Archive Result

20070502GRJHTBNL4M01

0:00:14.9 Introduction in Dutch Bob Lindeman

0:02:59.4 Thank you for the introduction, Bob. I thought American was changing. We have the November elections. That made a difference, hopefully it’s changing.

0:03:25.1 DT

0:03:36.2 Maybe they will never change, who knows. The idea is the principle in Buddhism, not only in Buddhism, but in the normal, common sense, it is non-violence, something extremely important in people’s lives. When you look into the history anywhere, violence never worked. Europe is a perfect example. World Wars I and II have taken place here and violence never achieved anything. Unless you know something, I don’t.

0:04:52.8 DT

0:05:17.0 Violence did not take place only in Europe but also in Asia, where I come from, tremendously. Although we talk more about World War I and II, but if you look at the Sino-Indian history, there is no much violence. So much, really.

0:06:08.2 DT

0:06:14.7 None has succeeded anywhere. On the other hand, you have so many great religions and traditions, the Judeo-Christian, the Hindu-Buddhist, all these great traditions in the world, they are also together along with that violence.

0:06:53.7 DT

0:07:08.4 The wise, compassionate people always have been fighting against violence. This struggle has not just begun today. It is human nature, ever since we came in. It has been there.

Now, what I believe is that it is human nature. The moment we are born as human beings we do have hatred, as well as obsession as part of our – I don’t want to say part of our life – but it has taken its toll with human beings. We are almost born with that.

0:08:23.6 DT

0:08:37.8 This violence, hatred, obsession, has never given us any good satisfaction throughout our human history. Yet we could not give it up, but carry it into generation after generation. Not only carry it, but sort of automatically do it. Why do I say ‘automatic’? We never had to go to school or monasteries or centers or temples to learn how to develop hatred, to have obsession. It is already there. I guess that’s called addiction.

0:10:11.4 DT

0:10:22.9 In other words we are addicted to hatred, we are addicted to obsession. We are not addicted to compassion, we are not addicted to love.

0:10:44.0 DT

0:10:47.4 I believe this is a human problem, a general problem for mankind, and not only us, but even insects, animals and everybody. We call them animals but we all have the same thing.

0:11:16.6 DT

0:11:24.4 These addictions always control and influence our lives. That is our problem. We need to take care of those. If we don’t, we keep on hurting mankind all the time.

0:12:19.3 DT

0:12:22.3 The wars – how many people got killed in the wars of the last 2 centuries, the 19th and 20th century. Before that we killed, but we killed less, actually. You know the cowboy type of thing. You can shoot one person, but there were no weapons of mass destruction. In the last 200 years it became more and more and more.

0:13:14.9 DT

0:13:28.7 Somehow our understanding is such that when we see some threat to our culture and way of life, race or whatever, then we think we have to destroy them before they destroy us. That’s what George Bush did. He did pre-emptive [strikes].

0:14:15.2 DT

0:14:25.3 We go wrong, not only Bush, but throughout all wars, we always think we have to destroy the enemy. The idea of killing, killing, killing is our idea. It is really sad when we look back in our history. Our ancestors have done so many great things, but on the other hand there is also the idea of kill, kill, kill. Perhaps we call them barbarians, but that’s the idea. Before we get hurt, we kill. We do that all the time.

0:15:31.6 DT

0:15:58.0 This is where we go wrong, all the time. We think we can’t take the risk. We must kill them first. But it’s not that we don’t know that’s wrong. We do know. All the great religions say it. Because I am Buddhist I am going to say especially Buddha. He has been talking about non-violence, love, compassion for 2600 years.

0:16:50.0 DT

0:17:07.2 And it’s not only Buddha, but every great religion that teach us. They always promote non-violence, love and compassion. But our addiction to self and selfishness, to protect that, we think we should indulge in violence. That is one of the biggest human problems. Not only religion’s problem, but a human problem.

0:18:04.7 DT

0:18:41.1 As I said earlier, that is something we have to deal with. If don’t do it now, our addictions will continue to grow.

