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20010703GRAABWL

CD of 7-3-01

As we have said before, in this chapter on patience, we are not talking about patience as just simple endurance, but the patience that is capable of holding the individual back from indulging in negative actions, which then creates negative karma.

Last Thursday I was in New York in our Jewel Heart chapter. The Thursday night talks and the Tuesday night talks are both available on the web site broadcast now. Friday, Saturday and Sunday I attended a conference organized by Tricycle Magazine. It was called ‘Practice – Does it make a difference?’ I had to give a keynote address. My subject to talk was about ethics. Actually it was called ‘update of ethics’. I was not the only one to give a keynote address. Stephen Batchelor and Sharon Salzberg were there and Joseph Goldstein and Sogyal Rinpoche gave keynote addresses at the conclusion. My turn was on Saturday night. After that, Philip Glass had two concerts. One was with the monks from Gomang. They did a nice job. The second concert was with some Moroccan singers and dancers and they did a very good job too. I had to participate at nearly every session of the conference. Everything was either about the guru, whether a guru is necessary or not, what a guru is and what not and the other question was that of ethics. These questions kept chasing and haunting me everywhere at the conference for 72 hours. Helen Torkov, the editor, did the report afterwards and everyone seemed to have been concerned with the guru issue. Isn’t that funny?

I was on a panel with one lady Buddhist teacher, a nice woman, and then Norman Fisher, the former Zen abbot from San Francisco. There were three of us on that panel. The woman kept on talking and talking. I kept quiet, unless I was asked. Suddenly that lady said, ‘We are all Buddhas. I am Buddha, you are Buddha, we are all Buddhas.’ She kept on talking like that in her nice, polished language. I thought for a little while and decided that I should keep quiet. But then I suddenly remembered that there had been something that came up during one of our Jewel Heart board meetings, something that I never agreed to. Some board members later said, ‘But you agreed.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t say anything, but that does not mean that I agreed.’ Then they said, ‘You did agree, because we talked about it and you didn’t object.’ That thought came up in my mind, while I was listening to that lady. So I thought, ‘I better say something, otherwise the next day somebody will say that Gelek Rinpoche agreed.’ So I then said, ‘It is great what the lady has said but I can’t accept that we are all Buddhas. Otherwise, what are we struggling here for? We shouldn’t be here. Buddhas are in an all-knowing, all awakened state. Why are you here?’ Normally, I would not have said anything, but here in America, if you don’t say anything, people think that you have agreed. So I have to open my mouth and say that I don’t agree with this.’ This was very uneasy for me. The way I was brought up is that I would keep my mouth shut. That did not mean that I agreed. That lady used the reasoning that, since we all have Buddha nature, we are all Buddhas.

That reminded me of the time in 1984, when I visited Dexter. We were watching TV and there was a bunch of people there, insisting that they were all God. Then the TV interviewer said, ‘If you are God, tell me what I have in my bag!’ And then the guy said, ‘But you are not supposed to ask that way.’ So this statement at the panel reminded me of that scene on TV.

Anyway, it was a wonderful thing to see people from so many different traditions together, whether they agreed or disagreed. I should say that Tricycle did a great job. So ethics and the question of the guru was the biggest concern that everybody had. Most of those Buddhist teachers there were somehow very interested in Tibetan Buddhism, even those people who are teaching Vipassana and Zen. All of them were talking about Tibetan Buddhism.

Many were talking about Dzog Chen. I saw somebody carrying a book about Dzog Chen. Somehow they were presenting it as if Dzog Chen was the ultimate of Tibetan Buddhism. It is not appropriate for me to say that this is not the case, but I found it very odd. If you really look into Dzog Chen properly….Actually the reason why they think that Dzog Chen is the ultimate is, because it talks about the mind. I don’t know anything about Dzog Chen, actually, except for reading a couple of books. But ultimately, Dzog Chen will tell you that when you encounter your primordial mind you are liberated or you have encountered emptiness. But everybody who dies encounters their primordial mind. Every human being that dies would have to be liberated. If that were so, then the next time when you take rebirth, there would have to be a fall back. It is a big issue. The polite way to deal with it is to keep quiet. On the other hand, if you keep quiet completely, you would be participating in misleading a tremendous amount of people. Here, in this place, it is also hard for me to say something, but most people here are looking at me for guidance, so I may have to say that with very heavy heart. You can’t just say that Dzog Chen alone is the ultimate thing in Tibetan Buddhism. Of course, it is going to take five or ten years and then people will find that it is all the same thing and that is nothing extra there. But to think that it is the ultimate may not be true.

