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Singing: may all beings have happiness, may they be free from sufferings…….

And welcome here today, thank you. So, we get together here today to reflect in our life and think about ourselves, our life and our relation to the spiritual path and its developments. And I’ll be talking to you from my background point of view and my background as you very much know it Tibetan Buddhism. So, I’ll be talking to you from my background point of view. But that doesn’t mean I’m here to try to convert you into Buddhism or make you into Tibetan and Tibetan Buddhism and all of them, not at all. To me personally the spiritual path is the spiritual path, the goal of the spiritual practice is the goal of spiritual practice, so whichever the direction you come in, it doesn’t matter. It’s like you talk lot in Tibetan, Tibet is full of mountains, so if you want climb on the top of the mountain you may climb from the east side of the mountain and get on the top, you may climb from the south side of the mountain, you get on top, you may climb from the north side of the mountain and you get on top of the mountain and you may climb from the west side of the mountain and you get on the top of the mountain; the goal is to get on the top of the mountain. So let’s say mount Kailash or say Everest, so Mount Everest, whether you are going to climb from the Nepal side or whether you are going to climb from the Tibet side, it doesn’t matter you get on it. So, when you get on it, that counts, that makes the salary of the shepherd or Sherpa or what is it Tenzing, famous in the world because they climbed on the top of the Mount Everest, happened to be the first, right? So, whoever got first, whether the shepherds got first or the helicopter (hahaha) but they both got on there. So, that’s what I look in the spiritual path, whatever the tradition you may coming in, it doesn’t matter. But it has to be a very authentic tradition, that’s what I learned from my background, authentic really means people already used this path, and people only succeeded this path and people who had achieved their goals and to tell you one thing, to me the spiritual path is also very scientific, believe it or not. Scientific, it has to be scientific, otherwise somebody else get it, nobody else tried, don’t get it, that doesn’t work, that’s not right spiritual path. The right spiritual path, no matter whether you are man or woman or whatever you may be, (hahah) it doesn’t matter, you know really, and if you try the path and if you try to aim to the goal then should be able to achieved. No matter whoever, wherever they tried but if you apply the same thing, and you tried and you should have the same result and that’s what I meant, spiritual, ah scientific. Because, if not, only the ancients and the Tibetans going to achieve and not the western are going to achieve or only the …..(0:06:47) going to achieve and not African Americans, or only the African Americans are going to achieve and not the, you know, it doesn’t work. That’s not the right spiritual path, it’s a problem and that’s what I mean it has to be scientific principle, whoever, whatever applies, so that has to work for the person. And you know in order make that authentic what we do is to make sure people had travelled on that road and achieved, people experimented and found it safe and found it is right and recognize the risk and the side effects if there are any, so they all have to be cleared and then we have to be, that’s what I called authentic. If you are the subject, like you are the guinea pig you may have advantage, I don’t know, but you have a lot of disadvantages, so that’s not right. It has to be authentic, authentic. So, any tradition, from anywhere, from any tradition, wherever it is coming from, it doesn’t matter as long as it is authentic. And then safe for you to travel and the result is going to be delivered, that’s what I call authentic spiritual path. I mean that’s not only what I call it, that’s where I come from and that’s what authentic spiritual path is. It doesn’t matter whether it comes from whichever tradition, whatever direction, who ever said it, it doesn’t matter. So, we talk about spiritual and authentic and this and that and so as a matter of fact these days we have a tremendous amount of spiritual information that are valuable to us, the question is what we do with it. What we do with it? I’m telling you what we do with it: we wanted to achieve the goal of what we want to achieve. The goal where I come from, from the Buddhist background, and Buddha, let me tell you this first, Buddhasam whatever you may think or you may have heard it is absolutely the total experience of one individual person called Buddha and how Buddha experienced through the journey of the spiritual path and what did he achieve, how did he become a Buddha and