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19960910GRAABWL

Tape 16 side A - 09/10/96

Preliminary practice before the session:

We take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, followed by inviting the enlightened beings. In their presence we offer the seven limb prayer, starting with bowing down. Here we express our admiration for their qualities of body, speech and mind. So we are not simply bowing down, but we admire their qualities, saying that we would like the have those. The word bowing down in English might not be able to give you the whole meaning of the expression in Tibetan. It is not my subject today to tell you what all the qualities of their body, speech and mind are. You know what the quality of the enlightened mind is. It is all-knowingness. The body quality is that there is oneness of body, speech and mind. There is no separation. We have a separation. We feel by body, send the message and the mind acknowledges. So this is a double work we have got to do all the time. Although it is quickly done, there is double work. The enlightened beings don’t have to do that. Body and mind are the same. So the body sees, reads, talks. I shared a number of times the story of the First Panchen Lama who was so old that he could not read and see anything. When he had to read in order to give an oral transmission, he would touch his hands on the lines in the text and read that way. It is not like here where you have books especially for the blind with letters that you can feel by hand. They did not have those in Tibet. So by just touching the page, he could read everything. That is an example for the sameness of body and mind at the enlightened level. Normally we say that God is everywhere. It is simply that body and mind function on the same frequency. Whatever the mind knows it is right there. So in this case, whatever the mind knows, the body is also there. That is the extraordinary quality of the enlightened beings. We admire such qualities and express that we would like those qualities. That is why we are bowing down.

Then we make offerings. I don’t think that the enlightened beings are sitting there, waiting for our offerings, nor do they need them. But it is an opportunity for us to accumulate merit, to get some gains. One of the best way of gaining merit is the practice of generosity. Among all the kinds of generosity, the one by which we give to the enlightened beings is considered to be the most important one. It is more effective for the individual than any other offering. What you can really give is really limited. We do not want limited gain. In order to create unlimited gains, we do offerings that are ‘actually arranged and mentally created’. You may only have a glass of water, a couple of flowers or candle lights. You may have some electric light. But in order to get unlimited gains, we mentally create tremendous amounts of offerings. You think that you are giving everything. In the six session yoga it says,

I give my and others’s virtues of body, speech and mind which we have accumulated from limitless beginning. Every good thing that has ever existed in the universe I pick up with my mind and I offer it to you, the supreme field of merit.

In that way, even though materially you may only give very little, because of mental training you give limitless, countless things. You accumulate most merit that way. You have to remember that the actual giving and generating the thought of giving are very much related. Although they are separate things they are closely related. Both accumulate positive karma. There is a disadvantage in there, however. That goes for the Asian cultures, like the Tibetan, Mongolian, Chinese, or even the Indian culture. In Asia in general, we emphasize very much this aspect of giving to the supreme field of merit as a superior way to accumulate merit. Because of that, the monasteries, temples, saddhus, lamas and monks get a lot of gifts. The needy people, the homeless, etc, are neglected. Giving to them is not so much emphasized. We should not repeat that here. There is a great tradition in the West. Wherever it is needed, people give tremendously. That should not be neglected. You know, I have the experience of both cultures and sometimes I have the opportunity to see the faults in such a culture. So when you create American Buddhism that should not be repeated.

