Archive Result

Soundfile 20080523GRGRMRMMF06

Speaker Gelek Rimpoche

Location New York

Topic Mind and mental faculties

Transcriber Caroline Vossen

Date 28-2-2021

Now let’s go here. Where did we stop earlier? Enthusiasm. The next is shin tu jang pa. What do they say?

Audience: Suppleness, alertness or mental suppleness

Rimpoche: What does that mean? We call this shin jang. Many of you have attended that year long talk on meditation, gom, so you still have that transcript called gom available. If you read in that, you get quite a good explanation in that. The thing is this: when we are learning how to meditate, the number one obstacles that we get are? One doesn’t want to meditate, one can’t focus and all this. So after some time one becomes so happy and so joyful to be meditating and that is because of the concentrated or due to the meditation, you get a certain amount of joy, both physical and mental joy. I believe the physical comes first, followed by mind, then the physical intensifies and then comes the mental. It’s a very joyful state. And that is known as shin jang. Shin jang, because one becomes so flexible, so easy and flexible, both physical and mind level, no matter whatever you may be. So it doesn’t matter whether you are old or young, it doesn’t matter whether you are fat or fit. It doesn’t matter whatever you are, but you get that level of flexibility and joy state, and that state is called shin jang.

00:04:37

So then we have that different translators are translating it to different things over there. They are calling it what?

Audience: Mental suppleness or alertness, or just suppleness.

Rimpoche: Suppleness, it must be that one, right? I don’t know anything about it. So that is called shin jang. What happened: at that state due to meditation, this doesn’t have to be a high level of meditation or anything. Actually it is not a high level of enlightenment or anything. Due to certain meditation, the shamata, the shine, the focusing alone is capable of giving the individual this result. So what happens is that any wrong things are purified, so your physical or mind, both become so easy to use to any virtuous activities. This is actually the true antidote of laziness. Because laziness somehow pulls you out. Because when you develop this joy, that really overpowers all the laziness, so you don’t have any more laziness. However we don’t get that state easily, so you can get to that state so the antidote for laziness we use is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm also sometimes becomes forcing, and that is also not very good. So one of those out of eleven virtuous, we have that faith, de pa, and within that, something when you see the quality and the desire to obtain, and that we use. And that is substituting for shin jang. Because you look at it, you see the quality, you admire the quality, you desire to develop the quality and that for a while. And hopefully that will be able to be replaced by this shin jang. That is the special joy state with the physical and mental flexibility period that is shin jang, and…

00:08:55

Rimpoche: Then the next is conscientiousness, we call that ba yö pa. This is like awareness. This is again based on enthusiasm, and then knowing what are negativities and protecting your mind from the negativities is conscientiousness. If you really want to know this in a little more detail, there is a whole chapter on conscientiousness in the Bodhisattvacharyavatara, chapter 4. We do have transcripts on that, right? There is a volume there. So it shows you, how these little things are. When we talk here we put them all together. These are the eleven, each one you can go into to as detailed as you can. That’s why I can’t finish this mind and mental faculties, it is going into the second year. I had better finish now.

00:10:40

The next is equanimity (tang nyom). This equanimity between the extreme of wandering or the extreme of sinking, it is talking about the meditation level. When you are meditating, there are two obstacles. One obstacle is wandering: you lost it completely, you are sort of sitting, physically you may be sitting, but the mind is not sitting, the mind is outside, in beautiful sunshine, and the beautiful water down there, and you have all this beautiful ground and all that. So mind is not focusing. Similarly it is too focused and working so hard and falling asleep and all these are the two extremes. We call it sinking and wandering mind. Sinking and wandering each have a subtle as well as gross levels. And when you really want to go, there are the transcripts on gom is not bad, it gives you a lot of information, and quite comprehensive. It is only transcripts, we don’t claim that to be a book or anything, it is only transcripts. So if you really look at it, it really gives you a very comprehensive meditative level in there: what are the problems, when do they arise, how do you know when it has arisen, what do you do. All of those are there quite in detail. So I don’t want to brag, but I don’t know any other good meditation book giving such detail in English. Whether there is any other one available, maybe there is, I don’t know. You people know better than I do but I doubt it, so that is quite a good one. And then very nice for us, for me, because these transcripts are very cheap now, especially this time. I am really happy with that.

