Archive Result

19960820GRAABWL

Tape 15 side A 08/20/96

Those of you who are regularly following should be aware that if you miss it you lose the oral transmission. If we go back, it does not matter. It will take more time, that is about it.

Audience: You did not read verse twenty and did not comment on it.

Rinpoche: Is that right? Well, I can read it, but I am not going back to talk about it.

Verse twenty

For the sake of those inclined towards the lesser (vehicle),

This was logically asserted

By the Tathagata himself

In the Sutra Requested by Subahu.

I believe this is talking in reference to the verse before that, verse nineteen and is given for the benefit of those who would like to use the lesser vehicle. If I have not explained it, I have to do it another time, because I don’t have verse nineteen with me in Tibetan. In English I can read it, but I don’t understand anything. So verse twenty says that verse nineteen is right and says that it was asserted for the benefit of those who want to follow the lesser vehicle and that Buddha himself has taught that. It does not make sense without looking at verse nineteen again.

Lets go and talk more on verse twenty-five.

verse twenty-five

This intention to benefit all beings,

Which does not arise in others even for their own sake,

Is an extraordinary jewel of the mind,

and its birth is an unprecedented wonder.

I believe we have to link verse twenty-three and twenty-four together. Verse twenty-three simply tells you that if you have the great mind of benefiting others, it brings a tremendous amount of merit. It is giving you examples of ordinary life, asking if ‘even fathers and mothers have such a benevolent intention as this’, and further ‘if the gods and sages and even Brahma have that’. We talked about this in detail. In other words, it is about the benefit of the bodhimind. Even though fathers, mothers, sages and the great Brahma have a tremendous amount of compassion, they don’t have that much of the mind that wants to benefit everybody.

Then verse twenty-four continues that line and says that most people do not have the attitude of wanting to bring all beings to the total enlightenment, the total freedom, which is the bodhimind - they do not have that wish even for themselves, for their own sake, for their own benefit. They don’t get that. We usually care for ourselves tremendously. Whether we are right or wrong, we like ourselves, we want to protect ourselves and help ourselves. We are the ones, for whom we want to reach the greatest aim, the best of all. All this is there within our mind. But we cannot even think that we want to become fully enlightened. That thought does not even arise for our own benefit. So how can it be possible to want to benefit others? How is such a thought possible to grow with us?

Bodhimind, the ultimate love and compassion, has learnt that the ultimate achievement is the total enlightenment and therefore one must have the desire to be able to bring all sentient beings to that level. When you have such a mind, this mind is called ‘precious mind’. This is what verse twenty-five tells us. Such a mind is not only precious, but extraordinary. Such a mind has never been there within us. Now we have found ultimate love, ultimate compassion, unlimited. It is unlimited with regard to the object that you want to benefit, unlimited in the goal. What you really want to bring to them is also unlimited. Therefore its birth is a wonderful, extraordinary thing.

Therefore, if we want to have that in our mind, we must know how joyful it is. We must know how happy we should be. If it did not grow within us, but we see that it has grown within somebody else, we must think that a wonderful thing has happened. So one way or another, whether it is happening within ourselves or with somebody else, we must be able to know how wonderful it is, accept it and rejoice.

Verse twenty-five says, ‘It is an extraordinary jewel of mind and its birth is an unprecedented wonder’. So whether its birth has taken place in your own mind or in somebody else’s, it is wonderful. You should really rejoice in that. That is the best happiness you can bring - because such a mind has developed in us. Even if it has not developed with us, but if we see that somebody has that, it is also a tremendous amount of wonder. Therefore those of us, who have not developed it yet should try to develop it. Those of us who have developed it, should try to grow it further. This is what verse twenty-five is talking about.

What it really is saying is that bodhimind is called ‘great mind’. Why is that so? It is the source of all qualities that we can develop. We have been saying that we want to develop ourselves. In Buddhism 101 we learnt how to develop the mind seeking total freedom. Once we made up our minds that we should seek freedom, the way how to do that is by serving others, helping others, using love and compassion for ourselves and all beings. That is how we are learning. Rather than asking ‘How can I get it?’, we ask ‘How can I help others?’ Do we have such a mind of helping others? We don’t. Everybody will say, ‘I like to help, I like to do this and that’, but if we look deeply in our minds and ask if we really have the desire to help others, we have to say that we don’t have it. If you look at the question whether you really have the desire to help yourself, you do have that half way through. It is half way, because you know that you don’t want problems and misery, you want to have benefits and joys. We also do care for others, but only up to a certain level. But if we have to make a choice between ourselves and that person over there, we have to acknowledge that the choice is for ourselves.

