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Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life–The Wisdom Chapter Part 4

with Gehlek Rimpoche

Ann Arbor – October 18, 2005

Welcome to our continuing discussion of the Bodhisattvacharyatara, the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. Sometimes, when the subject is going into tremendous detail we may lose the main focus of what we are doing. So I would like to bring it back to the meaning of the title: The Bodhisattva's Way of Life.

What is a Bodhisattva? Some new people may not even know what the word itself means. A Bodhisattva is an individual practitioner who is totally inspired by the qualities and powers and capabilities of the totally enlightened mind. Not only inspired, but inspired to act, with the altruistic wish to helping all living beings. It is not just an inspiration, a desire to help all beings to become fully enlightened, but with the very very strong love, great love and great compassion. The difference between compassion and great compassion is not only how strong and concentrated the compassion is, but what the compassion is focusing on. Normally, our love and compassion is focused on one or a few individuals, at most a hundred or a thousand. But when you are talking about great compassion, the point on which one develops the compassion is ALL LIVING BEINGS. So it is not only all human beings but all living beings. It is almost unimaginable for our usual thinking. When we say that compassion is great, naturally Buddha also claims that the compassion for the suffering of people brings joy. This is not only pleasure and happiness, but joy also for oneself. That is not even for great compassion, but even for ordinary compassion.

The way one best brings joy to oneself is therefore by developing compassion for others. That is the key, but no matter how many times we hear this directly or indirectly, we don't get it. This is because we have a very strong preconceived idea that somehow in order to bring joy to myself I have to try to get joy, pray for joy, accumulate merit in order to get joy. That is a very strong preconceived idea that we all have. Even if we manage to remove that from our mind and tell ourselves that the best way to bring joy to ourselves is to have compassion for the suffering of others, it doesn't last. We forget. We still lack compassion and joy and still think, "Where is the joy? I have to grab it." I am sure each one of us has heard this hundreds of times, but still it doesn't stick in our heart. The preconceived idea to go after the joy for oneself is too strong. We think, "It is my birth right, I must have it." With that idea we do everything and we always go wrong.

We never think with normal common sense that one's joy depends on one's compassion, looking at the sufferings of other people, although as a matter of fact, this is the most fundamental idea even of every democracy. We have been brought up with that idea, born and bred into democracy. I myself was born into an autocratic, aristocratic or authoritarian system. It was both, aristocratic and authoritarian. I was born into a wonderfully spiritual world, but politically it was authoritarian. It seemed to the common people as if the aristocrats had all the power, but actually the aristocrats were literally struggling to keep their status continuously.

The whole system depended on land. Although Tibet has huge masses of land, there is almost no irrigated land. The fruit of the farmers comes only once a year and that is the major basis of the economy. Because of lack of irrigation the usable land is extremely limited. And that limited land was owned by three main groups: the aristocracy, the government and the monasteries, which included lamas, labrangs and monastic institutions. The weakest of these groups was the aristocratic families. The strongest group was the monasteries. No one could take land away from the monasteries for fear of the monks rebelling. There were 10,000 monks in one monastery alone and the whole Tibetan army did not have 10,000 soldiers. So the monks could just walk over everything. That was very obvious. So the aristocratic families were struggling for their status among themselves, one eating the other one. Their suffering was almost like that of the animals. The way it happened was that the government would often punish some families for doing something wrong. They would confiscate all their land on behalf of the government and later give it to another aristocratic family for their good deeds.

Therefore Tibet was ruled in an authoritarian, aristocratic system. The western countries of today are democracies. The main principles of democracy are equality and individual rights and respect. These are the very principles that the lives of the Bodhisattvas and the bodhimind itself are based on. Bodhimind is based on great compassion and that is based on great love. Great love is based on remembering the kindness. That is based on recognizing the kindness of all beings, all of whom at one time or another have been our closest, nearest and dearest person. That itself is based on the understanding of equality and equanimity. This is how equality is built into the practice of bodhimind as well as into the foundation of every democracy.

And yet we often forget this completely and instead think that we have to grab for everything for ourselves. Look at our system, which is based on equality and consideration for others. But every corporation and business is characterized by competition and greed. The grabbing comes from that level. It is because of our habitual pattern or addiction for self-cherishing. Our great forefathers have designed the system of democracy, which was based on equality. It could almost be like Shantideva's bodhisattvacharyavatara. In principle it is very similar to it. However, our addiction to self-cherishing determines how we really function in the world, in the corporate business world and even in our daily life.