The next is purification. This is extremely important. We carry all kinds of negative karmas - all the time. We also create countless negative karmas. There is no question - even if we think, ‘I don’t have such a thing called negativity, I did not kill anybody, I did not cheat anybody, I did not lie to anyone. So what do I have?’ We think like that a lot. But the positive and negative karma is not only accumulated by doing something physically. Mentally we do tremendous things. Our mind is really not - very well behaved. Traditionally the teachers would say that our mind is like a wild monkey in the temple. If you let the wild monkey loose in the temple, what will they do? They will jump all over the different images, in between the offerings. They may drink the offering water, eat the fruits, knock down the butter lamps and do all sorts of things. Likewise, our mind is also very fickle, does not stay. So we constantly create negativities. Even when we drive we do. You may think that driving is not anything negative. However, while sitting in the car you drive over insects. There is rain and heat and so there are insects. You drive over them and kill a number of them. We have these things happening constantly. That is in our nature. It is extremely great that some people remain vegetarians. It is wonderful. However, there is things you can argue there. Some time ago, the Tricycle Magazine people asked me what I thought about vegetarianism. I said that it is wonderful. Then they said, ‘Eating meat is a negative action.’ I said that eating meat is not negative. One does contribute to the killing, but by nature eating meat itself is not negative. Then I said to them, ‘The vegetables do not grow in the pure land either’. So that was the argument. Even if you want vegetables, you have to make sure they grow. All sorts of things are involved in there. So do not think that there are no negativities. Then you will raise the question, ‘What can I do?’ Yes, you can purify. We do create negativities all the time. That does not mean that we are doomed. Definitely not. Whatever negative karma we have created, can be purified. Kyabje Ling Rinpoche, the Senior Tutor of the Dalai Lama, used to say, ‘

Negativities have their own good quality. That is they can be purified. That is their good quality.

The most important reason why it can be purified is that it is impermanent. Impermanence is the main reason why purification can take place. Positive karma, negative karma will change. We change, we all change all the time. We are impermanent. If you go b beyond that, you consider emptiness. Things are empty. Ka la tong pa nyi rung wa de la tam che rung wa gyur If things are empty, there is every room to play. There is room for miracles, for purification. There is room for accumulating negative karma and room for purifying it .Everything is there. The reason why we are responsible for our own deeds is because of emptiness and because of impermanence. If I talk too much about that here, I may not make sense. But when we don’t get the emptiness clearly, you can at least focus on impermanence and that helps. Everything is impermanent. If things were permanent we could do nothing, everything would be static. Once you had done something wrong, it would be done forever. Once you were born you would be born forever, once you had died you would be dead forever. That is not how it works. We know. When we are born, we are small, and then we get bigger and bigger and better, and then we get bald-headed and wear glasses, all sorts of wrinkles come and finally we die and disappear. All of that happens because of impermanence. That is the nature of life. That is why there is room for all this. If it were permanent, there would be no room for it at all. As we can see, our external body is impermanent in nature. We get the opportunity to get sick. You also get the opportunity to die. You also get the opportunity to create negativity and have the opportunity to purify negativity. All that is because it is in the nature of impermanence, and it is emptiness. There is room for everything. Miracles also happen.

When you want to purify something you don’t have to go and shout, ‘I did this, I did that.’ You simply regret. That is very important. If you don’t regret what you have done, there is no reason why you should purify. When you realize that you have done something wrong, instead of sitting there thinking, ‘What can I do?’ you purify it. If you have killed some beings, you save a life. If you have stolen something, then give, be generous. Or you may have done something wrong in your morality, that is breaking your vows or commitments. Keeping vows and commitments is the real definition of morality. Whether Congress passes a bill or not, we are not talking about that kind of morality. We are talking about vows and commitments, whether it is the refuge vow or marriage vow - any commitment you have taken. If you break that, it is breaking a vow. There are the Vajrayana vows, Bodhisattva vows, refuge vows or a simple, solemn commitment between two individuals or whatever. If you have broken a vow, you have broken a vow. That is immorality. That is the bottom line. So try to be pure. Then generate the bodhimind. That is on the point here because we are supposed to talk about the Bodhisattvacharyavatara. Generating bodhimind is one of the best ways to purify all negativities. We have read in verse thirteen where it says,

By entrusting myself to this Awakening Mind I shall be swiftly

Liberated, even if I have committed extremely unbearable evils.

Then verse fourteen says,

Just like the fire at the end of an age,

It instantly consumes all great evil.

