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20100801GRAAPT

The needs of the spiritual path

Guided meditation

(Kathy?) Good Morning everyone nice to see you all today for those of you who may be new to our Sunday morning talks we have some steps we go through initially. What we do together is we sing the four immeasurables which is a way of setting our motivation for our session here today. Then after that we take about five minutes to settle our bodies and minds to be able to develop some focus and stability which allows us the opportunity then to be more attentive and aware. Then following that we use our motivation and our focus to enjoy our talk this morning with Gelek Rimpoche.

Afterwards there will be some announcements and then we will close the session with dedication Dedicating our efforts this morning for the benefit of all beings to be free from suffering and to be in joy. Then afterwards we invite you to enjoy tea and cookies and share and talk with each other. So we will begin first with setting our motivation. (They sing the four immeasurables) 000122

So now with that motivation in mind now we make the effort to actually begin to settle and stabilize our body, find our balance. Ideally we would like to make sure that our backbone is straight allowing us the opportunity for our body to not be distracting but actually be supportive. Then the next step is that we are choosing for five very brief minutes to keep our focus solely on the natural rhythm of our breath. So the attention of our mind we are choosing not to wander into our thoughts about what happened coming in here or worrying about what to do next. We are letting our mind settle its focus solely on the rhythm of our breath that naturally is there with us all the time.

And we may find we start to sink a little bit or wander and when that happens we simply return to the breath. As it flows, either you may want to watch how it flows underneath the nostril, across the upper lip or the rhythm of your abdomen as it flows with the breath going in and out. And by taking that focus in that time and settling just within your own sphere with that I will let you know when the five minutes have passed.

Rimpoche: Welcome and good morning everybody. So today we will be talking in general about our needs on the spiritual path. A number of Sundays ago, the last time, I talked about compassion. 000558

Life is difficult without a spirtual path

Honestly speaking our lives are important, very good and all that but without the spiritual path it will be rather difficult as you know. So there are a number of different paths available. I was in Cleveland talking to the Jewel Heart Cleveland people yesterday. I’m sure they’re watching the web broadcast today and I would like to say to them especially hello and thank you we enjoyed yesterday. Good.

So we’ve been talking about wisdom in Cleveland yesterday and when I was looking back a number of times I talked about the compassion. We are quite familiar with it. Today I would like to focus more on the wisdom oriented practice, the wisdom oriented practice. When I refer to wisdom at this time I’m referring to know how and knowledge. In Tibetan Buddhism particularly you need knowledge/ It is very important. A lot of people will say you don’t need knowledge. They will say you need to think and meditate and that is very true. But what can you meditate and on if you don’t know.

Why wisdom is important

This is very important to know. I emphasized throughout my teachings that you don’t have to be a scholar. You don’t have to be a professor. You don’t have to be a master. But you at least have to know what you’re doing.

If you don’t know what you’re doing then you will get a lot of difficulties. There’ll be a lot of difficulties. So knowing what you’re doing is important. Not only knowing why you are doing it but also utilizing your own intelligent mind is extremely important.

Sometimes when you get into a spiritual path people would like to just let it be. Whoever the spiritual guide or master is he will tell you what to do and you just wait to be told what to do.

Submitting blindly to teacher is not very good

Many do not think much. Many will submit to the teacher who will tell them where to go what to do and all that. That is not very good. You have a wonderful education you have a beautiful mind basis, an intelligent mind very intelligent.

Plus you have an education but then you don’t use it! You don’t use it, you just submit to somebody else who tells you what to do which is not good at all. So you must think and use your intelligence. 001011

So what do you use your intelligence on? You use it on the things that you meditate, on the things that you do. Actually to me for the spiritual path meditation is of course important without that you’ll get nowhere. However the most important thing is conducting your life.

If you don’t conduct your life well, no matter how much you meditate - it doesn’t help you honestly. There was a great teacher called Dupokpulep who was the founder of the Dupa Kagyu tradition. A very wonderful teacher. In the Tibetan tradition there is the Sagya, Nimgma, Gelupa, and Kagyu traditions. . I think that’s four (Rimpoche laughs).

Then there are a lot of sub-sects among the Kagyu there is something call the Dupa Kagyu..The founder of the Dupa Kagyu is the Dupokpulep. He is a very interesting guy. He carries a bow and arrow, wears a white dress and takes a little dog with him when he goes around. He’s a very interesting guy.