The traditional Tibetan teachers used to give an example: ‘If some crazy guy came walking in with a big knife and started to cut up people, you would see who is hiding behind whom.’ And that will tell you how much we really care for others. So in one way we have it half way through.

When we are comfortable and there is no physical or mental family problem and no difficulties, we become great practitioners. We care for all beings. But when you have certain difficulties, you don’t know how to handle them and you become worse than.......okay, sorry, ‘...worse than some unworthy beings. You get anxiety attacks. People almost have to make you sit down and breathe in properly. People with spiritual knowledge, interest and background will do that. That simply tells you that although you may say, ‘I like to help. I am here to serve, I am here to help’, but when you dig down to the ground level, we don’t have that attitude; we become very weak. That is the problem.

If you have developed real love and compassion - forget about bodhimind - just ordinary love and compassion - what that reduces in the individual is not only selfishness, but also this sort of anxiety which perceives that [any crisis] is almost the end of the world. This sort of thing will definitely be reduced. If such an ultimate love and compassion develops in the individual, it really becomes an ‘unprecedented wonder’. To realize that is also important. There are zillions of people among ourselves who do have such a mind, but somehow it does not effect us at all, because we don’t know how to appreciate it. Even if such an effect comes to us, we don’t know how to appreciate it and if we lose that we also don’t even know that we lost it. All of this is a big problem.

Verse twenty-six

How can I fathom the depths

Of the goodness of this jewel of the mind,

The panacea that relieves the world of pain

And is the source of all its joy?

This bodhimind is the cause of happiness, the temporary relief from pain, and the ultimate joy which has never known sorrow. This mind when it develops within you is able to give joy and happiness to all beings. In other words, where is the happiness of all the beings coming from? It is coming from bodhimind. The ultimate love and compassion is the cause of all joy and happiness of all beings. Are you with me? I don’t think so, because the way I am explaining today is not working with you. Let me change it. How does one obtain ultimate enlightenment? How do you become enlightened? Because you learn about the qualities of enlightenment. Through that you develop an interest in becoming enlightened. Once you have learnt that you have to recognize the suffering and pain that bothers you, you develop the desire to free yourself. Once you learn how to care for others, you also learn how to develop the mind that will really be able to help others.

Now where all this coming from? From the Buddhist point of view it is all coming from Buddha who had all the experience and shared that. That is why it is coming from there. How did Buddha understand and develop? By experiencing this and he can only share his experience by explaining it to people. By listening to his explanations we can understand where our problems are coming from and how we can get free from them. It only comes from the kindness, compassion and caring of those who know. If they did not explain it to us we would not know. Let me put is this way: The teachings are supposed to give you the knowledge of these points of the path. Where are the teachings coming from? From Buddha. Where did Buddha come from? From Bodhisattvas. Where do the Bodhisattvas come from? From the bodhimind. Where does the bodhimind come from? From love and compassion. In other words, love and compassion is the total root of your and my spiritual development, your and my understanding, your and my methods of overcoming the neuroses. In other words, love and compassion is not only a caring mind, but is also the source of any spiritual development that anybody gets. It has to come from somebody’s love and compassion. Are you understanding any better now? A little better, but still not working very well today. Sometimes it does not, sometimes it does. Perhaps it is my fault. I was trying to finish this chapter tody and that is why I am not going so much in detail as I usually do.

We were talking about why the bodhimind is the cause of joy and happiness of all beings. According to this translation the bodhimind is called ‘Jewel of Mind’. It is also called the ‘panacea that relieves the world of pain’. Bodhimind is really the panacea. It is the only thing that can relieve the pain in our minds and in everybody else’s. How does it relieve our own pain? Some time ago somebody was saying that ‘I already bought my fucking ticket [in the context of an analogy comparing the wishing bodhimind and actual bodhimind as thinking about going on a trip or actually buying the ticket and going and the person was saying that they bought the ticket but were still going nowhere]. This is anxiety. If you try to relieve that anxiety by thinking, ‘How can I do it?’ it will never work. You can’t do it by thinking that way. The only way to relieve pain is by helping others. If you can help somebody you will be happy about that, you enjoy that, you are happy. That happiness develops within you. This happiness and joy really becomes the antidote to suffering. So this a very simple example.

