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Odyssey to freedom 3, 2002 SummerRetreat

Chants to 20:12. Good afternoon. We will continue where we have left this morning. That book marker. Can anyone have it? Thank you. We talked about position of the body mind and envisioning supreme field right? Envision supreme field. I might as well talk with you about the two things together, outer and inner or externally, internally. Externally you are arranging altar. Arranging altar is something usually they do in Buddhist traditions and many others, Hindu as well as others. Altar is nothing strange only to the eastern religions, but also in the west as well.

The arrangement of the altar is something very interesting. If you have a physical altar, it is nice to have a physical altar. It is very good to have, representation, symbolic and reminds you and all this. In this tradition, what we do, the most important thing in your altar is the guru Buddha. The most important guru is Buddha. Not just every buddha, Buddha Shakyamuni is considered the most important. Among the gurus the most important is the Buddha. And also this Buddhism is really the Buddha’s habit. It is the founder of Buddhism. It is the creator of Buddhism. That is why it is the most important figure, the Buddha, and that also only Buddha Shakyamuni, not every other Buddha. The Buddha Shakyamuni is the the Buddha who has the one hand in meditation form and the other hand is touching the ground underneath. That is the Shakyamuni Buddha. There are a lot of other buddhas. There is Amitabha Buddha and there is the Maitreya Buddha. There are the ten direction buddhas, the three time buddhas, past buddha, present buddha, future buddha and all of them there among them. You know I’m cutting it short because I don’t have so much time to talk to you. I’m cutting it short.

So the Buddha Shakyamuni is the most important Buddha, and it is guru, and the guru Buddha. Also any other gurus that you have. Most important whoever is your root guru, your root master. That is whoever is most important to you. Root master in this country, sometimes they have misunderstanding (25:00). Particularly in this country with the Tibetan tradition there is a misunderstanding saying if you are taking refuge to anybody else that is your root guru, not necessarily true. Your root guru is the guru that is most effective to you, guru that the most helpful to you, the guru that shared things with you, the teachings, the initiations, the oral transmissions, and explanations and all of those. That’s sort of called three kinds gurus. Three kinds gurus are basically the most important, among them whoever is most effective and that is your root guru. Not whoever the guru has higher ranking, lower ranking or speaking English, not speaking English, or Asian American or not Asian American. Those are not considerations for whatsoever. It is only whoever is most effective and helpful to you. That is your root guru.

Who chooses? You chooses, nobody else. Anybody else try to tell you so and so is your root guru, that is either society’s propaganda or sectarian propaganda or whatever it is. That’s not a welcome statement. The statement choice is yours. You have to choose. You choose on the basis of what has been helpful to you. That’s what it is. So your root guru is the most important. Of course this lineage comes from Tsong Khapa so Tsong Khapa is also very important. That’s about the guru.

We don’t want to cloud it with so many pictures. Then you know the altar becomes a junk yard of photos which is not good, collects all the dust. It is in the corner of somewhere, which is not very good. It should be clean, nice, not so many, very artistically arranged and beautiful. When you look at it it should bring good feeling, rather than look at. It and oh my god I have to clean this. You know every single darn thing you find you put on the altar, and it collects dust, sitting there, which is not necessarily a great thing at all. That is the guru part.

Next to the guru comes yidams. The yidams are the fully enlightened, but wrathful, peaceful forms, such as Yamantakas, Guyasamajas, the Herukas, the Vajrayoginis, so many of them like Hevajars. There are so many of them. Taras, Avaloketeshvaras, so many of them. These are the yidams. The yidams are actually more important than the buddhas, so that’s why after the guru the yidams comes in. After the yidams, then comes the buddhas other than Buddha Shakyamuni, all other buddhas. That is the system. So it is lama, yidam, sanges, buddhas, bodhissatvas and then dakhas and dakinis, and dharmakayas. The dakas and dakinis are the Vajrayana sangha. Arhats are the non Vajrayana sangha. The order of the altar is like that.

But for us we don’t have to have all of those. Perhaps you can have only one picture of a guru or of a Buddha and then (30:00). Picture is also you know, is a western invention. In Tibet, photograph not there anywhere. Right from the beginning. So there is no collecting dust on post cards are not there at all. Whatever is there the artist puts a tremendous amount of effort, a drawing or making a structure. All this done. Then you paint it with gold and all this, make it look nice. Difficult to find and artistically produced. That’s amazing. That way it becomes rare. Whoever makes this little creation creates a lot of merit. That’s how it works.

Now of course it is available in the form of post cards. Every single thing, even tankhas are becoming better and better and cheaper and cheaper year by year. You look at the store and today I noticed there are twenty. All these are interesting things, but the real reality is it should be a real good one and if it is created for you or on your own should be good artist maybe spend two or three years creating it by yourself with all effort. Painting it with silver or gold or something, make nice. If you are not an artist or know how to draw a straight line like me, get a good artist and commission and make it. It costs you money, that makes it better, and put effort.

