Archive Result

19960507GRAABWL

Tape 1 side A - 05/07/96

We will try to talk about the Bodhisattvacharyavatara, the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. The simple reason is that I had this request from Aura for a number of years. I thought we might do it on the Tuesdays. It is going to take a little time to do that, but it is one of the most important Mahayana textbooks. Those of you, who are familiar with me know that when I use certain words, you have to underline them. I did not say that it is one of the most important Buddhist textbooks, but Mahayana textbooks. I am very much tempted to go back to a very traditional way of talking. Normally I talk in an extremely - should I say New Age way - or new way. This time I am tempted to go back completely to the old style of talking. I am not sure how that is going to work with you people to go with the old style and its ways and means of explaining. But whatever it may be, let me follow a little the completely traditional Tibetan way, so that you will know how that is done. I am not talking about prayers, etc, but about how you present.

So traditionally it begins like this:

Shakyamuni, the kind Buddha, first generated a great thought or mind. He built a very important motivation that we call bodhimind. It is very funny - you are going to hear this business of the bodhimind very often in this teaching, because it is the Bodhisattvacharyavatara.

What is bodhimind? It is the mind of seeking Buddhahood. It is not the Buddha’s mind, but the mind of seeking the state of a Buddha. How did Buddha generate this bodhimind?

There are two ways of explaining this. [According to the Theravada or Hinayana and according the Mahayana tradition] How many people are not familiar with the terms Theravada and Hinayana? Quite a lot. You know, Buddhism is often called a vehicle. It is the vehicle to deliver the individual to the state of a Buddha. It is a vehicle like a car, train, plane or ship. Now there is a bigger vehicle and a smaller vehicle. Mahayana is the great vehicle. That is a Sanskrit word. Hinayana is the small vehicle. That is the traditional way [of distinction]. Some traditional Buddhism in India called them like that: Great vehicle and small vehicle. Those who belong to the category of the smaller vehicle don’t like that. They object to that term. Nowadays they are called Theravada, the self-liberating [ones], rather than small vehicle. The Mahayana is still called Mahayana, because they themselves don’t object to being called big or great.

So the presentation of the teachings is slightly different in the Theravada and the Mahayana tradition. The Theravada tradition will tell you that Buddha Shakyamuni had generated his own mind of achieving the state of a Buddha, had accumulated merit and then obtained Buddhahood all within one life time, a life time of eighty years. They only talk about that level.

But this is a Mahayana textbook. So I have to talk to you according to the Mahayana way. Here it says that Buddha generated the bodhimind many life times before he was born as Buddha. That is from the Mahayana angle. So Buddha had generated bodhimind, he had corrected his motivation many lives ago. It is said that Buddha went to the hell realms. He was in there and his job was to pull the horse cart of the hell realm managers, the people who were dictating what was to happen in the hell realm, the administrators of the torture chambers. So they probably were sitting in the horse cart, but instead of using horses they had hell people pulling them. It is very similar to what I saw in a movie about a medieval European kingdom. They had people pull the horse carts too. In the description of the hell realms you find many cultural influences. You could have western cultures influences or eastern cultural influences. So when the sufferings of hell are projected, when they are presented as some kind of physical appearance, naturally the hells are shown as some kind of torture chambers. There are actually only a few types of tortures, either through heat or through cold, or cutting, wounding and beating. What else can they project? There is nothing else besides that. These are the basic sufferings. In reality, however, it is nothing but a projection, a dream, but we perceive that and feel pain. In reality it is beyond that. Anyway, since we feel pain in that way, that is how the projections are.

So Buddha was in the hell realms pulling the horse cart together with another hell being. The passengers of the horse cart beat them. It is like when you see movies about ancient Rome, where the horse cart drivers would beat the horses. So in the hells, instead of the horses getting beaten, it is the people pulling the carts. Suddenly Buddha developed tremendous compassion towards his companion rather than for himself, although he also experienced pain himself. However, he was feeling the pain of the person next to him and he thought, ‘Poor thing, how difficult it is for him. It is so hard, the poor guy’. The moment he had that mind of caring for that particular guy, the hell administrators knew it and told him, ‘How stupid you are. What are you thinking?!’ and they whipped him and hit him on the head with a stick. So in this particular incident Buddha’s [previous] lifetime in the hell ended - he died instantly. But this death was for him the exit from the hell realm. So his release from the hell realm came directly through the powerful mind of caring for his companion rather than himself. Buddha’s life story is nothing but inspiration and shows us the steps how we can follow him.

