Archive Result

19981029GRBHOF

0:00:03.6 We have been talking here basically on the essence of the Buddha’s teaching in the form of the Four Noble Truths. We talked about the Truth of Suffering, the Truth of the Cause of Suffering, the Path, how we can get through, and the cessation.

Basically, we talked about the suffering in general, that we experience. We also made the very important point that when the Buddha was sharing his experience, when we are talking about Buddhism, it is really nothing more than Buddha’s personal experience; how he experienced life’s difficulties and how he has managed. In Buddhism we make this very important emphasis and I think it is very important to look in that way. If we look at Buddhism as something like a religion in the sense of the Judeo-Christian tradition, [it’s not the same]. I mean if I tried to tell you that Buddhism is not a religion, that is not right.

0:02:09.2 It’s wrong, nobody will buy that. On the other hand it came out as one individual person’s experience of dealing with life and it’s emphasis and focus also on the individual, how we can handle and deal with our difficulties and sufferings. Basically, the purpose of Buddhism is nothing but removing suffering and finding some kind of relief, how we can free ourselves from suffering. The purpose of Buddhism or rather, the Buddhist goal, or mission of life – a lot of people ask me, “What is the mission of my life?”

0:03:16.9 I have no idea but Buddha told us in general that the mission of our life is to free ourselves. Freedom from neuroses, from our negative emotions. The moment I say “free” you may think, “Alright you have to die in order to get free”. I don’t mean that at all. Don’t think that way. It is freedom from our negative emotions, referring to anger, attachment, hatred and most important, ignorance. Whether you talk about suffering or cause of suffering that is sort of packaged in that. That is our problem and the purpose of having that spiritual path is to just get free from those neuroses.

0:04:25.2 That is the goal, although Buddhists talk to you about being a buddha and enlightened and all this and it’s true, but that’s a long shot. Enlightenment, yes, it is true, but enlightenment really means total knowledge, totally knowing everything. That’s why it is called enlightened, right? Every single thing, whatever has happened, has been happening and whatever will happen is known to one individual all the time. That is incomprehensible, if we look at this moment and that is what we refer to as enlightened level. Can a person really get enlightened? According to Buddha, yes. He said, “You can get enlightened. I got enlightened, why not you?”

0:05:52.8 That’s fine for Buddha. But for us, is it really there? It is interesting. I have an interesting experience. Somebody who has been in Jewel Heart for 15-20 years called me in the early morning when I was asleep. That shows I was sleeping late. The person is not an early riser. It was not an early telephone call, but you know, they woke me up. I picked up the phone. The person was a little hesitant, saying the question was embarrassing, bla, bla, bla, the usual routine and after that I said, “Okay, you woke me up already, so just say whatever you want to say now.”

0:06:43.5 The person said, “This enlightenment, is it really true, is it really there?” Very strange question, but it hit me. I never think if it is really there or not. The question never rises in my mind. I never ever thought about it. For a minute I had nothing to say and kept quiet. Then I said, “The question really is: how do I know it’s there? How do I know enlightenment is there?” Knowing that this person has put some 15 – 20 years of effort in, and suddenly being hit with that question I did not know what to say and I thought for a little while and then my mind picked up saying, “Truly we don’t know if there is enlightenment or not. But one thing we do know is that we have improvement; improvement in dealing with our life and improvement with everything, our way of thinking, our way of dealing with people, of dealing with our own life. So we do have improvement and you cannot reach to the end of that. There is still more room go to – a lot. And that indicates, when you reach to that end completely, that’s what we probably call enlightenment.”

0:08:34.7 Buddha put that up as mission Nr 1 in life. If you could achieve enlightenment, the life itself is capable of delivering the goods. It’s a human life. Any other life is not capable, but this particular human life is capable, according to the Buddha. He made this the goal or purpose Nr 1, to be able to achieve that. It is really difficult to comprehend with our thoughts and our mind at this moment. But Nr 2: freeing ourselves, freedom from the negative emotions, that is really achievable. We can see it and we definitely want that. Whether you like it or not, why do people put efforts in and work at any spiritual path? For what purpose? You want to gain something. You are looking for some kind of gain.

