Archive Result

Soundfile 20050510GRJHNLINT

Speaker Gelek Rimpoche

Location Netherlands

Topic

Transcriber Tim Keller

Date:

Good evening everybody and thank you for coming here tonight. Subject that I’ll be giving to talk to you tonight is the…actually what’s happening in the world today and our model contact of the individuals how we handle the situation in the world, and how to handle our own personal things. In according to the perfect, perfect in the sense the wisdom of the Buddha which is 2600 years old. And according to that, how we handle. So we try to deal with this in the sense of today’s situation and our personal responsibilities and our integrity towards how to conduct our lives according to buddha’s wisdom. I think that we’ll try to cover tonight and as it’s planned we’re going to talk to you a little less than an hour and twenty-five minutes or so. And then we take a break and come back and if you’re still interested we can talk a little more

0:02:18

05:07 A number of people have difficulty to recognize the value of life because we think “that’s my life, I know it” whatever it may be, that’s my life. So what. If I can’t do it great, that’s fine, but I can’t do it anyway, so it’s not important for me. Many people think that way. But what happens is, if your life is threatened, in my personal experience and my dealing with people, looking at my friends, and when your life is threatened by anything, illnesses or anything else, then you begin to realize “Hey, what’s going on” you sort of begin to shake up and realize that’s what you don’t want to lose. Simply you don’t want to lose because you do, you do have tremendous value and we cannot get it when we’re not threatened because we’re taking it for granted and its integrity and its value and its importantness.

Especially when we don’t realize its value and importantness, then it’s threatened and then it becomes shaky of our integrity. Our commitment, our responsibility to our life, and our service to ourselves, and our help to ourselves we ignore that. We do so much so that it is the last activity that we have to do it as though every day doesn’t count for anything if you do right in the last minute and that is good enough to our service of our life, which is absolutely wrong.

0:08:19

We ignore our life totally whether you believe it or not we really ignore our life and we think our service of life is just before you die to be able to say the right prayer and then you can go to the right place and other than that every day what we have to do is not so much a matter for us. A lot of people do that.

This is the problem of the lack of integrity in the world today in a variety of society and everywhere, when you do not appreciate your life, how can you appreciate other’s lives? There is no way.

When you don’t realize the value of life and you don’t appreciate the life, how can you have compassion and love for human life

0:11:18

When you don’t have compassion for human life, and then human life becomes so matter of a playground, and it doesn’t become a being it becomes a thing.

When it becomes a thing when a few of them break it doesn’t matter. So in the world we don’t really respect human life and an individual person’s desire, whatever it may be takes priority over the human life and that’s why we have war going on. The commonly known war that we have is Iraq as well as the war against terrorism or whatever it is but actually there’s tremendous amount of war going if you look very carefully in the world and read the report of the Carter institute and that’s why there’s hundreds of wars going on everywhere today and this has become a terrible situation that we’re beginning in the 21st Century.

And not only is the war – killing and not only the killing, the torturing going that’s going on tremendous. There’s an old continuation of torturing that’s going on and there’s new torturing going on. Now let me spell it out clearly: the old torturing going on, today, continuously, is what’s happening in the China/Tibet situation, what’s happening in Tibet.

0:14:00

It is the Communist that still continues, still killing the people, and killing the culture and spiritual path, and still continuing almost 50 years now. And you have the new torturing going on, unprecedented (?) that’s happening in all these prison camps in the war zone area that I don’t have to spell out for you. We are not blind or deaf, you can hear the radio and see the report about what’s going on. This is what is happening. Unexpected, unprecedented lack of integrity. That’s what is going on today.

All of them happening because do not have respect for human life, human dignity, and humanitarianism. So where has the humanitarian value gone? Do you remember the world that we used to live is the true democracy, choice of the people, people’s rights and liberties and freedom. All of those, and today all them are going into the background and all these terrible things are happening right in front of our noses.

I never heard in Holland that you cannot demonstrate against something. Did you ever hear that before? All of you does. And this time you heard it when Bush comes, you cannot demonstrate. Either you do it before or after he is gone. When he is here you cannot. This is the human integrity

0:17:40

I have been here on and off over 20 years and I never heard a political murder in Holland until

I never heard any sort of communal trouble before until last year. So the integrity of the human value going down, that is because we failed to appreciate our life and we failed to see the value of human life and we failed to see and acknowledge capability of what we can do as a human being.

