Archive Result

New York Thursday Evening

3/25/04

Gehlek Rimpoche: Welcome and good evening. We will continue to talk about meditation, and we¹re doing it in a very detailed way so it¹s taking quite a lot of time. Meditation is something that has been taught so many times, but no one really has done it in a very detailed way what are the faults, what are the problems, and how and where it comes from, and how it makes a difference and to whom‹all that was never done, in this country at least. There are a lot of meditation courses, but they just tell you to sit down or stand and walk or whatever. You know how all the meditation courses go. So here it¹s different, as you can see for yourself so far.

Of all the meditations we are talking about shamatha-oriented or zhi ne-oriented meditation. I explained what zhi ne is, what shamatha is, and I don¹t want to repeat that. But I¹d like to repeat one thing that is, what qualities will I get? Why do I need zhi ne? How do I gain? What is the value in all this? That is an important point. Why? Because one of the obstacles, the biggest obstacle we face will be our laziness, we do not want to meditate because we are lazy. And we can¹t blame anyone for being lazy if they don¹t know what is to be gained from this and what is the use of meditating. People say, ³Oh, yeah, meditation makes me feel good, makes me feel nice, makes me feel holy.² Meditation does that, so it¹s good, but not good enough to overcome laziness. Because meditation is not our priority, any difficulty that comes up, the first thing to be eliminated from our schedule will be meditation. That¹s normal. Very true, because meditation doesn¹t bring any money. Our life is a money-oriented life, and sometimes we can¹t help it, we¹ve got to pay the bills. There are people who chase the bills. So in our list of priorities, meditation will be the last. Ninety-nine percent of people don¹t worry about meditation--maybe there¹s only one percent who do. I don¹t think there¹s even that one percent. Maybe one percent of one hundred percent maybe thinking about meditation, or might know something about meditation, might know something about the joy and happiness of mind it brings. They are the ones who may be doing something, but that¹s more or less the percentage. And for that small percentage, too, it¹s the last priority especially if there¹s something else they¹d like to do, or for whatever reason. So that¹s why laziness is the first thing to stand in the way. So I said this before, and the teachings say it, the antidote to laziness is joy‹the physical and mental joy you develop with zhi ne. But we don¹t have that joy. So we are talking about something being up there, on top of the mountain, and we believe that it¹s there so we take all the trouble of climbing up the mountain path thinking there is something great up there, on that hill, or beyond that hill. But what we need to know is, what is up there? What is up there is that joy of body and mind, particularly mental joy. And because of that joy, our mind will not have a mind of its own and run around and play all its tricks on you, and lead you on a wild goose chase. I live in Michigan, and the telephone company there is Ameritech. They have an advertisement for a telephone directory that tells you not to go running around on a wild goose chase for nothing, but to look up what you need in this book, get the number and call it, just like that. It shouldn¹t feel as though there is something over there, far away. What you want is a mind that doesn¹t have a mind of its own and runs you around on a wild goose chase. It should not be a wild goose chase. What happens is somehow the mind will listen to you and you can use your mind for as long as you want to and in whatever way you want to in a positive way, (or a negative way), and for spiritual development. If you look at it from that angle, by the time you are able to focus, you will ask your mind, ³Do not follow any negativities.² So, therefore, your mind will absolutely stay on positivity day and night. You¹ll use it as you want to, without it running away. As a result, we¹ll have less negative karma and tremendously powerful virtuous activities.