0:10:15.1 The gain we are looking for is not some kind of favor from somebody. We are looking for an individual gain and what are we looking for? We truly are looking for freedom, freedom from our negative emotions. Freedom from suffering is what they call it, but truly speaking we are looking for freedom from the cause of suffering, which is the negative emotions. That is understandable, and that is very much normal and that is natural.

0:11:02.8 Each and everyone of us in this room today can think…

0:11:11.8 (personal remarks to individuals in the room)

0:11:35.9 I forgot what I was talking about……

0:11:47.1 Audience (inaudible)

0:11:52.5 Rimpoche: That’s true, we can look from the freedom from suffering point of view, but we have to deal with the cause of suffering. That’s Buddha’s experience. If you deal with the suffering and say, “I am working with the suffering and I am trying to experience suffering more and more”, that’s not the way how to deal with suffering. There are certain people who like to do that. They really go through almost torturing themselves for nothing and they think, “I am working with the suffering.” That is a little difficult for me to understand. People like to do that and do that very often, but I believe that is not the way Buddha did it.

0:12:49.1 Buddha recognized suffering and then naturally the second question is: is there a way out? The way out is working with the causal level rather than the result level. It is interesting, if you look at people, they go through with great suffering and then they come out with the statement, “Good learning experience”. Many people do that. But how many times do you want to go learn? There will be no end to it. Every time you have to go through the suffering experience you then say, “Ah, good learning experience.”

0:13:41.6 As though it is never enough, right? We do that, but that is probably the wrong way to do it. Not probably, it is the wrong way of doing it, according to Buddha. You don’t want to indulge in suffering. The purpose is to escape from suffering, not to experience. Sometimes I joke with people who go for massage. You have pain already and they give you more. Ouch.

0:14:26.7 A lot of people like it and afterwards they feel good and wonderful. I don’t want to experience any additional pain at all. That’s me. Sometimes you can’t help it, but truly, it is not about learning how to experience suffering. You don’t want that. The purpose is to avoid it completely. How can you do it? Buddha’s way of finding out is to work with the causal level. Whatever is happening now is happening. Let it go, it will pass by. Make sure it does not repeat. That’s what it is.

0:15:16.9 How can you make sure it does not repeat? Avoid the cause. In our life we try to avoid and end the suffering and pain. But we repeat the causes again and again. Every time we repeat. When we are repeating them we don’t know what we are doing. We will only begin to have awareness when the result starts popping up. Until then we are not aware of it. We repeat the cause again and again. Every single thing we do, we do the same thing again and again.

0:16:15.6 Buddha’s discovery is the Four Noble Truths. First we see the Truth of Suffering, immediately followed by the Cause of Suffering, what made it happen. From the Buddhist point of view we have to say it is karma. Yes, it is karma, but karma is not some kind of supernatural monster or permanent fixture. It is created by ourselves. Every action we take becomes our karma. The negative actions we take becomes negative karma, the positive actions we take becomes positive karma. The negative actions we take because of negative emotions. The positive actions we take because of positive thoughts and ideas.

0:17:18.7 That is what Buddha discovered: the cause of suffering. And that’s why Buddha suggests to look in that level rather than looking where you are having the pains. That’s the allopathic doctor’s job. They treat your pain, give you aspirin or if that doesn’t work they give you Tylenol or something. Buddha recommended to look at the causal level: the negative emotions. That is the real cause of all our problems, within ourselves, nothing external, within our mind, within our thoughts and the actions taken by us are influenced by those negative thoughts. So the whole Buddhist trip, the purpose is to look into the life, how it is coming in, what we experience, why do we experience that, whether it is joy or pain, pleasure or misery.

0:18:52.7 Why do we have that? Buddha was looking in there and how we can change that. Is it possible to change? Now Buddha’s one important message is: yes, it is possible to change. I changed it, it is me here, I am the example. That’s his message. Then the immediate question is: how? The moment you say how he says: don’t work against the result level, work against the causes.