what made him Buddha different than anybody else? So that is the bases of Buddhism, and that path had been followed by millions of others day after and many achieved, many failed, I’m sure. So, everybody becoming a Buddhist is not going to be, going to heaven either, everything non going to become a Buddhist is not going to hell either so, but many will achieve, and many will not achieve. Why? Because that depends on the individual person, it is the individual efforts, it’s individual choice, it’s individual, it’s very individualized, independent, kind of possible spiritual path, that’s what Buddhism is all about, that’s what my background is all about. So, what do we do with all these information? We have a goal, the goal we put in all our information, we analyze them, we organize them and we utilize them to achieve the goal. The goal that Buddha introduced to follow him in the Buddhism is to become Buddha, to become Buddha and Buddha gives you a tremendous amount of reasons, each and every individual human beings are capable, possible, and eligible to become a Buddha and the reason what he gives you is: I achieved, why not you? When I achieved you should achieve because I’m no different than you. That is his reason, that’s one of the reasons why if your read in Buddha’s life story he lived in a Kingdom, he is a Prince, one of these top princes, one what the Indians called: going to be the Chakravartin Raja, means the Universal King. So, he left that completely and ran away and remained in the forest with a crazy sort of starve? You know, sort of thing, you know, looks like going back to the 60ies or something, (laughing in the audience) in that manner. So, he chose that life particularly because he wanted to tell everybody: everybody is the same. There is no difference, whether you happen to be born as the son of the ruler, so you maybe are called prince of princess and all that but, in reality a same human being, an equal human being, you know the princess and the prince do not have additional brains, nor the princess and the prince have anything extra. They are all same human beings as you and me and same capability, they happen to be born as a prince. Otherwise, same human being you know in order to show us and that’s true, so he left the kingdom and rejected to become a king, this is one of the reasons, the rejection of the King but actually leaving the home, this is the reason, to show whatever I could achieve, you could achieve. Whatever I could not achieve you may or not be able to achieve, but we are the same. We are the same people. Same type of human being, same type of brain, same type of mind, same type of mental capacity. And what the Buddha discovered is that our mental capacity is unlimited. There is no limitation, what we call it skies delimit (0:15:26) of the mental capacity. That’s what we have, you have it, I have it, we all have it. And I did reraise the question saying what do we do with our spiritual information, but the question should have been: what do we do with our mental capacities? What do we use it. It’s absolutely up to the individual, where I come from, the spiritual path. You want to become a great spiritual person, helpful to yourself, helpful to others? Yes, you can. You wanted to have a nice time, sitting in the corner somewhere and be whatever drunk or yanky or whatever you wanted to be it’s absolutely up to you. Nobody has anything to say, except you. So that tells us: spiritual path is absolutely your own choice. No one can tell you what to do. Yes, everybody can give you information for you to consider. It’s only for your consideration. Think about it. All these commercials that we see every day, trillions of them in television, in newspaper, magazines. And the papers that you through in your mailbox and all of them are for your consideration. And trillions of them we hear on the radios and everywhere else for your consideration. So as the spiritual path is the same thing, you should treat them same way as you treat the commercials. For your own betterment, though some of them tell you this is holy, and this is important. You cannot treat like a commercial, true and not true, for your own betterment better to treat them as a commercial and find out by yourself whether it’ going to be right or wrong for you, right? And when the title sells you a shirt, you’re not going to buy a shirt that doesn’t fit you. Right? I love to have a small size you know, (audience laughing), so but they are not going to fit me, and I can’t not even put one arm through, so then what is it useful for me? Can’t buy. So same thing in your spiritual path. Information is so helpful, but it is also to make sure it is really authentic information, not a wrong information. A lot of people get a lot of wrong information, for example I tell you Tibetan Buddhism, in this country, really the moment you say