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20021119GRAABWL

CD of 11-19-02

Verse 23

Even doctors eliminate illness

With unpleasant medical treatments,

So in order to overcome manifold suffering

I should be able to put up with some discomfort

Sometimes, when you are on the spiritual path, there is not the best comfort available. We know it very well. You would like to have a comfortable life, but it is not always possible. We would like to sit on soft cushions but we don’t have them here. We simply cannot afford them. We do have to put up with some discomfort. It is also not only the external conditions, but our own mental state is often not the most comfortable to us. Spiritual practice is not always done in a 5 star spiritual resort. Even if we could it wouldn’t work that well. The purpose of spiritual practice would be defeated. We do need a little purification. That will not take place if we only move from comfort to comfort. Instead we would only cash out and use up our positive karma, physically as well as mentally. So we do have to sometimes sit on cushions that are not very comfortable and stay in an environment that is not so convenient for us.

As Shantideva says here, doctors sometimes need to cut your body and take certain parts out. But we know the result will be better health. We will have more joy and comfort. There will be physical comfort and mental relaxation. So if you have a few difficulties here, try to take the best advantage of them. However, if it is too uncomfortable, then that is not very helpful. If you break your leg and have to remain in a plaster cast for 6 months or 12 months, then that is a little too much to justify this verse.

Verse 24

But the supreme physician does not employ

common medical treatment such as this.

With an extremely gentle technique

he remedies all the greatest ills.

Buddha does not recommend excessive hardship. His healing is better than anybody else’s. If you have the good karma to get Dr.Buddha to look after you, you don’t need any difficult procedures. Everything is quite magically done. However, that is very rare. There is a verse that says,

Even if the Medicine Buddha came as your personal physician and Vajrapani stood there, protecting you from all obstacles, and even if Manjushri himself were to give you the best ideas and Shakyamuni Buddha were to meditate on your behalf on love and compassion, even then if you have the karma to die, you will die.

This is true, but still, Buddha does not recommend the harsh techniques. You could interpret this to mean that Buddha does not use common medical treatment, because he can cure through miracles. In other words, Buddha is trying to eliminate the suffering of everybody, but he does not have to cut and burn. We are talking from the perspective of 2500 years ago. At that time they did have medical procedures involving cutting and burning. I don’t know how they used to cut, but in the texts it definitely it referred to it. I have no idea what kind of precautions and antiseptic methods they would have used, but it looks like they had something. Buddha has methods of curing people without going through such hardship.

On the other hand the common illnesses here referred to are the illnesses of delusions, of negative addictions, like hatred, obsession, fear. Buddha has the methods to cure these illnesses, without going through extreme hardship. In other spiritual traditions there are such hardships. Certain traditions make you do sacrifices of animals or even humans. In some eastern traditions there are sacrifices of birds. These are violent activities. Buddha does not approve of any of these things. The principle in Buddhism is non-violence. Sometimes, at a certain point in time, even Buddhist monks resort to violence, like in Vietnam where Buddhist monks burnt themselves to protest against the war. They had someone pour kerosene over them and then lit it. The purpose maybe all right, but the method is not good. One should never justify the means to achieve an end. It is a terrible way of drawing the attention of the world. It was said they sacrificed themselves voluntarily, but who knows what really happened? Some monks might have been brainwashed into giving their lives. We have seen it also on September 11. The people who flew passenger jets into the World Trade Center were definitely brainwashed by using religious reasons.

I watched TV last night and they showed Joan of Arc’s story. That is yet another example of the misuse of religion by the people in those days. It should tell us that there is no benefit to resorting to violence for any reason. It is very important not to have the end justify the means. If you do that, it gives room to people like Jim Jones and Heaven’s Gate, and it gives room to highjackers and terrorists. Many of us will say that motivation is the most important. But you could say that some of the highjackers had a good motivation. You never know. Motivation alone should not determine all our actions.

Another thing is politics. In many places violence becomes a means of politics. Here we don’t do that. We are civilized. I don’t know how civilized we are, but we are not so bad. Think of the Communists regimes around the world and of Hitler and other dictators. The moment you allow the end to justify the means there is a lot of danger that it gets out of control. You have to be very cautious about that in your life. Motivation alone should not determine all your decisions. If you give top priority to the motivation, then the danger of the end justifying the means could easily come up.

Buddha gave such a gentle medicine to cut off our sufferings, the samsaric ones in general and in particular the sufferings of the lower realms. This is done by protecting the individuals from the causes of these pains, the negative emotions and the addictions to them. Whenever I talk about my book Good Life-Good Death I say that to me a good life is one that is free from addictions to negative emotions. I don’t mean a life where you have plenty of material things. If that were the case, the rich people shouldn’t have any problems. But they do. Very often you hear that some rich person has committed suicide. This year especially, quite a few of high profile CEOs have been lined up for corruption charges. So plenty of money does not guarantee you a good life at all. Where does a good life really come in? Is a life of poverty a good life? Certainly not. If you can’t pay your bills you don’t have a good life. Some people may say, ‘Well, I don’t have anything, so there is nothing to worry about.’ That’s fine, if you live in a monastery, a cave or in the forest somewhere by yourself. Perhaps you can live on thin air. Then it is fine not to have anything. But we can’t. We have to have something. We need to pay our bills. On top of that our most important sufferings come from our burning desire to get something we think we need. On top of that we suffer continuously from fear. Traditionally, we call it obsession and attachment. We have tremendous desire for something that we can’t get. It has to be something that you can’t get. It has to be, because if you could get it quite easily you wouldn’t have that desire. You don’t want it any more.

