Archive Result

Four Noble Truths

Summer Retreat 2002: Four Noble Truths (edited 2005)

Disc 11

Remember I talked to you about the 3 scopes: common with the lower level, common with the medium level, and the Mahayana scope. But don’t mix that up with the Three Principles. These are completely separate. The first principle is what we call seeking freedom, but the original name, the first translation, was renunciation. Then people criticized that word renunciation so much. Some people said it makes people misunderstand and they think that you have to give up your life and run. Some people said it’s very Christian, that type of thing. But the most important thing is really renunciation. It doesn’t mean renouncing your life – so what are you renouncing? That is what one has to understand clearly. For example, when I was beginning to teach in English, Alex Berzin, who was in Dharmsala at that time, told me, “Rimpoche, please don’t use the word renunciation. If first you use 'renunciation' and then afterwards say it’s not renunciation even for a hundred times it will not help at all.” That’s what he told me. But when you really think about it, very carefully, consult dictionary, consult experts, you’re not going to get a better word than renunciation in English. It’s a question of what you are renouncing. That is very important.

It begins here. Before that, the common with the lower level subjects are totally pre- Three Principles aspects. In the way we run the courses as we do currently, we try to run the Three Principles before and the Lam Rim later, but in reality the renunciation is really beginning here. So now the question comes: what are we renouncing? Yeah, renunciation is fine, you can renounce anything. Renunciation means very specifically picking a specific thing to be renounced, yes? So can you change what you renounce? It has to be something, right? Otherwise you can’t renounce. If you can’t change it the renunciation would be like kicking the foot on the wall above the garage.

So what do you really renounce? We’re not exactly supposed to do what the Buddha did. This is where the misunderstanding comes in. Buddha did leave his family and he did go away from the palace and went into the forest, but why did he do this?

If he had to remain in the home he would have been forced to live the royal life and never have the opportunity and chance that he did. And that is a reasonable reason. We all do the same thing. We will leave the house when the parents force us to do something that we very much don’t want to do. What do you do? You pack up and go. What else, right? So that’s the common thing. Even today in America it is a very common thing. When you have left the home you do whatever you want to, that’s what you have to do, you cannot keep on renouncing apartment after apartment, or whatever, you know. So for Buddha that was the reason. But for us it is another reason. We already left once. Most of us already renounced once anyway. In my case I have left my life circumstances a couple of times . Many people have renounced already a number of times. So we’re not talking about that. Since we already renounced that, we know it doesn’t do any good either.

So what do we really renounce, here? We really want to renounce the suffering. Some people will say we renounce attachment and delusions. Yes, but really what you renounce is suffering. So, now we have to go and see where the suffering is. We are all experts on that for sure. That is also the discovery of the Buddha. If you look in Buddha’s life story, he discovered that suffering and for him it was big news. He was kept in some kind of artificially created environment where you see no pains, except people might be getting mental pains in there. So when he began to see the suffering it was a big discovery. The first teaching of the Buddha was: "This is the truth of suffering." So the four noble truths is a really wonderful teaching of the Buddha, extremely beautiful. This is our major practice. That’s what he has shared with us.

This is really a major practice. Yes, you may take Yamantaka as yidam, and Vajrayogini as yidam and Heruka; you may take this yidam, that yidam, you know you can get the most fearful, handsome, beautiful wonderful yidams, all of them may be there, but the major practice is the Four Noble Truths. Without that there will be no yidam. Remember, I told you I said Naropa told Marpa where there is no lama there will not even be the name of the Buddha, and similarly, where there is no Four Noble Truths there is no name of yidams, nothing. So the major, major, major foundation, really very grounding foundation for us is the Four Noble Truths.

So how does that work? Maitreya Buddha has 5 books, the Five Treatises of Maitreya, and one of them is the Uttaratantra. This is not a tantra, it’s sutra, but it’s titled Uttatarantra. In that it says nanechegya. It’s so beautiful. It means, if you’re sick, you have to know what you’re sick with. When you know what is the cause of your illnesses you have to get rid of it. You have to stop. That’s why a lot of people stop eating sugar, though they want to eat sugar. A lot of people stop eating meat. Or people stop drinking coffee. You know all that. All these fuzzy things go on anyway, anywhere, everywhere. So nanechegya, know what you are suffering from. You have to acknowledge. And accept it. That is first noble truth. What you’re sick with you’ve got to know.

Whatever is causing that illnesses you should not use it. You should get rid of it. That’s the Second Noble Truth. In order to make yourself well, you have to take medication. That is Fourth Noble Truth. And then, after that, you get well. That is the Third Noble Truth. First know the sufferings, and second know what it causes and get rid of it, thirdly, there is freedom from those pains and fourth, there is a path to lead yourself to the free level. So these are the Four Noble Truths: truth of suffering, truth of cause of suffering, cessation and path. Path is method, right?

The first two are negative. The second two are positive. Does that make sense? first you have to see it and know the pains and miseries. This is not a big deal. We all know. We know mental, physical, emotional pains, and we’re not fools, we know that’s pain. But we don’t know why Buddha is emphasizing so much that the first noble truth is to know, to get informed. What we don’t know is that certain things which we consider to be pleasure and joy happen to be pain and misery. That we don’t know.

Some things we use we enjoy and we think it is wonderful joy, but it is suffering in nature and it causes suffering. Anything we take is like that and we don’t' know. Let's say you are a substance abuser. You will totally deny that. You will say, "Oh I just took very little, oh nothing." And you like that state. And you may become and look like a zombie, yet still you think it’s great, and you keep on doing it. We’ve seen it, we’ve had personal experiences and we’ve seen others doing it. That is exactly what it is, but the sober people, people who are not using substances, when they look at that person, just give one look at that person, they know he or she is doing that. From every way they look, their eyes, how their nose is structured, how they think, absolutely transparent, you can see it. It’s absolutely transparent. Like that, a lot of people see it.

But you yourself will think, "No one knows, and even I don’t use much." You may be using tons of it, but you will say to yourself, "It was not too much." Then, when was the last time? Oh, half an hour ago. But you don’t really realize that. And that is exactly the same way we appear to the eyes of the enlightened beings. That is the problem with us. We know it is not good, it is suffering. The first kick is great, but after that you get all these different problems, not only with addictive substances, but even coffee, tea, herbal tea, vegetarian foods, the beans, the gases. We do know. And we all think nobody else will know it. You know, hot air flies up, so I’m on the higher level.

But the enlightened beings completely see what we think, how we function, they absolutely see it. So to their eye, you know, we’re completely confused, because it is true, it is fact, that we all want joy and never want suffering or pain. But they also see that we are always working for suffering, not working for joy at all. It is true, because we really don’t know what true joy is. We have those temporary samsaric delights. And that is changing suffering. We see them as joy. Too hot, turn on the air conditioner, and after a while you get too cold. This is the sign that is also not a true joy, because too much of it creates a problem. When it becomes suffering suffering, painful, which our body or mind acknowledges, it’s gone quite far, quite far, quite far.

So whatever we’re looking, whatever we’re enjoying, everything is suffering. Family, wonderful! Family is also suffering too. Really true. It’s wonderful to have it, but if you spend all the time with your family together, everybody will be quarreling with everybody. Luckily we only have only a couple of holidays. Samsara is actual all suffering, the total continuation of suffering. That is, samsara is the suffering. That is what we don’t know. And that is why the first point is really to know what suffering really is. The pains we know; we cry, we do all of that, because we are not happy. We also cry because we are too happy sometimes too. But really, everything is suffering there. Particularly life, the environment, and every inhabitant. Everything is suffering according to the Buddha. That is Buddha’s experience and that is reality with us, no matter wherever we go, whatever we have, worldly pleasures, whatever you enjoy, that gives you pain. The pain number one will be the impossibility to maintain. So all of those problems are there, constantly, continuing.

Until we see this is suffering, we will not have any desire to renounce it, right? We know when we’re choking and coughing, and yet we’re still smoking. You think, " I know this and I’m going to throw the cigarettes away". But you will not really do it until you see the pain it causes. Then you will have the mind of giving up. The mind of giving up will not come in until you really see the pain. People tell me, "I know, I know, I’ll give up". When you have the real pain, choking, coughing, and all of those, then you have the desire to give up, and yet you cannot. That’s the addiction kicking in, so you’re still chocking, coughing and yet you’re still smoking outside in the snow, right? The addiction pulls you in. Yeah, you may change the cigarette brand from the normal official dope to American Spirit, or whatever, or even Indian beedies. You may do that, but still you cannot give up because that addiction is holding you.

When you first pick up a cigarette it is a wonderful thing, right? It looks nice. Marilyn Monroe smokes. That’s a wonderful thing. We acknowledge that as pleasure, we acknowledge that as joy. Later you realize it is suffering. Like this, everything in samsara is suffering in nature, but we don't really don’t know. Once we know it, then we begin to have the mind of working against it. Until then, no matter how much we claim to be truly spiritual, nothing is going to change. Yes it’s wonderful to claim to be truly spiritual, but we’re not really going to be truly spiritual at all because we always have our desires somewhere, to have whatever. We want to have a good, comfortable, wonderful life. That is our desire. It is there. It is sort of hidden, but it is available at every turn you make, every move you make it. It's influence is always there. So this is going to take a hell of a time, and a hell of a struggle. So first, people will think, "What I am doing, that’s a wonderful thing, I can’t give up, I have to smoke! I can’t give up! I can’t give up drinking, I have to smoke!" Yeah, you may do so, but you do have to take the consequences.

For me, I love sweets. You know I used to chew those rock sugars, or those Chinese dry molasses, they call it brown sugar, and in the morning I would wake up and every blanket would be stuck together with that sugar. There is no wonder why I’m diabetic. I know the reason. Even in the States, it continued. I came here in the late 80’s and I used to eat Amy Joy’s doughnuts, like 24 at a go. When I first met Amy I said, “Oh, you’re Amy Joy!” She said, “No, I’m Amy Hertz!” So these are the addictions. Now I know that if I eat sugar, my sugar level is going to shoot up 400-500, so I don’t. And it takes time to move, to get used to the idea, to materialize it within me. Now, when I look at the sugar I don’t want it. Oh, it’s wonderful to look at but you don’t want it. If you give up, you don’t hold it. Then if you eat a little bit, it is OK. You know day before yesterday I had some coffee cake, not a whole piece, but two or three half spoons. So then the idea of staying away from the sugar goes away again. That’s how the maintenance is so difficult.

It takes time to know this. And just knowing is easy because I do have quite a good mind. I can know it easily, anything, whatever. But translating it into action, really knowing, is a problem. It takes time and it takes efforts. Then somehow you get it and it becomes a part of you. So now, every time I see sugar I almost have this aversion. But when I say, "A little bit is OK", then I lose it.

It is exactly the same thing with the samsaric delights for us. Sugar too, is one of the samsaric delights. Cocaine is one of the samsaric delights to some people. When you have this aversion against the addiction or the suffering, then you begin to ask, "Can you cure this?" In my case, I would like to find a cure for diabetis. Right? But I can’t. I don’t have it. Likewise here, you begin to look, "Is there a cure for this pain, for this suffering?" That question of a cure will never rise until you’ve really got it. You need to be not only convinced, but you’ve really got to get it. Until then, well, you like to say, "I’d like to have a cure, blah blah blah, but it’s not really a concern of me. Society moves along, I move along". Whatever you do then, it’s not a real thing.

So you begin to think, "Can you really cure it or not? Where did it come from, what made it happen, is there a cause or is it just naturally like that, no cause? If there is a cause, is it permanent or impermanent? Is created by somebody else or what it is?" Until we know the illnesses, we will never think of getting rid of the cause. There are some freaks who will just say right from the beginning, "I want to be vegetarian, I don’t want to drink coffee, I don’t want this, I don't want that" – they’re a little extreme. Most people will probably think suffering is just natural, "because we are born to suffer". Allen Ginsberg used to say we were born here to suffer in one of his poems. Yeah, it’s true to a certain extent, but it’s not coming from no cause. If it is coming from no cause, it should be same everywhere with everybody. But it’s not. Do you get me? Is that true? If there’s no cause it should be the same. There’s no difference, why be different? Everything, inhabitants, environment, everything should be the same thing everywhere. But it’s not. What is good for me is not good you. We have that difference. That difference indicates that it is caused by something else other than naturally happening. If it’s natural it should be all the same everywhere, communist style of building block buildings. Everything is the same everywhere, wherever you go. It is these horrifying, huge monsters, and they call that development.

All right, so there’s a cause, but the question now is whether the cause is permanent or impermanent. If it’s permanent, it’s not changeable. If it is not changeable, the result is not changeable. There won’t even be a cause. The cause cannot change and transform into the result, because it’s permanent. If it is impermanent it is changeable. These ideas will give you the true understanding that suffering is changing. That’s what I keep saying that these Four Noble Truths are such a wonderful thing, really. And then you may say, "The cause may be impermanent, but it is the creation of somebody." Here in the west, we look at it as God’s creation. I have nothing to criticize here, but the constant, continuous change that we see within ourself, if you really think very carefully that will raise a lot of questions on that thought. So these are the few thoughts, points I’d like to raise. So then Buddha draws the conclusion, he says, yes there is a cause. The cause of this is contaminated karma and contaminated delusion. So, second noble truth is cause of truth is karmic cause and delusional causes too. Karma comes in picture and the delusion is the more important. Because karma is our own creation. And delusion is also ours. But as long as there is delusion there we continue to produce the karma, you can clean up karma completely, keep on purifying and purifying, negative karma completely, yet you have the delusion there you constantly, continuously reproduce it. Continuously you reproduce. So the real bottom line, bare bones, is the delusions. Karma is the result of consequences of the delusions.

So you can see it, the cause, you can also see the cause is changeable, so you develop the desire to change the cause because you don’t like the result. That’s what we normally do, everything, cooking, everything you do, you don’t like the result you change the way you’re cooking it. You don’t like certain taste. If you want hot food you put hot peppers inside and make it hot. If it’s too hot, what would you do? No, you put sugar! You know, principal cooking, in the principal cooking, you put salt, if it’s too salty, you put sour. If it’s too sour you put sugar. That’s how you balance. Right? I’m telling you, it’s right. There’s a lot of cooks here who knows what to do. When you see that cause is changeable, by that idea you know that cessation is obtainable. Cessation is obtainable. That’s why truth of suffering, truth of cause of suffering, cessation comes there. Rather than way to cessation. Cause of suffering is changeable which means you have cessation. It comes next to that, instead of saying the third. It goes together. That’s the reason why the cessation comes third rather than fourth. How to lead to that cessation, that’s the fourth. The order that Buddha introduced, according to that he has done it, not according to how it’s created.