00:13:57

They made some mistake somewhere, I was told. Whatever it is supposed to be, it was supposed to be 20-25 dollar or whatever. All are 16,55 or 17,55, what is it?

Audience: 17,99

Rimpoche: 17,99 because they made a mistake with the bar code.

Audience: The printed price is wrong.

Rimpoche: Oh, the printed price is wrong, but anyway, I think I am very happy with it, honestly, because people can get it cheaper and that is much better. I am sure we will lose a little bit here, but we will gain somewhere else. This is always like that, so it doesn’t matter, because if you keep on focusing on reasoning, I always say we need to be as cheap as possible because people who buy this with great difficulty can afford to do so. These are Jewel Heart members and within ourselves it is always better, cheaper is better, that is what we should be able to do. So I am sort of happy, honestly. They wanted to change it. I said: “Please forget it” (laughs).

00:15:37

Anyway, So that is the equanimity between the wandering and sinking, whether it is gross or subtle level. And again it is based on enthusiasm, strongly focused on the subject of meditation, free of wandering and sinking mind, and makes the individual develop different stages, stages of the meditative stage, nine of them. So that is named equanimity or is there something else there?

Audience: They all say equanimity

Rimpoche: Only?

Audience: Yes

Rimpoche: Okay. This is a different equanimity than when you talk about meditating on compassion, developing bodhimind, either in the seven stages or exchange stage, there is a stage of equanimity. That is different. This is equalizing or balancing between those two. So the other one is balancing between self-cherishing and cherishing others. Here it is different, the same name but different.

00:17:31

Now, non-violence (nam par mi tse ba). What is non-violence? It is focused on any living beings, and a mind of hurting and harming, and pinpointing ‘I am going to hurt the person’ or ‘I am going to teach the person a lesson’, that negative connotation of ‘I am going to teach a lesson’, that and above, the idea of hurting, free of that, that is non-violence. Not only you don’t have the mind of not hurting, you have compassion, and even a little bit of negative or disliking one should have patience. I think that is about it, do I have to emphasize anything… Maybe not, but.. ‘sem ge..’(citation 00:09:11): so one of the essence of the Buddha’s teaching is not to hurt or harm others. So the non-violence is one of the major principles, foundation, ground in which Buddha shared his teaching with us. Buddha himself very clearly declared: “Anybody who harms anyone is not my disciple, not my follower, doesn’t belong in my party” in other words, in political terms. So that Buddha made very clear, so the non-violence is the essence of Buddhism, so therefore it is the fundamental basis of virtues. So that should be covering the eleven virtuous. Buddha himself has said: “How does one become a Buddha, how does one get that outstanding mental and physical state of Buddha? It is all coming from patience, patience is non-violence, not hurting people”.

00:21:13

So, basically these are the eleven virtuous. By nature all these emotions are virtue. However because of motivation, because of the thoughts accompanying, because of something sometimes, it changes here and there, and all these one has to be aware of. Although it is virtue by nature, by the nature of the emotion itself, these are all virtue, but sometimes while you are thinking it is virtue, it could go. For example patience or even non-violence, patience: you can go and try to be patient, patient, and sometimes it can change into passive aggressive. So you really have to know where the lines are drawn. So this is important to know by nature what it is, and then important to know it is dependent rise, and important to know this emotion is accompanied by what, and how is it changing. Because unless you watch it, - you may think ‘My motivation is good and therefore, and god doesn’t listen to me so I am going to give it to him’. By that time it already becomes a negativity because you are hurting him and it is going to get more. So that is about it. So and also how does it develop within the individual? We always have to develop all these eleven virtuous within us. How do we develop? How do we develop those three types of faith? And how do we develop this shame? How do we develop embarrassment and all this. So these are very.. everyone you help yourself and that is that.