Audience: You want it, but then you have it and don’t want it – until next time.

Rimpoche: But perhaps next time you don’t want the same thing again. You want something else. This burning desire makes us unhappy. Where does this desire come from? The next verses may have the answer. Why do negative emotions stop us from having a good life? Because they make us do negative things. They cause us to hurt ourselves or others or both. The moment you hurt a living being, it is negative. Some people say that it is not possible to figure out what is good and what is bad. They say, ‘Who knows what really is good and bad?’ To me it is clear. When you hurt somebody, it can’t be good, because you bring misery to that person’s life. Perhaps you give yourself a hard time and bring suffering to yourself. That is bad. On the other hand, helping is supposed to be good, except that not all helping really is useful. It has to be done right. Buddha’s extremely gentle technique is the method of love and compassion, of transforming negativities, of accumulating merit, of purifying wrong deeds. Buddha’s teachings are full of advice on these things. Everything is included. Certain methods are suitable for some people but not for others. Mr. A may need something that would not necessarily help Miss B. Buddha taught everything and you have to pick up what is suitable for you.

When I was young I lived in Drepung, the biggest monastery in Tibet with over 10 000 monks. Were all these monks great practitioners? No. Some were, for sure. There were great learned masters, debaters, practitioners, meditators. On the other hand there also were all kinds of other people there. In smaller retreat areas it was better. The monks there went to retreat voluntarily, and at that place, for that time period they behaved well, because they came there for a purpose. This lead to the Tibetans saying, ‘The great monasteries may be great places of learning, but the little retreat areas are much better.’ The saying goes, ‘In a great ocean you have all kinds of sea animals, big and small’. This reminded me of the great variety of Buddha’s teachings. He did this because the living beings needing them are like an ocean. So the teachings have to accommodate them and that’s why everything is there.

Most importantly, a spiritual practitioner has to cut through the addiction to the negative emotions. The moment you do that your negative emotions are gone. Then you won’t have negative actions and therefore no negative karma. Consequently you won’t have any suffering. Sufferings are the result of negative actions. The negative emotions force us to act negatively. That desire of us is driving us crazy to look for the things we cannot get. That hatred of us is driving us crazy, forcing us to have ill wish and cause destruction for those we don’t like. When we hurt someone, we will get the same thing back. If I kill you, next time you come back and kill me. Otherwise someone else is going to kill me, because I have created the karma of killing.

Not only that. If it ends there it is not that bad. I kill you, you kill me. All right. But our addictions to these actions makes us want to kill again. People who like to kill have to do more killing. Otherwise they don’t have any joy. They get a big release from killing. That is how addictions work. If you indulge in negative actions there is always this tendency to lean towards similar behavior in future. Look at people who went through alcohol addiction. They may be doing fine, but a single drop of alcohol or even just the smell can push them into the addiction again. That is because of the tendency to the addiction. You may for a time have overpowered the urge of the addiction, but it is not completely gone. It is still in your system. A drop or a smell is enough to push you back in. It is the same thing will all negative emotions. If we occasionally meditate on love and compassion, we may be able to reduce the itch of the negative emotions, but since it has not gone completely out of our system it comes back.

Verse 25

At the beginning, the Guide of the World encourages

The giving of such things as food.

Later, when accustomed to this,

One may progressively start to give away even one’s flesh.

Generosity is very important for us, but it should have wisdom in it, actually all the six paramitas. It should also have morality. Without it, your generosity has no discipline. There are two ways to look at it. First, morality on its own gives a proper context to your generosity and then, a disciplined generosity, which is the morality within the generosity. You have to think in both ways. You consider what you can give and what you shouldn’t give. This is wisdom and morality, both. For example, you cannot give an alcoholic drink to somebody who has just finished the 12 steps AA program. If you do that, it is immoral. You are hurting that person. If you do that on purpose it is done through ill-wish and evil thoughts. There needs to be patience when you give. Giving something at the wrong time won’t do any good. When the time is not right, the person may not even accept your gift. All this is nothing new, but we make mistakes all the time. We are not geniuses, so we have to learn. When you give, you have to be enthusiastic. Once you have decided it is the right thing to give at the right time to the right person, don’t wait, but push ahead. A lot of people will change their mind about giving and let doubts come up and then finally not give. Not only are you then not generous and neglected your morality, but in case you have vows, you may get a downfall for stealing. You may only have kept your own property, but at this point it becomes stealing. Look at this cup. It is by nature neither your cup nor mine cup. What makes it mine? We decide on ownership. Now, the moment I decide in my mind that this should be your cup, it has become your cup. It is no longer mine. When you then don’t give it but keep it for yourself, it is probably stealing. In order not to make mistakes here the wisdom of generosity and the enthusiasm of generosity are needed. There needs to be mindfulness, too. Otherwise you dedicate to give one thing to a certain person and then another thing to another person but end up giving the first thing to the second person and the second thing to the first person.