If you sit there and think, ‘How can I become happy?’, you will never be able to do it. Not only you will never be able to do it, but you will also develop anxiety, you will get burn-out, you get frightened. All this comes up because you think, ‘How can I do it?’ You are the only one you are concerned with. You are not concerned with others. When you begin to see that you are not the only one, but that others are also having the same problems, you will begin to think that you are a little bit better off than the others. You will see, ‘Here I have some knowledge, I have a way, a method.’ By seeing that you are a little better off than the others you will find ways to help others. Helping others relieves your own pain. Your own mental pain can only be relieved by helping others. Helping others, you get satisfaction and joy. And this is the basis of the happiness and joy that you will develop. That builds up. If you always think, ‘Is it better for me to do a little more purification? Is it better for me to do a retreat? Is it better for me say more mantras? Maybe it is better for me to go to Thailand!’

I am not saying that going to Thailand necessarily brings anxieties, but all these anxieties are not going to be reduced by thinking like that. Saying mantras will help you - sure. But it is going to be a long process. Why is bodhimind called ‘great mind’? Why is the Mahayana called ‘Great Vehicle’? Because they not only care for a lot of people, but they also have a lot of ways and means how to develop the individual, how to make things work better for ourselves. There are a lot of techniques and this is one of them. So you may think, ‘I have to do say 100 000 mantras’. But you don’t have the time to say that many mantras. I mean, if you sit up the whole night saying mantras it is better than sitting up the whole night for something else, but whatever you do, it is not going to help much. It is going to help some, but it is not going to get you anywhere. So the technique is to care for others, bring love and compassion. That will make a difference to ourselves. We normally think, ‘If I want to improve something, I will have to do something, oneself has the responsibility’. Yes, sure, oneself has to do it. But the way of doing it is not just to say mantras or whatever. The time we have at our disposal and the things we have to cover - there is a big difference. That is why the Mahayana is so great. It has the techniques which makes our practice more effective. That is achieved by caring for others, doing things for others. You start by realizing that you are not the only one that is having problems. Others have the same problems and even worse. You start thinking, ‘Let me help!’. That is how you can plug in to helping others. When you do that you at least attempt to follow the Mahayana path. That is why it is called ‘Great Vehicle’. That is why it is called the medicine or ‘panacea that relieves the world of pain’. So it is the love and compassion that relieves the pain in ourselves and in others. Nothing else can do it, not wisdom, not spiritual power can do it. Fortune telling cannot do it. Nothing can really relieve the pain of oneself and others. Only the bodhimind can do that. Even if you understand emptiness it will not do that. It may be cutting the root of samsara, but the real thing over here is the love and compassion that relieves the pain. Actually, the thing the reduces your own pain and that of others is the joy. If you relieve pain, you get joy. If you replace the joy, what do you get? Pain. It is as simple as that. So helping others, caring for others, is really the key. That is why Mahayana Buddhism always says that motivation is so important.

If you want to benefit yourself through saying mantras, you have to do millions and millions of them. But if you are not really a selfish person and you try to do whatever you can to benefit others, then even if you say just a single mantra, you cannot measure even a zillion mantras that you do for yourself against that. So the trick or the technique or method lies in the bodhimind which is the mind that totally makes the difference - even if you simply give a piece of food to an animal. A person who is motivated by love and compassion and gives a piece of bread to a dog and a person who tries to feed all the dogs in the world with sirloin steaks or something - if you compare the benefits that you get, is tremendously different. Even if you make offerings to all the enlightened beings - the whole environment filled with jewels - and constantly make such offerings to the enlightened beings, a single moment of bodhimind generated with folded hands, motivated by love and compassion - if you compare these, the one moment of bodhimind is far better than the zillions of jewels you offer to the enlightened beings all the time. What is making the difference is nothing but this mind. So the mental training is extremely important in the spiritual path. Of course, the training in mentally focussing is very worthy for everybody. It has been helpful. The American people know that. They call it ‘meditation’. You focus your mind. All that is great, wonderful. There is nothing wrong with it, it benefits, it helps you. But that is not all the mental training. Here you train your mind how to generate this ultimate love and compassion, how to develop it, find out what is love, what is compassion, how does it become ultimate, unlimited, unconditioned. Seeing this and trying to develop it, even just making the attempt makes a big difference in your spiritual journey and in your path. That is why it is called Mahayana, Great Vehicle. That is why is it called Great Mind. That is why it becomes the source of joy, the medication to relieve all sufferings.