00:24:09

Now the next is going to be six root delusions. They are quite simple: attachment, anger, pride, ignorance, doubt, wrong view. Negative view, negative doubt. These are the six root negative. This is simple because we are all expert on it. So we don’t really have to study to know what it is. It is within ourselves. So, it is interesting when you look at it, you say: what is attachment? Attachment is one mind focusing on a contaminated object, a contaminated object and then seeing the beauty and the desire to have it. That is the brief definition of attachment, if I have to give you. These are all bus stop definitions. So just simply say what is it?: contaminated basis. You know why? When you say a contaminated basis, which means if you have attachment on an uncontaminated basis, then what happens? Right, because the definition says: contaminated. So if you have an uncontaminated basis, and then you have desire, then what happens? It doesn’t become attachment, it becomes something else. Interesting.

00:26:40

Sometimes you find it very difficult to figure out what is the unwanted attachment and what is pure love. And when you are looking at the definitions, this is what happens. Let’s say: if you are looking at Tara, white Tara, not chocolate Tara today, let’s say you are looking at Tara and you see the beauty of Tara’s figure and how wonderful it is and you develop desire to be able to get it, or have it. Have it is also very funny… it doesn’t matter. Don’t let me talk, okay, because then I am not going to finish. So, anyway, having developed desire to obtain the state of Tara is desire, but the focal point is, also the aspects of the mind is also obtaining, it is also wanting, it is also desire, it is also attraction, all of them are there, but the focusing is on an uncontaminated basis, therefore it might not be sticky stuff. Think about it. ‘Sa je..’(citation 00:28:51): it is contaminated points, and seeing the beautiful and attraction and desire to have it. If it is uncontaminated, then what happens? Very similarly, I don’t remember when, but a couple of years ago, somebody asked me: “If you have attachment to Buddha, what happens?”. So if you have attachment to Buddha, it might not be attachment, because the focal point you are focusing on is uncontaminated. So it might not even be negative at all because of the object you are looking at. It is desire. So anyway, we are expert on attachment, that is for sure, so we know how attachment works with us. So there me be a point on what we are attached is slightly different. ‘Sa je…’(citation 00:30:15):

00:30:26

The next is what?

Audience: Anger

Rimpoche: On that also we are expert. We know very well about that. The definition here is focus on living beings and you are disturbed and you dislike it and you want to harm them. And it is unbearable they say. It becomes more and more intolerable, unbearable. So the aspects of this mind anger is it is becoming unbearable, intolerable, a deep mind which wanted to hurt and feeling hurt and that is basically what anger is all about. And most closest person who you can get angry at is somehow one who has a connection with yourself, either yourself or you friend or your family. They count nine different points or something. So anyway, the basis of growing anger is mostly yourself your friends, your family and of course your enemy. One doesn’t becomes an enemy unless you are being somehow connected, and then a lot of friends become enemies in samsara. A morning friend becomes an evening enemy, and the beginning of a lifelong friend becomes an enemy at the end of life. All this happens in the samsaric world. Your best friend, your best partner becomes your worst enemy in the end, it is always like that. That is the nature of samsara. That is why who you get angry at, you point out yourself, your friend, your dearest, past, present future, and three times three becomes nine, that is why this nine thing.

