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19960917GRAABWL

Tape 17 side A - 09/17/96

The technical term ‘Bodhisattva’ really means a person who has developed ultimate love and compassion, yet has not reached the fully enlightened level. Buddhas may have ultimate love and compassion, but they are not Bodhisattvas, they are Buddhas. It is as simple as that. This book is about the Bodhisattvas way of life. Look very carefully. It does not say, ‘Bodhisattvas Dharma’, or ‘Bodhisattvas Practice’. So how does a Bodhisattvas behave and deal with life? Actually even the word ‘behave’ sounds a little strange. It is how the Bodhisattvas deal with the incidents that take place in their life.

In the afternoon I was talking with a few friends and we were talking about how people are travelling through their life and suddenly they take a break and stop for lunch, dinner, a week end or something, and what effect that has. It is not that somebody is going somewhere and something is happening, but when you are going through your life, particularly when you look at life after life, basically we are running and we are travelling. Within that travel there are a lot of rest areas where we stop for the night, for lunch or dinner or for tea. So during this journey we encounter with the activities of millions of other people. They are going this way and that way, travelling here and there. Each time you contact and meet somebody, you are experiencing the effect of their life and their energy and you also effect them. We encounter that in our lives all the time. Some encounters are for longer periods, some are shorter. Some contribute to each other in a positive way, some in a negative way. That is basically what we do in our life. We meet some people and spend longer time with them and call them companions. We share our life, time, interest, energy. We effect each other positively or negatively. It depends on what we have to share. Each one of us carries a very wonderful human nature, which we call ‘Buddha-Nature’. But somehow we don’t share that, because it is either immature or covered with negative mental conceptions. I think that is the word they use here. They use ‘disturbing conceptions’ in this translation. Some translations will use the term ‘delusions’, some ‘afflictive emotions’. So here ‘disturbing conceptions’ is used. Actually it is really true. Once such an emotion or thought comes, the effect for the individual is that they get disturbed. Anyway, when we have those things a lot we effect the other people.

How do Bodhisattvas deal with that? They go exactly through the same things as we in our lives. There are positive things happening in our lives, we have the highest periods, also negative things happen. Everything you do is not right, something goes wrong. There are periods where you are sitting with a long face. So the Bodhisattvas, when they encounter the disturbing conceptions, how do they really deal with them? That is why this book is called ‘Bodhisattvas Way of Life’. But when we read it we cannot read what we need immediately, but after we start we know where to look and how to deal with it. So that is what we are studying here. Apparently it is very effective and extremely helpful. Especially, since I have been talking with you about this, I began to realize how important it is. It is not that I did not realize that it is important. Everything is important in Tibetan Buddhism. There is nothing which is not important. But it is a totally different approach. Although it is almost the same as Lam Rim, it deals with it from the ‘Buddhism 102’ level rather than the ‘Buddhism 101’ level. So it is very effective and very important for us - each and every verse. They may talk about the same thing over and over again, but I think it makes a lot of difference to the individual. Aura requested me to do this teaching about two years ago and somehow I was the lazy guy and did not want to go through with it. So we went through the Three Principles of the Path and the Foundation of Perfections and also two different lam rim texts. At that point I thought it might be nice to pick up the Bodhisattvacharyavatara. It is quite a long study, no question. It is going to take more than a year. We meet only every Tuesday for about an hour. So it is going to be four hours maximum per month and even if we do meet every Tuesday, the maximum is going to be four multiplied by twelve which is forty-eight hours. This teaching is not going to be done in forty-eight hours. That would not do justice to it.

Anyway, like this we are not going anyway either. But we don’t have deadlines either. Wherever we go, that is where we go. There is no stopping or resting or anything. Whatever is going to be effective for the individual, whatever the manner that is effective, that is what we have to do.