Twenty-six hundred years ago Buddha said human value is like a jewel, like a wish fulfilling jewel, according to that culture if we look this way to understand what Buddha meant that is, it’s like a magic lamp. In the kid’s story where you have a magic lamp, rub the magic lamp, and a genie appears and you ask anything you want to do and the genie does the work. And Buddha compared human life value to that twenty-six hundred years ago.

0:20:11

It is absolutely true: we fail to understand otherwise this life, the human life that you and I have today is capable of delivering whatever you want to do, whatever you want to achieve. Materially if you want a billion dollar for your own disposal, the life that you have and that I have and the life that Bill Gates has is no different. It is the same human life.

The spiritual life that Buddha and Jesus and all that, and what you and I have is no different. From the life point of view, we have the same life. If you want to achieve you can achieve. The only problem that we face is we are unable to trust ourselves. We are unable to recognize our value, and we are unable to push ourselves through what we have a thing called laziness and doubt.

And a lack of respect. Lack of respect to our own life and lack of respect for other’s life. So that is our problem, why our situation in this world is getting worse and worse and worse and worse. Yes it’s easy to blame Bush, I love to blame Bush, but also we have a responsibility. Each and every one of us as a human being, we also carry responsibility. This is our society, this is our world, this is our country, this our community and this is mine and we are all have a responsibility.

0:23:47

So lack of respect to the human life really brings those situation. Now what can we do? To point it out what was wrong is easy, anybody can do. Now to figure out what can I do, what shall I think, what can we do, how can we change?

Our attitude is always looking outside. It is somebody else’s problem to solve. And we look to our leaders to solve the problem. And do you think George Bush is the creator of the problem not the solver of the problem. So it is our responsibility and each and every one of us matters. And each and everyone one of us what we do today makes a difference to our world.

You realize today even from the science in front of you, the movement of the butterfly in china makes a difference on the weather condition in the united states. The difference the butterfly makes

So every human being’s deed is counted and it makes a big difference although you may think whatever I do doesn’t matter but remember it does. It does make a difference to you, if it makes a difference to you it makes a difference to your spouses, it makes a difference to your children, it makes difference to your parents, it makes difference to your family, it makes difference to your society, it makes a difference to your village, it makes a difference to the country, it makes difference to Europe, it makes difference to the world

0:27:16

Look this way, the work, what we call it work. Or whatever we call it, work society, whatever it is, what is it? It is something prefabricated somewhere in Heaven and dropped down here. No it’s not. Nor is it grown out of the ground trees and rocks. It is simply a society, its people. It is a collection of the people that becomes society and that is why each and everybody is counted and makes a difference.

So improvement of the world must begin from here. If we wait for the united nations to come and act who knows whether the ? (29:00) can sit on his chair or he’ll be thrown off. Who knows? So we have to wait.

Earlier the society was great. Though there’s not so much scientific development and facilities as we developed today. The societies earlier was great, there are great persons like Buddha, like Jesus they contributed so much to the awareness of the society. And they worked that, it worked much better in the middle age, they do have great persons like Mahatma Gandhi and there are a great many other people that are outstanding leaders and guiders, just like within our life remember Mother Theresa. And unfortunately getting old, in other words Nelson Mandela and all of those are there but in our generation we don’t really have someone really coming and leading and then we don’t have good role models either.

0:30:37

Especially times like there where the good behavior, good respect, wonderful idea of democracy and freedom and all of them are going down. Where these funny things are coming out and while there is no great leader really pushing through and this is the time the society needs to put in double and to make our life, our world, our everything safe and … (inaudible)

Buddha emphasized so much to self-discipline. More than that, Buddha does not believe somebody else is making judgement over somebody else and contacting the rulers. Yet Buddhist and Buddha is not immoral. And this is very much moral. It is important morality. The morality is one of the fundamental basis. And that morality is self-discipline. We take a vow. Keep in vows intact is our responsibility. There is nobody else, there is no Buddhist police there to catch it.

0:33:44

There is no Buddhist traffic camera that takes pictures if you speed your car and gives you the picture later. There is no Buddhist judge. There is no Buddhist court. Self-discipline is our responsibility. And if you don’t have self-discipline nothing can be achieved. Without discipline how can you achieve anything? Whatever you want to do, material, political, spiritual, anything without discipline nothing can be achieved.

