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

Oral explanations by Kyabje Gehlek Rimpoche

20050405GRAABWL

Talk 9: 4-5-05

Welcome tonight. If you are here for the first time tonight you will have a little difficulty in catching up on what we are going to talk about. If you have been here continuously a couple of times, you will be able to go along with me. I would like to mention one book that might be useful to read along with this. His Holiness gave a teaching on the 9th chapter of the bodhisattvacharyavatara, and that is available. If you add that to your reading list it will be helpful. Also, those of you who are following the teachings on Thursday nights in New York, should have the book that we are following in that course. This is Tsongkhapa's lam rim chen mo, volume 3, in the English translation. If you don't have that, I can't see how you can get anything. Actually, the reason why we usually don't talk so much about wisdom is that the moment you talk about wisdom it is a very, very heavy dosage. Geshes will start on that subject 15-20 into their training. That is the subject we are dealing with.

But if you don't have the book, maybe you can xerox certain portions out of the book, a couple of pages here and there, week by week. I don't think we are going to go very fast. Last time I did two or three paragraphs and I got exhausted. Four - five pages at a time will do. We will cover at the most 8 pages in the next segment of the course.

Here, on Tues nights, what we are doing is equally hard, sometimes even harder than the lam rim chen mo part. But still, we are here, reading the verses 6, 7, 8. I would like to read up to verse 13 today.

Before I do that, I have to get you together. I am not sure whether we are together or not. The best is to work out a system of outlines. I just want to bring us up to date a little. In the beginning we focused on the two truths, absolute and relative. Out of that, the absolute truth, don dam den pa, is referring to wisdom itself - which is emptiness.

First the two truths are presented. It says that if you want to attain liberation it is necessary to understand emptiness. There are people who say that in order to get liberation you can do without emptiness. They say, "I have been a good person. I am trying to do good, I don't lose my temper. I am not a mean person, I don't have so much obsession. I have some attraction here and there, but I don't have so much obsession. I don't have hatred. I am kind and I say my mantras. I don't hurt anybody. Why won't that liberate me?" That is a very valid point. Yes, it is karma that tells us, "If you do good you will get good results. If you do bad you will get bad results." That is a true fact. So why can't that get you to liberation?

In the lam rim teachings there are a lot of hints that this it is not enough to attain liberation. For example, it is said that karma is definite, but then we also tell you, "Not every good karma will necessarily liberate you." We talk about good karma, bad karma and unshakeable karma. We also talk about samsara and nirvana. Generating good karma does not necessarily guarantee that we will be free from samsara. All these words are brought up from beginning to end, at various levels of the lam rim. You hear them all the time. It is in the Odyssey to Freedom. It is in the Three Principles of the Path. You hear it in the lam rim teachings and everywhere. It is a true fact that good karma gives good results and bad karma gives bad results. But there are many levels of "good". Every Sony watch is not necessarily the best quality Sony watch. There are some Sony watches that cost $10 and some that cost $100. There also some that cost $1000. They are all Sony. Every good karma gives good results. But what kind of good karma?

Total liberation, total freedom from samsara, cannot be attained without understanding emptiness, according to the Buddha's teachings. You may raise another question here: "It looks like you are saying that every person who is getting liberated has to be a Buddhist."

I have been trained in a debate-oriented monastery. Immediately, when I hear that only the understanding of emptiness can liberate you from samsara, I will check back, "So if a person doesn’t understand emptiness, they will not get liberated. Is that right?" The answer has to be "That is right." Then I will say, "If that is so, then none other than Buddhists can be liberated, because others don't know emptiness." And next I would follow up, "If that is true, do you state that all other traditions are false?" Now it is going to get a little extreme. I was able to gain an inch, so now I am taking a yard. The inch is there because the bodhisattvacharyavatara or any other Buddhist teaching will say that liberation depends on wisdom. Every religious tradition has its own wisdom. Even the different Buddhist schools have their own wisdom. Even the Tibetan Buddhist schools have their own wisdom. Wisdom is wisdom and everybody has their own wisdom. However, I don't know who else besides Buddhists says that emptiness is wisdom. Among the Buddhists there are also tremendous differences. From school to school, from ancient India to today's Tibet, the definition of wisdom differs. No one can say that a particular definition of wisdom is right and another definition of wisdom is wrong.

That's why even Tsongkapa's lam rim chen mo wisdom chapter sold it to us in the beginning by saying that "Yes, you are going to find a lot of definitions of emptiness by the traditional Indian masters, before Buddhism even came to Tibet as well as by other earlier Tibetan masters. But I, Tsongkhapa, follow the path of Nagarjuna, Buddhapalita and Chandrakirti."

