Archive Result

20031027GRRU

RU-10-27-03

How to Contemplate Spiritual Topics

The idea here is to think about and generate spiritual points. I am going to give you guidelines to a daily meditation practice. Everybody would like to be a spiritual practitioner. But many of us have quite a lot of difficulties where to begin and what to do and even to recognize what a spiritual practice really is. This country is such a wonderful place, very open. But through that many people think that anything non-mechanical is already spiritual.

I can only talk to you about the spiritual path that I know. A few weeks ago His Holiness the Dalai Lama presided over a conference of all Tibetan Buddhist groups in America. During question time for some reason I happened to be in the hot seat. But I didn’t want to answer any questions in the presence of His Holiness. People had come to hear him talk, not me. But somehow I was directed to answer a question about the difference between the Tibetan Buddhist way of contemplating love and compassion and the western way. I didn’t want to answer this, so I said, ‘Since I don’t know anything about other traditions’ way of doing this I shouldn’t be the one answering.’ Everyone laughed and even His Holiness clapped and laughed.

Anyway, the point is that it is all right to say ‘I don’t know’ if you don’t. Some spiritual teachers in the west think that they are supposed to be able to answer all questions. But only the Enlightened beings know everything. So, if you are not enlightened, it is really the best to admit if you don’t know something. Nothing is wrong with that. Everybody except the Enlightened beings has limited knowledge. If you don’t know anything about a particular point the best thing is to nothing.

So when I am asked to talk about guidelines for a daily meditation practice I am going to stick to what I know and don’t say anything beyond that.

I am going to talk about the Seven Practices which is part of our chants in the beginning of each session here. These Seven Practices are really useful for everybody, whether you come from a Buddhist, Hindu or Christian background or even if you have no background at all and just want to be doing something spiritual. You may not want to lock yourself into a box, having to belong to a particular spiritual denomination. In the west there is a tendency to put everything in boxes. You make boxes, put labels on and then put the people in there. Then they are Buddhists, Hindus and Christians and so on and you think that the situation is under control. But by putting people in boxes the situation is not under control. On the contrary. It is a recipe for division and chaos. That is my view.

How do you do a daily practice? The first point you have to be clear about is what you want to achieve with that. It is not the question of what you should do but what you want to get out of that. The purpose of your spiritual practice has to be clear to you. Accordingly you can then frame and generate your practice and make it fit your purpose. That might not be accepted in the western culture. You may be thinking that there is one prescribed formula and you have to follow it. But I doubt whether that is the only thing you can do. Where I come from, spiritual practice is a huge field and adaptable to anything you want to achieve. It is like wearing a dress. It has to fit you. It is no good putting on a coat which is three times the size of what you want. The spiritual practice can be tailored and made to fit your needs. All the great teachers, from Buddha up to my late masters have done that and there have been millions of other people who have done that too.

According to Buddha the best possible achievement is that of enlightenment. This means having total awareness. There is nothing that a Buddha doesn’t know. This knowledge is simultaneous in past, present and future, including the changes in the future and where it is finally going to land. All of that is simultaneously known to a Buddha. Also, it is also not just his own circumstances and those of a few others that he has total awareness of, but of all living beings, including the tiniest insects. Everything about their lives is totally known to Buddha. That is why it is called total knowledge or enlightenment.

Today nobody will criticize Buddha. Most people will like what he did and even those who don’t, at least keep respectfully quiet. But in his life time he had a lot of critics. They openly challenged his claims to total knowledge. He said, ‘I will be happy to prove it. Ask me any question.’ They said, ‘You may have the capacity to read minds a little bit, so there is no point in asking you questions.’ Then Buddha suggested to them, ‘All the citizens of this area should go home and pick up a few grains from their own home. Hve them put them in a little piece of cloth and put their personal cloth on the bundle. Don’t let them tell anyone what that mark is. Bring these bundles here and I will tell everybody which is their bundle.’ Some 50 000 bundles came together. Buddha picked them up one by one and returned them to their respective owners. He did a lot of those demonstrations of his total knowledge, not just once. Whenever he was challenged he proved each and every claim he made. There is a huge volume about his activities called ‘Days of Conversation’. (Sutras?) Actually, the whole of Buddhism has developed out of those. Buddha did not write down anything and teach Buddhism as a system. He was asked questions and answered them individually, as the situation required. Later all of it was written down and put together and that is how Buddhism came about. Buddha moved from incident to incident and all that combined together became Buddhism.