Wasting time is easiest way. Does not need any effort. This is very often to the coffee shops in Amsterdam. You’ll know how much time is gone within moments. Another one: television. My personal experience, people watching television, time goes with no problem. It was helpful for me because I never learned English. I know how to speak a little bit now thanks to the television. And you may think it’s the Sesame Street, no I didn’t learn my English from Sesame Street. I learned English by watching Days of Our Lives.

0:36:26

After ten years of break, I watched once again the same old characters and still they are going on the same old issues. And is not wasting time, then what is wasting time. So it is extremely easy to waste our time. It is easy for laziness to take over if you don’t have discipline. So the discipline is the fundamental basis of spiritual or anything that you want to achieve.

Think about it, if you want to study you need discipline otherwise at the time of your exam you have to keep drinking coffee after coffee, coffee after coffee, and even then you can’t.

And that is easy to be said because they’re kids. But for all grownup people there are deadlines and we don’t think about it whether the deadlines are two hours later. And two hours before we try to do our best to try to read and all that, and if you are an intelligent experienced person you do an okay job and if not, you’re going to do a lousy job.

And you know that. Just watch yourself what you did last week or so. So the discipline is a must. It is our morality. And discipline must be based on the respect for human life and the respect for self and respect for each other. In order to respect ourselves we must appreciate ourselves. If you don’t appreciate yourself, you’re going to hate yourself. I don’t have to tell you that, you know. Keep yourself trying a little bit to look back and anything regarding something which you don’t like about yourself even your hairstyle. And if you don’t like it you can ?

0:40:25

So the self-respect is based on liking yourself. If you don’t like it, you can’t respect yourself. You have to appreciate yourself. Our mind is such, we think all the wrong things we did we’ll remember or right things, good things we did. And that is against self-respect. There may be little truth of you did something wrong but if you really look carefully it’s not bad, you have an explanation for it. There’s no reason you have to dislike somebody. Even if you dislike it, you can correct it.

We can change. Everything is in our hands. Our improvement we can bring by ourselves. And when you try to help yourself, you improve yourself by thinking it is our integrity. Remember that individual respect, individual integrity it is ? (inaudible). Our dislikes, self-hatred, all of them we create. This is our negative addiction. Our addiction for hatred, our addiction for obsession, that has been pushing us.

0:43:25

That is the source of our difficulties. This is the source of problems between the nations, between societies, between individuals, even within family difficulties are our own addiction to our hatred and obsession.

Then from there the fear. That is a very important thing everywhere. It is fear that brings all these problems in society today. The difficulties of traveling today is brought by fear. Fear of terrorists. Difficulties in family are brought by fear. Fear of losing. The difficulties between children and parents are also brought by fear. Fear of not being right and not being able to be good in the eyes of the parents. Fear between the student and the teacher. This is our problem source and if we don’t tackle this, all things, everyday life and spiritually, how will we help ourselves?

0:46:21

Buddha has a tremendous amount of wisdom, fortunately.

-Break- 0:47:06

Well thank you for coming back. And last night I said when we break up and come back and when you still have more than half of what you had before (*inaudible?). Looking at the clock, actually I’d like to be bottom line question, really the question rises, how can I help myself to maintain my integrity, my morality, and how can I be good? That’s bottom line. So to help yourself and to be helpful to yourself, as I said earlier, to help you have to take care of yourself. If you care for yourself you can help yourself, if you don’t care for yourself there is no way you can help yourself. That is the bottom line.

0:49:32

And what is the best way to maintain help and have some integrity and self-service? According to the Buddha, if you help others you help yourself. You know it’s interesting, we have this small group, we can talk interesting like that. If you help yourself and others, you help yourself. If you hurt others, you’re hurting yourself. And that’s what the Buddha calls the karmic principle. We talk about karma ourselves, whether we understand or don’t understand, karma is almost an international language everybody speaks. You can make karma some kind of mystical mystery, something interesting, or straightforward bottom line, or you can do both, whatever you want to do.

0:52:00

That is, if you help others, you are helping yourself, if you hurt others, you are hurting yourself. Like when you hurt others, you create negative karma and the consequences of that negative karma are that we ourselves suffer. The karmic principle is very simple in one way: you do good, you’re going to be rewarded, you do bad, I don’t want to say punished, but I would like to say there are consequences. And that is why non-violence is extremely important: because violence hurts. Non-violence doesn’t hurt. Yes, people must complete and accomplish our goals. We must do what we need to do. It is our purpose. And we achieve our goal with non-violence.