And because of zhi ne, you will have clairvoyance, you¹ll even have magical powers. We are not talking way down the road, we are talking where we can really reach. If one has a maximum amount of time and opportunity, within six months to a year one can gain all of those. We are not talking about 20 years from now, or about a future life, or at the time of death, we are talking about right now. As far as I know, the great spiritual practitioners do not spend any time developing clairvoyance. Great spiritual practitioners do not spend time developing magical powers. They get them as a side effect of spiritual development. They are a side effect of zhi ne, the focus-concentrated meditation we call shamatha. And if you are looking at the spiritual path, it is with zhi ne that you can achieve special seeing, lhak thong or vipasyana, seeing deeply inside, seeing the inner truth. That means we are cutting through the mystery of life. Cutting the mystery of life may not be so important. What is important is that with vipasyana, with that power, we can cut the root of samsara. The root of samsara is the source of all suffering mental, physical, and emotional sufferings. There is a chance we may be able to do that if we develop zhi ne because we get tremendous mental power. It¹s not actually mental power, it¹s the individual‹your mind gets trained so you can use it for as long as you want to, in whatever way you want to without interruption. Anything you do will be so powerful. That is the real reason we need this. And we are not talking about 20 years from now, nor we are talking about at the time of the death, or in our future life. We are talking about now. So there is a quality to be gained, there is an incentive, there is the desire to put some effort into it. The result of all our effort will be that quality of samadhi.

This is where we got to the other day. So if that is the case, now how do I function? On what do I meditate? How do I maintain my mind? Where do I focus? What do I do? That¹s the real question. What do I do? We did talk about how to sit and all those points. Now we are talking about the mind level. How do I focus? Where do I focus? Now I have to go back to the Buddha source and say, what are the things we do and what it is all about. Buddha was asked that same question: how? Where do we focus, how do we focus, what happens, what do you do? And Buddha says if you are a yogiŠnow we use the old language, yogi, it¹s what we now call a ³practitioner². So there are practitioners with achievement and without achievement. We call yogis those who have yoga, right? Yoga does not only refer to physical yoga, you have to remember. Physical yoga is part of the yoga called hatha-yoga, right? But the most important yoga is the mental yoga, mind yoga. The word in Tibetan is neljor. Actually yoga/yogi is also neljor and neljor pa. Neljor pa really means [Tibetan]. Neljor pa, yogi, really means one who can keep the mind peaceful and maintain it like that. That is not a definition, it is one way of looking at yogis. One who does yoga. Yoga is activity actually, but I don¹t want to make yoga cheap. I have the bad habit of simplifying, simplifying, simplifying, everything. In the end, some people miss the mystery part of it. Actually we are here to solve the mystery, not to build it up. But a lot of people love mystery. I like mystery. But the kind of mystery I like is when it¹s raining, and there¹s a lot of mist, then a little rain and a little sunshine‹I like that mist, and that mystery. I hate the mind mystery where you know nothing about it, what¹s going on, where it¹s going, that confusion. I don¹t like that mystery at all, I hate it.

So the Buddha was asked, ³What do we do?² In traditional texts, Tibetan Buddhist texts, whether you are reading the Buddha¹s teaching on this meditation, or Nagarjuna¹s texts, or Shantideva¹s, or Kamalashila¹s Gom Rim [have you read Kamalashila¹s Gom Rim? You have, right? So there¹s three the first Gom Rim, second Gom Rim, and they also call it Gom Rim first, middle, and last. The middle Gom Rim) all give you four points on which to focus, but it¹s not four points. This is where the teacher comes in. They all say the first is pervasive focusing. That¹s exactly how the traditional teachings are worded. But it¹s not a separate meditation. Every meditation should carry those qualities. So it is called khyab pa mig pa(?) in Tibetan. If you translate ³pervasive focusing,² khyab pa mig pa(?). When you read the books, it looks like khyab pa mig pa(?), [Tibetan]. There are one, two, three, four different things. But the first one is actually explaining how meditation should be. That¹s why the first one is the pervasive one. What they say here is that there are two types. [Tibetan] The first, one simply focuses and leaves it there without analyzing or digging deeper, you just focus and leave it at that. That¹s one. Two is actually analyzing and focusing.

The first one is just focusing on whatever you see. You see nice beautiful Nina¹s nose. So we just see Nina¹s nose and leave it there. Don¹t go into whether it¹s beautiful, or not beautiful, big or small, white or black, just leave it there without analyzing it. Don¹t analyze it, just leave it. The second is analyzing: Is it white? How white is it? Is it brown? If it¹s brown, will that brown go away? Is it a sun-tan or is it really like that? What is it? How long is it going to last? Will it change color, why and how and where and how long will it take for that to happen‹all of that is analyzing. That is the second part of it.

