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Here what we do is renown? the chant Four Immeasurables, it means praying all sentient beings, be free from suffering, and the joy may be never separate and remains equanimity etc. So see this link down with this meditation:

chanting: “May all beings have happiness, may they be free from suffering, may they find the joy that has never known suffering, may they be free from attachment and hatred”.

And welcome here today, I’m supposed to talk to you utilizing your present situation for spiritual practice, no matter whatever our present situation may be, at this moment, what we really see is the personal way of the Pope which gives us a tremendous (0:01:23), wonderful, beautiful, extraordinary human beings are valuable everywhere. I was brought up in Buddhism, I use to forget that, the idea of thinking that almost every wonderful persons and enlightened ones has to be part of Buddhist and no other, so here, at the first given the message of a wonderful, great human being, great spiritual person, I, from the Buddhist point of view, I should say enlightened ones, almost like that of fully enlightened Buddha type of persons are. Valuable in every great tradition, whether it’s Judeo-Christian tradition, Hindu-Buddhist tradition or eastern, west, every traditions have that that great beings here and there. That’s the number one lesson I learned like to share not just because of yesterday’s events, but that was big surprise for me when I was out of Tibet, actually communist Chinese kicked me out of the Tibet in 1959 and I was about 19 or 20 at that time, so the first big surprise for me is their great ..(0:02:57) to people outside Tibet or whatever it is, if you know the Tibet situation, we are completely surrounded by snow mountains and we are brought up in such a way that we thought that we are the only living human beings in the world. Almost in that manner, which tells us that we must have respect to every human being, we cannot really judge people from the color, from their tradition that they follow, how they dress and they are all immaterial, and it’s a very hard to know internally people just by looking at them, we can look at the tiger and from the skin of the tiger shows you what kind of tiger it is. But human beings don’t have like a tiger’s, it’s not that way, we must know the person. So, judging people is a thing you should never do, that’s why me must again respect and love to everyone. Essence of the Buddha’s teaching is ..(0:04:14) down to two points: one point is the love, compassion, the second point is wisdom. So, the combination of these two made the Buddha’s teaching extraordinary. Because of the love compassion and the essence of the love compassion is based on the wisdom, essence of the wisdom is based on love compassion. That works together. So, the essence of the love compassion, the first and foremost respect to everyone as well as compassion for yourself as well. The moment we say compassion we automatically look outside. Looking outside. Someone other than ourself, weaker than ourself, and he says: oh yeah, here I’m the great, say we are here to protect you, to help you. So, we kept that sort of thing all the time, that’s not necessarily true, love or true compassion. Because sometimes it can be all kind of things, understanding, looking down on people, and all kind of things are there, so therefore it’s love and compassion must base on respect. If you don’t have respect and if you try to generate compassion there is a danger of becoming ..(0:06:01) activities. And that happens very often in our everyday life, particularly our relationship with our children, or all of those types, that thing pops up very often. Number two point what I’m like to make it here is caring, not only respect. So that respect you follow by caring, so the respect also must have to yourself as well. You know sometimes the compassion, I said it earlier, makes you look to somebody else rather than looking inside, too. So, compassion must visit ourself as well, if you don’t have compassion yourself, and if you don’t have love for yourself who else is going to do it for you. That’s a very important point for you to remember. So, the love compassion must focus both: external and internal, and internally when you focus you must also have respect to yourself. If you don’t have respect to yourself and then you’ll make yourself again the problem which you are very familiar, making yourself …(0:07:42). Looking down on self and all of them are because we didn’t develop respect to yourself as well, so the respect and the caring are the two most important pillars of compassion and compassion is the source of love or vice versa they bring each other love and compassion, compassion brings love, love brings compassion. There is a sort of interdependent this two. So we talk a lot about love and compassion. How does one really gets love, how does one really gets compassion? This is the most important thing. When we say: I must help myself, no matter what situation I may be. Some people think: I’m so bad, I’m so suffering, so I’m hopeless and there is no such a thing as long as you’re a human being, there is no such a thing called hopeless. Suffering is a part of life, even Pope has shown how much you went through the sufferings, as I told you at the beginning. First under Nazi control, underground, force labor and then under communist control and then after becoming Pope that natural illness and all of those and he showed us you’ll not summit to the sufferings and you work and assure with the dignity you help and work. And that I learned and I was watching this last night and one of those priest, or father or bishop or whatever, some big one, hahaha, one of them said in the CNN some time, if you have a sort of heavy, rare, terrible physical condition that priest used a word almost embarrassing, that he’s running around with that physical condition, but it was how he showed