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Garrison…GRSC02. Compassion for Professionals

Jewel heart prayers, You who destroy all evil forces…Invocation, Seven practices, 4 immeasurables. (X3)

I was listening here just now. As David said yesterday, no one has to say it if you don’t want to. However, we give you a piece of paper and all the people are saying it. So I think I have to give you a brief explanation. Otherwise it is not right. Some people may think it is just Buddhist tradition. One can use them anyway for divine connection, although they come from a Buddhist tradition, and particularly the first verse, the verse of invocation. It has a very interesting Buddhist story behind it. It is not necessarily Buddhist. The story can be put to any divine being. In the translation the second word comes first. I don’t understand. That is because of my lack of English knowledge. Whenever you translate the first word doesn’t come first. Sometimes even the last word comes first and then comes in. Actually “for the sake of all beings,” that was the first word. Why are we inviting the divine beings here? It is not for my sake alone, not for your sake alone, but for the benefit of all beings. It is as simple as this and that can be put to any divine being whatever, any tradition, Judeo-Christian, Hindu/Buddhist whatever. Wherever you put, it is inviting for the benefit of all beings.

The second verse is the first verse and says, “You who destroy all evil forces.” What does divine being mean? What does gone beyond mean? The Sanskrit word does not necessarily refer to Buddha, but means one who has gone beyond. One who has gone beyond means beyond evil forces. What is evil forces? That is internal and external. Internal evil forces are our negativities, our negative karma, and the imprints of the internal evil forces. Our hatred is an evil force within us, our jealousy, our obsession all of them are evil forces within us. Particularly where it is coming from, our ego. Traditionally Ignorance what you call it. Those are the internal evil forces, and one who has destroyed the internal evil forces and completely overcome the external difficulties.

Give you a little example from the Buddha’s life story, and I’m quite sure many of you have seen it, that movie called, “The Little Buddha, “ years ago, maybe decades ago. For me it is so funny, I always think it was a few years ago, but maybe it was decades ago. When you look in that movie you will see a scene there and the Buddha tried to meditate under a tree to become a buddha, and at that time all kinds of forces comes in and attack Buddha. I remember that scene. First it sort of tried to seduce Buddha by all kinds of shows, scenes. When that doesn’t work, then throwing all kinds of weapons, Mara and devil looking people. No matter whatever they do, all these weapons they throw in there became flowers, rather than weapons against Buddha. They became flowers. That is the sign of one who had destroyed internal evil forces. When you destroy internal evil forces external things don’t hurt you. It doesn’t mean it is destroyed, but someone who tries to hurt you, they don’t hurt you because they don’t have have the internal evil forces with which you will connect to the internal suffering. That’s why if you overcome the internal evils you can easily overcome the external ones.

There are two ways to overcome, I would like to share with you. We may think overcoming is change the other person completely or subdue that person completely. That is what we think. Yes, that is true. But if you can’t do that the first step is whatever negative forces they put towards ourselves, that doesn’t hurt ourselves, protecting ourself. It doesn’t hurt ourself. That is a way of overcoming. Changing that person or being into a positive being is more difficult than protecting ourself from that effect. So the first what you see is the self has been protected from the evil forces.

I might as well as say it here. What really protects the individual? What kind of meditation protects the individual from those evil attacks as seen in that picture, “The Little Buddha?” Nothing other than meditation on love. Meditation on love, comes with compassion, is the one that really protects. There is the buddha, you know, in the Buddha’s story, we call it fortunate eon. There are supposed to have thousand Buddhas will come. I use the word official Buddha because there were hundreds of thousands of Buddhas without our knowing. There are a hundred thousand Buddhas in this world today for sure. For me when I use the word Buddha, this is because of my background, what I mean is enlightened ones, a hundred thousand of them, functioning everywhere. Then officially comes one or two, like when Jesus appeared, or Shakyamuni. And all of that is the official one; I am buddha and this is my time blah blah blah and that becomes official. Other than that there’s hundred thousands of them. So in this fortunate eon there is supposed to be 1000 official Buddhas appearing.

The next one is supposed to be the Buddha of love, they call it Maitreya. They use the Sanskrit word, they call it love, this is the Buddha of love. Also when you do the protection for ourself, and when you give protection to the others, we don’t protect the people by using the wrathful mantras. Everybody can say HUM HUM PHAT PHAT, it doesn’t matter. That is not a big deal. HUM HUM PHAT PHAT is mantra business. But to work HUM HUM PHAT PHAT one must have the resources of love and compassion. That is when it really works.

I must tell you another story. This is a little bit old Tibetan story, about 300 years ago. Just north of Lhasa there is a mountain called, a village called Pebu (sp). On that mountain there are meditators. One meditator came up and he has been crying, all the time he has been crying. So they nicknamed him as a creature of sadness, always crying. The word in Tibetan means black face or so long face, crying all the time. So it becomes his nickname. So he was a very great practitioner. And there were a lot of ghosts in that area. This is old Tibet. A lot of ghosts, and everybody enjoys. They had a meeting and said there is this new guy up in the mountain there and he always looks so serious. They decided to destroy that guy because you never know he could become powerful and one day he may control us completely. So better destroy him before he gets any development.

So the ghosts had a meeting and one guy said I’ll go, it’s my territory, so he went up there to harm that guy physically, mentally, and emotionally, all of those.

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He went up that guy and he’s crying all by himself, crying, crying, crying.

Even the ghost thought how come this guy is crying so much? The ghost had some power, you know power to read other people’s minds and all that. He’s observing what this guy is crying for? This guy is worry about ghosts in this country and how sad they are and how can I help. He could not find a way to help and started crying. The ghost thought twice, he’s worried about me and we are here to kill him! Is that right? Even the ghost thought, no that’s not right and he went back another day same thing he did. Third time same thing, nothing happened.

So they had another meeting and the chief of the ghosts said you went up there to take care of that. What happened? The guy said I went there three times and he was worrying about us, so I couldn’t do anything. The chief said, all right I’ll take care of him. So the chief ghost went there and found the same thing. He repeated three times and nothing happened. Even the ghosts cannot harm because you are worried about them, all living beings in general and particularly people near you. When they care about you, when they are worried about you, they love you, they are crying about you and how can you go there and use a knife against that guy, or woman? It is not even possible as long as you have intelligence. If you are retarded, looney or robot, maybe you do it. Other than that it would be senseless.