The third point tells you no matter what you are focusing on, there¹s always two points the relative aspects of it and the absolute aspects of it. The absolute is the truth as it is, and the relative is whatever it appears as. Are you with me, or did I talk Greek? No, OK, right. So whatever you are using, use this and then focus, you meditate on it until it transforms, till it becomes perfect, till it transforms. So by four points, I think it counts not analyzing as the first. Not analyzing, then analyzing, all materials and beings till it changes into perfection. Are you with me? So basically that is what meditation is all about. Every meditation must have that: the focusing point, whether it is relative aspects or absolute aspects, the method is analyzing or not analyzing, the result is until it becomes transformed. When it¹s transformed, then the result has come about. So if you read the old sutras or commentaries they mention four types, four meditational objects, the first is the pervasive. And then within the pervasive, you have these four. Which really means this is generally what meditation is all about: on what, for what, what you hope to gain out of it, and what the result is. OK? So let it be there, we have to revisit this. So I just gave you a brief idea of what the Buddha said. That is the first point.

The second, third and even fourth are optional. You don¹t have to do all, there are options. Why did Buddha give options? For some people one thing works, for others something else may work; and that¹s why options are given. Of these options, I don¹t have a title for the first one. The first one totally depends on the individual. What is the individual¹s need? Do I have a very strong problem of obsession? Or do I have a very strong problem of hatred? Or do I have a very strong problem of ego, confusion-oriented, what Tibetans traditionally call ignorance? As a matter of fact, these are called the three poisons: obsession, hatred, and confusion, ignorance, ego-oriented behavior, all of those are called the three poisons or sources of all our difficulties and sufferings and problems. The fourth one is the mind problem. By mind problem, I don¹t mean crazy. Like a monkey in a temple. That is crazy, a monkey in a temple. Can you imagine? If you let a wild monkey loose in a temple, what will it do? I¹ve told you this many times, the monkey will jump from image to image, knock down everything possible, every decoration, eat up all the fruit and any offering, drink all the water and pee here and there, do all that, right? And that¹s exactly what our mind is doing in the temple of our consciousness. Our mind is behaving just like a monkey. We cannot focus at all it goes here, it goes there, and back here. And it¹s much worse than American busy-ness, believe me. With American busy-ness, at least people can focus and do something and finish it, then do something else, half finish that, then come back or whatever, but they can achieve something. But when our mind is jumping about it does not achieve anything, it jumps so much. Thoughts are countless. Why do you think all our confusions that we cannot make a decision, cannot make up our mind so we have to wait for everything. We have no other alternative except to wait and see if things become more clear or we understand them better, otherwise we can¹t make decisions because the mind jumps so much and there¹s a zillion different thoughts popping up in a short space of time.

Buddha saw all of those as comparable problems too much obsession, or too strong an obsession, too much hatred, too much ignorance, or craziness. He had an antidote for those which was interesting. The antidote is if you have too much of obsession, Buddha recommends you meditate on horrible things. As I told you, Thai monasteries keep dead bodies in the water, turning them over and then over again. In Buddhist paintings you will see a great many skulls and bones and bone trumpets and bone this and bone that and all that, and unpleasantness. Unpleasantness connected with our body or anything else, that cuts obsession. Really it shows Buddha was not stupid. And when we¹ve had enough, we won¹t want to revisit that particular thing. I have experienced this in my life. When I was a kid, I think I was about 8 or 9, we used to get an orange sweet from China. It was really bad, but we used to enjoy it. They would squish all the orange along with the skin, squish it and put it in sugar and dry it and ship it in boxes to Tibet. And we all bought it and it was the biggest, nice treats like giving great chocolate here. Like giving nice, beautiful Swiss chocolate here‹people like that, right? Kids like it. In Tibet, they gave us this. And I used to eat it, and I got really sick on it one time. For a while, I don¹t know how long, but maybe a week or two or three, I was really sick. Since then, I can¹t touch or smell orange at all. Even later, in India, where you could get those beautiful Himalayan oranges from Sikkhim or Bhutan, it was a tangerine, not really an orange, actually‹I couldn¹t touch it, I couldn¹t stand the smell of it because I¹d been sick from that rotten orange. I¹d had enough. Exactly like that: when you have those horrifying problems, meditate. And when the obsessions you have begin to link up with that [disgust], you won¹t want to go anywhere near it again. So people who have such obsessions, Buddha recommends you meditate on that subject. You can make that the subject or the object, doesn¹t matter.