The real emptiness, the real wisdom, is extremely difficult to understand and encounter. I think Einstein has contributed tremendously to that understanding, particularly in the context of the western mind. His theory of relativity really uplifts the understanding of emptiness. Also computers have helped us tremendously. You can see how much you can accommodate in a tiny, little place. How much information can you store there! These things are talking to us about emptiness and wisdom. Otherwise, before computers, persons like me had it difficult to talk to westerners about emptiness. And that is although, without wanting to blow my own horn, I am supposed to be one the best people to talk about it in the context of western culture and with manageable, if broken English. Before computers it was hard to talk to you that in one little place you can have so many things, and one thing will not block the other ones, you can keep it there and see it. In one tiny, little place, there can be another huge universe. Before computers, if I said that, people probably would have looked at me and said, ‘He is crazy, right?’ But now the computers give us the opportunity. The windows software shows you how you can store everything there. There is all the information in the form of language, sound or even pictures. It can all be stored. And that gives us an opportunity to say, ‘Emptiness is like that! One does not block the other one, it can all be accommodated.’ Earlier Tibetan masters would say,

When you can accept emptiness, you can accept everything. If you cannot accept emptiness, you cannot accept everything.

In my upcoming book I made a big statement. Some of my friends over here thought that it was too big a statement. I am saying in there,

If you can find the end of the Russian doll, then you have found true, inherent existence

and then you will have refuted emptiness.

I am of course thinking that it is impossible to find the end of the Russian doll. Stephen Hawking, in a way, has also tremendously contributed to the understanding of emptiness. He is actually not working for Buddhism. He is not trying to prove Buddhist ideas. But in his own research it is being proven all the way through that there is not end – although he still thinks that one day we will be able to find the end of the Russian doll. If there were an end to the Russian doll, there would have to be something static, permanent, undividable – ‘the end’. If you have found that, you have found intrinsic existence. If you can find intrinsic existence you can find a permanent human being. This, however, is not possible at all. We are all in the nature of impermanence. It is not going to work that way at all. So I put that big statement into my book. This is my understanding. If I am proven to be wrong, then so what? I am wrong. Why can’t I be wrong? Everybody can be wrong. I can definitely say that I am wrong, that I don’t understand. For sure, why not? I am not claiming to be Buddha. Actually, I am making the claim that I am not Buddha. So I can be wrong. However, that is the statement I made. So the real point of emptiness is in all that.

However, tonight our subject is neither emptiness nor Dzog Chen. We stopped last time at verse 73 of Chapter 6.

Verse 73

If I am unable to endure

Even the mere sufferings of the present,

Then why do I not restrain myself from being angry,

Which will be the source of hellish misery?

As a matter of fact, I saw Stephen Batchelor at the Tricycle conference and told him that we are making use of his translation of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara. I told him that we are only making a couple of changes, not much. He said that he himself had made a lot of updates of that already and that there was always room for improvement. So that made it easier to talk to him.