00:33:22

So, looking at the individual saying: “This one harmed me”. “This one is threatening me”, “This one may hurt me”, raising doubt. So, anyway, the nature of the anger is always, the definition of anger tells us it always wants to hurt and harm the other person. So if you are just short tempered and you are angry, showing a temper tantrum, but you don’t have a desire to hurt the other person, then it might not be anger, no matter how much people are screaming and yelling, and whatever you are doing. But still it might not be anger, because that doesn’t have the desire to hurt the person. But some people will deny: “I don’t have desire to hurt the person, but I cannot tolerate blab la bla”. But then within that, some kind of avoiding the person, throwing, some kind of negative thing is maybe coming up, one has to watch. Then big powerful anger we don’t have to talk about. We all know. Sometimes it is so much you see no other thing except everything is anger. Because if you are angry with somebody, even though that person tries to do something good, we always see try to do something to hurt me, or harm me we always read wrongly, that is because anger influences the principle mind, the sixth consciousness. The sixth consciousness always reads it as a signal of threat, of hurting and some people are .., a lot of people in the natural habit, if you are upset, or angry you have to leave the person alone. You can’t go and say ‘poor you, bla bla bla’. If you say ‘poor you’, it may even get more on it. So ‘how dare you call me poor me’. So all of those will come up, and these are the… , we don’t have to talk much, we know.

00:36:27

What is the antidote of anger, we already talked about, Buddha says patience. Because patience, then again, it is a funny thing. Patience try to understand don’t let mind go under the control of anger, giving mind another alternative. However, patience can sometimes become passive-aggressive. If that becomes it is not patience, it is passive-aggressive. Mental faculties change so much. A lot of people say: “He gets so angry but I maintain cool. The more I maintain cool, he got more angry”. Because it is becoming passive-aggressive, you are not having anything great, you are enjoying it at the expense of that other person who is getting angry. And that is stronger anger than yelling, screaming anger. I maintained cool. Or some people may not go that far and say: “I don’t know what is going on, he kept on yelling and I just kept my mouth shut”. That could be shutting your mouth, it could be sitting there and enjoying shutting your mouth and seeing that other person going crazy. Funny, huh.

00:38:40

Alright, the next will be pride. Now this pride: for the normal American mind, why is pride such a negativity? Pride. We normally don’t see it so much as a negativity. Here in this case whatever you have, something, in reality it is probably nothing ‘nga gye..’(citation 00:39:29): some people have pride for nothing, you know, some people say ‘I am superior’, this is more or less, there is an inferiority complex and superiority complex, and this is all part of this pride because if we look at the definition they say: either you have wealth or you have quality or you belong to a higher cast. In traditional India there is the cast system: if you are Brahmin, you think ‘I am Brahmin, I am much superior, how can these Harijans touch my shoe! Forget about anything else, ‘How can they touch my shoe, I am superior, this one is dirty, filthy because he/she is Harijan’. In the Indian cast system, you have that, so much so that in old India, if any lower casts called Harijan, janitors, sweepers, all that category, or even a smiths, silver smiths or gold smiths or butchers and all that, if they touch any of the clothes of the upper cast, the Brahmins, forget about it, even food or utensils, or shoes, that particular Brahmin will run away in the field of kusha grass and sleep there for seven days to purify. It is the culture. Maybe it is very important in India for that matter.

00:41:48

So thinking, making yourself superior, ‘I am the child of noble family and I am great’ or ‘I have that good knowledge, I am great’, this sort of pride is considered as one of those root negativities. Not only that, this particular root negativity is divided into seven different categories. I mean ‘Me, me, me, I am great’ is number one. And then some, even though you don’t have any higher status of anything, spiritual or anything, but thinking ‘I am eligible, I am almost there’, then that is unnecessary pride. Anyway ‘nga wang..’ (citation 00:43:21): the worst of all is the seventh one, the seventh one is the wrong informations and then you think ‘That is right and I am superior’ and all this. The problem with the pride is pride removes tremendous opportunity for people to learn, for people to get information. Because always ‘I knew already, and I don’t want to know’. And teaching traditions, Tibetan traditions they tell you: which place, the high mountain peak or the lower platform becomes green first? Always the lower plateaus becomes green first. The peak of high mountain don’t become green. They give you the pride as the example, pride prevents the individual to get more quality, because you think ‘I am already’.

