Archive Result

19981013GRAABWL

TAPE TWENTY TWO (10/13/98)

...chapter three, verse 14, right? Chapter 4, verse 14. Thank you. I had a couple of minutes today and I looked it up and be able to talk here last time, verse 14 and it says,

And I continue to act like this,

Again and again shall I undergo

(suffering) in unhappy realms, sickness, bondage,

Laceration and the shedding of blood.

But I looked in the Tibetan, there is a little difficulty here. In the Tibetan it goes, (Rinpoche reads in Tibetan) what they are really saying is if you continue to do the same thing sickness and death. It is not bondage, it definitely says 'sickness and death'. 'Laceration' I looked in the dictionary it says 'torn and rugged wound' that is fine, 'chodang, shadang'. The other one is not shedding of blood, but the Tibetan what they are saying is amputation, cutting out your limbs, so on and forth. So this translation I don't know it is purposely did or that maybe include the amputation, or whatever the reason maybe, why he chose to use the word 'shedding of blood', I am not sure. But it might not be correct translation. So in my copy I cut across the word 'bondage' because it is not there. It is just added up. It is not in Tibetan nor in sanskrit; it is not there. It came out somewhere maybe sementic purposes or I don't know; or language or the person like to talk about bondage or maybe the person like kinky stuff, who knows.(laughter). Who know whatever you know. That's it.

Maitreya Buddha wrote, or supposed to be written by him, or he said it and somebody recorded, whatever it is, the root text we study for Prajnaparamita, which is Transcendental Wisdom, we studied that, it says (Rinpoche quotes in Tibetan), the example given is even the king of heaven started pouring the shower of rain, if we don't have good seed, we cannot collect good crop. Likewise the Buddha might have come and gone but if we are not fortunate enough, we will not connect. So when we are not connected, it will not help at all no matter what is happening out there. If it does not connect inside, it doesn't happen. I think that was supporting for verse 13,

Although for the benefit of every creature

Countless Buddhas have passed by,

Yet I was not an object of their care

Because of my own mistakes.

I am not even sure whether they said 'mistakes' in Tibetan or not. Does not really say 'mistake' but I believe can be translated as 'mistake'. It really should say 'my own unfortunate situations or circumstances, I have not been the object or subject of their care'.So what does that tell us on the other way round? On the other way round, they are saying if we don't have the fortunate karma to connect with the path to liberate ourself, or whatever, or anything . If we don't have the luck, we will not be able to connect with anything. Another words, if we don't have the right karma, we cannot connect with anything. Am I right or wrong? That means we have to very carefully think to be able to connect with the path, the practise, we have to have a positive karmic to be able to do that. If you don't have that, no matter what you do, the buddhas will come and will go, but you will be left out. Another words, this is Bodhisattva's way of life, and in this what the bodhisattva expected to do is to create positive karma so that whenever opportunities come, they are connected. Does that make sense? I believe that covers the verse 13. And then goes on down, in the verse 14. The link between these two verses is, alright earlier that was what happened to me, buddhas have come and gone, I have not been the object of their care, fine. But, in future I will be different. I will be the object of their care, so if you been unable to connect, if you don't have the karma to connect, even the future is difficult. That is what they are saying 'If I continuously act in that way, so that I don't have any connection with...shall I undergo..." So what they are telling you is not only you been left and not the object of their care, but if I continuously do this, if I don't put efforts, and continuously waste my time under the influence of the laziness again and again, then I have no alternative except to continue to suffer. Falling into the lower realms and having tremendous amount of sufferings, that is what they are talking of sufferings in unhappy realms. They are not talking about sickness and death not only in the lower realms alone, even you take birth in the human level as a human being, or birth as some good life, even then you have tremendous amount of sickness and untimely death. That is why I said instead of bondage, you put 'sickness' and untimely death. I guess you can put bondage there too. In the commentary they will say not only untimely death but also the bondage; you don't have to delete. This commentary tells me there is bondage too. So probably the translator read the commentary and put the 'bondage' in. So that is why we have to apologise earlier. I made a funny remark. That was a joke and not against the translator anyway. Sickness and untimely death as well as laceration, as well as the body cut and beat up. Emotionally beat up, physically beat up and mentally beat up - all kinds of sufferings. We experience tremendous amount of all kinds of sufferings even if you take human rebirth. In another words, efforts we don't put in and if we subject ourself to laziness, we will lose the good future rebirth. Even we gain the future rebirth, we will have such amount of problems. It is the laziness what we have now, and that is there, the side effect. Therefore it is advisable for us to put some efforts, we must put some efforts. If you put some efforts what will happen? The Buddha was asked in the Peace Sutra, there was a dialogue in it between the Buddha and Manjushri. Buddha tells Manjushri that there is one human being who make zillions of offerings to the countless buddhas- buddhas as many as the sands near the Ganga River,- if you offer them jewels that fill up the whole universe, and you make offerings to them for hundreds of aeons. No doubt you will collect tremendous amount of wonderful merit but better than that if anyone, any bodhisattva who would like to listen about this Bodhisattva's Way, how this Bodhisattva should think, how Bodhisattva should behave, and how Bodhisattva should act, even they try to listen or think about it, and if they especially try to follow it, they have zillions more merit than making offerings to the buddhas that fill the whole universe with jewels. In another words, they are telling you to do something, to act something. If you don't you are going to be subject to this and that, and it had happened before.