I have seen both, corporate life, administrative life, as well as the usual wonderful happy life most people here in this room have. We do have a happy life. We don't get much into the competitive struggle, where everything is difficult, secret and competitive. Most of us don't go for that. A few of us may have to do it to a limited extent in order to survive in the job. But mostly we don't have to submit to the pressure and struggle of competition, trying to grab for something. This is all a build up following from self-cherishing. We have almost reached the peak level of self cherishing today. There is nowhere else to go now except to fall down and dismantle it. That's what is going to happen. That is how all the countercultural movements come up. The hippies have come because of that. If society gets too extreme, some people go into the opposite direction. This is samsara.

True democracy and the Bodhisattva's way have a lot in common. And I also do remember that in the days of early exile of the Tibetans in India, some young Tibetans set up a communist party. The majority of the Tibetans are very much anti-communists because it was the communists who kicked us out of our country, but there was a Tibetan youth group who really like to have a communist party. They went to see both, Kyabje Ling Rimpoche and Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche and presented them with their communist manifesto. Just after they came out I went in. And Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche was still looking at that manifesto and reading through. He told me,

"A group of young, very handsome, wonderful and intelligent young people just came and told me they wanted to be communists. I thought, "What a waste!" but then they gave me something which looks like their constitution [the manifesto] and when I read this is looks just like the bodhisattvacharyatara."

The basic principles of the socialist ideas are therefore also based on compassion. In the beginning and according to their principles, communism is not as bad as it later turned out to be. The ideas of Marx and Engels were not so bad. I learnt about them a little bit from listening to the Chinese. As a matter of fact, they had great ideas. When it went to Lenin, those ideas began to become corrupted through the grab for power and then Stalin contributed tremendously to that and on top of that Chairman Mao was added, not to mention Kruchchow and Fidel Castro. These leaders brought an originally great idea to such an extreme state that we came to look at communism as a terrible threat, even to the point of inspiring McCarthy's activities.

This is an example of how a great idea can completely be turned around and changed into something terrible. Some time ago, during a lecture, I was using the Tibetan word cho trib. That is someone who knows about Dharma, but only the words but doesn't make any sense out of it, doesn't get any value from it. The traditional Tibetan teachers give this example:

Every kind of leather can be treated with butter to make it smooth, except the leather container in which the butter is kept, cannot to be treated with butter.

Likewise, the cho tribs are very used to the dharma environment, have thorough knowledge at the educational, informational level. However, their mind, their personality is not affected by it and then that knowledge becomes crazy, wild and twisted, making a good thing into something that is becoming worse.

Therefore, it is so important to integrate compassion and caring into your mind all the time. I want to underline all the time. Otherwise, if you keep on forgetting, all the talk about dharma will become meaningless and senseless. Maybe it will sound beautiful, maybe not, maybe sweet or sour, but it will just be words alone. It is not connected with the individual's mind. The way to connect love and compassion to the bottom of your own heart is by feeling and practicing love and compassion for yourself and then for others. That is the link, the hook. We say that attachment is the glue of samsara. Here we say that love and compassion is the connection to spirituality within ourselves. The moment we lose is, we lose the connection. It does not matter what nationality or race you are, what your skin color or hair color may be, whether you are bald headed or long-haired. You may wear monk's robes, red plus yellow robes, but if you don't have that connection, your spirituality is in appearance only, just show biz. On the other hand, if you do have that connection, then no matter who you are, man, woman, cat or dog, you have a solid spiritual base.

Compassion and love depend on caring. That is why Buddha says that compassion brings joy. If you care, you will be able to help and that brings joy. It is a joy that cannot be destroyed by hatred. It cannot be destroyed by obsession. Such a joy will become great joy and finally the joy that has never known suffering. That is the goal.

The way the Bodhisattvas function in life is described in the chapters of the bodhisattvacharyavatara. We have already read eight chapters. First we hear about the benefit of bodhimind, how wonderful it is. Then it goes to generosity, morality, conscientiousness, alertness, awarenss, patience, enthusiasm, concentration and wisdom.