So that is historically how, is an example. I give you two: Buddha and later practitioners. And even common sense, in our daily life, when someone loves you and cares about you it is very hard to hurt that person physically, right? That is how love protects. It is better protection for us than wrathful way. Wrathful way is you hurt one who is going to hurt you through the mantra power, through meditation power. Although it is through meditation it is violence. And violence means violence. Even little ants bite the toe of the elephant, whether that’s effect to the elephant or not the ants will bite. And if you have enough ants, thousands of them keep on biting the elephant somehow something happens, right?

The violence doesn’t help. Violence brings violence. Compassion and love brings care. At least it softens the person. At least it brings to a little neutral state of mind, softens people. And that means we see within our life, every day, don’t we? It doesn’t have to be a buddha who tells us, love touches violence. Even we see ourselves. I’m saying we don’t need Buddha to tell us, something like rocket scientists to tell how it works. That’s what I mean.

So way and how to overcome the evil forces are through compassion, through love, not through violence. So you say something against me and I use the “F” word against you, and all that. That doesn’t work. You may say however whatever anyone says against you, you cannot challenge anything. You are a wimp. Or you say oh you know some of the great traditions say somebody hits you on your right cheek, turn your left cheek. It’s great. No doubt about it. Can I do that? No, not me. I’m sorry, I would not be able to do it. Somebody hits you on the right, you turn the left, I don’t do it. Is that bad? Maybe. Not turning the cheek right and left is uncompassionate? Perhaps not.

What you need is to stop the violence. You need to stop the hatred. You need to stop anger. That helps. How to stop the anger, how to stop the violence. It is very interesting. Violence doesn’t stop it. It is only stopped by changing the mind. Bear with me a few minutes. Normally we think by using a gun we can control everybody, but it is proven again and again and again throughout our history and even today the guns don’t stop. We know it very well, even though we insist.

You know we use two weapons, gun on the one hand and the green dollar on the other hand. This is how we are, take the dollar or do you want me to shoot! That’s what we do, and that doesn’t stop violence. They are happy to take the dollar and fight against you. This is proven again and again. And that is wrong, but then what we needed is change of the mind. Some how we have to use the neutral, compassion, at least change it to the neutral level. And do it for themselves, not necessarily for others, but for themselves.

You know this is really horrible when you look at those suicide bombers. Look at them. Who is their first target? Themself! They have no idea, they go to the gathering. They hope to get the highest number. They hope to get it, but the first target is themselves, and that is because they don’t care for themselves. They don’t have live for themselves and that is why this is happening. Or maybe they think whatever the story is there is 72 virgins waiting for you or something. Whatever that story is. If you commit suicide then there are 72 virgins waiting for you in the next life or something. I always joke and say what about the women suicides, who is waiting for them?

The main idea is the hatred, the anger hurts those, self-hurt. They have given up. They say right, we don’t care, we have given up. That doesn’t mean they don’t hide. They lose the most, the most we have to lose is our precious life. They lose that. That is how I mean they hurt themselves. That is a lack of compassion for themselves. Forget about others. That is a problem today in the world. When the enlightened ones, spiritually developed persons, say destroy the evil forces, it is really the internal evil forces that are most important.

My understanding of spiritual development is this: when you are able to overcome the internal evil forces, it will be your own spiritual development. Even if you don’t overcome you will be better getting to an equal level and then moving up to completely overcome. It is also slightly development, not completely. You don’t just think, sit down and think about it. You are not going to have instantly. It is not going to happen. If it is instantly happening it won’t be true; it won’t be right. It is gradual development. That’s why overcome evil forces means that. Why do I say this here? In the Buddha’s story, Buddha as a spiritual teacher and whatever Buddha’s life story has, and whatever he has done, these are the guidelines for us who are seeking the future after his footsteps. So the idea is when we say overcome the evil forces that doesn’t mean Buddha had to overcome the evil forces. Buddha has overcome the evil forces or has not overcome the evil forces, what difference does that mean to me?

But we say this because it gives me message, idea and a signal that I, the individual me, can overcome my individual evil forces. That is why we say these words. Okay? Maybe I am talking too long now; I should cut it. I can’t say the English. What is the translation? “You who destroy all evil forces and know all things perfectly.” Oh, who knows all things perfectly meaning whoever has wisdom. Again it is not something high untouchable up there, it is the reality of what really is. I mentioned to you last night, we have this ego, the combination of fear and confusion.

What does the confusion do to us? Makes us confused on everything, in reality, even our life. You know the biggest problem we face is this fear of life, not knowing, what is in there for me, what is going on, what happens? That confusion comes from within ourselves, from our own ego. The nature of ego itself is a confused state. So enlightened means, where I come from we believe all enlightened ones are Buddhas and all Buddhas are enlightened. It doesn’t matter whether the name is Buddha or whatever the name it is. All Buddhas are enlightened and all enlightened are Buddhas. That is what I have been taught since childhood, by age 4. Not only I been taught, but I do understand what it means.

That means you know for me it doesn’t matter. I go into Christian churches, I go to Jewish temples, I go to Hindu temples, I go to anything. For me it is one enlightened being, enlightened beings. It doesn’t matter, because enlightened being means the one who knows the really true reality, means the one who has overcome the confusion that we have.

You know why we suffer in our life so much? Because of that confusion. Just like we see to overcome the other people, it is easy to use the gun and dollar and see which one works. These are the only two methods left to us. When someone is threatened with a gun they say do you want to accept this? Yes, yes, yes. They don’t want to die. But the moment the threat is over then they say no, no, no, forget it, or over my dead body. And some crazy people they don’t even mind if they die, and some people call them hero’s. They are all confused, and some are nowhere. When you know the truth, that means you have cut through the mystery of life and see things as they are. You see the reality, then you see the violence here as in our future. You see the love and compassion has a good result. It is no only obvious, it becomes reality. Right now we can’t see it because of the confusion. So knowing all means overcoming the confusion completely.