So the question arises' What am I supposed to do?' Supposed to think, supposed to read, supposed to listen, supposed to learn what the bodhisattva supposed to do, what bodhisattva should deal, how bodhisattva should deal with their life, and what is that about. And if that thought even listening and if possible what you understand think about it, and on top of that if you can follow it is far better than giving offerings to buddhas the universe filled up with jewels. You get it? To add up to that, (rinpoche reads in Tibetan), the Buddha has said that in a time like this particularly in this degenerate age, the Hindus call it Kali Yuga, bad time, even if you take one single commitment of the bodhisattva, that benefit one builds up is beyond what we have mentioned. But still if you keep the bodhisattva action, that is bodhisattva commitment to be helpful to others, and if you cannot, you are not going to harm anybody else. These are the commitments of the bodhisattva they are talking about, in principle. Even if you can keep it for twenty four hours, the merit is more than having such generosity as offerings to the countless buddhas a universe filled with jewels. That is what the Buddha talking about. It is so important at this moment, at this time, while we can be benefitted because we have the opportunity. We don't have to have money, we don't have to be rich. We are very rich this moment with our human capacity. We may not be that rich with money. So at this moment if we can utilize our opportunity it is very helpful. And if you cannot, and if you miss this opportunity, buddhas come, buddhas go we are left out. It had happened before and it will continuously happen and if you do so, it will become worse and worse. That is what this Bodhisattva's Way of Life is talking about. Thus I like to close the verse 14.

Now we have to move to verse15. It emphasize more of verse 14. Now it emphasize if you have to think of the Lam Rim, how important it is. If you look from the Lam Rim, you have embracing the human life. The reason why you embrace human life from one point you say it is difficult to find, not only recognize the qualities of human life but also difficult to find. Remember? Three outlines. Those of you who done Lam Rim would know. So here they are talking about it not only from the nature reality point of human life but also tells you how difficult to find.

Verse 15

The verse 15 will tell you (Rinpoche reads in Tibetan). So here they say,

If the arising of a Tathagata,

Faith, the attainment of a human body

And my being fit to cultivate virtue are scarce,

When will they be won again?

So now what are they talking about? So alright I didn't get this time, that will go. So next time I have it when I have a good life, I will try again. A lot of people do that. Oh, well, this time I didn't manage so well but I hope to do it in my next life. Lots of people will think that. Next life is next life and whether it is going to be easy one, or difficult one who knows. Number one, it is very difficult to find life what we have right now. Really it is very hard to get. Right now we don't appreciate our life so much. Not only we don't appreciate, sometimes we even hate ourself. Number of people hate themselves, number of people misuse their precious body, totally misused and abused, like me keep on eating. To me whether I am hungry or not, is not an issue. The issue is lunch, dinner and breakfast. So we keep on eating. And then we have snacks in between. That is physical abuse for the body, that is why I become fat. That is I am a diabetic. True. Well, I am not bad (Laughter), others are worst than that. They abused their body for some kind of kinky purposes, tonight is kinky night anyway -so abused for any kind of things. And couldn't care less for our physical being, ourself and others, and persons that we care. We completely ignore. Many do take care very well but many ignore and abuse. In one way it is your body, it is absolutely your right. You have total right, whatever you want to do with your body, that is your body. It is true, you have total freedom; you can do whatever you want to do. But you need to know what you are wasting. That is important. If you do not know what you are wasting, and you keep on doing, then that is not very good. Allen used to say,"If I know that I am going to live for very long then I would have taken care of myself much more than I did before". He used to say that. It is true. We do abuse our body just for little kick, so we drink. And we use accessive amount of everything - that is abuse we do for our physical purpose. Mental we waste our mind tremendously. Our mind has so much capacity and so much possibility but what we do. We really waste lots of time for some thing which you are not supposed to do. We waste our mind which is so important and so valuable, we waste and abuse our body and mind both. If you continuously do that, where are we going to end? There will never be end, but become worse and worse. That is true and we can see with everybody with addiction problem; if you don't take care, it will be worse and worse. We know that right and we have seen it. So bodhisattvas do have to keep on saying you become worse and worse and you go to hell - they are almost saying that up there, and it is true when you have been abusing your mind and body. You have every right to abuse but you need to know what you are abusing. So here they are saying,If the arising of a Tathagata, the word 'Tathagata' I believe referring to buddha. Saying a buddha appearing as buddha. In another words, if you look in the time period, don't look the time we are born and die, this is very short period. But if you look the time in general, see in this actually time frame, where the buddha was born and total disappearance of the Buddha. According to Hindu Buddhist mythology point of view, they call this time where there is Light. Why? Because the buddhas appeared and they share their path and their experience so there are opportunity for the people to be able to cut their continuation of suffering. That is why they call this period is the period with Light. And the period in between they called it the Dark Period. So if you look within aeon they have very short period of light and long long long gap of dark period. So appearing buddha as official buddha is extremely rare. Rare like flower of the Utumwara. It is a Hindu Buddhist mythological story says a flower named Utumwara

