Archive Result

19960702GRAABWL

Tape 7 side A 07/02/96

We are talking about the benefits of the bodhimind. Bodhi refers to the enlightened level. So it is the mind that would really like to seek ultimate enlightenment. This actually is ultimate, unconditioned, unlimited love and compassion. That is just simply bodhimind. The simple reason why you want to gain the best spiritual development is in order to help all beings, because we you committed. Just to make ourselves happy and joyful, we do not need either the enlightenment or even to seek enlightenment. But it is not only for our own purposes, so we need to go and benefit all beings. In order to help all beings, it is absolutely necessary for us to communicate, to be able to do everything we need to do. That is why there is need for the ultimate enlightenment. Tibetan Buddhism normally tells you that the state of the Buddha is your goal. That does not mean anything to you. But so many of you have kindly bought that from me or any other Tibetan without asking any questions why. So that is great, wonderful, it makes the job easier. However, for you it is not that great. While you try to go through with that, you say all the time, ‘I want to obtain Buddhahood’. After some time you begin to ask yourself, ‘Why? What do I need that for?’

I always share this story with you:. One friend of ours told me one day - that was in the beginning, about five or six years ago - ‘Rinpoche, could you give me something about Buddhahood?’ She asked me while we were standing at the road, so I quickly said, ‘It is something like God’. She thought for a while and then said, ‘If it is the stage of God, I have no interest to become God at all.’ Thinking about that however benefited her tremendously and some time later she told me, ‘Practising this has been good. People started treating me better.’ Actually she started treating people better, and as a result they started treating her better also. It think that is the bottom line. In one way she was absolutely right. There is no need to have absolute enlightenment for our purposes. If we get free from our negative neuroses, it is good enough. But when you talk about Mahayana, Bodhimind and Bodhisattvas, you are talking about ultimate love and compassion, you care for all beings, not only the people you really care about, but also those who you normally don’t care for. When you want to care for those, who you don’t even care about, that is more than meeting your own needs. You need to help and get into the people’s ideas. You have to talk to people. If you have to talk to one politician to make them change their minds - or forget about politicians, if you just want to convince one of your own companions of something, it takes a tremendous amount of effort and tremendous amounts of skill. You don’t want the companion to run away from you, you don’t want them to misunderstand, yet you want to [help them].

We have a saying in Tibetan, ‘Without scaring the bird away, you have to pick up the eggs’. Is that an English example too? All right. In order to do that, you need skills, you need methods. Ordinary methods are not enough. You need the ultimate, the best methods, because you are going to care for those you don’t even care about. That is why you need the best tools, that is why love and compassion and seeking Buddhahood is becoming relevant, when you get to this level. When you are at the beginning level, at the primary or preliminary level or even on the ‘common with the lower level’, you don’t need that. Your goal at that point is simply to make yourself free from neuroses. But at this level you shift your goal from just freeing yourself from your neuroses to helping and caring for others. So when you need to help the different varieties of people, you need the best tools available. Even on our usual educational level, if you want to help somebody, you need a lot of degrees. If you want to become a mid-wife, you need some kind of skills and degrees. If you want to talk to people, you have to become a psychologist or psychotherapist. On all the different levels you need to have skills. Here you want to try to help all sentient beings and bring them to the best level of enlightenment. Certainly, you need the best tools in existence. That is why enlightenment needs to be your goal that you want to achieve. These are the reasons.

When you don’t ask the question of the need for enlightenment at the earlier level, but simply repeat that you want to become enlightened for the benefit of all beings, and for that purpose you do this and that, etc. then you just sit there and it is nice, but after some time you will begin to ask questions. You will think, ‘I have not seen any purposes for why I have to become enlightened!’ Naturally, people will get thoughts and ideas coming up, so naturally it is a good thing to have that thought. Better late than never. I do welcome these thoughts. I really am happy when people talk to me that way. I am happy, because I see that people are thinking, that they are analyzing. To me, that is meditation. When you analyze, when you think, that is meditation. Whether you are sitting on the pot or in the shower or on the cushion - I don’t care, as long as you are not driving. When you driving, it is dangerous. As long as you are thinking, that is good enough. It will make a difference. You have to think and analyze and become convinced that you need to become enlightened - if you want to become enlightened. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. You can quit from this level and go back to the level where you want freedom from the neuroses. Nobody will say that they want to do that. We will all say that we do want to have freedom. That is because we can see and feel and touch it. Here, we are going one step beyond the ordinary level.

