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20090915GRAANL

Opening Prayers....

0:10: For the benefit of all living beings one would like to obtain the state of a buddha, for which one would like to listen to this teaching, practice and make oneself able to obtain buddhahood. At least one should have that much motivation and if possible, generate the pure bodhimind, as normally described within the normal teachings lines. At least for the benefit of all beings I would like to obtain buddhahood, for which I would like to learn, analyze, meditate and make it perfect. With that mind do kindly listen.

The teaching you are listening to is the lam rim teaching. There are a number of different lam rims. They all have 4 special qualities and 8 most significant points. Today this is the continuation of the nyur lam - the Quick Path, by the Third Panchen Lama, Panchen Losang Yeshe. There are basically two outlines:

1. talking about the lineage masters and explaining the stages of the path and their order.

2. After developing understanding of this training the individual mind on that.

The first is over, the second is: training the individual on this path. That has two:

1. Compassion aspects

2. Wisdom aspects

1. Compassion aspects: That has:

1. Root of all development, guru devotional practice

2. Developing of the individual thereafter

The first is over. The second has two:

1. Recognizing the importance of life and taking the opportunity of that life that has 10 endowments and 8 leisures.

2. How does one develop

That has three:

Common with the lower level

Common with the medium level

Mahayana

We are at 'Common with the lower level". The goal here is to avoid getting caught in the sticky desire and pleasure and harmony of this life. Harmony is fine, actually, but not pleasure. The second is the similarity in your future lives. Within that, that really establishes the First Principle in 'Common with the lower level'. That means the necessary things out of the lower paths. According to the Buddha's teaching there are the higher paths of the Mahayana and the lower teachings, the Theravadan teaching, traditionally called "Hinayana". Nothing is to be left out. You have to have the main paths of the Theravadan and the Mahayana teachings. But you don't need every detail. The absolutely necessary things we have to take. The main purpose of the Hinayana or Theravadan teachings is to cut the attachment and obsession to the goodies of this life and to the picnic spots of samsara in future lives. That is the purpose, no matter whatever anybody says. People may say the Theravadan teachings tell you how to function as a monk or nun, because they give detailed rules on how far you can look, how to walk, how to sit. Yes, it is true. The reasons why you are not supposed to look one foot beyond this and beyond that as a monk or nun is because that may cause you to have attraction and that opens the door to attachment. Your attachment may develop obsession and that's why they recommend to cut it from the beginning. The Theravadan monks will sit very straight and no matter what happens, they will not turn around. That's very nice and wonderful. But then they have to keep their mind straight too. The whole purpose of physical discipline is to bring the mental discipline. Mind is not supposed to be looking at something that makes you think, "Oh, this is good; I should get it. Ah, this is attractive and wonderful. I would like to have it." They are trying to avoid that, because that is attachment. Attachment is the glue for the samsaric life.

The essence of the Hinayana/Theravada teaching is to be able to see the faults and sufferings of samsara and the peace of nirvana. Thereby the individual moves towards the desire to be free from samsaric sufferings. That may be imposed on the individual - or the individual may pick that up - through discipline, through whatever means that work. That is the goal, the purpose, the base and the action. The result they hope to get is the arhat level - freedom from samsara.

Every Buddhist path has to have the base on which you work, the action you are going to take, the way you are going to function, and the result - what you hope to get. If one is missing your practice is not right. Without base it is not right. If you have no way of achieving your goal, that's not right. And if you don't even have a goal that is even worse.

Many spiritual practices in many places don't have a goal or purpose. It is just done for the sake of doing it. It is fun to do it. It gives you nice exercise. That may be wonderful or not, but there is no real purpose or goal. Then what are you really doing it for? If you are trying to do something spiritual at least you should know why you are doing it.

0:23 Even if you do exercise you know that you are doing it to lose weight. You want to look nice. So there is a purpose. The way you are achieving that is by jumping around and doing exercises. You are doing it on the basis of your physical body. So even those activities have a base, a goal and a way how to achieve it. Then schooling is the same. The base on which you work is your mind. How you are working is by getting the education. The goal is to get a good job and become an efficient and perfect person. That is just normal education and common sense.

Then we go into the spiritual path we have no goal, no base, no method. Just sitting there. That is a little bit naive. So the spiritual path also needs base, path and result. Without that it becomes questionable. The path may be right. That is not our business. But whether that path is right for me, that is my question to answer. Each one of us has to figure that out.