So bodhimind is one of the best ways to purify negativities. There are two things: Meditating on emptiness and meditating on bodhimind. That is the most important and goes beyond saying hundreds and thousands of Vajrasattva mantras. Many people say that when you have committed some negativities, ‘Just say some Vajrasattva mantras.’ People have that habit, particularly Tibetans. But generating the bodhimind is an extremely powerful antidote action for all the negativities that we have committed. What you really need is the four powers. The power of the base is taking refuge and generating the bodhimind. Then the power of regret, the power of the antidote action and the power of promise not to repeat the action. These are the four powers. All negativities, whatever you do, can be purified by the application of the four powers. This works for the Tibetans, but does not make much sense for Western people. We used to say, ‘Who told us that there are negativities? Who told us that there are non-virtues? Who told us that non-virtues bring negative results?’ The answer is that Buddha told us all that. He told us that through negativities we take rebirth in lower realms. Buddha also said that negativities can be purified. That is what we used to talk among ourselves in Tibet. Buddha’s words were accepted beyond question. In that sort of culture we were born. This does not make sense to Western people. Yes, Buddha might have said that, but so what? Right? What is the scientific proof you have for that? So you cannot say that here. Among the Tibetans we used to say that. I wanted to share that with you, so that you see that among the cultures there are big differences. For us Tibetans it is a powerful enough reason to say that Buddha said that there are negativities and that they can be purified. I don’t know whether there are scientific reasons that prove that negativities can be purified. I am not aware of it. Maybe some scientist will come out with that.

The next is rejoicing. This is a very important trick in the spiritual practice. That is why these seven limbs have been selected to make it easy. The spiritual trick is that rejoicing has tremendous gains and no risks. It is risk-free investment. It also overpowers jealousy. Normally we get a tremendous amount of jealousy towards people who are equal to us. We are good at generating compassion when we see people that are suffering physically, mentally, emotionally, environmentally. We can definitely generate compassion for them. But it is not so easy with people who are equal to us, whether they have the same level of education, job, etc. Towards our peers we always have jealousy. When somebody next door does some good work we say, ‘She is doing good work, sure, but she also does this and that.’ That is simply our jealousy. We say, ‘So and so has good qualities, no doubt. But there is an agenda behind that.’ We always talk that way. It is jealousy. What does that do to us? It makes us losers. It gives nothing to us. There is no benefit in jealousy at all. On the contrary - if we rejoice in whatever they do, we get benefits - according to the Buddha. If we rejoice in the qualities of somebody who is higher developed than ourselves, we at least get half of their positive karma - just by rejoicing in the activities they are doing. If it is a peer, you get the equal amount. If it is somebody lower than you, you get double the amount. You make the other people work hard, rejoice and get double the profit. That is why I call it a spiritual trick.

Mind is such an important thing. You can really play with it a lot. If you have to count only actions, we would be very limited. But the mental capacity is unlimited; therefore we can create unlimited positive and negative karma. So once you know how the spiritual way functions - this is what we call karma or natural law - there is a lot of loopholes and if you know how to plug them, you can really get a very good profit out of those. The enlightened beings selected all those easy ways of doing it. They brought out seven of them which we can use in our daily, weekly or occasional practice, or monthly practice. You can take the opportunity and do those. It is said that the Buddhas have thought for eons and as conclusion have come up with those seven things which people can do easily. So whenever people ask, ‘I need some direction. I would like to know what to do when I am alone. I would like something to do on a daily basis’, that is what you can do daily.