So according to the Mahayana, when they say that Buddha first generated the bodhimind, that was not in his lifetime as a Buddha, but when he was in the hell realms as a person pulling horse carts and the power of his mind [of compassion] led to his death in the hell realm and he took rebirth in a better life.

So the Mahayana tradition says that first Buddha generated bodhimind, then he accumulated merits and finally the obtained enlightenment. In the normal system they don’t tell you at that point how he generated bodhimind. If I only told you that he generated bodhimind, accumulated merit and then obtained enlightenment, it would not make sense to you. What I am trying to do is to present the teaching in a traditional way, yet to also give you some explanation, so that you understand what I am talking about.

If you acknowledge the value of compassion, if you grow the compassion in the hell realms, it ends the hell realm. That is the Buddha’s life story. The Jatakas, the story of Buddha’s previous lives, tell you that. So the power of the mind of compassion can free anybody from any lower realm. When Buddha first developed compassion he became free from the hell realm. So that is the first point: Buddha developed his motivation. Actually that means bodhimind. Bodhimind is one of the best motivations recommended in Mahayana Buddhism. The reason is that it is altruistic, compassion-oriented. It is a love/compassion-oriented altruistic mind; therefore it is the best motivation.

The Tibetan Buddhist teachings will tell you that the beginning and the end are the most important activities. The beginning activity is the motivation. The Buddha showed us that if you can develop a compassion-oriented altruistic mind, you can free yourself even if you are in the hell realm. So when we say that we would like to develop the proper motivation, we should follow the same thing, because what Buddha did earlier is a road map for those of us who want to follow him. When we see that in the case of Buddha, the mind of compassion could free him from the hell realm, that it has that much value, we should also get a little benefit. Buddha is the teacher and in this way he has taught us, given us the message. So if we follow that, we also get benefit - even if we don’t get that much, but to a certain extent.

The second step is about when Buddha came out of the hell realm. This is a non-Vajrayana talk. A lot of people here do not know about Vajrayana. There is something called Vajrayana. I told you earlier that in Buddhism there is Hinayana and Mahayana, the small and the big vehicle. The big vehicle is further divided into two categories: causal vehicle or Yana and result vehicle. This is the cause-oriented way of practising and the result-oriented way of practising. Both vehicles will give you results, but result-oriented means that you do everything as though you were a fully enlightened being. The result-oriented practice is very suitable to our way of functioning. That is called vajrayana. Sometimes it is also referred to as diamond vehicle or tantra. They are all the same thing, they are synonymous, but they are not necessarily sexually oriented tantras. The causal vehicle is sometimes also called sutrayana. Some people may say that they have heard about a different division of the vehicles. They will say, ‘There is the Hinayana, the Mahayana and the Vajrayana’. That is also one way of counting. There is nothing wrong with that. But the official way of counting is Hinayana and Mahayana, with the Mahayana divided into two. So when I use the term ‘non-Vajrayana’, I mean that we are not talking about tantra or Vajrayana at all, but purely about the causal or sutra Mahayana part.

So in this regard Buddha practised the accumulation of merit. You work for something until finally you get the result. Right? That is normally what you do. Likewise here, you first establish a motivation and then you work for it. There are two ways: 1. Purifying negativities. 2. Accumulating merit.

So in the sutra Mahayana system it is said that Buddha accumulated merit for three hundred countless eons. That is far away, isn’t it? Oh no, it is actually only three countless eons - that is good, a lot of zeros have dropped out! So finally, after that, he obtained enlightenment. That is what they say. This is different from the vajrayana, which is called the special way or quick way or swift way. Instead of spending three countless eons, you may be able to cover the whole path in the short span of a human lifetime of sixty or so years. This is able to substitute for three countless eons. That is why it is called ‘quick path’. So Buddha had accumulated merits for three countless eons and then become the Buddha, one of the best beings that ever came. What does that mean? I will explain that maybe a little bit later.

