Archive Result

Soundfile 19960409GRNY2

Speaker Gelek Rimpoche

Location New York

Topic Finding a Spiritual Path (Lam-Rim, Tsongkhapa's Three Principle Paths)

Transcriber Matthew McKinley

Date 7/14/22

[Audio cuts-in abruptly] ... laziness what we had. That was the problem and you're taking that anger on life. We have a saying among the Tibetan monks: "You're angry with your benefactor but you beat the drum". The monks, bang, bang, bang, and you beat the drum, you get it? You're angry with somebody else, you're beating the drum, bung, bung, bung [Rimpoche chuckles] You get it, that's what it is. You're angry with your laziness but you're beating your life. Getting angry with that, blaming. The lay-peoples, among the Tibetan lay-peoples they don't say that, they say differently. [Says Tibetan saying- "Tse bung ge mak.."] means you're angry with human beings when your beating the yak. So, that's what it is, you're beating the yak. So you're angry with the lack of enthusiasm and laziness and you're beating the life. Anyway, so life is wonderful. This life is capable of making you fully enlightened Buddha, it is capable. It has the capacity. Totally, it is capable of delivering that for ourself. Every quality of this particular life, every.. method, wealth, everything. It happens by chance, it happens to be... so it is more than ordinary human life quality, our life has that capability. But not everybody, that human quality,

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the quality can deliver the fully enlightened life, they might not have it. Simply they are not interested, simply they don't believe, simply whatever the reason being, even the tiny little thing make a hell of difference in the quality of life. We ared happened to be in that. So that's why this life is extremely important, and there's no such thing called "I blow it, I cannot do it". I blow it, I cannot do it, I blow it, people say that all the time. Don't! There is no such a thing- [Audio cuts out abruptly @0:04:11.3] I'm a non-believer of [indistinct- blew?], whether you like it or not. I don't, I don't buy it, you can't give me guilt-trip because I won't take it. True. You know why? I believe in impermanent, I believe in interdependent origination system... and that's why you cannot sell me guilt-trip, at all, I won't buy it. Because it's impermanent, it changes. If you don't believe impermanent look at yourself in the mirror, you'll know it, how old you have become. [Audience and Rimpoche laugh] True! It's true absolutely, get your 10-years old picture and compare it. You change! That's because it's not permanent, impermanent, it's changing. So everything single thing changes, so therefore no such a thing called permanently damaged or "I blow it, I'm permanently stuck", no that. That's the reason why I say you cannot sell me guilt-trip.

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Regret, yes. No to the guilt. Anyway, that's life. That is the beauty of life, because it is impermanent you can't sell guilt to-[Audio abruptly cuts out]... It's also quality of mind. Embrace. Why are we talking this? Why we giving you the value of life, why you giving you importance of life, and also I have to give you difficult to find this type of life. Why we doing this? To overcome our laziness. We need to- it shows that we need to work, we need to seek freedom, we will need to do that. But we will simply say: "I'll do it tomorrow", I'll do it tomorrow, that also lucky, I'll have so much schedule to do this and this and this year, and then when I retired and then I'll do it. People will say that, right? Or people will say that I'll do it tomorrow, whatever it might be tomorrow never comes. So what everyday it'll be tomorrow; tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow never comes and that's why it is necessary for ourself to realize, to convince, the value of the life: importanceness, difficult to find, and impermanent, so that we can do it now. This is the simple reason. Not only that, this is the method through which we cut, we cut down certain strong attachment to the samsara's delight. You recognize it is impermanent, you recognize the life is not permanent, you recognize the value of the life. "Dun ge tsam... nyer tsam.." The earlier, I think it is one of the Amdo lamas who said "By realizing how important the life is, so I cut-down the wasting my time",