Now, apparently every Tibetan Buddhist school, Nyingma, Sakya, Kargyu or Gelug, say that they are following Nagarjuna. I don't know what the Bon pos do. Traditionally they are not supposed to be Buddhist, but Bon, but today they like to be called Bon Buddhists. That is fine. I don't really know what they do. But all other Tibetan schools claim to be following Nagarjuna. Following and accepting Nagarjuna's views boils down to debating about what exactly is Nagarjuna's point of emptiness. That is the issue, rather than figuring out if this or that idea is wisdom. It has already been established that Nagarjuna's view is the best by quoting that almost all the early Indian masters praised Nagarjuna as the best.

Since we agreed that we are following this particular path of Nagarjuna, now we check whether certain points are right or wrong in regard to this path. On these points we can argue and debate with others. Chandrakirti has pointed out that by arguing your points, if you expose faults in other thinker's thoughts, that is okay. You can point them out. Why? He says,

By presenting your own points, if that disturbs, destroys or looks down on the points of other thinkers,

there is no fault.

This is because you don't do it in order to put them down. All you do is present your own system. In other words, there is no negativity, you don't create negative karma. On the contrary, it is positive karma, because you are bringing it out. You are not out to criticize others, but the presentation of your view may include critiques of the viewpoints of others. There is no fault in doing this. In other words, different viewpoints, thoughts and ideas are encouraged. Freedom of expression is very much emphasized - but in a framework of rules and regulations. I am sorry to have to say that but freedom of expression in this case does not mean that you can say almost every crazy thing and say, "This is my thought." You cannot do that. If you do there is no framework. There has to be a basic framework. The ground rule is: you cannot contradict direct knowledge.

One of the reasons that validate indirect knowledge is that it must not be contradicted by direct knowledge. If direct knowledge contradicts it, that proves it is wrong. The example given for this is wonderful but it may not work in the west. It used to work very well at the time I grew up in Tibet and that is because there were no automobiles. The speed may not work with this example. So Tibet is on a high plateau with wide, open plains. There are not many travelers and you can see very far.

So you see in the distance something black that seems to be moving. Actually, it is a tree stump but you think somebody is coming towards you. You keep on riding your horse in that direction and it looks more like a person and seems to be moving too. You think, "There is somebody coming. I am going to have company." You may or may not be eager to encounter the person, because it could be a robber. You may have a mix of doubt and eagerness. You go closer and closer. Suddenly you go through a little valley and up again. During that time you don't see that object any more. At that moment a person on a horse comes towards you, in bright red-pink monk colors. You know it is not the dark-colored person you are expecting. You ask him, "Oh, what happened to that dark-colored person?" The other guy says, "Which dark-colored person?" You say, "The one who has been standing back there all that time." Now the other guy says, "That one? That is a tree stump, not a person."

So, in this example the direct knowledge of the other person informs you that your mind of perceiving a dark colored person was wrong. Now you are supposed to accept that, rather than arguing, "No, you are wrong. I saw a person there and it is a person." You may even go and look for yourself and then for sure you will see that it is a wood stump. You have to be satisfied with that and accept this direct contradiction to your perception. You finally have got to accept it. You cannot continue, "There is a person. Maybe he is hiding behind the tree. Let me cut the tree down."

So that is the rule: Direct contradiction by a direct mind. It is diffusing the mystery of your thoughts with direct knowledge. So that's it. There a number of these rules. For example if you claim something is one with something else you have to agree that it is one in all aspects. Likewise, if it is separate from it, it has to be separate in all aspects. That cuts out all gray's. It is really either black or white. There is no gray. When I first came to America I was accused of having no gray, just black and white. Maybe it is because of this influence. So now I have a lot of gray.

Anyway, the wisdom of emptiness is absolutely necessary to have. There are actually three layers of "having" this wisdom.

Understanding

Comprehending

It becomes part of you

Understanding also has 3 parts. This is another thing. I was told by many of my friends I shouldn’t present like that, 2 of this and 5 of that and 4 of that. Now I am going against that. So the 3 layers of understanding are:

following learning (reading or hearing)

This is the most superficial layer

following analysis

From learning you get a picture in your head, an idea. You begin to analyze this. You disregard some things and accept others and finally you have a good idea of what it is.

following meditation

You keep that understanding gained by analyzing as base for concentration. You practice it, accept it, repeatedly do it. Then it will become part of you. Then it is no longer a foreign thing within you, but becomes your daily thoughts, ideas, chores, everyday food and thinking.