0:19:02.0 DT

0:19:09.1 Actually, violence can never destroy the enemy, never. Look at earlier history. Those kings and queens killed everybody who was against them and then the revolutions came, like in Russia and they killed them all and it didn’t settle. You get Hitler, fascism, communism, you get all of them, constantly, continuously, no matter how many we keep on killing, it comes up, including Saddam Hussein and George Bush.

0:20:07.3 DT

0:20:29.7 On the other hand look at the religious tradition, Judeo-Christian and Hindu-Buddhist. Let me talk about Buddha. He talked about compassion and love and this message has been constantly and continuously effective and helpful throughout. We all know.

0:20:58.4 DT

0:21:16.9 I was born in Tibet, but spent a lot of time in India and other parts of the world. If you look at the Catholic nuns, they go out and educate kids, set up hospitals and throughout the world you see a tremendous amount of their deeds.

0:21:45.1 DT

0:22:03.6 That is compassion, because those nuns have no narrow selfish interest at all, as we all know. No matter what we say about the Catholic religion in general, if you look at the individual nuns, they have been working and teaching, they have no narrow selfish interest.

0:22:34.0 DT

0:22:51.2 They are not making multi-million dollars. That is real compassion and that has been helpful millions of people throughout the world. Then the meditators. They meditate on compassion. They not only meditate, but whatever you meditate changes the personality. And the personality of the violent mind changes into loving and caring and that not only contributes to the individual themselves but to all persons who all persons who come into contact with them.

0:23:52.9 DT

0:24:14.7 Mother Theresa was an outstanding example. Then not only her, but all kinds of people. Gandhi is another example. He was an extremely well educated lawyer who finally chose to wear this little Indian sarong or dhoti and take a little goat and a stick and he walked around and even went to London for a round table conference with his goat. (laughs)

0:25:06.4 DT

0:25:20.8 Gandhi was the one spreading the message of non-violence, known as ahimsa.

0:25:33.6 DT

0:25:38.0 The way Gandhi challenged the British, can you believe it, with just a stick in hand, wearing a dhoti and a goat. He challenged the British empire. Those of my age will remember: the sun never sets on the crown of England. They owned almost the whole world. That was the British empire. And that guy wearing a dhoti with a stick in hand and picking up a little salt, that’s how he challenged that great empire and finally the British colonial idea had to withdraw from throughout the world, not only India and Pakistan. That is achieved by non-violence.

0:26:54.0 DT

0:27:09.5 Gandhi was a meditator too, very strongly. Whatever he meditated, he changed his personality. And although he was a meditator he needed some kind of incident [to make him understand what he had to do]. Gandhi was a well-educated lawyer, travelling on a train in South Africa. There was racism and they threw them out of the train. That was a good wake up call for him.

0:27:58.4

0:28:26.1 Because of that he started satyagriha, the movement of non-violence. He did not start that just because he was a lawyer, but because of his study and meditation in the vedas, the traditional Hindu teachings. He was a meditator and picked that up from there.

0:28:59.9 DT

0:29:16.6 As a result there is now no longer any British colonies anywhere now. Everybody has gone back to England. But then everything settled not by killing, but by negotiating. Everything settled nicely, although the British always liked to play double games all the time, dividing Hindus and Muslims in Pakistan and India. Today’s Iraq problem is also a left-over British empire job. They divided all the land and created Iraq and all of that. In the middle east they divided so many and made them into that way. But still, non-violence really succeeded everywhere.

0:30:18.1 DT

0:30:52.6 You know why? It is funny. I learnt that. You know why they made all these divisions? They knew they would not get along well and when the British withdrew they would fight and then the British would come back to rule. That’s why they did that. That was their policy at that time.

0:31:23.0 DT

0:31:41.8 It happened not only in Pakistan and India, but everywhere in the Middle East. Those divisions were made for that reason. If they did not get along well the British would come back and rule. But that materialized, but that’s why they made those divisions.

0:32:01.2 DT

0:32:12.9 Iraq and Iran and Syria were divided on those grounds. When you look in general that’s happened among nations. Now let’s look at small family and individual matters. Again, violence never works in any family, with children, parents, with each other, with the in-laws.