Normally we say, people say let’s get to the bottom of this. A lot of people use that terminology. Psychologists use it, as well as you know the doctors use it, and everybody else uses it. Let’s get to the bottom of this. The bottom of this is the confusion of it. That is reality, confusion. That confusion confuses us all the time. We are not certain. Even if we have some ideas, good thoughts. A lot of times whatever ideas come up in our understanding some times that is the best.

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The first thought is the best thought, right? Even then a second thought comes up and you put a question mark. Then your head goes right and left, not so sure. You are confused. That is because the root of the confusion is with each of us. We have not been able to overcome, we have not been able to conquer it. That’s why we don’t see the truth and that’s why we don’t get enlightened, because nothing has been overcome. That is why one who knows all things perfectly, free of confusion. Whoever might that be? It is a perfect and divine being, Eastern, Western, whatever. Or from the world of the third kind, like a close encounter with a third kind, wherever they come from. That is the enlightened one, and that’s what we admired and invite.

Why we do the invocation? You know this. In the church we do the invocation, although do we need the invocation? Do we need to invite? Actually, no. We don’t. Enlightened beings are everywhere. Everywhere. That’s why it’s called enlightened beings. Let me explain that a little more. Where we as ordinary human beings come from and where enlightened beings come from are different, because we are not enlightened so we have limitations. We have body limitations, we have mental limitations, we have knowledge limitations, we have kindness limitations, we have compassion limitations, we have limitations for everything. We are very conservative, conservative on compassion, truly! A little joke: George Bush doesn’t have to tell us conservative compassion. We are very conservative on compassion anyway. All of us. My joke made me forget what I’m talking about.

Since we have limitations, we function with limitations at every level. Our mind’s can do something’s our body cannot do. Our body can do certain things our mind cannot do. We have no problem while sitting here, our mind can immediately travel downtown Tokyo, or Beijing, or Singapore. I keep on thinking where head my mind goes. I can see the Singapore downtown, or Beijing, yes I can see the Beijing downtown. But our body cannot, it is stuck here. You have take that big fat body, drag it, and put it in the metal box and then send it whether it is flying or whatever you do. That is the limitations. Total knowledge means that limitation is over for that person. We may think it’s only spirit, no! They have a physical body too. They function at some frequency level. Good old American saying or good old Christian saying whatever it is: God is everywhere. That’s what it means, because it is total knowledge. If there is something to be known it is known to the person where it is. If it’s known, the mind is there. If it’s mind is there, it’s body is there. And that’s the words what means: God’s everywhere.

And I can’t forget this. It was earlier done when I was here, in late 80s, early 90s. You know in the upper tantric College they had a core in the U.S. align with the Grateful Dead, a rock group. They had a function in St. John the Devine in New York City. They asked me to speak there. Somehow that came up there. I told them exactly what you have been told today. The moment I got down from the stage, there is this huge guy, an African American guy a Southern Methodist minister, and something very important, something to do with the U.N., peace, and everywhere else. I forgot his name. He got hold of me and I am a small person. I am not small in Old Tibet, but I am small in America. I’m only 5 foot six and he got ahold of me and gave me a huge big kiss on my lips. And he told me you spoke better than a Southern Methodist. Please return. I don’t even know, I said is this a complement? He said of course. I’m not even sure. So that is why I don’t forget this. And that is not Christian knowledge. I have no Christian knowledge whatsoever and bringing in that from my little knowledge of Buddhism, how enlightened functions. So that is why a total enlightened person has no limitations, gone beyond the limits.

Then Inviting. Please come here. My problem is we don’t need invocation. They are everywhere. However to satisfy our relational minds , we need to invite. It is just to satisfy our mind. I invited. You came! That’s what it is. Oh no, I hope you’re coming. I heard him walking. People do say that in our mind, sometimes. So these invocations are, though we don’t need it, simply training ourselves and satisfying ourselves. That’s why we invite. What do you do when you invite enlightened beings as your guest?

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What do you do? You are not going to slap them, right? So you make, you know the divine beings are actually the best business companion we can have. The best business. We go and try to meet, you know the business people and try to get, hopefully you can get some business done, right? We do that all the time with ourselves, don’t we? Or meet someone, get job or meet someone and get business. That’s what we do. So we invite the divine beings here as our guests. We really want to do business with them. What business? Spiritual business. Not Wall Street business, not Main Street business, spiritual business. Honestly. How do we do spiritual business? It’s just like business, gain and loss. The spiritual path is really gain and loss.

My background is Buddhist, so that’s why I am talking to you from the Buddhist point of view. We call this, divine beings invited as our guests, we call it field of merit, whether it is a single individual person or a lot of them, or whatever it is. It is a field of merit. Field like field on which you can grow corns, right? I live in the Midwest in Michigan, so they call it a field where you can grow corns. Just like that, where you can grow merit. Merit in the sense where you can almost understand where you can build good karma.

Now I am giving you karma. Is this a new terminology to everybody? Looks like not. Very interesting. Looks like everybody knows what karma is all about. Is that right? Did you see it in the dictionary? I haven’t seen it. I was told it’s in the dictionary. Okay. Anyway, I think people have understanding when you say karma. Most people will think it is cause and result. I don’t want to say you are wrong. However, here are two words in Tibetan. One word says “ jumdeh” (sp ) and “umda”(sp), cause and effect, cause and result. Then there is something called “leh jumdeh” (sp). That word is the karma. When you add the word “ leh” it changes its meaning slightly. Not just cause and result alone. Positive causes bring positive result. Negative causes bring negative result. So the word karma is lorjumdeh in Tibetan, not just jumdeh, but lorjumdeh in Tibetan. Should be able to convince from vajra masters to individuals, good positive cause brings positive result, and negative cause brings negative result. That is what karma is all about. Just simply cause and result of the individual. You know individual cause, the seed grows into the tree. The birds dump them in the ground and the seed grows, and it grows the spout, cause and result. It is karma. Maybe I’m being a little picky about that. Where did I get karma from, the field of merit. The business you want to gain is positive karma out of it.