These three layers are necessary. Simple understanding will not do for spiritual practice. If you just want to be a professor with academic understanding it is enough. For that you only need the first layer and if you get to the second layer you become an expert. But to gain a spiritual insight you have to get through the third level. A lot of people will fall through that crack. They get up to layer 1, then maybe into 2, but never to the third. The third level is quite difficult. Here you are really becoming a spiritual practitioner. All of you are very devoted, but even those of us who have been involved for 60-70 years are halfway swimming and halfway sinking. That is how it really is. It is very hard.

When you say that emptiness is necessary to get liberation, that understanding itself has to go through the 3 layers. After understanding you analyze and then meditate and it will be part of you. Remember, the first point, understanding, also has 3 cycles. So it goes deeper and deeper. Take one subject from the lam rim as example. We are familiar with that. Take the precious human life.

Ask yourself the question: Is the life that I have precious? You will all say yes. But why it is precious? You may say, "It is life. What more precious than that is there?" That answer is correct but naïve. The intelligent way of answering is, "It is precious because it has capabilities with which I can do anything in this life. If I can take it, life is capable of giving everything." This answer is produced by thought. But when you go deeper inside, the thoughts don't have to come into it any more, because straight away your understanding will arise that life is precious because it gives you the opportunity, because it is capable. That insight will come from your heart, not circle around your head as an idea where you think, "Ha, it could be, let me think about it". These in between layers will be removed with deeper understanding. That is the difference in quality of understanding. You can see that by how people talk about it.

I have been talking to Jamyang yestersday. I said, "The moment somebody opens their mouth I begin to see how much they know about dharma." I am not talking about you people, but about the monks who have been practicing in the monastery for 40, 50 years. The moment they open their mouth I know how much the person knows, what sort of quality they have. The way the person puts the words will tell you exactly how much the person knows. If everything remains at the level of words and nothing is taken in, that becomes a "word flower" as we say in Tibetan. The "word flower" doesn't produce fruit. There is an equivalent expression about a person who has great experiences but no knowledge for whatsoever.

Once you have established that wisdom is necessary, the next is find out: How does one get this wisdom? Of course you get it through experience. But I told you that without the proper knowledge, I don't think the experience will be correct. That is the problem with experience. In order to get true experience you have to first learn, then pick up and then experience. There are certain schools - even Tibetan traditions - that say that they can transmit spiritual insight to you. They look at you with big, open eyes. That is happening. There are such traditions. They try to put certain thoughts in their eye consciousness and then contact another person's eye consciousness and somehow project their understanding in that. How much goes through that way, who knows. But in the Tsongkhapa tradition it is purely about knowledge which is analyzed and thereby becomes experience. This becomes internal development. That is how the steps are taken.

How does one establish the wisdom within the individual?

We all use the word emptiness. They can't just say empty, so they make it into emptiness. Another translation is suchness. With all respect to my friends, the translators, professors and contemporary Buddhist teachers, if you look at the early translations into English, they have done a great job. Today's translators say that they are unreadable, but if you look word by word they really do a great job. The ness in empti-ness has been added up later. The earlier translators used empty and suchness. The ness came in because the next translators thought that emptiness is not empty, but full and to make that clear they wanted to call it empti-ness. I actually think it creates more confusion. In Tibetan it is tong nyi - empty itself. That is wisdom, according to the Buddha. That is why the Heart Sutra says :"no eye, no ear, no nose no tongue, no teeth, no leg, no head, no horns", and so on. Empty itself - that has a meaning.

For us, when we see absolute truth and relative truth, we see two completely separate things. They seem to have nothing to with each other. If we see that, we do have a problem. Now the play with words becomes difficult, honestly.

Buddha himself has said,

ma sam joe me she rab pa rol chi

ma je man ka nam kai ngo wo nyi

That means: even if you want to say it, you can't. The words cannot express the meaning. This is what Buddha said about wisdom. He said it is like space, it is the one mother, it doesn't grow, it doesn't stop. It doesn't come and doesn't go. However, we have to explain and use words. So the best we can do is to say naturally not existing, inherently not existent.