So now the first truth of suffering. What is the truth of suffering? Well, everything. Environment, inhabitants, we ourselves, our body, our form, our five aggregates, all of them are truth of suffering. So, why is that? There is a point: the form. The form itself. A number of people think that our physical form is absolutely pure. It is joy. It is permanent. And it is self. In order to clear that misunderstanding, Buddha gave impermanent, suffering, empty, selfless, selflessness. OK? That’s how the first noble truth has a purpose. All right. Why it is impermanent? Because it is growing, increasing, decreasing, grows sometimes, decreases sometimes, so it’s impermanent. Why it is suffering? Because we are not free, we have no choice, the controllers are karma and delusion, we are not free, we are not independent, we are controlled by other than ourselves and that’s why it’s suffering. Why it is empty? Because there is no ownership. Why is it selfless? Because you are not going to find anyone, anything, called “I.” So the first noble truth itself also has the qualities of being impermanent, suffering, empty, selfless. We can come back and talk more after lunch. But basically I am getting you the idea of the four noble truths, why they are there, then the first truth, and so on.

[[[[[[4 misperceptions about suffering

Physical form is seen as:

permanent

joyful

pure

self

4 Counteractions about suffering

Buddha says it really is:

impermanent

suffering

empty

selfless]]]]]]]

Normally when we give you the teaching on the Four Noble Truths as part of Lam Rim or something you can never do all of this, because there is no time, there is so many things to go through. You need to cover everything, so you just have to go on. But this time I decided to spend more time on that. That's why I am going a little more into that. The Four Noble Truths is something so basic, everybody seems to know but nobody really knows. And it is so important. We’ll be happy to spend some time on this in this retreat.

Disc 12 - Next Session

This morning we briefly talked about the First Noble Truth, the truth of suffering. It has to be looked at from four angles, like four parts:

Impermanent

Suffering

Empty

Selfless

For the Second Noble Truth, the cause of suffering, you also have four.

Cause

Cause well functioning

Cause very well functioning

Conditions

The root of samsara is no other than ego, which we normally call ignorance, self-grasping, and all of that, but it really means the I, the ego. When I talk about ego I am borrowing the language. Please remember that it means self-grasping, ego-grasping, I-grasping. All this is the actual root of the samara or cause of the samsara. Since it is the root it makes sure that it continuously grows. Because of that we get hatred, because of that we get attachment, right? All because you created the I, I, I, I.

Then you create other, other, other, other. You’ve got the separation going. Because of that separation comes my, my, my and his, his, his. Or her, her, hers. That’s why we get: this side, my side, your side, that side, attachment and hatred, both will come. That is cause and cause-functioning. Because of that we get good strong suffering. That is cause very-well-functioning. And that becomes conditions to give us good suffering.

So the truth of cause has to be looked at as real cause, functioning cause, very-well-functioning cause, and the condition. The first noble truth is divided it into four, I gave you the reasons. Here I can also give you the reasons. Why? There are people who accept that sufferings just come because there is suffering. So there is no cause, or single cause, not so many causes but single cause. And then the people will say, well, naturally it is permanent but it changes. These are the wrong views. Some people will say that some other person has created the suffering. These are the four different misunderstandings:

without cause

only single cause

naturally permanent, yet changing

created by someone other than oneself

To overcome this, Buddha introduced:

Cause

well functioning cause

very well functioning cause

conditions

I will talk to you later how it works. For the second noble truth you have to think on that level. Because we have time we can talk. Otherwise normally we just say that the cause means causes and conditions. That's how I normally go because there’s a time limit. But sometimes, if we don’t really go into detail a little bit we get in to trouble, that’s why I am talking more here.

If someone says there’s no cause, Buddha contradicts that and says there is a cause. Part of the truth of the cause is the idea that some people have that this suffering has no cause or condition to any of this, that it just comes and goes as it pleases. So that’s been - I don’t want to use the word "refuted", but it tries to prove there is a cause. There are reasons why this suffering is happening.

The second point, the running cause, is the belief that "oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is only one thing that really causes suffering". But to that Buddha answers that it is continuing. All kinds of different sufferings come again and again and disappear and reappear, again and again. That is the running cause.

The third, the very-well-running-cause gives us pain, a lot of pain. This counters the idea that we all have by the way, "oh well, it is just a single little thing that is responsible for the suffering." So we work on it, work on it, work on it, we’re getting better, we’re getting worse, sometimes we get better, sometimes we get worse, but we are thinking we’re working on that and that’s why it’s making a difference to us. But what’s really happening is that there is not one single thing, but so many things functioning, that’s why these things keep happening.

And then the fourth point, conditions, is there because the minute before the suffering whatever the thing is, it creates the perfect condition for the next suffering to grow.

That’s why so these four points are the second noble truth. I’ll come back and make it clear. I’m trying to go through each one of the four noble truths which have f our points each. To some people it may be clear, to some people it may not be clear, but we’ll be revisiting this.

Let’s move briefly to the Third Noble Truth, the Truth of Cessation. Oh, one thing I forgot: what IS the second noble truth? There IS causes and conditions. Buddha says that is the root of the samsara and because of that we have hatred and aversion and delusions and because of those delusions we created karma. They are the cause of suffering, truth of cause of suffering. Earlier we introduced what is suffering. Likewise here we introduced what is the cause of suffering, the root of the samsara, because of that the aversion and attachment and the other delusions, and because of the delusions creating karma. The combination of all of those is called cause of suffering.

So the moment we say truth of cause of suffering, we have to have something to be pointing to, otherwise when you don’t have anything to point to, something that Buddha has said, then we go out and it remains just the words. That doesn’t do any good. So you need to pinpoint it and see that this is what we are talking about it. When you are talking about the truth of the cause of suffering, you are talking the truth of samsara, and that is ego and confusion, the combination of that. Sometimes we call it ignorance, sometimes we call it self-grasping, it goes by a variety of different names, because theoretical viewpoints make it change, but there’s not really a constant term that you can stick to. You know why? Because Buddha talked to the people and because of the understanding and level of the people, that’s why there’s some inconsistence of using terminology.

But in reality there is no inconsistence, just from the point of view of terminology. The real root cause of all suffering is ego-grasping, not the self-cherishing, that’s totally different, but self grasping - and attachment and aversion. Actually by doing this, the three poisons of ignorance, attachment and hatred are included. It is a combination of aversion, attachment and other delusions, and they produce karma, which causes the suffering.

Let’s move to the Third Noble Truth. What is cessation? You apply or use the Fourth Noble Truth of the Path, and when the path really gets over those negative emotions, and when it’s sort of really conquered each and every one of them, then you have gained something. It is gain, or yield, and that very particular gain you get is the cessation. What happens is let’s say if compassion worked very strongly and compassion finally completely defeated hatred, got rid of the hatred completely from the individual person, then you have gained the achievement of getting rid of the hatred. Hatred-less gain, you get. I mean you really gain something, it is spiritual development, and that is cessation.

So what is the possible misunderstanding here?

First misunderstanding: some people will say there is no such thing as liberation at all.

Second misunderstanding: many of us may believe that certain points of contaminated joy can also be considered to be liberation.

We may not consider it as nirvana, because terminology changed, but we do accept it as liberation. A lot of people say, “I’m liberated!” Especially those who get divorced, they say, “I’m liberated!” I just said that, for what I don’t know. It just came up on my head. Without thinking it slipped out through my mouth. OK now listen carefully.

Third misunderstanding: that some people think there is something to gain even beyond normal suffering.

But with the Third Noble Truth the sufferings is totally stopped. Are you with me? Suffering is totally stopped. And that is nirvana. That is called liberation. Some people fail to recognize that that is nirvana or liberation, thinking that some different place, something different stage, something different other than that needs to be gained. That’s also a misunderstanding.

Fourth misunderstanding: "Yes, I’ve been able to stop this pain and suffering for a while but it will fall back. It will fall back and it’s going to come again."

To clear these four doubts, the third noble truth also has four parts

1. Cessation

2. Peace

3. Satisfaction

4. Renunciation

It’s called Truth of cessation. Within that you have cessation, peace, satisfaction, renunciation. Why cessation? The cessation itself is the gain of stopping pains and sufferings, and that’s why it is cessation. It has no more influence of negative emotions and negativities, that’s why it's peace. It is always wonderful and peace and harmony and joy, that’s why it’s satisfactory. It’s not going to revisit suffering, that’s why it’s renunciation.

The four wrong misunderstandings again:

1 There is no cessation. We do get that very much. We may not accept there is no cessation, but we doubt it. We have the right to be doubtful, but we put so much of our life in that, a lot of investment in that. It is very true: we have to doubt. And it is right to doubt. But the reality is there is a cessation. That’s why cessation is part of the truth of cessation.

2 Cessation is not free of negative emotions. Cessation is free of negative or afflictive emotions. nyong mong is the actual Tibetan word. Cessation means to be free of nyong mong and therefore it is definitely peace. It is free of negative emotions, negative activities, and therefore it is definitely peace. This tells you that certain contaminated we consider as cessation are not true. Cessation has to be uncontaminated totally.

3 Temporary pleasure turning into suffering is considered as cessation. Some people misunderstand contaminated joy as some kind of liberation or cessation, particularly psycho-physical different things. We also get a number of them because of drug influence. There are the mushrooms. And then there’s another one, the Mexican Peyote. Does cactus have something to do to with this? Anyway, you do get some kind of psycho-physical effects, you may get certain wonderful things, or they may just beat the shit out of you. You get both. But some people do think that is some sort of liberation.

That’s what it means, certain contaminated thing maybe considered as liberation. So that is the wrong thing and that’s why the real cessation has to be peace. And it is always pleasure, it will never beat the shit out of you. That’s why it is satisfaction. So you know what the qualities have to be. This is a way of talking about the qualities of cessation. There has to be satisfaction.

4 Suffering can come back. Suffering must never be revisited, that’s why renunciation.

Therefore you have: cessation, peace, satisfaction, renunciation.

The Fourth Noble Truth: the Truth of the Path to Cessation. What is the Truth of the Path? The real true path, out of the five paths, is the path of seeing, and within that path of seeing, the direct focusing, the concentration which has no obstruction. There is a division within the path of seeing, a sort of preliminary stage and actual real on the target stage. The real on the target level is called no obstructions. When you read the sutras, sometimes they say: really no obstructions or obstructions that don't exist as real obstructions. That doesn’t mean anything to us. What it does mean really is this division within the path of seeing. In Tibetan we call it bag che me lam. Every Tibetan would not understand. bag che me lam really means path that has no obstacles. That does not mean that the whole path has no obstacle, but it is a certain specific path. As a noun, it is called "The path that has no obstacles." That’s a name. What is it? It is directly totally focused on emptiness. There is no duality, there is no meditator, nothing to meditate, no form, no nose, no eye, no tongue, all this no no no comes over there. This is the Path that has no obstacle and it’s aftermath is called path of truth.

Really, when you pinpoint it, that’s what it is. Normally people will tell you that the Path to Cessation is the eight-fold path, or the five paths, or three principles, or three scopes. All of those are actually able…..but the reality is that this is the real path and aftermath of it. That is truth of the path.

Four aspects of the Path:

Path

Pure

Practice

Renunciation

These are there to counter certain misinformation. For example some say that there is no path of liberation. They say that wisdom itself is not the path of liberation. Some type of meditative equipoise is considered as path. That is a misunderstanding. There is no separate thing I’m counting that as total cessation of suffering.

1 In order to overcome both misunderstandings, so the truth of the path is the form of the path, because it leads you to the total liberation, so it is the path.

2 It is pure because it is direct antidote of all delusions.

3 It is a practice because it gives you training of your mind to avoid the wrong path. The mind is not going in the wrong direction, but you are bringing it in the right direction and right points and that’s why it’s practice. So the practice means, when it’s connected with the path, what we really have to do is lead the individual in the proper direction and that’s why it’s practice.

4 It can deliver total renunciation from suffering. So these four: path, pure, practice and renunciation, makes the Truth of the Path.

Maybe I may have to allow one or two questions, because it looks like quite a lot of people got confused. I

Disc 13 Question and Answer Period

Audience: What is the second doubt?

Rimpoche: Certain contaminated joys are considered liberation: mushrooms, peyote.

Audience: The cause of suffering, there were four things. When you go to the 2nd truth, the truth of the cause of suffering, is there a direct correlation so that the four elements correlate?

Rimpoche: Yes, they do.

Audience: I don’t understand how there is a cause of impermanence or a cause of suffering.

Rimpoche: tsang de dak da. Some people think our form is pure, absolute clean. Some people think it is total joy, some people think it is permanent. And some people think there is some kind of ownership, right? So to overcome those, focus on impermanence, because it’s not permanent, it’s impermanent. Because it’s suffering, so it’s not pure. Because it’s empty, there is no owner. It’s not emptiness, it’s empty – there is no ownership. We do not really exist in the self form, therefore selfless. Did you get it now?

Audience: Is there a causal relationship among the four truths?

Rimpoche: Oh, you mean the four truths? I’m not aware of it. The second truth is the cause of the 1st. I’m not aware of cause in the others. Let’s look round, let’s go round and we’ll know.

Audience: What you just said about the 1st noble truth and the four parts made things that I actually had thought were clear more murky. You said that some think that the body is pure, a source of joy, it’s permanent, and that there is some ownership and some self. And that the Buddha gives as the answer to those that I have taken down what you said, that the answer to the purity question is that it is empty.

Rimpoche: No.

Audience: So what is the answer to purity? That there is suffering, OK? Is that correct, sir?

Rimpoche: Yeah.

Audience: Joy is refuted, OK.

Rimpoche: Permanent is refuted by impermanent. Pure is refuted by the suffering, which is impure.

Audience: And self is refuted by emptiness.

Rimpoche: You know why we have suffering? Because we are not in control of ourself, because we are under the control of delusions and karma. So it is not joy. And it is not permament because it is impermanent. Here is another ownership, that’s why it is empty. And we ourselves are is also selfless. So therefore there is no self.

Audience: OK, I used faulty logic. I thought purity was refuted by emptiness because purity was a quality. Let’s not go there.

Rimpoche: I think all of those four, you can go internally, back and forth too. I may not have time. Because each one of those four are capable of defeating every other four. So it should be, we have to come back to that. But I’m not sure whether we can or not. So I think we’re taking a bigger step on that so far.

Audience: It sounded from what you were just saying is that the Heart Sutra would be the core of our practice.

Rimpoche: Oh, OK. The Heart Sutra is the core of practice because it is Prajnaparamita. It is.

Audience: Rimpoche, I just missed the second misunderstanding on the path. Which the answer is it is pure because it is the direct antidote to all delusions.

Rimpoche: No, no, no, no. The Path is: the wisdom is the path that leads to enlightenment. Thank you.

Disc 14

OK, now let’s revisit. For the truth of suffering we say it is impermanent. Why is that so important for the truth of suffering? Our life is such that it is a wonderful life, capable of delivering anything. By sheer luck, we happen to have such a life but chances are that we will waste it terribly because we may spend all our time doing some useless stuff. So whether you can get a good thing out of life, or medium level, or at least something to make sure that your future is right, and you may not be able to do that at all but what is the biggest obstacle we face?