So one time there was an old lady who was dying. You know the old Tibetans keep turquoise in their hair which substitutes for an engagement ring. So before she died she took the turquoise out of her hair. She gave it to her family and told them “you go in the street”. “There you will find Dupokpulep then give it to him”. “Tell them to pray for me and take me to a pure land”. So when she died, the family switched the turquoise because her turquoise was supposed to be a very beautiful gemstone. So they went to Dupokpulep and instead gave him a different turquoise and asked him to pray for her. Dupokpulep took the turquoise and he threw it in the drainage ditch! Then he walked away. So then they knew that Dupokpulep understood they had switched stones. So they went back and got the real turquoise gemstone and gave it to him. So he took the turquoise and put it in the quiver where he kept his arrows. 001313

So he put the turquoise in there and he said Gemma tarba lamdo....

He said the turquoise goes in that arrow case and the old lady goes in the pure land. So he said that and left. So Dupokpulep went to a big monastery and the monks were meeting. Some of the older monks were sitting looking down and the younger ones are looking up. There were a thousand monks. So he goes around with folded hands praying and he looks up at those people who are looking down.

He says oh these old monks look very good but their basic refuge of Buddha is behind the door. Which is meaning that you’ve been meditating so long but you have not corrected your mind.

Only when you become a better person is your spirtitual path established

So you may meditate for a long time but if you don’t correct your mind and you don’t become a good person then the basic foundation of your spiritual path is not established. It doesn’t matter if you can sit for a centuries meditating even then you have not.

Dharma - correcting from wrong functioning

The word Dharma in the Tibetan language means “Chur”. They say “Chur”which means correction. Correcting from the wrong functioning. So wrong functioning here means that our mind is controlled by or we are addicted to negative emotions such as hatred and jealousy obsession etc.

We are addicted. If you cannot change your addiction, truly, by replacing your addiction to hatred obsession, and the other negative emotions, if these are not replaced by compassion, wisdom, care, and love, then you don’t have a spiritual path at all 001617

You may think the Dharma is something much more than that. Yes it is true Dharma is something much more than that. But this is basic. If the practice makes no difference to the personality of the individual, if it does not affect how the individual functions and the way the individual functions then the practice is not going to be a true spiritual path at all.

Replacing addictions

The purpose of the spiritual person really is to change the person. The purpose is to replace the addiction to negative emotions with a new addiction to love, compassion, and caring and all this 001714.

That is how the word “chur” which means change comes into this. If you can’t do that it doesn’t matter if you meditate for eons. So that is important to remember to be a good person. Becoming a good person is the fundamental Dharma. You don’t have to be a card-carrying member of any religious tradition. Even if you are a card-carrying member that card probably cannot be used when you need to use it (audience laughs). Nowadays you to go into a shop and give an American Express and they ask “do you have another credit card?” So probably they will look for something else. So remember that. That is very important. You don’t have to be something funny or fancy. It just has to be good.

So the negative addiction that is influencing the individual is replaced by another addiction that is good. That is the number one goal. It is the 101 course if you are in a university. This is a university town so we can say that right? 101 that is what Dharma is all about. Whenever we say that Dharma is profound and wonderful and this and that the profound-ness of the quality of this spiritual path that you do is where that is going to work.

The purpose of Dharma is to make you a better person - kinder gentler

The work that you’re looking at is not your levitating, not your ability to fly, not your ability to live underground. They are all there but that’s not the purpose. The purpose is making the individual a better person - kinder, gentler that is the real Dharma.

You must also understand the nature of reality

On top of that you have to have an understanding of reality. Which means the very famous question that every person asks “who am I, what am I, who, what, and why right?

All these questions. The question really comes, who am I? Who am I? It doesn’t matter. You may be Dr. Joe Blow of the 16th century in Sussex England or something. Honestly! I use that all the time. So it doesn’t matter whoever you are, you are - from that angle.

What does matter here is very interesting when you look at it. You identify yourself as a doctor. So you identify yourself by profession. You also identify your self by name - Joe blow. You identify yourself by place - Sussex, England as well as by time - the 16th-century.

So you identify yourself with the time, the profession, the name, and the place. All this you need otherwise you say I’m Dr. So-and-so which doesn’t mean anything right?

With only one identifier - “Dr. So and so” you are not even sure whether it’s a medical doctor or a PhD Doctor 002213.

So identifying ourselves depends on all kinds of things. Without these things you cannot identify yourself. Even Buddha needs identifiers. Let’s look at Buddha who we can identify quite well. When you look closely - you must ask which Buddha? Is it Shakyamuni Buddha or Maitreya Buddha or the past Buddhas or the present Buddha or the Ten Direction Buddha or the 35 Purification Buddha and all this. 002253

Identity is dependent arising

There are too many of them so everything has to be identified with a name with a place with a time etc. Which tells us that we are a dependent origination. We are not an independent solid thing. That is very interesting. So we identify by name and the place where we are. Where I used to be in India, not only do you have to write you own name but you also have to write “son of”. So you take the father’s identity in addition to establish who you are.

