Archive Result

8

Relinqushing Blame

20070415

Good morning and welcome everybody. And thank you for the introduction. Thank you. And thank you for the beautiful prayer. Relinquish the blame. Okay. So what I have been doing these days, mostly between here the Ann Arbor as well as the New York, been giving the lecture and talking on mind. Mind and what we call it mental faculties. There's no separation then mind (???) but activities of the mind. So one of the principle things that we've been talking here is that earlier teaching of Buddha, this is 2600 years old wisdom, it says the mind itself is luminous. As pure and clean and luminous. All obstacles that we collect, or blocks, make the mind unable to function, whatever they are encounter, they are all temporary. Like space is a pure, clean, no obstacles. We can see beautiful sunshine, like today here, or if it is like full moon night, with no cloud, it will be wonderful, nice and romantic. You know, that is the mind itself. So everything, whatever, blocks like a cloud, or the storm, or all of those, are temporary. Temporary in the sense, it is not by nature, it is part or parcel of the mind, however, it is there. Is it there - to be able to separate. Is it there to be able to separate. It is separable. It is not inseparable, that of mind, but it is separable. That is what it means, temporary.

So in our culture, American culture, we would like to blame, take a lot of blame to ourself. Everytime, it's my fault. Also blame is o.k,, but sometimes many of American culture, they pick up guilt. And it's this guilt that tortures the individual tremendously. It is true that when we have committed some kind of negativites, we cannot . . . . Why there are two parts, I almost said you cannot undo. You can undo to a certain level. We can correct. But if you have killed somebody, by correcting you cannot bring that person back. However, however, you can do lot of things, lot of things to compensate, whatever the mistakes we have made. Very clearly, right now, the war in Iraq is a mistake. You know 3,000 whatever, 400 or 600 American lives lost. It is a mistake. Each and every death is unnecessary. And then Iraqis, more than half million human beings have been killed. Although our administration would like to dismiss that, that figure. The figure came out and ah, it is only 20,000 we know, 30,000 we know, they dismiss it. But about a month or two ago, I was listening to BBC, and the freedom of information in England, that shows, they have the correct figure. And they presented it to the Blair administration and they hushed it, according to the BBC. So that means more than half million human beings have been killed.

So certainly that's not necessary. And it's not ending there, anything else, I mean every day, something else goes on, someday, everyday. We cannot bring back those half million or more than half million human beings. However, we cannot stop killing. However, we can stop killing. And those people who have been wounded over there, and come back here, we can treat them decently. And these are the remedies we can do. Even the World War II, we have the huge trouble, but then you know, the wonderful American culture, we have a set of remedies. The old Marshall Plans to help, Germany and Europe in general, and Germany in particular, way and how we compensate and whatever we created. And that time it was necessary. That time it was necessary. Today it is almost unnecessary. Some people might not agree, yeah true, but that's your right. Many people do agree, and that's our right. But we have to do something to stop the killing continue.

Just like that, this is larger scale for individuals. Within our individuals, dealing with one to one human beings. And particularly, it is most thing, we create our own negativities. And when we are sitting with one to one all the time, this is most likely support where we create our negativities. The people who are most close to you, in this case your spouse or your companion, or your children sometimes. Very conveniently in-laws. So this is where we normally create negativities. And creating negativity does not really have to be there, just hitting them or beating them up, or shouting at them, or killing them, we don't have to. When you are hurting their feelings, that is the most important point. When you hurt the feelings, it happens. I can tell you with my personal experience. Sometimes we can hurt people without knowing anything. Though we may have good intention, we like to help the person. And you know the certain way that person is functioning is not right, not the best for him or herself. But we like to help it.

And then way and how we help, it is becoming the method. It makes the people hurt. And we don't realize, I don't realize that until way later. Way later, I don't realize that. Although I cannot almost say I always try to maintain good motivation. And good motivation is very good thing within the Buddha's teaching. However, one cannot justify a good motivation for, you know . . . the motivation cannot justify the deeds. As well as end cannot justify means. So we all know that. We do just fine, means, because the end result is great. But I don't think end can justify means. That's where we get hurt people. Honestly. And we don't realize at all, and the years go by, and somehow you begin to know. And by the time you begin to know, you be very sorry about it. You have a tremendous regret, and you feel sorry about it. But then you never know where you have opportunity to make it right or not, you never know. Sometimes it's brought to your attention and you begin to realize this is what happened. And many people do get upset at that moment. Many people do get upset. When you are upsetting, what's happening? You are depriving yourself of opportunity to make it correct.

