Archive Result

113

Soundfile 20071006GRGRVaj2

Speaker Gelek Rinpoche

Location Garrison

Topic Vajryana

Sections 2

Transcriber John Thornton

Date date on which you finished this transcript

Good morning everyone. Kindly develop pure motivation, Bodhimind. To continue with guru devotional practice I have emphasized that it is much more important in tantra. Every practice you are supposed to do within the framework of guru devotional practice. I hope you remember that. What you hope to achieve by doing this, there are 8 benefits of having guru and 8 disadvantages of not having guru devotion. Buddha Guhyasamaja, Vajrayogini, whatever, it is inseparable. Not only that, when the practitioner becomes fully enlightened one, becomes the yidam, it is in the form of the guru yidam. So remembering that is important.

Again I emphasize that the jewel like guru through whose kindness I obtain the bliss-void enlightenment in a matter of seconds. If you are a mother tantra practitioners, you have those eight verses in the Six-Session Guru-Yoga. To complete guru yoga practice is difficult, because it is hard not to see faults. We see them as full of anger and obsession. As I told you my father was very solid from a spiritual point of view. He was one of those great guys who doesn’t do much teaching.

There was a dharma master from the lower tantric college. I remember Geshe Ling Rinpoche was giving me a teaching that normally had quite an obstacle. Every time he was giving that teaching for a week you can’t come near Geshe Ling Rinpoche. Some of the attendants nearby would warn you. Then there will be two diagrams-two wheels-the male and female wheels. When I received that teaching first, Geshe Ling Rinpoche was not well. So suddenly, he realized the drawing was not right. He said, “When I was young, your previous reincarnation was there.” The women started singing. He said, “Hey, you women who are heavier than bags of salt, what are people saying today?” The women replied, and he was dancing and everything fell off the table. He removed the drawing completely. The one who is an expert on the mudra’s and a very good geshe, Dama Shebe, was telling us a story. He said, “When you come into the tantric college, you never know how to teach.” One of the geshes there is a vajra master. He has to do all the mudras. So many of them you go in the middle, so I will be sitting behind everyone. I think he does that with everyone. So then Geshe thought people were watching him to see what to do, and he will put his finger in the mouth or something crazy. So everybody else does the same. (Laughter). And then at the end the geshe, the new one, has to start the long prayer. So then he looks at him and corrects him and he says, “Now we have to punish you because you did it wrong.” So they put the new geshe down and lash him. It is all joking.

So this lama, took one teaching from my father something- here and there, and Lama Checke (?) is following behind him with his book wherever he goes and gets a teaching from my father. It is very hard to see him as enlightened. Not only that, I threatened to sue one time. So that is how he does. He always got a lot of indirect teachings from my father. It is very hard to see him as enlightened.

We used to have a Fiat. We are the only ones who has a Fiat, and I am one of the only one who knows how to start it. The Fiat was hard to start, so the third time I tried it jumped. They were going to build a garage and I hit the pile of rocks that were pile up for the garage. The rock fell and hit the Fiat and broke the windshield, and my father put me in the garage and locked me up for almost a day. I put my head out and screamed, “Government, hey, I am locked here and I want to express my difficulty!”(Laughter).

So ultimately it is true that my father is a living Heruka. Unfortunately, my mother is also a living yidam, Vajrayogini (?). When she passed away, it was during the Cultural Revolution, she was in jail, gone crazy, and finally passed away. For prayers my father said all we have to say is the praise to the Vajrayogini. I used to write poems, and someone found one and gave it back to me, and I did not remember it at all when I looked at it. He said this should go in your collected works! The poem talked about receiving a life from a Heruka father and a Vajrayogini mother. In life, however, I am ready to sue him and go to the government.

This happens in life. When it happens, when we have negative emotions to our guru, it is an opportunity to purify. It is a great opportunity. In life, when these things happen, when you are angry you are angry. But over the whole of life, your whole life should not be like that, and you should purify. Whenever you see any of your masters, particularly a vajra master, you should see him as Buddha Vajradhara,

Buddha Yamantaka or Buddha Aria Tara. You know sometimes in the movie someone changes into something, like a man changing into a wolf man. You should be able to do that without any hesitation or doubt. When you reach that level it is the beginning of the establishment of guru devotional practice within the individual. So that is going to take a tremendous amount of time. Sometimes we can develop that within our lifetime, sometimes we develop it later. That is totally individual. So it takes time. That is why every practitioner should start guru yoga, but also with embracing human life.