We are now at the level of wisdom. Wisdom is not just knowing something, but more than that, knowing the absolute reality. This is extremely difficult to comprehend. We discuss the various views of the earlier Indian and Tibetan masters on that wisdom. It is not that some of them did not fully comprehend the subject. They did. However, in order to show us the different levels of subtlety, they have presented particular ways of thinking about emptiness. In that context they present different ideas of what existence is all about. This is how a number of different Buddhist tenets have come about. From that perspective, not every Buddhist accepts emptiness as the reality. There are a number of Buddhist tenets that don't accept emptiness at all. For them emptiness becomes total empty.

Those masters, in truth, do know their emptiness, but for the sake of presenting the different levels, they maintain a consistent presentation of a particular view on emptiness. They have set up philosophical schools and taught that way. Later students, like us, are fortunate to be able to look back at all of them. From the beginning we have already been informed that these views are not true. We are visiting them with the preconceived idea that they are not true. We are already looking at them with the intention of finding out what is their fault, rather than what are they saying. We have also been told which view is the right one.

Apart from that, the presentation of the different tenets leaves it entirely up to us to analyze and find out for ourselves why some of their views are not correct.

We are informed by the different tenets that Buddha does accept their thoughts. Every school will trace back their presentation to the words of Buddha. In that way, although they are not correct, they are authentically Buddhist. That is why the Buddhist masters and presenters will say, "This view is according to this system, that view is according to that system", and so on. At that time the question of "What system do you follow?" is not asked. That is not necessary, because we already have been given the preconceived idea of following only the best system. We want to settle for nothing but the best. And we have been told what system that is. We should keep that in mind and then study all the tenets. Finding out about what the lower tenets say will help us to more clearly see why the higher tenets are superior.

At our level, when we look into the lower tenets in order find what is wrong with them, we are not going to find it. We are not even clear of what they are saying. This is because here on Tuesdays we can only read a few words from their tenets, give a little explanation, read some commentaries here and there and that's it. What we are doing here on Tuesday nights and Thursday nights is very similar. The difference is that the Thursday night text we are using as the basis is so tough. It is really hard - like rock. At this moment it is like chewing rock. If you have heard me talking last Thursday night you will know how tough it is.

It is also not easy for me to teach this. Normally, when I teach on lam rim or anything else, I only prepare for a few minutes or even just pick up the subject when I arrive and talk about it. While you are saying the prayers, I may look at a few pages and that's it. But the current topic on Thursday night is based on Tsongkhapa's lam rim chen mo. If I read a section the day before the teaching, I don’t even know what it is talking about. It is absolutely Greek. I have to read the same pages 3 to 10 times. And then there is a commentary on that. That commentary is a compilation of the views of four different scholars. They all give you contradicting points. Their different comments are only marked by a letter from the alphabet like "ja" or "ba" and so on. Only by that you know that a particular passage marked by "ja" is a comment by Jamyang Shepa and one marked by "ba" means it is Baso talking. "ta" means that some Amdo lama is talking there. However, they give totally different points. So you have to compare them, pull them together, think more about it, adjust and come out. It is helpful for me in order to re-study the subject, but it also shows you how tough this subject is.

Compared with biting the hard rock of the lam rim chen mo, the study of the bodhisattvacharyavatara wisdom chapter is like eating mushy chocolate. But even here, we compare the different viewpoints of the different tenets.

At this moment we are presenting the Mind Only (skt: Chittamatra or Yogachara) School's point of view, their arguments and counter-arguments contrasted with that of the Madhyamakas. We are at verse 18 and 19. But I want to briefly review the exchange of arguments so far.

Below the Chittamatra the other Buddhist schools accept external existence as identity. The Chittamatrins don't accept that. To them, however, mind is still an intrinsically existent true reality. It is almost like permanent. They say that if the mind is not a true identification of the person then the person does not exist at all. They say that would be the extreme of nihilism. But they are wise enough to see that external reality is not intrinsically existent.