Unfortunately, everything is now mass production. Yeah, but you cannot judge the value of the image of an enlightened being. But where and how they make it, particularly those post cards, what is the value? Wooden nickel or something. So from that point of view image and it is created unnecessarily negative. They don’t know what they are doing. You can’t put that on your altar. That sort of thing. They charge two thousand dollars for the whole thing and what they do with it? Throw in the garbage. It becomes a big problem. You just throw it around, it doesn’t get the respect it deserves. It is impossible because the situation itself makes us put in that. That’s why I don’t like people send post cards with the Buddha’s image on them. I don’t know what to do. I get a lot of them. So collect bundles and start burning them. What do you do? So that’s I’m talking about myself. If you can’t afford it fine, post a picture of a Buddha or a tankha or something, and then you put a mental value on it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a postcard. It may cost you a nickel, but there’s a sentimental value which is more than money value, which you cannot buy with money the sentimental value, which you cannot sell with money. You cannot buy with money.

Anyway, it is recommended to have an altar. Then you don’t have to make it eastern looking. Some people have a lot of difficulty. There are a lot of people who would like to have an altar, but they don’t want anybody to see it. They want to hide it. (35:00). All right if you have to do that, do that. Why make it if you have to hide it? Nor is it a public exhibition either, particularly certain Vajrayana practice things. Not because it is something to hide, but because it should not be seen by someone who doesn’t know anything about the Vajrayana. It creates no problem for people who see it, rather it creates a problem for us. That’s why it is made into a secret. But other than that for Buddha there is nothing to hide. Picture of Buddha or picture of guru you don’t have to hide. You don’t have to hide your girl friend’s picture or husband or wife’s picture. So the same thing.

Also the Buddha you don’t have to hide anything because it is very good art decoration these days if you ask any interior designer. Put a Buddha here and there or even outside in your garden or whatever! Everywhere you find it. Somebody was showing me a picture today with a Chinese version of Avaloketeshvara right in front. It was in one of those top designer magazines. These things are there. So nothing you have to hide.

Number one this is not encouraged. Card you don’t have to hide. This is not that sort of secret behind the scene. Nothing there. Altar, straight forward. As I told you this morning there are millions of good Buddhists who are not Buddhists. Really, that’s what it is. There is nothing you have to hide. Sort of a simple, nice altar is absolutely fine. If you are in habit if you like to be dusty, disorganized filthy one, that is also fine because that suits your mentality. You can look in your altar and then you can judge yourself, how organized you are. So sort of that way you can do. That is, then if you really want to hide, nowhere it says altar has to be exhibited. If you want to hide in your closet? That’s fine, the closet. You want to hide because whatever your reason is individually. According to that you are hiding it’s fine, thinking your mother-in-law would not like it or your mother would not like it, anything maybe, but that is fine. Whatever suits you is fine. From the Buddha’s point of view, from our point of view, there is nothing to hide. It is not a cursed system, if you think if I have this I won’t get a job. My boss would not like it. That’s a different story. That is different story. Whatever you have to do, you have to do. It makes no difference to the Buddha or Buddhism or to your self. If you hide it inside closet, outside closet, doesn’t matter. If there is an altar it’s nice.

Now the next important thing is inner altar. That is a mentally created altar. There are many different ways of creating this mentally created altar. If you are a Vajrayana practitioner, I don’t have to tell you here, there is an inner altar created in the Lama Chopa, or any other sadanas that you do. (40:00) Yamantaka, Vajrayogini, Heruka, Chakrasamvara, you name it, Tara, Avaloketeshvara. Each and every one of them has an altar system you know. Anyone…space in front of me bla, bla, bla, over there they have a system of there own altar. Each one of them are creating spirit in front of me, which means mental altar. It is not a picture or physical altar at all. So then this altar dissolves to you. You don’t have to hide, it’s already hidden. So they are very convenient altars.

If you have something simple like Ganden Lha Gyema practice, then you have a Ganden Lha Gyema thing over there. There is a picture of a pure land, Tsong Khapa with his two disciples like that. It is a simple mental altar there. If you are just, if it’s not there. You don’t want to do that. A simple one like Six Session Yoga, you have Lama Buddha Vajradharma, that’s about it. Vajrayogini dharma, right? Buddha Vajradhara here. What is it? Those of you who don’t have any Vajrayana practice if you like to have you should have mental altar.