We are just simply reading one verse per day. But if you get the message out of those verses and use it and apply it, you are dealing with your life. When you have difficulties and frustration with your life, take whatever is useful out of this and try to apply it. Whatever you have to deal with in life, ups and downs, joy and misery, try to apply that in life. That is what spiritual practice really means. If you can’t use the message you get from that to deal with your life, and if it does not make a difference to the everyday life that you lead - whether it is your job, dealing with people, watching the news or a movie, reading the newspaper, sitting in the shop, selling momos, making momos, etc. if you are unable to apply these teachings to the periods of difficulty, then you don’t have a practice. Do not allocate the practice as some period of time that you leave out there somewhere to do some funny things like sitting cross-legged. We all do funny things here. We sit cross-legged, close our eyes, burn some incense, put a candle on and so on. If you identify that as practice and cut it out as a certain period of time out of your life, then you are not going to get anywhere. That does not mean that you don’t have to do that [formal practice]. Whatever you get out of this learning, thinking, analyzing, meditating, receiving information - I should really say: perceiving information - , acknowledging and digesting the information, making it part of your system, this will pop up whenever you need it in your life. Basically, it is almost like teaching a computer, putting information in the computer’s memory. Then whatever you need, you press the key or push the button and that information will come up. Exactly the same thing should happen to us in dealing with our daily life. That is the most important. That means having a practice. When somebody is actually pushing you into a corner, using harsh words, etc., your natural reaction will be to get angry and fight back. When that condition comes, definitely this information should pop up and stop you from losing your temper. Yet you also must learn how to fight back without losing your temper, to fight back without getting angry. You have to fight back. You don’t sit there, saying to everything, ‘Yes, sir!’. You can’t do that. If you don’t fight back, you become a doormat. People will take advantage of you.

My main point is this: I would like to give a few examples, but if I do this, it looks like I am blowing my own horn. But the point is, I used to live in India and there you never get anything done, unless you scream and shout at the top of your voice, almost insulting people. You have to shout things like, ‘How stupid you are, you can’t even do this!’ You have to shout until you choke, in order to get things done. If you don’t get things done, you are letting the people who rely on you, down. That becomes a disservice for your job, your duty, your purpose. If you think that you can’t shout, because you are not supposed to lose your temper, then you pretend to have compassion and that is what I call idiot compassion. You may try to save your face but in actual reality you are doing service to your ego. You can’t show that you are screaming, but you are letting the people down that you are responsible for - for the sake of ego-service or for the sake of one being. That is the point. So you have to shout and scream. I used to shout all the time. If you don’t, you don’t get anything done. If you do, things do get done.

One example comes to my head. We were organizing Tibet House in New Dehli. It was supposed to open soon and the Dalai Lama was expected and representatives of the Indian Government. The Dalai Lama’s brother, who is basically a very nice person, was responsible for that. He had a group of Indian carpenters working there. They changed a number of times. His way of functioning was to give them whatever money they asked for. He did not bargain. So they asked for some fantastic amount of money and they just gave it to them in cash. The carpenters were supposed to be finished soon, but after two weeks not even have half the job was done. The company who hired the carpenters had a little guy on site with a little briefcase and a tie. He acted as interpreter, because he could speak English. He was the elder son of the company owner. [There was only one carpenter on site at the time.] When he saw what the carpenter had not done, he did not even speak to him, but grabbed him and used his tie to choke him and beat him up. He physically beat him up so much that he had three broken ribs and had to be put into hospital. That night a whole group of those carpenters came back, about twenty or thirty of them. They worked by electric light throughout the whole night and then the whole next day and so on for about a week and more carpenters came and worked in shifts non-stop. There were about forty or fifty of them over three days. So sometimes that is how it is done. I don’t know if this guy lost his temper or not, but he did beat this carpenter up completely. He literally beat him up and broke his ribs. He did not talk to him, because there was nothing to talk, there was no excuse. So the work got done within a week. I am not saying that this is a great way of doing it, but if he had not done that, the work would never have been finished in time for the opening - especially when they already had received the total amount of money. They would never have done it. The most important thing here is not to get angry. If you get angry, that is wrong. If you don’t lose your temper, you can still shout and scream and play all your monkey tricks. That is how you protect yourself from idiot compassion.

If you read this text it will probably tell you how a Bodhisattva should function. You will see the positive ways and the negative ways. The main purpose of saying this is that each verse we are discussing you should use in two ways. First, whatever message you get from these verses, try to apply whatever little you can in your daily life. When I say ‘daily life’, I don’t mean the time when you sit down and meditate. Everybody does their best at that period. There is no problem. The problem arises when you are in the office, in the work place, in the street, when you are talking to somebody, when you are driving and somebody gives you the finger, when somebody tries to cut across right in front of you. These are the times when you apply these things. As long as you have the confidence that your mental faculty is not overpowered by disturbing conceptions of anger, attachment, pride, jealousy, you are okay. You can scream, yell and do anything. As long as you see that there are disturbing conceptions of anger, attachment, jealousy, pride, etc, then stop. Don’t yell, don’t scream, even if you have to become a doormat. That is how you make the distinction within yourself.