We label it laziness, we label it any kind of thing, but what we’re really facing is that somehow we consider the self, the form, the physical body, or life itself as permanent. We know it is impermanent. We agreed; we talked about it. No one will say it is permanent. But every of our activities is based on seeing and knowing this as permanent. That is the biggest obstacle to our spiritual practice. And that’s why in the truth of suffering here we have this impermanence as most important. And also, we have this contaminated body, which is definitely in the nature of suffering. And if you get some illness here and there, aches and pains and all this, it is nothing surprising, because it is a contaminated body. Anything can go wrong, anytime anywhere. We’re not very much aware of it so we complain and do all kinds of things. It is suffering, but we consider it is joy and pleasure. And then when we get some suffering we freak out.

Really true. According to the Buddha, our body is absolutely filthy, but normal we say it is not filthy, inside is very clean. You cut it and some scientists say it is clean inside. So it depends on what do you mean by cleanness.

It’s almost like President Clinton said, "It depends what "is" is." What does "clean" really mean? According to the Buddha our body is completely impure. But some people think it is pure and wonderful.

According to the Buddha also, there is no such thing as self and I, but we consider there is one. Many times people think that the self is someone who is hidden inside, or wearing the costume of our five skandhas, somebody inside who you can catch and hold. And Buddha said that is not there, so it is selfless. Impermanent, suffering, empty and selfless. Out of those Buddha chose impermanence first, because one of our biggest obstacles I mentioned to you earlier is thinking everything is permanent.

If you look in the Buddha's teachings, his first teaching is the Four Noble Truths. And the first part of the First Noble Truth is impermanence. So the first teaching of the Buddha is impermanence. And Buddha talked about impermanence throughout his lifetime, to everybody, whoever he talked to. And lastly, just before Buddha died, he took off his robe and called his disciples, and told them,

Look at the body of the fully enlightened Buddha, because to be able to see a fully enlightened Buddha who officially appeared, is rare, like the utumvara flower.

The disciples started shouting something so the Buddha called them and said, “Hey, don’t say anything. Just listen for a minute.” So then he said,

Every phenomenon that is created is impermanent in nature. These are the last words of the Tathagatha.

Then Buddha passed away. So his first teaching was impermanence and he taught it throughout. The last words that Buddha shared were also about impermanence. It is so important because the biggest obstacle we have is that we continuously think we’re there all the time. So that’s why Buddha showed and emphasized to us to think and meditate on impermanence all the time. What does that do? It helps us tremendously to do the right things. At the beginning, during the contemplation period, it will help us to overcome our laziness. Finally impermanence is really the one that will give us the transition to the totally enlightened level, and that’s why it is so important.

We think, "Yeah, I know it’s impermanent, we don’t have to meditate on that. Why should we have to meditate on that, just to get some more depression or something?" We might think that way, but it is actually very important.

I want you to remember, what does impermanence really mean? It does not just mean that we are going to change, that we are going to get older. When I become me, when we become whatever it is, it doesn’t stay a minute more, it changes. We’re not talking about continuation, where there is zigzag changes. The minute we become something, then that stops and changes. That is the impermanence we’re talking about.

Disc 15

OK. Good evening and welcome here. I did mention to you earlier what impermanence is really about it. It is not really the long-time changing we are talking about, we are talking about short time. The minute we are established the next minute we are changed and gone into it. To make sure that it is correct, we are talking, there are a lot of quotations from the different sutras and everywhere. But a couple of them, I’d like to mention here.

The root text on logic, the pramanavartika, says,

Naturally what is not changing is the definition of permanent.

So what is impermanent has to change immediately. The moment you become you get destroyed, you become something else, something else, something else. So that is the difference between the permanent and the impermanent.

We say it is impermanent, it is going to change, it hasn’t changed yet but it’s going to change, sooner or later it’s going to change. We’re going to die. That is the gross level of impermanence. If you look really carefully impermanence means really changing any minute, everywhere. The minute you produce it, you become something else. And also, cause and result function the same way. The cause changes, becomes result, and when the cause cannot change, and the cause cannot become result, that is permanent. Again, the text on logic says,

Permanence means that nothing changes.

It is a simple statement: nothing is going to change, so therefore it is permanent. So every phenomenon that’s created, because of the condition, it’s always changing, every second. It is like the dew that the grass carries in the morning, and the wind comes and blows the dew away and things change. Another reliable text also says,

The moment you’re born, it doesn’t remain.

That is what impermanence is all about. Not only the thing itself is impermanent, but even the continuation, although when the thing changes we have some continuation. So that this is a well known statement among the American Tibetan Buddhists: Continuation of discontinuity. These beautiful words were introduced by Trungpa Rimpoche in English. However, that beautiful word "continuation of discontinuity" is also impermanent.

That continuation is impermanent. So that’s why a person that is supposed to be living for 60 years, when one minute is over it’s no longer going to be a 60 years living person, but 59 years, 11 months, 30 days and 59 minutes. It changes in that way. Not only this, we have to look in our mind. If you’re focusing on something, whatever the perceptions you are getting, they go on and change, is that right or wrong? Even the words that we hear go on changing. When you’re listening to the news, whether it’s television news or radio, it goes on changing - the words alone. The syllables, the sound, the pictures, everything goes on changing.

These are the gross impermanent things we see. If it doesn’t go and change, we can’t get the news. It will be static, it will go vvvvvvvvvvvvvv, it will be. So in order to make it work, and understand, communicate, it changes. And that’s why all created phenomena are changing. I am trying to give you a better picture, but I can’t think of anything else. I wish I could remember some good examples, but this is not bad. Because of the changing, it possible for it to function. It’s useful. Usefulness depends on the ability to change. Permanence are not that useful. It stays, it's static, it doesn’t help. Impermanence is helpful.

Nagarjuna said,

We call ourselves alive, but that is a second, a mind second, nothing else.

But we don’t know that. That’s why we think we are permanent. We always plan to live forever, that is really important. That’s why it is important to think and meditate on impermanence and the gross impermanence is death. That is important, I have to emphasize that. And it is also important to have the fear of dying. Normally people don’t like fear at all. You think fear is bad. Yes, fear is bad. But every fear is not necessarily bad. Yeah, fearlessness is great. But if you are in a disturbed area, where there are problems, if you try to walk through that thinking, “I’m fearless,” somebody will shoot you. Some passing bullet can hit you, maybe nobody even wanted to shoot you, but some bullet passing through can hit you. And so for that reason, if you have fear, you will be careful, and that fear serves a purpose. That fear can protect you from hitting by the bullet.

Just like that, the fear of death will help us rather than harm us. Many of us think this fear of death is not good. They don’t want to think about the bad things, just good, positive things. But think about it, there is no more positive thinking than in Tibetan Buddhism, especially Vajrayana Buddhism. Mind you, you imagine yourself as a fully enlightened being, and with that motivation, with that visualization, with that pride, we walk around. What better positive thinking than this could you find anywhere?

But the same teaching will equally emphasize the importance of the fear of death as well. So without reason they will not raise this. The reason is that if we are afraid of death now, we will prepare. We are afraid because we cannot avoid it. What we are really afraid of is actually the fear of the unknown after death. Death itself is of course a natural process, no doubt about it. But after death, what happens is unknown to us. I think we’re really afraid of death rather than we’re afraid of simply dying. Yes, we have hesitation, we don’t like to go through because we don’t see you any more tomorrow. If I died, you don’t see me any more tomorrow, right? I don’t see you any more because you died. Nobody likes that. But that’s not we’re afraid of it. There is also nothing to be afraid of that. I’ll touch that later. There is nothing to be afraid of it, because sooner or later it’s going to happen. You cannot avoid it. But what is more afraid of it is we don’t know what’s going to happen. Now we know what’s going to happen because we know the result is coming after the cause. We have so how much of the Second Noble Truth that we know from that what the result is going to be. And the result is the Third Noble Truth or the First Noble Truth. So we know where we will be. Either it’s going to be the Third Noble Truth or the First Noble Truth. It can’t be anything else. So the chances of it being the Third Noble Truth are rather slim. So it has to be the First Noble Truth. So then there is a variety of things. So that’s how we have to see it. So if you have that fear of what’s going to happen in the future, after death, it helps us to make the arrangements, the arrangements of cancellation of the negative karma, which causes the suffering, and the building of the positive karma which causes better life.

So, this fear is a useful fear. We have to make best use of it. This will also help us not to have too many obsessions because we know it is temporary. It is temporary. After we are getting together, the end of it will be separation, and no matter whatever we do, we cannot stop or change that at all. Shantideva says,

If you can correct then why should you have to keep on worrying?

If you cannot correct, what is the use of worrying?

Remember Shantideva’s verse I quote very often. We have the fear, and that’s good, so can we do something. Is there something to be corrected? Yes, there is. So don’t worry about it and correct it. And if there is nothing to be done, why worry about it. Dying is definite. We will die, you can’t change it, no matter whatever you do. Everything, life is beautiful, youth is beautiful, but they are impermanent in nature, they are going to go. It doesn’t remain even more than a second. It is always running towards decrease. Everything we experience, whatever, it’s all totally going to end - with a not so wonderful result. The end of birth is death. The end of accumulation is exhaustion. The end of company is separation. The end of going very high is falling down. So it always ends with these four things. That is the sadness of all our things.

Everything is in that manner. That is what it is. So, life, youth, everything, every wonderful thing that we enjoy in our life, the “good ones” as we call them, they also concluding with suffering. When we know it’s going to end that way, and in between that, if we still think it is joyful and wonderful, maybe we’re wrong. Lets say you are falling from the high cliffs of a mountain. You know that when you hit on the ground you’re going to break into pieces. In between that, while you’re going down from this high cliff, can you consider that as something pleasurable? So it’s not. Just like that, the moment we are born, we are falling towards death. If you know this, how can anything happening in between be considered as pleasure or joy?

Buddha, in his Impermanence Sutra, says to his disciples, says,

It is wonderful to have no illnesses, a youthful, rich life. That is what everybody wants. Everybody considers this wonderful, everybody thinks this is great, but every creation is impermanent, unreliable, it will cheat you, it will let you down. So the end of no illnesses there is going to be illnesses. The end of youth is going to be old age. The end of being rich is being poor. The end of life is going to be death. Look at those people that make pottery. Whatever they do, whether they’re going to burn it in the fire or not, it’s going to break. At the end it’s going to be finished. So there is nothing that will not die after all we’re born. How sad. That’s the reality.

So this is the reality, so there is nothing that really takes that much from us in there, but that’s why nirvana is really peace. Once you get there, once you obtain nirvana, it is permanent. It is just the opposite of this. It is no longer suffering, it is permanent, it is joy, and it is really wonderful.

All that we have accumulated at the end is completely finished, exhausted. The end of the collection is empty. When you build up and up and up, at the end of the building up it is collapsing. If you look at the sutras it is almost the same. The meaning is the same. I give you a different example. The end of getting together is separation, the end of life is death. These are the four conclusions of every phenomenon that we ever experience, no matter whether it’s high, rich, low, poor, or black/white, wherever, whatever. East/west, south/north, wherever, this is the reality. That’s why I’m going to conclude that samsara is suffering. Everything we consider to be joy here, there, everything is going to be concluded, end with pain, there is nothing that will not bring any pain at all. So when there is something that doesn’t bring pain at all, that is nirvana, so samsara is suffering, nirvana is peace. Therefore one of the most important things we have to meditate on is impermanence. As I told you earlier, it was the first word of the Buddha, and the Buddha continuously talked about it, and the last word of the Buddha was also about impermanence. And one more thing about the importance of impermanence: The great nirvana sutra says,

Buddha himself said that the best time for growing food is the autumn. In India you get crops two or three times. So the autumn crop is considered the best. And when you have the animals going around, the biggest and best footprint of the animals is the elephant’s footprint. Every other footprint can fit in the elephant’s footprint. From any angle, from this way, from that way, it will fit in there. Likewise, Buddha said that the most important awareness is the awareness of impermanence. Every other awareness can fit into it. Likewise with the awareness of impermanence every spiritual development can grow and develop. Without awareness of impermanence, it is so difficult to grow, because everywhere, wherever, we feel something different, our addictions pull us all the time. I think that’s enough talking about suffering otherwise there may not be anybody coming tomorrow.

Actually, is it enough for suffering? No, it’s not. In the lam rim you have so many different sufferings in every level that you talk about. These are available in the transcripts, so I don’t want to go on talking that much, but I emphasized, the impermanence level as quite important. So that will be useful. The rest of the other sufferings, like 3 sufferings, 6 sufferings, 8 sufferings, all of those you heard all the time. And the individual suffering, suffering in the hell realm, and different realms you have heard about, there are different papers available, you have to pick up from there. So what would you do? Now, if you’re really meditating you should think about the suffering in general and particularly the lower realms. And if you’re really taking refuge, you are recommended to do these two together.

You meditate on the sufferings of one of the hell realms: let’s say the lightest hell realm of the hot hells is yang se, the re-growing hell. You die 100 times a day and you’re reborn 100 times a day. You get killed all the time. So on that level you keep on meditating. The moment you think about the hell realm, first you see the burning ground. The ground is really totally made of metal which is burning and so hot. And even if you’re wearing shoes you’re going to be burned. And the walls and everything are also burning hot. And within that you get killed 100 times a day. When you begin to think this that is fine. Acknowledge and say to yourself, “Luckily I’m not there yet. So I’d like to take refuge to guru, Buddha, dharma, sangha, and also follow the advice of purifying negativities that may force me to take rebirth there. I purify all those and I give myself a commitment not to repeat those actions.”

It is recommended to this with every hell realm, and then the hungry ghost and animal realms. It is painful at the beginning, but after a little while it is also a little useful. And that will bring real awareness, not only awareness of suffering in the hell realms, but samsara as a whole. And by that you’d like to bring nirvana as joy. And then we begin to see samsara as something to be thrown out, and nirvana as something to be taken. We won’t be able to see this until we really pay a lot of attention. Why? Because our attraction is so strong, in our era, particularly nowadays, because we know it is pain, everybody knows it is pain, so we try to make every pain easier to endure. All kinds of things have been done for that, unlike during the Buddha’s time. We now have air conditioners to cool us down, heaters to keep us warm and so on. All these things are great things in one way but on the other hand it will also give us sort of a little illusion. If you really look carefully, we cannot make the whole world become temperature controlled, we can only separate certain areas in which the air is blocked in. That’s all.