appeared once. You know you have sometimes flowers come at night, once a year only one whole night they stay? What is that flower call? Very good smell? (Voices: unclear) Like that the Utumwara appeared extremely rare and lived a very short period. So the Buddhas life was compared by Hindu Buddhist mythological point, and also Buddhism itself to that of the Utumwara flower. So it is so rare and so short lived. That was the story. Now we look to ourself. When we look to ourself look the life what we have. The Buddha tells us it has ten special qualities. What are those? Five of ourself and five of the period. (Rinpoche quotes in Tibetan). It is the time of light, and it is the periond where the Buddha share their experience still in life; Buddhism is active. This is from the buddhist point of view. (Rinpoche repeats quote). Also Buddha appeared, Buddha taught, Buddha shared the experience, and Buddhism still active in life. That means how we handle our life based on the Buddha's experience is still in life. And there are followers continuously working just like you do, just like you want to do. There are helpers and persons who can help you so that sort of five qualities, from the time point of view. In general, the human qualities are tremendous - understanding, capable of communicating, capable of working with that. There is no other life can do that truly speaking. We may think some kind of encounter with the Third Kind comes, and there are some kind of wisdom they would bring and hit on our head, and we will be wiser and become enlightened. A lot of people think that. A lot of people watched the UFOs, and there is society working for that and people running round doing all kinds of things, but the point is intelligence or wisdom what you are looking for over there is within us, according to the Buddha. That is the Buddha's message. You have with you even the enlightenment, what we call it 'Buddha stage', is not external, it is within ourself. It is a matter of how we reveal ourself; it is not an external thing. We can keep on watching the UFOs coming and going and landing and running. We keep on saying that FBI has the UFO guys been held there for investigation, and we can do all these things but what are you going to get out of that even if it is true. Nothing, really truly. If there is something useful in there, even if the FBI and the government want to hide it, they will come out. They leak out, and do you know how much they leak out? We will know it how much they leak out. It is extremely difficult to keep such a ...anyway it is great they can't keep any secret at all. You know these guys in Afghanistan, those terrrorists people, they knew before the bomb flew there so they ran out. Everything leaks out this days they can't keep much secret no matter how much they pretend to. There is nothing useful even they have it. Let's say you have UFO guys there,even then there is nothing much. The wisdom is within ourself. This is true. The Buddha was a human being, and so was all the great spiritual masters that we encounter in our history. All the genuis who develop scientific development including Einstein, they did not come out of UFO, did they? No, they did not. The Buddha did not come out of UFO, nor did Prophet Mohammed, nor did Jesus, nor Einstein. I having nothing against UFO don't misunderstand. It is fine it is good, it is there. But it is not worthy of wasting our life and energy, hoping for something special from them. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. If there is, they will come out. But we know we have it but we are not spending time and energy to reveal what we have within ourself. It is not somebody else have it. You know it is you, you the individual each one of us have within ourself. That is the sad part of it or good part of it. But we don't recognize. You can say 'Ya, I look from head to toe and found no wisdom'. Fine, but we don't expect to find by looking from your hair tip to your toe. You are not going to find wisdom in there. But you have to look inside, deep inside, deeper self existence, deeper self functioning, deeper mental functioning. You are going to find all the wisdom what you needed in there. That is the problem. Another words what this is telling you is what you are wasting and abusing now is the rising of the Tathagata - the period where the buddhas teaching experiences shine on you, pointing five of the external qualities one of them. And then saying faith. In this case they are linking external qualities of the five and the internal of the five (Rinpoche quotes in Tibetan) It is the human being. I am a human being, that is number one. I am born in centre. You know it is traditional buddhism; there are some package there. So the centre is package. Just like earlier, it is time of ..teaching of buddha shine. Little bit of propaganda here and there point together. But the reality here number one is

