Archive Result

Soundfile 20080523GRGRMRMMF01

Speaker Gelek Rimpoche

Location New York

Topic Mind and mental faculties

Transcriber Caroline Vossen

Date 9-1-2021

00:00:00

Thank you for being here, everybody and thank you for the orientation. And before we start tonight, as you know, all our retreats we begin with checking out motivation. So similarly here tonight, the motivation. Whatever the time, energy, efforts, money, whatever you spend here, it’s not simply for benefit to ourselves but everyone, every living beings may be able to obtain total enlightenment, for which we will be spending our life in general and particularly this weekend. With this motivation and especially today, for this particular retreat, I would like to suggest we use this, our energy, prayer, all efforts dedicate not only for the benefit of all living beings but particularly those people who have suffered and are sufferings due to the elements problems, such s the water problem in Birma, the earthquake problem in Sichuan, a province in China and we should all think very carefully. All those people who are suffering, not only general suffering, this is very specific, right in front of out own nose, it is popping up all the time and it is happening as we speak, as we are sitting here, speaking. People are continuously suffering due to those element problems, whether it is earthquake or waterquake, whatever, people are suffering tremendously. And on top of that some kind of dictator, administrator who is not allowing people to help. Maybe they are supposed to send them in today, anyway, hopefully they do, but..

00:03:40

Whatever, all of those. So what we can do is sort of we utilize all our virtues, one to those who lost their lives, cut their negativities, and suffering what they have gone through should be good enough for their negative karma whatever they may have from the limitless of the beginning and it is enough, and their future life should be a good one, free of all sufferings in general and particularly this type of suffering. And also free from the negative emotions and consequences of negative emotions and thereby they will have only positive emotions and thereby positive result of positive emotions, they will enjoy their future lives and ultimately in a rather short time obtain total enlightenment by reaching through a good spiritual teaching, suitable for their own needs, whatever it may be. So we dedicate that for this purposes. If we do that, every efforts we put will be a little worth for it. Not only that. That is not the only thing happening in the world today, everywhere, every place a lot of suffering and pain going. And also some people will have close family, friends, some of who are sick, suffering, some have passed away. For example we have Rose ??, your assistant

Audience: Rose ??

Rimpoche: Rose’s ? father passed away, the day before yesterday, so all this. So we dedicate to all of those. Not only people who are suffering with the earthquake and water effect in Birma and China but also within our own near and dear family, friends, all of those. And what I know I mentioned, there are some sick people within the family, and there are some who are going and who have gone. To all of them we should dedicate and we know.

00:07:55

So this is my beginning here and subject, as you know what I am trying to do is talking about mind and mental faculties. We began this about a year ago, both in Ann Arbor and New York and we took a lot of time to talk about the first five segments of those mental faculties and then we did talk about the next, these eleven virtuous emotions, and we are on the point of talking about six root negative emotions and twenty secondary emotions, and then four changing emotions. And when we cover all this, we should be covering fifty one different mental faculties. So I was really hoping to cover that this time, because I don’t want it to linger all the time. I started the Bodhisattvacharyavatara and it took years and one time I said, when I was starting there in Ann Arbor I said “ Well this has been about a year or so”, and people in the front some of them started to give me a little bit funny smile. So I said: “ What happened?” And Tony King was there, Tony said: “Rimpoche it has been six years already”. (laughs) I thought it was a year, but it was six years already and we still haven’t finished the nineth chapter yet. Of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara eight chapers are done, so I don’t want to linger around so long. So I just hope to be really done this time with the fifty one mental faculties.

00:10:47

So what difference does that make to us? Because that way we will be looking at each and every emotion, whether it is positive or negative, they are important things that occupy and control our mind. We will be looking at each one of them and recognize them and whenever it is coming up, when we see it is coming up, we know what is happening with us. And when the negative ones, when we like to stop them, we will be able to do it. Although at the beginning it may be late. It doesn.t matter, better late than never. So then when you get used to it and you have been able to recognize them during, it is better than recognizing them way later. But then thereafter you may be able to recognize them even before they arise and that way how one can make oneself always have a virtuous mind or positive from the spiritual point of view, from the material point of view make oneself a little happier and first stable. I don’t mean we all are crazy, we all are great and wonderful and intelligent. But we don’t have really good freedom from our mind within ourself. You can gain that by looking, knowing your emotions.