Some thinkers will say, "If everything is naturally not existent, what the hell are you doing? Why do you work, take hardship, be kind, generous, why do you have morality and try to be patient?" They say that then the fruit of the spiritual practice, enlightenment, is also not there and it would be better to enjoy what you can, eat more, lie down, become fatter, build up more stomach. Why not? They say that does not make sense and that therefore there is no valid reason to talk about things naturally not existing. So again, they say if nothing exists inherently, then enlightenment also does not exist and then there is no point in having a spiritual practice. It is simple, I hope not too simple. Sometimes making it simple makes it sound silly.

The answer to that is: there is a valid reason to claim that things don't inherently exist. Both sides accept the existence of dreams and magician's shows [magician's illusions]. So you accept and I accept that dreams are there. They are not reality but they exist. Didn't you ever dream? Have you never seen a magician's show? So they are there. That doesn't mean that they have to be naturally real. Things could exist in the manner of your own dreams, your own magician's show. Further, although things are naturally not there, things like generosity and so on are not useless, because our mind can understand, achieve and experience. So the argument that if things are naturally non-existent it is pointless to practice spiritually has been directly contradicted by saying that you have dreams and there are magician's shows. You cannot say that your dreams don't exist. You can say, "My dream is not real", but you cannot say "My dream is not there".

The other person still objects and says: "Fire for example, is really there. You can burn yourself, you can cook food with it. That is truly existing. You have to accept that."

Now the Middle Path person will answer: "I don't accept that. You don’t need natural existence for things to function. If you exist you don't have to exist naturally. Fire is there relatively. Fire cooks and does everything, but not naturally." They tell the first person: "Since you cannot see the difference between existing and truly existing you are a fool. You need to be able to make the distinction of these two on one point."

Remember, we always say

If you don't exist absolutely it is not good enough not to exist

If you exist relatively it is good enough to exist

The moment we talk about wisdom we will tell you this. So the first person does not see this and thinks that the two truths are absolutely separate. But there is this very interesting idea: don tung gyu ma ta bu. That means: empty, lacking true existence, but existing like a magician's illusion. By telling you this I also want to give you a warning: some people may go too far and think: dreams are true reality. Some people try to live in dreams. Their dreams become their real world. That is not right. I don't mean dreams in the sense of planning and having ideas. I mean the actual dreams that happen when you fall asleep. If you try to make them the reality of your life you lose. You defeat yourself. You defeat your spiritual world and your material world. There is the common understanding that the person who is great in the spiritual field is terrible in the material world. That is not true. If one does not know how to live in the material world such a person will not know how to maintain a spiritual life. Traditional teachings emphasize this. There is a very interesting story:

There is a well-known spiritual teacher who thinks he is great. He really does become great, but maybe not at that time yet. So he is traveling through a village and has to spend the night. In Tibet there are no hotels, but some families will give you shelter. Some of them don't take money and some do. It depends on the individual how much they can leave. There are no set fees for accommodation or food. The traveler will ask for shelter and the family may give them a room, food or no food, or they may just give you a space in the courtyard. There you can build a fire and cook your own food. The family may give you food, you never know. Nothing is certain. You can't take it for granted. So this big lama with big title and big retinue came through and asked at a lady's house for shelter. The lady happens to be Tara, but looked like an old, hunch back lady, terribly dirty and she said, "You want shelter? All right, stay in the courtyard." The lama felt insulted and thought, "I am a big lama, and she won't even offer a room, just the courtyard. What an insult." It hurt his ego badly. After a little while the lady brought some tea. The Tibetan tea is normally mixed with butter and salt and shaken. It is almost like soup. But she only gave them black tea, without any butter at all, almost like dirty laundry water. So the lama felt more insulted. He looked at the tea and said, "There is not even a smell of butter here. It is not fit to drink. Therefore I throw it to your wall." With such poetry he threw the tea cup against the wall. The lady grabbed the lama by the collar and said, "You don't even have the smell of human behavior, so how can you have spiritual development? There is no room here for you. Get out of my courtyard!" And she threw him out.

Therefore if you don’t have good human cultural functioning and behavior you won't even have the smell of a spiritual path. This tells you: If you are not functioning properly in material life you won't function properly spiritually either. Therefore, if you are living in your dreams you will neither have dharma nor a material life. You will be without both. In old Tibet the teachers give this example.

Another example: There is no gas or electricity in old Tibet, not even wood in some areas. It is too dry. So they use dried cow dung to cook their food on. So the people collect the cow dung in a basket on their back. Mostly the cows are grazing on the mountain side on the other side of the river. You have to cross over, collect the cow dung and bring it back home. Some people run off without the basket. Then the saying goes: you neither have the basket at this side of the river nor do you have the cow dung at the other side of the river. So where can you look? All you can do is put the finger in your mouth."