The best fields you can do the Buddhas have a recommended 7 things. Good Indian pundit called Shantideva, has a book called “The Bodhisattvas Way of Life”, says for eons the buddhas taught the best way to help sentient beings, to serve sentient beings, living beings like us. They draw 7 conclusions, 7 points. That’s why there are 7 things to do, recommended to do. They call it 7 limb, whatever they call it, as long as there are seven it doesn’t matter: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Out of seven, some are more important, some are slightly less important. To be true to the tradition we brought all seven in here.

First and foremost is the respect. When we come to somebody; actually in America when somebody rings the bell, we say what you want? Or you want to be polite you say what can I do for you? You say what you want? We don’t say that. In Tibetan culture we say please come in. But it is culture and everything, especially when invited guest comes to your door. The first thing is respect. After invocation you do not insult. You did not invite them to insult. And the best way to respect in the tradition where we come from is prostration. Can you imagine? Prostration! Prostrating Is really touching the highest part of my body to the lowest part of your body, the foot. That is called prostrate. It’s not very welcome in American culture anyway. I’m going to make this short. Prostration is the highest respect you can get. Not only you are giving it. The word in Tibetan is “chak”, chak- sal, giving the body, mind speech, all three together, and

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giving highest respect.

The second word “sal” says what makes you to do this? It is because I admire your wonderful quality. I give you respect because of your quality. The quality that you have. The wonderfulness of who you are, and I like it. I admire, and I want it. I want your quality! That’s where the fire comes in: Chak and sal. Chak means give me, give me, give me. The Tibetan culture doesn’t do that, but the Chinese culture if you look, they will touch their forehead and then they open their arms saying please give me. They are not saying give me your money. This morning somebody was telling me a mantra called what, “oh money pay me soon” or something, right. Instead of saying, OM MANI PEDE HUM, oh money pay me soon or something, right? Doesn’t mean that. They mean give me your quality. Your quality, that means your quality of kindness, your quality of wisdom, your quality of capability. These are the qualities. So respect means you respect the person and you also acknowledge their quality, acknowledge and everything. And give the signal I also want it. It is a little, you can look at it as a little manipulation too because you do something because you wanted something. What you want is the quality, and that is good manipulation. Even though it is manipulation it is good manipulation.

Then what is next? “I offer the best I have to give.” Thank you. I offer the best I have to give. All right. What we have we have divided into two-to give and not to give. Is that right? Just joking, sorry! This step. The first one which we went is not only training ourself to respect other people, and respect ourself, and admire the qualities of the people and admire your own quality. And make the mind of building your own quality. That’s that. Now this one is generosity. Generosity. Giving the best you have, three types of generosity: spiritual generosity, material generosity, and protection from fear. These are the three categories of generosity. People who need it. Mostly what we need is the spiritual, so that we can help ourselves. We can overcome our pain. Once and for all we can get rid of our mental, physical, emotional pain for which we need spiritual generosity. And to overcome our karma self difficulties, material generosity. To overcome our fear, protection. Protecting against evil, one needs protection. These are the wonderful spiritual works, or non-spiritual. Even society, these are the great works. I don’t know about spiritual, but needing people to give food, shelter, clothing and service. Forget about spiritual completely, even in normal society this is the great need and the great deeds we do. And spiritually it is the same thing.

That is why after respect the first thing you do is an act of generosity. Since this is meditation, since this is mind building, so we visualize. We visualize offerings. Just a single little flower or single little incense or a glass of water, is a waste of time. Think the space between you and me is totally filled up with wonderful gifts of whatever, beautiful things. Flower is example, beautiful things. And did you say there is a person named Karma, Samsara? You know I mean the flowers, whatever beautiful, doesn’t have to belong to us.

Sometimes we say well I am so poor I have nothing to give you except a penny. Penny is great, but we don’t have to limit ourself to generate our own positive karma to a penny, whether it is owned by me or owned by anybody else in the world, whatever it is. This is a certain part we own it, belongs to, although it belongs to Bill Gates or somebody. But there is a certain part we own it, because it is a part of this world, and the world is the collective karma of the individual. Anywhere, beautiful places. so we can offer Garrison. We can offer the house and river although we don’t own it, as long as we don’t get into a little trouble. I mean realky, the beautiful things, whatever you see, we can offer them. There are outer, inner and suchness offerings. I just mention this, but it is not important for many of you to know. Those who don’t know, doesn’t matter. That is the offerings.

Why you offer? That is to generate karma to make you rich in future. Generosity is the cause to become wealthy. This is exact opposite. In normal cases to become rich we steal. But here we tell you if you want to become rich, spend! It’s just the opposite, isn’t it? But you know by giving you are building the karma to become rich! The generosity is the wish-fulfilling jewel which fulfills the wishes of the people. It is also the best weapon to fight holding, or stinginess. It is also the best method of building confidence. I can do that, confidence. So all of those. There is tremendous amount of benefit from generosity. I don’t have to explain. You all know. The generosity is not new in this culture. In American culture, generosity is known through generations. Nobody questions whether generosity is good or bad.

But there is one key I would like to share with you. The generosity can make you perfect, good karma. One should never expect to get a return. When you think this is the best way to get wealth, so I’m going to spend here this generosity and then I will get back. So if you are thinking in that way you spoiled our generosity, because it was hoping for a return to us.

So I think that should be enough because if I keep on talking generosity there will be no end to it. The great Indian pundit Aryadeva who gave eyeball and all that started popping up in my mind. These are the great ways they do, but it is beyond our deeds, beyond our thing. So we shouldn’t talk about it. That is Good enough. That is the reason why offering is important. It is not necessarily offering.