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"Dun ge tsam ne..." By realizing how difficult to find this, I cannot sit in leisure. All these are geared towards to cut our laziness, to make ourselves move, because our mind is a very strong person. It is not simple, it's not under our control by any means, if you try to control your mind, my God you are going to face a problem. So what you have to do is training the mind is selling things gradually to the mind, whatever the mind is willing to buy, are you with me? It is true, that is called mental development, mental training. Actually you try to sell it, convince the mind, whatever it is willing to buy. If you give too much, it will reject, if you give too little, it will not be interested. That's how you train your mind, true. Lam-rim is nothing but that of mental training, mental development, training the mind in such a way that the positive actions will become our habit and patterns. That is totally involved with the mind, that's at least what I understand. Right now what we have is a negative emotion as our way of life, not way of life but that's exactly what we do all the time, automatically comes up. Habitual pattern or ... that's what we are used to it. So dharma is called "chu" in Tibetan, means "change", changing what? Changing the negative way of functioning in life, change in the positive way that becomes dharma. And where and how you change this is selling the thing to your mind. That's called mental training... [Indistinct- Sounds like Rimpoche exclaims something in audience] What is in that? Geshe-la who died in that Loseling? We used to teach in Dharamsala. [Audience responds, unintelligible] Geshe-la taught it, lam-rim he call it... What is it? Tibetan.. mental development or mind training or something he said, huh?

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Mental development right? So the Tibetan tradition of mental development, that is actually lam-rim, he didn't call it lam-rim, he called it Tibetan tradition of mental development. Simply how you training your mind, selling things to the mind that they will buy. And sell it with the quality and restricted quantity. If you have too many of them you won't appreciate, if you give too little it will not interest it. So the mind is such a thing, you know the earlier Tibetan teachers used to give: "Mind is untrained the monkey in temple", wild monkey in temple, what will it do? In the Tibetan, you know, all this colors are in the temple, right? The [indistinct- interior] painted yellow, red, green, blue, there's a bowl with water, food, and life and everything. If you let a wild monkey in there, knock down everything, right? Big mess, everything, cannot be stable, cannot really focus or do anything. So mind is like that, inside. So the training of the mind will simply give you quality with the proper care, so that it will take it, it will buy. When it buy it will become part of our life, it becomes our habit, it becomes our ... [Rimpoche comments on someone in the audience trying to find a seat] I don't know, is there some seat available? There is one chair here and um.. how about this one chair here so. Huh? Allen said there was room here. Huh, what? How are you [indistinct-sleeping]? So we are in the middle of talking mental development, mind training, not silver mind-training it is gold mind training. [Rimpoche and audience laugh] Truly, that is lam-rim about it, that is three-principals all about it, and that's why they talk to you. "Tse ji tsam dewa...",

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when you realize how important the life is, what is cutting-down is the laziness. And that's why they tell you meditate on this, simply we not submit ourselves to the laziness. Is that ok with you [indistinct-audience name: stok?], huh? You have question?

Audience: "Thinking about how lazy I am"

Rimpoche: Oh ok, well... do you have one, Allen? Oh ok you're using Jonathan's. Phillip can you pass on those [indistinct] and Alba. You got it already, Alba did you get one? Alba means white lotus, right? "Tsen den sem de..." I don't why I am even talking on this now. How lifespan is not fixed, it says here lifespan is not fixed. So point what we try to establish here is the preciousness of the life, how important, how valuable it is. If you want to meditate on that, you should, you should really meditate on that. And the meditation, not necessarily, if you can sit down and burn your incense and beat your, whatever, drum or whatever you have, any musical instrument if you want do it, fine. But that's not the thing you have to do it, you have to- the meditation is nothing more than thinking. Particularly the analytical meditation, it is analyzing and thinking. And it is a point you are selling to your mind is your meditation. Making sure you become a good

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sales-person and sell these points to our own mind- it's meditation. So doesn't matter where you think, whether you think in the- on the meditation cushion or whether you think on the path, or think in the shower, it doesn't matter. You can think lot when you are taking nice warm shower. You can think the value of life, you can think how the life has been capable of doing. Think how life has benefitted us, don't be "Mr. or Ms. Negative" all the time, thinking what life didn't get it only, think what it give you, what it has been good to me. Everything, education, talent, quality, for that way cut-down on being Mr. Negative, hating our life is because we be Mr. Negative. Don't beat the yak! You know what I mean, you heard before right? Don't beat the yak, works very hard, carries all our load, gives good, gives cloth, at least for the Tibetans. That's what it is, don't be the yak. That's what we do, especially those of us who have been in the practice of Buddhism for long time, if you're beating the yak. We have not established lam-rim 101, do you realize that? Really true, we have not established the lam-rim 101, so give up the claim to be a vajrayana person. You cannot become a vajrayana [indistinct- yet] without being a lam-rim