00:13:00

I call it emotions, originally you are supposed to call it mental faculties. And for me, I don’t know English, so once I learn a terminology, I call it mental faculty or emotion. To me, the thought I have is the semjung, something grown out of mind, so the semjung is my thought. So I don’t understand whether it has become difficult, hard, or easy. But if I say emotion, it seems to be easier for you to catch. When I say mental faculty it makes it a little difficult. And it is hard for me to get it, very hard. It is about a couple of months ago, you know for me the time is terrible. When a couple of months ago, it could be maybe a year ago (laughs), I was talking with Dimitri and Dimitri brought a new girl friend in Jewel Heart on Thursday night, a new friend, not necessarily a girlfriend, and then afterwards Dimitri said: “Thank you”. I said “Why?” He said: “ You talk was very easy to understand, today I brought a new friend, so it makes it easy” I said: “ Mental faculty talks are always easy, isn’t it?”. He said: “You call it easy? You say ‘object ascertaining’, such words, I don’t think it is easy at all”. That made me think, really think, because you know, for me you know what I am looking at? I am looking in the Tibetan and then I look at what equivalent people are using for that, so I pick up that word. And so I don’t know whether it is a difficult word or an easy word, for me it is the same thing whether I call it object ascertaining or mind that recognizes and understands. So for you it makes a huge difference. So I try to use emotions rather than mental faculties.

00:15:56

Because they are emotions, and each one of them pops up and grows within our mind as part of mind or as a result of mind. Mind meets with certain conditions and within those certain conditions, as a result of that, certain thoughts, ideas, a certain way of thinking develops within us, and that seems to control our mind completely and makes us to move in a certain way. For example anger: when the anger comes up, the anger somehow, first it becomes a little uneasy, it comes in an easy way, it is a little uneasy, that’s about it. And then it makes a little more surprising, a little harder, a little more, and very soon you realize your mind is completely occupied with that anger and we are totally engaged in thinking how we are going to challenge that, how we are going to overpower that, our mind is completely controlled by that. So that makes us to do negative deeds. It is very easy to say not to engage in the negativities, not to indulge in negativities, it is easy to say. But when the individual is caught in that it is very difficult to follow because our mind is taken over by that emotion, whatever it is.

00:18:31

Let me try to make it a little more clear. We have a mind, we call it principle, or we call it sixth consciousness. The sixth consciousness is the mental mind, the principal mind. We have eye consciousness, dealing with the eye, we have ear consciousness, then what? Tongue consciousness, do we say that?

Audience: Taste.

Rimpoche: See, we already have a problem here. Taste, is taste part of mind? That is an interesting question. Awareness yes. The moment you say awareness, it means understanding, right? Knowing, aware, knowing, right. So it is part of mind. So normally the Buddhist way of saying, -to make it more difficult-, each one of those consciousnesses, five of those, eye, ear, nose, all that, the usual five plus a sixth one, sixth sense, the sixth sense is referring to mind. Let it be mind, okay? Because if you go to the theoretical point of view: the sixth one is mind, is not mind, Buddhist schools thoughts, ideas will differ on it. So let’s not bother about it, let’s go the sixth one is mental consciousness, the mind itself. So when you are talking about the mind, mind itself naturally has to be some kind of very neutral mind, we call it, - I am going to mix it up a little bit-, but still we call it pure mind. It has to be pure, it has to be clean, it is. When you say mind, it is neither negative, nor it is positive. It is very neutral. Neither it is white, nor it is black, neither it is grey. Because normally we say if not white, if not black, it has to be grey. No, neither it is grey because it has just no color, it is not tangible.

