Archive Result

20030311GRAABWL

CD of 3-11-03

Verse 39

Both now and in previous lives

Such deprivation has arisen

Because of my lack of aspiring for the Dharma.

Who would ever reject this aspiring for the Dharma?

When you don’t have a good aspiration, nothing will work. That is happening very often to us in our life. When people have no interest in what they are doing but are forced into it, they won’t give it their full attention. It could be that they are just working for the money or under the control of a dictatorship. But under those circumstances it doesn’t work very well. On the other hand if you have a personal interest in your work the result will be different. Here Shantideva says that whether your spiritual work will be effective or not depends on the personal interest of the individual. Where there is a lack of inspiration the result of the spiritual practice won’t be that good.

This verse says that in this and in previous lives I have not had a strong aspiration for virtuous activities. There was not a lot of interest in building virtue. I did not have a great aspiration in building up my merit. Because of this I have had all kinds of difficulties. I have been deprived of positive things in life. Why do we have so many difficulties in life today? We suffer from illnesses. Things don’t turn out the way I want them to. Of course, if we don’t know how to plan, that is another problem. It has nothing to do with lack of aspiration. Also, if you don’t know how to execute he plan if you have one, it is not a lack of good karma. However, if you do everything correctly and still it all goes wrong, that is the situation Shantideva is talking about and that comes through a lack of positive aspiration, not only from this life but even from previous lives. The deeds from our previous life are making a difference to what happens in this life. If you are not convinced about reincarnation it is difficult to get that picture. But if you are convinced it is not so difficult to see that what is happening to us today is dependent on what we did in our previous lives.

Now the question is: Can’t we change that? Yes, you can. But it means shifting from Plan A to Plan B. It is not a smooth transition, but we can make that transition. But if you make changes today, don’t expect that you will see a difference in the next days or weeks or months. It takes time for things to get into gear. The gears have to be completely shifted.

Look at this example: It is very difficult to switch to different software on your computer. It takes a long time to get familiar to new software. It also depends on how stubborn the operators are, but in any case it takes a tremendous amount of time and energy.

Here we are talking about karmic processes that have been running over life times. It is obvious that these should take some time. But that does not mean you can not change it. By changing you can definitely ensure that things will run smoothly in future. That is for sure. That future could mean after a couple of years, or decades or after a couple of lives. That is not certain.

If you realize that your current difficulties are coming from a lack of aspiration, who in their right mind would give up trying to develop such an aspiration for Dharma? I don’t know what kind of picture you get in your head if you hear the word ‘Dharma’. You may immediately connect that to Buddha and Buddhism. In Tibetan the literal wording is cho. In English it means corrective measure. There is a big difference between Dharma and dogma. A number of people may get completely confused. They may think that they are the same. They may think it is just a philosophical doctrine. You have to be clear about the difference, otherwise you are depriving yourself of a lot of the benefit of the Dharma. It has nothing to do with dogma. Dharma is pure. It is truth. We say Nature empty, everything’s pure, naturally pure. That’s what I am.

This is pure spirituality. When you make that into a dogma you will say that it has to be the Buddhist spiritual path. The word Dharma probably does not carry that implication. In the Tibetan language, when you use the word ‘aspiration’ you only have to mention it, without saying where it fits. It is for the individual to figure out what it is. But in English you have to make everything very obvious, so the translator has to say, ‘Aspiring for Dharma?’ I am always told by my editors to say everything very specifically. I can’t just say ‘orange’. I have to say ‘orange, which is a mixture of yellow and red’. In Tibetan it is good enough to say ‘orange.’ In Tibetan it is good enough to say ‘aspiring’. You don’t even have to say ‘for Dharma’. In English you have to. But then you have to be careful how you read ‘Dharma’. In this case it is not necessarily buddhadharma. Then again, in the context of this text, the Bodhisattvacharyavatara it could sometimes refer to Mahayana Dharma. This is always subject to debate and interpretation. Also, no matter how much you try to pin it down and identify, people will still interpret it differently. Look at all the legal documents. Everything is spelled out to the letter, as if you were talking to an idiot. And even then it is being disputed and the different parties take the documents to the supreme court and fight over it and try to get it changed. This also shows you why mind is more important than matter, by that way.

So the lack of things working out the way I want comes from a lack of aspiration before that. It is the lack of aspiration for purity. If I don’t produce the karma for things to be that way, how could they materialize? There is no basis. Now you can plan, work and push for it, in other words, provide the right conditions. But there is no force. No matter how many circumstances you try to arrange now, nothing can materialize, because there is nothing to work with. But if there is something, even if it is small, then the conditions you provide can make it perfect and wonderful. But there has to be something there in the first place. Otherwise it is just like a beautiful antique cup, worth thousands of dollars. If it is empty, you can only look at it. You don’t get to drink from it, because there is nothing to drink in the first place. In this example, don’t think about the value of the cup itself. The point is that no matter how valuable the cup is, you need to drink and if there is nothing to drink it is useless even to have the most expensive cup in the world. So, if you don’t have the root cause, all the conditions you may provide are wasted.