Now, the second one is if you have too much hatred, hey, Buddha recommends love, love, love. Don¹t forget, l-o-v-e. Is there ³e² at the end? It¹s not like ³potato,² right? I thought I might be copying Dan Quayle. You know, Dan Quayle can blame the cue card, but I don¹t have a cue card. Remember those days? Potato with an ³e² at the end. Love-compassion, is exactly the opposite of hatred. Hatred says, ³I want to get you, I want to torture you, I want to make you suffer. That¹s what I want. I want you to feel the pain. I want to see it, I want to know yu¹re suffering.² And sometimes our hatred is so great that we torture ourselves not only mentally, but physically in the presence of that person, hoping that person will feel the pain that we are experiencing. That¹s what we do in our hatred, don¹t we? How many times have people said, ³I¹ll kill myself, then you¹ll be happy.² They think that way. Some unfortunately act that way. That¹s why we call them crazy. Their hatred is such that they want to cause pain, ³I want to teach you a lesson.² We¹re familiar with that, right? So we go and ask Buddha, ³Hey, I have this problem. What to do?² He said, ³Love, love, love, love, love.² That¹s it. Compassion or love. They are exactly, completely the opposite of a mind completely tainted by hatred, wanting to cause suffering, and willing to sacrifice ourselves if necessary just so as to cause the other person pain. Or you¹d like to torture the other person. Some go so far as to say, ³Even if I were to eat your flesh piece by piece, I still wouldn¹t be satisfied.² This is hatred. We are talking about individuals. Now there¹s a bigger hatred. We go through all kinds of sufferings and difficulties, miseries, terrorist attacks. All of those are due to hatred. What just happened in the Middle East‹it¹s hatred. They¹re just killing. Killing the spiritual leader of Hammas and killing teenage boys. You know what I¹m talking about. All of those are due to hatred. So the antidote is love and compassion. When hatred is too strong, and it¹s too hard to bring love and compassion‹remember our experience of September 11th, 2001?‹when it was quite fresh, it wasn¹t very far from here, and we couldn¹t talk about love and compassion, couldn¹t even think of it, there was no room. When affected like that, Buddha recommended if you are meditating on love-compassion, that makes love-compassion strong. If you develop zhi ne on compassion, what more powerful compassion than that can one bring? If you develop zhi ne on love, what more powerful love than that can one bring? So hatred such as we experienced on September 12, 13, 14, 2001, that hatred completely overpowered everybody physically, mentally, emotionally. Just like that, if you can turn the other way around‹that¹s what Buddha recommended, you can overcome the hatred by that. Right now I¹m talking about who can focus on what, who can meditate on what.

Then, of course, there is ignorance. If our problem is ignorance, then yu need wisdom. Wisdom is a word for us. I don¹t know whether we get anything out of that word. I don¹t know what people project individually. Some have an idea what wisdom is all about, some don¹t‹it is just a soothing, beautiful word to them. Wisdom. In essence, it is the interdependentness of everything. Interdependentness of individuals, between individuals, between east and west. I don¹t mean East Asia and West Europe and America, I mean just east and west. There¹s a tremendous dependentness. If there were no east side, how could there be a west side? The existence of an east totally depends on a west. The existence of a west totally depends on an east being there. And the middle‹if there were no middle, how could there be an east or a west? A right side or a left side. So interdependentness, the dependent nature of existence‹I¹m not going to say any more than that because I do have separate material on wisdom, plenty of it everywhere that you can read. So this much will do for you to understand what I¹m talking about.