So I am going to go over that. We should embrace human life because of leisure, opportunity, as explained in the Lamrim. But this is your path. When we do not think of the value of human life, it is going to be more and more difficult to practice. This way people who think of suffering they are not sunk in depression because the appreciation and joy of human life is so much emphasized. The person who has developed this, no one can convince them that they are useless or helpless. Anyone who tries to do that will fail, because when this is established in you, you are talking about right now at this moment what I have and what I am. Believe me, we think our life is almost nothing and useless. If you watch our mind, we think I will be great if I am anything but myself. This is how our lives are, our psyches. I am hopeless, useless poor, fat, thin, stupid. You name it, any worse quality we put on ourselves. We think except for me everyone else is better, more skilled, taller, more beautiful, more money, more everything. It tells us how we are totally confused and in delusion. Honestly, because how great life is. We should think how important life is, and you realize that. This is one of the best antidotes you build up within you automatically for not wasting your time.

When you find how difficult it is to find this life. It will be impossible for you to sit idle. We waste so much of our time by making wrong priorities, everyone of us myself. Because our priorities is for many of us is money to pay bills, or to some obligations or responsibilities. So we have the wrong priorities all the time. And that is because we have not taken the time to develop this first step that Buddha taught us to do. The moment you think about life, you realize this is the most important opportunity I have to develop spiritually or materially what I have to do. Otherwise, all these things like hopeless, helpless, popping up, means you never understood the Buddha’s message. So drop everything and develop this within us.

This is for a short time. Many of you do these retreats and it is wonderful to do. It is time for you do these retreats, like taking refuge and then you should focus on this and think about this. Don’t just read Lamrim, but read wherever you can find it. At the end of your session, draw your conclusions. This is the beginning of development within the individual. It is wonderful to have this great opportunity and you have information and a connection and you have everything. Then you think, yes this is all true, but I don’t have all the time in the world.

So then you have to move to impermanence. Buddha has said every phenomenon that is created is impermanent in nature. So everything we create is impermanent including our mind and our body. Everything is created, our house, environment universe. Everything therefore is impermanent. You know when I went to Tibet, the Tibet that I was born into, and the Tibet I saw when I went back has changed completely. Lhasa now is like a dirty Chinese city—almost any other Chinese city. There are a few things still there, but everything else has changed. In Drepung they took out lots of things. But there were steps in one place, and I looked and they were there. And then all at once they lifted me up and put me on the thrown there. That was funny! Even in the monastery there are now electrical lights, so it looks smaller inside than my recollection. But almost everything is different. Human beings have changed; very few humans there were people I knew. Even families I used to know are younger and more beautiful than I use to know. So when you are looking at this everything in our life that we felt was so important, do this and do that, including good ones. Yes, they are great, but the most important priority for us in this life is to achieve enlightenment. We all put this on our back burner. Yes it is our goal, but when it happens it happens. The most important is our fire has stopped, or we have to cook now and all these priorities.

So the most important thing, enlightenment goes on the back burner. And this is wrong with everybody, unless there are some exceptional people I don’t know. That has to be changed right now. This means don’t put it on the back burner. Instead, put effort into it. We cook tofu, but cooking enlightenment is putting it on the back burner. And if the Vajrayana practitioners cannot correct that, who can? If you don’t correct it, then as the Hindus say-the ram has come and the ram has gone. Like that. So the precious human life has come and it is going, going, gone. Geshe la says, “Gone, going, going.” He doesn’t have good English and he doesn’t know. Geshe wanted to ask the lady is the bus going or gone or what? So he moves closer to the lady and she moves farther away. So then she runs away. He thinks gone, going! So the priority over here is making sure that life is not wasted that way.

Again, if you keep on looking into the foundation of perfection or you look in the Lama Chopa, the structure is there. If you don’t mind will take you anywhere. Mind is interesting. People do all kinds of meditation and they have extra terrestrial travel. I am sure it has a purpose, but our purpose is to gain enlightenment. So number one is don’t make a mistake about the goal. Don’t put it on the back burner. Some of our people are very great; they do nothing but practice and prayer. That time is pretty much gone. It may be crazy, but some people did that in the 60’s. Somehow, due to our fortune the crazy ideas came in the 60’s. Now we think it is too religious or too whatever. So now is the time for us to stabilize the idea. Then you have to pick it up and move on it very seriously.