Next lets talk about what is pure and what is impure. As I mentioned to you earlier, Buddha says our body is not pure. Normally we think our body is pure, but our body is not pure. We get very strong attachment or obsession, not necessarily to the other person, the biggest problem is our strong obsession to our own body. We really do that. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take care of your body, you do take care of your body, this is the fundamental basis on which you can function. On the other thing there is something that we have to be very obsessed to our own body. Not only we have to be obsessed with the body but also we have dissatisfaction, tremendously, everybody, will have dissatisfaction to our body as well. No matter how beautiful one might be, one will never be satisfied and wants it to be more beautiful, we want it to be something that never existed.

This is extreme attachment. So if you think about it, it is attachment to our body and what it’s made of. I don’t want to read a sutra here, it is fantastic, I don’t even know the names of those. What do we have in our body? We have hair, mustache, tooth, nails and sweat and smell and skin and flesh and bones and tendons and nerves and kidneys, heart, liver, lungs, stomach, pancreas, I don’t know many of them. Buddha gives us a long list. So it is actually a collection of all that which we call body. So it’s everything, our sweat, blood, our everything. Every good thing, every bad thing, every illness is included in there. It may be a wonderful thing but it’s made out of those.

The Buddha gives an interesting example: He says it is like the old dog that keeps on chewing an old bone, which is making lots of holes in his teeth and gums. The dog thinks this bone is so tasty, but what it is really tasting is the blood that’s drawn out of its own gums and mouth. Likewise, we consider the collection of such a filthy thing, urine and excrement included, a beautiful body. It is equivalent to that of old dog chewing a bone and drawing blood from his own gum and considering it tasty.

The worms that live in the human waste, they like to live in there, the smell is great, there’s a lot of food, and it’s a nice place, and they think you cannot live without that. And that’s called foolish, so human beings should not be same as that.

Then many people think, “All right, if it’s not clean enough I can clean it.” Yeah, you can clean it, you can wash everything on the outside. Even if you could wash it inside, the Buddha says,

No matter what you do, whether you wash it with holy water, say mantras or do anything else, the conditions for the impure to grow are continuing in your body.

How can you stop that and live together? There’s a fact in there. So, it is not clean. OK, now this is a very traditional Indian argument. It says, “All right, you said the body is not clean or not pure, so you cannot have a strong attachment for it” and this is because the brahmins consider themselves to be the cleanest persons in the world.

The next point is selflessness, or rather emptiness. Now I am looking at a sutra. Buddha said,

Brahmins and untouchables, males and females, white and black and yellow and every other human beings – they are all equally impure, no one is superior, everyone is equally impure.

Brahmins think they are better than the others. It is just like the talk here, you know, the white and black, we talk about that all the time. It was very similar to that traditionally in India. Buddha said there is no such thing as somebody who is really the owner of that pure or impure body. So we have the idea the body is a particular thing and that within that there is somebody who really owns all of them. We think the body is like a costume, people wear it. And they are somebody who is changing the costume, and we are changing from life to life and something is changing, somebody is going round, it’s almost like a dharma performance. But Buddha says that there is none, there is nothing there, there is nothing but the combination of the body and the person. Nothing is there.

That almost covers for the next point, selflessness. Traditionally Buddha has given this part, particularly during the four noble truths. He is giving the example of a king who thought he owned the whole kingdom, which for him was almost the whole world at that time. The king thought “I own the whole world”. The Buddha goes on saying the king not only did not own the whole world, but not even his own city, not even his own palace, his own his queen, not even his own children, and not even own his own body.

Buddha says,

Like the king who thinks he owns everything, we think there is ownership of something called “I”, who is the owner of all of them. Hey, there is no such thing. The cities are owned by the people who live in the city. And the king thinks, “I am the king, these are my subjects.”

That’s the situation of “I” and “my.” It is like saying, “I am the king. I own everything. These are my subjects.” Because of that, the king has great pride. Because of that, the big division of “yours” and “mine” comes in. In reality the whole land is owned by the people, including the road, the forest, the river and everything.

If you don’t think that’s correct, then do a performance. Have a dharma performance, and act like the king. Pretend to own everything in your performance. Then do you really own everything? You don’t.

Buddha was actually saying all this to a king. And he said to him,

You yourself are also performing. You will have to change your dress very soon when you die. You will no longer be the king. So that’s how there is nothing called self. Everything is dependent.

This sutra goes in much more detail but I don’t want to read it. So that’s the basically the first noble truth we covered today. And I don’t think I can spend a whole day on each of the Four Noble Truths, so tomorrow we’ll try to cover a little more than one or two noble truths. And I guess that’s it. Then we have some questions:

Audience: In terms of the First Noble Truth, is appreciation of beauty or contentment with a situation also suffering or delusion?

Rimpoche: When you are meditating and trying to bring the quality of the nirvana and eliminate the faults of samsara it is delusion. But appreciation of beauty is good and great. If you go beyond that you lose the society line where Buddha really insists not to lose. Yet in the reality when you really go to this level of the meditation, you know, level to level, things will change. That doesn’t mean they’re contradicting each other, it is more like becoming out of context. Therefore, normally, yes, appreciation of beauty and all this are great, and it is good to enjoy and rejoice, but at this level, when you’re meditating on the suffering, this is a false.

Q: Is it possible to have relationships with anyone: friends, family members or anyone, without attachment? If so, how?

Rimpoche: Depends what you mean by attachment. If you talk about attachment as appreciation, respect, admiration, it is nothing bad. Another matter is attachment as obsession, control, having it exactly the way I want it to be, and if not we have to change it. And it is not me who has to change it, you have to change it. That sort of attachment is unwelcome attachment. So you’re better off not having it.

Attachment as appreciation, admiration and respect is different. You can certainly have a relationship and make that a good relationship, a pure relationship. If in a relationship you criticize each other, try to control each other, try to show the horns to each other and have bullfight that is not a good relationship at all. If it’s me, personally, I’d better not have a relationship than that of having a bullfight relationship. I’m sorry, I’m making it rather short.

Relationships are important, companionship is important. And a lot of people think that attachment holds them, but that’s not true. Respect and appreciation really holds them. Not the other way around. For those who would like to control the other, their relation never lasts well. It’s not going to last very long and it’s never going to be a good relationship. There are always difficulties. If you appreciate each other, when one person is having a difficult time, the other person can adjust a little bit. The other person can realize who is giving them the hardship. They do that by their own common sense and common nature. Because you’ve seen the situation clearly, you have the respect and appreciation. That relationship is really a wonderful relationship.

And that is not a harmful attachment. That is a good, pure relationship. Attachment in the sense of bad. If the relationship is only based on attraction, physical or otherwise, it is not going to be lasting because whatever you are attracted to, that physical point, is going to change in both sides anyway. So it’s not going to be there. If you are attracted to that person because he or she is so thin, he or she will become big, fat. Or if you’re attracted because he or she has got chubby, he or she is going to be thin, so it’s going to change. So that attraction-based relationship is not necessarily good. It may help to spark something, and that may lead to - that has to lead to - mutual respect and understanding and appreciation and that is the good relationship. That is the lasting relationship, caring, loving, and that is really what it is. And other than that, it is not a good relationship.

Audience: Is it enough to accept the possibility of reincarnation to progress on the path or do you have to accept it as reality? Is there a point where you must accept it to complete the path to enlightenment?

Rimpoche: Well, the benefit of the doubt about reincarnation is the beginning level. As you move along, you will begin to know that there is reincarnation, you will know it. You will know it. You don’t have to depend on somebody else to tell you, you will know it yourself. And that is how it’s going to be learned or picked it up.

Audience: If we are responsible for our own development, how do the buddhas help us?

Rimpoche: That’s a good question. I don’t know. Good question. Thank you. I don’t know the answer, really, I don’t know.

CD 16

Audience: Where are the hell realms and what is our proof that they exist?

Rimpoche: Oh, there you go. That also I don’t know. I don’t know.

Audience: Where are the pure lands?

Rimpoche: Same answer.

Audience: Are they in samsara, or if they are outside, how can you get there?

Rimpoche: I think the Third Panchen Lama or Second Panchen Lama has written a little booklet, not very long, about thirty or forty Tibetan pages long, and it’s known as shamabhala yi lam yig, the guide how to get to Shambhala or something. When I was a kid I read that very sort of thing. They tell you to go here, get over here, cross this, little bit. I don’t know whether it’s true or not. When I was in Dharmsala, the person that was translating for His Holiness, he told me somebody took that book and went and landed in Italy somewhere. So I don’t know. From Tibet he went and went and arrived somewhere in Northern Italy, Southern Switzerland, somewhere - maybe Tuscany. Maybe they landed in Tuscany and had a lot of their wine. That’s what I know.

Audience: I have a two-part question about taking refuge. What is the difference between the official ceremony of taking refuge daily, either alone or in a group. Can one officially take refuge without the ceremony of taking refuge? You can, but whether ceremony or no ceremony, taking refuge from a master is not just simply taking refuge but it’s more or less taking refuge vow. And refuge vow has a lot of values. Because if you take refuge vow, and sit idle not killing, you are constantly creating karma of not killing. But if you don’t have the vow, if you sit idle, you’re not killing but you don’t have good karma of not killing. That’s the vow make the difference. Because vow you’re committing I’m not going to kill. Since you’re honoring that commitment, these are the very important knack or business trick, so these vows serve tremendous benefit, so that’s why they do this. Yeah, sure you can take refuge with our without a ceremony, ceremonial type of thing is first time you’re receiving the vow, or renewing the vow, and if you take personally you don’t get the vow. And once you take vow already then you keep on taking continuously it renews. That’s sort of, that is the difference, the vow is passed by person to person. Not it is sort of grabbed in the air. Refuge is, yes, grabbed in the air. And then I did talk yesterday, was it, so that’s good enough.

Audience: In the food offering there’s something that refers to “I and my circle” – who does my circle refer to?

Rimpoche: Anybody who you’d like to include in your circle, your companions, your fellow sangha members, family, everybody, whoever you want. Circle is circle.Anybody who you want to include is your choice, it’s your circle.

Audience: OK, this is the last question from this set. Why is there alcohol and meat in the Tsoh.

Rimpoche: That’s a good question. In the tsoh, in the vajrayana tsoh particularly, there is a point where the alcohol and meat is a must. I think it has to do something with bliss. I don’t know how much more I can say on that. It has to do something with bliss. But however, however, you don’t have to drink. Like the monks, who have self-liberation vows, they cannot use alcohol, their vow is they cannot even take again. They are not allowed to drink as much as a dewdrop, that’s a vow. However in the Vajrayana tosh practice they take a drop, put it on tongue, just a drop. That was even permitted. Doesn’t break the other vow. You cannot go on drinking, you know. Keep on drinking, oh it is tsoh, or inner offering or something, you cannot go on drinking that. And also there are people who don’t eat meat at all, and I try to compromise that by using fish. And even to some people fish, if the fish is still too gross, you might be able to use Shittakki mushrooms. What we are talking, that was afternoon. The purpose of this, I think the mushrooms serve more closer to the purpose rather than tofu. I’m not even sure whether I’m permitted to say that or not, but I hope it’s OK.

Q: I’ve got five or six questions here on Karma. I’ll take the most comprehensive one first.

A: How do you know it is most comprehensive?

Q: Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s the longest one.

A: Just joking.

Q: Given that karma means any experience that a specific individual has a result of a specific cause of that individual, then karma is a non-random system. What then makes conditions arise to cause a specific karma to ripen? If an individual creates the conditions, how is that different than a cause? If not, then how is the system not random. In other words, how do conditions work, how is that different from karma, and are they the same?

A: Whichever is the heaviest karma you have, perfect, I talked to you yesterday, with motivation, action, conclusion, whichever is heaviest, good or bad, whichever is heaviest, that comes first. And if it’s equal, whichever you’re closest to, that comes first. If that comes equal, then whatever you’re used to it, that comes first. So that is the order, whichever is perfect, stronger, that gives result first. And all of those, if there are not, I think they’re covered that way.

Q: Please elaborate on lucky karma. Does that mean there is an opposite, or unlucky karma?

A: Yeah, negative karmas are unlucky karmas. Why this is called unlucky karma, because it is good karma capable of delivering or total enlightenment. That’s why it’s called lucky karma. Opposite of that is unlucky karma, it’s negative karma.

Q: Can you generate karma in the bardo?

A: Good question. Probably you can, but it may not be so much. Because the bardo base is not so powerful as the human base, so their efforts might not have so much yield as human effort does. So I think that’s, yes you can, but not so strong enough.

Q: Is abortion killing karma and if it is, what is our karma as women? What is the karma for the men involved?

A: It is an interesting question. I think no one thinks abortion is good. No one. People for abortion or anti-abortion, you don’t call that anti-abortion, you call that pro-life. That is a political thing. But whether you’re for or against abortion, I don’t think no one thinks abortion is good. Everybody knows abortion is not good. But you can’t help it. You have almost no choice. You can’t help it. And that is why it comes in. I don’t think we can deny that as killing. I think it is killing. The question remains whether you kill a human being or not it’s a different issue. Incomplete human being is human being or not. If it is, then egg has to be hen. Egg is not bird. It will be bird, if it’s not disturbed. So very similar to that, there is a question on that. It also depends where would you, where you draw the line, what constitutes being a human being and what is not. The definition of human being is mashin dogo, one who can express and one who can understand. So I don’t know where, what time, what period. Earlier period in the wombs does not meet the human definition. But that is debatable. I don’t think anyone thinks it’s not killing. The question is whether it’s killing a human being or not. At the same time no one thinks it is something good to do. Again, the question is choice of individual. So whether you respect that or not, no one is really arguing that abortion is a great thing to do. I hope not. But it’s not great thing to do. But you have no choice. And sometimes you have no choice. When that comes, what does the man have to do here?

Q: What is the karma for the men involved?

A: Creation karma. Equally, creation karma. Yeah, that’s right, creation karma. I think so. No doubt there’s creation karma, because they create it, equally, together, because one cannot make, you need two hands to clap. It is. Well, nowdays you know it is slightly different, well, that is then different.

Q: What is the karma from killing or requesting the killing of a suffering animal.

A: That is another very difficult question, again. Killing of a suffering animal is also killing. Even though that killing might help that animal, we never know. But we hope that it will help. We never know whether it helps. We know it’s not going to harm that much. Whether we help or not. Again, no one can deny that it is killing. But again, it is not like abortion but still very similar to it. Very similar to it. These are difficult questions. I don’t think I can really say this is this or this is that. But both animal and individual it is better off that way.Judging from the human beings point of view, you know we do have some kind of phowa, transferring the consciousness, and when it is allowed to do and when it is not allowed to do. It is allowed to do when you know you are definitely going to die, time is now. Whether it is a few hours later or a few days later or a few weeks later, when you see that body is no longer going to be useful, then it is allowed to do transferring the consciousness. Judging from that angle, so the mercy killing of an animal may not be that bad. Since we don’t have phowa capability and try to put them to sleep. So it might not be that bad. But there’s no denying that’s killing tool. They say you cannot be right all the time. Perfection is extremely difficult. But that may be the right thing to do.