0:19:37.5 That is the system of the Four Noble Truths. The causes also are not so much the business of karma, but the creation part of it. Once you created karma you created it, whatever it may be. You can do and undo your karma. Some people think that karma is such a thing that you can do nothing. But that’s not true. Karma is dependent arising. Karma rises and function in a dependent nature. Karma depends on conditions. When the conditions are not right karma cannot function. It is also not an automatic monster over there. It’s not. It is dependent arising. It depends on the conditions. So the Buddha knows that and tells us: work on the conditions. Don’t let the conditions take place, avoid them. If you avoid them, as a result karma cannot function. It cannot, because it is dependent and then things are not complete. So how can it function?

0:20:57.8 So make sure it will not happen again. That is why now, in life we begin to see it in the picture, we should not do things that are harming us. We find all these negative emotions are harming us. We see them as circled under what I don’t want. Then you see a group of them as positive things: what I do want. We begin to see in our life, almost by ourselves, what is right and what is wrong. It is very difficult to figure out what is right and what is wrong without that. It is not black and white, right and wrong. Some things that are right for you may be wrong for me.

0:22:29.1 Some things that are wrong for me may be right for you. It is very much individualized and you have to figure it out individually, rather than collectively, not as blanket rule. You can do collectively, but it is not a blanket cut out as black and white, right and wrong. That’s what I always thought, so I am mentioning here and talk to you about moral issues. The moral issues are very important, absolutely important. But that’s for nobody else. No one can tell you what the right and wrong morality is. It definitely depends on the individual. Entertaining our negative emotions such as anger and attachment and hatred, etc, is negative and the wrong morality.

0:23:47.6 I don’t know if I should say ‘immorality’ or not, but it is the wrong thing, simply because it gives me suffering, it causes suffering. Right? The right and wrong morality are individual matters. Something right for me is not necessarily right for you. For example look at Chinese and Tibetans. To protect and help and promote independence and freedom for Tibet and Tibetans it is good and right morality for Tibetans, but it is not the right morality for Chinese.

0:25:01.2 That is clear. For China it should be part of China. So if you have strong nationalistic feelings with China then the idea that Tibet should be part of China is a good thing. Are you getting my viewpoint? The morality that people think, it is very interesting, if you don’t make morality into an individual thing like Buddhism does, then it becomes difficult. If you look back in history, the wars we waged, most of them were on religious grounds. Even today, what is happening in the Middle East is a question of right and wrong and an issue of morality.

0:26:31.5 So it is so important to think that. Good morality is absolutely necessary, but individually. My commitment is my commitment and differs from your commitment. I am keeping my commitments and that is my morality. That may or may not suit you in your morality. If you look in the way that Buddha experienced, everything we experience and do, is Nr 1, totally important. Nr 2, it is only dependent arising. That is the difference and that will make a big different effect on the question of right and wrong, because it is conditioned and dependent on one another.

0:27:59.3 The interdependent system is the basis of functioning for everything, according to the Buddha. That’s why we are individually functioning differently. In normal American language, the individual rights and individual freedom and individual functioning becomes so important in Buddhism. It is absolutely important, because everything is dependent nature. It is individualized. If you go and kill a human being that is negative, general for everyone. That type of thing is universal, but the rest of them are individual.

0:29:10.4 We completely ignore that and try to look: if it is truth it must be one. We normally think that way. If it is right for you it is right for me. Right is this one, the wrong is the other. But it is not that way. It is not black and white. It is so important, but somehow very hard to communicate and get through. People are so used to it, thinking that all wrong things are wrong and right things are right.

0:30:07.1 That is how we function. That is the principle of life and that is how we really see the big picture of life and here in that big picture we have the suffering and each and everyone of us has to be avoiding our own suffering by ourselves, individually, not together. It doesn’t work in groups or collectively. It is individual. The suffering is individual, the freedom from suffering is individual.

0:30:49.0 The individual has to handle it. The negative emotions we experience are also individualized. It is perfectly geared to the individual exactly fit to your own character. We have those negative emotions. They will perfectly fit to each and everyone of us to torture us enough. To some people a tiny, little negative emotion is good enough to torture you. To some people it’s not good enough. And we had exactly what we needed. It is sort of personally tailored, these negative emotions. The antidote of fighting against those negative emotions also have to be tailored personally. So really, truly talking, what Buddha shared in his experience is generally what’s happening. Then individually we have to tailor it to suit our needs.