Shantideva says that because of that, who in their right mind would reject the power of the aspiration for goodness and purity or for dharma in the sense of pure spirituality.

There is another reason why we shouldn’t just think of Buddha Dharma in this context. Does a pure person necessarily have to be Buddhist? Are only Buddhist going to be enlightened and everybody else is going to hell? That is not right. So we shouldn’t use Dharma here in a dogmatic sense but in the sense of the real Dharma.

So, who in their right mind would reject the pure and right way, except George Bush? The problem with him is that he is becoming a non-virtuous friend – for Tony Blair. As effect of this Iraq war he is probably going to lose his prime minister’s job. A few years ago it would have been unimaginable. He won two elections in a row in a land slide. That has never happened in British history for a century. Now he has to go to every talk show, trying to get his popularity back. But people are all shouting at him. When he wants to talk about a regime change in Iraq, people in the audience suggest there should be a regime change in Westminster instead. This should be an example to us how non-virtuous friends can negatively effect your spiritual practice. Where does the negative friend come from? From the lack of aspiration. When you go wrong in principle, when you make the wrong choice about peace and war, when you move away from the fundamental points, then things start to go wrong. This Iraq thing could drag everybody in and there could be terrible consequences or else it could drag on for a long time and will have some results the administration is happy with and that looks good in print. But it is like in Afghanistan. If you really look you will see how much people are suffering there now today. The shopkeeper from California who has been made president of Afghanistan has to come to the White House and say, ‘Don’t forget me.’ He is not even controlling the city of Kabul. There are so many war lords there and the Americans and the Pakistanis, plus the Taliban and Al Quaida are still there too. He doesn’t have any power. That is the true state of Afghanistan today. But all you see printed in newspapers is the story of a girl who has been able to take off her burka and can study in the university and even become a minister. That gives people the chance to say that all women in Afghanistan are free.

Anyone in their right mind should not throw away the aspiration for peace, for purity, for well-being, for liberation of the people. If you are losing that aspiration you are not a right minded person. Again, what is right-minded could be something different for different people. What is right for one person may not be right for another person. What is right for Jaques Chirac might not be right for George Bush.

Verse 40

The Mighty One himself has said

That aspiration is the root of every facet of virtue;

Its root is constant acquaintance

With the ripening-effects (of actions).

The positive aspiration is the root or foundation of every virtuous action. One sutra says,

All phenomena grow from conditions. The root of the conditions is the aspiration itself. The fulfillment of one’s wishes works out in accordance to how one prays.

The root of all positive actions, karma, virtue, all depends on the positive aspiration. In other words we are talking about faith, but intelligent faith. It is said that faith is like a mother who gives birth and nurtures the children. Without faith no positive things ever grow, because if the seed has been burnt how can you expect crops to grow. The root of all is aspiration for positive-ness. There is a tremendous difference between intelligent faith and blind faith. We don’t need blind faith. We are not fools.

We have a beautiful mind, well trained, educated. People often don’t value their education. That is because we are in a developed country where everybody is educated. If you go to areas where the level of education is very low you can’t help noticing what difference that can make for the individual. Education makes your mind very alert and you can think, you can make judgments, you can calculate. If you don’t want to utilize that and behave just like an uneducated, illiterate person, that doesn’t make much sense.

The good aspiration itself is rooted in karma. It may sound like doctrine, but actually it is true. Karma really makes a hell of a difference to all our life. Because of karma we have got to do the right thing. Many people say that you have to act right because of compassion. That is also true, but even more so it is because of karma. Right actions will give you the right result and wrong actions will give you wrong results. If you hurt somebody, you will also get hurt by somebody. It may not be that particular person. You may be more powerful than the person you have hurt, but somebody else will smash you later. That is karma. If you are good to somebody, somebody else will be good to you. It may not be the same person but somebody else. That is karma. Positive actions bring positive results and negative actions bring negative results. This is commonly known. We often say, ‘Have a positive outlook on that and you will get a good result.’ The reason why positive thoughts give you positive results is the same that positive deeds give you positive fruits. Bad thoughts bring bad results. Thought processes are actions of the mind. Deeds are actions of the body or speech and sometimes even of mind itself. Without thoughts there won’t be any actions. A robot carries out actions, but without thoughts. It is automatic action. If a robot does something good it won’t necessarily produce good results, because there is no being in there. There are all the conditions for karma, but no force, no karma. Whatever a robot does it neither positive nor negative. It is just action. However, for whoever programmed the robot it will become either positive or negative. Karma will work on that person, not on that piece of machinery. It is like hitting somebody with your hand. It is not your hand that is responsible, but you, the person.