The Buddhist path clearly tells you: this is the base, this is goal and this is how we work to achieve it. So we talk about 'common with the lower level' and 'common with the medium level' and 'mahayana'. So the goals change, the methods change, but the base doesn't change. It is me.

Technically, I should say: the base is the two truths. The path is wisdom and compassion and the result is the rupakaya and dharmakaya. But what does "two truths" mean to you? Actually, it is me, myself - the relative me and the absolute me. When the Buddha talked about the two truths he talked about relative and absolute truth. There is no third truth. And then we talk about the Four Noble Truths! That is different though. The word is the same but the way you count is different. In the two truths we talk about the relative and absolute aspects of the individual. Other than that there is no third aspect. The Four Noble Truths is a different story.

"I" is the relative truth and the absolute truth is the true reality of "I". I don't want to go into detail on that here because I would be putting the cart before the horse. I am going to leave it there.

The two paths are wisdom and compassion. The two results are the mental aspect of enlightenment and the physical aspect of enlightenment. That is the goal of the mahayana. Both, 'common with the lower' and 'common with the medium' share the same goal: freedom from samsara. That is normally known as the level of an arhat. You are not a fully enlightened buddha but you are out of samsara. That is the goal. How you reach that goal is through wisdom, the profound, and the compassion, the vast. These two will lead you anywhere, in hinayana and in mahayana. In hinayana we don't emphasize the compassion as much as at the mahayana level.

Having said that let me get back to today's subject. 0:30

Within the 'common with the lower' level we begin with the appreciation of the life and embracing it, recognizing it's qualities, importance and difficulty to find it. We have talked all that already. This life is impermanent. It is changing nature. Not only that. It exhibits the gross level of impermanence through death. We talked about death and the dying stages. Then if we don't have a guarantee that we will take a good future life, if death comes before, what shall we do? So we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. We talked about ordinary refuge and mahayhana refuge. You have already heard that. Then we talk about who we are taking refuge to. Buddha is not only the historical Buddha alone, but what the historical Buddha represents. What does 'buddha' mean to us? I explained the Tibetan meaning of buddha, which is sang gye. sang is clearing - clearing the two obstacles, the afflictive emotions as well as their imprints. gye refers to total knowledge.

We also talked about dharma. That doesn't mean the dharma books or somebody sitting there, meditating. We talked about the two points of Vasubandhu's metaphysical root text. That says

dön pe tam chu nam nyi de

lung dang thog pe dang nyi du

There are two types of dharma: absolute and relative dharma. Absolute dharma means the spiritual development within the individual. Coming to the past, being in the present and going into the future. True dharma is the spiritual development within the individual.

Buddha is like the doctor who diagnoses you and gives you medicine. Dharma is the real medicine or medical treatment. It is something that directly works as antidote against our afflictive emotions and their effects. When that is overcome we gain some positivity. This positivity is our spiritual development. That is our true dharma. The big spiritual development happened within the Buddha and the small one is within us today. Hopefully that will also become the big one. The relative dharma is the dharma books. They are the result of the dharma the individuals have developed and they expressed that through books.

Sangha truly means 'best assembly' of more than four Buddhist monks. That is the relative sangha. The absolute sangha is when the individual, man, woman and child, has developed the true understanding of reality.

We talked about the eight qualities of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. I mentioned to you what taking refuge means. Simply repeating the words after somebody who is giving the refuge is not enough. You can say namo buddhaya namo dharmaya namo sanghaya or you can say lama la kyab su chio sang gye la kyab su chio chö la kyab su chio gendun la kyab su chio or you can say buddham saranam gacchami dharmam saranam gacchami sangham saranam gachhami dutiyampam and tatiyampam, etc. but that is just repeating words. That may or may not necessarily be true taking of refuge. In order to truly take refuge you have to know the reasons why you are taking refuge, whom you are taking refuge to and what refuge means. Then you can engage in the ritual of refuge taking. If I say that I take in refuge but have no idea what buddha is, then how is that going to work? Looking at a little buddha image - that doesn't become buddha. Those of us who claim to be Buddhists, want to be Buddhists, who like Buddhism, or have a fantasy about Buddhism, may just want to say a few words and think that's it.

0:40 But that doesn't become refuge. Who you are taking refuge to and what for is so important to know. There should be a sense of urgency, thinking, "If I don't make it and death becomes before, then I have no idea where I am going. What happens, who can I rely on? Why should I rely on Buddha, Dharma and Sangha? Who are they?" That is the real concern. You have to study and know about it and gain understanding. Then you can say namo buddhaya and then these words have a taste and some force and energy. They are connected with me and the Buddha whom I am taking refuge to. And that is my future buddha who is represented by the historical Buddha. That is the connection, link or bond. What really makes that bond? The dharma, the antidote of negative emotions, which acts to overcome negative karma. That bond will produce the levels of the sangha. Then your refuge will become worthwhile.