Mental altar, it would be very nice to have Buddha. That is your object of meditation or your subject of meditation, and your focal point. A mentally created image of the Buddha is very important. There is no more important than literally shut up or doing anything of that sort. That is the creation of the supreme field. Even you just simply close your eyes and create an image of the Buddha. When you create an image of the Buddha it is very difficult to create image of the Buddha. If you chose Buddha. If don’t want to, something else, then it is okay as long as that individual is fully enlightened. If not fully enlightened, if you chose any one else other than a fully enlightened one, then you may have trouble. That’s why it has to be important. For example, you should not use any spirit, any ghost or even a protector of the dharma as an object of refuge. You should not. Even if it is non-samsaric protector such as Mahakala, dharma kings, all that. Even then you should not use that as a total object of refuge. Forget about samsara figure, even the monks. The Buddha is very nice and any yidam, any guru, these are fine. Even though some of the individual gurus may not be fully enlightened in their own right, however, any guru represents total enlightenment and is somehow fit to be an object of refuge. If anybody (45:00) has a back ache and wants to go, you can get up and go. Anybody that has a back ache. Nobody’s moving, so nobody has back ache, okay. That is the creation of the altar.

And then the praise. Now the order here and the order what we say on a Tuesday nights is slightly different, isn’t it? That Tuesday night, anybody, Kathy? Out of the seven limbs what comes next? Okay I go according to that. First, prostration. Now what we did not mention there is the invocation, but it is there in the, what you call it, Tuesday night practice. In that you have invocation, right? GATE, GATE, PARAGATE, PARASAMGATE, BODHI SOHA. I’m not going to explain that because I did explain a couple of years back. There are about twelve or thirteen tapes. How many tapes there? Does anybody know? Okay then there are five or six. There is more than that. Twelve, yeah, at least twelve. So I’m not going to explain here. Actually GATE, GATE, PARAGATE, PARASAMGATE, BODHI SOHA, it covers the five paths: path of accumulation of merit, path of action, path of seeing, path of meditation, path of no more learning, five paths, which is complete Buddhist path anyway. It covers in that GATE,GATE, PARAGATE, PARASAMGATE, BODHI SOHA. So that is the Heart Sutra, the essence of the Heart Sutra. Instead of saying Heart Sutra we say GATE, GATE, PARAGATE, PARASAMGATE BODHI SOHA, we don’t have time to say Heart Sutra Tuesday and Thursday nights. That’s one thing. Also if you are doing your prayers, you don’t have time to say the whole Heart Sutra, so GATE, GATE … is what you say.

Then comes invocation, right? Is the translation available there? I don’t have it here. In other words whatever you have mental image why it is there to satisfy our rational mind we invite enlightened beings from wherever they are. If I had time I should talk to you inviting from dharmakaya into rupakaya and all these things are there. Those are on the transcripts so I am not going to repeat here. Invite from wherever they are, from there.

One thing you have to convince yourself, at the moment we give opportunity to the enlightened beings (50:00), they are there to help you, to help us. Why? That’s their commitment. Right from the beginning they generated bodhimind. For the benefit of all beings I like to become a buddha. Now they are buddha so it’s their job. It is the thing they would like to do. However, we have to give them opportunity. If we don’t give them the opportunity, how can they help? Right? So that’s what it is. I used to think, I watched the television and they said this is great, call 1-800 bla, bla, bla, this and that, they advertise and I said oh it’s an opportunity, not knowing they are going to take your money. But their motivation is to get your money whatever it is. Especially if you are a homeowner. Don’t let them get your home, from their point of view. But from the enlightened point of view, maybe that’s the difference between the spiritual and material worlds. The enlightened ones are waiting for you to give them the opportunity and there is no bill to be paid. They are there to help. If you don’t give them the opportunity, they can’t do anything. That’s why you give them the invocation. The invocation is invocation if I understand the language correctly. So you are inviting them to participate, to help you, to support you, to guide you, to be a friend. That’s how we invite them and we beseech them as well. That’s the invocation.

After inviting, then you have to say how nice to see you, you look wonderful. That’s what the praise is. You bow. This is Asian culture. If you are in India you say “Namaste,” but if you are in the Chinese culture you do all this and so does the Tibetans too, the Asian culture. The western culture: “how nice you are looking, you look beautiful”, we call it the buddying business. That is exactly what you are doing. You are doing the buddying business. You are buddying them up.They are saying your body is radiantly beautiful and handsome. Your speech is the ear ornament of fortunate one. Your mind no measurement, no limit for whatsoever. Is it true? Yes, you are buddying them as well. Why you are doing this? Two reasons. Number one you praise them and you seek their quality for yourself. You are getting an example. You are getting role model for yourself how your body should look like. You are getting a role model how your speech should look like. Speech should be ear ornament of fortunate one, not like mine is ear poking. So that is the speech. Mind that has no limitations whatsoever. Knowledge. I told you what enlightenment is all about this morning. Here you are praising the object of refuge. You are saying you have those qualities, and I respect those qualities.