In Tibetan the last line of verse twenty-six becomes the first in the English translation, ‘How can I fathom the depths’. It is the jewel mind, the panacea that relieves the pains of the world. It is the source of all joy. Therefore it says in the text, ‘How can I fathom or measure its depth’. In other words the benefits of the bodhimind are measureless.

end of side A of tape 15

Tape 15 side B - 08/20/96

Verse twenty-seven

If merely a benevolent intention

Excels venerating the Buddhas,

Then what need to mention striving to make

All beings without exception happy?

If even just wanting to help somebody, like your father and mother, relatives, etc, is much more beneficial than making zillions of offerings to the enlightened beings, then how can you have the slightest doubt that the wish to help all beings without limit is more beneficial? There is no question what benefit that will bring.

The mind that wants to bring any help to a single sentient being, a group or a lot of them, is considered much more beneficial than making zillions of offerings, filling up all space, to all enlightened beings. This is what Buddha himself has said. He said,

Somebody may make offerings to the Buddha every day that fill up the whole universe. On the other hand, someone may have a little bit of the mind that wants to help and benefit others. If I had to compare these, I would have to choose the person who has the desire to help others, because this is much more beneficial for all beings.

Likewise, indirectly Buddha is also saying that if he had to choose between someone who is literally doing something that benefits somebody else and someone who is just sitting on the cushion, saying mantras and doing meditation, he would choose the one that is benefiting somebody else. That is the bottom line of the Mahayana Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhism is this. We have a big misunderstanding. We think, ‘I have got to do something, I have to do it myself, I am responsible.’ Yes, you are responsible, you have got to do it. But there are a lot of ways and means of doing it. Not only that, there are great ways of doing it. So it all lies in the motivation.

I keep on saying that in the 1990s and the year 2000, we need to have a perfect motivation and a spiritual practice that corresponds with the movements of society. It has to be a spiritual practice which changes all your chores into spiritual work. Even doing your laundry, waiting at the parking lots or teller machines, all of this has to be turned into spiritual practice. That is today’s need. We have a big problem doing that, simply because with half our mind we agree with this, but with another part of our mind, we deeply think, ‘That is not going to work.’ We think that it is necessary to do mantras, circumambulations, prostrations, etc. We think we should not sleep, should take vows of chastity, should suffer. We almost think that we have to take a vow of poverty. Somehow people have that in the back of their minds. You are influenced by that, thinking that you have got to do all that. Another part of our mind will tell us, ‘Oh yes, the Vajrayana has different ways of doing it.’ But people are not getting it, when they are in the situation. The hang-over of the other way of thinking is there.

What you have to do is this: Do whatever you have to do every day. The important thing is to correct your motivation, correct your mind. Dharma is called ‘chö’. This means correction. It is the correction towards pure thinking, pure love, pure compassion, unlimited love and compassion, the ‘ultimate jewel of the mind’. You have to correct your mind which is full of neuroses and make it into the jewel of the mind. When you do that, you are making it. It is not necessary to do all these things that we keep on thinking are necessary. They are not. There are ways and means of doing it. The bodhimind has to be the motivation behind every single damn thing you do. You need to have a good motivation right from the beginning. Early in the morning, instead of crying for coffee, you should cry for a good motivation. Instead of yawning and wiping your eyes, you should wipe out the selfish mind and open your eyes to the motivation of compassion and caring. Because of that, with every single action during the day, this influence will be there. Then you have to do your job. If you don’t do your work, you are not doing the right thing. You are terrible. You are worthless for the spiritual world as well as for the material world. That is what it is. You are not worth a penny, only a wooden nickel. I am sorry, sometimes I carry on too far. But the reality is, unfortunately, the values of today’s society are measured through the economic condition.