So this first chapter deals with the benefits of particularly the ultimate love and compassion.

Verse ten

It is like the supreme gold-making elixir;

For it transforms the unclean body we have taken

Into the priceless jewel of the Buddha form;

Therefore firmly seize this awakening mind.

It is like the gold solution which will transform all ordinary metals into gold. They are not talking about something dipped in gold or gold plated. It is one of the Hindu-Buddhist mythological stories. Early in India there was supposed to be some kind of special lotion. If you touch any iron with this, it will turn into real gold, because of the power of the solution. In fact, I was told repeatedly by well-known Indian politicians - they repeatedly assured me that in old India they had this magical solution which changes metals into gold. They told me that this is how they financed Ghandiji’s non-violent movement against the British - with this funny magic. While I was telling people in India that this was one of these mythological stories, a number of well-known, respected old politicians, including somebody who worked as Ghandi’s secretary and is currently the chairman of the Ghandi Peace Foundation, objected. He is a student of mine - a very respected Indian politician called Rabindradharma. He repeatedly told me, ‘Rinpoche, this is not a mythological story, this is reality. This is how we supported Ghandi’s peaceful movement.’ I asked him, ‘Who knows about that method?’ He said, ‘Only a couple of saddhus knew, and after the independence they decided not to reveal it any more. So when I was giving teachings on this particular verse in Dehli, Rabindradharma told me that it is not a myth, but reality. Who knows, but it must be. Rabindradharma is a well-respected person, chairman of the Ghandi Peace Foundation right now. So maybe it is true. Our text does not really clarify it. It just says that it becomes gold, not just gold-plated. So there must have been some kind of lotion at that time. When the lotion is applied, all the metals, particularly iron, become gold.

Likewise, if you develop this love and compassion, even our ordinary human form is changed into something extraordinary - the precious Buddha’s body. It becomes priceless. You cannot put a price on it. Therefore, if you are an intelligent person, why would you not want this jewel to be part of you?

Verse eleven

Since the limitless mind of the Sole Guide of the World

has upon thorough investigation seen its preciousness,

All beings wishing to be free from worldly abodes

Should firmly take hold of this precious Awakening Mind.

If you have this mind, you will become the only guide who can lead sentient beings. Ultimate love and compassion will care for all sentient beings. Otherwise you will be a guide who will be leading a number of people, a few people, five or ten, or hundreds or thousands. But when you have the bodhimind you will become the sole guide of all sentient beings. Whether you have something to do with certain persons or not, it does not matter, you will care for them, you will really like to help them and you really will be guiding them. That is why you will be the sole guide of all sentient beings.

If you check and investigate, if you really analyze the value of such a mind, what are you going to find? You will find that it is immeasurable. Why? You will be able to fulfil the wishes of all beings, and even if not of all beings, but of hundreds and thousands of beings. If you can fulfil somebody’s wishes, if you can help somebody, how much joy do you get?

Today I will say it again; I have given this Bodhisattva example everywhere from Chicago to San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco to Minnesota. When you see a girl caught in a burning car, there is no time to find a stone - you have to use your hand and all your strength and break the window and pull the girl out - saving a life. That is one example. And even if you break your wrist in the process, it does not matter. The joy of saving a life - how much is that! Likewise anybody can do something. Saving even a bird or a humming bird by giving it sugar water or something - when you realize that some being that has been dying comes back to life and flies off because of your little gesture of giving water - how much joy you receive. These are examples how you can help. When you can help a disturbed child, giving it a respectable life, guiding it in a proper way, and when you see how that child is no longer disturbed, and has been helped, how much joy can you get out of it? We know that, right? So if you can help countless numbers of people, the joy you can receive from that is immeasurable. So the joy you can get, if you do a little bit for somebody, is tremendous. If you can do a lot for a lot of beings, how great the joy must be. We are talking here about happiness. Forget about the Vajrayana great bliss of the movment of the semen up and down - forget about that. Even Taoists can do this. There is no comparison between the Buddhism and Taoism. Taoists are totally dedicated to the benefit of this life time. You can increase your life span as much as possible, from one hundred to one thousand years. You can do that. That is the difference. Buddhism is concerned with life after life. There is no comparison. Don’t forget reincarnation. If you forget about reincarnation, I will be out of a job! [laughs] - I am just joking. That is the benefit you are getting. It is immeasurable. There is no limitation to the joy you can receive from the love and compassion. It is priceless. The immeasurable mind.