I am a human being. They did not say I am a dog, or a cat, or a horse, or a monkey but a human being. It has tremendous value over the dog, over the cat , over bird, over horse, over monkey. We may think the monkey is intelligent, and the dog, and cat and bird and so on are intelligent, but we are more intelligent than they are. Really true.I used to say if you think your cat is intelligent then give the cat the car key and let it do your grocery and see what they bring back. They won't bring your car back. You may have to look for it and get the police to do it. So it won't work. That is a joke. But that tells you I am a human being has the superior quality within the human beings over any other life that you see today, forget about the ghost and UFO guys. Because you don't know them, If you know them you will be better than them for sure. Even the ghost is extremely afraid of you. Just like the tiger if you encounter with it, it is afraid of you, or the bear. The bear is afraid of human being. They will attack you for their protection but their instinct tells them before you get them, they better get you. That is what it is. They are very scared. If you encounter with ghost, the ghost are scared of you , extremely scared of you. (Voice: haunted house) You can become ghost buster without any problem. You seen that movie. You don't need those machine. You go with your good conscience and clear mind, and you can bust them all out. If you cannot go with a good clear mind, they will bust you out. But they are equally afraid of you and they will do the same thing, what you can do to them - kick them out. They try to kick you out that is all. So really if you look at human, its value is tremendous. Tremendous capacity, value, it is tremendous. But remember the bottomline, the buddha was a human being. All these great masters were human beings- great scientist, musician, painter - everybody was a human being. There is not a non human being there.

(End of Side A)

Side B

... that is why having faith in human capacity that I am a human being, in having faith in reality, true nature, that is why they put faith here. The faith in human capacity and you have attained the human body which makes you human being and having faith in the human capacity. You can destroy your human capacity by picking up the funniest thoughts. You have no faith in human capacity and think completely crazy such as fifteen steps ahead of anything that will happen, and make you absolutely crazy. You can do that. It is abuse of human mind. Not looking after the body and making it fat like me is abusing the human body. And abusing your mind, even taking excessive caffeine can be part of abusing the physical body and mind. The rest you can figure out. Here I am using the word 'even excessive caffeine'. Look at the value in one hand, and if abuses what happen? We don't have to look very far away. Just look at your left you can see it. Nothing is wrong but excessive abuse on human mind, and if you have intelligent mind and if you abuse it is so easy to flip off. So making sure that do not happen to ourself is the important practice of the bodhisattva. Bodhisattva has to know how to look after yourself physically and mentally. You may think this is afterall my body and I can abuse. Fine, but if you do so and become cuckoo you cannot help anybody else including yourself. So then what happen to your mind? That is what it is.

And such a human body which is also free of ...according to the Buddha, you are free of business. The business in the hell realm is suffering, and in the hungry ghost realm is hunger; in the animal realms is ignorance, in the demi god realm is jealousy; and in the gods realm is attachment and bliss. The human realm is free of those business and we have the value to be able to understand what is suffering and what is joy. These are the human qualities. That is why having faith for human value and human body capacity, human mind capacity- capacity to be able to cultivate virtue is very rare. When will there be such birth again? Probably will not. So therefore it is so important not to waste this type of thing - time, opportunity, and life. Wasting that cannot have any bigger non-virtuous than that. To add up little more from the sutra (Rinpoche reads in Tibetan), another words they are telling you Buddha appeared as Buddha , shared his experience, is extremely difficult, is very rare. Having the human life, to be able to understand, to be able to think, to be able to make a difference, is very rare. Another bodhisattva sutra called (Rinpoche quotes in Tibetan) Buddha appeared very rarely - once in a blue moon. So do not waste your life and put your efforts just like running stable river. Don't do too much in one day and don't have anything. It should continuously running. You know laziness is one thing. You can overtake laziness by putting up too much effort today -ran down over there, do everything, right now, and then forget about tomorrow as though you ran out of task, nothing is happening. That get you no where. so everything you put efforts slowly, constantly, continuously - not too much at the beginning, go very slowly, smoothly. This is the way how to do, like a stable river doesn't increase much, doesn't decrease much but always running all four seasons. That is the sort of efforts you put. Because if you put too much in there and then not be able to do anything, it is all gone.