Now the Madhyamaka school insists that all phenomena don't have intrinsic existence. Everything we perceive is like a sorcerer's illusory show. The Tibetan texts use the term gyu ma, which means magician. That idea of magician is quite different from what we understand by a magician today. I was confused about that for a while. Today's magicians use actual objects, they just hide them. When they pull out a coin from your nose, it is a coin that they had cleverly hidden somewhere. They don't produce a non-existent coin out of thin air. There is an actual flower hidden in their sleeves and it only seems that they produce it from nowhere. The sorcerers are different. They attain certain powers of sorcery and can produce things from nowhere. So the Madhyamakas say that every phenomenon has no true existence, no intrinsic reality, but exists like the illusion show of a sorcerer.

The Chittamatrins reply that if phenomena have no reality at all, who is it that is able to perceive them as a sorcerer's illusion? That is verse 17:

If the mind itself is an illusion, then what is perceived by what?

The Madhyamakas then reply: If you see that external existence is not truly there, you are also going to see that the mind which perceives it is not truly existent either. What your mind perceives is not reality as it appears to you.

Alternatively, if an intrinsically existent or truly existent mind perceives external reality, then whatever that mind perceives has to be true. Mind perceives form, sound, etc. [It follows that form, sound, etc are truly existent, because everything a truly existent mind perceives has to be true]. From your own point of view therefore, external existence has to be true, because form, sound, etc are external existence. What you perceive and what you accept, in your view has to be one. It cannot be separate. Therefore, according to your own system you have to accept external existence as identity.

In that way the Madhyamaka take the argument of the Chittamatrins and use it against them. This can work because they both are using the same logical system. It is necessary to know the logical system. This is very hard. In monasteries, after 12 years, 24 hours a day, devotion and debating you begin to pick up the logical system. But one thing I learnt in the west is that the westerners pick up the logical system within the short period of 3 or 4 years study. The western education is helpful here. Certain ways of thinking and analyzing does not normally exist in the Tibetan mind, but it does in the educated mind in the west. That really helps tremendously.

The Chittamatrins now say that for them external existence still does not exist, but what does exist is some kind of substance which is part of the internal perceiving mind. In other words, they are saying that what we see is only a reflection of the internal mind, rather than something existing out there. We perceive it to be externally, but it is an internal reflection.

This is similar to when we perceive with the physical base of the eye consciousness, the eye ball. This sees forms and then some part of the physical aspect of the eye ball perceives the form upside down. The reflection is turned in the opposite direction by another internal faculty and then we see each other standing up. If we remove this internal "lens" we would see each other upside down. The Chittamatrins are saying exactly that: that we are seeing an internal reflection of some mental substance which is perceived to be external. On the basis of this argument the Chittamatrins are saying that external reality does not exist.

Now comes the Madhyamakas' next reply. They are saying to the Chittamatrins, According to your system, since it is only the reflection of internal mind that appears externally, there is no separation between who is seeing and what they see. If that is the case then mind is seeing mind. And this is not in accordance with Buddha's words, because Buddha says that mind cannot see mind. No matter how sharp a weapon is, a sword cannot cut itself. Likewise, mind cannot see itself.

In between that, someone else came up with the example that no matter how long your fingernail grows it will not touch itself. That may not work. If your nail grows very long it will twist and then it may touch itself.

The Chittamatrins counter argument is presented in verse 18:

[Yogacharin] It illuminates itself, as does a lamp.

According to them, one light not only illuminates itself but also clears the darkness.

The Madhyamakas counter by saying, still in verse 18:

[Madhyamaka] A lamp does not illuminate itself, for it is not concealed by darkness.

If light clears light there would be no time at which darkness would cover it up. Since the darkness does not cover there is no need for light to illuminate itself because there is no darkness in light.

The Chittamtrins insist: Mind sees itself and other phenomena. For example, when you see a crystal paperweight it may at times look blue, depending on certain conditions, like the reflection of something else. However, a piece of lapis lazuli will remain in the nature of blue, right from the beginning. Therefore, mind has two points: one is seeing itself and one is seeing other phenomena. Mind sees both. Seeing a crystal becoming blue-colored is the example of seeing others and seeing the blueness of lapis lazuli is the example of seeing itself.

In Tibetan this is called rang rig - self-seeing. rig is a very interesting word which can be pulled a million different ways. For example, rigpa as in Sogyal Rimpoche's Rigpa Centers is used almost in the sense of mahamudra and clear light. Apart from that, rig pa can mean mind, thought, idea, seeing. So here, rang rig means self-seeing. That is a bit different from self-observing. Observing is almost like you see your own thoughts and behavior as reflections in the mirror that you can observe. This will also come in the next verse.