Tibetan Buddhism it’s sort of have a funny idea of some kind of mystical, mystery path that’s exactly what you get. Something like you get in a dark room with candle lights round, as a matter of fact I saw on television very recently some guy who claimed to be a Tibetan teacher, he has landed into the jail years ago and it’s showing in the television that dark room with candle lights around and he’s sitting in the middle there with all of girls around and all kind of things going on, you know? So, and the guy happens to be in a … (0:20:18) jail. Then they commented it: Mountain true because it was in Colorado. Tibet I’m sorry, he was born in Russia or something you know. That’s what the television commented on that. Anyway, so you get that impression of a very mystical point of thing you get it, but the true reality is, the true, the great spiritual path, the true one has to be very scientific, very scientific. You know when we have this dictionary thing and you look for the law it’s a blind, right? Blind person with a, what do you call it? ( 0:21.26 machine) …..getting in the hand. The religion, the spiritual path should be like that. Honestly it should be blind, should not favor anyone, should be straightforward, should be really, no matter who ever follows, whatever they do, it should be right. And true spiritual pathes are, really has to be, very scientific. As I told you earlier. Anyway, what does that mean to us. What do we do with this? As I said earlier Buddhism has a giving, a goal, Buddha suggested to become Buddha and that doesn’t mean to become me, Buddha did not say that, Buddha called Buddhahood, we now call it Buddhawood. But what Buddha calls is a total knowledge, Buddha call it enlightenment, total knowledge, enlightenment. Enlightenment means total knowledge, knowing everything, there is nothing you don’t know about it. So, it means using the total capacity of your mind. The human mind has a tremendous capacity, and you use it totally and human mind has the capacity of totally knowing everything and everything simultaneously. Don’t worry, that is not going to drive you crazy. We are knowing everything to get simultaneously you know how to handle that yourself by that time. It’s not a crazy state. If it’s becoming a crazy state, something is wrong somewhere so have to see it where it went wrong. So, the purpose of it is to help ourselves and to help others. Yes, helping others we are very happy, you help others yes good, love, compassion, every action, everybody says wonderful except George Bush, (audience laughing) true (hahaha). Everybody else says it’s a wonderful except George Bush, and so that is the love and compassion part of it. hahah. But, but the moment you say helping others, love and compassion, our mind is such that we look outside, and looking for some kind of suffering person and to find suffering person and going to go and help them. Yes, it’s great no doubt. What’s going to happen, there is a huge concert, going to be for the benefit of African Nations, that’s wonderful, no doubt about it, it’s a great thing we should admire and rejoice. And also, this …(0:24:57) going to forgive, you know the depth of many poor nations, it’s also wonderful, no doubt about it. We should totally rejoice, that is great, that is compassion. But also, here is also somebody called me, ourself, we also need a compassion too, we need a love, we need compassion. It is absolutely true, we cannot looking out only, we must also look inside, what about ourself, what about this disease in the United States; the poverty in the Unites States, what about the bills that we cannot afford to pay, what about this medical cause for ourself, and what about children’s education, what about our aged parents, we also need that, both ways. Compassion must include self as well. For Michigan what was our road (laughters) perhaps the worst in the United States, maybe the worst State, perhaps, I don’t know. So, all of those and what about those jobs, those huge amount of shut downs, the General Motors you know they are announcing how much jobs they are going to cut, I’m sure it affects tremendously us and Michigans, not only the United States, but Michigan too. And then what about me, individual person, who is suffering, who is crying, who is suffering from emotional, physical, mental, emotional. And who is going to help me? Of course, ourself, who else? Ourself. Tony Blair is not going to come here, hahaha, to help us, nor does George Bush, so who is going to help ourselves? And these are the man-made material sufferings that I’ve mentioned, a lot about kharmic sufferings we have. We suffer tremendously, we had 9-11, we had the Tsunami, all of them what are they? Who made it? It is our kharmic consequences and it’s our first nobel truth through those suffering. It’s nothing than that of truth of suffering, it’s nothing but