world, even you have this natural process, something which can never happen, it happens, no it’s not, it’s a natural process, natural process of our physical conditions, due to the age, due to the illnesses, due to any circumstances that happen to be. We have a culture that sometimes if you have little physical difficulties you try to push them away, hide them away. But here hear the short, with the dignity, how you can trouble throughout the world and try to help and try to share things. That’s the great respect to self as well as great respect to others. So, I’m saying here; no matter what our situation might be, even me, just now, I was thinking I should stand here and talk to you and to meditate that. What I try to do, stomach is so big and it started giving me pain at the back so I have to sit down, not so? It doesn’t matter when you stand or when you sit down, same, that’s probably why you are wondering why did he sit in the middle of the meditation, haha, so that’s the reason why. So that’s we learn from the life of the Pope, and looking in our own lives, whenever one of us has a tremendous amount of chronic diseases, illnesses, problems, and all of them there but most important thing is a giving yourself the respect and let not the disease bully us. Let us not summit to those difficulties. That’s the human quality, human beings have a tremendous quality as we know, Buddha tells us, there are like 18 different, great qualities in human life, that is absolutely true, and the most important quality what we have is our mind. Our mind capacity is tremendous as you know. Any life you look at, our mind will be superior, lot of people think to zoom in if we get in close encounter with third kind. So, if we get it and you think they have a superior knowledge, they have a superior mental power, you are mistaking. We have a superior mental power, our mind is so much, we are not utilizing our mind capacity at all, I’m not sure what scientist say, but we only use a very little capacity of ours, we are not using at all, so the total enlightenment for Buddhists, total enlightenment ultimate achievement of the spiritual path, in other words, Buddhists some told us, you can become a Buddha, that’s the best you can do. And we call that total enlightenment, total knowledge. What does that mean? Our mental capacity is so much extended, the full length of it. The human mind has the capacity to know everything there to be known. Past, present and the future, we do have that. We can extend that capacity through various ways. Through limited ways, through our education, training and all of them. Another way is through meditation and the spiritual practice opening our mental capacity. Buddhism or no Buddhism, whether it’s Judeo-Christian tradition or the Hindu Buddhist tradition, east or west, whatever it may be, to me the meaning of the religion is to be a service to the people. And that also mental, physical, emotional service. And that requires traditions to share how, the individuals require to do and that means spiritual, yes of course, there is this branch, that branch, little bit of this, little bit of that, you know, you can do here and there, and everything can become, called spiritual, I mean it’s not a joke in a one way, it’s also true. If you learn how to be vegetarian or micro biotic or drinking a grass juice or that also become some time making a spiritual path. I’m not objecting, that’s ok. But we are looking much more than that. To me spiritual really means uplifting the individual, bringing closer to total enlightenment, total knowledge, and human beings have that capacity to be able to do it. No other living beings have it, equal to the human beings according to the Buddha. If you just look lives around, we see it. We see other lives than human lives, right? We see the animals here, we see the insects there, we see the birds up here, we see a lot of other lives too. It’s not only us in this world. There are lot of others, we also see spirits, whether we see it or know it or hear it or whatever, gods and good spirits and bad spirits, all of those. But whatever we see, or we understand life, look at the capacity, we have it, we are definitively much stronger and better. And that means you have it and each and every one of you, no matter whatever situation you may be, physical, financial, whatever may be, you have that capacity. If you want help yourself, if you want serve yourself, if you want that, do it by yourself, because no one else can get in you and do it. You know, I used to make a joke with the American Express card, they use to advertise, it’s not transferable or don’t leave home without it or something. Very similar to this, it’s not transferable, it’s yourself. It is the most secret value and the thing that you can do to yourself. Spiritual path is all about that to me, it’s not whether you’re a follower of Judeo-Christian tradition, Hindu or Buddhist, that’s not an issue. It’s our old American style, you get that and put it them in little boxes, ah, these are Buddhists, these are Catholics, these are, I don’t know, Protestants, and this and that, and these are the Muslims, ad these are the Hindus, now the situation is under control, because we levelled them and put them into boxes. That’s our old style and that doesn’t help much. Today we are in this age, 21st century, we must break out of those little boxes, the purpose of a spiritual path is to help the best you can. The ultimate help you can give to yourself. No matter where it comes from. Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, or whatever, even the “Budhuus”? (0:19:44), hahahah, or the Buddhuism, all of those, where it comes from. Why not? Take a total advantage of the situation, what we have, specially here in the United States, tremendous advantage, and you, the individual, have a tremendous capacity to do it, only what is standing between you and your spiritual practice is, what we call it, laziness, our own individual laziness and that is the one who blocks it between. Actually I must say something clearly, it’s not really right to say it here, but not only the laziness but also doubts, and all that type of thing and that really blocks us, the doubt make us, should I do this, should I do that, should I do this, oh this is maybe right, that may be right, so maybe I take this or that, or this or that way, you know, these things are, sometimes create problems for us. And so to clear your own doubts, trust yourself, trust your own conscience, and also check with the other people as well. You know intelligence feed is absolutely necessary to any spiritual path, the blind fate is not required and not good to have it in spiritual path. That’s what I learned. Intelligence feed is necessary, it’s like a mother who can give birth to a child, but very often we substitute intelligence feed with the blind feed, bind feed can create tremendous amount of difficulties, and we do have a tendency to submit to the blind feed, sometimes to some people I do notice that they don’t want to make any decision, they would like to depend to somebody else to make a decision for you, well unless you are a lawyer in the legal thing, sometimes you don’t understand anything, so you may have to trust your lawyer, but other than that, or doctor for medicine purposes, but other than that you know and why you look down on yourself, that is again the laziness will come in, so you don’t’ have to make your decision, somebody else will make the decision for you, but what happened is when the consequences comes in that somebody else will not take the consequences, it’s only you by that time, so you have to (0:23:04) their lifes. But you do need faith, and that is intelligence faith, decision made by you on the bases of basic capability of your using your common sense, using your education, using your intelligence and draw the best conclusion you do. And that gives us the result, enlightened ones, whether you call it Buddha, of God, or whatever you may call it, the enlightened ones have a tremendous compassion for us, they care each and every one of us, they love, they want to help us, they are there, out there, to try to help, but we individually do not provide any opening at all, and when we do not open at all, how can they help. You know when I came in this country first I was wondering, you know, all these commercials coming out of television, and at the end of that they say call 100 and that and that. Call this, call that. Why? You need opening, right? They are not there to serve you, they are there to get your money, the commercial people. But you know, you need an opening, even then a very similar to that, in the spiritual path enlightened ones would also like to help but they need opening, if you don’t open, if you shut down completely, how can they help? And we have all the Tibetan saying: the enlightened ones have a compassion to hook, they are swinging it over on our head all the time but we never prepare the ring where the hook can hook and pull up, so then whose fault is it? So, opening, you can only open it, if you love yourself, you can only love yourself if you care yourself. You can only care for yourself if you have a compassion to yourself, that’s how spiritual life works and I hope we will all open for that. Thank you so much, I will be happy to have some questions, not too many. Yes? “Rimpoche, when you were just speaking about the last, the ring made me think of an angel with a halo, do you think that in the spirit of Christianity is a way that the halo can hook into, you know, catch the hook?” That may be a metaphor, my Christian knowledge is equal to zero but better not say much about it, hahaha, that I don’t know, so must be, you know. What my understanding is a halo comes out of spiritual development within individual, it’s a sort of manifested out, not necessarily be the ring for the compassion hooked to be able to hook. It is the internal development showing externally so that’s my understanding, I don’t know whether you wanted to use it that way of whatever. Thank you. Yes Sir? “Listening to you I wonder about the ability for different religions to bring people together, because it seems to be like recently in history that certain religions or leaders seem to use controversial subjects from their teaching which then divide people and lead us to have strong different opinions with one another as supposed through those teachings I would feel that more compassion and love should come out for each other and for other humans and if you could try to explain briefly, even though it’s probably a very large subject, to try do understand.” Well, thank you for asking that question, religion is something very interesting as we all know. If we use the best way, they have the best tool, best, everything valuable, and if you use the worst way that seems to heavy, every possible to be able to do that. If we look back at the last century or maybe even century before that, last two centuries, how many wars we fought? And many of them are unfortunately based on the religion base, unfortunately, in that case, what really had happened to me is the best service possible to be given to the mankind, has become the best disservice for the mankind, it’s the corruption that utilized by individual. I don’t know, religion leaders, politicians, we always blame the politicians, anyway, though we can’t get away from them, hahaha, but still, and the politics, and the politicians they misused all these wonderful things, and that’s really what had happened, I think, absolutely depends on a good leaders, like the pope John Paul II, type of leaders, who’ll be able to go out of the way, to be able to go through mosques, Jerusalem and all of those type of thing, apologizing whatever had happened, I don’t know whether if it was fully, but it’s always there is a huge political machine works there, even you want go completely out and say I apologize from the