00:45:26

Even within the monasteries, throughout the generations, if you look at the different generations in the monastery and through my period and even nowadays there is always some example there. And during my period, there was a geshe named geshe Sakya Senge, Shakya Senge is Buddha’s name, right? It is from Kongpo Khamtsen, it is from Bhutan, it is Bhutanese, Shakya Senge. Shakya Senge thinks he is the most learned, he knows quite okay, but he is not the most learned, but he thinks he is the most learned, and he believes he is the most learned throughout Drepung, especially in Loseling, whatever ten, fifteen thousand learned geshes, he says no one is like him, he is the most learned. And everybody except him knows he is that type of person. So then he came during the exam period, and he seems okay, he is geshe okay. But Khen Pema Gyaltsen, one of my teachers, an outstanding abbot, he was the abbot of that time, then they give you the category of geshe. Many geshes are taking their exams together and then they say: “So- and- so is the category of lharampa”, the best one, and then “So-and-so is the second category”, “So- and-so is the third category” and “So-and –so is the fourth category”. Shakya Senge falls in the second category, the second category was probably right, maybe he could have fallen in the third but he is okay. Probably Khen Rinpoche thought ‘He may be very disappointed’ and he put him in the second. So he came up saying: “Me in the second? What is going on? I should be in one”. Everybody was looking and he kept on shouting “I should be in one, who else knows better than me”. (laughs) So everybody laughed at him. He says: “They are laughing at me, what is it?”. And then later also he tells me: “Because if he doesn’t have that pride he could have been in number one”, because he doesn’t really study, he is okay but doesn’t study that much.

00:49:00

And that is during my period, a little bit senior to me. And then late Tarab Rinpoche and Lodro Rinpoche told me there is another geshe in Dharamsala who was very similar to this. And then one day they wanted to make a joke. He was a very nice geshe. So Tarab Rinpoche and Lodro Rinpoche invited him and served him lunch. Actually they wanted to feed him. He was a nice geshe. So they sort of both talked to each other and both pushed each other. And when he came they both got up. They were sitting and both got up, saying “Oh yes, geshe-la pleaew come in, you have to sit up here”, and he said “What is going on”, and they said : “No, geshe-la, please sit, you are most learned” and this and that. And he said: “Do you really want me to sit up here?” and they said : “Yes we want you to sit up here”, and they got down and sat on the floor looking at him and they said : “Now we have some difficult questions to ask you”. He really thought they were asking. They were actually making jokes, they were having fun, and he is really thinking, he is having.. they asked a couple of questions and he gave reasonable answers, it was okay. And suddenly His Holiness popped up. This was Tarab Rinpoche’s room. His Holiness looked up and down, and said “What is going on?” Tarab Rinpoche said he kept quiet, but Lodro Rinpoche said: “We were joking”. Geshe realized and jumped out (laughs). So things like that, sometimes pride makes you blind. So when that happens it blocks all development, all qualities, especially the wrong pride does that.

00:51:35

The next one is probably ignorance, ignorance is marigpa. ‘marigpa…’(citation 00:51:42). Ignorance here is ignorance/confused together. One who is confused, on the reality of every existent phenomena, that is ignorance. We divide that into two categories, that is

ignorance on the karmic functioning

ignorance on reality

Ignorance on karmic functioning and ignorance for absolute reality. So ignorance on karmic functioning is not knowing the result depends on the cause, the cause brings the result. This is the ignorance on the karmic functioning. Not only that, at the causal level negative emotions create negative actions, negative actions create negative karma, not knowing these are harmful for the individuals. That is why one of root of all sufferings is called ignorance, because of not knowing: a) ignorance on karmic, b) ignorance on absolute reality. So it sort of provided a perfect base for sufferings to breed, to develop. That is why out of those six, the ignorance is the most important. One has to be aware of it.