Tsong Khapa’s praise for Buddha on the basis of emptiness, that is a very good one. (tib: ten drel töpa There is a new translation available from Wisdom Publications. There were a lot of shops at this conference. I walked by and so many people gave me all these books. I had to buy a bag to carry all of them. A Tibetan woman that I tried to buy this bag from recognized me from Dehli, so she gave me that bag too! I couldn’t spend any money. I was collecting books and then also the bag to put the books in. I really liked this translation of Tsong khapa’s praise of Buddha. During my keynote address I quoted the first line from it. Reading through it, the first verse was translated perfectly. Then in the second verse it says, ‘The conqueror of dependent arising’. I mean, it is the exact translation from the Tibetan. But really, you can’t say that. So when I was up there, going into the text, I just said, ‘Oh Great Buddha, who shared the dependent arising with us’, or something like that. I had to do that on the spot. I did not have time to read it before. But I was very happy to have that dependent arising – oriented praise to Buddha, because that way we can understand emptiness much better. It is available in English. I will bring it next time. It is very nice.

I think it is a little important for us to pay a little attention to the wisdom part. For many years we did not. But we should do a little more. I wanted to share that with you.

Anyway, this Shantideva verse says that the little suffering in our life that we experience now, we find difficult to endure. If we have difficulty enduring a little, man-made suffering, no matter how severe that may seem, that is nothing compared to the karmically made sufferings. Honestly speaking, that is true. Ninety per cent of the sufferings that we go through, particularly the emotional sufferings, are man-made sufferings. I mean, they are also karmic, no doubt. But I call it man-made, because we somehow create this suffering and we do not know how to accept it, how to perceive this. The biggest problem we are having is the perception. It is not the appearance.

There is a quote. The great Mahasiddha Tilopa told Naropa, his disciple,

Appearance is not going to tie you down. But perception will tie you down. Let the

perception go.

When you always say, ‘Let it go, let go’, it means to let the perception go. The appearance of suffering, dissatisfaction, regret, jealousy, or whatever – our mind is such a thing that the varieties of sufferings that appear to us are countless. The point is that while for you it is a huge deal, for me it probably does not mean anything. If it is nothing for you, it could be a huge deal for me. You know why? It is all because of our mind. I am not telling you that your pain is just made by your mind and is not reality. I am not saying that. Your pain is real, whether it is back pain, butt pain or heart pain or mental or emotional pain. It is real, real, real. However, it is intensified, made bigger, more powerful, harder to take it – and that is through the perception. Physical pain is different. I am talking about mental pain.

Many of you went through with this mental pain and came out beautifully. Some we lost. Most came out beautifully. Some are going through it presently very, very heavy. It is true. We all will go through, everyone of us – if we have not gone through yet. At the end of the day we will know whether you made it or lost it. And many of you have come out beautifully. Some are still going through. Many will go through later. What makes the difference is the perception, not the appearance. Remember Tilopa’s words to Naropa.

I have also given you the example of Nick telling me that the backyard of my apartment in New York that was very industrial. There are giant air-condition plants. When I started looking at them, I counted seven or eight. So after that, when I was going to sleep at night, I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, I am in the middle of all these air-conditioning plants, I can’t even breathe.’ I got a problem of breathing. That is called phobia, right? Then I tried to change my thoughts. I told myself, ‘Well, this is not a giant, industrial air condition unit, but a flower garden full of lotuses.’ Then I could go to sleep. That is how the perception can make a difference over the appearance. Yes, pain is there, suffering is there. But your mind can make it much bigger than it is. It can do that. I am not telling you that you are making it up in your mind. But the way you perceive it makes a hell of a difference. So, please try.

I remember, a few years ago, one of our friends got a speeding ticket from the police. She was driving up the ramp onto a highway and somebody booked her for speeding. She got very upset. She was thinking, ‘I have got a ticket now. My insurance is going to go up, this is going to happen, that is going to happen’, etc. Thinking like that made her very upset. I told her, ‘Just cool down, it has not gone up yet.’ And she said, ‘But it is going to go up for sure.’ In the end it didn’t even go up at all. Somehow the police might have forgotten to inform the insurance company.

Aud: The case was dismissed.