This one little page that we use as preliminary practice before the Bodhisattvacharyavatara teachings is what you can do daily in your home. What I am talking to you gives you material to think in relation to each one of those sentences. You should say the words written on this page and think about what we have been talking about here. That is your practice. Meditation truly speaking is nothing but thinking and training the mind in concentration. Thinking about and concentrating on a subject is basically meditation. There are thus two types of meditation. One is called concentrated meditation, technically known as shamatta. The other is analytical meditation, also called vipasyana, insight meditation, etc. It is actually analyzing the karma that we create, its consequences, its loopholes, how to go around them, how to take advantage of them, actually how to cheat karma and how to cheat death. These are the main meditations. That is really what meditation is; that is what really training of the mind is. Mind is such a thing that you can turn it around into a good way, bad way, neutral way - anywhere. You have all these ‘silver mind training’, hypnotizing, etc. and all of those have room, because mind is powerful, flexible and easy to use. It has tremendous value and power in the spiritual and material, positive and negative. Wherever you use it, it is a very powerful vehicle which you can drive anywhere. That is the real mind training. To make it spiritual, it works through karma, through love and compassion, through emptiness, the nature of reality. It is challenging the negativity within ourselves. It is cutting down the negativity, cutting down ignorance, building wisdom. This is basically how you train your mind.

This is your journey on the spiritual path. That is why Tibetan Buddhism emphasizes so much to follow the footsteps of Buddha and his disciples. If you take these footsteps you will reach where they have reached. It is really scientific. It does not matter who does it and where they do it. If you follow the same steps you get the same results. Buddhism is nothing but Buddha’s life experience. It is the experience of negative and positive things in karma, in life and how he had handled these and what results he got. The simple statement of these processes is actually Buddhism.

It is also a living tradition. That means that people do practise this and it makes a difference to their lives. You can see it. Look at the person to your right, left and in front of you. They are all making a difference in their lives. So you also are bound to make a difference in your life. That is why it is a living tradition. While it is still alive, it has effects.

So that is all about the seven limb practice. That is how it makes a difference to people’s lives.

The next is the request to remain. That is not so important to every individual. But those few people who expect to become a Buddha in their life times, for them it becomes important. The request for the teachings to remain and to be given on time is definitely important for those people. You definitely need on time teachings. Although we normally give all the teachings at the same time, but at the time just before you become a Buddha that last minute spring board push is needed. That is why the request to give teachings becomes important.

The last one, dedication, is again important for everybody. It is another trick in relation to karmic law. The rule is that karma is definite. That means if you have created karma for something, karma has to give you the result. It remains until the conditions are right. Then it has to revive and you get the result. If you dedicate a karmic action so that all of us may become enlightened or something else big, important, then until that result has come, the karma does not get destroyed. When the karma is not active, that is the time it gets destroyed. That goes for both, positive and negative karmas. So the positive karmas also get destroyed - in the same way that it is possible to destroy negative karma by purifying it. Anger is the one that does destroys positive karma. It is like the fire that consumes the wild woods.

We were talking about that in the Bodhisattvacharyavatara in verse fourteen. In order to protect your positive karma you dedicate it. If you dedicate it along with the karma that the great beings have dedicated, then whatever you do, your positive karma will remain as long as their positive karma remains. This is because you mix them together.

The Tibetans have a very interesting example in the teaching tradition. It might not make much sense in the West. In Tibet the poor people don’t get to eat tsampa, the Tibetan staple food which is actually barley powder. The poor people cannot afford to eat barley. So they make powder out of black peas without skinning them. So this powder is full of black spots. It is like when you grind black pepper. You get a lot of black spots. So pea powder is yellow with a lot of black spots. If you are a little wealthier you eat barley powder which does not have any spots.