Actually the state of the Buddha is called the ‘awakened state’. All others are sleeping, he is the only one who is awake. It is called ‘awakened’, because he has a tremendous amount of awareness, so much so that Buddha is also referred to very often as ‘all-knowing’ person. If there is something to be known, it is known to the Buddha, no matter if it is past, present or future. With regard to the future, he also knows how the future is shifting and how it is finally going to happen. That is why his mind is called ‘awakened mind’. The mind of a Buddha is able to know everything at the same time; not only reading other peoples’ minds, but everything that even happened a million years ago and what will possibly happen in another million years in the future. It is all known to the person, just as if you could read it in your palm. If you look at your palm, there is nothing hidden, it is all there. If you don’t know how to read it, it is bad luck. Otherwise there is nothing hidden, there is no mystery about it. This is beyond our comprehension. If we have ten things happening at the same time, we are going crazy. Buddha will not go crazy. There are billions of things happening together, coming, going, taking rebirth and dying, functioning, living - everything together. It is way beyond our comprehension, beyond our capacity. That is why Buddha’s state is called awakened state, or state of all-knowing.

If he has this all-knowing state - what did he do with all this knowledge? He gave us guidance. He left the message. The message he left is what we call ‘Buddha’s teaching’. Technically it is sometimes called ‘Turning of the Wheel of Dharma’. It is not turning the wheel of the car. What it really means is that he shared his experience, he shared his knowledge and gave us the message out of the knowledge that he had in his awakened mind. Yes, Buddha gave the whole message. However, we are only capable of picking up certain messages, and not capable of picking up certain others. The messages are all there, but certain things we cannot pick up. So later, Buddha’s messages were analyzed by other great masters who followed Buddha’s path. The analyzed and divided his teachings into three categories: the first, second and third turnings of the wheel of Dharma. ‘

Some people interpret that to mean that the first period of Buddha’s life is the first turning of the wheel, the second part of his life is the second turning and the last, just before he died, is the third turning of the wheel. There are some teachers who tell you that. But the traditional Tibetan Buddhism does not accept that. They will say that the first turning of the wheel is famous in the world today as The Four Noble Truths. He taught this three times, which makes it twelve. I have to explain what three times means here. I have seen a traditional Indian movie made about Buddha teaching the Four Noble Truths. In India they have a strange rule which says that nobody is allowed to show the body of the Buddha in a movie. There are pictures of Buddha but you cannot show him in a movie. So in any movie about Buddha you will only see huge feet and crossed legs up to the waist. You cannot see anything above that. That is the Indian law. So the picture which is stuck in my head is seeing these huge feet and that big voice saying, ‘This is the Noble Truth of Suffering’ and the second, ‘This is the Truth of the Cause of Suffering’, then ‘This is the Truth of Cessation of Suffering’, and finally, ‘This is the Way to get to the Cessation of Suffering.’

So the first of the three rounds of the Four Noble Truths is to introduce them. The second time he explained the purpose, which is to acknowledge the suffering, to avoid the cause of suffering, to obtain the cessation and meditate according to the path. The last three rounds are to acknowledge the suffering, yet there is nothing to be acknowledged; to avoid the cause of suffering, yet there is nothing to be avoided; to obtain the cessation, yet there is nothing to be obtained; and to meditate on the path, yet there is nothing to meditate. The third round is actually introducing the wisdom. Everything which we acknowledge, avoid, obtain and try to meditate on, is just like a magician’s show. It is illusion, it is not real. That is where the famous Buddhist teaching of emptiness comes in. This the wisdom part.

So these twelve rounds of teaching is called the First Turning of the Wheel of Dharma. It is a technical description. It is the first category of teaching. Some people can be liberated completely just by that alone, so just by introducing the Four Noble Truths, explaining the purpose and giving the wisdom aspect alone some people can be totally liberated. This is the essence of the Hinayana of Theravada teachings.