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practitioner. Right? And many of us will say a lot of sadhanas, lot of mantras, and sit down with a nice beautiful cross leg, sit for a long time and do all sorts of things. And yet, beating the yak all the time. So which means we don't have lam-rim 101... okay? Good. So once you realize life is important, it has value, and difficult to find mind you. Lots of people will say "Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true, I realize that but now I couldn't do anything but next time I'll do it better". How many of us will go and say I'll do it better next time, almost everybody! Next time, next time, next time. Alright, if it's a cup of tea you can have the next on easily, but human life next time is difficult according to the Buddha. I will share that with you here. Buddha normally talks three way, how difficult to find human life from the causal point of view, from the example point of view, from the natural point of view. Three different point of view but I'll share with you the example, the rest two you read in the lam-rim books. The example is Buddha says there was a blind tortoise, turtle, blind turtle word pops his head every 500-years, once every 500-years, is middle of ocean hoping to caught neck in the moving yoke in the ocean. Hope to caught in there, comes up every 500-years, once. Their wanted to hope to go through in there. Is it possible? Yeah, possible but not... huh? [Audience responds] Not probable. That was Buddha's example of finding such a life again. That is from the example point of view,

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the rest of them you pick up. That is good enough example, shows how difficult. I don't have time to give you the reasons why, you read in lam-rim and use them for meditation, please. If you don't use the meditation, if you hear this, you will do a disservice to yourself. I must share that with you, particularly lam-rim or three-principles of the path, presented to individual that communicates to individual with their life and when that's not used for meditation purpose- didn't use meditation, then we are doing disservice to you. You know the example here is, "Tongpa margyu terme...; Tongpa margyu ..." he says "Those while later if you want treat them", this is Tibetan example, "you can treat them with butter". You work with those, you know no matter how frozen the yak-skin may be but apply butter and work with that it can be treated. But the yak leather to keep the butter and you can't treat that with butter at all. Are you with me? [Audience: "Is there a specific text we should we or just meditate on the [indistinct-essence/value] of life"]] Text is text, doesn't matter but really what does matter is whatever it may be, simple thing that we've been talking to you, use them for the proper step and mediate. Meditate on that and makes sure it make difference to one's life, that is the point. "Chuptu chugu de...", no matter how heavy and negative person may be it can be helped with this, but if you hearing that all the time, don't do anything to yourself, if you have to treat it again with something else it will be very difficult to do it. Because this is such a great method and also presented to you which makes sense to your life and when you don't use that

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next time you try another one it won't even work. It's like this antibiotics and [Rimpoche chuckles to himself] if you don't take them completely and then it becomes terrible one, it's just like that. Just like that, and when you apply this lam-rim way of meditating, dealing with life, and do it with the strong make it complete, don't drop in the middle because when you have to take another one it makes difficult to work. "Chuptu chugu deme to..." Really true because you have heard all this, you know about it, you heard about it, you've heard about it, you've have... someone else tried to present to you, if not weaker than this then even this level, not going to make difference to you, you have heard already. "Nah, nah, nah, don't talk to me", I know all this, right? So that has become disservice to the individual, so make sure this will not become disservice to yourself, what you've been hearing. And making sure it is not become disservice to you is making sure it effect to your life and where and how you effect to your life think about it. In other words I should say meditate, but think about it! Think, analyze, is that making sense with yourself, is that making sense or not making sense? If its making sense with you, why don't you try to become a part of your life. I'm not interested to the people, the people here, become a some kind of very religious person and keeping saying mantras all the time and meditate, I'm not interested. I don't even have hope for that, I'm not interested. What I'm interested is getting out of this, changing, making change in your life. And that will be capable of delivering enlightenment, otherwise just keep on saying mantras all the time its not capable of delivering enlightenment, not at all. "Decha ruda kis..." If you say so many mantras you become powerful hungry ghost, that's what it becomes. Powerful because you've been saying so many mantras and you don't develop yourself,