Verse twenty-nine

For those who are deprived of happiness

And burdened with many sorrows

It satisfies them with all joys,

Dispels all suffering,

Verse thirty

And clears away confusion.

Where is there a comparable virtue?

Where is there even such a friend?

Where is there merit similar to this?

Lets talk about verse twenty-nine first. All beings want joy and happiness, but many do not have it. They are deprived of happiness. Why? Because we don’t have the causes of happiness. People are deprived of the positive karma. What by the way is positive karma?

Audience: The result of a positive action.

Rinpoche: Give me some word to hold on.

Audience: Good luck?

Rinpoche: What is good luck? What does saving somebody’s life do for the individual? You will be happy. What else?

Audience: Results have to be similar to the cause. So in some way, if you save a life, you will receive benefits at some stage in the future, like a long life.

Rinpoche: It is getting close, but I am still not quite happy with that.

Audience: It pleases all the enlightened beings.

Rinpoche: You have read too much of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara. It is a point. But what happens is that you make an extraordinary impact on your soul - to go beyond Buddhist terminology, some extraordinary imprint on your consciousness. That imprint is a powerful seed which when it meets with the right conditions, can ripen and can make a difference in your life. You could extend your life span, have a longer life, have less illnesses or whatever. It is a positive form of energy, some kind of seed-capability, formless, colorless, a capability left on the consciousness, very similar to an I Owe You note. Saving a life is important, but for you as an individual who has done that, you have that particular impact attached to you as a seed which becomes your credit. It is not that somebody else is going to count at the end and pronounce a judgement. It is more like a credit that you will be able to cash in whenever the conditions are right, whenever it is needed. That is more effective to the individual. This is positive karma.

Negative karma will to do the same thing in a negative way. It is not credit, but debit. It will be taken away from your credit account. When the conditions are right it will manifest as some kind of undesirable, painful suffering that you have to experience. It may be physical, mental or emotional.

So that is basically what karma is. It is different from the Dharma-Karma explanation that Deepak Copra gives. The other day, I saw a Deepak Chopra talk on PBS [US TV channel]. He was using the terminology of Dharma and Karma. But when he explains that, he explains them differently. That is what I noticed. Anyway, this is the way in which you become responsible for your own deeds. Of course, besides saving a life and being happy about that, this is the karmic credit that one takes. On top of being happy about saving a life, saving a life gets you additional credit. The basic law of karma almost functions like those gimmicks we get in the mail which promise, ‘If you do this, you will get a million dollars’, etc. and if you do this and that early, there will be extra benefits, like ‘early birds’. Very similarly to that, you have the basic nature of karmic credit, plus the credit of saving a life, plus being able to rejoice in saving that life. All of that bundles up. This is true for both, the positive and the negative ways.

Take a negative example. You kill somebody and you are happy that this person is now gone. You think that now there is no more problem, it is all over. Each of these negative things will add up and become your debit. That is basically how our life is functioning and is creating what will happen next. Following that [example of the negative actions] you can reach the most negative experience ever possible because you are using the tools that will get you to that level. I am sure it does not work according to the ideals that we are used to in the West. We always like to look at the positive way.

When you consider Dharma, it really is the spiritual path, and the spiritual development too. It is the gains that you have credited within your own consciousness. The credit thus left at your disposal makes a difference to your life. That is the real Dharma. I forgot what Deepak Chopra said, but from whatever little I know, it is not right. He gave some kind of really materialistic explanation. It is a true example of spiritual materialism.

When we have a lack of this kind of credit, we have the state of being deprived of happiness. Nobody else has caused it except ourselves. We are responsible. That is why in one way this particular verse is talking about ‘those who are deprived of happiness’ and also ‘burdened with many sorrows’. Actually, when you are deprived of happiness, the vacuum created by the lack of happiness is definitely going to be filled up with sorrow. There is nothing else.

end of side A of tape 17

Tape 17 side B - 09/17/96

This particular verse presents you with the aspects or rather the objects of compassion. What does compassion feel? You want to relieve the suffering which people are experiencing. The suffering they are experiencing is being deprived of happiness and being burdened with many sorrows.

Then verse twenty-nine goes on to say, ‘It satisfies them with all joys, dispels all their sufferings.’