0:33:04.3 DT

0:33:22.1 Whenever there is violence it has terrible consequences, with kids, parents and everybody. We know. It is not a secret to us. It is totally clear to us.

0:33:44.9 DT

0:33:50.7 It is funny. I was brought up in Tibet which is supposed to be the country of love and compassion. But as kid I was always beat up so much. The old-fashioned way of education was to learn and do study and if you don’t you get beat up. I was brought up that way. It was supposed to be love and compassion, but I got beat up all the time.

0:34:26.4 DT

0:34:45.2 The Tibetans tried to justify that by saying it is good for you and done with good motivation. I am not sure whether that can really justify that. I have my doubts. It is true. Those spiritual teachers, when they beat you, they really don’t have any agenda or anything. They just want to make you become better. I am not sure whether there is anger involved or not. For some, yes, but for most of them no. But they really beat you and beat you badly, so that you can learn the lesson. It was not only in Tibet, but at that time that was the case in almost every society.

0:36:05.0 DT

But somehow today we learnt that beating is not good. I don’t know if there is a law or society, but everybody knows now that beating doesn’t help. Violence doesn’t help and produces terrible consequences. We know that in the families and most of the families don’t indulge in it, except some crazy drunken old men maybe. But most of them don’t.

0:37:08.0 DT

0:37:25.4 Somehow we learnt that. So why can’t we learn the same about weapons of mass destruction in bigger nations?

0:37:38.0 DT

0:37:49.6 This produces tremendous consequences and is good for nothing. So this is sort of clear to us now. Violence is not good. We talked about big nations, we talked about families, we talked about that. Now, what is the best way to develop this compassion? What is love? What is the effect on our life? How can we develop it? These are the points we like to talk and hope it helps a little bit.

0:38:49.0 DT

0:39:01.5 When you talk about compassion, it sometimes becomes a little funny. Once Allen Ginsburg told me, “Compassion is a buzzword.”

0:39:24.7 DT

0:39:39.5 It is overused, everyone uses it and it is not so much effective to the individual. That’s what he told me the meaning of buzzword is. He told me the story of where it started, like in Brooklyn and Allen did that all the time. But the essence is that it is overused. Everyone thinks they know something about it, but it doesn’t effect anything for anybody.

0:40:22.2 DT

0:40:39.0 This is one of the best ways of our mind functioning in a good way: compassion and love. But if that becomes ineffective that’s not so helpful in the world today.

0:40:57.2 DT

0:41:07.4 How can we make it effective? Let’s see why it is not effective. Because it is not personalized. The moment we talk about compassion, we started looking out. Somebody who is weaker than us, poorer than us, who is more hurt than us, we look down on them and say, “Oh, poor thing, we need to help you”. We think that is compassion.

0:42:00.8 DT

0:42:08.2 I don’t know whether that is compassion or not. That is sort of looking down on people. Compassion doesn’t look down on people. Compassion really cares. Not because “I am a better person than you are, so I take care of you”. That’s not compassion to me. That’s looking down. It is condescending. Compassion doesn’t do that. As I said earlier. We must begin compassion with ourselves. It sounds maybe a little strange to you: have compassion to yourself. But if you don’t, who else will have compassion for you?

0:43:46.3 DT

0:43:54.3 If you don’t care of yourself, who else is going to take care of you? So let us not have this misunderstanding, but a clear understanding. Compassion is caring and you have to take care of yourself too, if not, who else will?

0:44:25.1 DT

0:44:31.5 Nor does compassion put caregivers at a higher level than the care-receivers. Today we think, especially the caregivers, “We are the caregivers and the people who receive the care are my subjects.” I am still glad that the people receiving care don’t become like objects, like in hospitals, treated on an experimental basis. I am so glad it is not like that, but still they are subjects and the caregivers are superiors and the care-receivers are the poor little things. “I take care of you”, that is condescending. It is not love, it is not compassion.