Why is this verse talking about being the sole guide to all beings? You are not only leading all beings, but you are leading them to the ultimate level of all-knowingness. Let us talk about the state of a Buddha. Normally we will talk about the Buddha as one particular guy who was born in India two thousand five hundred years ago. Here we are not referring to that. A Buddha is all-knowing. His mind is everywhere. It is the pervasive knowledge, the pervasive capacity. Buddha’s mind is everywhere. Even from the normal Christian point of view we say that God is everywhere. Don’t we? How can you explain that? God is everywhere, because he knows everything. There is nothing he does not know. So when he knows, it is there, this is pervasive, the knowledge is pervasive to enlightenment. The enlightenment sees all that knowledge. So therefore it goes this way or that way. The frequency of the mind and the body is the same. It is the extraordinary quality of enlightened beings - the union of body and mind. When their mind is there, their body is there and when their body is there, their mind is there. In our case, body and mind are separate. We know by mind and we feel by body. At the enlightened level, though, it is the same thing - body and mind are a union, they are oneness. If the body is there, the mind is there. If the mind is there, the body is there. Therefore if the mind is all-knowing, it is there, they see it, they feel it, they touch it and taste it. That is what all-knowing is.

We think that there are certain things we can keep absolutely secret and nobody will know, except me and my friend. But that is not true, because the enlightened mind is everywhere, it knows everything. Okay? So don’t worry about it. That is why it is called ‘limitless’ mind. There is no limit, because that mind is all-knowing mind. We call it Buddha, but whether you call it Buddha of God really does not matter. What does matter is what you can get as a human being. You know, the division comes from the religious traditions. The eastern ones call them something, the western ones call them something. So it is all the different traditions. What we are really referring to here is the ultimate level. Technically in Buddhism that is called the enlightened level. I don’t know what equivalent terms the judaeo-christian religions have. You cannot call it the God level, because that is never obtained by any person. Anyway, the ultimate level is limitless. Whoever has achieved it, they know everything, they are there. If the ultimate mind analyzes, what is it going to find? That those who cannot accept ultimate love and compassion, are nothing but fools. I added up the word ‘fools’.

So we as human beings from our point of view look at all the paths available to us and see what we as human beings can really reach in terms of spiritual development. In the west we have a tremendous amount of intelligence and we try to develop the human capacity externally. How much we can do! It is almost limitless. You can now very easily sit in your living room and watch Jupiter or something. It is an almost immeasurable achievement on the external, material level. If that is so, then on the internal level we can even develop much more. If you cut out those little so-called traditional thoughts and ideologies of various religious schools and go beyond that, if you take the precious human mind and look what it can achieve on the spiritual level, you will see all this. That is why the Bodhisattvacharyavatara refers to it as ‘limitless mind of the sole guide of the world’. If you have that limitless mind, you will be the sole guide. So I have explained the term ‘sole guide of the world’ in two ways. First, if you have that mind, you will be the sole guide. Second, if you take it the other way round, if the limitless mind of the sole guide of the world analyzes, it will see the benefits you can get out of love and compassion. If you measure caring for others against the narrow selfish interest of ‘me, me, me’ and ‘how can I do it’, unless you are a fool, you have to accept this. Not only do you have the opportunity to help others, but the way how you develop yourself is by caring for others.

We went through the Three Principles of the Path. The first is seeking freedom from our neuroses. Once you have established that, you don’t just think, ‘How can I do it? Should I sit, sleep of walk? Should I sit on the pot or on the meditation cushion?’ etc, . If you do that, you are not going to go anywhere. We told you, remember? That is the self-centered mind. It is one-sided. Move from there to caring for others, to love and compassion. Measure that and then see which one is getting better? Find out from your own level of intelligence. Then look from the window of the limitless mind and see what it is. Then naturally, unless you are a fool, you have to choose to move to the caring, to the love, to the compassion. If you think, ‘Should I say more mantras? Should I sit? Should I do prostrations? Should I do retreats? Should I shave my hair?’, it is not going to work. You may shave your hair or go into retreat or say mantras, you may do prostrations and circumambulations, but as long as you don’t shift self-centeredness, you will remain the same old mule or donkey. It is not the Democrats’ donkey, but the usual donkey.