If you look at the non-violence tradition, like what Gandhi did, or you look at Mother Theresa, and you look at what the Dr. Martin Luther King has done, and look at what Nelson Mandela has done, and look at what the Dalai Lama is trying to do. All of them have some good reason and the result, what you achieve is really important, not only to ourselves, but to thousands and millions and hundreds of thousands of people.

0:55:15

And look back at what violence has done,not very far away from here, not very long time ago, but what Hitler had done. And what Stalin had done. And Mao, Chairman Mao, what he had done. Even Saddam Hussein has to be captured out of a hole. So if you look in history, history is guidance for us. All the violence has nothing successful. And the hurt, the hurt hundreds and thousands and even millions of people in the process. And non-violence, whatever they have achieved it has been sustained. The work of Gandhi is successful. Although it did not entirely come out as he had wanted. And the Mother Theresa’s contributions. And even Dr. King’s achievements, Martin Luther King’s achievements. And Nelson Mandela’s achievements. You know a few years ago the Dutch is in the Anti-Apartheid. So then, when you conclude, anything on the positive side, the positive virtuous side, is sustained. It helps people, doesn’t hurt people, don’t get killed, don’t hurt so many people, the result is helpful. The violent side is also the same thing: what had happened, all those, nothing today in the process, so many people got killed, so many people lost their lives, their families. You know that happened. This all happened in Europe.

0:58:59

And what had happened in the Middle Ages in Europe is not a joke. That’s the women doesn’t have any weight and what you call them, and then you burn them and for what? So perhaps they need a woman like me (joke). So anyway, if you look at the conclusions, none of the violence whatever had achieved, nothing achieved. Whatever temporarily happened it does not sustain. Whatever the non-violence they created it remains, it sustains. You know why? Because it is truth. As long as it is not true, the other is true, truth fulfills.

Today violence again. But, again truth. So in our lives, to help ourselves, keep ourselves integrated toward non-violence, and love and compassion for ourselves for our children for our family, Buddha wants us to look at all sentient beings as mother beings. Even if you don’t get it as all sentient beings as mother beings, love must be in our circle, the person you are dealing with all the time. 24-hours. It begins with your spouses, begins with your children, your parents, your family, your circle, your society, your fellow countrymen, and begins with the world.

1:02:15

Sometimes we always have difficulty to choose between the loving something and something else. We always face this. That’s because we’re human beings. And there is also always very difficult to make a judgement between right and wrong. And what I tried to do, what I tried to suggest to people, whether it hurts, don’t include yourself. You cannot hurt yourself, you cannot hurt your loved ones, you cannot hurt the people you are supposed to protect. That’s how it begins. Loving all sentient beings is a wonderful thing, but it has to begin with self and loved ones and family.

Basically, if you’re hurting something and not hurting, you choose not hurting. Sometimes when you have difficulty, and then you have to apply your wisdom and don’t let anyone judge you, but you use your own wisdom and choose the non-violent way.

1:05:07

Choose love over hatred. Choose compassion over violence. Choose the truth over fears. And if you keep those as your base principles and try to maintain your integrity, true to yourself. As you see the advertisement in this pamphlet you see, in Buddhism there is no one to tell you if you don’t choose the right morality you’re going to go to hell. But the discipline is left in your own hands, your own choice. Because we all want to do the right thing. Because we all want happiness. Because we all want joy.

So this is how I think and I know how to be maintained our own morality and how to maintain our own integrity. If you wanted to know further, a little more and if you’re more interested, Jewel Heart here provides study options. And if you read those and if you’re interested, then you are welcome to join with us to help yourself.

1:08:00

And if you have any questions?

Q: What is the truth?

R: Very good question. We always think truth is right. Even Buddha says truth is truth. And absolute and relative truth. And absolute truth is really truth of what we call, very famous word in Buddhism is what we call emptiness. It is a lack of inherent existence, which is the nature of impermanent, it changes. It is changeable. Sometimes today’s truth may become not truth tomorrow. That is possible. Relative truth is truth judged on the basis of helping and hurt. So probably you are looking a very practical answers and it seems I have given you a puzzle. But still, your truth, my truth, might not necessarily be the same thing. It is because of my mind and my judgement.

