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SHANTIDEVA’S GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE CHAPTER 9: WISDOM PART I

Oral explanations by Kyabje Gehlek Rimpoche

20050208GRAABWL

Talk 4: 2-08-05

Welcome everybody. I believe we are meeting tonight because the first meeting was cancelled du to snow. To substitute that we are meeting tonight. As you know we are at the beginning of the wisdom chapter of Shantideva's Bodhisattvacharyavatara.

We finished the first verse quite easily. But the second verse is the most complicated verse.

Verse 2

This truth is recognized as being of two kinds: conventional and ultimate.

Ultimate reality is beyond the scope of the intellect.

The intellect is called conventional reality.

I have almost been talking the same subject in New York on Thursdays. Most of you will have the transcripts available because they are on line and can be downloaded. But what you really need to get clear here is the two truths. I could easily just name them and move on. That can be moot. But it is a little more than that. Even the translations differ. Some say conventional and ultimate, some say relative and absolute. m

One most important thing is: Any spiritual practice, or if you just want to have knowledge in this, must be based on three things:

Where we are - the base

what we do - the path

what we aim for - the result

Without knowing where you, what you are doing and what you hope to achieve, just do something, that is joining the hahayana. You can just laugh, that's it. To be in a real yana, a vehicle that can deliver you where you want to go, you have to follow either the hinayana, mahayana or vajrayana. I am not supposed to be using the term hinyana but I do that here purposely to make it more clear. Without base, path and result you don't have a spiritual structure. Even if you just want to find out initially what is in Buddhism, and you don't have any base or foundation, it really becomes just hahayana.

The base, the ground we stand on, is the two truths. That is why I cannot just brush this away by simply stating that there are two truths. I need to complete this statement tonight, because today is the last of the initial first four sessions. If I just leave it, I don't know if I am not doing you a disservice. Actually, this subject is going to come up a number of times during the course of this teachings.

What is the ultimate truth? Our verse says, "Ultimate truth is beyond the scope of the intellect". When we look in our mind there are two categories:

the mind that can observe things extremely finely and in detail and concentrates

the mind that roughly looks and draws some conclusion

The ultimate truth will be not the usual mind, the mind that you and I possess. That mind might will not be able to see it clearly. That means that the mind other than the one at our level, the wisdom mind of the aryas, the mind of the extraordinary people, is able to find it. It is something that our ordinary mind cannot perceive. What we perceive is called 'relative truth'. I am presenting that to you in a very rough way so that you have something to hold. Otherwise you hear so much about the conventional and ultimate truths, and you have nothing to hold.

Why can the ordinary mind like ours not perceive ultimate truth? It is not that our mind is not good enough, but it doesn't have the capacity to focus strongly and solidly. Also, our mind doesn't have the capacity to analyze detailedly and profoundly. Last year we did a one year meditation course. You remember, looking at that, our mind is not a meditative mind. We will not even reach to the first level out of the nine stages with the mind we have. Some people may, but most of us don't. That doesn't mean that our mind is bad. It means that we haven't utilized our mind well. We let it run by itself according to its own habitual patterns. Our habitual patterns won't let us focus on anything. If we try to force ourselves to focus on one thing for a few seconds, we probably think we go crazy. I haven't heard somebody telling me that but if I would hear somebody telling me that 'this is not the American way', I won't be surprised.

That shows that we haven't utilized our mind and its capacity. That's why we don't have focus. Without that we cannot find the reality. We can also hear something in between the lines also: the focusing mind can at the same time be the analyzing mind. So focusing doesn't just mean to sit there and stare at the microphone and say: microphone, microphone, microphone. You will be looking at the microphone and notice: Oh, there is this fuzzy sponge that covers the actual microphone. Wonder how it looks inside. All that is still part of focusing, although you are transiting from one point to another. But we can't do that. We will be looking at the microphone and say: "microphone, microphone, oops, there is a glass of water, here is water…" We make that big jump.

When we say, "our mind cannot perceive ultimate truth", it doesn't mean that the mind cannot do that, but only the mind that has not developed, and is not trained. That is acceptable to any culture. Everybody agrees that a trained mind sees things differently than an untrained mind. Take a designer: the designer's eye can see straight and crooked, matching and not matching, symmetrical and not symmetrical. . That doesn't mean that any other eye is able to see the same. If you are not trained it is acceptable if you cannot see it. Similarly, the eyes and mind of a doctor can examine a patient, and judging from the color of the face, the shape, the pain and all that, and diagnose what illness they are suffering from. Our ordinary mind cannot see it. That is commonly known. Likewise, the lawyers can look through the papers and see a lot of things which we cannot see! That's why we have to hire lawyers and pay them. That is very much accepted.

