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CD of 4-11-02

We have been going back and forth through the seven stages of developing the bodhimind. I would like to emphasize that we should look into it very practically. When you are doing the practice, what does that mean? Does it mean saying sadhanas? That may be true, but on the other hand, we are actually talking about training ourselves. That really means gaining wisdom. Again, what does that mean? A lot of people think, ‘There is something called ‘wisdom’ and I am going to get that’. Many people also think,’Oh, the Buddhist wisdom is emptiness, so I am going to get that.’ But I am not talking about that at all.

Within the seven stages of development of the bodhimind, at each and every step you are going to get three different layers of wisdom. First, there is the wisdom following from learning. You learn, you hear the words, you get some idea. You learn what the steps are, how they hang together. For example, the subject of equanimity. Again, equanimity itself is a strange word. It is perfectly fine for those with great exposure to Buddhism. For everyone else, they won’t quite know what that is supposed to mean. Literally, it means equalizing. Anyway, the idea you get after first listening, is the first layer of wisdom.

Once you have the idea, you work around it, tear it apart, try to find out if it makes sense or not, what it is all about. Through that you get another, better level of understanding. That is the second level of wisdom.

Only then you will be able to meditate. Until then, meditating is not useful. Just sitting there, saying, ‘It is all equal’, is not going to help. You first need to establish the understanding. Then you can use that as a focal point for your meditation. Then you get the wisdom that follows meditation. You have to get these three layers of wisdom.

The first point is equanimity. What are we equalizing? The good guys and the bad guys? Why do we need equanimity? We do need it, because our perception of the people is such that we don’t see them as equal at all. Some of them we perceive as friends, close, near. We care for them, we love them. We say, ‘I would die for you’. Then, about other people we say, ‘I hate you, you are not a good person’. We like to label them as brutal dictators. The way we perceive those people is very different. There is a big division into black and white.

In normal life that is the reality. That is how it works. But here, if you want to develop love and compassion, it won’t work. This is because we try to gain Great Compassion. This is the compassion that looks at each sentient being as one of the nearest and dearest persons you ever had. And this won’t work, if your perception of the individual people is not equal.

In a lo jong teaching two years ago I mentioned four different layers of equanimity, each deeper than the previous. We say all the time, May all beings be happy, may they be free from suffering, may they find the joy that has never known suffering, may they be free from attachment and hatred. The level of equanimity at that point and the level of equanimity at the seven-stage development of the bodhimind is different, although it is the same word describing them.

If you look from the point of view of each individual, they are wishing for joy and happiness. We wish them that they may get whatever they wish for. That is the bare bones level one equanimity.

On this level we are going further. Also from my point of view I should be able to treat and cherish everybody equally. Is that possible? Yes, it is, but it is not easy to do. There are some people I would rather meet in a back alley in the dark. Some people I would like to see nicely in my bedroom. Then there are a lot of people I would like to meet in my living room. You can see the different layers there. I have to change that. From the society’s point of view, the idea of equanimity is not that much valued. Can you imagine, if you have conservative parents, telling them, ‘I would like to see all our friends and enemies as equal’? Your parents would hit the ceiling. That is what society is like. It is not only the conservative parents, the liberal ones will do the same thing. You have to see where society clashes with certain spiritual points of view. Perhaps this is one of them.

If you think of functioning in this society and try to apply this idea of equalizing everybody, you will see how it differs. We have chosen to follow certain spiritual paths, but at every point questions like these will rise again and again. It is not for me answer them, but for you to see how you can handle them. Let’s presume we are going on in the direction we have already chosen. Then you have to work with yourself. You will see why you have such a difference of black and white among the people. Some are close to you, some are distant, some you love, some you hate. Why is that?

You may come up with some very valid reasons. You will say, ‘I don’t like that person because he slapped me in public’, or ‘He does not respect me’. Respect is a really important issue. ‘He looked down on me’, ‘He insulted me, calling me a brutal dictator’.