0:32:25.1 Any spiritual path you pick up is fine, but it has to be tailored to the individual needs, whether it is Hindu-Buddhist tradition or Judeo-Christian tradition or nothing, no tradition, whatever it may be, but individualized to suit the individual. That is so important. Otherwise, how can you expect to work with each and every individual? Our negative emotions function exactly fit to ourselves. Whatever the level they want to go they are perfectly geared towards us. So we need the antidote perfectly geared to ourselves too. That’s why, right and wrong, moral and immoral, all of those questions are individual, rather than black and white. I don’t think so.

0:33:55.1 For example, certain individuals have very powerful anger, but not that much attachment. Certain individuals have a tremendous amount of attachment and not that much anger. And some have both, equally powerful, and some have both less. Dealing with the negative emotions individually we will see what you have to have. It is very carefully tailored rather than a simple blanket, saying: meditate or purify. These are nice words to say in general, but it has to work individually.

0:34:48.8 Anyway, so when we look through in our life, every suffering we experience is a consequence of negative emotions, nothing else. Therefore, our target of negation within our life are the negative emotions. That’s why freedom from negative emotions becomes a spiritual achievement. We can all hope and we can all can work on that. That’s why Buddha introduced that as the Nr. 2 goal. If you cannot reach as far as enlightenment, at least go for freedom, which makes tremendous sense for us.

0:36:07.9 Even if you cannot reach that, the lowest of all, the last goal that Buddha recommended is to make sure your next life is okay. That’s what it is. But the question is: the next life is a big issue again. For me it is no problem. The same thing as enlightenment. We keep on talking about enlightenment and that’s not problem for me, whether I know it or not. And reincarnation is also no problem for me, because I am born with that idea, it is rooted somewhere deep down. We are born with it. But for a lot of you people it is a big issue.

0:36:59.4 Nr 1: is it true or not? And then if it is true, how does it work, right? It is the biggest mystery. You cannot expect that mystery to be solved by a couple of lectures. It’s not going to happen. We don’t even touch on it. But one thing: no one can honestly, straight forwardly from the bottom of their mind say that there is no reincarnation. You cannot. You could, 50 years ago, but today not anymore, simply because there have been so many incidents. So many people talk about it, that if you are honest with yourself, at least you have to give the benefit of the doubt.

0:37:53.3 No one can really openly say there is no such a thing called future life. It is true, no one has come back from a future life and shook hands with us and said, “I am from the future.” We see that in movies, but not in reality. That way we don’t have proof in that manner. But if you are honest with yourself, when you think we cannot deny it. When Allen Ginsberg first came to see me his words were, “I do not know whether or not there is such a thing called future life. I have not seen it, I have not understood yet. But if there is something there I do not want to deprive myself of the opportunity to work for it.”

0:39:05.0 That’s how he first talked to me. So when we look in ourselves, it is very hard to say there is no future life. Who can really decide? No one can. Simply because I haven’t seen it is not a good enough reason. The fact that you don’t know about it doesn’t mean there is nothing there. If that is true you must be fully enlightened. That’s what being enlightened is all about it: knowing everything. So we are not enlightened because we don’t know everything. Whether we know it or not, if there is such a thing called future life then we will experience that. Today people like or dislike it and it becomes a big issue for death and dying.

0:40:23.0 Some people are afraid of it, very much. I don’t believe people are afraid of dying. That is a natural process. We have no alternative, it is a natural process. But the unknowing is what we are afraid of. We don’t exactly know what is happening. There is no road map, there is no planning, there is no travel agents who guarantees your accommodation or your bookings at different hotels or your food and all this. There is nothing guaranteed. It is a blank for us. And that’s what we are afraid of. We don’t know what’s going to happen. But we cannot dismiss and say that there is no future life.

0:41:33.2 Buddhism is a big religion in the world and a lot of other Eastern religions and even in the Judeo-Christian tradition I don’t think they say there is no future life. Something happens thereafter also. The chemical part of our body may return to the chemical [world]. Earth will become earth and that type of thing, but something happens to the individual. If nothing happens to the individual why do we have to worry about it? But we do worry about it, all the time. Who are we afraid of? This is interesting in life, you know.