0:45:39.4 DT

0:45:58.1 You know what the mind says, “I am better, so I take care of you. I am the better one.” Again, me, me, me comes up. Compassion doesn’t carry “me”.

0:46:15.5 DT

0:46:25.5 Actually, if you look at mothers, they take care of kids. They really do take care. They don’t think – unless they are a few bad mothers – but most of them think, “The kids are wonderful and precious and I really have to take care.” That is called mother’s love. The mother doesn’t think, “I am superior and better than that kid and I have to somehow teach him or her a lesson.” They don’t think that. They always think they are wonderful jewels, something great and so lucky to have them and they must take care of them. This is true love.

0:47:29.8 DT

0:47:57.5 Buddha tells us to have motherly love for all living beings. Buddha did have that, but for us it is impossible. But one thing I want to say. When we talk about motherly love Buddha is talking about the mother who gives love to the baby, so this is looking from the mother’s window, the mother’s eye to the baby. Not the other way round. The moment we think about motherly love we think about our mother and say, “Oh, my mum, oh no!”. We say that all the time.

0:48:52.0 DT

0:49:05.4 Isn’t there a huge difference? Looking from the mother’s window to the kids rather than kids looking at their mum? That’s a huge difference, right?

0:49:28.6 DT

0:49:35.8 It is perception. The perception of human beings. When human beings get together we rub shoulders with each other and give the cold shoulder to each other and that cold shoulder makes people feel that way. It is the perception that develops.

0:50:14.2 DT

0:50:24.3 You know, when you have a child and the mother has so much compassion and caring, that’s because of love. Love brings compassion. It is not that compassion brings love, but the other way round. Love brings compassion.

0:50:50.0 DT

0:51:03.7 The mother gives unconditional love to the kids. She never says, “What’s in there for me?”

0:51:19.6 DT

0:51:25.1 That unconditional love brings compassion. When there is no love, all the rest of compassion without love is not really good compassion at all. It always has something attached there. Traditionally we say it is like giving aid with strings attached.

0:51:57.6 DT

0:52:04.9 You know what I am talking about? The rich nations give aid to the poor nations and then they have strings attached all the time and they pull those strings. Like the World Bank loans to the poor nations. They give huge amounts of money but when you really look at it – I am not a politician and I am not supposed to say that, but – these are supposed to be the most compassionate actions of the world – the World Bank giving loans to the poor nations as millions of dollars – but if you really calculate, what you really have is the interest and the mechanical system goes so that the rich countries sell it to them just enough to pay the interest of the earlier loans – nothing more. That is called aid with strings attached. When you do that, that clearly shows it is not true compassion. Why do we do that? Because we don’t care. We care about our own money and the big companies care about their money and they have to make sure they get all that interest, otherwise that country may go bankrupt and they don’t get their money back. So they give them a huge loan from the World Bank, called “World Bank Project.”

0:54:12.3 It is supposed to be non-governmental, non-profit making, a wonderful thing, but the reality shows there is no care and when there is no caret there is no love and when there is no love there is no compassion. It is sometimes even violence. Violence in the sense of passive-aggressive violence.

0:54:44.9 DT

0:55:37.5 I don’t know, there was one country who refused to take the World Bank loan, remember, and then everybody put pressure on them making them take the loan.

0:55:58.5 DT

0:56:07.4 Now the question comes? How do we deal with it? Up to here we have seen how violence works, how compassion works in the bigger sense. When we come back from coffee break we talk about how compassion develops in the individual? How do we deal with one person one to one?

0:56:52.1 DT

0:57:04.0 But before that I want to remind you: you have to take something home today. So far you can take home that we looked and we saw it: violence has never worked. Violence succeeds. Buddha became Buddha because of compassion. Gandhi was successful because of non-violence. Hitler and so forth never could achieve anything, because they engaged in violence. I want you to take home: Without doubt, clearly, violence doesn’t help, it doesn’t serve anything. It only creates trouble. I want you to have that resolution – clear cut.

0:58:20.3 DT

0:58:48.4 I have a lot of example to tell you, but let’s have coffee.

0:58:48.4 end of recording