On the other side, you have some people where you think, ‘I like this person, because he likes me. I find him cute’. There are zillions of different reasons you find.

Then you have to work with yourself. Look at all these reasons and check if they are really valid. If we think that these are valid and real, we are overlooking certain points, especially impermanence. There is change in relationships. There are people who may have thought that you are terrible and may even have insulted you, and next time they realize that you are great. Now they may respect you and even give you gifts. That may change over the years. Last year somebody might have treated you well, giving you presents and so on, and this year, it is completely different. If somebody has insulted me this year or last year, it is the same action. And if someone has changed their mind and is treating me better, that could even change back next year. From this angle it is very questionable to make a solid decision about whether someone is a good person or a bad person. We may have valid reasons to feel a certain way about someone, but that may cause us to overlook many other important points. Looking at the impermanent aspect will shake up our fixed idea of enemy and friend. Such a black and white view might not exist. It is changing. When we can’t see that, our consideration is limited. It is like when we haven’t got all the information we can’t make an informed decision. Similarly here: we are rushing for judgment without having the full perspective. When you have a bigger view you can never make a judgment calling someone an enemy. Just watch the relationship between Iraq and Iran. How many years have they been fighting wars against each other? And now they are getting together. So the label we put on a relationship is not necessarily correct.

Secondly, we don’t have equanimity because we don’t respect some people. Some people we don’t respect at all and some we respect greatly.

Remember, the whole idea of developing equanimity is to develop Great Compassion and Great Love. Not just affectionate love, but real love. Traditional teachings will give this example: If you want to do a painting, you need a smooth surface to paint on. Without that you won’t be able to paint a nice picture. The beautiful painting you want to draw is Great Compassion. In order to get that you need the smooth mind of equanimity, not only wishing all beings to be equal, but we should try to perceive everybody equally. It is difficult and you have to work on it, but at the end of the process you will see a big difference in your perception. Work with your mind. Ask yourself why you are seeing all these differences. See if there are any valid reasons for perceiving this way. It is very important to be true to yourself in this process. If you are not, you will never be able to do this. You have to give true arguments and counter-arguments to yourself and then judge which argument is correct and which is wrong. Then you draw the conclusion. Then you can meditate on this conclusion. This meditation then will be shamata meditation, a focusing meditation. By doing this single-pointed meditation, what you have established as conclusion becomes part of your daily life.

Every spiritual development has to be made part of your daily life. It has to become a habit. It may be a wrong way of putting it, but you could say you have to become addicted to it! That addiction will make you automatically work in that direction. This type of positive addiction is actually what we call ‘experience’. I don’t think there is something more than that when we talk about gaining experience. Gaining realizations is still more, but gaining experience on a subject is actually getting addicted in a positive way. That is how we gain our spiritual development. There is no such thing called spiritual development with horns, saying, ‘Here I am’ and gets into you. It doesn’t work that way. Nor will the Buddhas come down, get within us and say, ‘Now you are the same as I’. That is why it is said,

The Buddhas cannot wash our negativities with water, they cannot remove our sufferings by hand, they cannot transfer their spiritual development

It is not like the American Express. You cannot transfer. When you are positively addicted you are gaining the points. After getting rid of negative addictions you replace them with positive addictions. Using the word ‘Addictions’ sounds a bit dark, but it gives you the message, right?

How can you get addicted? By experiencing something. Let’s say you smoke a cigarette. You don’t get addicted by smoking one. You try two and you are still not addicted. But you go on, keep others company who smoke, and you think it is cool and fashionable and in this way you reach the point where you need to smoke and if you don’t get any cigarettes you get all kinds of reactions, restlessness, and so on.

Here you do the same thing in a positive way. You keep thinking and analyzing until you reach a conclusion and then you focus on that. Through that it will become an unshakable conviction. That means, whoever comes and tells you, ‘Don’t be silly, an enemy remains an enemy, friends are friends, what’s the matter with you?’ you won’t buy it. You know that it is the way society functions and you have to behave according to that, but your deeper understanding is different. You learn to superimpose your own understanding on top of the society’s way of functioning, yet you don’t behave like a white crow. If all the crows are black, you shouldn’t be the only white one. If you become a white crow, then instead of getting development you become cuckoo! That is where you should draw the line.