end of side A of tape 16

Tape 16 side B - 09/10/96

Two travellers were travelling together for a few days. One was a little wealthier and had some barley powder. But he had to carry it. The other one was a poor guy who had this pea powder with him and it was about to finish. He looked at the wealthy one and saw that he had a lot to carry. In old Tibet there were no motels, hotels or restaurants. So if you had to go somewhere and it took seven days, you had to carry food for seven days on your back or, if you had a horse or yak, you would load it on that. So the poor guy calculated that his pea powder would not last for the rest of the journey. He started thinking how he could manage and got the idea to mix his food with the rich guy’s, so as long as the rich guy had food, he had some too. So one day he called to the rich guy, ‘Hey, friend. We are going to the same place, stop in the same area and cook our own food. You cook yours, I cook mine. You have to carry a huge load and I also carry my own. Why don’t we mix our food together and cook together, so that we don’t have to do two jobs? I will also carry it for you.’ The other guy said, ‘All right, that is a very good idea.’. So they mixed the food together. They continued their journey and kept on eating equal amounts out of that. The poor guy had a very little quantity right from the beginning, while the wealthy guy had a lot. While there was enough, they did not think about it, but once the reserves began to shrink, the wealthy one started thinking, ‘The other guy had very little, I had a lot. We mixed them together and since then we have been eating the equal amount. His portion might have finished by now. I better tell him, because otherwise I may not have enough for myself.’ So he asked the poor guy, ‘Don’t you think your portion might have finished by now?’ The poor guy said, ‘I think so, I only had very little. But we can look.’ So when they opened the bag there were black spots everywhere. The poor guy said, ‘Oh mine has still not finished. There are black spots here and there are black spots there.’ So the black spots are not going to finish until the whole tsampa is gone, right? So that is the example the teaching tradition would give us. They told these stories, so that we would remember.

Actually, in the sutra itself it says,

If you put a drop of water in the ocean, no one can say that your drop is finished until the ocean is finished.

That was Buddha’s statement. Then to make it interesting and easy to remember, they made it into this traveller’s story. So that is dedication.

The best recommended dedication then is this:

Whatever the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the great beings, have dedicated, I also dedicate whatever virtues I have along with their virtues, to become enlightened for all beings.’

That does not exclude yourself. So you don’t have to worry about what is in it for you. You also get enlightened.

That basically is the seven limbs. We do that every time before the teaching. If I did not explain it, you would probably wonder what this is talking about. You may think it is just a prayer in seven lines. If you think that way is does not serve the purpose. If you know what you are doing, it makes a difference to your life. You can do it in your own home, in your own room. Whatever you want to do, it is not compulsory. If you like to do it, you can. People always ask me, ‘I did hear a beautiful lecture, but I did not get any instructions on what to do!’ So here you are, these are your instructions. Beyond that we don’t tell you what to do, because you are all grown-up intelligent, educated people. You should know what you are doing. It is up to you. No one can force anything on anybody anyway. Our job however is to present this to you, so you can think in this way. We should never say, ‘You should do this, you should do that’ and ‘you cannot do this and that’. One should never say that. Buddha never said, ‘You should do this and that.’ He said, ‘I suggest you could do this and that’. He said if you do this thing there is a problem. It will create such and such a problem, etc. Buddhism is actually just pointing the finger [at the solution]. So if you introduce the problem and the causes of it, it automatically tells you the suggestions to get rid of the problem. Buddha never said, ‘This is the rule and you have to follow it. If you don’t follow this you will be excommunicated.’ This is unless you are a monk or nun. They are expected to follow certain rules and if they break them, they will be out. But besides that Buddha presented everything as suggestions in terms of showing the problem and the causes and consequences.

So in our Tuesday night and Thursday night classes we give you these presentations. We also give you examples of what to say and we talk about what to think. So if you put two and two together, you will find your direction. We really want you to find your direction rather than we telling you. We don’t want to do it like in that Tibetan expression about somebody learning the alphabet. In Tibetan the first letter of the alphabet is Kha, not A. The teacher in this example says, ‘First you say Kha’. So the student repeats, ‘First you say Kha’. Then the teacher says, ‘Don’t say that, just say Kha’. The student also repeated, ‘Don’t say that, just say Kha’. Then the teacher said, ‘Damn you, say Kha’. The student said, ‘Damn you, say Kha’. So we don’t want to do that! You have to figure out a little bit yourself.

I am not going to talk to you about the mandala offerings, those who know can do it. What we are really talking about here is the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, Shantideva’s book. Once again, those men, women and children whose minds are influenced by bodhimind, become Bodhisattvas. So it is their way of life. The author is Shantideva, the great Indian saint. I told his story a number of times and I am not going to repeat again. We have been doing this since May, seventh. It is an ongoing course and could go on for a year or so. We only talk on Tuesdays for one hour which makes it four hours a month. a year only has twelve months. That makes forty-eight hours.