Identity depends on time place profession and so on

So it shows how dependent we are - not independent. The reality is all of us are dependent arising. It looks like you’re very solid. Rimpoche! Yes that’s me! So and so hey you hi! It looks like a solid things that we see, that we perceive and we say hi this and that. That solid-ness that you see consists of a physical body which is part of our identify. This consists of the shape, the sound, the look - everything. Plus I all of those anyway.

Then in occupying that identity what we call an entity maybe the inner being there. Let’s say it’s a mind right? The mind/body combination identifies. 002525

So it also shows that we are not so solid - it is dependent. If one of them is missing you can’t. If the body is missing you become a ghost if the mind is missing your body becomes a corpse. So the combination of that is how we are seen.

And we are normally unaware that we are a combination. We think me and that’s it. We see ourself as a very very powerful person dictating everything from deep inside. We are always worrying about I get hurt everything is built to protect me.

Our biggest worry is I’m going to get hurt - that is what we worry about. The biggest worry that we have is I’m going to lose or I will be the loser. I will become “gone”, I will become void.

So oh so much fear we build in. So in order to help, in order to protect me then we often think that the best course of action is that of hurting others. Because we have a fear of being hurt then we had better hurt them before they hurt us.

So the negative emotion comes. They hit you back so then you get angry and experience hatred. Then we see wonderful things like we get obsessed - all of those are built to protect me.

We lack awareness that there’s nothing solid to be protected. That confusion is the beginning of the mystery that we go through. What we call it? The mystery of life. Here is something that we are protecting we are promoting we are developing but it is not there.

Yesterday in Cleveland Ed asked a question. The question he asked was, we have built up our life in that way and if we lose it would be shaking our principal of our life called what we do. He did ask that am I right? 002900

Don’t attack the self or the individual person - attack the false I

The answer is we don’t attack and we don’t destroy the self or the individual person. Instead we try eliminate the self that we identify as ego. That big built in self is the target.

Actually there are two In our perception we see right now we see that ego is so big so controlling, that big me is that one. But if you look carefully the true me, the true dependently arised individual human being who remains in this life, who is coming from a previous life, who will be going to a future life is not a target of wisdom. It is not the target of wisdom.

Wisdom cannot destroy something truly existing. What wisdom tries to destroy is the false person, the false being. That’s why we try to borrow the concept “ego” as a self terminology to use.

What is happening is we are controlled by the false perception - actually our whole life is built on that. Our whole life is controlled by that. Our whole life! What does wisdom do? It solves that mystery.

The way and how it solves that mystery is bursting that false “I”, the big one, the Queen ant, or Queen bee. I is to call “I Rimpoche”. That is a false person. You have to understand that. The self grasping cutting, the selfishness cutting, all those activities are directed totally at the false “I” not the real “I”. Do you get it?

Don’t get confused, you don’t have a split personality within yourself. There are not two different persons no. It is the false perception of our mind that is the basis, the foundation for all our negative emotions.

It is simply meant to dissolve that false “I” that big one, dictation, control, protection mechanism - all built up. 003302

Put the blame where it belongs - on the false eye

That is the reason why Buddha slogan called samsara is suffering. Nirvana is peace. No matter whatever you do as long as you have that false I controlling you every day - one gets right, the other goes wrong one gets right everything goes wrong here and there here and there all of these difficulties because of the false I. Even in the compassion they tell you Leh leh tum jee

put the blame where it belongs and remember the kindness of all beings, respect to all beings these are the Lojong words remember? Leh leh tum jee

Koan - aim for the target the does not exist - the false eye

It all blends to one that is the false I. So I made that statement earlier in the morning not in this detailed way - the target is not existing - perhaps people don’t get it.

So I thought I would clarify that today because Ed asked that question. What was he asking? I tried to get help from Marilyn. Marilyn said that is exactly what I heard but I don’t know where it’s coming from. Then I thought about it and maybe that’s what it is. Sometimes it is important to think what you think for me.

So I was thinking about it and that’s what we thought. Coming back by car we discussed it. Sometimes people don’t get it easily. I just simply said we negate the false I..

The purpose of wisdom is to defeat the confusion

I did not use the phrase “false I”. I think I used the phrase we negate this dictator that’s it. But it may not have been very clear. So the purpose of the wisdom is to defeat the confusion. Confusion is the cause of the mystery of our life.

Earlier Masters used all different languages for defeating the confusion like burst the lie, caught the thief red-handed and all kinds of things but really what it is - is the target that you negate. You know we call that emptiness you have heard about it. 003608

What emptiness in not saying

Emptiness is not saying I’m not there and you are not there - it is not saying that. Emptiness not saying that everything is not really there, it is not saying that everything is the same. It is not saying that the gold is equal to the pebbles or iron or something It is not saying that.