Then, of course, if you have pride, not the good self-esteem but pride, ³Me, me, me, I am the one.² Remember in the Tara teachings, the fear of pride as a lion who is ready to destroy every animal, thinking that ³I am the king of animals² until a rabbit comes and throws the lion into the river. So goes the lion who had the pride of being king of all the animals. So if there¹s that pride, then all kinds of existence, Buddha called it kamgyarabi(?), which means all kinds of existence, different galaxies this and that, Pure Land Š There was a story, you may recall, in the earlier teaching of the Yamantaka. Lalitavajra, the great founder, had a sort of pride, thinking, ³This particular tantra, I know it best. No one today knows it better than me.² He had that pride. And then in a dream, all these dakinis came and showed one tantra after another which he had no idea about, forget about him having seen it, he¹d never even heard about it. The next day he thought he knew nothing about it, he sank to that level. That¹s the sort of pride we are talking about, not self-esteem. Self-esteem is good pride which we need. But the ego-oriented ³I am the only one,² that pride is a tremendous problem for us, for us in the sense of we who are trying to develop. In the long run we try to develop enlightenment, in the medium level we try to develop being free from samsara, here we at least try to develop zhi ne. Pride is an obstacle for all three. It is an obstacle now, will be an obstacle, and it¹s definitely been an obstacle all the way down the road. So Buddha gives a variety of existence teachings. Metaphysical teachings are given here, that¹s what it is.

Now last but not least is our problem of the runaway mind, the crazy monkey. The crazy monkey. What do we do with the crazy monkey? How do we deal with the crazy monkey? Make him busy. Let him count. Make sure he counts. Let him count. Count what? Count the breath, going out, coming in, going out, coming in, going out, coming in. Let him count so that if he can count up to nine, he will have to sit for a second. If he can count up to nine, he will have to sit for a second. That¹s how we begin. So we all have the crazy monkey, countless thoughts. If we try to think of one thing, somehow we get a zillion thoughts. In the traditional Tibetan teachings, there¹s an old saying which every great master one after another repeated, for generations. Poor guy, whoever it was who said it first. There used to be a name and a face on that teaching, but later somehow it was somehow left out. So there was an official, a man from a noble family, who decided he wanted to meditate a lot. He said, ³I meditate.² Every time he sat down to say prayers and meditate, he told his attendant, ³Make sure you leave a piece of paper with a pen and ink in front of me.² So he would sit and meditate, I don¹t know for how long, maybe an hour or so, and by the time he was done, he would have a long list of things for his attendant to do, ³Go and collect this from that one and collect that from this one, and we have to give such and such to so-and-so and we have toŠ² So what he did, while he meditated, was to think from whom he would have to collect what and to whom he had to give what and all these business transactions, which he made into a long list of things to do. That tells us exactly how our mind works instead of focusing. Instead of focusing on prayers, instead of focusing on meditation, he spent the time making a list of what to sell and to whom. That is the example given.

So these are called chevanumjung(?). Chevanumjung gamipa(?) is the meditation that our experience makes a difference and how we can bring antidote. Why one person has too strong obsession, why another person has too strong hatred? Do you know why? It¹s very simple. Buddhism 101 speaks that. We call that addiction. Exactly, it is addiction. Since I am coming from the background of incarnation, so addiction coming from previous life. And if you don¹t accept or you are not convinced about incarnation, but you cannot deny this is addiction. There¹s no way, anybody cannot deny this is addiction. It is addiction. As we say, the drugs, cigarette, alcohol, we get an addiction that¹s physical. We see it, we feel it, we taste, we enjoy, we cannot live without. It becomes an addiction, but this one is a mental addiction. You cannot deny unless you are crazy or don¹t understand anything, like Bush. Just don¹t get it. Honestly. I was watching the TV news just before I came down here and he goes on and says, ³If I have a warning of they¹re using the planes to do that, my power and our government power, we do everything to prevent that.² Nobody is saying that you did not act since you have the notice. The accusation is you didn¹t work, you didn¹t think, so therefore this thing happened. So he said, ³If I knew it, I will prevent everything,² so you don¹t get it. I don¹t know what you call that anyway. So that¹s exactly what it is. So it is the addictional problems, how you can overcome these addictional problems, Buddha presents that.

