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

with Gehlek Rimpoche

Ann Arbor – November 1, 2005

Welcome tonight. I have to talk to you about my intention to change the way we do the wisdom teachings on the bodhisattvacharyavatara. We have been talking the bodhisattvachayavatara on Tuesday for years. I thought at first I can do the whole teaching in one year. Then it turned into two, three years and more and at some point, when I thought, we were doing it for a year or so, I was told we had already been doing it for 4 years. Then it took a few more years. The teachings went very well until we reached the 9th chapter, the wisdom chapter. This is getting harder and harder and now my realization is that it is not okay to do this on Tuesday nights and try to deal with one verse at a time. Instead of being a service to people it may become a disservice.

The same situation has developed with the Thursday teachings in New York. I began teaching the Odyssey to Freedom some 4 years ago and went through all the points, including the six paramitas up to the paramita of concentration. We do have a little transcript called GOM that shows how well the teachings went on that point. But the 6th paramita of wisdom is not going so well with the Thursday night format. I am basing it on the lam rim chen mo text and it is also getting harder and harder.

Here in Ann Arbor, you people keep on showing up Tuesday after Tuesday, and I am not sure how much you are getting from this subject. It has almost come to the point where you show up here to give me moral support [laughs], for which I am thankful but I think we need a little bit more than that. For this year, apart from today, we only have one more Tuesday left. Then next year, I am not going to continue this wisdom chapter of the bodhisattvacharyavatara on Tuesdays. On Tuesdays we will come out with nice open teachings. From the program point of view we do have an idea of how the Tuesday teachings hang together, but it will appear like it is a different topic every Tuesday. But I am not going to leave the wisdom teaching behind. Therefore, next year we will continue the wisdom teachings by meeting once a month for a Friday night and an all-Saturday teaching. The Saturdays will probably go from 12 noon or 1 pm to 5.30 pm or 6 pm. That way we will be able to set aside a chunk of time once a month. I am going to do the same thing in New York as well. This way we can do the wisdom subject well and it will become solid and steady.

To do this on Tuesday and Thursday nights is becoming very hard. We could only pick up the subject realistically for half an hour to an hour at the most and some Tuesdays we don't meet at all, so we don't even engage the subject at all for weeks.

With the new week end format I am thinking of beginning on Friday night with a session to bring our attention and focus to the subject and then on Saturday do the major work.

We will continue with this format until we complete the 9th chapter, the wisdom chapter. For the 10th chapter I can bring the bodhisattvacharyavatara teaching back to Tuesdays. It is very easy, almost like praying. It is almost -as Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche once told me - like the Tibetan Communist Party Manifesto.

Once a group of young Tibetans came to see Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche and Ling Rimpoche and gave them their Communist Party Manifesto to read. Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche called it their "constitution". He read through it and said, "This doesn't look like anything coming from the Chinese communists that we know from Tibet. It looks more like something out of the bodhisattvacharyavatara.”

So this dedication aspect we can do on Tuesdays again. It is really like a prayer and we can do five or more verses per night. They don't need much explanation. Those who are really interested in the wisdom chapter and are prepared to put in a lot of hard work may come, and the rest don't have to come if you don't want to. It is not something compulsory. In order not to miss the bodhisattvacharayavatara teaching I could just read the verses in Tibetan for the sake of keeping the oral transmission complete. This is how I am trying to do the right thing for you and me and everybody.

Today and next Tuesday I am going to conclude whatever we have done throughout this year. By the middle of November I am going to Europe and when I get back we will start with the January courses.

There is actually not so much to conclude from what we did this year because we really didn’t do anything. We talked but didn't really do much. Did we really make a dent? Not really. We did something, so that you people get at least some idea what wisdom and what emptiness is. At least we know that when talking about wisdom, it is not just knowledge. Buddhist wisdom is a very specific wisdom. That wisdom is the wisdom that knows the reality. This is the reality of everything, not something abstract. We are not talking about what is the reality of America or Iraq. We are talking about the reality of me, the individual, connected with the reality of the people of America and the situation of the whole country, as well as the situation of the larger world. If you separate our individual reality from the reality of the world the problem is that we separate ourselves from the world. We disconnect. That is not right. We have to be connected with the absolute reality, what is really happening. What am I really? What is this country really? When we investigate that, we get a different picture.

Look at this country, the United States of America. Yes, we are Americans, but we are not America. We belong to a group a people, known as Americans. What is America? The people, the land, the culture, the history? It is not a single entity. The people are not America, the land alone is not America. The culture doesn't make this America. The language alone is not America. The combination of all of these together makes it America.