Q: The act of choosing, the choices I make seem controlled by karma rather than by my free will. Are my choices also the result of karma?

A: Your choice, you choose, and once you choose, and then its execution takes over by karma. You chose, yes you have free choice, free will choice, you did choose, and the execution of that choice again takes over by karma even though you executed, but it’s a karmic function there together. So yes there is a free choice, yes there is a karma involved. Both go together without contradicting each other. Complementing each other, actually it goes. This body is very clear. That’s it! Thank you.

Today is very simple. First noble truth. Don’t develop depression, but go and think a little more. OK, that’s it. Thank you so much.

Disc 17

Are we fully satisfied with the empty and selfless? I don’t think we are. However I’d like to touch briefly on the two other noble truths and probably the Fourth Noble Truth of the path, which is also the selfless and empty part of it. So probably we can sort of combine these two together and revisit today. But I’d like to go back to the Second Noble Truth first because we mentioned it as the Truth of the Cause. The misunderstanding being clarified here is that everything comes out without cause, it just appears. It just happens to be. That's what people think, it just appeared, or it just accidentally happened, it is just good luck, bad luck business. There are no causes and conditions. To answer that misunderstanding the Buddha emphasizes so much that it is the cause that brings the result. There is no result without cause. Basically the whole karma business really talks to you for the whole cause part of it.

All the different sufferings, constantly, continuously, are repeatedly growing with us, everything we are experiencing is suffering, even our joys and everything are considered suffering, in our particular case. And it is true, to the eyes of the enlightened beings, it is suffering, because when we have too much of it, it creates pain, everything does. Even the companionship, if you have too much you quarrel, you started abusing each other. If it’s too hot, you try to sit under a tree. Then it becomes too cold. If it’s too cold you try to sit in the sunshine. Then it becomes too hot. So even the right temperature, just perfectly right, does not last, it changes, it becomes wrong. So these are the clear signs that everything, whatever we’re experiencing is suffering. That’s why we’re talking about suffering only, when we’re talking about the four noble truths.

Truth of suffering, cause of suffering. So it is. And that is constantly, continuously coming, and that’s why again, it is the cause of suffering. You know, the second noble truth, people translate as truth of cause, but it’s a little more than that. Continuously all the sufferings are coming. The causes for these sufferings will continuously run and continuously come in. I was asking one of our friends who has been sick for a long time the other day, "What did not go wrong with you?" rather than "What is wrong with you?" So that is kun jung - continuously coming. And it is not the fault of the individual or anything but this constant cause is running

And because the cause constantly runs the suffering goes on and increases all the time. It does not decrease. Sometimes it looks as if it decreases a little bit. But then it increases again. So that’s why it is rap che, really growing. And it also becomes the condition for the next effect, which is ready to hit. So that’s why it is a condition as well. You have to look at the Second Noble Truth from the four angles of being the real cause, constantly making sure it’s running, increasing the suffering increases and becoming a condition for the next pain as well.

These are true facts in our life. Everything is like that. Even our medicines that are supposed to be methods to help us not to have suffering also become causes of suffering. You get side effects and something else happens and something else happens and all that. And of course, as I told you, in my own case, my diabetes had to come because I’ve been eating all these sweets all these years and that is the original cause. The condition is that I have been given certain tablets for my blood pressure and that caused the diabetes. So the method of relieving pain becomes a condition for receiving another pain. It’s true for me, and it may be true for you.

This is how you can see the truth of cause, like we see the truth of suffering, from four angles. And I don’t think there is many questions on this, because we are aware of the cause and how it is continuously going, I don’t think there are a lot of questions about why the delusional causes become karmic causes. People may have that question. But otherwise it is making sure that running suffering increases, it becomes a condition. All of them are quite clear. But people may have that question. Some people may not be clear, how the delusions become the karmic cause. That is a big question. It is an important question, it is a fundamental issue for a spiritual person. It is also a fundamental point where you really draw the line between right and wrong. It is a fundamental point. I think that basically, right and wrong are dependent and relative. But here it will give you some points about what's right and wrong, which are definite. I’ve been saying it for the last couple of months and weeks, maybe years. I don’t have a problem with new age, it may be fine with them, great, even love and light, no problem. But I do have a problem if they say there is no right or wrong, everything is right and everything is wonderful, that there is no such thing such as wrong or negativity and that there is is no sin. In reality, if there’s no sin there’s no virtue. If there’s no wrong there’s no right. Right and wrong are dependent arisings. They’re just opposite each other. If there’s no wrong there’s no right. If there’s no negative, there’s no positive. Otherwise everything is fine. Everything is lukewarm and nothing makes any difference to anything. So it will not really work that way, in my mind. And I fail to see it. So yes, if you feel positive, it will help you to be positive, there is no doubt about it. But that doesn’t make it go very far. As I told you there’s actually no better positive religion than Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.

In Vajrayana you think you are a fully enlightened Buddha. That’s how we got to talk about "Chocolate Tara". It started with Alan. Alan wrote a poem saying John Madison has chocolate toes. So then I went on and said John Madison is Chocolate Tara. If you really think in that way, you are visualizing yourself in the pure deity's form. Last night I kept telling you how impure the body is. I went on and on quoting from the sutras. So in Vajrayana you are doing the opposite of that. You focus on how pure the individual really is. You visualize the divine nature, the buddha nature, in the form of the fully enlightened being, capable of becoming fully enlightened within this lifetime.

These two approaches don’t contradict each other. You may think, ah! These two are contradictory. They are not. The dirty part of it is true, and the pure part is also true. Both can go in one form, on one point. The pure as well as the impure. Both can really go on it.

So good and bad is reality. You cannot deny there is bad. Bad things are there. Bad things happen to people. And there is a hell realm. It is real. It is not just the imagination or hallucination produced by some religious leaders to threaten people. People may think that way. But they are all reality. We will only know if we have to experience them ourselves, on our body. Then it’s painful. Then it’s difficult to take. Then it’s hard to make it.

My first teacher was the one who really taught me the Tibetan alphabet as well as reading and meditating on the lam rim points. I thought that I was six or seven years old at that time but from the pictures I look more like four at that time. I was sort of sitting in between two grown up persons who were meditating on all these lam rim points. One of them was sitting to one side of me and the other on the other side of me. One of them was a very famous geshe. Later in India even His Holiness took a lot of teachings from him. He had a terrible body odor, too. On the other side there was this old retired businessman, and he just sat up straight the whole time. The evenings were too long for me because they’re meditating. They probably meditated on all the outlines from beginning to end, and whatever they were focusing on they were pinpointing the focus on it, and I sat there in between looking up and down.

That teacher of mine, when he died, came to visit physically. I told that story elsewhere. Anyway, while still alive he was unable to speak for a long time. He had a stroke or something. I was not taken there. When he spoke again he was in a big family called Chak drag family. They were Tsonghkhapa’s benefactors, and also my teacher’s benefactors. So the members of the family were visiting India, they were not home, so he had collected all of the managers back and he spoke to them and said that there were some difficulties, a curse, and this and that, and then he said, "When it really materializes on your personal body it is not easy, it is hard, but I prayed to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha that I will speak again and tell you people about that." That’s what he said. These sort of were his last words.

As I said, Buddha’s last words were about impermanence. He took off his clothes and told his disciples, “Don’t talk now.” That's because everybody was yelling and screaming, so he said, "Don’t say anything, listen. It’s very rare to find a Buddha’s body", so he took off all his clothes and sat over there and said, "Look." And then he said, "These are the last words of an enlightened being."

So my teacher, Gendun Rimpoche, said the same thing, "When it comes, and when you have to pay, it’s on your own flesh and bones, it’s not easy." So that’s the reality, it’s true. So there is bad, it’s true. That is the only problem I have when people say there’s no good and no bad. I mean they don’t say there’s no good, they say there’s no bad, everything is good. So, that's interpretable, sure, because you can make everything good for here and there and this and that - as we say, even we get nothing: "It’s a good learning experience." We always say that. And we have this good learning experience forever in our life, even life after life. So that’s not necessarily great. So it's interpretable, sure. But good and bad are there. Good and bad is also a result of good and bad deeds. And it’s also a cause of good and bad as well. So you see: negativity brings negativity. Positivity brings positivity. Anger brings anger. You keep on getting angry, angry, angry, angry until it gets bigger, bigger, bigger, until you’re going to hit the ceiling or you’re going to explode. Right? So that is how causes and conditions work. That’s the reality. And if you keep on thinking about kindness and compassion all the time it also does the same thing because just like we have the cause of suffering we call this cause of suffering and we identify this as suffering, but it works the same way, cause of joy and pleasure as well. And so that’s why, if you keep on thinking about love, compassion and caring and all this, it also carries the same thing, it becomes cause, it becomes the result, it becomes the condition.

Though we label this cause of suffering, cause and result works for both, joy and suffering, everything. The Second Noble Truth is truth of the cause of suffering, but the system is working the same for the positive as well. So the idea of not having good and bad is quite obviously wrong, because bad things do happen. We do have difficulties. We get it.

So lets revisit a little the Third Noble Truth. You can look at that also look from the four angles, the angle of cessation, peace, satisfaction and renunciation.

What is really cessation? Yes, liberation is cessation, sure. But what I really wanted to convey is that when you have been able to stop the suffering and the cause of suffering, then you gain something that is not only just free of pain and the cause of pain, but by stopping it you get some kind of peace, harmony and in the nature of joy. It is not only a feeling but a status that the individual obtains. And that is the really the cessation.

There are some people who think that there is no such thing called total liberation, or just liberation. Certain people really think it goes on and on and keeps changing, changing, and sometimes you feel good, sometimes you feel bad. They think this will really continue, nothing else. To a certain extent it is true for our experience. But Buddha is saying, "No it’s not true, beyond that there is really something called cessation which I personally experienced." When Buddha first obtained enlightenment he chose to keep silent and the first words that Buddha spoke were

I found a profound experience, such peace, an incredible, luminous, almost uncreated, nectar-like state. But I cannot express it to anyone and even if I do no one will be able to understand and thus I would like to keep silent.

So it is a stage that you can obtain just because you have totally eliminated suffering and the cause of suffering. And that stage has no fallback. And once you’ve obtained that, you remain forever. As long as you have the fallback, then that is contaminated. Falling back is the sign of contamination because it cannot sustain itself. When it is no longer contaminated, that is actually cessation.

Then some people consider certain parts of contaminated joy as liberation. We talked about that last night. All of those are not really cessation because the cessation is real peace. It is peace because it has completely overcome the delusions and negative emotions and everything.

Now you are probably thinking that then the person may become some lukewarm type of person, because you don’t have pain. So you may really become lukewarm, not so much concerned, out of touch with everybody else. You may get that idea, and there’s truth in that. That’s a point the Mahayana will raise about the Hinayana. It’s not that they don’t have compassion, it’s not that they don’t care, but there’s much more personal concern than everything else. There’s maybe more, maybe a slightly lukewarm touch. That’s why love and compassion have to be applied very strongly. And that’s the reason why the ultimate yana has to be one yana rather than three yanas. The difference between total enlightenment and just liberation alone is that big.

But liberation alone is not that bad. It is already a tremendous achievement. It is nothing to look down on, although it might be slightly lukewarm. It is tremendous peace, free of every disturbing thoughts and emotions and effects and consequences, everything really. That’s why it’s peace. Not only it is peace, it is fully satisfied. The individual has permanent satisfaction. That satisfaction doesn’t go away. It is the satisfaction that doesn’t disappear, that remains forever all the time within the individual. And that’s why it’s not only peace but also satisfaction. Not only is it satisfying, but it never, ever is revisited by suffering and the cause of suffering at all. And therefore it is renunciation too. So here you can see the renunciation does not mean renouncing the good life and family and all that. Somewhere some stupid person brings such thoughts and then that fools everyone. A person like me, who is a fool, can be fooled by a fool. A fool can only fool another fool. So they can fool me, and that’s what happened.

So now let’s visit the Fourth Noble Truth. I told you yesterday what the true path really is. The true path is at the center of the path of seeing. And that concentrated, meditative state of no obstacle, and the aftermath of that are the real true path.

The misunderstanding here is that there is no such thing as a path that really leads you to total cessation. Some other people say that the wisdom of selflessness is not the wisdom path, not the liberation path. Or some people say some kind of concentrated meditative equipoise is the true path of liberation and that there is no such thing called total cessation.

In order to overcome those misunderstandings, Buddha taught the path. And it is the direct antidote of delusion. The word in Tibetan is lam rigpa dupa ringin. rigpa is a very interesting word, word that has a tremendous amount of meaning. I don’t know what this big dictionary somebody gave me yesterday says. I’m sure it doesn’t say much. Knowing Dr. Goldstein, he will not visit dharma words, he will say that is Jeffrey Hopkins' job. Leave it. So I’m sure he doesn’t say much on it. He had quite a good people working for him, so maybe there is something.

rigpa goes for liberation, rigpa goes for ideas, rigpa goes for the primordial level, it is sort of tremendous. Out of that rigpa is direct antidote of negative emotions and negativities and negative karma. And it is also drub pa which is practice, the practice part of it, because it leads the mind to the proper, perfect way, the positive way. That’s why it’s practice. If the mind is lead in the wrong way it may not be called practice in the dharma system. In other systems they may be calling it practice but not in a dharma system, because you are leading your mind the wrong way rather than the right way. Again, it is renunciation, because you’re never going to revisit suffering and the cause of suffering again.

Basically these are the four major points of the Four Noble Truths. So what I did on this day and half or two days and little part here today, is visiting the Four Noble Truths quite deeply. Did we really go that deep? No we did not. We can really go far beyond this, at each and every one point, but it is much more than what I’ve been able to talk before, so it does serve some purpose.

Now I would like to talk about the Fourth Noble Truth, the Truth of the Path itself a little more. Last night we briefly talked about selflessness from the point of view of the First Noble Truth. It is the point of empty, tongba , empty and selfless. We are talking from that angle. Last night we talked about what is self-grasping. We gave you the example of the king. Traditionally in the Buddha’s time he talked a lot about the kings. So in the example the king thinks, I AM THE KING. That gives you a strong grasping self. I. IIIIIIII am the king. THE KING. Then he look at his kingdom, the country, the people, the land, and says, "These are MINE." So here you get I and MY. So here you get the "I" grasping, EGO grasping, MY grasping. The mind really grasps the "I" - mind very strongly. Buddha immediately links that to pride. He says that because of that the king has pride. It is the pride of I AM THE KING. THESE ARE MINE.

That is the pride we don’t want. Self-esteem, yes we do want that. We want to make ourselves humble. But humble with quality. If you have everything and you think nothing, then that is humble with quality. The straw that doesn’t collect so much wheat will stand straight. And if it has a lot of wheat it bends down. These are examples, remember?