While we can see the benefits of the bodhimind on one side, we can at the same time see the faults of the narrow, self-centered mind. What we try to do is shift the attention, shift the focus from the ‘I, I, I,’ attitude to thinking, ‘How can I help? What is the best way to help you? What is the best way to help all being?’ You have to move from there. This is the way, this is the path. There is no magical path for which you just have to eat a special pill or drink an elixir. There is no such thing. What you have to do is your Buddhism 101, that is getting the determination to be free, and then you move to 102: the way how to do that is through love and compassion, not through ‘Me, Me, Me’ and ‘I, I, I,’. That is extremely important.

Those who would like to help other beings, who would like to guide other people, have to hold this mind very carefully.

All beings wishing to be free from worldly abodes

That means that all the beings are in the world of suffering, the cyclic existence, the continuation of suffering. There is no question that there is reincarnation. But every reincarnation is suffering after suffering.

Somebody read me a story this morning, saying that the hell realm people die, but are again reborn as hell beings. They don’t get out. But due to certain help, they can die and not come back in a world of suffering. What is really happening in samsara is that we have a tremendous nature of suffering and pain, each and everyone of us. Who does not have mental, physical and emotional suffering? Anybody who does not have any of these, I would like to meet. Is there anybody here? No? Right. So each and everyone of us has either mental, physical or emotional sufferings. And we have no control over it. Repeatedly we die and are reborn with that again and again. That is how ‘born again’ is true for us. I am not being sarcastic towards anyone, but....

end of side A of tape 7 07/02/96

tape 7 side B 07/05/96

In absolute reality, it might not be a real suffering. It might almost be illusionary, but it is a good enough illusion to make us suffer. It is a good enough illusion that we feel pain. Normally we say in the context of wisdom that we do not truly exist, but relatively we do. Relatively we exist, because all the conditions are right. At that point we exist and that is good enough to exist. The sufferings and pains may be illusions or hallucinations in absolute reality, but it is good enough to feel pain, to suffer. So we need to get out of it. That is the reason why Buddha taught two truths and not one truth. These are the absolute and the relative truth. Buddha said that both are true. It is good enough to feel the pain, thats why it is true. A lot of folks tell me that if there is a truth it has to be one truth, there cannot be two; that it is either right or wrong. But apparently there can be two truths. You can have right as well as wrong. That is the mystical part of our life, that is the mystery. We can have both. Absolutely speaking, nothing exists. That means all our existence functions only collectively. Things exists because of terms, conditions and time. Then it is good enough to be existing, because we feel it, we suffer, we enjoy. The problem with a number of people is that they cannot accept establishment [of reality] based just on the combination of conditions. Those scientists may not have that problem, because they also see that if certain factors come together, certain things come into existence. When certain parts fall off, the ‘thing’ disappears. That is true in our lives as well. That is why the relative truth is based on collectiveness alone. One should be able to accept that.

verse twelve

All other virtues are like the plaintain tree;

For after bearing fruit they simply perish.

But the perennial tree of the Awakening Mind

Unceasingly bears fruit and thereby flourishes without end.

The awakening mind is the bodhimind, the mind that seeks enlightenment because of ultimate love and compassion. Any good work you do, like saving a life, being generous, being kind, being a good person and going to church, etc., normally will bring one result. Then it is finished. Karma is meant that way. You do one good thing and you get one result. Then it is over, it is finished. You do one bad thing, you get one bad experience. You wash out that karma. You settle your account. Thats what it is. But when your mind is influenced by bodhimind, it does not settle that way. Constantly, continuously, it gives you fruit.

The text says, unceasingly bears fruit’. Another translation says that it constantly bears fruit. Once you produce a positive karma with the bodhimind, it does not finish. It goes on all the way until you become enlightened. It keeps on giving you results. That is the best investment. It is beyond any stock market crash, it is immune against that. It is blue chips. You know why? Because karma is definite. If you do something with a big mind - perhaps it is a long shot, but that does not matter - thinking that you want to do something in order to become enlightened, even if it is only one single migtsema mantra, that is good enough to yield results until you become enlightened. But if there is somebody who says one hundred thousand migtsemas without bodhimind, the value of that one single mantra supersedes these by two hundred thousand. This is because of the mental capacity, the value of the motivation. That is why I urge everybody in the coming years up to the year 2000, who have a lot of time pressures- the young ones among you, whose lives are not yet established, who are in school or half way here and half way there, you are in a picnic spot right now, you don’t feel any pressure, everything is nice and wonderful, love and light and beautiful, no doubt - but when you move up in age a little bit, in a few years time you will feel the pressure. You will have to make money to pay your bills, whether you like it or not. It will be like that.