For me at least there is no solid thing called America. The reality of America really boils down to the combination of all parts and parcels fitting together. That becomes America. You can't find a solid unitary thing called "America". Take the president. He is not America, he is an American president. Likewise, the government is not America but only the government. Even the government itself consists of three parts, the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. Combined together they are the government. This tells us that the absolute reality of America is emptiness. That doesn't mean that it is empty, but there is no one thing that you can identify as "This is it". That is the real wisdom which Buddha presented to us 2600 years ago. At that time some of the people listening to him must have thought he had gone crazy.

I used America as example or metaphor, but you also have to look at the individual person. It is the same situation. No matter whoever the individual person maybe, they aer not just their body. When somebody thinks, "The body is me", that is a wrong perception, a wrong view. When we look carefully we know that our body is not "me". But we don't know yet that our mind is not "me" either. My mind is not me. It is part and parcel of me. The combination of my body and my mind together becomes me. If my mind is not in my body, then where is "me"? I remember the comedy with Steve Martin called "All of me." His mind went into a little copper pot with water and that crazy little Indian guy was chanting and then suddenly a horse came and kicked the pot over and the water went inside the flowers. I am not saying that this movie is a hundred per cent correct, but the mind does travel and transfer and transform and improve. Mind is impermanent, it changes. Our mind changes all the time, especially mine. I have been accused today of changing my mind all the time. Without a mind I am not there. I depend on mind and body to exist. Right body, right mind and right label for the right object becomes "Gehlek." Gehlek exists on the basis of all these parts and parcels. That is why in absolute reality you are not going to find anything.

Likewise, when you look for the government of the United States you are not going to find anything to point out "this is it". This is true for everything. Ultimately you cannot find anything if you analyze it. I just heard on the Tibetan Radio station that there was a spiritual-scientific conference in Dharamsala with the well-known Indian physicist Dr. Rajindra Prasatichatra and with Samdong Rimpoche and others. That physicist was saying that the scientists had become very materialistic, looking for the absolute zero point, an absolutely existing particle, like the atom. After thinking they had found the ultimate smallest particle, they discovered it too could be divided into smaller particles. This is known to all of us by now anyway. There is no such thing that cannot be divided. Using Stephen Hawkins' language: there is no end of the Russian doll. Not finding the end of the Russian doll, that is the Buddha's view which he presented 2600 ago.

Not every Buddhist will actually buy that. There are a lot of different schools of thought in Buddhism. Some think that you can find the "me". If you cannot find it internally, they say that as a reflection you can see it in the external existence. Buddha used the term "emptiness", so all schools say that they recognize emptiness. But emptiness has to be empty of something. You may be able to say that your wallet is empty or that your wallet is lost and gone. Somebody else has it. You may say that a glass is empty of water. The water is gone. So all the different schools present that we are empty of something other than what we really are. Some say we are empty of external existence, or we exist as the reflection of the internal mind in external objects. Others say we are free of that type of existence and then the non-existence of that type of existence becomes wisdom. Some say that freedom from external existence is wisdom, but that the mind is permanent and exists in true reality. So the different schools have different views of how to understand emptiness.

The final, most subtle viewpoint of all the schools is the madhyamaka or Middle Way school of Nagarjuna. Even that is divided into two: the followers of Buddhapalita and the followers of Bhavaviveka.

I don't know how true it is but today's buddhologists say that the division of the madhyamaka into two is only done by the Tibetans. But the Tibetans don't talk about a division of two madhyamaka schools within Tibet. They are talking the madyamaka in India, before Buddhism came to Tibet. That was when the great Indian panditas Buddhapalita and Lek den je (Bhavaviveka) taught. Lek den je almost goes to the point of saying that within the faultless mind there is still some kind of substance from its own side which truly exists. Lek den je includes that qualifying aspect in the point that you are supposed to negate. So even at that level there is division. However, it has been repeated by all Tibetan teachers in every tradition and especially Tsongkhapa emphasizes it that we should follow Nagarjuna's explanation through the interpretation of Buddhapalita and Chandrakirti. It is like a constitution with its interpretation. According to Buddhapalita's and Chandrakirti's interpretation emptiness has no base at all, neither internal nor external. Nothing truly exists, neither thoughts, nor energy, no vibration, no particle - nothing. Existence is only the combination of parts. That alone is capable of functioning, of taking responsibility, of working. Just that exists, nothing beyond that. That is the real point of existence: it is just the combination alone. The moment the combination is no longer there, you don't exist any more. It goes almost to that point. Once you see that point you realize that still it doesn't negate the ability to function, it doesn't negate karma and responsibility.

It is difficult to see what has to be negated and then it is difficult to establish what exists. Once you have emptied it you have to fill it with something. The point of negation and the point of establishment are the two difficult points. If the negation goes too far, it becomes nihilistic. If the negation is too little, it becomes existentialistic [eternalistic]. That is the meaning of madhyamaka, the middle path.