00:22:30

But then those emotions that arise, let’s say for the sake of understanding, they are rising out of, or coming out of our sixth consciousness or our mental consciousness or from our mind. And by nature, some are positive and some, by nature of the thought are negative, and that swings the principle mind which is neither positive not negative, it is made into positive or negative, it is changing it. Because the nature of that particular mind, - when I say particular mind, you have to make the distinction because of the time, not because it is a different mind, but the time period which is occupied by the positive, influenced by the positive mental faculties or influenced by the negative mental faculties -, and thereby mind becomes sort of occupied, influenced by negative or positive thoughts or emotions. And thereby mind itself becomes negative or positive for the sake of action, for the sake of functioning, I other words for the sake of karmic purposes. Karmic purposes it becomes either positive or negative because of the thoughts that we have, it influences. Simple reason why? We say our motivations are important, our motivations make a difference because motivations change the nature of the mind which is following the motivation, the actions that, like I am talking, you are listening, you try to understand what I am talking about and if you get it , you try to utilize your understanding, apply on your mind. And this time we put, the thought we put in, the things we are going to do, become positive because of the motivation. Why? Motivation makes a difference because motivation becomes one of those emotions, or mental faculties, and that emotion influences the mind, so the nature of that particular mind, that particular period changes into positive or negative. When that changes into positive or negative, that made our action becomes positive or negative and that is how we create karma. Positive karmas are created that way, negative karmas are created in that way. In that way we make a hell of a difference in our lives by looking at the mind.

00:26:49

A number of times when people are thinking ‘I am looking in my mind’, you simply sit there and you are just watching. People do that. I hope that had great purposes, I don’t know. As far as I know, just to keep on watching does no good. So why you are watching it, is because you know what is going to happen. And then you get ready to handle it. It’s like sometimes we see in the movie, some guys are hiding behind somewhere and somebody walks in ready to attack. So just like that, we are preparing ourselves, watching our mind whether it is controlled or influenced by negative emotions. If so, just cut it and block it. When you can do that, you are creating positive karma. That is the most logical, simple way of making our life worthwhile.

00:28:45

Buddhism has a tremendous amount of methods and ways of improving individual life, bringing the individual closer to enlightenment and all that, tremendous, both in the sutra aspects as in the tantra aspects of it. But all of them, whatever it is, will boil down to handling your mind. Mediations: you sit and meditate, both focusing concentration or analyzing, or saying sadhanas, going through a ritual, step after step, step after step, trying to get through certain procedures, or saying a mantra, all of them again boil down to mental activity, mind activities. So the best way of handling one’s mind is knowing it is part and parcels, and what part and what parcel, what thought makes what, and what happens to the mind. And when you know this, then everything whatever you are going to handle, becomes much better.

00.:31:30

Before you understand about this mind and mental faculties, let’s say if you are doing a sadhana of whatever, visualizing yourself as a yidam or whatever, let’s say Buddha or whatever. Knowing this mind and mental faculties, thereafter visualizing yourself into let’s say Buddha makes a difference to the power and strength of that, although you are simply visualizing yourself as Buddha, maybe one meditation maybe. But even then when you know which mental faculty is functioning, how it is influencing the principle mind, makes your meditation of visualizing yourself as Buddha become much more powerful than simply sitting there: ‘I suddenly become Buddha myself’, and then try to figure that head is Buddha, the leg is Buddha the hand is Buddha. And knowing the mental faculties, using five object ascertaining mental faculties, using them and holding them makes a huge difference and that’s why it is important. And also, even if you don’t visualize, even if you don’t do your sadhana, even if you are not doing it, even functioning, simply living life, even then you are recognizing which are the positive emotions, which are the negative emotions, and knowing the positive gives you the positive result and the negative gives you a negative result. Knowing that and guiding yourself, your own mind by yourself makes a huge difference. For your life it is a tremendous improvement from the spiritual point of view.

O0:34:16

Even from the material point of view alone earlier: I mean whether you are going to make yourself happy or sad is really in your own hand, nobody else’s hand. That is a true fact: circumstances will make you sad, cry and miserable. But when we know how to think, how to use our mind, circumstances have much less effect on our principle mind, really, than using your own mind. And that is how you have to make yourself happier. Otherwise all circumstances make you sad, everything wherever you look, whatever you do, it happens. You turn on the television or the radio and you will hear nothing but ‘so many people have been killed’. I spent a year in the morning, I woke up with the NPR, for a year I have been hearing: ‘today we lost eleven lives, ten lives’, ‘seven died’ or ‘ten died in Iraq’, for a whole year. Maybe two years like that happened. And then those natural element incidents, continuously: something happened with the water, something happened with a cyclone, something happened with this weather. Even in the Unites States in the south, all these tornados, that happened in Arkansas, so many people died, all of those. If you keep on thinking, if you are listening to this, what else can you do except cry? Sad, definitely sad. That happens and if you keep on letting your mind go in that way, you will be crying all the time. In my case, I am quite sure I am.