00:54:17

Next should be doubt, negative doubt, not every doubt. This is a more Buddhist doctrinal thing, like whether is there is truly four noble truths, is it really true? Or karmic: is it really true? This is the most powerful obstacle to the individual to see through. Actually doubt in general is good: if you can raise it, talk about it, clarify it, it is very good. But this doubt here is beyond the normal doubt. Like very strong saying: “There is no proof for whatsoever for the second noble truth: that causes bring suffering, there is no connection for whatsoever. How can it be that I hurt you, and that brings me suffering, because I am victorious, I am powerful, I beat you up completely, I am great, how can that bring me suffering, there is no connection whatsoever”. When somebody says: “There is a connection”, “That is very doubtful, there is no connection”, from that angle bringing doubt. Not really whether this is true or not true, not that sort of doubt. This is a little more even in Buddhist teachings, if anybody doubts the karma and the principle of the four noble truths, they consider this as a very heavy negativity. But I think this has something to do with religious philosophy and doctrine.

00:57:11

What now? Now that is a difficult one, the next is the view, right? Did they say negative view?

Audience: They say: wrong view, opinionatedness, afflicted views, deluded view.

Rimpoche: Right. Number one: this is jigta, the wrong view number one is jigta. Jigta we talked about a lot, jigta is a view that is seeing the perishable aggregates and identifying them as me. So looking at the perishable aggregates and identifying them as me, really brings all fear with everybody all the time. Because it is perishable, the identity of me is perishable. So therefore I am always afraid of losing me. But that is what over is counted as negative view. But however in the Prasangika system ignorance itself, jigta itself is ignorance, there is no other ignorance than jigta itself. That is the Prasangika system. So this is extreme views of nihilistic, extreme view of existentialistic. And some people think some behaviors are superior. There are even certain teachings: if you could burn yourself with five fires or jump on a trident and you die, you will be liberated, and all of those are some, according to us, non-Buddhist teachings in early India. They have that. If you could.. these are the behavior superior thinking. So if you could die jumping over a trident or burn yourself with five different fires. These are non-Buddhist views, these are what that really is. What does jigta really do? Jigta does look at my aggregates saying “This is me”. So, it is always trouble.

01:02:06

Did they give any division of this wrong view?

Audience: No, it is not here

Audience: In Geshe Kelsang Gyatso’s book there are five divisions

Rimpoche: They have that? What names do they give?

Audience: View of the transitory collection, these are the five types of deluded view:

View of the transitory collection, extreme view, holding false views as supreme, holding wrong moral disciplines and conduct as the supreme, and wrong view.

Rimpoche: That is holding the wrong moral conduct as supreme, which I am talking about: jumping on the trident and die, then getting purified of negativities and liberated. Wrong view here, this is considered the worst. Not having past, present, future life, not having karma. Some people try to analyze a little bit, or talk to people, say “Hey, is past , present and future life is a total joke”, so you are convinced completely, you are holding that view very strongly, that is called logpa. That is called wrong, very wrong. It makes yourself totally wrong, that is why it is considered it is very, very bad. Why? Because it cuts you karmic activities completely, and therefore it cuts all the virtues you build. Since my and our understanding is this: virtues bring quality, non-virtues bring disqualification and when you cut out all the virtues, you cut out all your qualities. Even Buddha goes repeatedly in the sutras: that cuts the root of virtue. So, out of those five, this wrong view is considered the most harmful to the individual, because it cuts out. And that happens, it is a reality. So basically six root negativities are there.

So now the next is twenty secondary negativities. I am sorry that I am running a little bit too fast but sometimes it happens at the end. Hopefully it makes some sense to you. But again these root delusions are there, we have it and we are expert in this anger, attachment. Pride is little questionable. Then what else? The difficult part is the wrong view and all that, that is slightly difficult. Some of them may be by virtue, it may or may not be negativity, but in Buddhist philosophical point they are making it into a negativity, but it may or may not be, I don’t know