We are at the end of chapter one. We have done verse twenty-eight. [Rinpoche reads that verse in Tibetan]. There is a reason why I read this verse in Tibetan. Though I don’t understand it, but I can read it, because I know Tibetan. That helps me to understand it before I talk to you. [laughs] Secondly, in the living tradition of teaching, if you hear the sound from living person to living person, it becomes the transmission. That is why I am reading it to you. For those of you who are new but want to come continuously, I recommend to read this book. Get this book. There are two different translations. One is called ‘Oxford translation’. The other is translated by Stephen Batchelor. It almost looks like two different books. Therefore is better for me if I read and teach from the Tibetan.

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.

That is talking about why we should have compassion for all sentient beings, particularly for persons that you care about. The one right in front of your nose, the person who makes you happy, who brings you joy, who irritates you, who makes you angry. Look at that person, see what that person really wants. That person’s wish is to get rid of suffering. They don’t want suffering. Look at yourself, look at the person right in front of you. Look forward and look back. The desire what we have, what we are seeking - there is no difference. You seek joy, you seek happiness, I seek joy and happiness. What you don’t want is misery and suffering. What I don’t want is misery and suffering. We are equal in what we want. In what we are capable of we may also be equal. Perhaps we are not, but we may be equal. But when it comes to what you want and what I want, we are very much equal. I do have a tremendous desire to throw away my sufferings. But what do I do? I run towards suffering. This is because we have got something called ignorance within ourselves. What does ignorance do? It probably gives you wrong information. I would like to be happy and in order to make myself happy, I sacrifice other beings. Don’t we do that? In order to get fat, to get strong, I eat meat. Not only meat, but also cheese, butter, etc. All this is at the expense of animals. To survive, we eat food and people have to grow food. People work and sweat and insects die. So to keep ourselves happy and joyful we running towards creating negativities which in turn cause unhappiness. That is what all minds of delusion are all about. Ignorance gives the wrong information to us.

If your information and education is limited, then in order to become rich, you go and steal. People do that. Why do thieves steal? To make some extra bucks here and there. You may or may not know that stealing is a bad thing and has its own consequences. Harming others is a bad thing and has its consequences. Whether we know it or not, that is what we do. We are running towards misery itself. Think how we function in our life, how we live in the dream or rather in the fantasy of our lives. We build a fantasy which we call ‘success of life’. Then we work towards fulfilling that in whatever way we have to. We will cheat other people or whatever we have to do in order to accomplish the dream of our life. We create all sorts of negativities.

Yesterday I was watching a movie on television. There were two brothers and both fell in love with a very nice, young girl. She said, ‘Whoever becomes rich, that person I will marry.’ So one of the brothers immediately started up a cattle business. The other started digging for gold. This movie is called ‘The man from Snowy River’. So the first guy did the cattle business, where you raise and then kill the cows and sell the meat. The other started digging for gold. So the moment you have the aim to become rich at the expense of the lives of the cows, you start killing the cows, so that you can become rich and marry that woman. That is running towards suffering. When I read that verse I thought of that movie. This is exactly how we function. Our mind has set up a fantasy which we call ‘achievement’ or ‘success’. In order to reach that, you could go and kill so many cows. You may think that it does not matter and that they are just cows. But that is the example of how people run towards misery itself, although wishing to gain happiness. Ignorance makes us destroy our happiness like an enemy. In our deep consciousness the ignorant mind does not really know what brings happiness. The positive karma gives you happiness. We don’t know that.