When we say, serious, some people may look crazy but they are serious. Within the framework of society we have to do our thing. Compassion and wisdom is our usually accepted within the society itself. Many of you do great work within the framework that is acceptable within the society. But still you are the pioneers. If you are not strong enough the impact you leave will be so so. Strong is unshakeable thought and understanding of your goal. And every minute is important because we have to remember the clock is ticking on our life. In reality it is the true clock of our life. Every minute we are getting older, our life is changing, the situation is changing. So this is the essence of impermanence. When it is there, it is the right time and moment. You have to take advantage of it. We know this. Don’t look at the moneymaking business, look at the enlightenment. If you are making money, fine, nothing wrong with it. However, enlightenment is our goal. As you know in the Western tradition, what you do is: be on time, don’t waste time in the material world. Do the same thing in the spiritual world. The traditional teaching tells us the material world and the spiritual world function the same way, the same principle.

So impermanence gives us a sense of urgency, and the appreciation of life gives us joy and comfort and stable and solidness. One builds on top of another. If you don’t think of the value and importance of life and you think of impermanence, what else do you expect besides depression? Death may be happening next minute. You know you don’t’ get into depression because you have an appreciation of life. Then the individual develops a sense of urgency and you develop force and energy. The essence of impermanence, as I said earlier, when you think about impermanence and the difficulty of achieving (enlightenment), you don’t waste your time. So sense of urgency and moving yourself forward. Where do you move? Traditional teachings will say, you are moving to death. After that you don’t disappear, you will have another rebirth. You can think about death and rebirth and do we have another life? I don’t think that way, because no one thought that way in Tibet, and it is very well established. If I thought that way, they would say what is wrong with this incarnate lama. Could be a devil! Particularly, if you are bright. This is the wrong way of thinking. I would get the name wrong-way Rinpoche. Someone calls me that now because in New York when I should go west I go east. Amy says, “Wrong way, Rinpoche!” So I get the “Wrong Way Rinpoche” name.

So after that, one doesn’t disappear. Buddha guaranteed-because of that reason Buddha said, no new soul. In Buddhism there is no one new. All of us are old, and old and old, million years old consciousness. Yet still we never learned our lesson. We forget. We didn’t have the opportunity or we didn’t put in effort somehow. You know, life is life. We can see life in the little birds, the ticks, ants that crawl, and cockroaches sneaking though our drainage. All of them are life. Sometimes we are there.

Especially, in Buddhism, in general teachings it is said there is no life that I can say I have never been there. This is general Buddhism teaching. If we have been there, there is no reason why we say we can never be a tick again? We have been ticks, ants, beautiful birds and monks. Can you guarantee that you will never be a tick again? We would love to, but we cannot say that. It is unthinkable, unimaginable. It all depends what kind of karma we have. We have a karma of giving a lot of ticks that probably gives us the opportunity to be a tick again! If Buddha is telling the truth, then whatever karma we have created will determines where we end up. Anyway, where I will go after my death depends on my karma. Whatever karma we have, depends on us. It depends on me. My life is my deeds. If I am sick, happy, rich, poor, short, tall, fat, thin—everything is the result of my deeds. No matter whatever. Almost we can do nothing. Karma runs everything. If we do nothing, things happen. Yet we don’t have to follow that. We have the opportunity of thinking, communicating, making change and making a difference in our lives. We can do that because life is impermanent. Because life is a result of collected karma and conditions. When conditions are right, things happen. That is natural, reliable. No one can contradict that. So who provided the conditions? Who else except ourselves, myself, yourself. That is the reality. If we want to grow a good flower we make the conditions right. put the right soil, fertilizer, moisture, temperature, and the right flower grows, so it is conditions. Maybe a little larger, maybe a little smaller and that is also due to the conditions. I used to grow dahlias, I made big dahlias. If the conditions were neglected, then dahlias did not grow. And that’s how it worked. The key is everything is in our hands. This is Buddha’s wisdom. Just like in our life, exactly the same in our future life. We may never be able to control it exactly, to have the same parents again, because it depends on the conditions. Maybe your parents are to young or they are not together, I don’t know what might happen.