In the teachings so far we have been making attempts to move in that direction. It feels to me that we have not even gone near the door. We haven't rung the bell, but from the distance we have been throwing stones at the door. That is my conclusion of what we have been doing this year. We are trying to know what it is in there. We are interested, that 's why we are throwing stones at the door. Deeply in there, the reality is just such an extremely subtle point and yet it is capable of functioning, responsible for deeds. It makes our karma function even better. Emptiness does not negate karma. If it does, it becomes nihilistic. Emptiness compliments karma and the karmic functioning compliments emptiness. That is what Tsongkhapa means when he says

Emptiness appears out of interdependence and the interdependent nature appears out of emptiness. The essence of emptiness is interdependence and the essence of interdependence is emptiness.

We are throwing stones at the door that is shut to us right now. We really want to know what is in there. What we are looking for is the truth of that statement. Even if were able to open the door, we may or may not clearly see it. It is better to keep throwing lots of stones at the door at this point, so we can figure out a little more what wisdom is all about.

I don't want to follow what happens in this Indian story where four blind people try to figure out what an elephant looks like. One touches the ears, one the trunk, one the legs and one the tail. Each of them thinks they know what the elephant looks like and what it is. The one holding the ear says, "The elephant is flat and floppy", the one holding the leg says "it is like a huge column", the one holding the tail says, "It is a thin, tiny thing". So we don't want our understanding of emptiness be like that. It doesn't matter to what level of depth we can get, but we should have a solid, correct idea of emptiness. This shouldn’t just be the knowledge of what words I said but should be expressed in your understanding. Just look at the example of America and you will know. You need a solid understanding and then meditate on it. That is the wisdom we want.

Until we get there, we will have to substitute the understanding of emptiness by thinking according to the vajrayana method about emptiness in terms of space-like emptiness. Whatever dependently exists we imagine has been dismantled and disappeared completely, reaching the reality of space-like emptiness. Yet it is the basis of everything functioning. But don't make the mistake of thinking there is nothing there, like a zero, non-existence. Non-existence is not emptiness. Emptiness does not negate something that has existed, but it negates something that has never existed, but which we perceive to be existing. Without that understanding, the space-like emptiness is meaningless. In vajrayana you go through the death-dying stages dissolving system, which finally dissolves into nothing. It means that all existence is dismantled and melts into that base-foundation. Out of this everything grows and rises again. It is that level of space-like emptiness. That is wisdom. If you just think there is nothing there, that will not be wisdom. It will be a nihilistic view. That is the difference. Even on our mundane lay person's level you should have that background thinking. Don't let it become totally empty, that would not be right.

Basically, that aspect of the understanding of emptiness is a fundamental basis for our wisdom. Without wisdom you can never hope to gain enlightenment. Even freedom from samsara is not possible without wisdom. This wisdom is also the basis of the enlightened mind. Technically, this is known as dharmakaya. It is the product of wisdom. When wisdom has improved to the totality of its potential it becomes the mind of enlightenment. When love and compassion develops to its totality it becomes the physical aspect of the enlightened person. Body and mind function on one frequency. They become oneness. We talk about two separate things that become one or union.

In vajrayana you need the pride of the deity. That does not mean that your ordinary body becomes a deity. The ordinary body dissolves through the dissolving system into the nature of reality, out of which the seed syllables bring up the pure aspects of that body, which is the yidam, whichever yidam it may be. The pride is therefore an important aspect of vajrayana, but it is not focused on this big, fat ordinary body of ours. That is not Yamantaka or Vajrayogini. The essence of this ordinary body completely dissolves through the dissolving system. The seed of that transforms, becomes pure and out of the purity, that very "me" is the pride where the yidam is put. That body on which you put the pride is the ultimate result. It is the ultimate result in the sense that the subject material which made that body is love-compassion and the substance which made the enlightened mind is wisdom. The union of these is what enlightenment is all about. That is our spiritual goal. When I talk about transformation, don't think that this ordinary body is being painted golden in a paint shop. Nor is it something that is dipped into gold- plating solution and come out looking yellow. The work of the wisdom is that and the work of love-compassion if finally going to be that. Remember, in the Ganden Lha Gye ma teaching it says that when the guru is right, the disciple is right, you can produce enlightenment like an artist produces a little piece of art by hand. When you make something by hand you need a substance out which to make it. You need at least mud, or bronze or metal. Here the material is love-compassion and wisdom. Wisdom makes the mind, love-compassion makes the body and the union of that is the union of body and mind, which is enlightenment. This becomes the union of absolute truth and relative truth.

This is what I wanted to say tonight. I can talk to you a little more next Tuesday and this Thursday, Friday and Saturday I will be in New York, talking about the wisdom. I am going to do this also the following week end, on Nov 11-13. We will start the wisdom week ends in Ann Arbor next year in January.

Thank you and good night.

11/02/2005