Unfortunately the sixties are gone, the seventies and eighties are gone, the nineties are going and 2000 is coming. There is going to be a lot of pressure for everybody. There is going to be economic pressure, age pressure, time pressure, commitment pressures. All of that will come up. So you have to learn how to make every single chore you do in your life worthwhile. You people may say that you are young right now and don’t have to worry about it. But if you can worry about that now, it is better. Even at the young, nice, love and light level, you can also get this benefit. That is simply the motivation which you establish in the morning and the commitment that you give yourself that you want to devote all of your time to benefit all beings, to serve them. That is the mind training that you should do yourselves.

Remember I told you when I was a kid they taught me a few prayers to say in the morning and if I woke up and did not say these prayers, I would get pinched. That is what it is about. Think that ‘May I be helpful to all beings’. I had to say that every morning, whether I liked it or not. If I did not, I would get pinched. I did not like to be pinched. So that is how I got trained. You people are lucky. There is no child abuse here at all. Kids are very well protected. But if you love yourself, if you care for yourself, you should have that thought in your mind. Finally, in the evening, you should dedicate every good thing you have done to the attainment of enlightenment. Don’t waste them in the manner of those trees that simply perish after giving one result. Go for the kind of tree that gives you constantly fruits - all the time.

So dedicate your actions to total enlightenment, for the benefit of all beings. Because of that result, every single damn chore you do during the day time will be beneficial to you. If you do your laundry, it will be of positive nature. If you clean your room, your house, etc, it will be beneficial for you and everybody. We need to learn that method to make every chore we perform into positive karma. That is possible, unless you do things which are by nature negative like producing B2 bombers or something. Even then it is not necessarily bad, because a lot of B2 bombers provide relief food here and there. They do not necessarily just drop bombs. In any case, every neutral action, particularly sleep, regret and the analyzing mind, are very easy to change into positive karma. It is in your own hands, right in front of you - whether you take it or not. That is the ready-made TV dinner provided by Buddha, presented by Ngawang Gelek or Gelek Rinpoche. If you like it, take it, if you don’t, throw it away. That is it. I am going home.

Audience: [ about difference in translation of verse ten between Stephen Batchelor’s and the ‘Oxford Edition’]

Rinpoche: In Tibetan it is called ‘sin gyur tsi’, which is a solution that changes every metal into gold. So it is not just gold plating or another metal dipped into gold. One thing changes into another. So when the bodhimind develops within you it is like alchemy, one metal changed into another one, iron changed into gold. Likewise, when you obtain the bodhimind, the ordinary body, which is valueless compared with the body of the Buddha, will change into that valuable Buddha’s body and the limited ordinary mind will change into unlimited mind. It does not become unlimited knowledge right at that moment, but it changes its nature.

Aud1: If there is no self, at whom is compassion directed?

Rinpoche: Who told you that there is no self?

Aud1: You did.

Rinpoche: Did I? There is a lot of people here who do not agree with you. Selflessness does not mean that there is no self. With selflessness we mean the lack of an intrinsically existing self. One exists just through the combination of conditions and collections. People have difficulties accepting that, because we have a deeper thinking that there must be something more solid than just the combination of things together. Somehow we cannot satisfy our mind that existence is based only on conditions meeting. That is enough to exist. Somehow we cannot take that. A lot of people have problems with that. They probably think that there is something deeper than that, something more solid, something going far under the ground and sticking there. I think that is the problem. People just cannot accept that when the conditions are right, things happen. It is like when you go outside from a room in which the air condition was turned on too high. You go out and it is nice and warm. You feel good. It is simply that the conditions are right for the texture of our body. It is soothing us and that is why we feel good. But we are not satisfied with that and look deeper for something called joy or pleasure or something. If I put my ten fingers together, just the meeting of them is not enough, we think that some solid stamp still goes below that. It is the intrinsic existence we are looking for. Thats what it is.

end of side B of tape 7 of 07/02/96