Likewise, it is not looking down on our mind to say, "The ordinary mind cannot perceive ultimate truth". Our mind is not bad, it is just not trained. When your mind is not trained, it may still have the capacity, but it is not utilized. An artist can see things I can't. I won't even know whether a line is straight or crooked. If someone tells me, "This line goes this way and that way and therefore it is straight", I will probably say, "Maybe, yes." The ultimate truth is not perceivable by the mind of our ordinary level. It is the wisdom of the aryas, as the traditional texts call it. These are extraordinary persons. By saying that you get another message.

Whatever we ordinary persons perceive at this moment is the conventional truth. It is not that we don't see truth. The truth we perceive is the conventional truth. That gives us one more understanding: the mind can really see the ultimate. Finding the ultimate truth with a reliable ultimate mind [of an arya] is perhaps the definition of ultimate truth. Whatever truth we can perceive with the ordinary mind, is a truth and that is the definition of conventional truth.

You have the definition of the two truths. The understanding behind the definition is that an extraordinary mind can perceive something extraordinary. That is the ultimate truth. The usual mind can perceive some truth and that is conventional truth. That is the basic understanding we can get.

That understanding is a good seed which will grow a lot and lead to a lot of things. My indiscriminate thinking leads me to think that what the ultimate mind perceives and what the ordinary mind perceives will be directly opposite. With our ordinary mind we think that everything we perceive exists as we perceive it. The nose is really a nose, the ear is an ear, the mouth is a mouth, white is white and black is black. The head is a head and the chest is a chest. We look at ourselves as a person and say "I". What do we really perceive? On the basis of our five skandhas we think, "That is me, Joh Blo". But Joh Blo is only a name. That is not you. So who are you? When we look inwards it seems as if all our skandhas merge together into a lump which we can call "me". Our ordinary mind will perceive and acknowledge that and it is. But the extraordinary mind will go beyond that and ask, "Which one are you talking about? The form, sound or smell? Are you a sound, or are you a smell? Are you a taste? Are you physical form?

If you are physical form then when that form disappears, do you as a person disappear too? As physical form you have so many aspects. So which of them are you? When you keep looking from that angle you will finally find out that there is nothing called 'me'. I simply exist on the combination of things that are part and parcel of me, such as my mind, my body, my feelings, perceptions and so on. You understand that 'me' is just the simple combination of all these things. There is nothing beyond that. If you search you are not going to find it.

With that we may be traveling towards the ultimate truth by taking the first one or two steps. Our conventional mind will never be able to perceive that. We will get very scared. We will flatly deny it and we don’t want to hear about it. In other words, the basis on which the "I" is labeled is just the five skandhas or aggregates. These are form, feeling, perception, [compositional factors] and mind. These are all impermanent. Therefore, they are not only changing, but they can be destroyed and disappear. Since we are based on these, we always carry the fear of losing, of not making it. We are always afraid of something. This is because of the conventional truth of "I" being based on the five aggregates which are impermanent, changing and finally will be destroyed. We carry that fear all the time.

This mind is exaggerated. The mind doesn't know it is just a combination. Our mind thinks the "I" is something we have to protect and it could not find any other way to protect it except through pre-emptive methods - attacking the enemy. That is hatred. On the other hand the same perception leads to obsession to the desired objects and to jealousy towards our competition. They are all exaggerated minds. The ultimate truth will cut all of them. The basis on which we build will be realized as not existing. We are holding something which is not there. That is the reason why emptiness is me ga and not ma yin ga. Something that we thought was there has been recognized as not being there. Something we perceive as being there is being negated. It is not that something wrongly perceived is being corrected. That is also the reason why emptiness is empty of self and not empty of other.

There are many traditions that accept that emptiness is empty of 'other'. That is not something to be surprised about. If the glass of water is empty of being a clock, that is nothing to be surprised about. We can easily see that the glass of water is free of being a clock. That is not emptiness. But if you see that the glass of water is free of being a glass of water, that is something. So it is not free of 'other', but free of 'self'. Western translators have to add up "ness", so it becomes 'emptiness'. The translators and professors and everybody, they are afraid of 'empty'. So they add up the - ness. They make it into 'emptiness'.

The two verses are further supported by Buddha's statements which he made when he was reunited with his father and his family. There is a sutra called "Reunion Sutra". There Buddha clearly says,

The conventional is the behavior of the jig ten.