Rinpoche: That’s what it was. Thank you. So it was very hard for her at the time. She thought her insurance and her bills were going to go up, the income was going to go down. It seemed to be a huge problem. I am suggesting to you all, ‘Bite what you can chew. Don’t bite something that you cannot chew.’ Well, it may catch you one day. In that case, take it day by day, take it easy. It is the perception that makes the difference, not the appearance. This was first taught 2500 years ago and this is how the mahasiddhas have explained it and it is true and relevant today. In one way it is your western education. You are taught to see everything and plan everything before you make a move. You have to know exactly where you are going. This is part of your education. It is not your fault.

I remember somebody was going to do a retreat and tried to calculate how many mantras could be said within one hour and from there find out how long it was going to take to complete the retreat. It all turned out different. The calculations were scientific, but it did not work that way. So again, perception makes a difference.

Lets look at verse 73 again:

If I am unable to endure

Even the mere sufferings of the present

This is not saying that the present suffering is not suffering, however it is purposely trying to impress on you that it is just ‘mere’ suffering. Even if it is huge, Shantideva is trying to make it into a tiny, little thing. It is barely there. This is done for two reasons. Firstly it is done in order to reduce the present suffering. Secondly, compared to the misery that you experience in the hell realms it is insignificant. It is good to look at the bigger picture. I am always telling you: when you begin to accept reincarnation, and further, when you begin to focus on reincarnation, your perspective of life will change tremendously. It will open up. You will have a panoramic view - from previous lives way into the future lives. Everything that is happening here is only a melodrama of this particular life. It is not that big a deal. Even death is a natural process of change, not a big deal. But for us, it is so hard to think about death. When we think, ‘Oh, my God, I am going to die’, we are going to hit the ceiling. The moment we associate our name with dying, we hit the ceiling. But if you have the view of reincarnation, you can think, ‘Yes, I will die today, but I will be back tomorrow.’ How about that? Isn’t that wonderful? But transfer all your assets to somebody who is promising to give them back to you tomorrow! [laughs].

Remember the movie ‘All of me’. There is a rich lady who has agreed with the man who has been looking after her horse that he could use her body and she transferred all her assets to him or rather ‘her’. And then that lady did not let her use her assets. There was an Indian saddhu, who made her consciousness go into a jar of water. From there it went into a flower and so on. You know it is a movie. All these entertaining movements have to be done in there. So in essence, what I want to say with that is: Don’t transfer all your assets yet. The point I am trying to make is that accepting reincarnation is going to give you a panoramic view of life. All your temporary happiness and misery of this life, and even death, is not a big deal. It really isn’t. After a little while, this body of ours can no longer function. It becomes unserviceable. You are going to have to change. That is what is going to happen. It is as the great master Longdöl Lama said,

The old man’s body in the morning will become the body of a young god in the afternoon.

That means small g god, a god in the god realm. If you adopt that perspective, you are going to have a lot less suffering. One of the ways to reduce our pain in the moment is how we perceive our pain. This is so important. That is why Shantideva emphasizes that the suffering we have is just ‘mere suffering of the present’. It is if there is some little thing stuck in your hand that you can easily wash it off.

Then why do I not restrain myself from being angry,

Which will be the source of hellish misery?

‘Restrain’ is a very powerful word. I would say: hold back, use patience. Restraint is maybe not the best word. After all, most of you come from either a Catholic or in any case, Judaeo-Christian background. So this is really talking about patience. Don’t allow yourself to get angry. Protect yourself from anger. Try to block the anger. Put in some efforts. Divert your attention. Don’t submit to anger. If you submit, anger can become hatred and you have a big problem. If you get into a hell realm and compare the suffering, the suffering we have here is really nothing. It is like walking into some dog poo. It is just mere pain. You can bear it.