bottom of my heart, but then there is another political machine will catch you limit? You know in there and then but that’s what normally we see in people’s life that happens, but even then, we are out of the way doing all this and luckily is holding this the Dalai Lama, completely open, going out and holding, servicing through everyone, whatever, you know? All these things will help. And not only the Dalai Lama and the Pope, but there are great many beings like the mother Theresa, and Doctor Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, even living and all of those, great beings, doesn’t even really have to be a religious leader, court, and court. And most importantly the people such as yourselves and when you bring that idea in the society it makes tremendous difference. You know society is nothing but that of a collection of people and people kept together, that makes a society. That society together makes a public and that public makes a country, that’s really what it is, so that’s why we all make big difference and we do need that. Yes, we do have extremist there, we call it extremist, whether we call it extremist or conservatives or whatever we call it, we all have a tendency of bringing things in, even if you try to be the best you could, but you still have the tendency to bring that thing, you know why? This all because we do have an Ego behind our functioning. Every day, every chore that we do, every moment we do, we have an ego. Ego, I’m using the ego as public uses, that’s your ego talking. Not as psychologist who had created that language, but ego to me is the combination a fear, confusion, pride, hatred, obsession, all of them combined together, creating a big dictator within ourselves. And when you are controlled by that, that’s what happens. It’s not the individual (0:33:27). Every human being has a wonderful nature by itself, but we can’t assure that wonderful nature, we show what we call cold shoulders? That because of our ego inside, thinking I’m protecting myself. Thinking that’s the best way to protect ourselves. We went through, we went through, I mean we are still in the war too, I don’t know whether it’s a war for freedom or a war for ego. I think history will make the judgement, our election did not make the judgement, hahha, so the history will make the judgement later you know, so that’s what I can think of it. It very much depends on people, people can make a difference, people have a power, really, I can almost say, the garden (0:34:24?9, people have equal power, so really people have the power. So, it’s up to the people. Yes, lady? “ Your respect for the Pope seems unqualified, haven’t been raised from a catholic and gone to a catholic schools, I think I know his teachings fairly well, I can’t help but hold him a (0:34:45) for millions of divorces and abortions across the world because of his entire converse control policies, how am I to look at, I mean I understand what you are saying about the good things that he has done, you know you would be compassionate and might to ignore this other fraction of his personality? I wish I could answer that, yes there is a lot of conservative attitude that this particular Pope has been taking and that are all true and also you have that tremendous great service here, it’s done and that’s also true, my feeling is yourself you make your judgement by yourself, for yourself, haha, and I think that’s the best way, yes, it does have, it’s all true, there is a social, quite conservative, very conservative decisions made by this Pope, they are all there and I think one has to make a decision to believe by oneself, no one else can make decision, particularly this is the time that we should not be reflecting, you cannot completely ignore, but I think his (0:36:13) make its own, his judgment, his ….. one who tells what it is. I’m sorry to say I come just from the old fashioned Tibetan Buddhist background, and time like this and we like to think about all great things the people have done, we appreciate that thing, and always people do things which are always non necessarily best and also there, basically what it is, because what Buddha calls, it’s a Samsara, and the circle of suffering. We live in that life and that’s somehow controlled and pushed by all different egos that we have and that is what happens. It’s maybe a very symbolic way of the blaming all bad things of the egos and good things to individuals, hahha. Thank you, so thank you so much. You one coming for? Ok. Go ahead. “ The pope is kind dear to my heart because he was responsible for the freedom of my people and really supported freedom through non violence and prayer. I understand his conservative policies but he followed his heart, which was pro life, which is he would stand in the way of the death apparently as well as abortion so it’s just that he was very conservative and followed that catholic ideology to the letter pro life.” Thank you for your comment, haha, yeah well I said in the beginning the fighting against the communism and nazi, all of those are there, you know? So I like to thank you so much for all of you coming here and we at the Jewel Heart would like to be service as much as possible to the people, our way of doing this is sharing our knowledge, whatever, what we say 26 hundred years wisdom of the Buddha that somehow preserved by the Tibetans behind the snow mountains at the expenses of the countries’ economic development, tried to preserve that as pure as possible to the service of humanity and all living beings. So that’s all I’ve been able to bring from Tibet and I try to share that as my way of service to the community and my people who have been with me for helping, studying for number of years, we all doing this and that’s how Jewel Heart tried to serve community, try to bring peace, happiness and specially methods of helping yourself by you. And that’s what we try to do and thank you so much.

Singing a prayer: others merit, may I......

Thank you.