our kharmic consequences, our common kharmic consequences believe me. Those of us who are watching what’s happening, we suffer, we feel the pain. Many of us could not stand, we almost go ourselves, drive ourself almost crazy by watching the whole day what’s happening in 9-11. I remember very vividly, I’m sure all of us will not forget that images, we’ve been suffering for this, Tsunami equally. So, this is what Buddha called first noble truth, truth of suffering. Nothing but truth of suffering, we are all subject to this in addition to our own usual sufferings such as illnesses, aging. Aging is suffering, sometimes it looks nice, when you have salt and pepper on your hair, but, but it is suffering, it is pain, you get additional wrinkles in your forehead and it’s pain and it’s a suffering. We (inaudible..1-2word), more pounds here, it is an additional pain, additional suffering. These are all usual sufferings. Then losses in the family, loosing loved ones, loosing family, these and that. And each and every one of us, if you think there are probably not so many people who did not lose someone either close to us, or known to us or friend of friend, nobody is here without that story and that is how much suffering we have, it is reality, it is a pain that we all experience. We all may have things, we may have fun but that doesn’t mean we do not have pains. We do. Each and everyone of us tries to put up our best face and if you don’t have it you put up little make up to look like better. But in between the cracks of the make ups we see the pain. When we did not see our friends for a long time, when we get together, we say how are you? And then fine, fine, fine that blab la bla and the talks are always pains and sufferings. So and so, the class fellow had gone, this and that has gone, their family has gone, they suffered this, that, we open the television what we hear every day, dead, dead, dead, we lost soldier, we lost this, this, this, despaired of control of the information. Despaired of the administration try to help, not bad news on the public web or whatever it’s called. I mean if you don’t believe me, try to look back and say Tom Brokaw’s departing lecture, we don’t hear, you know we hear that only one time on television and the radio, the day after it’s gone, right? Listen to that famous guy who works with Jo Campbell, what is his name, Bill Moyers, despite of all this we still hear the bad news, continuously, that, that lost life, wounded, so many people died, so many people died and this and that, that’s suffering, not a pleasure, it’s suffering. So, who is going to help to this if not ourselves? Can anybody do it? No, nobody, not the United Nations, not the Unites States, not the United Kingdom, not George Bush, not Bill Clinton, not Hilary Clinton, nobody except ourselves. And that also, in order to help ourself, in order to help others you have to help yourself. If you can’t help yourself, you cannot help others, believe me. So, the helping yourself it now becoming first your spiritual goal, believe it or not. You probably came here to hear from a Tibetan incarnated Lama to hear about love and compassion, beautiful, beautiful, wonderful. But I’m here to tell you your first, you know really your spiritual waow one it to help yourself. One o one is to help yourself. You are the only one who can help yourself, nobody, else, nobody, no Buddha, no Jesus, no God, nobody. No Bush, no Blair, nobody. Help yourself. And that also is the first step: recognize your own pains and sufferings you’ve been carrying for very, very long time with you. Please look inside, use your spiritual information as a mirror, use it to look inside yourself. Just don’t hide your sufferings and pains, just like the cats, sometimes when they go and do a little dirty business and then they throw a little dust over, cover it up, or the normal expression it says: sweep it under the carpet. That’s you own target to overcome, first target, don’t do it. Because you are not going to cover it all, even if put sweep a little dirt on it it’s going to smell. (laughters). Even if you use some deodorants on it, you don’t smell it, but somebody will step over it. So, it’s not going to be covered at all, so deal with it, work with it, look at it, see how I’m going to help myself, how can I deal with this? Yes, many of the pains that we carry are healed by time, too. That’s true. But it is not gone. The spiritual path should give you how to make it completely gone out of your system. And that is the job of the spiritual path. If it’s not capable of doing it, there is a problem. Yes, it will take tremendous amount of time, yes it has a lot of obstacles, yes it will produce obstacles by ourself, yes, people will tell you a lots of obstacles and all of them. But it is up to you, and you are capable, you can do it, you should go through it, you can do it.