Another one is that on the mountain peaks the water doesn’t remain because it goes down. But in the valley the water is maintained. Without pride, quality remains. With pride it washes off. So Buddha goes on talking to the king about how to reduce the pride. Buddha tells him, "Everything belongs to everybody. It just does not belong to you alone. It’s not yours, and you won’t be able to do anything." Also, he asked the king to imagine he is a performer, "Pretend to be a king for a short second, and then pretend to be Brahma for a short second; each and every one of those seconds when the performer is performing, he or she should pretend everything belongs to him, but it really doesn’t belong to him because he’s just performing. Likewise, you own everything, you don’t own everything, you own nothing, you will die with nothing, so you own nothing."

That’s how Buddha talked to the king. This was to show him not only the pride of being the king, but also his ego grasping that "I am the king and these are the subjects."

Buddha went and told one of his disciple-kings, "Where does the first king come from?" The king says, "We are born in the king’s caste, we don't belong to the caste of Brahmin or the untouchables. That’s where it comes from." Buddha says, no. First people were growing food together and everything was shared together, and then they had difficulties sharing, so they decided to divide the land where you can grow the crops, the food.

The moment they did that people started stealing from each other. You know, one steals from other, and they needed to stop that. So they decided to hire a strong young man to be the watcher of that, and they were going to pay, everybody was willing to pay 6% of their crops to their person, who was hired as watchman. The watchman then became king. So Buddha told the king, “You are a watchman, you are being paid by everybody, and you are the servant of everybody, not the king of everybody, but you are named the king because you are the watchman who watches that everybody’s property remains intact and no one overtakes the other one. You are paid by 6% of everybody’s share. Probably that might have become a tax.”

So later the kingdoms been developed. I thought it was very funny. You know, Indian culture, the traditional Indian culture also claims to be the first democracy too. They were talking about that in the west. What happened is if the majority of the persons like to hire that person to be the watcher, then that is a majority decision, sort of majority’s choice, not minority’s choice.

This sort of publicly selected or elected king is what the traditional Indian Buddhist culture claims to be a democracy and they says it has always been over there, so that it preceded the Greek democracy.

It is interesting how Buddha talks to the king about cutting his ego grasping, and that I grasping and my grasping business. And he also gives the example. "You are just the same as when you yourself choose an attendant, you appoint your attendant from among your subjects, you give them a bigger land, and in the same way the public selected you to be the public watchman and give you 6% of their yields. So you are a servant to public just as your servant is a servant to you."

You know Buddha did this to reduce his pride, as well as ego-grasping together. He even told him, "Your caste, the royal caste, is no superior caste, there is nothing, you happened to belong to the family who was chosen to be the watchman so you have become royal caste. That’s not permanent. Any one of your family member may get married to lower class or Brahmin, and in that case, what happens to your caste?" That’s how Buddha talks to those kings.

Buddha did talk about kings all the time, because a king is the good example of a great ego. Really, you talk about the ego, it is the king who has the big ego, but actually, every sentient being, each and every one of us has that ego grasping or "I" and "my" grasping both. Because of that we do have obsession, aversion and hatred, sort of automatically. Even though there may be a really absolutely poor beggar, even that beggar has ego grasping. Even that beggar has aversion and hatred. Even that poorest of all, if there is something called worst human being, even that person has ego, and that person’s ego gets hurt. And that is the reality for all of us. We sometimes think that we are better human beings, that others are not so that great. We give whatever reasons there may be, that they are not educated, don't know what they’re doing, or whatever the excuse may be, but they also have ego and that ego gets hurt.

We do have that grasping mind very strong. For example, we look in our body, which is actually not even ours. It comes from our parents’ drops. Right? It is coming from my parents’ drops. And that increases, collects together, and that’s what we call our body, which is a collection of flesh, blood, bone and all this impure together. We pointed out a number of them last night, so it is a collection of all those. It is not even ours. Yet also it does provide a basis for us to be able to grow, grow older, provide us the base to get sick, provide us base to die, so it is a basis of fear. It is also basis of destruction. And ultimately, this body will separate from us and become just like dust somewhere. So such a basis provided the shelter for our mind, and there is not really someone other than this collection of impure things, there’s not someone pure who owns all of those. Yet, we think there is something, and call it "me". And "my". Actually there is nothing really fit to be me or mine, but we have this pride, this grasping pride. Actually we own nothing, not even our own body. That’s also coming from somebody else’s blood, as well as other things.

Likewise we also think that other things, certain articles, even going beyond my body, are also MINE. MINE. It’s very strong. Actually nothing is really yours. You may have to leave any minute, leave everything, and go. So we shouldn’t have such a pinch that it has to be MY. You know? Thinking, "Don’t eat my food", "Don’t take my shirt away", what does that do to us? If you can think on those lines it will reduce our negative emotions. Every negative emotion that give us pain is based on a false perception. So when you know that, it will give you much less pain of negativities. So, this I-grasping is called ten-dzin (lit. truth-grasping) in Tibetan, self-grasping, I-grasping. And it also has it’s imprints as well.

Within the Buddhist tradition, whether it is Mahayana or Hinayana, Buddha’s point is there is no self. Grasping at self and "I" is the not the correct thought. Our spiritual purpose is to eradicate that idea of grasping a self. So, the Buddhist point is that it is selfless. The -nesses were added up later. This question is an unfinished, very strong debate point between Nagarjuna and Shankaracharya. Shankaracharya's point is that he does accept self. And Nagarjuna does not. I think there lies the difference between Buddhist and non-Buddhists. On the one hand it is taught that the division is on the point of taking refuge to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, but in reality the division comes in on three points.

acceptance of the reality

functioning of the individual

the meditative level of the individual

So these three points come in. It is more than who you take refuge top, what you take refuge, it is much more than. And for a person like me, looking from here, I follow Buddha’s path. But we cannot say Shankaracharya is wrong. They have been arguing over this for over a thousand years, who knows who is going to decide it. Then maybe a point will come out, somehow.

I only know from the Buddhist path point of view, and therefore, all Buddhists are known to accept selflessness from that angle. And that’s the big difference. So when you talk about selflessness, you have to talk about what self is not there. That’s why the Heart Sutra says, "no eye, no nose, no ear, etc." That doesn’t mean that there is no ear or no nose.

It is a really important point. When you talk about selflessness, what kind of self are we talking about? If you’re not clear with this, we’ll be talking about apples and oranges. We should be talking about apples and apples or oranges and oranges. So we have to make that clear first. And that becomes an important point in Buddhist or non-Buddhist schools and for practitioners to practice. We have been taught so much that samsara is suffering and misery, everything is horrible. We are almost getting an aversion for it. We are almost at the point of throwing up.

At that point we want to know what to do and they tell us "Selflessness". So that is becoming an issue. To making it clear what kind of self we are talking about is number one priority. In the Buddhist teaching tradition they call this recognition of object of refutation. We are talking about selflessness in the first noble truth, which is also the fourth noble truth, so think about that together. Don’t lose the basis on what we’re working. So in that context we are talking about the recognition of object of refutation. What you refute, is that right or wrong?

The pramanavartika, the text on logic, says that everyone of us has the sort of simultaneously born self-grasping idea. That means we look in and we say, this is me! So where are we looking, and where are we telling ourselves "This is me"? We are perceiving that "me" is something, a person, or some sort of substance, that can independently stand on its own. We feel it is somewhere inside, maybe part of the mind, maybe part of the body. Or it maybe both or maybe neither. Or it may be neither body nor mind. Or maybe mind alone. So we look in there and find something, a substance that can acknowledge the label of self. We perceive a self-standing substance. So that’s what we really look in.

When you say “I” meditate, “I” pray", “I” say my sadhana", “I” am eating", “I” am going", “I” am talking", and so on, when you’re really looking at that “I” you get some sort of a pervasive type of substance within your body, within your mind. We are looking at that and we are grasping that. Right? So that sense of "I" is my most precious, precious. And it is much more important than the others - because it is MINE. That is the reality with us. Because it is mine, it is much more important than the others.

So immediately you get exclusion. I and the others. You cut others out. MY independent, self-standing substance is much more important than yours because it’s mine. So we have that division of excluding you, cutting you out. And making ME much more important. So naturally you made a self-existing me and you, an independently established me and you. That’s where aversion and hatred comes. Because of that we get everything else. The Buddha himself stated,

When you no longer have this independent self-existing “I,” you begin to realize that your aversion and hatred not only go away but won’t even come at all.

This is very true, because aversion and hatred both come because of this exclusion of others. So what we are saying here is there is no independent self-standing, independent substance. When you say there is no independent, self-standing substance you get a message behind that. Yes, there is no independent self-standing substance called “I,” but there is an “I” based on or labeled on my form or five skandhas. You will see an "I" as independent self-standing substance, but automatically you will see a self-labeled dependent "I" at the back of the independent self-standing “I.”

The word in Tibetan for this is zay yul and ta yul. zay really means substance and ta means labeled. There is a labeled "I", labeled on forms, skandhas, and mind combined. So you begin to see the division of "I" here, which normally we don’t see. You begin to see the division of what that grasping is; you really begin to see it. It is the independent, self-standing substance within me. We see that as the owner of "my", one who owns "my body and mind" and all those. That is a pretty strong ego.

But, then you also have to see the opposite of that, and that is the labeled I.”, which is a dependent “I”. It is not a self-standing substance but a labeled one. So you just basically see two different selves here.

When I see an independent "I", a self-standing substance, that "I" probably does not depend on form or anything. From our mind point of view, you say “me.” For that “me” you do not need to go through form or skandhas or anything. It is ME. "Did “I” do something wrong?" "Is that person angry with ME?" That me, that big ME coming up is the independent, self-existing substance that is coming into the projection, or into view.

So is not just a simple collection of the skandhas, or not just a continuation, it has almost nothing to do with form and creation. With creation I don’t mean being created by god. It is some kind of self-standing substance. That self is the object of negation. And that actually doesn’t exist. But such a thought, such a projection we all have right from the beginning. It is extremely difficult for us to recognize it, unless you have a good condition.

I would like to read a little bit from Tsonghkapa’s leg she nying po, which Professor Robert Thurman translated. The English title is "Speech of Gold" [also: Essence of Pure Eloquence]. In there it says that according to the Buddha’s followers, we will consider the self-standing, independent substance as self-grasping. We perceive this self-standing substance as the leader and all the skandhas as retinue. Because we label them, it is MY form, MY feeling, MY creation. You say, "MY form, MY feeling", you’re not saying, "ME form, ME feeling", so it gives you the perception that "I am the one who OWNS all this", that’s why MY form, MY feelings. So "I" is considered the owner or leader of the others, meaning your skandhas. They are like the followers or employees, or something in that manner. You have to be able to stop that. Stopping here means negating that. The moment you’ve been able to negate that, then you will see the dependently labeled “I”, rather than that big ego that we have inside.

We are talking about something which we consider the big guy, the big director, the queen bee, the queen ant, the “I, Rimpoche”. I have given you all these labels at different times but when you are really able to talk about them and think about them, when you have the time and the opportunity, then it is much more clear here. So I hope people are more clear about it now than just simply thinking “I, Rimpoche,” "Queen Ant" or "Queen Bee".

Tsonghkapa says when you refute that "I", then you will be able to see the other “I,” that is the dependent, collectively existing "I". This exists just as a collective, just as collective alone. That means that there is no other "I" apart from the collective, no other "I" than the skandhas and mind. Earlier we were thinking about the "substance". We refuted that and then it becomes just a collective of skandhas and mind. That is the mind or the wisdom of selflessness. What stands refuted is the independent, self-standing substance. But there is still one “I” left. Why? If there is no “I” left, then you don’t have a basis for the creation of positive and negative karma. There is no one who experiences good and bad results. Who is caught up in samsara and who is going to be liberated from samsara? All this you would lose completely. We know that this is not true, therefore you’re going to find another “I” there.

In popular talks I often say that we have been so much crushed by our ego that the "I" stopped functioning properly. I think I mentioned it in MY book GOOD LIFE GOOD DEATH. In order to talk about that self standing substance we are borrowing the word ego. That has crushed the actual “I”, which is collectively or dependently functioning behind the scene, providing the real basis. Now, when you realize how it exists, it will begin to open its eyes and speak. You will begin to notice it’s there. When you have completely refuted and negated that strong ego, then it first looks like everything is gone, nothing is left, there is no one who is creating karma, no one who is experiencing the results - nothing. We know that’s not true, the "I" is collectively there, even after negating the ego I’m still there. If you pinch yourself, you will feel the pinch. So who is feeling the pinch? So now you do see these two tyes of “I.” You do see the two different ways of grasping. Basically we did good a job here. The main thing is recognizing the object of refutation. It is a big job. Some people meditate for thirty, forty years with open mouth, but don’t get that.

Disc 19

Welcome back. We’ve been talking about selflessness and the object of negation. I have been talking about this independent, self-standing substance. You may really think it is like a material substance, like a piece of paper or something, or the mixture of something and something else. But what I’m really thinking here is the Tibetan word for substance, dze. That means something tangible, something you can catch, hold, something you can look at. It is also independent of the skandhas, including the mind. That is the self standing, self-existing substance. We’re almost seeing it as something sort of behind the body, or maybe oneness with the mind. It is something tangible called "self".

We will have difficulty finding that. We sort of think it is somewhere inside, but we really can’t pinpoint it. That’s what we perceive. That perception itself might not be the object of negation. But the projection, the acceptance of it as self is. Tilopa mentioned this to Naropa,

Appearance does not tie you down, but the perception does. So let the perception go.

The independent self appears to us as somebody beyond the body, beyond the mind, or at the back of the body, inside the body or in front of the mind or something. That perception is not the problem. The acceptance of that appearance is a problem.

I think we did quite a good job this morning. So there’s not so much left, but still, there are a few more loose ends we have to tie up. When we accept this independent, self-standing self it really appears to us as tangible, catch-able. You can almost say what color it is, what shape it is. You trace it inside; you get some kind of black lump. It is something, but you can get nothing more in detail. So we are accepting in our mind that it is something there. We don’t see it clearly but we are convinced it is there. The appearance has been accepted. Accepting that appearance might be the major problem rather than the appearance itself. The acceptance of that independent self-standing, tangible, catch-able substance is what most of the Buddhist schools can accept as object of negation.

There are two exceptions. For example, the lowest school, they don’t accept that. They really do accept a tangible being, independent of body or mind. Yet, they are still Buddhist. As I mentioned to you, it is more or less a Buddhist or non-Buddhist division from that viewpoint. More or less it’s true, but there are exceptions. There’s one group called nemapuba. The nemapuba really are Buddhist. They do take refuge to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. They do honor every morality, and both, concentration and wisdom. But their way of presenting the wisdom is very close to non-Buddhist presentations.