If you can satisfy them with joy and dispel all their sufferings, what more can you do? Do you see the compassion and love in there? Compassion wishes to dispel all suffering. That mind is called compassion. The mind wishing others joy, ‘satisfying them with all joys’, as the text says, is love. In other words, love and compassion is one mind with two different aspects, focussing on other beings. So this verse presents both, love and compassion, one face going this way, and the other face that way.

What kind of suffering is it that you would like to dispel? It is the suffering that causes all misery in general and particularly the miseries in samsara. Now, gradually I have to take you deeper into Buddhism.

We can see the pains that people are experiencing. Particularly, we ourselves experience many pains. A lot of them are very gross pains. We are not really acknowledge the subtler pains, and especially not the so-called pervasive pain. Although we do experience them all, we do not acknowledge them. We don’t recognize them, because our physical or mental gross pain is so severe that we are not able to recognize them. Many times I have said that people in the West will not have the opportunity to experience the economic suffering which Indian coolies at a railway station experience. We don’t have that opportunity. Their situation is so severe, depending on the economic condition of themselves and their country. They, however, do not have the opportunity to experience the sort of mental pains and agonies that we go through here. This is because their physical suffering is so severe that they don’t experience the sort of pains that we do. It is always like this. Whatever pain you experience severely, prevents you from seeing other kinds of pains.

In reality we all have three different layers of pain. There is the severe, gross pain which we all acknowledge, like a cut or a wound, or physical, mental or emotional illness. They are all gross pains.

Then there is the subtle pain. At our level we have those gross pains and therefore do not see the subtle pains. The pervasive pains we never have the chance to acknowledge. We do experience them all the time, but we cannot acknowledge the experience, because we suffer from grosser, more severe pains than that.

When you wish to dispel all suffering, we are talking about these three different layers of pain. When we try to bring joy for all beings, we have again three different layers or levels of joy; the joy which we ordinarily experience in samsara. A lot of people think we should not experience these, that somehow it is not right to enjoy these material, physical and mental joys. Again, these are gross levels of joy. A lot of people really think that as spiritual persons we should not really enjoy those things. But that is not right. It is basically our hard-earned right - to use the normal American language. You can definitely enjoy the samsaric joys. But don’t fall into the traps that come with them. You are in a trap if you cannot live without it. You get attachment to this. Attachment is when you think, ‘I want it and it has to be mine. If I don’t get it, nobody else should get it’. All these things are the symptoms of attachment. Pure love does not have these symptoms. Pure love does not say, ‘I want what you have’. If you say, ‘I want what you have, the good figure, the beautiful look, the wonderful smile or smell’, if you feel that you want it - forget about thinking ‘I own it, it is mine’, but just wanting it alone, is a symptom of attachment. Thinking, ‘How wonderful, it is great, I enjoy, it is beautiful to look at, wonderful to share with you wonderful things.’ This is love. I wish that you can experience that continuously, I am happy for you’. This it normally another American saying we use a lot.

Audience: Just a buzz word.

Rinpoche: Maybe it is a buzz word, but actually thinking ‘I am happy for you. I appreciate what you have.’ That is actually love. The moment you say, ‘I want it, it is mine’, it is attachment. This is not a definition I am giving you here. Don’t debate with me, or I will lose. But I am trying to give you something to hold on in order to make a distinction between love and attachment. This is extremely difficult. It is not easy to make a distinction. Everybody will make a mistake on that. We will always make mistakes. So don’t worry about it.

Then the text says,

...and clears away confusion. Where is there comparable virtue? Where is there such a friend? Where is there virtue similar to this?