Is it is true that hell realms exist? I am afraid they do. Not only Buddhists, but every tradition, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc, all talk about the hell. All of them can’t be liars. So I am afraid it is true. If that is true, then the sufferings in the hells are true as well. In that case, the lightest sufferings - for example in the hot hells - is that your body is chopped into pieces one hundred times a day. You die one hundred times a day. You get killed over and over again and then you get revived. It is like when you are cutting a snake’s tail off and it can join back on. It is like that. Your body is cut, you suffer and die and then you wake up again, only to fight and die and wake up again and again. And that is the lightest suffering available in that hell! In comparison to that, the things we are going through here are nothing. We haven’t died yet. It is not that bad - unless you kill yourself or unless, when you are crazy, you kill your own children or something. That is what this woman in Texas did. She killed her five children. But then she must have gone crazy. Otherwise no mother will kill her own children. That can happen, when you don’t know how to accept suffering and don’t understand your mental, physical and emotional pain. It can lead you to do that. Then you are going completely crazy, insane. If you are sane, you cannot kill a child, let alone five. You have got to be crazy, particularly if you are the mother. This is real pain. But if you know how to perceive and if you know how to get help, that does not have to happen. There is help. There is medical intervention. There are psychologists around. There are medicines available. And there is a way of understanding. You have to put everything together and that is what is meant by perception, rather than appearance. If you are not careful with the perception, you will exaggerate it and it becomes like that.

That is why Buddha and Shantideva try to make our suffering into ‘mere’ suffering. They are trying to make it so small, so irrelevant. It is not that our suffering is irrelevant, but they are trying to impress on us that our suffering can be made small. It all depends on how we perceive. If we cannot manage our mind alone, we can get help from a psychiatrist or medication. There is nothing wrong with medicine if it helps you. Sometimes the medicine may make you dependent. But even if that is the case, it is better than going crazy, right?

With perceiving pain and suffering you have to build your own internal strength. If you are weak in challenging the pain, it seems to be huge. When I was a kid I thought that everybody was a huge giant. I guess everybody thinks that when they are a child. Then, when you see the same people twenty years later they are not that big. They are just our own size or even smaller. So when we are weak, the pain appears to be huge, a giant monster. When we are strong and when we know how to perceive, it is like it is called in Jiddish ‘a little schmasch’. Is the pain different? No. But the perception is different. So get all the help you can get. There is a lot of help available. Take all of it. If there are pills available, and if the doctor thinks they are right for you, take them. Don’t hesitate. Just don’t take them because somebody gives them to you and you want to try something out. I did that a number of times. With my Tibetan background I did say a number of times, ‘Okay, let me try one of your pills.’ But you never know what is going to happen then.

What we do is we exaggerate everything tremendously. We exaggerate the joy and we exaggerate the pain. It is in our mind. We don’t do it consciously. It just happens that way. The buildings I remember from Tibet seemed to be so huge. Now, when I see pictures, they are tiny. Again, it is a matter of perception. For me, they appeared to be huge for sixty years. Now, on the pictures, they are not that big.

So compare the human suffering to that of the hells. There are eighteen different hells. If you think about that, each of them is tremendously painful and in comparison, what we have here, is nothing. Remember, the verse above said:

Why is a man condemned to death not fortunate

If he is released after having his hand cut off?

That is exactly the same thing. These negativities we are experiencing were supposed to be hell realm sufferings but they are experienced now as ‘mere’, small, manageable emotional pains. If you can substitute them in this way, how happy should you be! These kinds of suffering come and go. But we have the advantage now of making best use of them. Many of you had the tong len and lo jong teachings. That is how you can take advantage of these difficult situations. You have to experience the pain anyway. It is not going to go away until the time comes where it is finished. And rather than suffering for no purpose, if you could make best use of them by using the lo jong steps, then why not? That is what Shantideva is telling us here. He is saying, ‘We can’t handle our little sufferings now, then, if we get bigger ones, how can we take that? I better avoid the cause of such sufferings’. In this case the causes are anger and hatred.