According to Buddha the best goal that human beings can achieve is total knowledge. His reasoning for that was, ‘If I could achieve it, why can’t you? There is no difference between you and me, except that I have been working hard and you so far have been lazy.’ This is true. Human capacity has no limit, whether in the spiritual, material or scientific or any other field. There is no equivalent to human capacity. We are very proud of scientific achievement. Science now proclaims that we will be able to prolong our life further and further and also maintain good health. We have been sending human beings in rockets to the moon and now we are thinking about sending them to Mars and to other planets. That may be a scientific achievement, but even then is first and foremost a human achievement. The particles and machine parts don’t just collect together by themselves and become a rocket. There are human minds behind that. Years and years of research, inch by inch pushing forward with human knowledge has made these things possible. This shows that the capacity of human beings is basically unlimited. We too have that capacity. We are human beings too. But so far we haven’t been able to use it to our full advantage. I don’t even know how to properly pronounce the word ‘contemplate’. You can say it and I can’t. You have learnt it as your mother tongue and I have been too lazy to catch up in that area of knowledge. This is how it works everywhere. On the other hand I may know a little bit more about Buddhism because I have been born into it and again, it is almost like my mother tongue. You people don’t, because you are born here and not in Asia. But potentially we all have the same capacity. If we use it we can achieve anything.

So the best goal is to achieve total enlightenment. But there are many other goals on the way. You can for example reach to the level where you become a kind, compassionate person who is caring for everybody with loving kindness. In Buddhism such a person is called ‘Bodhisattva’. Sometimes it is good to use Buddhist terminology. Very often I try to avoid it, thinking that it would be very difficult for people who are not used to it. I did that a few days ago during the opening ceremony of Garrison Institute. I tried not to use any Buddhist terminology. After me there were a number of other speakers, including Paul Gorman. He used the term Bodhisattva all the time. So that became funny. Here I am, from the background of that culture, trying not to use those terms and there is Paul who is from here and he freely uses these very terms.

So being a Bodhisattva really means having ultimate, unlimited, unconditional love and compassion. Once you have that you will be a Bodhisattva. The next, easier goal is to achieve nirvana. That means freedom from negative emotions, from disturbing thoughts and actions. If that is too difficult you can try to get a good life, a life which allows you to fulfill your wishes and guide you to a better future life.

There are so many levels of spiritual achievement. Before starting a practice you have to think about to what aim you want to put efforts in. Once you decide what you want to get out of it then you figure out how you can do that, what you need to do. In that way you can tailor your practice to your own needs and wishes. That is the rich value of Tibetan Buddhism. It is almost individually tailored to the practitioner’s circumstances.

If you are unable to make a choice you can follow Buddha’s advice. He says, ‘Why settle for less than best?’ Maybe you don’t get the highest achievement very soon. It doesn’t matter. You will get to a certain level.

Almost all practices can be made to fit your goal. The techniques you use are often the same, but according to your goal you use them differently. Because of the motivation the practices will become tailored accordingly. It makes a difference.

Let me give you one example. Lets say you see a hungry dog and you feel motivated to help it. You give this dog a piece of bread. Now, you could have the motivation to do this in order to serve all living beings and help them achieve total enlightenment. Your action is giving a piece of bread to a dog. But what you achieve is something different. With a great motivation you achieve a huge benefit. With a limited motivation the benefit of the same actions is limited. If you only have the idea of giving some bread to a dog the benefit will be just that of giving a piece of bread to a dog. But with the great motivation the same action will have a result that is a zillion times stronger. Buddha therefore always emphasizes motivation. In any meditation, first watch your motivation. Even when you come here to listen on a Monday, think about what your motivation is. If you come here with a motivation of serving all living beings and helping them, then in order to help them, you would like to learn. Actually you want to gain spiritual development, but your aim is to do be able to better serve others. Then with that motivation you get a lot of merit out of the hardship you are taking. Merit is very similar to luck or good karma. So the best thing is to think that whatever you want to do you are not just doing it for yourself but for everybody. At least have that mind. Even if you just do your daily chores in your own home, like vacuum cleaning your carpets, you can do it with that motivation. You are not doing anything extra. It is still the same task. Tidying up with that motivation becomes a much stronger positive action. With such a motivation, pick up your dirty underwear and socks and think, ‘I am cleaning up this space not only in order to make myself feel good but also to create an atmosphere where I can do a spiritual practice for the benefit of all.’ With that picking up your dirty socks and underwear becomes spiritual work. Pick them up and throw them in your laundry machine. Think, ‘I am purifying all negativities and wrong doing for the benefit of all beings.’ The dirty laundry water goes down and your clothes become clean.