Somebody told me yesterday, "In Tibetan the world is called jig ten, which means everything is falling apart." That may or may not be true. But jig ten means "based on something that is subject to destruction". We are the ones; we are based on our five aggregates which are doing to disappear. Nothing is permanent. Even if it were permanent, we wouldn't like it. You don't want to drag a 500 year old body around, do you? Nobody wants that, although we all want to get old. But when you are there you don't want it. Feeling is the same thing, recognition is the same thing. You don't want to see the same thing again and again, like in the "Groundhog Day" movie. In the Reunion Sutra Buddha further says,

The ultimate is not to be known and cannot be understood

At that time, the people Buddha was talking to might not have been fit to understand the ultimate truth. In that context I would like to raise the following point. It is about inherent existence. You have to have to have some idea about emptiness. If you ask anybody what emptiness is they will usually reply, "Freedom from inherent existence". That is a common mantra. I don't know whether the people who use that word really know what inherent existence is. I am sure some of the upcoming verses will deal with that. Just for now: This "Freedom of inherent existence", is that perceivable by mind? According to Shantideva's verse it is not. However, if the mind cannot establish the non-existence of something that tells you that it does exist. In other words, it's non-existence cannot be proven. It is very much like in the court of law. You are regarded as innocent until proven guilty. Similarly, if the mind cannot establish that something does not exist you have to consider it to exist. That is the rule. Nagarjuna says,

rang zhin me ba nyi la na rang zhin nyi du rab du gyur

If you go away from the non-existence of inherent existence,

by that you establish inherent existence.

In other words, if mind cannot prove that there is no inherent existence, indirectly it establishes that there is inherent existence. That is how mind works. This functions like black and white. There is no gray. So, Shantideva saying that ultimate truth is not perceivable by ordinary mind indirectly tells you that although ultimate truth is not to be established by ordinary mind, it can be established by a profound logical mind. That does not have to be a highly spiritual thing. A profound logical mind can establish that.

To conclude, the ordinary mind is able to perceive and establish the conventional truth. The mind beyond that, the profound mind of the aryas' logic is able to establish the ultimate truth. In order to understand this, if there is time and if you have interest and if you really want to know more you should read the madyamaka literature. For example, it says that whatever exists as it is, that is the ultimate truth. Words like suchness came in for that reason. Whatever the ultimate mind perceives exists as it is perceived. Tibetan terms like de ko na nyi, de zhin nyi and so on mean 'just like that' or 'such as this'. That is the mind which perceives ultimate reality.

Verse 3

In the light of this, people are seen to be of two types: the contemplative and the ordinary person. The ordinary folks are superseded by the contemplatives.

In the light of this… refers to the two truths and what can be seen by who and what and so on. So in regard to that there are two types of persons. Allan Wallace translates them as 'contemplatives' and 'ordinary persons'. We have seen that the two truths are the basis on which we are standing.

So which kind of person follows what? 'Ordinary person' is not meant in the sense of "House of Commons" and "House of Lords", but rather in the sense of jig ten pa, those who depends on the impermanent base that is used as the identity of the person. That is the simple way: we see it and we function that way. The other type of persons is called here 'contemplatives'. The Tibetan word is nel jor, which means 'yogi'. We all know what that is. In other words we are talking about yogis and non-yogis.

Those who are following and functioning on the ultimate level are called 'yogis'. Those who are functioning on the conventional truth level are called jig ten pas, "worldly persons". This time you have to think simply that jig stands for the impermanent form and pa is a person based on that. We are form-based persons. We use that for our identity. Our driver's license is proof that we exist. If you go somewhere and say, "I am So and so", and they ask you to prove it, you show them your driver's license and that is the proof, right? So we base our identity on form and we duplicate a picture of it, some authority signs and stamps it and that is our identity. That really shows us that we are form-based persons. No wonder that we are always afraid. We are afraid, whether we are educated or uneducated, rich or poor, young or old, man or woman. Everybody has so much fear and that is because we are form-based people and form is impermanent. We are on shaky ground. This verse says that the ordinary folks are "superseded by the contemplatives". This is not because the yogis are more powerful and overpower you. It is not a bureaucratic ordering system. The perception of the jig ten person will be contradicted and even defeated by the perception of the yogis. It can be contradicted and proven to be wrong. We ordinary persons think that the form is a source of joy. Our joys are normally based on our form. We think it is mind, but mostly we perceive physical feelings. We think our body gives us joy. So when we want joy we go for all kinds of things, from cigarettes to alcohol, drugs and sex and so on. It is because we see our joy connected with our form. So whatever shaky thing we can get we think that is great joy. I am glad we did not get electric shocks!