Then the next one Buddha called intelligence meditation. So we would all like to do that because we all like the idea of being associated with that. Intelligence meditation is actually a meditation on skandhas like form, sound and taste and all those type of skandhas. Elements, and interdependentness and the dependent nature of existence, and right and wrong. So focusing on that is called intelligence meditation point.

The last one is called overcoming obstacles. At whatever level you may be, you¹ll have difficulties. Now, this is not going to make sense to you until I explain it. But if I explain it now, I won¹t be able to do it right. So I¹m just going to say that whatever the problem is that you have to overcome, knowing what it is and focusing on that is a way to handle it. Which doesn¹t mean anything to you, it¹s like a lot of blah-blah. There¹s a reason for that. These are specifically meant for the highly developed individuals; and each stage, each level of development, has its own obstacles. So when you are focusing on that correctly, it helps you boost up to the next level; and that¹s why it¹s called overcoming obstacles¹. Let¹s not make it very detailed because it takes time and may not be very relevant to us. Why do I mention it? Because it¹s part of this. Now, for example, the meditation on the four noble truths, and the four noble truths multiplied by 16. Four by four, should be 16, right? So 16 times. This is called overcoming obstacles. So now we¹ve given you a number of them. They asked Buddha, ³Why do you have to have the meditation on addictions?² And he said because if you meditate on that, whatever it is you have an addiction to, it will make it easier for you to overcome that addiction and develop this meditative level. So it is a special way, Buddha called it special. So what about the learned intelligence meditation? And Buddha said, with that one, not only will you understand what you had not understood before but you can also really develop wisdom completely and, therefore, this is a very good one. And then what about this overcoming obstacles? Overcoming obstacles is a general antidote to our negativities, therefore very helpful. So, therefore, any meditation you do to develop zhi ne will have very important purposes‹special, important, great or necessary, whatever it is, it has a very special importance.

Therefore, although one can develop zhi ne on any focusing point, the earlier Kadampa lamas were asked, ³On what I can meditate?² They replied, ³On anything from a yak¹s horn to cow dung,² anything. So because of the important reasons already mentioned, they do not recommend you meditate on either the yak¹s horn or cow dung or any one of those. So you should have a special object of focus. What should that be? Two. You don¹t have to do both. Either one will do. You should have a mental or a physical object. For the physical one, what Tsong Khapa recommended in the Lam Rim Chen Mo, or the big Lam Rim, is the Buddha image. What Tsong Khapa recommended in the Lam Rim Chung Mo, the small Lam Rim, is mind. So I¹d like to touch on both. So first, the Buddha image, and I don¹t want to repeat this in detail today since I have already talked about it. So please refer to that Thursday. Dimitri was asking me a lot of questions, and I showed him I had brought the wrong file. Anyway, that¹s when I did it, and I think I did it right, nothing missing. So, therefore, I do not want to repeat the focusing on the image part of it, but briefly touch on it. If you are going to focus on the Buddha image, there are a lot of reasons to do that. Why? Because it purifies negativities, and the Buddha is something you get good karma from because of the karma called remembering the Buddha. And also if you get used to thinking about Buddha when you die, at the time of the death, if you are Buddhist, and you are thinking of Buddha, you will never fall into the lower realm, guaranteed by Buddha. Not like this Men¹s Warehouse guy who says, ³If I get you in the shop I guarantee you will buy a suit,² or ³you¹ll come back here to buy a suit.² So it¹s not like that, really truly. But if you are focusing on the Buddha image, and you are recommended not try to have clarity here; just generally have the head, hands, legs and general structure. I used to call it a yellow lump, that¹s a little too funny. All different kinds of yellow lumps come up, right? But a general structure is good enough. So the first and foremost difficulty is not finding the point of focus. So if it is recommended you meditate on Buddha, just generally find a picture that has a head and hands and leg and is sitting, that¹s good enough. Don¹t try to zoom in and see what the eye looks like, what the nose looks like, and how the hands are kept, and whether the leg is crossed or whatever. Don¹t go and zoom in there, just a general picture is fine. That is for common, ordinary practitioners. But if you are a Vajrayana practitioner, if you are saying sadhanas, then that¹s not right. The purpose of the sadhana is clarity, at the development stage. At the development stage level you have to build the clarity. Clarity of face, how many of them, the legs, how many, the hands, how many, what implements, and so forth, all of them you try to see clearly, that is Vajrayana. But just for zhi ne, you don¹t need that. And as a matter of fact, trying to go into detail will become an obstacle at this moment. So do not go into detail, do try to bring clarity. Just find the points, and then focus on that. That is quite simple‹I¹ll leave it there.