Remember we used to have Chodrak Rinpoche, many of you knew him. One day I was traveling and I am right in the front of the plane. All of a sudden in the plane I saw Chodrak sitting there at 37,000 feet high and doing some kind of mandala offering, sitting cross-legged and looking at me. I thought he died what is he doing over here and I got scared and the moment I got scared, he looked at me. Then he disappeared. That very same moment Dagyab Rinpoche (?) was on holiday in Spain. When I reached Holland, she said Chodrak Rinpoche came and she said, you came! He said “Yes, part of me is in Daramsala” and gave his address. I said, “Yeah, he came and saw me on the plane.” Then Dagyab Rinpoche (?) made inquiries and she found the address and Chodrak’s father was there. He said the father’s name is something, something. It was not the right address, the person was living three doors down from the address he gave. So this happens you know.

After we are gone, we don’t disappear, we take rebirth. It depends on karmic conditions. My teacher said either you will have a good rebirth or a bad rebirth. Every moment we make in this life, we make our future life. It is just like the scientists in the laboratory, every minute they create conditions that will affect our lives 20 years down the road. We all know that. Just like that we are creating our future conditions. That’s why we need to be good.

The main point is what is going to be my future life I am making it right now; each and every one of us. We try to be mean or angry to somebody and we build it up, add up, add up, add up we build a future life in which we will be very ugly. You may be born as a hunchback even if you are born as a human being. That is the consequence of anger. We do. We have an addition to anger. Every time something is not exactly the way we want it, we get angry. And that is why we get divorced! Honestly. Or maybe you are angry with yourself. If you don’t want that, reduce your anger. You have to look at your anger face to face. Then denial comes. Don’t submit to the denial. If we cannot handle anger, how are you going to handle enlightenment. That does not mean we do not get upset. If you let anger take over, or if you avoid, it will work one or two times, maybe a hundred times. But what is happening is the basis of the anger remains and it becomes a huge monster, because you did not deal with it. We have to deal with it. This is practice. OM AH HUM, think about the pure part of each, think of purity clearing obsessions and ignorance.

So face the anger. Facing anger means why? Why are you here? What makes me angry? You find the reason? What you think it is? I didn’t go forward in my career. I couldn’t do this. If you have a companion, he or she is a good target! If you don’t have a companion, you yourself become a target of your own anger! I should have done this. I am stupid I am this I am that. Then you have a split personality: the angry you or the pacifying you. Whether you have a companion or not or an enemy, look for the reason. You are not a stupid person. If you are a stupid person you do things without a reason. You are not a stupid person, you are a Buddhist practitioner so what is the reason? I want this or that. Anyone of these trillion reasons you come up with. It is there for sure. So your job is to find out whether that is a valid reason or not. When you realize it is not a valid reason, then you bust your reason to get angry. When you bust your reason you bust your anger. The more you meditate, the more and more you meditate, you begin to bust your anger. All reasons you are giving are false. You know that. It has not basis in ultimate reality. Then you have to concentrate. When you see the reason is not valid, you concentrate on that as long as you can. That makes an impact on your consciousness. And then every time your anger comes up, you recognize it is false. That is how you meditate. Meditation does not have to mean having a mala and being holy. You can sit on the pot and have a meditation on that. What is wrong with that?

So that is how you do. That is how we deal with our life, with every negative emotion. I just used anger as an example. Actually if you read Good Life Good Death, it has a very good chapter on anger. It is easy, simple and quite good. So all the negative emotions you have to deal with that way. Remember if you don’t deal with it, you try to make a good life but it won’t happen. Think about it. Your anger puts additional tings on your life. Instead of icing on the cake you have wasabe on your cake. So that is what happens! That goes with every negative emotion. That is your karma. Though we talk about karma as definite and you meet with the result. They are true. When you sit down and think on that it is mediating on karma. Honestly, people have a lot of misunderstanding.

I talk with a lot of Tibetan groups. It is a funny thing, I talked with the Tibetans in Chicago and I begin to realize. They have lots of friends and some of them are interested in the spiritual path. Then they talk about meditation and they get scared. You don’t know and you pretend you didn’t hear and you have no idea what you are talking about. They say yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks holy and they are sitting down and burning incense, but what they are doing is counting the breath. Three times from the left and the right and both counting nine times. So they are happy. That fits in their minds. That’s all? It is true. You make it very slowly and very mystical, but actually counting the breath. Why are you counting your breath? You don’t want to thing of negative things. You are doing that so you concentrate on something neutral. Actually, you are taking your mind and not thinking in negative things. Along with that you are focusing a little bit. Because you keep on counting the breath and you focus. If you don’t focus, you lose. You don’t want to lose so you keep on counting the breath.