And then you know it is very important to see. The offering must respect. There are three types, right? You offer to the higher whatever, enlightened beings; you offer to the people equal to you; and you making offerings to people who are needing, lower people, like a beggar. Especially, there is tremendous sufferings and difficulties in Basra today, as well as everywhere how many is still going on, and these are important. When you do this, every offering must be done with respect. No one would like to throw things at you, or dumping. Dumping may be a gift, just dumped it. Even the receivers say oh yes. The giver has no respect. It is a waste. Why do you give? You want to help them, not because you want a result, but you want to help them. Helping is by changing their mind, by changing their attitude, by giving them comfort, by giving them respect. So without which there is no respect then no fault.(?) In December we had a conference, I even forgot the name, in Toronto’s with his Holiness the Dalai Lama. I was invited to the preparation meeting. You look at each and everyone of them, and they are great people. Each and everyone of them has wonderful ideas, specially the difficulties they face. But at then at the end and what I suggest is what about the receiving person’s point of view, and respect? If you don’t respect the person to whom you give. Buddha in his lifetime, those great Indian kings would like to be generosity. They want to throw their wealth to the public.Buddha said “great”, but the kings, him or herself and the queens by his or herself must pick up their own things and offer to the lowest beggar in the country with all respect. That is what Buddha made them to do. Even the kings of those days, 2600 years ago. Can you imagine the kings? Think about our European kings how they function. So it was even earlier than that. Each and every one of them, whatever the piece of cloth or food the king by himself and the queen by hand offered to the individual person with all respect. So that generosity becomes perfect, and the respect gives them confidence. Gives them the opportunity I think. So that’s what it is. So it has to be mutual respect. That is important. That is important. Oh yes there are some people who like to give anonymous donation. That’s fine, but it must have respect. Generosity. I think that should be enough.

What is the next one? “I regret and purify all transgressions.” Oh, purification. I’m going to stop here because purification is a very big subject. It’s important so I am going to take a 15 minute break here. Please take a break here.

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(After break). Welcome back. The next is the verse dealing with the purification, right? I think it is very important, very important in our life, purification. This is strange. In the karma system you know it is something very interesting. Although, when you have committed a negativity, someone killed someone, when one regrets, and you cannot bring that person back, when someone is killed. That does not mean you cannot purify the negativities. It is interesting when you look at it.

There is a tremendous amount of interesting things in our culture. It is something very interesting. When you are looking at those people who have committed negativities, such as very recently in Pennsylvania, children got killed and wounded. It is the beautiful Amish culture, we just forget and forgive it, and go forward, even inviting the killer’s family for the funeral, and all of them are wonderful traditions. And great. I admire and it is wonderful.

On the other hand, in our culture also we have the idea of taking revenge all the time. Revenge, revenge, revenge. Sometimes people don’t use the name for revenge, they use a beautiful little name called closure. I’m sorry, don’t laugh. It is really interesting. And then another name for that is justice. It is all our culture, a great tradition no doubt. But revenge and all of those are very questionable from the point of karma, it makes it continue. You kill me. I kill against you, and it continues, I kill you, you kill me, I kill you, you kill me. It makes sure the circle continues. Never ends, never ends. It will continue. And many times even here, all right I die, but I will become a ghost and get you. I don’t know if they get it or not, but however, we see that. We think that. That idea is, you know, to get revenge. That to me is an extremely sad thing. I don’t know, it’s justified, maybe. We say it is justified. I don’t know what is really justified.

We lost over 3000 people in 9/11, and then we justify reacting. That’s fine to me. But then we have wars on top of that and how many people get killed? Even our own people, you know. 2700 soldiers is the number we get, and that is only the Army in uniform. What about those special operations people? What about truck drivers, even talking about Americans only, not talking about Iraqis. What about the civilians working. I’m sure these numbers would be put up much more. Then Iraqis, they are also human beings. So that is really a sad thing and it continues. Other wise people like Buddha and like Jesus, are giving the idea of forgiving, purification, all of those. And we all claim to be kind persons, compassionate persons. And we don’t get near there, we have to get them whether it is justified or not justified, we need to get justice done, and all this.

Anyway, forget about it. As an individual person when we committed negativities, directly or indirectly. Indirectly we commit too, you know? Each and every one of those people get killed in those wars. By engaging ourselves so much in the world affairs, and neglecting the other side,and all of them, by killing here and not killing here we contribute, indirectly through our taxes, contribute. I don’t mean don’t pay your taxes, you have to but I look at it as generosity. They are going to take it anyway. If you don’t they will put you in jail, so do it happily as generosity, thinking from our mind thinking it is a contribution towards good things, saving a life, giving an education and hoping on that we contribute from our side. Wherever they use, that’s their use.

So indirectly we do have those negativities, we carry. And not only that. Everywhere we go and whatever we do we create negativities. We are not living in a pure land. We drive a car in that road, and that is not a pure land. There are a lot of insects and we drive and hit the creatures here and there. The skunks will let you know you hit them. Other than that, knowing or not knowing, we hit a number of them too, and we have a lot of negativities, including our own, in that. Then we have the negativity, this may not be so obvious, but the negativity of skiing too. (?)

If you carefully look at it from the Buddha’s eyes we all have a little bit of negativity here and there, this and that. You never know, though we did nothing openly, but you know maybe anything is possible….social misconduct, negativities through physical. Then lying. Three by body, four by speech, three by mind. Especially mind one. Three by mind very easy to get. Very very easy. Being my, being me and wanting to hurt, hatred.

There is one Buddhist one. That is the wrong view. This is Buddhist dogma because Buddha taught it is harmful to the individual, sort of knowing and believing that nothing is true. Karma is not true. Enlightenment is not true. Negativity is not accessible, positivity is not believable. All of those types of things they call wrong view because what you perceive, what you think, is wrong. Negativities are accessible. Negative karma is accessible, not permanent. So does the positive karma too. They are also buildable. We can build as much as we want to. These sort of come under the wrong view. It is more Buddhist doctrine than actually there, but it is harmful to the individual. Individuals who believe negativities cannot be purified is very difficult. It is very difficult because we remember what we did wrong. If we cannot make it right, how difficult it’s going to be for the individual person, especially if it is at a time when you need to go, you remember all this. And you don’t know what to do. Truly you put yourself, ourselves, into a hopeless situation. That’s why it is harmful to the individual so Buddha chose to call this wrong view. It may be a little dogma, but there is a reason for this.

Any one of those negativities, and especially in our everyday life, we create so many difficulties to the others without realizing because we have been influenced by two points: self cherishing and ego grasping. Self cherishing and ego grasping thoughts, these are the two culprits we have. And then ignorance makes think, ah this way is the way to protect me, that way is the way to protect me. Ignorance is actually stupidity, really stupid.