What a big deal if it is a Buddhist thing or non-Buddhist thing! Some people could feel that. What difference does this make? Although this nemapuba view is a Buddhist view point, every Buddhist school refutes them. The reason is that they don’t want to mislead the people. Its not about that you’re wrong, and I’m right, and we defeat you. That is not the issue. These refutations are an issue because we don't want to mislead the future generation and individuals.

The self is called kang sa in Tibetan. There is also a little Tibetan tobacco pipe that has the same name. During the prayer festival, there are debates. So a group of monks was debating about kang sa all the time. One nomad came and was watching, observing the debate. And he thought, “Oh my God, how can they argue that much about a little pipe? Whoever lost theirs doesn’t matter, I can them mine.” So, the next year he came during the same period, and the same thing happened. Again, they were all arguing about the pipe. The year after that he definitely brought his pipe, you know. And when they were debating he said, "Stop, don’t argue! Whoever lost it, take mine. You have been arguing for three years. I don’t want you to argue any more. Here’s my pipe, take it!" So it happens to be the same name for the person and for the pipe.

When we talk about the perception of the independent, self-standing, tangible substance, the word for that in Tibetan is zah yul. It interprets tremendously here and there. Independent means that it does not really depend on the form or skandhas or anything. Asanga also states, "It does not depend on something else, it does not come with something else, it is independent and self-standing." If you don’t have that, you have something that is depending on others, something that arises, remains and then decreases and disappears because of other conditions. And that's why it is not independent, self-standing, substantial or tangible. We don't have such an independent self, free of skandhas or others. Why? If you have it, then you have to have it with the form together. But it can neither exist in oneness with the form or separately from it. In short, when we are talking about the First Noble Truth, emptiness, suffering and selfnessness, that selfnessness is the lack of a self which we label form, or which is an independent, self-standing, tangible something. In other words, we have now quite a good recognition of what ego is, and when you recognize it’s not there, that really becomes selfless. It is impermanent, suffering, empty, and selfless.

There is no other than the impure form in which we can trace it. We can see the form and say, "Here I am." Other than that, separate from that form, the pure "I" is not there. It is selfless and empty. That self is the object of negation. We already talked about the ego. Now empty here means that separate from our impure form, there is no other one who occupies, who has the ownership. Earlier we talked about this king, and his retinue and all this. Then we talked about the ego within ourselves and that all others are retinue. It’s all there. It’s all going to lead to the same thing. I think they will emphasize and point it out from the two different angles, separately, twice. I think that should be able to do it.

In other words, our normal feeling, the minute we begin to look at our appearance, our form, is that we see someone who is not depending on the form, but someone other than form, which we call self. That’s what appears to us and then we accept whatever appears to us as reality. That self has to be the object of negation. If that’s not it, then there has to be really something solid there.

And that has to be either oneness with form, or separate from form. And then a lot of problems will come. If it is oneness with form, there are so many [aspects of form], and there would have to be so many selves [for example, there is seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and so on]. If it is separate from form, then where is it? You go and search. But on the other hand you cannot say it’s not there.

It is like looking for a horse in this room. There is an elephant, a cow and a dog and you’re still looking for the horse. So you take out the elephant, the cow and the dog and there should be the horse left. But you don't have it. . Just like that: if the self exists separate from the aggregates, then take away each and every aggregate, the physical form, the feelings, consciousness and creation, all of them, and then there still has to be self there, but you don’t have it. Again, if the self is one with the form you have another problem: as the form is born and dies or is destroyed, the self also would have to be born and destroyed, but that is not how it works.

I think that should be quite good enough for the view that is common with almost all the Buddhist schools. But when we talk about the great emptiness, then that is a totally different story. I’m not even sure whether we could go for that or not. So anyway, so much for the selflessness commonly accepted by almost all the Buddhist schools. When we talk about all the Buddhist schools I’m not talking about Sakya, Gelug, Kagyu, Nyingma, the Tibetan traditions. I’m talking about the traditional four Buddhist schools, and all are accepted by every Buddhist everywhere, in any part of the world. I’m talking about their view points. In Tibet, everybody claims to be follow the tal gyur wa view. The tal gyur wa has a unique viewpoint. I think the basic general Buddhist viewpoint of selflessness, this is not very mysterious to us, this is comprehensible. At least you can call this a gross emptiness. If not a subtle emptiness, but it is gross emptiness, that’s for sure. I think that itself is quite a good achievement.

I just want to touch on the tal gyur wa view a little bit (skt: prasangika). It is the ultimate view of Buddhapalita. The Prasangika's way of expressing self and selflessness is different from the others. The view of the others schools is that we find the object of self to be lessened, and that is this is something to do with individual human beings, either their physical body or mind, or their existing in oneness or separately or independent or not independent. The Prasangikas, on the other hand, use the same name, selflessness, but their selflessness does not only apply to the people but to all phenomena, whether they are moveable and immoveable, animate and inanimate. That self, as explained from the Prasangika viewpoint, is very difficult to understand. And I put a lot of efforts myself into this too. The difficulty is not the word, not the explanation, but after the explanation, some kind of substance that one has to get.

You know, when the other schools talk about self, it is on the level of not being the same as form, not being independent, and so on, which is quite easy. But here it is a little more difficult than that. For one thing, the Prasangikas establish existence differently from others. Number two, the Prasangikas accept tok da. Tok da has to do with the perceptional mind, the mind labeled on the correct points. Here we are dealing with just a combination of the acknowledging mind and labeling on the correct point. If you combine them together, then just that combination is good enough to be existent.

This is the most difficult level of emptiness you can talk about. Even though we can understand it by words, but we just don’t get it. I went through that difficulty a lot. And then when you don’t get it, there’s no more study you can do. It is not that you don't have enough information. You do, but you still don’t get it. You know what I mean? You don’t get the taste, and you don’t get the substance, you don’t really get it. Then it is required to do purification. It also requires praying. That is why I strongly recommend that people in Jewel Heart do a 100,000 migtsemas before we do anything on wisdom. That will have its effect differently to this level.

So, according to the Prasangikas, just the combination of all parts and parcel alone is existence. And if one is not satisfied with that and goes beyond that and searches, then there is nothing to be found. And that is called selfless. Take for example the person. The person’s body and name, they are in life together. That is just good enough to be existing. Even without name sometimes it can still exist. But beyond that nothing can be found. Just like that it goes for all other things too. So in this particular system, when you talk about "self", what are you talking about? Anything that is not depending on terms and conditions. And when you find there is nothing that is not depending on the terms and conditions, then you have found selflessness. That is the emptiness in this system. This Prasangika viewpoint for us is a very long shot at this moment. For now this should be good enough to be able to understand selflessness. Thus I’m going to close the explanation on selflessness, how it is becoming part of the Four Noble Truths and in particular the First Noble Truth. When Buddha taught it, I think that is what it is.

So lets briefly summarize. When Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths, he did not just say, "This is the truth of suffering, this is truth of cause of suffering, this is truth of cessation, this is truth of the path to the cessation". How he did it is the way we talked about for the last two, three days. In the films they show in India, the Buddha comes and says, “This is the truth of suffering…” But it doesn’t work that way. At the end, when everything is done, he says that. And that doesn’t end there. He told that again twelve times. The Four Noble Truths, repeated three times, makes twelve.

The first is the truth of suffering itself, why it is there, to acknowledge it, to know. When we are really talking about the truth, it is difficult to know, it takes time and energy to try to get to that. We are not simply talking about pain. It goes deeper. The reality of the truth of suffering is the continuation of the individual in an uncontrolled life. That is the real samsara. That is the real truth of suffering. It’s not just the pinch, it is not just the hot and the cold that we are talking about. It is, but that's not all.

Then the second round: dongesheburja. The purpose of the third noble truth is to obtain, to get it. The purpose of the Fourth Noble Truth is to meditate, to practice. OK? That is the Four Noble Truths twice.

The third one says, "Yes, you have to know the suffering, but there is nothing to know. You have to avoid the cause of suffering, yes, there is nothing to avoid. Yes, cessation is meant to obtain, there is nothing to obtain. The Path means to meditate, but there is nothing to meditate."

By now we know that. There is no self-standing, independent suffering to be known. There is no self-standing independent, self- cause to be avoided, because that’s not there. There is no cessation to be obtained, because there is nothing that is not depending on form and name. There is no path that you meditate which is not empty. So that covers the Four Noble Truths in deep detail, and you are circling three times round. So what do you say if I close here? Lets call the retreat is over.

Right. So, I have that little small bookmark around here from the Odyssey to Freedom. From that we have covered:

Recognize suffering, thus all contaminated phenomenon are suffering. Determine cause of suffering, seek liberation, thus all phenomenon are empty, nirvana is peace.

So it almost looks like we are covered it here. Except one subject, the reincarnation, which I said I’d like to revisit. I will probably do it this evening.

Disc 20

Now the "common with the medium level" is almost over. But the one thing I have left out earlier is about death and dying. In general I don’t have to speak much. There are lot of people who returned there and told what happens, and all this. So what I’d like to talk to is a little bit about reincarnation. There is quite a bit of information in the Tibetan book of living and dying. Good life, good death, Tibetan Wisdom on Reincarnation. This has a lot on death and the dying stages, and how people die. So you people have quite good enough information and you are still getting more continuously. But I’d like to talk to you a little bit about reincarnation. Either I talk to you about reincarnation here, as part of the common with the medium level, or I can do that as part of all sentient beings to be recognized as mother. It is possible at both levels. So I would like to do it here. When we begin to look little bit in ourselves, we find two different things. We have two different forms, actually, we have two different forms. The physical form and the mental form. The physical form is a collection of substances that we collect from our parents, commonly known as genes. You know better than I. What I know is from the quotation from the Buddha. What Buddha really says is the physical form has color, shape and all this, so it is a substance, it has come out of a solid substance. The continuation of this solid substance comes from the blood and juices of the parents. And that of the parents also comes from their parents, and so forth. So it is all of other people’s body parts collected. It goes continuously from one person to another, we are sort of talking about a genetic tradition. Buddha talked about that, 2,500 years ago, but we talk about it now.

But when you trace this to the beginning, no one can really point it out. No one can find the beginning. Nagarjuna adds on to that: even if you look at the single result of a human body, and you trace its origin, no one can really find it and point out the beginning. Not even the enlightened beings can. Like you cannot find the beginning of the physical body, you cannot find the beginning of our mental body, the mental form. You cannot trace back its continuation. No one can say this is the beginning of my consciousness. No one can really figure it out. We may be able to say, where it is when it begins to enter the body, when we are born. This is the beginning of that relative individual human being, that very specific individual human being, but not the beginning of the person.

You may say, "Oh, the consciousness may just arise, it is not continuing, it just pops up." But we know very well that consciousness does not function that way. It is a continuation. Today’s consciousness is the continuation of yesterday and the day before. And so forth. So it is a continuation of a consciousness rather than something new that suddenly pops up

Not only that, but non-consciousness, like metals and things like that, cannot become consciousness at all, according to the Buddha. Dharmakirti’s logical text says that non-consciousness cannot become consciousness. Only consciousness can become consciousness. So every consciousness is a continuation of another consciousness. According to the Buddha, other than consciousness cannot become consciousness, no matter whatever happens. The consciousness is the continuation of consciousness. So from that point of view, as long as it is consciousness, it is a continuation of earlier consciousness. So it cannot be that something new pops up. Therefore, according to the Buddha’s idea, when you look at it carefully, there are no newborns, all souls are old souls. There are no new souls at all. I don’t know whether you can buy that or not, but I’d like to throw that out, so that you can think about it. I do not expect you to buy it. But I want you to think about it. So that’s why we have so many karmic imprints and so many positive and negative addictions.

Buddha gives examples, like today’s mind, this minute’s mind, is the result of the mind before that. The mind of this evening is a continuation of this afternoon mind, it’s not a new mind that we have come up with. There are new definitions for that mind, but still, this evening's mind itself is the continuation of the afternoon’s mind, and that afternoon’s mind is the continuation of this morning's mind, and that from the mind of last night and so on. We don’t have a problem to accept that until we reach to the time of conception that time. Beyond that we don’t see. So here we have the doubts. From here to conception, we can see it is the continuation of that mind. Since the mind itself is impermanent, it changes every second and every minute, but it is a continuation. Beyond conception, we can't see it. We don’t remember.

But that doesn’t mean much. There are many things we did in our lifetime that we don’t remember. Not remembering something does not mean it didn't happen. Or by not knowing something it doesn’t mean it didn't happen. They are not valid reasons. They say, well that’s not continuation because I don’t remember. I don’t’ even know about it. That doesn’t mean it has not happened. Many things happen that I do not know. Many things I’ve forgot. So just not remembering, or just not knowing does not become valid reason that there is no continuation of mind. As we see, as far as possible and comprehensible, with our mind, up to the conception, we can follow back. Maybe not to some people, but then at least back to birth, and then you can still think inside the womb and all that. And that we can sort of see, it is a continuation. Now the difficult comes, when you cannot show or trace that gap before the conception. But if you think along the lines that it is a continuation, and we also know the physical gene are continuations of genes before them, then what valid reason is there for assuming that consciousness is not a continuation of another consciousness. We cannot say yes but we cannot say no. As I said in my book, no scientist has proved that there is reincarnation, but no one has proved there is not, either.

The point really is, it is not for argument’s sake. This is for our understanding. For argument’s sake you can argue, and go on arguing and no one will never know anything whatever it is. That doesn’t matter. But if you are really honest and straightforward to yourself, from here to conception it is a continuation, and we don’t really have a reason to say it was not continuing before that.

Of course it is difficult to accept that there are no newborn consciousnesses. But it is Buddha’s statement, and it deserves to be considered. Furthermore, our experience with our addictions, even our qualities, even our knowledge, that it was easy for us to learn or difficult, all of them really show that there is something other than simple learning alone. .

Buddha says that it is the imprint of the earlier consciousness, the experience of the earlier consciousness. And we don’t’ know that yet. But we see differences. We see differences among the people, differences between even twins.. Where does that come from? What is it? It is to be considered. If it is not due to the continuation of mind, if it is simply learning or physical capability alone, then why do people have different levels of compassion, wisdom, care, attachment, and so on? All of them become different to different people. Even though they may learn together and do everything together, two siblings have two different level of experience. Why? If it is simply the physical situation and the same role models, and learning situation, they should be almost the same, but you will get a big difference even with twins, who are born together. Why is this? The difference is there because of our consciousness..

Some people just need to read a little bit and get taught a little bit to understand the whole thing. We call them "brilliant". Some people, no matter how much you keep on talking and reading, you don’t gain anything. So normally we say, "Don’t work hard, work smart." Some people may think it has a lot to do with the parents. Yes, it’s true to a certain extent, it has a lot to do with the parents; the parents provide the atmosphere, they provide the role model, and some kind of discipline. But the children are not part of the parents' consciousness or mind. If that were the case, then if the parents are great artists, the children should become great artists too. That is true to some people, but not true for everybody. One of the parents maybe a great painter, and therefore all children would have to be great painters, but that's not the case. If it was part of the parent's consciousness that information should have come down, but it doesn't.