Then my choice will be either to introduce the next subject next week or to continue on the focusing points, then go over the mental part at the end of these eight weeks, on the eighth day or something. I¹m not sure what I¹m going to do. Maybe next week I¹ll introduce the mental meditation or whatever. So I¹d like to stop here. And if you have any questions, comments, statements, I¹ll be happy to give you the floor. Even if you want to talk about Richard Clarke, that¹s fine.

Woman: Well, I would like to talk about Richard Clarke, but I won¹t. This does go back a little bit to what Dimitri brought up last week, if we¹re Vajrayana, do we work on the zhi ne separately? And you were saying no, that it can be done within the sadhana itself. But now you just said thatŠI for one wouldn¹t say that I have developed zhi ne. So I¹m working on a sadhana. Obviously, when I¹m working on the sadhana, I¹m trying to work on the clarity of an image. Is that in some way creating an obstacle for me in developing my zhi ne?

Gehlek Rimpoche: On the Vajrayana level, developing zhi ne is slightly different. Since you were in the Winter Retreat, I recommend you refer to that. Also you can read the Vajrayogini transcripts, they will tell you there too. Do we have Yamantaka transcripts too? We do. We do have a Yamantaka transcript, we call that Sandy¹s Notes.

Audience: We have more. We have from your teachings too.

Gehlek Rimpoche: Yes, there¹s been more added. Sandy¹s Notes made bigger. So Sandy¹s Notes was the first teaching of Yamantaka. If you read that, it talks about developing zhi ne as slightly different from the one here, but not that different. The major method we apply there comes from here. There is a general Vajrayana way of moving and that drives it, I think the pattern is slightly different. Otherwise all the bullets you have to bring from here. And the second hand is you, right? Corinna. Karuna is compassion, for me at least.

Corinna: I would like to take you back, Rimpoche, briefly to where you were explaining the four steps where first you focus on the object just as it is, then

Gehlek Rimpoche: That¹s what I was saying here about the Buddha image, just finding it, leaving, is without analyzing, that¹s what it is.

Corinna: The next step is the analysis of your object. Then you had a third step where you said to see the relative and absolute aspect. And lastly, you said continue until it transforms. What did you mean by that?

Gehlek Rimpoche: The mind we have when we are beginning to focus neither has the joy nor the enthusiasm. By the end, even if you were forced to leave, you wouldn¹t leave. The mind has been transformed to that level. That¹s what I mean. You get it? Thank you. And relative and absolute aspects, they are the focusing point. So whether analyzing or not analyzing is a way, but the relative and absolute path is what you focus on. And finally, transforming is the result I¹m talking about. It¹s clear, right? Thank you. Yes, sir?

Man: Staying with that same line of questioning. If we think of relative and absolute in terms of the transient phenomena, the material phenomena, and their source being absolute, is the transformation that you¹re talking about transformation into a state where there is constant awareness, constant understanding of the absolute so that the relative is not seen? So the transformation is bringing it forth completely, can we think of it that way, of bringing forth completely the absolute?