Deprivation of happiness, disturbing conceptions - where do all these come from? From ignorance. If you don’t have confusion at your basic, fundamental level of mind, there is no reason why you would have disturbing conceptions. We would not have them. To bring all happiness, to dispel all suffering, what you have to do is to clear the confusion. If confusion is cleared, ignorance has no room to play. There is no better way to make yourself become closer to enlightenment. There is no better way to find your way out from sufferings. You may be serving others, dispelling their confusion, freeing them from their disturbing conceptions. But that is the way how you find your way out of suffering yourself. That is why I keep on saying that it is wrong to sit there and think, ‘How can I do it.?’ With that you are not going to get any answer. It is going to bring you depression. Instead of that, looking for the way out, is switching your attention to other people, changing your focus from yourself, thinking, ‘How can I make it?’ to thinking, ‘How can I help?’ That change itself is actually removing the red carpet from under the feet of your own ego. The ego may scream, but you actually remove the carpet from under it. Once you have done that, the pride of the ego which took it for granted that it could use you as the most obedient slave, has been shaken. Then there will be a fight. You are beginning the fight with the ego. When you find the point where the ego says, ‘Don’t let me go, don’t let me go’, you have really come quite a long way. A lot of people will not find that right away. If you do get to that point where the ego is screaming to you, ‘Don’t let me go!’, you are doing quite well. That is if it is really genuine. If you just project that and pretend that, it is a different story. So instead of thinking, ‘What should I do? Should I do Vajrasattva recitation or should I meditate? Should I meditate in the morning or in the evening? What should I do?‘, think, ‘How could I help others?’ So immediately switch from Buddhism 101 to Buddhism 102. That is the Bodhisattvas Way of Life. They look in that way. If you do that, you cannot do anything better than that. Not only that, there is not even anything equivalent to that. As the text says, ‘Where is there a comparable virtue?’ Where is there a comparable positive karma that you could generate?. The text goes on, ‘Where is there such a friend?’ In Tibetan it actually says ‘teacher’ at this point. The translator has used ‘friend’. Where is there a teacher comparable to that?’ Where is there merit similar to this?

Verse thirty-one

If whoever repays a kind deed

Is worthy of some praise,

Then what need to mention the Bodhisattva

Who does good without its being asked of him?

Generally, if someone helps you when you are in difficulties, it is the basic understanding of human nature that somebody has to repay their kindness. When somebody does something good to you, you owe them. There is even the phrase, ‘You owe me one’. So somehow you have to adjust that.

Here the Bodhisattva acts without being asked, trying to solve everybody’s problem, trying to remove the red carpet from under the ego’s feet for all beings. That definitely deserves praise. To be an example, to be a role model, that is what it is.

The last two verses tell you that for the person who is capable of doing that, who can attempt that, it becomes a quality. That individual who perceives things and deals with things in such a manner, that is a quality of such an individual. This is actually talking about the quality of being a good human being. We just read three funny, little verses today. But don’t leave what we have talked about here in the book. Take them with you and whenever you are getting disturbing conceptions, those mental faculties which are disturbing in nature, [apply what we have talked about] Actually they are conceptions, because you perceive things in a certain way. We call that ‘blocks’. What do these conceptions block? The light of wisdom. They give you deep, dark shadows. It also does not let the individual go through the proper way. That is why it is a block. They are conceptions. They will disturb your peace. You will perceive in a certain way, acknowledge things in a certain way. It is wrong conceptions. A lot of people talk about dualistic attitude and conceptions. We don’t want to deal with the idea of dualistic conceptions right at this moment, but we are coming closer to it. So conceiving information in a certain way which has a disturbing effect on the individual, that is why it is called nyöng mong or disturbing conception.

How does each one of them effect your mind? If you don’t check it, such a thought will push you and demand a physical or verbal or mental action. Then you will perform that mental action and even go to the extent of verbal abuse, and if you are not satisfied with that, you will go beyond that and physically abuse sentient beings, people. Can you see it? The physical abuse is the third step, the verbal abuse is the second step, like swearing, F-words, showing the finger, etc. The first step however, are the disturbing thoughts or conceptions. They make you believe in a certain way and push you and block the wisdom of discrimination. You don’t get it, if it is right or wrong. It is almost like when you take a tranquillizer, you are not aware of certain parts of your physical feelings. Very similarly to that, the disturbing conceptions make the wisdom part of your mind numb. Lack of wisdom is the credit of ignorance. That ignorance makes you perform certain acts, whether verbal, physical or mental.