0:43:09.1 When we cannot comprehend and when we cannot function by ourselves, when we cannot have an explanation of what is what, then certain traditions will leave it in the hands of a god. And we do the same thing today too, don’t we? When we have to do something, when we have to materialize something, we try our best, whatever we could and thereafter we leave it in the hands of God, don’t we? In our daily life. When you cannot do anything beyond that level, you do that – or you say: hope for the best and wait. That’s what we do.

0:44:07.1 The difference is that in Buddhism Buddha says: you are responsible for yourself and you are the one who can make the difference to your life. That’s a slightly different way of believing. Somehow Buddha’s discovery………………..the love and compassion does not give rise to the negative emotions. And where do the negative emotions rise from? What kind of idea do we have, if we watch our mind? All our negative emotions will rise from some kind of mind that protects self-interest or promotes the self. Actually, it is me protecting and promoting me. Me, me, me is the one. All comes out of that.

0:45:51.9

Tang po nga zhe da la zhen gi tse

Da gi di zhin ngö la chak pa yi

First comes me and when somebody attacks me I have to protect me, no matter whatever it takes. I must be upset, I must be angry, I must protect myself, because that person is attacking me. When you see something beautiful and wonderful, then you think, “I must have it, because it is me. I want it. I has to be mine and mine alone. You cannot have it.” If you begin to observe your mind you will see it, where all of these negative emotions come from. If there is me, me, me, me, do I ignore myself? Certainly not. Some people may say, “Are you telling me that Buddha wants me to ignore me?” Certainly not. If you do not protect your own interest, who else will protect it? Your really have to protect your own interest. But why is Buddha saying that then?

0:47:52.8 It’s the way and how we protect ourselves. That is the problem, not protecting me. Remember, if I don’t protect me, who else will? If I don’t look out for my own interest, who else will?

We always say, “May all sentient beings be free from suffering and cause of suffering. May all sentient beings have joy and the cause of joy”, etc, the Four Immeasurables. But if you look carefully, it does say “all sentient beings”. It never says “all sentient beings except me”. I am included. But the way we protect me is not protection. It is creating additional suffering. I challenge and fight to protect my interest. The other side will fight you back, they are not just sitting there like a target. They are a human being too. They will shoot back. Then you shoot back and they will shoot back.

0:50:02.7 And it goes on. That’s how we think we are promoting our interest and protecting ourselves, by shooting at others. That’s wrong, because they will shoot back. It just promotes suffering rather than pleasure and harmony. That is the problem of me, me, and my, my and you and yours. Why do we do that? Because we are so used to it. We only that’s the way.

We don’t know any other way. That’s the only thing known to us. That’s why ignorance becomes so controlling and important in our life. And we know it better than that we won’t do it. Even if we know it we can’t do it because we have the addiction of doing that. How many people have said, “I know better” – afterwards. But we cannot do it because we have addiction to it.

0:51:31.4 So how do you deal with it? When you handling things the best way you can and somebody is attacking you, how do you deal with it? Big question. Not easy, because we have that strong addiction. Even when you know you lost it is better late than never. Even if it is late you should acknowledge, “I lost.” Don’t deny, denial is a problem. Everything, even the process of Buddha introducing suffering is also to acknowledge. The purpose of introducing the cause of suffering is to avoid it. The purpose of introducing the cessation, the Third Noble Truth, is to obtain it, to get it. The purpose of the Fourth Noble Truth is to act, to function accordingly. These are the four purposes.

0:52:56.6 When you are challenged, no matter how many people say that “I have been minding my own business but that person keeps on attacking me all the time, what else can I do?” People do that right? This is the question: how do you handle that? If you don’t challenge such behavior they will call you a wimp. If you do challenge them that creates more suffering on both sides. So how would you handle this? This a very practical question. What do you do?

0:54:01.1 I have been talking with two well-educated ladies, one from Harvard, the other from Columbia, and they kept on writing notes to each other. They didn’t stop. Any every time one writes another memo to the other one they call me. They yell and scream all the time, “How can that woman do that?” and they go on and on and on and I listen and listen to many time. The same exact thing comes from the other sides, the same exactly. And then something happens and the other one will write another memo and complain and they will scream and write back and there is no end to it.