1:11:10

But no matter whatever it may be, violence can never be true. The very conservative people have their own truth and we liberals have our own truth too. But violence is not truth. Here we’ll judge. And I’ll tell you what: violence leads to losing a life. And the most precious possession that we have, the most precious possession is life. And if you squeeze that out, by the power of whatever, military or whatever, that is no good. That’s the reason why this is true. Thank you.

1:12:43

Q: Self-discipline ?

R: When I was a monk, and I was a good monk because I was a kid and for three or four years recognized as an incarnate lama, taken into a monastery, and put on a seat and taught. And then the Chinese Communists came and took over the Tibetan culture. We were kicked out. And at the same time, in the 60’s and I was looking for something too. I was looking for something very exciting, something. So it is my time and my opportunity to experiment. Then I became a bad monk. And then no monk. And then I am trying everything.

1:15:00

Wine, women, and drugs. Cigarettes. Not so much the drugs. Not so much drugs, that doesn’t suit me. I tried once and I stopped. And I picked up smoking cigarettes. Terrible cigarettes. And I bought the cheapest most horrible cigarettes and I used to smoke three packets in two days for years. One day, I had to go to my doctor. A very famous incarnate lama from Tibet, and is also the head of a certain tradition so they wanted me to go with him and help, he didn’t have opportunity at that time to do study, so the people would come and compose these things and write these things and give this and that and so I was asked to go. And the culture at the time in Ladakh is such that if you’re smoking they treat you like a devil. That is their culture. I said okay, I’ll cut the cigarette smoking. And somebody said finish this packet and then you stop. And I said if I’m going to consider it, I’m going to stop right now. I am not only not going to finish this packet, but I’m even not going to finish the cigarette in my hand.

1:18:00

And then I put it down. Then an hour later I wanted a cigarette. So I look at my watch and then it had been one hour. One and half hour. Two hours. Two and half hours. Three hours, four, five, six hours. And I said to myself, am I going to waste the effort I put for six hours I put into change for two seconds, or am I going to help myself and save those hours? And then I chose to save it, transform it. Then days go, weeks go, months go and then I’m using the same principle: am I going to waste the efforts I put, those hard efforts, into this hour, this day, this week, or am I going to blow this off in seconds. So I choose not to and that’s how I discipline and thereafter I did not smoke. I had headaches so I kept on eating aspirins.

1:20:08

And I didn’t smoke at all thereafter. For years, then I wanted to find out if I still had addiction and I wanted one cigarette, and then two. I did that a couple of times. That is how I stopped. That’s how I maintain my discipline. That is an example for you of self-discipline.

You know in between that, lots of people will come give you cigarette, and say one won’t bother you but then you have to redouble your efforts. I’m not going to waste effort that I chose, but the first six hours are very hard. First couple of days, and weeks. Thereafter continuously, and then this long period I saved by not smoking and that is it. And the most difficult is thinking “I can take one and then stop” but never give up. That’s is the beginning of trouble.

Q: ?

R: Well there’s also a technique: the technique is you meditate and then you stop when you are doing well and when you’re happy. Don’t sit long until you’re tired. Stop when you are happy. Then you’ll always want to do this. And if you sit too long and get tired and then you think I’ll do it later, I’ll do it tomorrow, etc. that’s what happens.

1:23:46

Thank you.

Q: ?

R: Well I’m sorry, my condolences. Secondly, anything positive that you have done in your life and any other thing positive that you would like to do and to help yourself and your father, you dedicate for his benefit. If you like to do something special positive, like saving a life or whatever, then you try to do for his benefit, you should do it and then dedicate it and then if you are Buddhist practitioner, your practice, your prayers, your good work is dedicated.

1:26:20

And I will say prayer for him. And one thing is also important is also letting go and dedicate positive karmas. And you must continue the celebration of your life. Thank you.

Q:

R: Ignorance is no excuse in our common human law. And karmic law also. A deed is a deed. The responsibility lies with people, whatever you did good or bad, the responsibility is yours, ours, knowing or otherwise. If I unknowingly hurt someone, that also hurts. If I knowingly did the hurt, it is worse it is worse, no doubt about it.

1:29:37

But still, unknowing hurt is hurting a person, so I have the responsibility even if I know it or not. That’s my understanding. Even if the person doesn’t know. I don’t think it has to be dependent on that. I’m sorry about it. I think that’s the reality.

Okay thank you so much and that’s it.