We already talked about. Now we are reaching to the benefits of refuge. I think I mentioned them before.

1. You become a buddhist, which is the base of all vows.

2. It cuts negativities that we have accumulated earlier.

3. It builds tremendous luck and fortune.

4. It protects us from falling into undesirable rebirths in lower realms.

5. Even in this life we are protected from fears. (I have given historical examples)

Now we have reached to the positive and negative advice of refuge. After taking refuge, taking refuge alone is not good enough. You have to follow their advice. There are two:

Individual Advices

Common Advices

Individual Advice

1. Positive Advice - tells you what to do

2. Negative Advice - tells you what not to do

1. Negative advice comes first.

By taking refuge in Buddha we do not take refuge in samsaric or improper gods or spirits.

By taking refuge in Dharma we do not engage in violence. Don't do things that hurt anybody, oneself or others.

By taking refuge in Sangha we don't engage with non-virtuous friends.

Particularly Dharma, do not engage in any violence. That means not hurting people. That includes dealing roughly with people, being passive aggressive. You could hurt somebody through offensive or defensive ways. You could attack a person physically, verbally or emotionally or even through not reacting. Treating the individual like a piece of rock or a mud pile is also violence. You may not shout or scream and say that you just mind your own business, but you are expressing your unhappiness and displeasure to the person or to the world through different ways. The individual of course has every right to express what they feel. No one can tell you that you cannot express yourself. However, if your expression causes disharmony in the community, in the home, in society, that could be violence. Not necessarily but it could be. It makes others uncomfortable, miserable and tortures them. That torturing and discomfort is caused by your action. So that could be violence. If so, then it goes against the advice of the Dharma of not harming others.

Taking refuge is easy. Following the advice is difficult. Similarly, by taking refuge in Sangha.

0:50 The tradition tells you: do not go along with the mutigpas, the non-Buddhists or anti-Buddhists. But that is a technicality. It really means to avoid getting involved with non-virtuous friends. These are friends who encourage you to have more hatred, more obsession, rather than compassion, non-violence. The less involvement you have with them the better for you. You don't want to be controlled by negative emotions. It is just like people who are addicted to substances. If they are involved with other addictive persons the chances are that they are not going to get free from that addiction. If they are not associated with addicted persons their chances are much better.

Similarly, if people are addicted to negative emotions like obsession and hatred, the less association with them the better. It will help the individual not to be involved with that. That's why it makes a huge difference to your spiritual path. For a good friend to bring one person to the level of being good is a hell of a hard job. It takes a hell of time. A bad friend can take a good person down very easily, within a month or so. It is like drinking. If you have a friend who likes to drink you will end up drinking with them. You have one tonight, two the night after, three the night after that. By the time the week is over you are drinking 7 drinks a night! Within the month the person who has never drunk can become a drunken fellow. It is not hard. But for a person who drinks a lot to stop drinking is very difficult. It is not going to happen in one, two or three weeks. There will have to be revealing reasons and then you try to avoid it and then it is very hard. It hurt and is painful and you are still trying. It is very hard work.

Just like that. The negative emotions can easily be influenced by a friend. If you keep on talking with a friend who uses the f- word all the time for one hour, in the next hour you begin to use the f-word as well. That is common. That's why this advice is there.

These are the individual advices.

Now the common or general advices:

Remembering the qualities of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and their significance.

Repeatedly, again and again, take refuge in them and remember their kindness.

Always commemorate them. That is important.

To commemorate Buddha we follow the Buddha's words.

To commemorate Dharma we avoid violence.

To commemorate Sangha try to have perfect morality. If you can't, do whatever you can to improve your own morality.

Particularly rely on Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. They will never let you down.

Don't use Buddha, Dharma and Sangha as jokes or swear by them.

Thus we have completed the individual and collective advices of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

Next is: The functioning of karma and developing trust in karma. This goes together with refuge. Today I won't be able to handle this and it should be next week's job, but next week I won't be here. I will be in Denver and Boulder, Colorado.

1:00 (follows a 5 min presentation of an animated picture through facebook on the video screen, accompanied by an Allen Ginsberg song and poem - breathe when you breathe lie down you lie down......)

1:05 announcements, 1:07 dedication prayers 1:08:41