Once I asked one of my great masters, Kyabje Ling Rimpoche, the senior tutor to the present Dalai Lama, about mindfulness practice. He said, ‘Yes, you have to be mindful and meditate.’ I asked him how to do that and he got up and walked to the door. He opened the door and said, ‘I am now opening the door.’ Then he went outside and said, ‘I am now outside the room.’ Then he came back in and said, ‘I am now inside the room and I am now closing the door.’ Then he said, ‘That is mindfulness meditation.’ But then he said, ‘There is more you can do at the same time.’ Again he opened the door and said, ‘I am now opening the door for all living beings. I am stepping outside for the benefit of all beings. I am going back inside for the benefit of all beings. Now I am closing the door for the benefit of all beings. ‘Then he said, ‘That’s not all. You can do more and he opened the door again, saying, ‘I am opening the door to liberation for all beings. I am closing the door of suffering for all beings.’ If you do it that way the practice becomes more and more powerful. How many times a day do we open and close our doors? If you remember to think like that every time you walk in and out of a room, how much benefit could you get from that, instead of banging the door? These are the little practice tricks you have to learn.

Motivation is the first thing. Then come awareness and mindfulness. And then you can do the Seven Practices. They are very good, especially those I am going to highlight now. One of the great Indian Buddhist saints called Shantideva, which directly translated means ‘God of Peace’, wrote, ‘Buddhas have thought for eons about the best possible practice and they come up with the Seven Practices.’

When he says ‘Buddhas’ that means enlightened beings. These are not only Buddhist saints, but could be anyone, man, woman, black, white, yellow or whatever. As long as you are fully enlightened, according to Buddhism you are a Buddha, no matter which tradition you have come through.

These Seven Practices are not just some fancy little thing picked up from here and there, but the Enlightened Ones’ conclusion after eons of contemplation. Of course, today we are making them as short as possible and as easy as possible. Traditionally, these practices would be very lengthy.

For example, the first of the Seven Practices here just says

I bow down in body, speech and mind

Traditionally, it would go on for page after page. You could be chanting the whole day. There is also a practice including actual physical prostrations, something which we don’t do in the western culture at all. It comes from the Indian culture and is a means of showing respect. You are actually touching the highest point of your body to the lowest point of their body. That is the old culture. It became a practice of doing 100 000 of these prostrations. At that time that was no big deal. Today we make it as short and easy as possible. But at least when we do that we should concentrate hard and work as much as possible through our body, speech and mind.

The word ‘bowing down’ does not really capture the meaning of the Tibetan chag tsal. Chag means showing my respect to you by almost touching the highest point of my body to the lowest point of your body. I am touching my forehead to your foot and acknowledging how wonderful you are. I do that because I admire your qualities, not because you are a king, queen, general or somebody rich. I admire the qualities and I would like to have the same qualities. When you don’t know that background and just say, ‘I bow down’, it does not give you that message at all. For the time being we don’t have a better translation. So we have to explain that a little bit.

Now, the question is: To whom are we paying respect? If possible, to the enlightened beings, Buddha, Jesus or whoever, as long as they are enlightened. You think that they are great and that you would like to have their qualities. That makes them objects of refuge. They become the focal point of all the Seven Practices. Buddhists call that ‘object of refuge’ and also ‘Spiritual Field of Merit’. There is a reason why it is called ‘Field’. In an ordinary field you grow your corn or vegetables. In the spiritual field you grow your merit. Whoever is your field of merit or refuge is entirely up to you. No one can tell you whom you should worship and whom not. You make your choice for whatever reasons you want to. If you have good reasons, that’s great. If not, too bad.

There is one strong recommendation from Buddha: Don’t worship ghosts and spirits. Don’t go into haunted houses and pray to them. It doesn’t work very well, because these ghosts are subject to compassion themselves. Actually, if you don’t believe that there are ghosts you are better off. Milarepa, the famous Tibetan saint said,

If you have a lot of doubt and superstition, then even a house with nothing in it will instantly attract thieves.

If you go to a haunted house on Halloween night that is fine. But don’t go there to worship them. They are not free themselves. Actually they are as much afraid of us as we are of them. It is very simple: If you go there without fear they won’t do anything bad to you. If you go there with fear and doubt they will do something. It is the same as with tigers and dogs. You know how to deal with animals. It is very similar with ghosts. Take it from me: I do know about this. If you go to South East Asia there are so many ghosts. They get into people and make them go into trance. All kinds of things are happening. I try to avoid them as much as I can. Sometimes however, you can’t avoid it.