I like to talk a little more on the sutra of Maitreya Buddha. Maitreya Buddha says, (Rinpoche reads in Tibetan) It is so rare to get a human life. It is even more rare than to have a buddha appeared as official buddha. It is even more rare for a buddha to appear and to connect with us. It is so rare to have bodhisattvas around. You may never find these for hundreds of aeons. But you have it now, so do not waste your life, do not waste the Buddha's experience, do not waste the bodhisattva's effort, keep your enthusiasm up. You have awareness always. This is awareness, awareness of this. You said you have awareness. Awareness of what? Awareness of being a human being, awareness of having the rare opportunity with you, awareness of Buddha's experience with you. That is how you have to function your life. Does that make sense. I close this verse 15.

Verse 16

Although today I am healthy,

Well-nourished and unafflicted,

Life is momentary and deceptive;

The body is like an object on loan for but a minute.

If you borrow a shirt from somebody, the person says,'That's my shirt, give it back. I want it now'. He can take it any time, right? I used to say our body is just like a rented apartment. Think about it. We really have such a valuable life. We also have time. We really tell ourself we have no time but believe me we have time. Really we do. You are really going to find time if you really want to. We have time for everything else except for our own benefit. Everything else. We have time for gossip; we have time for entertainment, we have time for every thing - holiday visit, being mischievous,creating trouble, every thing we have time. And I am not sick like today, I am healthy. But within that healthiness, I have no shortage of food, clothes. And I don't really have any direct threat to my life right at this moment. But my life is like the river flowing to the cliff; it is running all the time. I do not have the power and time to hold back even a single minute. In reality my life is unreliable to me. It can go any minute any time, any where. It is momentary and it is deceptive. That is what verse 16 is telling you. Another words we look everything as nice, and wonderful. Business as usual, no threat in life, nothing. But it is momentary. You never know when that is going to go. Therefore wasting my time and my energy for not making use of great opportunity, and taking for granted this will continue next two hundred years is a lie. We are deceiving ourself. We do not even have guarantee that we will remain tomorrow. Who knows which will come first? Tomorrow or so-called 'future life'? Which is going to come first. Nobody ever planned to die; nobody. All these people who died in the car crash or plane crash, they did not plan to do that way. A moment, a second makes the difference in life. So if you think, we are all on that verge as well. So can we afford to waste our time? That covers verse 16. I don't think I will do verse 17. We will close here unless you have questions, otherwise we will close.

Questions and Answers

Student: Rinpoche it is often mentioned the story that when His Holiness first became aware of the level of self-deprecation and self-hatred that Westerners carry and how dissimilar was the culture and environment in which he was raised. He was quite surprised by the level of self-deprecation and self-hatred the Westerners struggle with. My question really turns on how this negative addiction or repetitive habit of self hatred uses the knowledge that we have a precious life, we should not be wasting time, that we should be moving forward and taking the advantage of the advice that have been given to us and shared with us, and the teaching that are shared with us. And we actually fall into a secondary negative habit of chastising ourselves for failure to follow through the positive advice that has been given to us. And I of course went to verse 15 where it talks about cultivation faith. You are several steps removed from being able to effective cultivate faith if somehow you are in a securist pattern of what His Holiness had referred to several years ago, of that Western tendency. And I am curious and I would like to hear your cross comment.

Rinpoche: I don't know whether I said His Holiness was surprised of perceiving Western tendency of self-deprecation. Glenn Mullin might have talked about it because I don't remember recollecting that. (Voice interrupted). But, he might have but I did not know whether he has or not. I am not aware of it but I did have for sure. I really did have that shocking surprise one after another by one after another person, all the time and every time. It goes on. And it is true, and surprisingly true in the Western mind. Also I cannot somehow be as articulate as you said it.

However the main point here is using your own knowledge, your own understanding instead of helping oneself to build confidence and self respect, instead you are turning it against like what we Tibetan lamas used to say 'The yaks grow their horns to their own protection but sometimes the horns grow crooked and poked their own eyes'. That way people used that very often too, and that is also big surprise to me. However that is human nature.