Whether you like it or not, you are living in this society. It is not possible to change this society. What you do is, you adapt to this society, within that society you behave in acceptable ways and become extraordinarily rich in both. That is what I have told you earlier. The elder generation of Tibetan masters used to tell me, ‘We are very proud of the combination of our combination of spiritual and material society.’ I never understood that. I thought, ‘The Dalai Lama is the temporary and spiritual head of Tibet. Maybe that is what they are talking about.’ But I have been a fool. Only when I started to talk to you people, I understood in hindsight what this elder generation of Tibetans were talking about. These people who lived the Shangri-la life, were proud of being able to combine the two things together, the material work, where you have to pay your bills, and should become a responsible and respectable citizen, along with being rich in the spiritual practice. The way how to do that, this combination of the material and spiritual world, that is what they meant. They were not talking about whether the monks had control over the government, or that the Dalai Lama was the head of the government. They were talking about the way that each and every citizen can combine their spiritual path and their daily work. And we have been blind. How many times have you people read about bodhimind or bodhicitta, how to develop it through the seven stages of development, the eleven stages - 7 - 11 - open 24 hours! How many times have we looked into it! However, we fail to see that there is a hidden treasure here. We can combine spiritual and material together. There is an easy way to switch all our chores into the spiritual path. Here is the key and our eyes have passed over this key a number of times. Whenever we have read the lam rim, the Three Principles of the Path, we have missed it. We have failed to pinpoint and pick up that key. This is the method, this is the way. The bodhimind changes everything into the spiritual path, as long as it is not negative by nature. Sometimes even things that are negative by nature can become positive.

In one of his previous lives, Buddha was the captain of a ship. He had to kill one human being in order to save the lives of five hundred. This has become a positive action, even though it is killing. I am not trying to support Dr. Kervorkian, but that is how it works. [Dr. Kervorkian is a Michigan doctor who openly and actively assists terminally ill patients with ending their lives].

So this is the treasure we can pick up in the Mahayana Buddhism. It is the need of today. In the year 2000, nobody will have time to sit down and say mantras as they did in the 17th century. Nobody will have the time and opportunity. We have to recognize this very carefully.

As I said before, Buddha said that if somebody was to bring him gifts and somebody was doing something good for others, he would choose the one who helps others. If you can do both, of course that is the best. Then everything you offer becomes more and faster. Even here we are still talking about whether it helps you and me, even though we are talking about the bodhimind. You see, at the level of bodhimind we should not care how much we do and what we do. We should care about how much we can help and develop others. Then your own development automatically happens. You don’t have to work for it. It is automatic. This is something we have to remember.

Verse twenty-eight

Although wishing to be rid of misery,

They run towards misery itself.

Although wishing to have happiness,

Like an enemy they ignorantly destroy it.

Ordinarily, we do have the mind that wants to get rid of suffering. Who does not have it? Everybody does have it. We do. But we run towards misery itself. How is that? The ignorance of not knowing how karma works, gives us wrong directions. We think we are doing something good for ourselves, but we are doing bad things.

For example, you want to relieve the suffering of hunger. So you go out and kill all the animals and eat them. Is this the right way of relieving our suffering of hunger? Or you would like to be rich and go and steal things, rob banks, cheat others. You can make a quick buck overnight. But is this a good thing to do? No. Very similarly, our education tells us that if you want to become rich you have to work. If you want to become healthy, you have to eat good food. Brown rice, right? Similarly, in our ignorance, we do not know how to get rid of our suffering and we do the wrong things. Some people are very thirsty and they go and drink ocean water. Will that help? So this is how ignorance is working in our minds. That is why the verse says that we are running towards suffering, or ‘they run towards misery itself’. That is why people say that we have lack of reality or clarity. There is a word for that. It is the deluded mind. Somebody in the spiritual path knowingly threw that word among us. So we use it very often. We talk about our deluded mind. That is how ignorance is working. We have the mind that wants to get rid of suffering, but we are running towards suffering. We are wishing to have happiness. But what do we do? Because of ignorance, we destroy the sources of our joy.

Lack of wisdom is the problem. Ignorance makes us so ignorant. There is two kinds of ignorance. One is the ignorance of the karmic system. The other is the ignorance of reality. The ignorance of reality is the deepest problem, but does not directly cause so many problems. We create our problems directly through the ignorance of the karmic system. That is the problem. That particular verse deals with this. What does the bodhimind do? It eliminates this ignorance completely. All forms of ignorance are based on ego-servicing. To satisfy our ego we work in that direction. Once we shift the focus from ego-service to serving others, all these problems will be eliminated. That is the benefit of the bodhimind.

I don’t think I can do more than that. I wanted to finish this chapter today, but I cannot do it. There are still a few verses left. Trying to rush does not work well.

end of side B of tape 15