So what do we do with all these negativities that we have knowingly or unknowingly? Collected from the limitless time, you know, time of the beginning, whenever it begins, limitlessness. We do carry them with us. Some of them we paid for, many of them not. We carry both, positive and negative. No doubt about it. That’s why we have good time, bad time all the time. Because of those negative and positive karmas we have.

Now before we go to the purification the question arises. Is it changeable? Purification is a nice way. In other words you wash it away. You change it. The question is is it changeable? Answer is definitely yes, very strongly yes. Not because Buddha said so. Not because Jesus said so, forgive and forgiving. Even logical. Think: there is a reason for this, a strong reason. That is it is impermanent. It changes. We are all impermanent, impermanent. We change every minute of our life. We change our physical look. We change all the time. We change our mind all the time. How many times we change our mind? We change, because it is impermanent. It is changeable. How it changes?

1:40 min.

Change is because of cause and conditions. I sound like a lawyer. But conditions, cause and conditions make change. That is the reality of our life. Nothing is permanent. Long life is not permanent. Suffering of the people is not permanent. Nothing, our lives are not permanent. There is nothing really permanent at all. Everything is impermanent. Impermanent means change, not only change, but change is almost like 300 times in a matter of seconds. That is how changing we are. We change our physical body. We change our mind. We change everything so much, all the time. No matter if you are sad, bad, in difficulty today, you can be happy and joy and nice, and enjoyable tomorrow. Vice a versa. If you are happy today, you can be sad tomorrow. That is because it is impermanent. The total reason is impermanence. Where and how it changes is the conditions. We have the freedom to change the conditions.

That is where the purification really comes in. It is not really, you know it may or may not be, you know you go to somebody, I hurt you, forgive me. If that person forgives, you get happy. If that person doesn’t forgive, you get more angry. At the same time they do all that. So the Buddha’s wisdom is never talk about it going to the person, seeking freedom. But it does talk about regretting, it does talk about acknowledging.

So basically where and how to change the conditions according to what the Buddha taught is by utilizing four powers. They call it four powers. And there are different schools, and different teachers have a slightly different way of talking on this, teaching on this. However, what I know is we call the basic foundation of the power, and that is two things. Actually compassion is the one important point here, compassion. Compassion to the people who are not enlightened. If you hurt.

Negativity means you hurt somebody, you hurt people. You hurt a rock, or you hurt a stone, that doesn’t become negativity. Some of them may have life, that’s different. Mostly rocks, they don’t have life. Some of them they do. So since you hurt nothing that is just one of those things. It is not connected with a consciousness so you don’t hurt. You cut the rocks into pieces and build a building, you don’t call that a negativity, do we. But you know negativity means you hurt some living beings, somebody with a life, somebody with a mind, somebody with a consciousness and you hurt them. So what do you do? You generate compassion with the person you hurt. If it is not object of compassion, someone enlightened or something, you take refuge. From the Buddhist point of view we say refuge. So combination of taking refuge and generating compassion is the basis of the power. Power one. The basis of the power.

Power number two is most important, regret. Whatever I did something I have to regret. If I don’t regret, why should I purify? So I don’t regret, I will do it again, right? People do say that. I have no regrets, I’ll do it again. There is no guaranty I won’t do it again. We have no regret. Why you are purifying?

You know in order to get regret, you have to recognize. If you don’t recognize you did something wrong, then there is nothing to be regretted because you don’t even recognize. How many times we thought we people have difficulties, getting along well with others. We say no matter how much I said he didn’t get it. You don’t recognize you did something wrong, right? I thought we say normally, he didn’t get it, she didn’t get it. We always say that. Didn’t get it means don’t recognize, don’t acknowledge. If you don’t acknowledge that we did something wrong to someone why should I have to purify? Why should I regret because I didn’t do anything wrong. Most of our arguments, people talk to us, people tell us. We, instead of regretting, we fight back saying I didn’t do anything wrong. Sometimes our mind is such a tricky, that we really think I didn’t do anything wrong.

But in reality sometimes we hurt people without knowing. We do. Very often we do hurt people we don’t know in many ways. By way of looking, by way of talking, by way of anything. I do have experience on that personally as well as a witness a number of times. By not knowing, it is so important that we have an open mind. We shut our mind, we think I did nothing wrong. It is very strong with us. I did nothing wrong, the other person is crazy, always. Our number one excuse, crazy, unstable mind. What else? All these we use.

One time I remember, this is a very good example, I won’t name. All the people are alive and with us so I won’t name them. Somebody was sitting there, and one person without telling. It was during the, there is a mayor in New York before Giuliani. He was an African American, right? So somebody’s talking, blah, blah, blah, you know? I mean literally a racist remark and there is an African American lady and she keep on hinting. Then suddenly person looked and said, ah, to me you are a lawyer, not an African American! She said, and that is exactly in her mind the racist view. That happens, you know, with everything. We do have that. We have to be very open minded, very careful, think three, four times.

Sometimes we hurt people by making jokes. Sometimes the jokes are to a certain extent it if it goes through it goes through, if it doesn’t go through that it is a joke. We do that too. We have a saying in Tibet it is Chinese language, if it doesn’t go, it is Mongolian language. Tibetans and Mongolians have two different languages, right? We speak something. If it goes it’s Chinese, fine. It doesn’t go it’s Mongolian. That is how sometimes we function. These are not good. We need very open mind, and recognize. We hurt more people by not knowing what we are doing rather than knowingly. We are good persons. We are basically kind persons, caring persons, compassionate persons. We don’t want to hurt anybody for sure. But unknowingly we hurt. We justify it by saying I don’t mean it; I mean good. And we do justify a lot of meanness by saying this. Ends should not justify means. Justify meanness we do that very often.

That is why recognition. When you recognize, you hurt people. When you realize that, you have a tremendous opportunity to purify because it is really an opportunity to make it right.