Emptiness is saying - become empty of false perception

What emptiness is saying is - empty of false perception which controls our life completely! Which is the Queen ant or the Queen bee or the precious me - I me, me, me, that’s it! Who is saying me me me is the false me. What you do yourself is very little - you are completely controlled by the false I. That’s why many times we know “this is the right thing to do” we know this is the wrong thing to do.

But we can’t help it! You look at those people who are challenged by substance abuse. They know what is the right thing to do, many of them. But they cannot help it because of their false I. We call them addictions but because of this false I dictating from inside they are reduced to their additions even though they have knowledge and know how. This is because the false one is functioning.

So what wisdom does is identify the false I, work against it and not only defeat it but negate it completely from out of your system.003840

When the false I is gone your true being shines out

Then the pure being shines out the pure you shines out. Here you worked hard, you built your education, you worked hard for your spiritual path you try to do the right thing but then suddenly false I controls and you do something wrong. Earlier in the 17th century teacher had told us Ton dah nyeh 003911

When your stomach is filled and you are warm from the sunshine you look like a great Dharma practitioner. But when difficulties pop up in life then you become worse than an ordinary person who doesn’t know anything about Dharma. So that’s what it is because the false I takes over like that.

So that is what happens. Even those people who are addicted anything (?). Or they knew so they go through with all programs of rehabilitation. Week after week month after month and suddenly something happens and gone. Right? That’s because of the false I directing. We submit to that. To identify the false I, to work against it, defeat it, and negate it - that is the job of wisdom. Any questions anybody?

Rimpoche: It is okay so no one would like to raise a question (he has an aside in Tibetan)

Audience: the false I is understood in the context of the spiritual growth and physical existence but in the physical world you are still identified with the false I. For example if I say that I am so and so from IBM it has a different meaning than saying I am a developer.

Rimpoche room: a what?

Audience: If I say I am from a bigger company then it has a different identity than saying that I am a developer.

Rimpoche: I understood you

(They discuss a moment)

audience: My question is in the physical world you are still identified with that false I.

Rimpoche: Okay Yonas can you bring the mic back? Thank you . Thank you for the question that tells me exactly I am Joe Blow from IBM or I am Joe Blow the bum. Okay so it has a different perception. Do you know what that tells you? It tells you that you are dependent arising.

The whole idea of image that we talk about is all dependent origination. So naturally you are not identified as the false I but your identified as a dependent arising. John from IBM - that shows dependent arise. It depends on how you look at it 004341

So when you look from the angle of wisdom you will see the emptiness nature of everything. Even if you see a person... by seeing the person alone, it tells me the person is a dependent arise. Remember Shay a now wha...

So remember in our normal courses in the beginning of the three principles path if you look in there Now wha yer.....

By appearance negate extreme existence... empty defeats extreme nihilist. That is it, that is what it is. You are not there because I saw you. You are not there because I saw you. What I did see is a dependent origination of you the physical part, the mind, the profession, and the time.

Didn’t I tell you.... doctor Joe Blow from Sussex in the 16th century? That tells you it is all dependent. One of them is missing because true inherent existence is not there. If there is inherent existence then you don’t have to depend on time, place, profession, name. Like space... space is permanent... it does not depend on anything. So things like that tells us I’m not like space. If I am like space then I would be there all the time and everybody can pass through me. Like that Goldie Hawn’s movie.(audience laughs)

audience: Death Becomes Her

Rimpoche: Death Becomes Her okay thank you. So anyway that’s what it is. That is the difference. We perceive the false I like we perceive space - it is always there always controlling always me and me has to be protected but the reality is it’s not true. It is a dependent arise.

If you can spend a little time thinking about it then you will see everything is not so solid. 004749

A friend of mine I’m not saying who talked to a friend of mine. Both are in Jewel Heart. The first day when they saw the guy had been telling that person. We were sitting at the table and having either drink of coffee or whatever. He’s telling the person, the new one, the table what we’re looking at is really not there. The top is not the table the leg is the table and all this are not the table so where’s the table? It’s not really there.

So that person has been telling that. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong but I’m thinking if you begin to think that way. When you begin to think that way it will definitely help our worries and sufferings much more. But then you don’t lose completely don’t carry that word and run you don’t do.

What you do is.... yet relatively we function we function very well. We have to function within the society. We have to function like everybody else but we don’t suffer like everybody else.

That is the gift that you get from wisdom. That is proved by this gentleman’s question. I’m John from IBM. Okay? So I would like to thank you. I will be seeing you again when? On Labor Day Sunday right? We are open Sunday too yes. Labor Day weekend we do have a Labor Day retreat and we are talking about wisdom right? (they discuss an upcoming Jewel Heart event). So see you, thank you so much.

audience: (announcements about Jewel Heart events, then they chant)

Rimpoche: Thank you