buddha and then read this Ganden Lha Gyema verse, it will make more sense. So a Buddha would know the past, present and future different thoughts of every living being, including individual ants. That is what it means to be fully awakened, fully enlightened. The capacity is unlimited. Knowledge, function, anything, there is no limit.

Audience: I can sort of imagine knowing the past and the present. But the future is not fixed, what will happen can change at any moment.

Rinpoche: At the Buddha level, and even on the last two Bodhisattva bhumis, you can. On the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth Bodhisattva levels you will see the future as it is taking shape right at this moment. It looks very much like the poll readings.

Audience: It has got to be better than that!

Rinpoche: What you actually get is all the peoples’ thoughts at this moment, so you know whatever is going on. The knowledge of the bodhisattvas on the fifth, sixth and seventh bhumis is like that. The tenth level bodhisattvas and Buddhas however, know exactly what is going to happen. In the case of the upcoming elections they can tell you what is going to happen at every turn, day by day, and then what the final result will be. They don’t read the polls. The polls could be like that: from now on Bob Dole will put in a great effort and he will come head to head with Clinton in the polls and will almost look like he could beat Clinton, but then on the 9th of November, Clinton will get past him and on the 10th he will have won. In that way, seeing the future is different for the different levels of development. Practitioners on the lower levels don’t exactly see what the changes are going to be. When events are getting closer, they begin to see it.

Audience: How does reading and knowing the future fit in with the creation of karmas of the individual, the level of choice they have to influence their future?

Rinpoche: The Buddha will be able to see on the karmic level whether people will succeed in their efforts or not. Bodhisattvas on lower levels may not be able to see it. They can see what the tendency is at this moment. It is interesting. The time frame and how the bodhisattvas of the different levels see things differently, show the limitations. It works the same way with the past as well. When they try to look into the more distant past, the bodhisattvas with limited abilities will not be able to see it. They can see what happened last year, etc.

When it is focussed on one’s own experience, we call it memory. It are bits and pieces and flashbacks, short and long ones, and then it becomes perfect. But, when you try to see the other people’s past, it is totally different. One of the kings during Buddha’s lifetime wanted to become a monk. All of the Buddha’s disciples rejected him, saying that he did not have the positive karma for that at all. Buddha, however, finally accepted him. The arhats were shocked, but Buddha explained that some zillion years ago, this king was a fly, sitting on a piece of cow dung, when some stream of a river came and swept it round a stupa. That is a very limited, subtle, almost non-existent karma, but Buddha was able to see it and connect it.

Each and every one of us human beings also has a different way of remembering the past. You always hear different stories and tales about past events, so there is a different perception of it. There are different interpretations. That is because of a weakened capacity of human understanding. In the case of the spiritual practice, people started writing things down. That helps. But further on the higher spiritual levels, it becomes the job of the mind to write things down and to take notes.