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so you don't get better life, so you become hungry ghost, powerful ghost. We're not interested for that, we are interested to become a perfect human being who will be taking a perfect human rebirth and becoming totally enlightened and that what our interest is. Our interest is freedom from the negative emotions, once for all, that's what it is. And these are the methods, how you get there. Let's say we appreciate life, we embrace life, but I do it tomorrow. "Sanpa ge chime...", whether tomorrow is going to come first or so-called future life, so-called shall we say? Future life, which is going to come first, who knows? Who knows, right? Every one of us, every one of us are aware our life is impermanent, we have the knowledge, we accept that in principle. We do not accept that in our life, we accept that in our principle, in principle. In principle! There will be no one who will say "I'll live forever", unless you're crazy. That's why we accept in principle, however we will not accept that ending of the life is tomorrow. We [indistinct- clear] way down there somewhere, 102-years later. Right? And each and every one of us would have that in mind, way down there, and that will continue even if you think 2-3 years later, 20-30 years later, even you reach that 20-30 years later there will still be 20-30 years later. That is the problem in this, that is the problem in that.

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So you really never know when it is coming. It's going to end it, it's definitely going to end it, we never know. That's why said "Do it now", if you are prepared whenever it comes, doesn't matter. I think Milarepa or somebody said something... now I don't remember. I think Milarepa said something-something and now I fulfilled- "Nyenjung tsompa tsoh...", Milarepa said "Now I've fulfilled my wish, no matter whenever the death comes I am ready." I don't get the words exactly, I don't remember. So anyway, in sort of in the essence the Milarepa has song on that. So if ready, get ready and then doesn't matter but the problem with us is most of us is caught when we are not ready. Then it becomes difficult. First Karmapa, first Karmapa I think, it says "When we are relaxed, we are totally relaxed; When the death comes we start scratching our chest", that won't help. Even you look to those enlightened people, even you look in the collected work, you will come cross with number of words that incompleted. And sometimes there's even a long list of incomplete words, so that means the death came before they got ready.

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So writing a book left half doesn't matter, but having achievement half left is a big problem. [Rimpoche to audience member who just came in: Do you want a chair or something?] Ok, so maybe I'm talking too much. And those of you who are really meditating, there's three- actually nine important points on this. These are three-roots, three-reasonings, and the three-resolutions. Three-root, three-reasoning, three-resolutions, it's called nine-round of impermanence meditation. I'm not going to go in detail here, if interested read lam-rim book and pickup from there and make simple essence. Some people.. I must mention that, some people thinking just reading lam-rim book is practice enough, some people try to think all the lam-rim book whatever is in there they try to meditate. Both are wrong, don't do it. Read it, get the jist, get the essence of the message and meditate on the essence of the message. Reading book is not meditation, and try to meditate everything whatever in the book is incomprehensible. So those outlines is actually outlines are not really as outlines, its like a synopsis or simple resolution of certain points, and get those organized and meditate on that. And that will change, that will influence you, how you think

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with your life. That all we are looking for, how you approach your life, are you with me? What we try to change here is approach with our life and it's problem, that is all about dharma. The difference approach with the life and it's problem. Maybe I should finish this. "Tanje tsoh.." So the recognizing the life, difficult to find, importantness of the life with the three-points you embrace life, then realize it is impermanent. Makes you cut-down your attachment to the samsara's delights. Don't you think its going to make it? Its going to make it. Ok? It will cut-down attachment to samsara's delights, like that. So now just cutting-down the delights that we project, will that be enough to develop this total seeking freedom? No. We will have very strong attachments to our future live's delights. [Audience chuckles] We do, we do, we do, we do, you need to cut that too. You really need to cut that too, so the way and how you handle that problem is by understanding karma, the sufferings in general, in every part of life, that will then cut that down. So the attachment to the samsara's delights that we will experience this life and attachment to the samsara's delight that we would like to experience in future life, both will be cut by the different keys here. This one, embrace life, importantness, difficult to find,