Gehlek Rimpoche: I would like to stick to the subject itself. The subject here is shamatha or zhi ne. So I don¹t want to go that far, and talk about Absolute Truth and transformation and the complete enlightenment level and all that, I don¹t want to do that. I don¹t want to make it relevant at this point. So the transforming here, as I stated just now, is not really transforming everything, just the mental state. Mental state means the mind that is the observer or whoever is focusing, whoever is meditating. So that level has been changed from an ordinary level to a better level. In other words, it¹s not as though dead. Our usual example‹ ³our² in the sense of the way I was taught in the old-time monastery. Our usual example was of the dead-tired donkey with a heavy load pushing up hill. This is our example for the level we are on now. And a change from that level, is if at least the donkey is not too tired and is a little bit alert, not absolutely hungry, but not climbing, maybe even going down. So that¹s the level of transformation. I¹d like to leave it there rather than continue because words are such that they can go everywhere. So I¹d like to leave it there so that it will become relevant and not out of context. Thank you. Yes?

Man: This gets back to last week¹s class. Could you speak a little bit more about how vows work?

Gehlek Rimpoche: What did I say? Could you speak more about what?

Man: How vows work.

Gehlek Rimpoche: Oh, yes, it¹s very simple, very simple, I¹ll tell you what. You and I are sitting here right now. We are not killing anybody, we are not lying, we are not stealing anything, we are certainly not engaging in sexual misconduct right here and now‹too many people are watching, right? So do we get the positive karma of not doing those things? The answer is no. We do need to have an opportunity we are not taking in order to get the positive karma; and when we have the opportunity, and decide not to engage in something then we get the karma of not doing that thing, right? But if you have a vow of not doing something, even is we are not doing anything, even if we did not have any opportunity, still because of the vow we constantly, continuously have the positive karma of not doing that thing. That is the advantage of the vow. The disadvantage of the vow is the exact opposite. Don¹t let me speak about it. OK? Exact opposite.

Man: No, I understand that.

Gehlek Rimpoche: Good.

Man: But if we choose to follow dharmically, not doing wrong, following the tenets, it doesn¹t work as great as if you have the vows.

Gehlek Rimpoche: You bring the positive karma out of that by just simply not doing it. That is the big difference the vows make. Disadvantage is also equally, equally. When you do something wrong, you are breaking the not to do it, which makes it worse than simply having killed or something. That¹s it. Yes, sir? Yours is the last question, OK? Thank you.

Man #2: Because you¹re fulfilling a vow, does that mean that you are earning tapas?

Gehlek Rimpoche: What?

Man #2: You¹re earning tapas, like a yogicŠ

Gehlek Rimpoche: You are earning papa? I¹m sorry, I didn¹t hear.

Man #2: Maybe this word isn¹t something that we talk about, but I think it¹s a Sanskrit word, tapas, which means you fulfilled a vow. (inaudible)

Gehlek Rimpoche: Liberation, tharpa. Neljor.

Man #3: It¹s a Sanskrit word.

Gehlek Rimpoche: A Sanskrit word, what is it?

Woman: Tapas, t-a-p-a-s.

Gehlek Rimpoche: What does that mean? Since I don¹t know Sanskrit, I can¹t answer your question, I¹m sorry. But on the other hand, vows make a tremendous difference, right? And we just said it, in the positive and the negative sense both. And the advantage of the vow isŠparticularly the bodhisattva vow. Shantideva said [Tibetan]. He said, ³From now on, even if you go to sleep or play or do nothing or whatever you do, as long as it¹s not a negativity, you have the continuation of positive karmas building up.² And I¹m sorry I can¹t answer the tapa business because I don¹t know what tapa is. If you were talking about tharpa in Tibetan, which means liberationŠbut it is Sanskrit, which is not liberation, so I¹m sorry.

Man #2: I¹ll find out.

Gehlek Rimpoche: Good. Tell me, then, next week. Otherwise I¹ll bring a Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary and we¹ll look it up. I think we have to call it a day now. So I¹d like to close shop and thank you. I¹ll be here next week. Thank you.

[END]