The second category of teachings is the Interdependent Relationship of people, of mind, body and existence. That is not only concerning human beings, but all existence including the environment, the inhabitants, the elements - everything. It is the interdependent origination -even how we take rebirth, how the process functions. There is something called Twelve Links of Interdependent Origination. It deals with the causes, with how we function and how we create ourselves, what we experience and how we end. It is based on the life of one individual within the system of the Twelve Links. But the links are hooked in this manner, rather than only twelve in that way [Rinpoche demonstrates]. You know, it is one hook within a hook. You are completing certain circles of the Twelve Links here and you are also creating certain points of the Twelve Links there. So these different cycles of the Twelve Links are hooked up. That is why there is a continuation of reincarnations which are all interlinked within the system of the Twelve Links of Interdependent Origination. It shows how one individual life functions and how it is related to other lives. Sometimes even three lives hook together. So [the second turning of the wheel] is those Twelve Links and the actual way out - the wisdom of emptiness. This means the emptiness of individual beings and the emptiness of things other than beings - articles, things, etc. These two are the major teachings which fall under the category of the Second Turning or Middle Turning of the Wheel of Dharma.

The Third Turning of the Wheel is the method, like bodhimind, generosity, morality, etc. These are the activities of someone who has generated the altruistic, love/compassion-oriented mind. This book here is called bodhisattvacharyavatara , in English Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. It is about how you conduct your life, how you function. These are called method. It deals with how important altruistic mind is, how important love and compassion is, what compassion is, how you function with this, what you do with this, how you make that part of your life and not only part of your life, but how your life becomes that - how you make your life itself love/compassion-oriented. Not only love/compassion-oriented; it is becoming love, it is becoming compassion. It will guide you through the steps; first introducing love/compassion, then how you orient yourself with this, and finally how every chore we have to do itself becomes love and compassion. That is the Bodhisattva’s way of life. A teaching about that is part of the third turning of the wheel of Dharma.

[Tape 1 side B - 05/07/96]

[I have given a little more detailed information] about Buddha’s life. The traditional old lamas will just say, ‘Buddha first generated bodhimind, next he accumulated merit and finally he obtained enlightenment’. This three-word statement contains whatever I have explained so far. So traditionally I would just say, ‘Buddha first generated bodhimind, then accumulated merit for three countless eons and finally obtained enlightenment. Then he taught. The teachings he gave were firstly the Four Noble Truths, then the wisdom teachings and then the Bodhisattva’s way of life.’ That is the traditional way in which it would come out and the meaning behind it which you would have to understand is that much.

I have to say a little more about obtaining enlightenment. But I may leave it for a little later. Then what Buddha shared with us is the Bodhisattva way - no matter how long it takes. Who knows - there are 214 pages to cover. We will try to finish at least the first chapter before the summer retreat - but who knows.

Then I have to tell you something about the author who wrote this particular book. That is Shantideva or Shiwa lha in Tibetan. Truly speaking he was a Vajrayana practitioner. Within the Vajrayana activities there is trö je and trö me which means with activity and without activity. Shantideva’s practice happened to be that without activity. He was sleeping all the time! He was found to be always asleep. Even his colleagues and friends would call him the person who only knows three things: how to eat, how to sleep and how to shit. The only time they saw him was at the food gatherings and the rest of the time he was sleeping, apart from the times when they saw him going to the toilet. The Indian culture at that time and with that also the Buddhist [establishment], was male-dominated. Therefore the males had a superior authority over the females. So in the old style the nunneries would require monks coming over to them to give teachings. So that used to be the old style. Buddha’s monastic rules were to purify all the negativities every second week - in general and particularly any negativity that went against their vows. So every second week you have a monks’ gathering about that. I know, because I have been there. We would stand up and make confessions. It is not that everybody has to get up and say, ‘I have done this and I have done that’, but all the monks as a group confess having broken the four root vows, the twelves branch vows, the thirty sub-branches, the ninety sub-sub branches, the two hundred and fifty-five secondary vows. So everybody says all of that together - everything. They will say, ‘All that and whatever else was done, we purify here together.’ So if there is one thousand people present they would recite all that together. So it is not an embarrassing thing for the individuals. At the end of the procedure one of the senior monks will read out the sutra once again and everybody will just listen and then go home. In case of the nuns, one monk from the monastery came over in order to conduct that sutra teaching every second week. That used to be the rule.