We will do wrong. We have a saying, not we have a saying, but we say we are Buddhists. We are not Buddha. So we do wrong because we are not Buddha. If we don’t do wrong, we must be Buddha. No, we do wrong all the time, yes, all the time. We must have awareness, we must realize, and we must recognize. Once you recognize, ah we may be a little afraid of it, embarrassed, afraid. But it is an incredible opportunity to do right. It is an incredible opportunity to do right. We must look from that angle not to look from the angle of embarrassing, cover up. Nobody can cover up anything else. The cat may be able to cover up in whatever that little box is, but that’s about it. No one can cover up anything. So don’t go down that road. Take the opportunity. It is an incredible opportunity to make it right.

This is our daily life I am talking about. I’m not talking about sitting and meditating in the field, the trees, or the temple. No I’m talking about everyday life. Recognize, and add a little bit of embarrassment and maybe a little bit of fear too. This brings regret. That really brings regret what you did. I’m sure Mark Foley must be regretting tremendously. But you know still it’s not too late, right? It’s not too late. I always very often think, even it is not too late for Sadam Hussain. It’s not too late. He may be killing, but for him to make right he still has the opportunity, and probably now we’ll never know, right? We’ll never know, probably. Who knows? He may still think he’s right. He did everything right. I think it’s amazing. The other day, not the other day, two months ago I was so shocked that Chief justice. He says. You’re not a dictator, he said. You’re not dictator and he looked at him in shock, “What did you say?” He repeated, You’re not a dictator. The next day they brought out a new Chief Justice. It’s so funny, it’s all drama there, nothing but drama there, nothing but drama. And that drama is neither purification nor justice. Nothing. It’s just show, whatever it is. Anyway, recognize and regret. When you have the regret, then you have the opportunity. When you don’t have acknowledgement and regret, you have no opportunity at all. Opportunity to purify.

So what are we doing today, this morning? I mean I wish I could finish this but I will not be able to complete the four powers. I learned one thing from His Holiness: finish on time, start on time, finish on time. And if you can’t finish up on time, it’s not right. So I do remember I was taking teaching from His Holiness about “Bodhisattvas’ Way of Life” in Chung (sp) somewhere up in the mountains, in the Himalayas. For the first time His Holiness heard Tibetan time, had the Tibetan clock, ten or fifteen minutes late, Tibetan time. His Holiness was not happy with that, it’s late. He said somebody said Tibetan time. It’s not. I’m going to prove it. So the teachings usually started about ten in the morning. The next day he started teaching at 9 o’clock whether there was anybody there or not! Two days later everybody coming at 9 o’clock and he starts teaching at 8 o’clock. At the end of that he said that’s Tibetan time! Somehow he didn’t like the word Tibetan time and late, and he started two hours ahead of the schedule. But now, you know, wherever you go and His Holiness is teaching everything starts on the dot. He just starts and does all that. So I’m not trying to be His Holiness, but I think on time is important. So I was hoping to do two powers, but I only did two. Two left. Next time those two.

What did we talk about today?

2:00 min.

We talked about invocation. Those words. One thing I forgot, the story behind this invocation. There was a great Indian king and a daughter who was really devoted to Buddha and the daughter was sent to a marriage somewhere very far away. Those days far away does not necessarily mean far away nowadays. When I was in Tibet, going from Lhasa to my monastery, Drepung, you know we had to make provisions for horses and all that and then it was almost like a day long. It was definitely half a day. But then you go in the middle of the day, by the time you get there it is a whole day job. Now I realize it takes about ten minutes to drive it. Those days far away does not necessarily mean that far. But however, it is far.

So she was longing for seeing Buddha and she asked permission of her husband, a king, to host Buddha and his disciples for lunch. It is very far away. So she keep on going on the top of the palace holding incense, looking toward the direction of central India and saying these prayers. And Buddha knew everything, and the day before Buddha told his congregations tomorrow we have to go as a guest for lunch. Those who can fly, they accept the invitation; those who cannot fly, they don’t go. What happened is Buddha and all those disciples who can fly started flying from central India literally to her place and landing on the roof of the palace. It’s called Namrata story. So this verse is coming out of that, and that’s why in all 12 of the Buddhist areas they consider this as important. I noticed this translation is slightly different available in China, slightly different in Malaysian, even the Japanese they have it. I don’t know whether they tell the story behind or not, but I did know it. So we say that in English. That is invocation. That is the reason.

I explained each and every word what it means and what is meant to praise the enlightened beings and what is meant to us as individuals how to retravel the spiritual path. Followed by seven limbs, first prostration, then offering as generosity. Now we are at on the purification, and their four powers. Out of the four powers we did two, and two to come up, and that is where we are, why we are doing this. Those of you who have a Buddhist practice they always do. Those who don’t have a spiritual practice, if they want to have a spiritual practice, not necessarily focused on Buddha anybody else, this is commonly can use it, by anyone. Not only that, it is very effective, small, short, but a huge vast contemplation. That’s why we are bringing that up, in order to develop compassion, in order to gain perfect on compassion, they need those things. These are the actual materials we need to build within us. Otherwise, just keep on thinking compassion, compassion, compassion will be just like thought, teach the palate to say compassion and build nice thoughts… compassion, compassion, compassion. That doesn’t mean anything. As a human being we have to do better than that. That is why they are provided it.

We will stop here. David will sum up. David is a very very great spiritual practitioner, for a very long time. David worked with Trumpa Rimpoche for years, who I look as the father of Tibetan Buddhism in the United States and in Western Europe. Even if David did nothing, just by association with Trumpa Rimpoche alone, he is way ahead of us. So here he is. He is going to sum up and I quit. See you in the afternoon or evening, according to that schedule.

Before you are coming, David, I also have a meeting with a number of peoples. Those individual meetings that we have time limit I think it’s about 15 minutes or something. I think it’s not very clear I was told, so just wanted to say that. See you again.

David: That was a very big build up. The reality is that Trumpa Rimpoche, the teacher that I studied with, we never did exactly this kind of summarizing and this analytical meditation. In fact, I’m doing this for the first time.

Let’s start with some meditation, mindfulness meditation. Might be good to just let go of all the words and concepts and responses and reactions just now. Just come back to simply being present here in our bodies. Let the whole thing just rest, settle down and just be. Staying in meditation, trying to keep with our awareness and sense of simply being present, we’ll do a review and contemplation of the topics from Rimpoche’s talk. The idea here is there is a progression. One is learning, especially with spiritual teachings. First you have to be present and listen, so we’ve been listening to Gelek Rimpoche.