0:55:19.2 It goes on all the time. They talk to me about it all the time. At the end I said, “You hit hard, so she hit you back and by hitting back you hope it will stop you are wrong, she will hit you back bigger. I won’t stop.” That’s what’s happening. That’s exactly how me, me, me and my, my, my cause trouble. One of these women keeps on telling me, “I can’t work with your Buddhist attitude of nothing ever happened. I can’t have that anymore.” I keep on saying, “But what did you have in first place?” (laughs). “What do you mean by anymore? What happened when you started hitting?” So things like that happen.

0:56:35.3 So would you like to be a little wimp? The wimp may not as bad as the successful hero. I don’t know how to handle it, but the most important thing is that no matter whatever happens, it is so important that you don’t lose your temper. Do not act with anger. Do not. Do not ever use the motivation of anger, looking for some excuses and wherever you can find the most painful response to the weaker point, attacking that. That is not a nice way.

Ram Das was talking to me years ago, telling me a story. When he was in Harvard, around Roshashana one year, he miscalculated the day and he had taken a trip of LSD and he had the Roshashana day wrong and had to go to a family dinner. He was still very high. I am sure many of you have heard that story. He was even telling me that when he was driving the steering wheel was like a snake. Somehow me managed to get there without hitting anybody or wrecking his car. He went to the dinner and he was sitting across the table from his brother or niece or – I forgot – some family member. That person must have been attacking him and he noticed those tiny little arrows, like those you shoot into a dart board, a lot of them came out of that person’s mouth, shooting at him. So every arrow that came his way he picked it up and put it next to him on his plate. So the arrows were not hitting him. Whether it was due to chemical conditions or due to his spiritual development, whatever it maybe, that is how he handled it.

1:00:06.3 So no matter whatever happens from the other side do not take it personally.

Kyi tsub chog le tsang we ko cha ching

Ne par na tso tu tse gom pa dze….

The biggest person the other person uses against you are rough words and that can really get you. However, if you learn how to handle that, you may get irritated for sure. Anybody would, if anybody keeps telling you things like that in your face you do have irritation, no doubt about it, you do. But do not take it personally. Don’t let them get you. Pick them up, put them on your plate. This is the lowest part of handling this in our life. It’s not the best way.

1:01:22.1 The best way is to change it. If you look in the Buddha’s life story, when Buddha was about to obtain enlightenment, all these devils came in and started throwing all kinds of different weapons and they all became flowers. Those who have seen the movie called “Little Buddha” probably know it. They show you that. The weapons become flowers. That is the best way to transform the negativities coming towards you. That takes a hell of hardship.

1:02:10.7 If you cannot transform, then the second level is: don’t let it come to you. Let it go somewhere else. Actually we have examples for that. That guy from Malaysia who came to one of the winter retreats and demonstrated his kung fu practice. He sat down and asked others to hit him on the head, including the strongest person. That happened to be a karate teacher from Ohio. Remember that? He was huge person and hit him with all his strength, but he did not hit his head, somehow he slipped off. He explained later, “It was as though I walked over some kind of muddy water where you slip.” With all his force he came very close, but then slipped. That is the second category.

1:03:38.1 If you cannot manage that, at least put them on the plate and don’t eat them. So that is probably the example of how to handle this when somebody is upset with you and bugging you all the time or irritating you all the time. There are these three categories. And if you cannot handle that, then get away, run away, don’t even look back. Just run away, avoid the situation. That is actually Buddha’s advice. If you can handle the negative emotions you can handle them. That may have a lot of value and importance. If you cannot handle it, avoid it. Probably that’s how we have to handle it. That’s from the protection point of view.

1:04:53.0 But our purpose is eradication. Eradication is by truly understanding the negative emotions, how they affect the individual, how they affect you, how they affect life, how they affect your circle. Understanding that is necessary. Study it carefully, through analytical meditation. It is a label you put on, but truly it means you study and try to understand. Recognize whenever it is popping up. And when you recognize it is very hard to pop up. When you recognize anger and when you recognize it is not good, when you recognize it is embarrassing and causes suffering, it makes the anger arising within you harder to happen. It is not that you are trying to deal when you are angry. When you are angry you can’t deal with it. It even gets worse, if you try to deal with it.