That should be good enough. We went back and forth and back and forth through the process of how the disturbing conceptions effect us. We call them negative emotions, delusions, disturbing conceptions, afflictive emotions. You are really the one who is disturbed. You are confused by those negative emotions, whether it is anger, hatred or jealousy. So what does love and compassion do? Love and compassion may not be able do deal directly with the deep ignorance. But the sources of abusiveness that we use physically, verbally or mentally - or being judgemental, etc, all of this comes from the disturbing conceptions. Love and compassion balances them out. You are focussing on somebody else’s suffering, deeply wishing them to be free. That does not give any room to your disturbing conceptions, there is no way to entertain them and your ego entertainment is cut. That is basically how Buddhist practice really works. You don’t have to shave your hair and wear brown or yellow or green or red or white blue clothes. Whether your sit cross-legged or on a chair, that is not the point. That is not Buddhism. The real Buddhism is dealing with your mind, dealing with the ego. Cut all this ego entertainment out, try to push out those disturbing conceptions. Balance them out. Don’t give them any opportunity to come in, keep yourself busy with the compassion. Even laziness has ways of getting things done. So keep yourself busy with love and compassion, with caring. Automatically you are building positive karma. Therefore there is no comparable virtue. ‘Where is there such a friend? Where is there merit similar to this?’ Remember that. Virtue is positive karma, merit is positive karma. These are the spiritual foundations you are building. These are your foundations. Such a compassion can do all of this. That is why I always say that the next millennium will be an extremely busy one. No one will have time to cut off and say, ‘I am meditating’. So better learn quickly how to make every moment of yours into the practice.

You know the wealthy people may be playing on the golf course or having a holiday in the Bahamas or sailing through the world, but their money is working and building up. Right or wrong? Similarly, you have to do the same thing. You may be busy working in the office, walking through the street, going here and there, but your positive karma should always be credited to you and that is the trick of the trade. I guess we have to leave it there.

Audience: What happens to your personal commitments when everything is always changing?

Rinpoche: Good question. When the conditions are changing, the commitments change. It is as simple as that.

Audience: Thanks.

Rinpoche: That is easy to satisfy!

Aud2: But for example when I have to maintain a commitment to secrecy and because of that have to lie, isn’t there a contradiction?

Rinpoche: I don’t think so. The vow of secrecy that comes with taking the Vajrayana vows changes when you come here to people who do the same practice. So you can talk.

Aud2: No, I mean more situations where you don’t tell people like your friends what you are doing.

Rinpoche: When you tell your friends that you are practicing Vajrayogini, that does not mean that you lose the vow of secrecy.

Aud2: But even when friends ask me what I am doing I try not to lie and tell them something about Buddhism.

Rinpoche: But in that case there is no commitment of secrecy at all! We do have a vow of secrecy, but do we really have the information that we are supposed to guard secretly? I don’t think we do. Therefore the situation of breaking the vow of secrecy arises much. It is there, but I don’t think it is important for us now, because we don’t have that much information at all. That is why we only give limited information. We don’t throw everything at people. That is the reason. You don’t really have that much. You have to use your discriminating wisdom. That is the bottom line.

Aud3: You said that when conditions change, the commitments change. Does that also refer to situations like when the Chinese took over Tibet and a lot of the Tibetans preferred to go to jail and get tortured rather than to denounce their values and practices?

Rinpoche: I don’t mean that at all. I was not even thinking on those lines. Let me give a very simple example. You take an initiation, including the vow of secrecy and there is only a group of people around that have also taken the initiation. So the conditions have completely changed and you can talk anything whatever you want to. The commitment of not peaking is not applicable, because the conditions have changed.

We take a vow of not killing. But if there are monsters coming at you right and left and you have got to kill one of them to get yourself out, that is a change of conditions.

Aud2: But could I give a book about the Kalachakra initiation by Jeffrey Hopkins to a friend who knows nothing about Buddhism but is curious?

Rinpoche: The Dalai Lama gives Kalachakra initiations to groups of four thousand people. When there is not broken commitments there and you give a book that has already been read by more people than that - perhaps thirty thousand - I don’t think you have to worry about broken commitments.

Aud4: The other day I was meditating and one of my friends was upset about me meditating and kicked me. I was not angry and continued meditating, but afterwards told the person that it is not all right to do something like that. The person then said that she knew that herself and that I did not have to come and tell her that, just to humiliate her.

Rinpoche: There is nothing wrong with communicating things like that, as long as it is appropriate. It should not cause anger or suffering in the other person. We call that skilful means, which is difficult to find. When you have so many experiences of being kicked, you will learn the way of skilfully communicating that. I am joking!

Aud4: It was not that hard a kick anyway.

Rinpoche: I know that.

Aud5: My practice is going up and down a lot. Some weeks it is going all right, but then I experience anger which can go on for a week. So I feel the only thing I can do is start again. Then I blow up and have to start again. Is that actually a correct way of doing it?

Rinpoche: I believe so. We are like children. We don’t know how to walk and fall down. So what you do is get up and try again. That is what you do. The same thing will repeat again, naturally, until we learn how to walk properly. It is a learning process, isn’t it?

end of side B of tape 17