We think that a quick way of making money can give us happiness. It is actually unfortunate in our society. Success in life is based on economic achievement and that is based on the quantity of the dollar amount. That is really unfortunate. When you really think of it okay it does not matter. Actually it is a terrible thing that everything we want to achieve, like comfort or whatever, is measured in dollars. Really, it is very bad. But the society is that way and you cannot run away from it, you cannot run against the current. People in the sixties actually did just that. You did tremendous work and achieved something here. But you also wasted tremendous amounts of energy and opportunity in order to achieve some small, little thing.

The best thing in the 1990s is to swim through the current and get yourself out rather than fighting against the current. There is no use in fighting against the general society’s way of thinking. How much can you fight? You will create trouble in the family. Your teenage children will think you are cuckoo. Your husband or wife may go along with you half way and half way they don’t know that is going on. It does make a difference in society, for sure. You cannot ignore that. But the amount of energy that you waste on that, or spend on that, you could spend differently. The total aim is to attain happiness for all beings. Trying to change society’s way of functioning is not going to make everybody become enlightened. That is not even going to make you as an individual enlightened, let alone all sentient beings. What you can do is function within society, even though it is bad. The water carries away people but if you know how to swim you can get through it. This is the current of society - basic human - I hate to say it - negative functioning. That is how we measure. When we measure human achievements in terms of dollars amount this is what is going to happen. If you think carefully, the amount of dollars is not really wealth, neither spiritually nor even materially.

If you have the dollars it does make a difference in your life, however, the value of the money goes up and down. Luckily the American green dollar never really goes down. It is always maintained on a certain level because of the economic manipulation, if I may say so. But if for example you look at the Brazilian currency, what had happened last year? So the economic manipulation cannot challenge. Actually to me the dollar is really a certificate of having a certain amount of internationally accepted wealth. It is really a certificate. If you go to the bank, the lady at the teller is really supposed to go down to the safe and see if you have an equal amount of gold. Then she is supposed to come up and tell you, ‘You have one dollar down there.’ That is what should have been. But it is not. It is paper currency, in reality a manipulated certificate. It is economic manipulation. That is the true emptiness, deep down there is true emptiness. Earlier, when I said that I don’t want to talk about it, these things came into my head and I could not hold them back. This makes us, the individuals, work for it. They utilize our energy to work towards this. It is really the normal American system of carrot and stick. It is like when you have a goat which you give a carrot to and hit it with a stick. In this case you show the people the dollar certificate and make them work for it. Everything is manipulated and measured in those terms. That is called ‘price’, right? You want yoghurt, you have to buy it. If you want food you have to pay for it. That is how society is economically structured. It economically manipulates people. They make you work for the dollar. It is the carrot and stick approach.

Audience: No, it is more like the carrot on a stick. Nobody is hitting you.

Rinpoche: The Tibetan traditional teachers don’t talk that way, but what they say is that the samsaric joy is like honey on a sharp razor blade. If you like the honey you have to lick the razor blade and cut your tongue too. That is exactly how our society functions. This is not very great. But you cannot use all your energy fighting against that. So you go along with that and make the best use of it. If you are a spiritual practitioner and you are interested in making the persons that you care about happy once and for all, there is a way how to make your life function within that society and have success in both, spiritual and temporal. You can do that because of your mind. Your mind the powerful vehicle to make it possible. How you use your mind is through the motivation. The best motivation recommended is love and compassion, ultimate love and compassion for yourself and others. Every single chore you have to do to get the honey off the razor without cutting you tongue is possible with the motivation of bodhimind. Bodhisattvas are told by the Buddhas to function as one of the people in society. They are advised not to go off the society. Be within society, function within that, and yet become a Bodhisattva. Every one of these verses will share with you how you can function.

‘Wishing to get rid of misery, they run towards misery itself.’

By telling you that, you should reverse that. If you wish to get rid of misery, do not run towards it. That means: Do not create the causes of misery. How can you change that? Simply by a perfect motivation, the motivation to help all beings. Whatever you have to do, help all beings. By doing that, even if something is non-virtuous by nature it will become positive karma. By doing that you do not run towards misery. You can have a fantasy of life, but know that the fantasy of life is in the nature of impermanence, in the nature of emptiness and yet it is the need of today, so you work for it for the benefit of all beings. That is how you can function.