The commentary I am reading, quotes the great Indian teacher Chandrakirti. He says that most of the emotional pains we have are unexpected pains. They are man-made pains. It is not original karma, but something has been added up. Of course it is also karma. And that is why these unexpected pains are very good to get rid of negative karma. We can make use of them for purification purposes. It may be better than making mandala offerings, Vajrasattva recitations, prostrations and so on. Say to yourself, ‘This may be able to help me clear all my negativities’. And you can do better than that: ‘This may substitute for any other person, so that they do not have to go through this suffering. I pray to the Supreme Field of Merit, ‘May my pain may substitute for the pain of all others. May my pain be increased even more, so that I may be more helpful, substituting for more people.’ This is what you think if you are brave. If you are not that brave, think that whatever pain you have may be able to substitute for the pain of all others. If you are brave, pray for more pain. But I guarantee you, you are not going to get more. However, you are going to build tremendous merit. There is a tremendous opportunity here to build better merit, to become better and to cut your pain down. Having said that, if you just think, ‘in reality I am just doing this to cut my pain down’, then it doesn’t work. You are defeating the purpose. One thing you can think is this: ‘I have to go through this now. May this substitute my going to the hell realms in future lives. I pray that it may work this way.’ Or you can pray, ‘May this pain substitute for me becoming a cripple when I am 80 or 90 years old.’ This is substituting for your own future pains. Then further you can think, ‘May this also substitute for the pain of So and So and So and So and all other beings. May be I have a little more of this, so that I can substitute for many more people.’

That is the beauty of the Bodhisattva’s way of thinking. So if I am having a headache, I will be happy to take aspirin, but at the same time I pray the same thing. So that does not prevent me from taking aspirin.

A lot of people may think, ‘I can’t take medicine.’ I have a friend in Malaysia who thought that, since her suffering was a karmic consequence, she should just bear it and not take medicine. She was thinking, ‘If I take medicine, I cut my suffering short, so then my karma will not be finished.’ That is a wrong way of thinking. She may be listening now, so I can’t say it is foolish. But it is definitely the wrong way of thinking. Yes, you can use the opportunity to make use of your suffering, but on the other hand, if you can get rid of it quicker, then why suffer an extra minute? While you are suffering, make the best use of it. Even ask for more. But you are not going to get more through that. However, the mental power to be able to take more will make a big difference. It purifies negativity. It builds merit. That is the best way to handle unfortunate incidences, mishaps, etc.

Well, I haven’t gone through much today. One more thing: Lochö Rinpoche is coming to visit. He is one of my teachers, my childhood teacher. And now he is probably the best Gelugpa lama available – in India at least, beside his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. He came once or twice to America. He was here for one of our summer retreats where he gave Yamantaka initiation. He is coming now, having been invited by the New Jersey Learning Center. Then Professor Thurman, who went to India and spoke to him. He told me, ‘Lochö Rinpoche is coming to your place to rest for five days.’ So I thought, when he comes, his rest is very important, but I also thought it would be nice if he could give the Guhyasamaja initiation. I myself have not done my own Guhyasamaja retreat, so I could not even give it, even if I wanted to. It is not an easy retreat to do, you can’t do it in a few days or weeks. It is going to take some more time. So I have been unable to do the Guhyasamaja initiation. A number of people wanted the Guhyasamaja initiation. It is a very important one. It is one of the three important yidams of Tsong Khapa. These are Guhyasamaja, Yamantaka and Heruka . Most of you in the Vajrayana group have Yamantaka, Heruka and Guhyasamaja. I had asked Bakula Rinpoche to give it years ago, but he said he would prefer to do Yamantaka. Then I asked Rilbur Rinpoche, but he wanted to do Heruka. Now I am hoping that Lochö Rinpoche will do it. I called India and talked to his brother. He confirmed that he planned a visit to us in right from the beginning. So he likes to be here. I told his brother, ‘Well, it is great that he comes to rest here, but I am going to ask him for the Guhyasamaja initiation.’ He started laughing and then I quickly hung up the phone, giving him no opportunity to say no. So we are planning it in this way.

Those who are qualified to take this initiation are people who have done the lam rim teaching, or have done 100 000 migtsemas or have done a complete teaching of the Three Principles, or the Foundation of Perfection, or have done a summer retreat last year or the year before. This is the opportunity. We are also only making this available to Jewel Heart members. I am also hoping that Lochö Rinpoche will do a public teaching here on the Thursday night. If he does it is going to be made available on the website as well.