One of the most important keys here is impermanent. Because you know, good things happening to us is impermanent, we know it. We know it, just like death, dead things, sufferings are also impermanent, there is nothing permanent. It’s impermanent, it is changes. And changes, whatever the way you wanted to change that is entirely up to you. Do you realize? You do have a control over your life. That’s how you help yourself. Whatever the way you want to change it, it’s up to you, so you can do this. Yes, it’s a result of a negative Kharma, you remember, negative Kharma is impermanent. It is not a permanent, big, sort of huge king sitting over us. It’s not a huge monster that is sort of lying over us that we cannot breeze. It’ not true. It’s impermanent. So much so that, you can kick with the finger like this even with your negative Kharma, you can do that, you have the capacity, you can do it. Yes, it takes hard work, yes it takes willingness, yes it needs information, it needs efforts, but you can have total control of your life by you. You may can see it now as I talk to you, because you can change it, because it is impermanent and it gives you the room, and the way and how you want to change it is entirely up to you. If you want to sum it to our addictions and to our lazinesses then let it go as it had been, fine, it’s up to you. You want to do other way round, make the right changes, make the right efforts and make it better it’s up to you. Once I was travelling from Europe to here and there was a guy sitting next to me and because it was a long journey, I had to say my prayers and then he said. What are you? I said what do you mean? He said what religion do you follow, and I said Buddhism. He said, oh, yeah, yeah, I know, that religion, that’s the religion of suffering. Religion of suffering. Now I begin to realize it’s not a religion of suffering but a religion of choice. You can choose, you can really choose your future, you can do it. Why you can choose your future? Because whatever you do, you are responsible for yourself and no one is responsible, whatever we do, that much we know. If I hurt someone then someone will hurt me and I have a consequence, I know that. Though I don’t know the detailed settled kharmic system, how it works. But we know when we do something good, we get something good, and when you do something bad you get something bad, you know, very simple straightforward did that.

I can tell you one story: there is a Tibetan master, meditator, who has been meditating, who has gone to a new place, and he wanted to meditate. And there are lots of ghosts in Tibet. Tibet is full of ghosts, well no wonder why it’s called mystical, too. Hahaha there are lots of ghosts in there, so those ghosts in that country, in that little town or village, everything, area, they said: hey there is a new meditator, he seems to be quite serious, so we better take care of him otherwise he will control us later, so let us better take care of him. One guy out of those, you know, the ghosts have meetings. As a kid I’ve seen it, honestly, I’ve really seen it, you know, I have a little cape where I do mediate and then I see the ghosts meeting at you know down the valley, near, there is a village and other side of the village there is a big tree, and around the tree all the ghosts sit in a circle, completely circle, and I used to see them a little flims, you know, little bit of light like this and they were sitting in a huge circle, one, two, three circles and then there is a slim in the middle, I think this must be the speaker who was talking and so they do that and then one day I was doing some prayers and I wanted to do some gift to the ghosts and started to doing that and throw my left others to the ghosts and I can hear through the rocky mountain, shshsh, they are going walking through there but see nothing and then I looked through that meeting and everybody is gone and then see anything here but I can hear it walking and after a little while, half an hour, 40 minutes later they were meeting again down there, so I’ve seen that. So, in their ghost meeting they said: we have to destroy that guy before he becomes powerful. So, one guy volunteered, he said I take care of him. So, he went there to try to hurt him, and when he went there the guy is crying, the guy has been crying. He said I’m wondering what is he crying for. The ghosts have the power to read your mind. So, they started looking why he was crying for and he’s worrying about the ghosts and how much they are suffering and how he could help, and he was really on compassion and he’s crying about ghosts. And so that ghost said: oh, I cannot hurt him because he’s worrying about us. So, he went back. He went back three times, so one of the meeting said, this guy is still there, somebody volunteered, what happened? So, the volunteer