Anything you are thinking is strong, so you lose focus. So in order not to lose focus you count. What focus will do. You know, anything you think and do, it is very effective. That’s why you focus. Then, you know, you may not have time to think everything in advance. But once you get used to it everything comes out. Just like I talk to you I did not preplan. All I planned was to talk is lamrin. Whatever I share with you is what I went through myself. One single thought, if it helps any one of you, it is a great achievement. I consider it success. It is never going to happen to everybody. Never. Even if one is affected, I consider it a success. Honestly!

So meditation in one way looks very serious. Not only Tibetans but you people, you make it very serious. It is serious. It is amazing, when you Westerners say your prayers, no matter what happens, You say, “ I am saying my prayers.” Unless we are a retreat, we don’t do that. If I am saying my prayers in the middle of a sadhana, I drop it if I hear someone call me. I just drop it and get up. I am not going to say, “I am doing my prayers.” People in the West do that so seriously. Yes, true it is serious. But on the other hand you know meditation is imagination within a structure. That is what it is. Taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha is meditation. If you simply say the words and have no thought, then it is not meditation; it is parrot. That is not practice. The moment you say, “Namo gurubye, “it is your yoga practice. Same for namo buddhaya, namo dharmaya and namo sanghaya.

So this is how we function. Remember, our life is what we make of it. We provide the conditions. We provide the cause. And the causes and conditions meet and it materializes. Cause and condition meet. It happens. Otherwise why is the fruit on the tree in autumn and not in winter or spring? Because of the conditions. The time when they meet. So when the conditions happen and trees produce flowers, then the buds and then the fruit. And the fruit ripens. If it does not ripen it is not edible. So it is all causes and conditions.

No matter whatever you do, if you cut the tree, the fruit will die. Or if time is over, the fruit will rot. This is life. Life is nothing more than that, the right moment. This is how we live and how we go and how we function. Karma is not mystery. No more than this. Dependent arise is no more than this: cause and conditions. Evolution? Causes change and conditions change. That is the reality. It is natural that we die because it is reality. It is also natural that we are reborn, according to Buddha, it is also reality. What kind of born, what type of rebirth, it is in our hands. We provide the causes and conditions. Buddha does not decide. Enlightened beings do not sit up there and say, all right, we will send him there or we will send him there. They don’t do that at all. We give him this post or that post. They do not do that. We send him here or there, they don’t do that. It is up to you. So our life is in our own hands. We are responsible for it, whatever we experience.

And since we have a lot negative karma and we are unable to purify--of course, we also have lots of positive karma--it depends on where it is going to link. And that depends on me, because my thoughts are my thoughts and my actions are my actions. When we cannot deal with it by ourselves, then we take refuge. After taking refuge, then we follow their advices. When we follow the advices, it is karma acting. And every negative karma that we have created is somehow linked to one of those three poisons. Every one of them is coming out of ego and ignorance. Some are more anger oriented and some are more obsession\attachment oriented, but they are coming out of ego and ignorance combined. That is why we are running life after life, due to that ignorance. That is the reason why they say samsara is the result of ego-grasping ignorance. It is because of this.

That is how the first two noble truths--truth of suffering and truth of cause of suffering--happen. Our goal, our job, our responsibility is to turn that into the other two noble truths: the truth of thought and truth of cessation. When you are following that way, when you engage your life totally that way there will be a time when your negative karmas have been completely exhausted. When they are completely exhausted and no new negative karma, then you are left with nothing but liberation. That is why they call it cessation. In Buddha’s principles we see things and we say it is not, not, not, and you have discarded all the “not’s” you are left with what is.

The four noble truths work exactly the same way. That is how it goes. These are the fundamental principles of our practice. Truly speaking, if you are connected with Tibetan Buddhism, it is totally here from guru devotional practice. It only becomes Mahayana because of the bodhimind. Without the bodhimind, it is not Mmayahana at all. Buddhism begins with refuge; Mahayana begins with bodhimind; and Vajrayana begins with the doorways.