And when you are, when you have the opportunity, it is great opportunity, that you can correct. As I said earlier, you cannot bring back the people who you killed. However, you can compensate and purify. Purify. The idea within us sometimes, the purification is not in so much important, I mean, it's important, but not really bought, not sort of, not bought in our culture, am I correct? In American culture, I think mostly the purification is not really openly bought it. So you did something wrong, you have done something wrong, so you cannot help it. You can do nothing except, I don't know, you can go to hell or whatever. Beside that, no other ways of doing it. And that perhaps makes the people to blame individuals. So you know, blaming yourself or blaming others, makes [you] lose the opportunity. According to the Buddha, here I'm talking to you from the Buddha's point of view because that's the only thing I know. So Buddha says, and proved, at the time when Buddha was in life in India, no matter whatever heavy negativities, Buddha called them five limitless negativities. Killing your two parents, two, and killing arhats, one of the sages, and now even I forgot, I'm sorry. And then one is - Buddha called drawing the blood from the Buddha. That doesn't mean drawing literally drawing, it is something else. Anyway, that these sort of five limitless, unlimited negativities, there is no bigger than that. Sort of, from the consequences point of view. And says even one who created all five at the same time, and repeatedly, and that person can purify.

And giving the example of cloud and space, there are raining days. Completely. We know the gray weather in Michigan is not news to us. We always have that for all winter long. So no matter how grey it might be, there will be time that cloud be removed, sun shines again. The space. The pure, wonderful, beautiful space can prevail, just like today. So this is the reality of our human beings. So no matter how much, how heavy we make mistakes. . . . We do make mistakes because . . . you know what we say within Buddhist? We say because we are Buddhist we make mistakes. If we don't make mistakes, we should have been Buddha. So we are not Buddha yet, we are Buddhist. So therefore we do make mistake. So every human being will make mistake and we do make mistakes, and we keep on making mistakes again. No matter how much you fall, it's like a child. Learning how to walk. How many times you fall? We have to make sure we get up, we just don't lie down on the ground. We get up and walk again. Move forwards.

Purification is something very big within the Buddhism. Buddha has told everyone - the Buddha's message to all of us, to be remembered is, in our nature, our mind is luminous. Everything, whatever comes it is temporary. Nothing can be damaged in our nature. We are all to be about enlightened. We have the capability to be able to become enlightened, fully pure just like the Buddha himself. Years ago, he himself like us, like us, full of delusions, full of hatred, full of obsessions, full of jealousy, yet worked out. And become pure, become a buddha. We all have the right, and the capability, to be a buddha. All of us. This is our human, not only human, our living right that we all have the capability . It is up to us whether we put efforts, or we let it go. Like Hindus have a joke . . . We do the same thing. To the sun shine, sunset, get up and go. That's how we pass days, weeks, months and years. And finally, time becomes too late to do anything. So if we don't do that, if we put efforts, we all have capability, possibility to become just like the Buddha.

This is our living right, according to the Buddha. Doesn't matter whether you are a man, woman or kid. This is our potential. If we explore, we have opportunity. You all have opportunity right in front, right under your own nose. If you don't take it, then you become [ARHAM GHIARAM???]. Thank you. Any questions?

Q. Can you talk a little bit about blaming oneself and violence towards oneself?

A. To me, violence is violence. Whether you are violence against yourself or violence against others, it is all violence. The violence does not become any good result, at all. Thank you. And good result, you know why? I am thanking your question. If you look at in our history, right in front of us. Anyone of those violence, has never been successful. Looking history, whether it is big nations. the dictators, or small individual families or individual persons. Anything violence will give you no good result whatsoever. On the other hand, non-violence has achieved almost whatever they want to do. We have so many examples in this. Looking in the violence activities in the history, big history picture. Look at it. Look all this earlier dictators, kings, and lately look at Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao of China, even Saddam Hussein. No good result. As we see. On the other hand, look at Buddha, Ghandi, the Mother Theresa, and his Holiness the Dali Lama. And Nelson Mandela. Dr. Martin Luther King. And just big example right in front of us. Then, similarly, individual families. The parents who abuse a kid. The man who abuses the woman. Vice versa, the woman who abuses the man too. Honestly. Abuse is . . . although we mostly blame for the man, but you know there are both ways. Always two way street. Two way street. So all this abusing people ,they don't have good result. The kid does not turn out to be, mostly does not turn out to be great, because of the example we provided. Provided. So no matter whoever you may be . . . if you are exposed to abusive thing, and you are most likely to produce the younger human being to be abusive.