If you live in dreams you neither have the spiritual development nor the material basis. As a consequence you can only put the finger in your mouth. That is not considered spiritual. Dream-like existence does not mean to live in dreams. Some people tell me, "I was dreaming last night about this beautiful water and I was fighting and I was enjoying". Fully awake in the afternoon, if you are still thinking that, that is what I call 'living in dreams'. That is wrong understanding. You may think that all material things are the same, whether they are there or not, because in absolute reality there is no difference. Some people even told me, "It doesn't matter if you do good or bad; in absolute reality everything is zero, because it is empty." A number of well-known, even famous people told me that. That tells you how we misunderstand. Let dream-like be dream-like but not a dream. From another angle, the whole life is a dream. At the end when the total calculation is made then it is zero zero zero zero. A number of zeroes will come. All zeroes will be there, whether it is 800 or 700 or 1000.

I wanted to read a couple of verses. These verses directly contradict that viewpoint I just told you about: If you exist you must truly exist. If you don’t truly exist you don't exist at all. This view is contradicted in verse 6:

Verse 6

Even the object of direct perception, such as form and the like,

are established by consensus and not by verifying cognition.

That consensus is false, as is the general agreement

that pure things are impure, for example.

They [people with the wrong view] are trying to tell you: Form, etc is something we directly see. It is direct understanding. It must be truly there because I can see it.

When we hear that we are sold: It is there because I saw it. That is a very strong reason. But to answer that this verse says, "You are not there because I saw you." Remember, there is one verse at the end of the Three Principles of the Path:

Further, appearance eliminates the extreme of existence.

Emptiness eliminates non-existence.

Emptiness itself is cause and effect.

Understanding this protects from these extremes.

We may say: It is there because I saw it, but what we don’t realize is that what we see is a dependent arising, not an independent object. I can only see you because you are dependently there and therefore you don't independently exist. With our knowledge of today's world, with our science and education, we know that our world is a dependently originated world. We now know that this world is not a world that is solid and independent. Therefore we, the intelligent people, understand that the old way of thinking is wrong. The old way of thinking is that we can cut off our borders, don't let people in and don't let people out and do our own thing. That no longer functions. It doesn't work. Even George Bush knows now, to a certain extent - when he wants to know. Dependently originated means that it has not originated independently. It is like somebody who is sick and depends on a walking stick. Relying on a walking stick is the sign that you cannot walk independently. It is a lack of independent capability. The walking stick is not a show piece. The British officers may have done that. They walked around with a walking stick for show and the Indians copied that. That is the sort of thing they do in India. But that is just colonial culture.

Another example is eye glasses. Why do we wear glasses? It is because without them we cannot read or see. This shows that your eyes cannot see independently. When dependence is demonstrated you know that independence is not there. If something is not there independently, it is not there truly. Therefore now you know how it works:

"You are not there because I saw you." I see a dependent person, therefore not independent, therefore not truly there.

The second half of verse 6 continues:

That consensus is false, as is the general agreement

that pure things are impure, for example.

Moreover, not only the form that you perceive but the eye consciousness with which you perceive are commonly known to exist but that is just common knowledge which is not necessarily established with a reliable reason. For example, it is commonly known that the body is absolutely clean inside but the reliable mind tells you it is dirty. It is dirty because it gets illnesses. Surgeons may tell you that when they cut a person's stomach they see that it is clean inside. To their eyes it is clean, but if it is absolutely clean, why can you get stomach cancer? If cancer can grow from inside the body it cannot be clean. That is the basic principle of Buddha. During the Four Noble Truths he talks about suffering and that the body is in nature of suffering. The anti-Buddhist thinkers say that it is clean, happy, permanent and self. Buddha counters that it is not clean, suffering, impermanent and non self. Buddha is a counter-culture person because the Hindu culture at his time would say that it is clean and permanent and so on. So Buddha turns it round, saying that it is impure, suffering, permanent and without self. Therefore they give you the example that commonly known things are not necessarily true, like for example the body being clean. The verse may say the women's body, but the same goes for every other body too. That is the reason.

There are some thinkers who then say that all relativities are not true. They say they are known but not reality. This statement is wrong. Both truths, absolute truth and relative truth, are reality. Not only are the two truths not contradicting each other, but both are true.

I was thinking of going up to verse 13 today, but it is not possible. People are shaking their heads. Don't worry, I am not going to get that far. I have to stop here.

Thank you

04/07/2005