Human beings always do that. Why? Because two reasons. One, over enthusiastic and two, no patience; and three, always wondering 'What can I do', 'How can I get better, this way or that way', "Maybe I better stand up, or better sit down, this way, that way', "Maybe I do this, maybe I do that'. That is exactly how mind drives. One's mind drives the individual in that manner. And what happens is the information and education what you have instead of supporting it, also becomes a fuel for the anxiety to feed. So instead of helping, it becomes harmful. It harms the individual rather than helping. That is because of over anxiety and the lack of patience and so much push of 'what can I do'. This is much more with the Western rather than Eastern people, that for sure. Well I don't know all the Easterns are like that or not.

But it also comes with what we called the modern development of life, with the competitiveness, and pull and push, and how can I get my edge over other competitions. That is so much on the minds of people - I need things to happen and I need it right now. I haven't a single minute to wait. How can I do what will that happen. Is it better for me to get up, is it better for me to sit down, is it for me to breath, or meditate, or analyze, say my prayers, say my mantras? What is better, what is better, and at the end you have nothing.

So this is a big problem with lots of people, not you as an individual I am referring. But it is really with a lot of people. And it is so important to recognize what is driving me, what is happening, what is pushing me, who am I, who am I going to go. Sometimes I used to say to people "I am not going anywhere, relax, sit down, we are not going anywhere". Actually it is true we are not going anywhere. Specially we have a couple of verses before, it becomes pull and push gets you nowhere. I think this is one important point and we should remember it. And think about it.

It is helpful to think when we have control in our hand. It is extremely important to maintain control. I mean the word 'control' is maybe bad word, but manage yourself by you, nobody else. Remember if you are good spiritual practitioner, you keep your own what we called that the yak used to have the rope there and when people pull the rope you have to go this way or that way. If you are good practitioner, they say keep the rope on your nose tied on your own horn, and don't let anybody catch it. So that is an important point, I think.

Question: Could I ask for clarification of the three points are inside of what you are speaking about at least of what I heard from you? The first is that you spoken on several occasions the desire to maintain a global relatively speaking for one's personal enlightenment and enhancement is in proper use of the activity of having a desire. So my first issue is I am interested in hearing of what you have to say regarding how does one margilate or moderate one's striving going back to your reference to the competitve nature of the Western world in that sense. And my second issue that I would like to hear your thoughts on is when one is or has some relative thoughts and aspirations towards gaining a relative understanding of enlightenment, and yet will power to perform even the simpliest task which have been outlined by teachers as been useful to cultivate, the fruit of that desire how are these two things workable?

Rinpoche: Enlightenment is goal. It is my goal, and I am not competing with anybody else. Whenever I get it, I love looking forward. And I am putting every efforts whatever I have every time to that direction. I am not in a hurry, I am not competing with anybody . Whenever it gets me, fine. That is what I do.

The second question is what? Can you help me?

Question: Whenever we have less will power..

Rinpoche: That's right. And the will power for what?

Question: The will power to maintain stability and will power to carry out simple practices that have been outlined to us as useful, and I am not even talking specifically about regular performance of sadhanas or qualitative things. I am talking about will power in that sense. And the last piece of that is how does one distinguish between the language spiritual materialism and what you are talking about the issue of 'here we are and we are striving. It is like maybe we fall to the place of spiritual materialism without an awareness we are falling to it '

Rinpoche: It is better late than never. Better wrong than never have. And I don't think spiritual materialism and pure spiritual thing is very important, no question. But at this moment, I don't think it is issue, number one. Number two, will power. If you have great interest for enlightenment every efforts is driving towards that direction without putting strong efforts it is already directed through motivation, through your way of thinking, way of functioning, rather than try to make it in that way or this way. Every point where you generate motivation try to shape it in that way, try to guide that way. If you have to do that, it is never going to work. So what you really have to do is generally motivated towards that direction, every efforts put towards that direction, and dedicated for that direction. And that is how we go keep in principle mind of Buddha's principle in life. And that way when you function everything will go that way rather than make each and every point where you have to put efforts and try to push this way, and try to think 'Am I going this way or that way, or is it that way or that way'. This is the anxiety which pushes through, and this is the 'Wanted to have right now' that pushes through. In general let it be loose and yet you tight but loose. That is how I normally function my life. I don't want put every efforts ...if I stay this place will that help me or anybody else? I am not worry about that. I am worried about my general motivation , my general mind setting up and my general attitude. That I will correct and I will not do anything specifically for any point for anything. If I have to do that, I will be nowhere.

I think I may have to close shop.

(End of Session)