guy said I went there three times and he’s worrying about us and he’s crying about us, so therefore I cannot hurt him. So, the chief guy said so I’ll go. So chief guy went there, he’s meditating on compassion, crying the same thing and he couldn’t even heard him at all, so it proves: one of the best protection for ourself is the compassion, meditation, love and compassion is the best protection to ourself. Not be too (inaudible 0:48:32). Not nuclear weapons. Compassion and love is the really best protection. So, the compassion begins with ourselves and begins with others. Compassion is nothing than that of understand and feel the pain that others are going. So, the compassion should be able to make that individual to help. The pains that we are going through ourselves and others going through. If the compassion is out of touch, then you lose your election. Remember the George Bush signature? During his election he was out of touch, remember he went to the grocery shopping, he doesn’t even know how to walk through. He doesn’t even know how much it costs, milks costs and how much a pound of meat costs, how much the butter costs so the people told him he was out of touch. On the other side Clinton knows everything, that time. So, if you are out of touch, you lose your boat, board?. It doesn’t matter if you become the President of the United States but if you lose the boat? Board? and become that and you can’t’ help yourself, then it’s a big loss. So, let us not lose the boat? Let’s us have compassion, let us feel and understand the pain and difficulties that people go through. So we do not screw the people’s life. If you hit with a knife and cut it, it’s one thing you can heal, if you screw through their lives, taking years and years and life to heal. We see that, don’t we? So let us not do that. Have a compassion for yourself and for others, and that’s the same thing exactly, that is not screwel ourself (0:51:19) to ….Let us unscrewel ourself, really, that’s what we do. See our pain, recognize, don’t reject, and look for how you can help yourself. And there is no instinct cure, believe me, if somebody tells you there is an instinct: try, but you are not going to find it. You will be disappointed, because there is no instinct, if there is an instinct, all these people, like the Buddha, and the Jesus had given us by now, why are they holding it. There is no instinct cure. It’s the individual effort, step by step, drop by drop you have to fill the bucket. That’s how you utilize your spiritual information and that’s how you help yourself. I guess that much I have to tell you I’m taking a lot of your time and I’m so happy, it’s so great to see so many of you and occasionally I’ll come on Sunday and talk here but every Sunday we have somebody who is sharing these things and the Jewel Heart providing the service to the people, giving the information in the form of different courses, retreats and all that sort of thing we try to serve community, try to serve the people, only thing I have to give you is my background, my spiritual information, that’s all I have and that I try to share through the help of people, kind people such as yourself in the Jewel Heart. And as you know of course, we are upcoming with some retreats, it is beginning on the 19th, this Sunday, right? This coming Sunday. And it’s in Alvin College, and we are totally working with the primal Buddha, Tara and types of Tara. White, green, yellow, red and there are like 20 different Taras, there are actually 108 different Taras, there is 800000 different Taras but we are able to handle with 22 Taras mostly known, so we try to work with this and the purpose is again spiritually and to help ourselves and how to heal , how to deworn that which had been screwed so badly. How we …(0:54:29)….them. So, that’s what we are trying to do and after that we’ll be back and we’ll starting our Tuesdays, July 5th onwards another segment of Tuesday night courses and we are still dealing with the wisdom as a little top subject to do that too. But one got to deal with it. It’s like a truth that you can bite your negativities, your wisdom, That’s very tough and hard to get it. I guess that’s it. And then I have one more request here, when we are in the retreat, from the 20th to the 23rd July, there is need of some volunteers to help during the art fair. So I thought it was June, oh, so then we are not in the retreat. So that’s it and thank you so much everybody for coming. And do we have some dedications? Thank you.

Directly following the talk there is tea and cookies in the Lobby for about ½ hour we’ll have a little social period and then there is a white Tara meditation after that. Also, if you want to volunteer for the fair art helping out there is a sign-up sheet in this store and you can see….

Singing: By this merit, may I quickly, ……