Verse 19

[Yogacarin:] A blue object does not require something else for its blueness, as does a crystal. So something may or may not occur in dependence on something else.

The Cittamatrins maintain that mind can be divided into seeing self and seeing others.

The Madhyamakas say that light cannot illuminate itself just like darkness cannot shadow darkness. Light can clear up darkness but darkness cannot shadow darkness. Darkness shadows the objects so that you cannot see them, but it does not shadow darkness. When you put a cloth over a glass of water, the cloth covers the glass of water. Darkness cannot cover darkness like a cloth covers a glass.

verse 20:

[Madhyamaka:] As in the case of non-blueness, blue is not regarded as its own cause. What blue by itself could make itself blue?

The Madhayamakas next counter argue the Chittamatrins' example of the lapis lazuli being blue from the beginning.

They say that before the lapis lazuli comes into existence as lapis lazuli it is not blue. It only becomes blue at the moment of coming into existence as lapis lazuli. The components of lapis lazuli are not blue. Therefore the blueness of lapis lazuli also depends on other conditions. In that sense the example of the blueness of lapis lazuli cannot be used as an example of self-existence or self seeing or self perceiving.

verse 21:

[Yogacharin:] It is said that a lamp illuminates once this is cognized with awareness. The mind is said to illuminate once this is cognized with what?"

The Chittamatrins now say: Light does not see itself, but by nature it is clear. Likewise, mind is in the nature of mind and in the nature of understanding. Therefore, mind does not clear itself. Rather it is in the nature of clarity.

The Madhyamaka reply to that is: If that is the case then mind knowing the mind clearly depends on another substance, which has to depend also on another substance and there will be countless, endless substances in order to establish this. Therefore your presentation does not make any sense. The example is given in the next verse:

verse 22:

[Madhyamaka:] If no one perceives whether the mind is luminous or not, then there is no point in discussing it, like the beauty of a barren woman's daughter.

When you realize that there is no son of a barren woman, the question of how handsome, short, tall or fat that son of a barren woman is, does not rise, because the son of a barren woman does not exist.

I am going to stop at this point. I will be back on Nov 1st and revisit the topic and make sense of the Chittamatra-Madhyamaka argument. I am not going to open this up to question. The subject is a little hard and so the questions might just make it more confusing.

[[There are a couple of announcements I would like to make: our next speaker for the Sunday morning series in Ann Arbor is Jonathan Rose and the topic is on Buddhism and the Environment. That should be very interesting. Jonathan has had a long standing interest in the environmental issues and very recently attended a high powered environmental conference in Colorado. Apparently it is very important how the environment issues are coming up. Al Gore was there explaining that and John Kerry was there, spending all his time explaining why he didn't raise environmental issues during his recent presidential campaign. Then a very powerful Christian televangelist faction were saying they would be very happy to support environmental issues, provided the subject of evolution was not touched. So this Sunday talk should be very interesting and you should be able to ask questions, as long as you don't support the evolution and leave it as God's work, otherwise the environmental issues won't go anywhere. [laughs]

Then we will also have Glenn Mullin come and teach in Ann Arbor. He is a very interesting and wonderful speaker. He has written a number of books on the Dalai Lamas, on the Feminine Principle, and on Female Buddhas. He must have written almost 20 books by now, including the "Six Yogas of Naropa". He has done a lot of translations in Tibetan Buddhism over the last 40 years. He was also very instrumental for Drepung Losseling. The Sacred Dance and Sacred Music performances of their monks were the original idea of Glenn Mullin. He arranged that for Losseling and now every other monastery has picked up on that and is sending monks everywhere to do that.

We will also have Khen Rimpoche Geshe Lobsang Tsetan come and teach in Ann Arbor. He is a solid guy, a geshe and has now become abbot of Tashi Lungpo. That is why he is now called Khen Rimpoche.

Finally, Sandy will give a work shop here in November.

I myself will be here for another 2 talks in November, then go to Europe and Asia and will be back with you in January. Thank you for all your patience and good night. ]]

10/21/2005