To summarize: Because of the lack of positive aspiration in the past, unpleasant things are happening to us now. If you are intelligent, don’t give up the positive aspiration. They are the root of all spiritual development. The ‘Mighty One’, Budddha, has stated that. It is the truth of cause and result. That is the reason why aspiration works.

Audience: Can you change karma that you have produced in the past? And what happens to your positive thinking when the suffering in the world doesn’t seem to get better no matter how much positive thoughts you try to think? Your negative thoughts then come back and take over.

Rimpoche: Karma is not permanent. It is changeable. But it is not easy to change. It is like a mechanical system. You have to change everything. But it is changeable. Also, it is not necessarily true that all the karma we produce now will only take effect in the next life. Previous life’s karma are active, but if a karma is superstrong it will supersede all the previous karmas. Karma has a lot of priority categories. There are the ones with priority, the ones with overriding priority, and even immediately ripening. It all depends on how strong the karma is. The ones with the highest priority will supersede every other karma you have. You can also cancel karma. That is called purification. By purifying you change it, you cancel it. I have taught about that on various occasions.

Sometimes it is true, that negativity is like a bulldozer and seems to just run over you and you are helpless. But sometimes there is sunshine too. You find opportunities to do positive things. Negative forces can be very powerful and you have no chance to feel good or do anything for a while. You have to see that there are a number of mental, physical and emotional aspects involved. Sometimes the mind and the emotions will influence the state of our body. Sometimes the physical body influences what happens with our mind and emotions. Western medication can be quite useful for the physical body. As for the mind and the emotions you have to take care of them yourself. There are all kinds of methods available. The most important of those is analytical meditation. Concentrated meditation can only give you a little bit of peace and harmony for a while. Deeply analyzing makes the real difference. Find out why things are the way they are, how they can be changed. Gradually, you will find a way to handle it. It is never the end of the world. Sunshine is also real. Take whatever help you can get, but with care. If you don’t put any limits you can get into trouble.

Audience: In some cases, instead of aspiration you could have also used inspiration.

Rimpoche: I had to use the word because that was in the English translation. I have to comment on what is there.

Audience: Where does aspiration come from, from karma?

Rimpoche: I should have said it differently: I should have said that the reason why aspiration works is because of karma. You can’t really say that aspiration comes from karma. How does that work with karma? Positive aspirations bring positive actions, which bring positive results. Negative actions bring negative results.

Audience: Is there a way to take a sick person’s sufferings away from our side?

Rimpoche: There is the practice of tong len, Giving and Taking. But when you meditate on those lines, does it really work that way?

Audience: I thought it is more of letting the person know that you are with them.

Rimpoche: When you really learn it well, the tong len actually works. But when you don’t know very well, just wishing that the person you are meditating for is being healed or whatever, doesn’t work. It is a wonderful aspiration. That’s all in the beginning level. What works better? Do something positive, some good deed and dedicate that for the person. Pray to somebody who can make a difference. Ask a person who can make a difference to pray. That will make a hell of a difference. To let the person know you care is also helpful. At the end of the day, though, no matter how much help you get, and no matter how many people are standing around your sick bed, trying to hold you back, when it is your time you will go. It is like a hair being pulled out of the butter. Only the hair will go, the butter will stay. When a person dies you can stay with them and let them know that you are there, but after some time they are gone and you can’t follow. The journey to the next life is quite far. You can only accompany them in the beginning of that process.

Some days ago I was in New York airport. There was a very long line of people trying to go through the security check before their flight. In one case, three people were leaving and another 12 people had come along to see them off. They accompanied them, standing together in the line. But when they reached the security check, only those three went through and left, the others stayed behind and walked back. It is the same with dying. You can only accompany a dying person up to the security check, not beyond. The dying person has to go through the narrow door way of the security alone. The journey is long. They have to pass the security, walk through the airport to their gate and finally get on the plane. The journey is that long.

Audience: Did I hear you say that the positive aspiration becomes intelligent faith?

Rimpoche: In Tibetan two terms are used: mo pa and de pa. That is aspiration and faith. Aspiration and faith are two different things. Both come from dun pa. That is willingness. But that is quite complicated. There are three divisions of faith. One is the admiration for something and the wish to follow that. The next is that you really want to develop that. It becomes desire. From the practical point of view that is a stronger faith. The next is trust. That means intelligent trust. You have your reasons to trust. It has proved itself right to you. That is the intelligent faith. It is a bit of semantics here. All three are part of faith.

In Tibetan there are different words for each of these. The translators then have a hard time to find which is which in English. Then, instead of covering all three kinds of faith, they designate aspiration to cover only one kind of faith.

That is all I want to say tonight.