One time, in Central Malaysia, I came to know about a kid that was suffering tremendously, because ghosts were occupying it. The parents and relatives were trying to make an appointment with me, but I tried to avoid them. I had no desire to encounter with a ghost. If I could help, fine, but if I couldn’t help, then why should I? Then, a few days later I was giving a talk in front of a large audience and I saw that family there. They brought that possessed kid. They tried to talk to me even while I was teaching. I signaled them to go to a nearby room until I was finished. This girl was a little over 11 years old. When I came into the room I told the father and the other relatives to leave me alone with the girl. They insisted to stay. When I asked why they said, ‘You won’t be able to hold that girl. Another rimpoche tried to deal with this and the girl went crazy and kicked and slapped him. Four of us couldn’t hold her down.’ However, the idea is if you know what you are doing you don’t have to be afraid. The relatives told the girl, ‘Go up to see Rimpoche.’ But the girl did not want to. She said, ‘There is no rimpoche there, but a strange blue man.’ She was trying to run away, scratching at the doors of a cupboard, trying to get in there and hide. Now I knew that I had the upper hand. I went after her and pulled her back by the leg. I asked that girl, ‘Who are you really?’ And what I heard was such a sad story.

There was a family feud and people had been killing each other. The dead became ghosts and 11 of them entered the poor little girl. They came one after another and tried to explain to me why they were there. I had to negotiate with all 11 of them. The last one was a ghost who had been a Thai Buddhist monk. I said to him, ‘You are wearing the robes of Buddha and look what you got yourself into! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ He said, ‘What could I do? My sponsor and benefactor got killed by this evil family and I had to avenge him.’ I asked him when that had happened and he said, ’60 years ago.’ Finally I agreed with these ghosts that they would leave the girl alone if I performed a puja for them. I did a fire puja a few days later and that day they all left and never bothered the girl again. I was lucky to be able to manage that. This is not because I am somebody special, but I just had my mind straight and I know what I am doing. But I am not really a ghost buster.

So that is why you can’t take refuge in ghosts. These ghosts for example were themselves are suffering, because they had tried to take revenge. And the poor little girl had nothing to do with these people. None of her family had anything to do with them. These ghosts could not get into anybody else. They can only enter someone who has low self-esteem. They look for a little opening and get in. The Holy Ghost is not a ghost. That is different.

Your spiritual business has to be conducted with a person who is fit to be an object of refuge. They have to be free from the problems that we are suffering from. They have to have overcome them and therefore they know what to do. They have compassion and don’t care if you give them 10 dollars or a million dollars or nothing at all. It makes no difference to them. They do it out of compassion. We on the other hand would do any monkey dance for a thousand dollars.

We have just begun to establish the object of refuge on the basis of whom we can do the Seven Practices. This is who you worship or whatever you want to do. It is a serious business by which you can gain big profit. By bowing down to a correct object you purify negativities and at the same time ask for qualities and you seek these qualities for the benefit of all beings. You are working with your body, speech and mind together. You don’t just bow down and say the words, but you think why you are doing this. Physically you have to offer at least a gesture. Even if you don’t bow down, you can at least fold your hands. You say the words and in your mind you admire the qualities of body, speech, mind, knowledge and activities of the object of refuge. These qualities are unlimited. Reflect on them. If you are a Buddhist you will choose the historical Buddha Shakyamuni as your object of refuge and admire his qualities and seek them for yourself. You will think, ‘I have an immature Buddha within me. It is my future Buddha. I am linking the qualities of the historical Buddha with my capacity to develop these same qualities.’ If you think this way it becomes a powerful practice. So far I have only been talking about the first of the Seven Practices. The second is offering:

I offer the best I have to give, both real and imagined to fill the space between us

Here we are not just talking about some money that you put into a hat that is passed around. You are offering the ‘best you have to give’. This is generosity. You all know what a great thing generosity is. Further you offer mentally as well. If you give a flower, think about its purity and beauty and color, about the art of presentation. Then think that it is not just one flower but that the whole of space is filled up with flowers. There are zillions of them and there is one for each and every sentient being. You can see that the mind has no limitations. Materially there is a limit, but mentally there isn’t. A single little flower can become zillions of flowers in your imagination. You can offer a flower to all enlightened beings and to all sentient beings. This really works. I would love to tell you more but we have a time limit. So use your mind. Visualize and imagine. There is no limit in what you can think and imagine. If I had time I could tell you so much more but we better stop here for tonight.

Thank you and good night.