1:06:23.6 But if you are not angry you have to think how bad the anger is, what anger does to you, the person. It makes you a weak person, it makes you a small person in front of other people. It is an embarrassment to me, in front of colleagues, friends and family. When you begin to notice it makes it harder for anger to come up. From the Buddhist point of view I should say: do analytical meditation, analyze anger. What does that do? How does it affect my family? How does that affect my children, my parents, etc.? And then you begin to know it is not good. Then you keep on thinking that it is not good – which is concentrated meditation. And that will affect your mind stream and then, whenever anger comes up you get an alert. Then it becomes much easier to handle anger. It doesn’t become full-blown anger.

1:07:45.2 I am using anger as example. But it goes for attachment, it goes for hatred, it goes for jealousy, all of those negative emotions. The true teaching of the Buddha is that. That is the fourth Noble Truth, the path, the road on which you travel. It is simply handling those negative emotions. That’s how we help ourselves, that’s how we help our life, that’s how we contribute towards our family, that’s how we contribute to our society. If you bring negative emotions to society, it builds up. If we bring an anger-free atmosphere into society that’s how we contribute.

1:08:53.5 I am a strange person. I never think that World Peace will come out of the UN, nor from Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Paris or anywhere. World Peace, peace itself, comes from the individuals. Each and every one of us will bring our own peace. And we contribute that to groups, into society, into the community and into the country. That is how we develop peace. I never think somebody else will bring World Peace, like in the UN and bring it over here. That’s not going to happen. I don’t think so. It is all up to each and everyone of us, how we deal with our negative emotions and that contributes towards our own family, group, circle and that extends.

1:10:00.4 The good old American saying goes: charity begins at home. Peace also begins at home. Compassion begins with the individual. If you do not know how to develop compassion for ourselves and try to develop compassion for somebody else you are actually developing pity feelings towards them rather than true compassion.

1:10:34.4 True compassion is caring and if I don’t care about myself how can I expect to care for somebody else? Maybe a mother can care for her child than for herself. That is possible and it happens almost all the time. It is because of the mother’s love and compassion to her own children. When I talk about the mother’s love, some people have difficulty looking towards their own mother. The point really is that if you have been a mother – and many of you are – I have never been a mother, as far as I know – I don’t know anything about my previous lives, but those of you who have been mothers yourselves, you know how much care and love you have for your own children. You know and for other people this is difficult to understand, even fathers. But you understand. That is the mother’s love we are talking about. Don’t look to your own mother, especially not mothers-in law. That’s a joke, but…..

1:12:16.6 Truly, it is love and compassion and it begins with yourself. If we don’t really know how to care for ourselves then it is very difficult to care for anybody else. Everything is within ourselves, nothing is external. Everything is inside, within our mind, nothing external. That is Buddha’s experience. Normally we always look out. Me inside is somehow wrapped in some kind of thick insulation or blanket, kept in there and looking out at everything and going, “me, me, me, me”, attacking, promoting and projecting.

1:13:24.6 Probably that’s what we do. Promoting me within me, by me, protecting me within me, by me, wondering how do that with myself. Once we begin to know that then we begin to know how to do that with others. Otherwise we don’t know how to help. It is very much the American style of kindness within each and every American. They will always want to help. But do you know how? We know how to reach to our check book, but that is not the only help we can give. That is probably – I can’t say the worst help but sort of mediocre help, truly speaking.

1:14:36.9 The true help is helping yourself. If you know how to help yourself you repeat the same thing for others. That is the best way to help, as far as I know, as far as Buddha’s message is concerned. That is the path to cessation what will lead you to cessation or freedom. That’s it. That is Buddhism in total, free of all cultural baggage, free of all whatever – the essence of Buddhism, even free of religion. How we think, how we handle our life, that is the best way to help ourselves.

1:15:33.9 I like to thank you, I am so sorry, it’s almost 9.30, I didn’t even know. Sorry, that’s it. I believe we are not meeting anymore this year. We are not meeting in November and December. We will be meeting again in January, on January 20.

1:16:32.5 Audience (inaudible)

1:16:32.8 Rimpoche: that indicates it changed from the original schedule. Doesn’t matter, we will meet next year some time and we will let you know when, because we don’t have a place to meet, that’s why we have to see wherever we can get a place and then accordingly we move.

1:16:51.5 End of file