Some years ago, the hippies wanted to create a new reality and completely ignore the society’s way of functioning. They wanted to be spiritual. They said, ‘I don’t care if I am dirty, that does make me internally dirty. If I don’t wash my hair, that doesn’t make me internally impure.’ In one way some people might think that is okay, but on the whole, if you think and behave like that, you have ignored the society’s norms. If you cannot put your way of functioning and the society’s way of functioning together, you become a hippy.

You have to have a better understanding of friends and enemies. It is not black and white. Not only is there gray, but the black can become white and the white can become black. As a matter of fact, if there is no friend there will be no enemy. Every enemy becomes an enemy for a reason. You have been too friendly. The most terrible enemies are the former friends. Remember the dealings between Firestone Tyres and Ford. For a hundred years they cooperated and were very close and then suddenly it all blew apart. If they weren’t friendly before, they couldn’t be such great enemies now. Some of those bad divorce cases are the same. One tries to get the other one. Mostly men try to get the advantage over the women.

Making such a big distinction between enemies and friends is not a good thing – in my own perception. In society it is different. To a certain degree you have to go along with society. You can’t help it. Look at the war against terrorism that is waged right now. Many of us will not agree with the bombardments in Afghanistan. But when society is moving you have to move along with it. You know it is not right, but you have to keep quiet, because the time is not right to say something. So sometimes your own understanding and that of the society does not tally together. So you keep your understanding and work along with it. Chandrakirti said,

Do not ignore the relative truth and the view of society

One other important reason for the validity of equanimity is the change in life. When I say ‘change in life’ I am not talking about menopause. I am talking about reincarnation. We go from life to life and each life is very different.

There is an incarnate lama called Kunga Lama. His third incarnation sometimes comes round here with the Gyutö or Loseling monks. His previous incarnation was a masiddha-type of person. Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche had great respect for him and he did save Kyabje Rimpoche’s life a number of times through his magical powers. This famous Kunga lama had a funny life. He used to wear robes but he may not have been a monk. His way of life was just like the Chinese warlords. Nobody would see him praying or meditating. His interest was in guns. He had always 30 or 50 or even 100 people around him, all carrying guns and he used to fight a lot of wars with the local war lords. He had an extraordinary gift. It was really wonderful. He was able to remove certain pills from a rock! He put his hand in, open up the stone and found these pills inside. There were always five or six pills in there. He used to give them to people and they never finished. Next time there was just as many in there. A number of people have been protected from bullets by these pills. They became bullet-proof! That is why he had so many people fighting with him. They knew they couldn’t be killed. These pills also cured some people from chronic illnesses, which they could not recover from before.

When Kunga Lama was first trying to find this stone with the pills inside, he did a lot of protector prayers and rituals and then he assembled 100 people and made them shoot their guns in the air. Suddenly a bird appeared in the sky and he knew that he had to follow the bird. Wherever the bird landed, that is where he would find that stone. The bird did indeed land – in the backyard of his most important enemy!

So Kunga lama couldn’t get there. He had to fight another war with this local warlord and somehow he managed to get the stone. After Kunga Lama passed away, the last stone he opened had a couple of pills left. I got one of them in Tibet. He had collected more boxes of these stones, but no one else was able to open them. And that was the end of it.

When Kunga Lama passed away, his reincarnation was born as the son of his most important enemy. That was the funniest thing. It happens like that. For a while the two groups did not know how to react, but then they settled all their differences and became one. He probably chose to reborn there purposely.

These kinds of changes take place from life to life. Therefore, today’s enemy is not necessarily tomorrow’s enemy. Your enemy’s place can be your home tomorrow. So much for good guys and bad guys. You have to watch that very carefully. We shouldn’t make quick judgments. Even if we do as part of society, in our own true perception, we shouldn’t do that. What we have to work on is the hatred towards our enemies, obsession towards our friends and the ‘could not care less’ attitude towards those who we don’t know. Somehow we have to label them together. If we could do that, we can establish the basis we need for the seven-stage development of the bodhimind.