It is many years ago when I was passing through Hong Kong. A friend of mine made arrangements for me to talk in the Plaza Hotel. When I gave the talk I went into attachment and so on. At the end of the talk a gentleman raised his hand and asked, ‘What do I do with my Rolls Royce?’ So I said, ‘As long as you drive the Rolls Royce, you are fine. But the moment the Rolls Royce starts driving you, you are in trouble.’ If you drive the Rolls Royce, you are fine, you are not running towards misery itself. But if the Rolls Royce drives you, are running towards misery itself. So know this and reverse it.

Although wishing to have happiness

Like an enemy they ignorantly destroy it.

We want joy. The positive karmas cause joy. We don’t know that. So we look at the positive karma as an enemy, because ‘That does not make money, that does not make sense. What is the use of me having compassion towards all beings? Are you crazy? Do you want me to be the doormat for everybody? I am not going to do it. I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it. That is not the way to do it.’ - That is ignorance talking to you. It does not mean that you have to become a doormat. But ignorance makes you think, ‘Who am I that I should have compassion for all of them? What do I owe them? Nothing!’. So that sort of mind, particularly the mind which protects and entertains the ego, is the mind which really destroys the cause of joy.

Look, what happens when you can help somebody a little bit. Remember, a few months ago, Pat broke the window of a car that was in an accident and got this girl out. By doing that he broke his wrist and had to keep his arm bandaged for some time. I kept on calling it the ‘Bodhisattva arm’. That girl was about to catch fire in that car and he did not have time to find a way to open the door. He had to break the window to get the girl out and in the process broke his wrist. But the joy he got from that! And not only he, but also all of us, when he shared the story. The joy that develops from that - how great it is!

When you are able to help somebody, the joy comes with that. If you just keep on sitting there, thinking, ‘I need to know if I can do something, so what can I do?’ you will not find anything to do. The more you keep on crying, ‘What can I do?’ and ‘How can I do it?’, the more you get depressed. First you get nervous. Then you get irritated. Soon you find that you are incapable to function in society and after that you will say that you don’t want to talk about it. You would like to close your windows and doors and maybe cut off the telephone. This is how you bring yourself misery. So instead of that you should say, ‘What can I do for you? How can I help? Is there any way I can help here?’ and you have to think, ‘That is my practice. That is the way to bring happiness and joy to myself and the persons that I care about most. But if you always think that you have to defend yourself, if you have the fear that your ego is getting hurt, if you start to get angry with your friends and attack them, so that after a while they attack you back, that is how you create trouble - even in the family. You snap at each other. Then you start using harsh words. Then you start to think what would be the most effective words for hurting the other person. You try to inflict pain on the other person by using terribly sharp words. Your tongue becomes a sword to cut the heart of the other persons. Then of course they do the same and it goes back and forth. That is how we run towards misery. That is how we destroy our joy like an enemy. The friends you are fighting with, the companion you are hurting, that is actually the person you love. You try to make them behave in the way you want to, because you have a control issue. When they don’t want to behave that way, you use the sharpest weapon you have available. You cannot use physical violence, because you would go to jail. So you use the sharpest weapon you can and that is how you destroy your friend and your own happiness like an enemy. That is exactly how it works in our life. When you see that, reverse it. Dharma means nothing but correction. Correct that attitude. Correct what happened. Make it better. If you want to hurt the other person and you think of sharp words to say, even if you have them on the tip of your tongue - try to swallow them down. That is positive karma. Develop compassion. Love really means, ‘I will make you happy in whatever way you are and whatever the way you want to be.’ It does not mean that ‘I want you to be the way I would like to have you.’ If you twist it round in that manner, it does not work. This is what this verse is telling us.

Having said that, I think I have to stop here.

end of side B of tape 16