So one time, the monks of the monastery where Shantideva was staying, were fed up with him and wanted him to leave. They wanted to insult him as well as also tease the nuns at the same time. So they selected him, the one who only knows three things and told him, ‘It is your time to go and give a teaching to the nuns.’ So Shantideva said, ‘Okay!’ Then monks said to each other, ‘Look at him, how shameless. What is he going to say? He knows only three things. He has got nothing to teach. Anyway, lets watch what he will do.’ So they told the nuns that Shantideva was going to come over to them and teach. The nuns also said, ‘What, this one? The monks must just want to tease or insult us. But we are going to turn the tables on them. Let us build a huge throne for him!’ So all the nuns collected their additional robes - all of them - and constructed a huge throne outside in the open. There was no way that anybody could get up there, unless you had a high ladder. So when Shantideva came by he saw that huge throne and he thought, ‘Did they really do that out of respect or do they want to insult me?’ When he meditated it became clear that they did it as an insult. What he did then is, he reached up with his hand towards the top of the throne and his hand went up there longer and longer and actually reached the top of the throne and then he started to press it down. By doing so, the whole big throne shrank to a normal level and he sat down on it. After that, the throne started to go back up, as high as it had been constructed. Then, Shantideva proceeded to give this teaching of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara in ten chapters - totally ex tempo. This teaching is now considered to be one of the best works of poetry available in Sanskrit. When they translated that into Tibetan it was not as good. The normal teachings would tell us that the value was reduced by fifty per cent through the translation. Translated into English it is bound to be worse. While he was teaching Shantideva rose up into the air and finally went up in between the clouds. The tenth chapter could then only be heard. People only heard his voice. His body could no longer be seen. And that is how he died. He left with his body. So it was very unusual and extraordinary. This is accepted as true by all the different schools of Tibetan Buddhism, Sakya, Nyingma, Kargyu and Gelug. Besides Buddha’s words, this is one the things that is accepted by all of them. Apart from that, everybody has their own commentaries and ways of doing the practice. I consider myself lucky that I am able to read and discuss that with you and you people are also very fortunate. I think I should end my talk here. But we will take some months to go through that (laughs).

Audience: After Buddha was released from he hell realm through his development of compassion, did he maintain this level of compassion in his next and following rebirths?

Rinpoche: The answer is ‘I believe yes’. That is for the case of the Buddha. Will that be the case for every human being? I don’t know. That depends on the individual. For some it is the case, for others it is not. The Bodhisattva vows, however, are different from the monks’ and nuns’ vows. The monks’ and nuns’ vows end when the person dies. But the Bodhisattva vows don’t end there. They carry on continuously. You take them until you are a Buddha. That is a big difference.

Audience: Could you comment on the different levels on which one can receive the Dharma?

Rinpoche: I cannot say ‘no’ to this request, but what is known to me is that according to Tsong Khapa the first level is learning, then meditating and concentrating and finally obtaining enlightenment. There are many ways of learning, that is definitely true. But when you talk about Buddha’s teaching particularly, I tell you how I obtained the teachings. For us, in the old Tibetan monasteries - whether it was the Theravada or Mahayana principle, or Vajrayana - the teachings were normally divided into three categories: the oral transmission, the explanation and the initiation. We were taught that all three of these are absolutely necessary and important.

What is oral transmission? This deals with the textbook of the subject you are learning about, on what basis you are receiving the teachings or doing you practice. You listen to the sound intact. The message is written in the book, it is there, you can read it. But there has to be the continuation of the sound of what you read. It is the continuation from the author who wrote that particular text. He will give that to his students who will pass it on to the future generations. So the sound continuation from the author through the generations is the oral transmission.

Initiation means introducing people to a mandala, appropriately describing the mandala to the students and introducing it to them with the full ritual. In this Vajrayana case [Maha anuttara yoga tantra] you have to receive all the four initiations perfectly as the seed for the four bodies of the enlightened level.

Then there is the teaching and explaining part. That includes answering questions and giving guidance. For that there are different ways at different times.

Basically, these are the three different levels of teaching and one must receive all three in order to make the Vajrayana work perfectly.

end of tape 1 side B - 05/07/96