00:37:03

And then think about it, the earthquake in Sichuan, it is again fifty thousand people died. And then you think about those families, one child families, one child policy, that child died. So what will the old parent be thinking? If you keep on thinking that way, sad, terrible. But then you have to think: ‘right well, this is a negative karmic result, that is really terribly sad, but I hope that will substitute their negative karmas maybe come over’ and blablabla, you have to change your mind with all this blablabla and then again looking forward. That is because when you recognize your mind, when you recognize your emotions, and when you recognize those, then you can change your mind, you can suggest to your own mind to pick up those different points rather than feeling sad and sad and sad. And that is not only sad looking outside, looking in your own life, it always happens like that. It is sad if you look into what happened in your young age, the period where it is gone. If you keep on thinking that way, it is terribly sad. Friends, gone. One after another, they drop just like flies, one after another. We have group pictures, ten years later, how many people are gone out of that. Sad, no doubt. It is always. Perhaps Buddha called that samsara, suffering nature, so we are in that, no matter whatever we do, we are in that.

00:40:08

But then it is our mind, our intelligent mind, it is the duty of that mind, that individual, to not let the individual be occupied by the sadness, taking advantage out of that situation, changing that sadness into compassion, changing that sadness into wisdom, emptiness in nature, the reality. Existence becomes conditioned. One provides the condition by oneself. Knowing that, that makes the individual to have a fresh start every second, every minute, so always something looking forward. And all of those are our mind’s job, mind does that. Simultaneously making the mind into a positive form, that is because we are not only in the spiritual field, but we know the material field alone could not fulfill our desire, the material field alone cannot answer our needs and that’s why we have to have the whatever it is called the spiritual development, in other words making the mind more pure, truly pure positive nature. Right now pure, neither positive, nor negative, neutral pure. But that has to be changed into the purely positive nature. If that is done, there will be no negative left, when there is no negative left, it is the end of suffering, that is very logical, straightforward, karmically how it works.

00:42:41

That is the reason why everywhere people will give you vows, and then they say protecting your vow is the root of all development, because the vow is saying ‘I shall not do this and that’. When you are honoring your vow you are cutting yourself from doing negative things and that is the same thing you can do without taking a vow by watching your mind. The bottom line will boil down to this. And that is why some schools, some thoughts, some ideas earlier teachers said mind is the only thing that matters. Those people are not fools. They said the Mind Only School doesn’t not say: “Everything is mind, there is no other than mind”, they don’t say that. Because mind is the one which really makes a difference. And who handles mind? You yourself handle your mind, I handle my mind. If we don’t handle our mind, mind will go by itself in all kinds of funny ways. Mind will be guided by our habitual patterns, it will go all of…. if we keep on thinking negative cynical, critical, mind will take you very critical, very negative, very cynical. If you go on thinking of positive, mind will take you very positive, it becomes very positive.

00:44:47

So that has to do with dharma practice, spiritual practice. By saying mantra, by meditating, by doing is one thing, the bottom line even when you meditate, say mantra it will boil down to this. And it’s very hard for people when you just look at it, saying this is dharma or spiritual practice. Sometimes it doesn’t look like it. I keep on saying it, we did about a year or so of this mind and mental faculties. Many times while in the middle of talking either on Tuesday night or Thursday night, in the middle of it I am saying to myself: “ What am I doing here?” “ What am I talking about?” “ What are people thinking about it?”, “Are we losing the principle?”. We may sometimes totally engage in one emotion, we are talking about one emotion, what does that do, what does that do? So then in the middle of that you begin to ask yourself the question: Hey, what am I doing here? But when you think back, when you are brining it back this whole thing, that is how it is going to work.

00:46.26

So, that is what it is. Although we have done, but I don’t mind going briefly over the positive ones and I am not going to spend time on the object ascertaining mental faculties (laughs). I didn’t really realize it is a difficult one. I didn’t get it. For me when I learned the language, whether I learned as mental faculty or object ascertaining, it gives me one message, that is what it is. Maybe I am stupid anyway. Then we have to spend major time looking into this six root negative emotions, that is anger, attachment, pride, things like that anyway. So we try to recognize each one of those emotions, and then when that is within ourselves we have to catch it, saying ‘it is here’ so that we are not completely overpowered by those emotions, realizing it way after it is gone. So that is what we are supposed to do.