You know in my case, as childhood, and one of the way to get in the Tibetan monastery's discipline is to beat you all the time. They really do beat you - a lot. And in my personal experience, when I'm looking back, I am not so surprised when I see people beating. It's not so shocking, because I've seen it. And even on me, one time I noticed, I have a lot of dogs in India And I noticed one day I started beating dogs, I mean hitting the dog. And then I realized, oh, this is wrong. And so where it come from? Because I saw the teachers beat the students in the monastery, all the time. But although they have very good intentions, no personal agenda for whatsoever, and it's only meant to improve, improve the individual. Even then. That's why I begin to say motivation cannot justify means. Nor end cannot justify means.

So this is what happens. As well as, when you can't blame anybody else, the easy target is yourself. And you begin to abuse yourself. What for? Don’t we have enough suffering, enough pain everywhere, wherever we look? We do, we have enough suffering, enough pain. So why we create one more? Not only from the negative point of view, very practical point of view. Why do we create another pain for yourself? Some people may justify this, I do know someone, some people, just fine, saying it is my purification. That is not your purification at all. I do know someone who had ulcer, who is friend of mine, I call it friend rather than student, who refused to take medicine because ulcer pain is my purification. It took me five years to convince her to take medicine. Firve years. And very reluctantly she took pills, and she feels better. Even then, she said because you said it I took one month treatment, but now I'm not taking. You know sort of thing. Because it's my purification. You know, this is, I don't know, blind faith or what it is. For me, if I don't have to endure any suffering, even a single minute, I will not, no matter whatever. The other day, just two days ago, somebody was calling me, not friend, not student of mine. Student of another Tibetan Rimpoche. The person is dying with the cancer. So he doesn't want to take morphine because he think I am going to die anyway and my mind will not be clear at the time I die . I told him, even your mind is clear, do you know what you are going to do, do you know how you are going to control it? So it's better not have the pain. Just as long as your mind is clear at, up to that moment, think the positive things. Such as the faith or anything else, good positive things. As long as you don’t have control over your mind, when you begin to lose control, that is o.k. That is how one should do, rather than taking a morphine, and given by doctor, and not taking morphine and try to die with that. And anyway, that is very brave and one very great, however, I think it is unnecessary problem for the individual.

So this is what it is , And even the faith is good enough, very good. It is, you know, faith provides hole. And compassion of the enlightened beings is like hook. So when they swing the hook, there is a hole they can pull it. When there is no hole, no matter you know, no matter how much the hook they swing, they can't get hook nowhere. In case you are bald-headed sexy guy, you may even have cut over. Thank you.

I guess it is that time now.

Q. Could you review the four purifications?

A. I shall do that on Tuesday. Thank you.

Q. (something by Robert Thibideau that was not clear).

A. Right, Robert. This is the [lampen di chi lin dos?????]. So all the blame, put on blame where it belongs to. Right. And where it belongs to? It belongs to your own ego, not you. It is the ego. The ego is the one who are creating all problem. This is a little, I did not share that earlier, it came up as a question, I did not share that earlier because that is sort of total different ballgame here. So that's why. But that is seeing all faults, every problem that we have, it is the ego that created the problem. So all the blames really belong to the ego. And this is the way how one destroys one's ego. It is actually great way of developing ultimate, unlimited, unconditioned compassion. Because the compassion is always blocked by ego, because ego probably crying for . . . saying me is not me, it is my ego. So that's why it blocks all the compassion. At that practical level, blaming to ego. And so the [lampen di chi lin dos?????] Every blame belongs to one, that is ego.

Actually it is ego who makes you cry. Ego who gives you all kinds of false information. Even if it is not true, it will make it look like true. And you know, it is ego has many tricks it can play to build your attachment, to build your hatred. This is what they do. That is why Rumsfeld has built the hated of America, hatred of America for whoever by his ego trips. For him, in my feeling, for him it might be very sincere thought for him. From his point of view, this is we have to do it, this has got to be done. This has to be destroyed No matter what it takes. If don't destroy now, it will destroy us later. From his, I'm not pretend to know Rumsfeld, but my guess it that this is how the motivations might have ???? This is the ego place, the ego does that. And when you are leader, your ego becomes the ego of the country. This is how, you know, the leadership can sometimes mislead huge number of people. Otherwise, people have no problem. People is great, people is kind, people are compassionate, people cares. But individual leaders can lead, and that is the ego. That's where, when they say all the blame belongs to. It just doesn't belong to Rumsfeld or Bush. But Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney's ego. Thank you so much. Thank you.