Then you contemplate and the contemplation also has different stages. So right now it is a re-listening. It is listening again to the topics without trying to think too much or analyze too much at this point. But to hear and see in our meditative state maybe more clarity comes. Some of the basic sense of the message, a more holistic sense of it. When we speak more this afternoon, we’ll become more analytical, bring intellect into it, more looking into it. A bit more in your individual contemplation in the first session after lunch and then more so in the discussion groups. Then especially in the last session before dinner which is the analytical meditation proper.

Rimpoche said that he thought it is important to say something about the chants, the few that we are doing and why one does those. The first four lines is the invocation, which can be of Buddha, but not necessarily. It can be an invocation of any enlightened ones, of divine beings however that is for us. “You who destroy all evil forces and who know all things perfectly for the sake of all beings, please come to us.” The first topic was the evil forces which are internal and external. The important point is that when the internal evils are destroyed, then the external ones can’t hurt us.

The further point there is only through meditation on love are we protected from evil. And this theme comes back later in the talk. It is not by responding an eye for an eye, but it is by changing in one’s own mind from negative or evil to love and caring. Love protects us. Rimpoche told the story of the crying saint and the ghosts. Then he said well it is really just common sense. When somebody really cares for you it is hard to hurt that person. Turning that around, when we really care for others, it is hard for them to hurt us. Love softens people. Therefore, it protects us. But this only happens by changing our mind, and it begins with bringing love for ourselves. Anger or hatred, the first victim of our anger or hatred is ourself. We are harming, injuring our precious life. So we should commit to destroying the internal negative forces and understand this doesn’t happen in an instant, but gradually, slowly.

The role of the Buddha traditionally is not so much that he will save us, but that he presented a guideline for us, a message, a signal, that we too, each of us, can overcome negativity. And the Buddha and other enlightened beings know all things perfectly. They see reality as it is. They overcome the basic confusion about the mystery of life. That basic confusion is from our own ego. Here Rimpoche made the point that all Buddhas are enlightened and all enlightened ones are Buddhas. What matters is not the tradition or the culture, but the realization of love and compassion. That becomes reality.

Therefore we invite or invoke enlightened ones. Do we need to? No. They are everywhere, but we do because we have limitations. We are conservative on compassion, limited. Our compassion is limited. The enlightened ones are unlimited and in that sense, everywhere. So we invite them, even though they are everywhere, we invite them to satisfy our rational mind and to train ourselves. We invite them to do spiritual business with us. This is traditionally called the field of merit, inviting divine beings as our guests. It becomes a field in which just as one grow corn in a cornfield we can grow merit. We can build good karma. Rimpoche made the point that in Tibetan terminology and understanding karma isn’t just cause and result,

2:20 min.

but it is positive causes bringing positive results, negative causes bringing negative results. So it has to do with our state of mind and intention. Then traditionally certain things are recommended to do. This brings us to the second chant, the seven practices, or the seven limbs: prostrating, offering, purifying, rejoicing, requesting to remain, requesting teaching and dedicating merit, which are described in the chant.

The first of those: “I bow down in body speech and mind,“ is about respect, paying respect, giving respect. In this case toward enlightened ones, but it is also a general principle in our relationships. Not just saying, “What do you want?” but giving respect. Traditionally, that is done by a full prostration, lowering your head, your highest point, to the ground to put it on the level of the lowest point of the feet of the other person. That represents giving all of ourselves, our body, mind, and speech. At the same time it is a request. It is an acknowledgement of the wonderful quality of the other, admiration for that, and asking to receive the kindness, wisdom. Rimpoche called it a good kind of manipulation. So that is the first of the seven branches, giving respect or prostrating.

The second one is generosity. “I offer the best I have to give both real and imagined to fill the space between us.” You might be visualizing Buddha or an enlightened one out in front of one in space and take the attitude of giving, offering. That’s visualized by imagining all space filled with beautiful things. One is giving those up and giving them up. He made an interesting point, an important point is that we don’t have to own it in order to give it. In a spiritual way of understanding, we do own, have a part in everything, everything in the universe. It’s not about property rights. So there is an attitude of possessing tremendous wealth not in a selfish way, but as a basic birthright. This is last night Rimpoche talked about self respect and the importance of self respect and the precious human life. The precious human life is a human body, but it is also the entire universe. We have that to give, so we offer that. In fact generosity itself is the source of wealth. Generosity cuts stinginess and builds confidence. Remember in your generosity don’t expect to get rewarded, don’t expect to get something in return. Just give.

The third branch is purification. “I regret and purify all transgressions.” Rimpoche gave the example of the Amish in Pennsylvania, their immediate forgiveness and generosity toward the family of the mad killer and their children, as opposed to actions which continue the cycle of violence. We do commit negativity directly or indirectly, knowingly or even more often unknowingly. The good news is it can be changed. It can be purified. This is so because everything, including ourselves, are fundamentally impermanent, always changing, changing because of causes and conditions. We have the freedom to change the causes and conditions, but we cannot do this unless there is regret and recognition, acknowledging that we do harm, that we have caused harm.

This brings the topic of the four powers. The first one is the basic foundation, this is all within the category of purification. Rimpoche is presenting the four powers and he gave us two. The first one is compassion for all the suffering beings we have hurt directly or indirectly. Rimpoche gave the example of a car running over insects. We could say the same thing for the food we eat, the harvesting, production and cooking of that food. Injury is caused unknowingly to other beings. We generate compassion. The second power is regret, recognizing that we have done wrong, not fighting back insisting we didn’t do anything wrong. So it is so important to be open minded, not blaming the other person for the crazy way. It was all their fault, and making jokes about them. We are basically kind and caring, but unknowingly we hurt others. If we can recognize this we have the opportunity to purify. Maybe at first we feel afraid, guilty, embarrassed about what we’ve done, but what is important to understand is that this is an incredible opportunity to do the right thing. Not to cover it up. It’s never too late, even for Sadam Hussein.

We’ll take our lunch break now. Thank You.