Tsong Khapa’s first disciple, Gyaltsab Rimpoche, has said,

Equanimity is like the ground. Love is like moisture, compassion is like the seed. Then you may be able to grow the tree of bodhimind. From that you get the fruits of Buddhahood.

Equanimity is the ground or soil. Into that soil you may be able to put the seed of compassion. This will only grow if you can bring in moisture and heat. Love and is that moisture. Bodhimind, the mind of the Bodhisattvas, is the tree and Buddhahood is the fruit. This verse shows you how the Bodhisattva path really works. According to Tsong Khapa, anything short of recognizing all beings as mother beings is ‘unacceptable in ordinary society’. For us, even equanimity is very difficult to accept.

We have to go quite detailedly into this now. We have been going back and forth over it three times. Now we want to go more in detail so that you can think about it, analyze, visualize and argue with yourself and draw conclusions. Don’t leave it at a superficial level. If you do, you will never get any development. That would only be the level of the first wisdom. The second and third wisdom must also be there at each and every point. It does not matter, if we talk about Odyssey to Freedom or Lam rim, you always need these three points. Your viewpoint may not necessarily be objective, especially since you are influenced by your own experience. Actually, you are very scientific. But according to the society, you are not being objective. Being objective means you can’t get yourself involved in the subject you are investigating. You can only talk about it and analyze and present it that way. But the truth is when you really find the truth you will necessarily be biased. After all you have just experienced it! So, every instance of being biased is not necessarily bad, especially in the spiritual field. You have to look from a different angle. From society’s point of view you need to be objective. Actually, finding the truth is very scientific, but it may not be objective. That is my feeling. You may not be objective from the liberal arts point of view.

Audience1: We are doing the prayers in order to liberate all beings from suffering. On the other hand we always hear that we can only liberate ourselves. So what are we trying to do then?

Rimpoche: We are trying to overcome narrow selfish interest. From the philosophical point of view you have to say that Buddhahood has no limitations. There are no limits to knowledge and capability. We have to say that. There is definitely no limit to the Buddha’s knowledge. The Buddhas know everything, not only in the present or the past, but even in the future. But from the point of view of liberating other beings, there is a limit. If the Buddhas had total capacity, why haven’t they liberated us? We are still stuck here. The answer is: Yes, Buddhas could have liberated us, but we did not give them the opportunity to do so. They have the hook of compassion, but we did not provide the noose where the hook can go into. To liberate me takes two persons, Buddha and myself. I have limitations. That is why the Buddhas have not liberated me. Either I did not cooperate or the time was not right, or the conditions were not right or my ignorance was too great. If the job could be done just by the Buddhas, without anybody else being involved, there is no limitation to what they can do. But when I am involved there are limitations and the limitations comes from within me. That is why it is said that the Buddhas cannot wash our negativities away with water, take away our pains and transfer their spiritual development to us. If you see that as limitation, it is true. There is this limitation.

Audience2: I can’t help feeling differently about different people. It is impossible to feel neutral about them.

Rimpoche: I don’t think neutralizing is so much the issue. It is gaining respect equally for people that we have to develop. One of my teachers had a disciple, a business man. When I was still in Tibet, as a kid, he would come and talk to me in the afternoon. That was a good excuse for me to have a break in my studies. We used to talk about the Chinese communists and how they were trying to equalize everybody. He said, ‘Rimpoche, I don’t think the Chinese are going to equalize the people like the earlier Tibetan kings had tried in our history. The old kings tried to make the have-nots have equally much as the haves. The Chinese are going to bring those who have down the equal level to those who have not.’ That stuck in my head since I was a kid. Later it turned out to be true. The idea of equanimity really is to have equal respect.

I am going to stop here for tonight.