In short, you need all six perfections with all the other ones with every daily activity we are doing. If you do this, you will automatically become a good person, efficient, capable, somebody people will admire. You are automatically organized, you become a role model for others. These six things are really interesting tools. Though Buddha had put them together 2500 years ago, today we can use them not only in the spiritual field, but even for our daily chores.

For Bodhisattvas generosity is extremely important. Chandrakirti said,

In the beginning, when you can’t give much, Buddha recommended to share your food.

But you should not give the yellow part of the vegetables and the blue or green part of the butter or bread. It is no big deal to give away your vegetables when they are becoming dry and old. That is not generosity at all. But when you get really used to it, you get the giving addiction. Then you can even give parts of your flesh and your organs and you don’t feel bad. You don’t even feel pain. Remember the story of Aryadeva, Nagarjuna’s disciple. He gave one of his eye balls away because somebody asked for it. When these Bodhisattvas hear the sound, ‘Give me’, they experience tremendous joy. In our case, when we are very addicted to negative actions we enjoy doing them. Likewise, the opposite is true. The Bodhisattvas are so used to giving, they look so much forward to it and they are so excited that they even like to give away parts of their bodies.

When is it okay to give away parts of your body? The line is drawn on whether or not you can feel any pain. Even if you don’t feel joy, but as long as you don’t feel any pain, it is all right to give your life. For us, this is not only not recommended but even forbidden. If we do it, it is a downfall, a negativity. Chandrakirti says that when the Bodhisattvas hear the sound of people begging, their joy is even greater than what Buddhas experience in peaceful Samadhi. Alternatively think if you are addicted to something and when you smell, see or hear it, how much joy do you get? This is contaminated joy. The joy of the Bodhisattvas is uncontaminated. That is a big difference. Contaminated joy gives us trouble. It is an invitation to suffering. Uncontaminated joy is the solution to stop suffering. It is cessation of suffering. Contaminated joy increases contamination. If you are addicted to alcohol you have to drink more and more, until your body becomes almost like an alcohol bottle and even then you are not satisfied. Uncontaminated joy functions according the same lines, but it is uncontaminated. It does not bring any suffering. I can’t give you examples, because we are ordinary beings just don’t have it.

Verse 26

At such a time when my mind is developed

to the point of regarding my body like food,

then what hardship would there be

when it came to giving away my flesh?

When the Bodhisattvas are at a high level they don’t feel any pain. It is the same for them to give vegetables from their fridge as it is to give their own eyeball. If you are at that level you can give your body. Otherwise it is not permitted.

Verse 27

Having forsaken all evil there would be no suffering

and due to wisdom there would be no lack of joy;

but now my mind is afflicted by mistaken conceptions

and my body is caused harm by unwholesome deeds.

Since you are totally free of all negativities, since you don’t have any sin, you don’t have any suffering. Without negative causes there can be no negative results. Therefore there is no more suffering.

We can see that to a certain extent in ordinary people. Some people don’t get nearly as much pain as they should from particular illnesses they have. Some people suffer less under torture than others. I don’t know if that is going against the law of physics. We simply say that this is due to mind, but it is the spiritual level of the individual person. What they are going through may look very painful, but maybe they don’t have any pain. It is somewhat unusual but we can see it quite often.

Song Rimpoche, a great Tibetan teacher of the last generation, was about to die in 1983. He just said, ‘I think it is time for me to die. But I don’t want anybody say that I died through some black magic, so bring me a doctor to check me.’ Tibetan and western physicians came and they could not find anything wrong with him. Still he said, ‘It is time for me to die.’ The next day he died – just like that. Dying is not easy. It comes with a lot of pain. But not for Song Rimpoche. He left, just like that.

Also last year, Domo Geshe Rimpoche passed away. He went almost in the same way. Actually, he was ill, but he did not have any pain or difficulties. Two days before his death he talked to me and said, ‘Well, I am getting better, but one thing is funny. When I go to the bathroom it is sometimes tiring for me.’ That was all. Then two days later he suddenly died and shortly before he was still talking with people. So, because there are no negativities there is really no suffering for the individual person.

Further, this verse says, ‘Because there is wisdom there is no unhappiness.’ The lack of wisdom is what gives us all our mental agonies. People suffer from depression because they don’t have wisdom. I don’t think psychologists will buy that, but according to Shantideva it is true. He also says that if there is something to be corrected, don’t worry about it, but just go and correct. If there is nothing to be corrected, don’t worry about it. You would only create additional suffering for yourself. What is the use of that?

That’s all I would like to say today.