That indicates it’s not the consciousness of the parents. Even they way you think is also different. When your parents are very conservative, then you will go against that, and when you as a parent are more liberal, the children will go against that. So that shows they don’t think the way you think. Therefore, quite clearly, the childrens' mind is not part of the parents’ mind. One of the great Indian teachers, leuven che cho makes that point.

People may think the mind of the children is also the continuation of the mind of the parents, but that is not the case. They don't learn the same way, they don't think the same way, and more or less they function the opposite way. It says in the Buddhist text that two children may be from one mother, born together, be good-looking, look the same, function the same, but one can be very intelligent and the other can be very dull.

The same text further says that calves and baby elephants and all of them, will straight away, without teaching by their parents, learn how to look for food, have sex and all this. Since we see a lot of difference with very young children, with their mental capacity, we have to ask where that comes from. It is their previous life experiences, which made them different. It has rather nothing to do with the physical genes. So now this text says, "As today’s mind is the continuation of the mind before, this life’s mind also is the continuation of the mind before. Why? This life’s mind is comes from there. There is no other cause than the mind before this mind. And so the previous life itself is also the continuation of the life before that. So when you trace it, you cannot trace it, you cannot find the point where you can say "This is my beginning."

So it is a continuation. When you honestly, true to yourself, begin to think, you will see that there is a point. No one can really say at this moment that it is correct. But when you keep on thinking, - I should say keep on meditating - first you reach a point where you cannot deny. Then you find that it may be a valid point, and at that point you can consider to give it the benefit of the doubt. Then you may find there is really something there. - Or you may find there is nothing there. I think this is for us to explore and to find out. The body is a continuation, the mind is a continuation. That's nothing new, that’s the main point that the Buddha gave us. Once you establish that, then you begin to see that the consciousness as this life is also the continuation of last life's consciousness.

If you can see that, then you can see there is no reason why our future life’s consciousness is also not the continuation of this consciousness. According to the Buddha, our previous life’s mind has been connected to the present life’s mind, and this will connect to the future life with all the capability and imprints and experiences of this life itself. So this is how we travel from the past life to present and present into the future. That is also where you do the transition. It is themind just before death that will be connected to the future life's mind itself. But that doesn’t mean you cannot connect the human consciousness to a consciousness of an animal or anything else. Also, human consciousness can be connected to a mind as a samsaric god, or again human, or whichever realm it is going to. There are no restrictions at all. It can connect each other.

There’s one important thing you have to make clear. When I’m saying, "we" have been doing it, you probably think somebody called consciousness is living inside and getting out of this body, and entering into another body. I think we will think that very often; that is how we’ve been traveling between one life and another. According to Buddha that is not the case. The self of today has not entered into the self of the future. Nor has it entered into the future without cause. Nor it is created by somebody and somebody has made the decision to send you here. So then how does it happen?

It is said that the gross level of consciousness completely decreases at the end of this life. The so-called perception of this life has completely stopped. You go into the darkness. And from that darkness what comes out is a very, very subtle continuation. Not some big lump that’s getting out, but some very tiny continuation. It is so tiny, so subtle. It is just a continuation, and I don’t think it has any shape or color at all - though we talk about bardo beings as haveing shape and all that. At the transition level there is no shape or color, there is nothing tangible, just something very subtle, a sort of capability, very subtle, way beyond even evaporation - a very, very subtle continuation. That continuation also did not come into being because it stopped function here. It stopped functioning here and that continuation is a dependent arising or dependent origination, and then it starts growing into a more gross level. That’s the transition at the extremely subtle level. It can't just stop here and start there. There is the interdependent nature of functioning and that’s why, the transition is in that period. And it goes dark, it is gone completely, stopped here, and then the continuation, as dependent arising, comes out, connects here. That is the transition. It’s not that somebody got out here and goes in there, or that there is somebody called consciousness that flies out of here like a bird, and gets in there in the new life It’s not that way. It is a very, very subtle transition.

Disc 21

So we spent time talking about the Four Noble Truths. We did spend quite a lot of time on the First Noble Truth, and that also from four different points of view: impermanent, suffering, selfless and empty. We spent quite a lot of time on the selflessness part of it. At least you have a basic idea of what we’re really talking about it. It’s sort of general, commonly accepted to all the Buddhist schools. Again, I’m not talking about the different Tibetan Buddhist sects, I’m talking about the original different four or five schools of thought. So now you have most of them.

Now, it is time to sort of wind up all this. We have been talking in detail. We have to sort of conclude that in. We really quite nicely recognized the object of refutation or negation. Here we borrowed term "ego". We have not really spelt it out, but it is not a clear state, but a confused state. It is a state which accepts whatever appears as true. That’s why it is a confused state as well as wrong knowing and mis-knowledge. It is all of that. It is also the source of all the different varieties of fear we have. Yes, fearlessness is great, no doubt. But certain fears are also good. We did talk about that. So that’s that part of that.

We know this is ego, we know it has to be negated, and we recognize it. Now the question comes, "How do I do it?" Buddha at that point taught the Three Higher Trainings, sometimes also called the Three Baskets Teaching. I will come back to this. Why three? It is exactly as we said: the wisdom alone is the direct antidote of that ego. It is the wisdom, nothing else, provided we have the interest in obtaining liberation. We do have interest to be good. We would like to be a better person. But it’s not so easy to have interest for liberation. Liberation is just a word. What we are referring to is freedom from samsara. I’m not sure how many people have interest for that. It is very rare. Yeah, everybody wants to be happy, joyful and good. There is a great deal of interest in that. Then when you talk about freedom from samsara a lot of people will say "I don’t know about that", or "I do know something, but I’m not very sure about it". So as long as we have that in our mind, we don’t have the mind of seeking liberation. That is the measurement.

You can judge for yourself, whether you are a true liberation seeker or whether you are just one of those floating dilettantes. That’s a good new word for me. Are you serious or are you a dilettante? No one can judge you. And you should not let anybody else judge you either. That is within yourself, and you know it. It is really difficult to gain a great interest to be really liberated. For one thing, we don’t know what liberation is all about. Number two, nobody comes back and tells you, "I have been there". You know, normally people talk to you when they went somewhere and say, "It’s great, I had a wonderful time, the water was great, and you know, you can swim in the water with the telephone in your pocket." No one says that, you know. That is why we do have difficulties. Yes, we are extremely intelligent, no doubt about it. But we are very visual people too, extremely visual. When we see it, we believe it.

That is not bad at all, it is good thing, but unfortunately we don’t see the liberation. It is not a tourist resort where you can take a tour. You can take a tour to the Indian holy places, but nobody can take you on a tour to the liberated area, or pure land, or western paradise, or tushita or something. That is our problem.

Our mind really doesn’t have a limit of what it can know, what it can really learn. Even computers have a problem with how much information you can fit on them. When a computer is overloaded it becomes slow and starts to drag, and then after a little while it will crash. The mind doesn’t. Mind has a better position than that. It has no limit, no storage shortage. And when you really meditate and when you think and analyze you can learn it. And you begin to really see it. And then you begin to think about it, and you begin to understand, and then it becomes much easier.

Here I have to talk to you presuming that we are all interested in liberation. In a way, we are supposed to be, otherwise what the hell are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere in Michigan?

So where do you get the liberation from? How do liberate yourself? You have to free yourself from that confused ego state, that ego controlled mind, and begin to function as you yourself, rather than ego functioning on your behalf. It is like that bully father in the family. Everybody has to do everything according to his wishes, or maybe it is that bullying mother-in-law, who controls everything. So ego functioned in that manner within us, and we, the true individual, are suffering.

Yesterday we divided the "I" into two. One is the "I" that is an independently, self-standing substance. Anyway, it seems tangible, and that is the ego I. And then the other "I" is the one that is just a labeled combination and is truly functioning underneath and behind everything, making sure everything works and yet it has no say whatsoever. And that is the true "I", the "I" that is the basis of our karma, the "I" that comes from our previous life and goes to our future life. That "I" is the true "I". But true "me" has nothing to say because that bullying father-in-law is so powerful over there, sitting on everything. So, you have to really bust that up. Only wisdom can do that, nothing else. Yes, wisdom is developed by analyzing and meditating. But however, this is very strong and very serious and very subtle meditation.

Mind is capable, but it needs help. What help do you need? You need to be stable. The problem with so many people is the lack of stability. We’re not stable. I don’t mean you’re crazy. But there are not only a few screws loose, but so many screws are loose. And that is the problem. You have to put those screws back a little and make it stable. And that stability is called samadhi or shamatha. And that is the meditation commonly known in the United States, or in the West

Actually meditation is two things. The wisdom part is meditation. And shamatha is also meditation. But here what you need is shamatha. Without shamatha wisdom may not be able to work. Buddha himself said this in a dialogue between Brahma and Buddha. Brahma (the well-known deity and Hindu-Buddhist mythological figure) asked Buddha, "How does one get liberated?" So Buddha replied, "The root should be very, very solid and stable. And one should be very happy with peace."

Buddha gave an example: If you are going to cut a tree, you really need somebody whose shoulder is very stable. Even if you have got a big axe and it hits up there, down there, you’re never going to cut it. So you constantly have to hit in one solid point. That makes it easy to cut the tree. That was the example given by Buddha, saying the root should be very stable. With "root' here he means the shamatha. Almost all of you know what the meditations teach you, focusing. They make you think of one thing only. And if you are thinking something else you are losing your focus. Even if you are thinking about something good, the meditation instructors will say it’s wrong and bad. They will ask you to move it back on the subject or object, whatever you’re thinking. That is what the concentrated meditation is all about it. It’s really what they’re training you in. They’re training the individual how to focus on one thing and one thing only. That is shamatha. It also gives you a lot of pleasure and harmony and peace and all of those, it is a natural process. Usually our mind thinks and runs all over the place. So when you’re making it think and sit down in one single little place, it gives you focus and concentration, and it gives you peace and harmony and even relaxation and all of those. And that’s why people like meditation.

I don’t know how much stability you gain, but you get something there, and people are happy; you get a sort of harmony and you get good rest and relaxation, and you can think and mindfulness also comes with that. And that is what we call meditation. That is again a must, you know. It is very important and a must. I remember two days ago, some questions come up about what role meditation plays. So, yes, it is important, you’re encouraged everywhere, people should have meditation. We do have those three hour sittings, we have a whole day sitting. So we do have those three hour sittings and whole day sittings, and soon we’re thinking of introducing three day sittings and all that. That’s happening in New York. That is because the shamatha is equally important. It is a must. That way you learn to stabilize your mind. You learn and gain experience of how to focus. I don’t intend to talk in detail about this now. The detail comes in at the level of fifth paramita of the Bodhisattva activities, but you can really combine them together, But basically the object of that style of meditation is to be able to focus.

What are the obstacles when you try to focus? There are only two things: the wandering mind and the sinking mind. Wandering happens when you can’t focus, you can’t think, the mind is going somewhere else. You may be sitting here, but your mind has gone shopping at Myers. So your body may be here but your mind is going through those aisles of Myers or Krogers

Sinking is sort of uhhhhh…..and finally going to sleep. That is gross sinking. But the woardst is not the gross sinking but the subtle sinking. The subtle sinking really is a big problem. It looks like you’re focusing, yet there is no sharpness. It is sort of a loose holding, half asleep. A lot of people used to think this is a great meditation, yeah really, and they believe it too. But it brings a tremendous disadvantage to people. You’re better off not meditating, if you mix those too. You begin to lose your intelligence. You are much better off with your wandering mind than with the subtle sinking mind.

After a little while it becomes like something you are not sure should be thrown out or not. It is like wondering whether something is edible or not edible. That far it can go. So I’d like to tell you the disadvantage of that state. Do not consider the subtle sinking mind as a meditative state. A lot of people do. That meditative state really can make you quite dull. It’s not going to happen straight away that you ask whether it’s edible or not edible, but years go, down the road, that problem will appear. So that is important to be remembered. You would be better off not to have any meditative level than having the level of subtle sinking. At least as good human being you have your intelligence, which is extremely useful. It is a must in order to do anything in our world. In the material world you need it and in the spiritual world it is also a must. If you don’t have that, then no matter whatever you try to do, it’s not going to work.

That’s why the mind is important. Not only the mind itself, but a stable mind is extremely important. You can’t go crazy. If you go crazy you won’t have a spiritual practice, or you won’t have any material development, nothing. You will be the loser in both worlds. So don’t go crazy. It is so important. Intelligent people, very sharp, witty, almost brilliant persons, can easily go off the track. We have seen it, we worked with them, we do whatever we can do, but sometimes you can’t help it, just watch them sadly, just keep watching and see what we can do, probably nothing. So that is important. So you really have to be aware of that, because the most precious thing we have is our mind. Nothing can compare with it. Multi-billion dollars are nothing if you don’t have the mind. What could you do with them? Eat them or wear them?

The mind is so important. Please be very careful. Don’t destroy your mind. Watch out for anything that makes you crazy, any substance, or even thoughts. It doesn’t take very much to make you crazy. It is much easier than we expect. No one will think "I’m going to go crazy, I’m going to make myself crazy". But it goes. And when you’re getting there, you won't even know you’re getting crazy, you’ll never know that. And no one will be able to tell you straightforward either, because if they do, you’re going to get mad, you’re going to fight with them. Why should they tell you? No one can tell you either. By the time when you really realize, it is way, way, way too late. So I don’t want to lose any friends on that. And we do, and this happens. Not only that. There are powerful drugs, whether they are official or unofficial, prescription drugs or non-prescription drugs. When you overuse them you can destroy your mind. The reason why the doctor has to give you prescription is because it has to be managed, to avoid over-use.

The minds that get destroyed are normally not the dull and stupid minds. The minds that get destroyed are the intelligent, brilliant, wonderful ones. That is really the sad thing. When it’s gone too far, then you can’t help it. Internally you can destroy it by making mistakes like submitting to subtle sinking, and externally there are other conditions. When you destroy your mind, that is really a crime, a crime against yourself, a crime against the human mind, The root should be very stable. You don’t have that. There’s no stability at all. You’re basically worse than that flag in the middle of storm, even worse that that. And I think everybody has to be careful. That doesn’t mean you have to worry all the time, "Am I going to be crazy, am I going to be crazy?" We don’t have to worry that much, but when you have the possibility, since whoever is having the possibility, they know something is not right. So you really have to be careful. Meditation or no meditation. Liberation or no liberation. We cannot afford to lose our mind. That is important. And that stability of mind is an internal arrangement, an internal thing. It is due to training your mind, and mind's withdrawing from a lot of attractions. I think that is the right word.

04/26/2005