The yogis see differently. They don't see that joy is dependent on the body, not even on the mind. I am supposed to be Buddhist, but let me say it this way: jogis see the joy on the soul, rather than mind or body. We see only the body, so we do everything related to the body. 99.9% of the commercials on radio and television are just there to give some buzz in your body - that's all. It is because we see that as joy.

But that is not true. The ultimate joy is not physical and not even mental. It is the joy of the soul, from the bottom of wherever you are. That is why there are two different views and that is why the division comes between the yogis and the non-yogis. So the views of the non- yogis are defeated by the yogis.

Within these yogis' views there are also different levels, the higher levels of understanding defeat the lower ones. That is why the spiritual development comes in gradual stages. That is why it is not instantaneous and not so simple. It is a little more complicated, because our nature is such.

Verse 4

Due to the difference in their intelligence, even contemplatives are refuted by successively higher ones by means of analogies accepted by both parties, regardless of what they aim to prove.

I presume that 'analogies' is similar to 'examples'. The lower yogis' understanding will be refuted by the higher yogis' understanding. For example the Chittamatrins, the Mind Only School, will accept that form is truly existent. This is refuted by the Madhyamakas, the Middle Path School, because form cannot truly exist. This is because form is impermanent and changing. It does exist, but not truly. That is different.

We are establishing here that yogis are digging into the ultimate truth and non-yogis are stuck with the conventional truth. I suppose this much is what I can say tonight. Since it is the last talk in this series I want you to have something to carry home. What we did so far is that all other practices and teachings are like blind without the eye of wisdom. Chandrakirti said that all other practices are like a bunch of blind people. They don't know which direction to go. There is no perfect guide, no eye that sees. So wisdom is the eye. Yet, wisdom alone cannot do it. You must have love and compassion on one side and wisdom on the other side. Where do these two things come from? They come from the basis of ultimate and conventional truth. Any spiritual practice that is directly dealing with finding the ultimate truth is a direct cause of the Buddha mind. I am talking from the Buddhist perspective. It is the mind of total knowledge. Love, compassion, etc, will bring the form body of total enlightenment.

In order to achieve the mind and body of perfection you have to have the conventional practice of love and compassion and the ultimate practice of wisdom. It is not only based on practice but on the reality as well. Based on the two truths and the two paths you get the two results, the mind and body of enlightenment.

Yet, the ultimate cannot be perceived by the conventional mind of people. We are not trained to see beyond that. The conventional is what we perceive and the ultimate is what yogis perceive. We are not yet yogis, because we base our identity on our physical form, our aggregates. We are based on an unreliable source of identity. It is unreliable, impermanent and will finally disappear. Therefore we base our joy on physical experiences or even mental experiences. Yogis find joy in their deep being instead, rather than in physical, mental or emotional experiences.

When we really look for the spiritual path we look to find the joy in the deep being itself. We also have to destroy the basis on which we build our fears. This is also the source of all our negative emotions. I perceive my temporary identity as me, therefore I protect all that is 'my', with hatred and obsession. Thus we establish a spiritual practitioner. Our target is not only to reverse our negative emotions, but to destroy the source and re-establish the simple, pure being. I guess that is as far as we have come. Think about it, work with it and you have something to hold from the weeks you have spent with me here.

We will meet again on March 8, 2005. We will have another series of 6 Tuesdays. Thank you so much for being here. This is quite a complex and deep subject. It takes quite some time to dig into this. I didn't just want to lick around the point but bite into it. We need something solid. We need to bite.

One thing about the upcoming Yamantaka initiation and retreat: a number of our people are a little scared of vajrayana. That is a misunderstanding. There is nothing to be scared of. This is an extraordinary opportunity. Yes, at the beginning you don't know what you are doing and where you are. All of us, including myself, swim through that lack of understanding. However, the tantra itself says

vajaryana is like the utamvara flower

This is the flower that only blooms once when an official Buddha comes. This is a hindu-buddhist mythological story. Right now there may be a lot of Buddhas, even among ourselves, but there is only one official Buddha for this period and that is Shakyamuni. That utamvara flower only appears then. Just like that, the opportunity to enter vajrayana is just once in a very long time, more rare than the usual blue moon. It is a great opportunity and one should not push oneself away under the pretext of being careful. Actually you are cutting off your own opportunity. You can see clearly that it does not come very often and is also doesn't last very long. It happens to be a very fine time now with a very fine opportunity. Had you been here two decades ago you would never even have been interested. If you come here two decades from now, I am not even sure if it still exists or not. That's what it is - a great opportunity. One has to think of that too.

Thank you

2/23/2005