Bowing down is the China Asian culture. If you go to India their culture is you touch the highest object, the forehead to the foot. You touch the foot. Now they put their hand on your head. The culture, within the same culture it pleases. Traditionally, you are putting the forehead to the shoe of the other person. (55:00) Now you just put your hand down. I don’t know if they really used to do that or not. That’s the Indian culture. The Chinese culture is the bowing and the Tibetan culture in between that is the same culture. So Asian culture.

You know how the Japanese bow all the time anyway. That is their culture. No matter whatever it is. They keep on bowing all the time, remember? When they would like to sell you a Honda car they bow a hundred times to you. So that’s what it is. You go to a department store morning to evening there are people there who are bowing there all the time. Every floor when you get out of the elevator, bla, bla, bla all the time there. So that is the culture. That’s what it is. In the evening you go a little bit before the department store closes at that time people standing there singing. (Laughs). So it becomes that way. That shows the culture.

Even in our culture will tell you, look man, great, how wonderful to see you. What did you do to make you so good looking, and all of those. That’s what it is. Your body is fantastic. Your speech is wonderful. Your mind no limit and all this. I praise that. It is interesting, you look in the Tibetan word for bowing it is CHA. It is seeking the quality. Just like you salute your general, you protect me. The soldiers will salute; the leaders are supposed to protect them. Similar to that we do this. Praise, qualified, we seek their qualities. It is clarified in the Ganden Lha Gyema practice. You are Vadjradharma, Manjushri, etc. you better make me like you. So you are inseparable. In creation of the altar, we, don’t think of one guru alone. The guru represents all enlightened. Guru that is inseparable from all enlightened beings. That is important, inseparable. That is very important. You are seeking the qualities of inseparable as well

So next is what? Offering. Offering is two things. Making offerings to the enlightened beings is one of the best generosity. Everybody knows generosity is good. No one questions why the generosity is not good, (1hr.) even if you are a critic of generosity. But you may not know why it is good. At the most you may think generosity is good and helpful. One has to think very carefully. It is helpful for what, how much? That’s a big question. Generosity must have wisdom. We will be able to come back to this. Generosity is one of the activities of the bodhisattvas. Each and every activity of the bodhisattva must have the discipline of the six parameters. Generosity must have wisdom. If you don’t have wisdom of generosity for you it makes no difference. But for the recipient it makes a big difference. That’s why the wisdom is necessary. Wisdom in generosity is very necessary. Some of the generosity, like the aid you give is helpful to a certain extent, but then it is harmful, starts to create dependence. The moment it starts making dependent on you, you know it is not good. You must have wisdom. The enlightened beings do not depend on our generosity, it does not make difference. If you give it or don’t give it they don’t care. For you, the giver, it makes a big difference. For enlightened beings makes no difference whatsoever. That’s what it is. Likewise if you receive something, if you don’t get something it makes no difference whatsoever to the enlightened beings. But from our point of view it makes a difference to us. Generosity is one of the best ways to accumulate merit. That’s why offering is recommended here. That also has to be the best offering, not just because it’s going to go bad, might as well give it away. That’s not necessarily good. I don’t have much time. You know traditional Tibetan teachers say the offering should not be the yellow part of the vegetable or the blue part of the butter. If you give something away something that’s good. If it’s not useful for you, it’s not useful for that person at all. If it’s too big, slightly different. Someone else might wear it. If you think it’s not good, I don’t want it. Might as well throw in the garbage, rather than give it away, because you may create negative karma by that. You think well if it’s not good for me, I give away, it’s not good at all, even if it’s a million dollars, not good at all. If you give it Away not because it doesn’t fit but because it doesn’t meet your standard. The giver himself does not get good karma either, because it’s not good for you you give it away.

So generosity should be anything that does two things, one don’t get pinched because someone took away from you. The pinch are the sufferings. You remember it years later. The pinch are suffering. The pinch creates suffering. As long as you get a pinch, it does matter to you. As long as you get the pinch, it does matter to you. It’s the training of the mind. Training the individual so you will be able to give away anything that you have, including your life. That’s why you have the story of Aryadeva giving the eye. All these traditional stories are there to sort of boost our mind of generosity. Yet you should never think I have to be generous, so therefore I have to create something; don’t do it if you feel I have to do it. In Tibet, we have a saying, don’t kill the fish to feed the dog. In the giving you don’t want to create negative karma. Don’t kill some being to be generous to another living being. That is called wrong doing. That is generosity. The offering, anything you can get. The offering should not be limited to the water.

Another story. Okay, no story. Okay, I guess we have to stop here. We come back. I like to finish Seven Limbs today, no matter how long it takes. Even you have questions, you have to hold them back. That’s that. So we give the food offering and then we go. We remind the cooks the food should be served on time, so we also have to go on time. Ohm ah hum, ohm ah hum, ohm ah hum…..