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impermant, impermanence is the real key anyway. Impermanent represent the gross impermant, that is death. You haven't read death mediation at all, did you? Haven't you? Death meditation... no? Yeah? Yeah, lot of people say yeah in the back. And that's what it is. "Dagye tampa ... tsam che", now I forgot. Anyway I'm not going to talk the death meditation here at all. And those of you who are interested there is Pabongka's death meditation called reminder of death, its called "Spoon of heart". Did you see that translate? Yeah, there's an english translation available, so read this, this will go through whole procedure. The practical procedure, procedure on that. Huh? Heart spoon, says heart spoon. These are the translators they can say anything. [Audience and Rimpoche chuckle] Heart spoon, spoon of heart... no it's a separate small little booklet published by the wisdom people. That has whole thing. "Damje tama kache..." There's a lot of the last food, last cloth, last word, last this, last that, all sorts of there,

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all of those. Even.. they give you the worst possible. "Damje tama..." The worst word they would like to give you is some kind of will and experience of the difficulties, no matter how hard you may be trying to say something, people cannot understand and you have to go with that way, you know that sort of thing. "Sagye dama tamze...", the last food what we get, blessing pills and all this sort of thing, they will put in your mouth, you will have no power to swallow it and left in the mouth of the corpse. Like that, lot of those anyway, so if you can cut-down your laziness and if you make things do now, you don't need those meditations. All of those are meant to cut-down the laziness. Laziness in the sense, the Eastern lazy and the Western lazy is two different thing, I notice that all the time. As Eastern lazy person I would like to sit quietly in some nice corner with- [Audio cuts-out abruptly@0:46:42.6 until 0:46:58.6 and repeats previous few sentences] -nice cup of tea, now it may be coffee with half-and-half. Quietly, read a book, or talk, or listen to gossip, or watch TV, or whatever, quietly, that will be my laziness. But the Western laziness, you don't have that problem, you don't sit down, you can't sit down you have to keep on running, if you have to sit down its been problem for you, it's almost like punishment. No wonder they

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grounded the children all the time! No wonder what it is, really, it is, huh? It is, so you can't sit either, so you have to do something make yourself busy for nothing. And put yourself lot of deadlines, try to catch this, try to catch that, drive here, drive there, run here, run there, do this, cash this, do this... all this are Western laziness. Some are necessary because you got to pay your bills, some you just build up. And if you really look down it's almost 50-50. [Indistinct] And that's laziness, and what does that laziness do? Will cut-down to your precious time, it is cutting-down on your precious life, it is cutting-down on your precious time. The Tibetan teachers, earlier teachers, called these people stupid. Why they call them stupid? They give example, there is one beggar who found a bag full of gold, so what did he do? Oh I found bag full of gold, so he carried the bag at his back and started walking around. What he did not realize there was a hole on the bag, so you go on walking, the golds are dripping, the gold dust keep on dripping. Finally you find empty bag, that is exactly how the laziness cuts-down on the precious human life. You have a precious human life, you recognize that, you wanted to make best use of it but you said I will do it later, so you carry it at your back and walk, what you don't realize there was a hole. These are the mind training steps to cutting-down the laziness. And if you cut the laziness already you don't need that. Each one of them are become stronger, and stronger, and stronger, and stronger, everything to achieve to get to the point. To make sure the antibiotics work. [Rimpoche chuckles]

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Okay? "Khorlo la..." The last word, so by training your mind so then samsara's delights will not interest you anymore. You don't have great interest at all to the samsara's delights. Day and night you are seeking total freedom from those negatives, and if you have you have achieved buddhist 101, the principal number one. That's what it is, and I'm going to stop here. I don't know whether it's five or not, oh it's almost five, it's five-minutes to five. So I'm going to stop here. Do we have any questions? We do have five more minutes. Anybody... if not... huh? What? What did you say? What? What?

[Audio cuts-out@0:52:47.1]