Archive Result

20100627GRAANL4

00:00 Heart Sutra, lineage prayer, mandala offering, sang gye chö dang…..

10:10

Kindly generate bodhimind and if you cannot, at least generate the thought that for the benefit of all beings I would like to listen, learn, practice and attain the state of perfection and lead every living being to that state. The teaching you are listening to is the development of bodhimind. We already talked about the benefits yesterday. Now let’s talk about the actual bodhimind. It is the mind that wishes to obtain buddhahood. That’s from the Buddhist point of view. Whether you call it Buddha or not, it is the ultimate level a human being can achieve. All human beings can achieve that. You may call it the level of Buddha or the level of being almighty or whatever. The name doesn’t matter. Names are made to fit certain ideological religious views. Certain religious views say that the “Almighty is untouchable”. They say you cannot become that. According to other religious tradition you can achieve the ultimate. You can call it enlightenment or whatever you want to name it. That doesn’t matter. Language can be different.

In Sanskrit, the original language of Hinduism and Buddhism, it says “Buddha”. But it means the state of perfection. In Tibetan Buddha means jang chub. Jang means ‘totally trained’ and chub means ‘training completed’. Or jang as the past tense of training means being trained and chub is something that you could achieve. You were able to complete it within your power. Whatever you call it, that’s what it means. From this word Buddha we have made words like Buddhist and so on. Still, what it means is perfection. It is what a person can achieve. That achievement is not restricted to any religion, race, color or gender. It is totally open and totally available to all sensible human beings. To human beings who are not sensible, in other words, absolutely crazy, it doesn’t apply, because they are crazy. Unfortunately that’s a mental state and the first thing that has to be done is cure the craziness. Then you become normal and then you can use methods that normal people can use. Until then it is difficult. You can’t think or your thinking is absolutely limited. That’s the problem. But when you reach the state of jang chub, that’s what enlightenment is all about. You don’t have to be Buddhist or Christian or Muslim or Hindu or anything. What you really have to do is overpower and completely get rid of the negative emotions and their root, so that they don’t affect you. You are going beyond them.

In other words, you go beyond hatred and the root of hatred. You go beyond obsession and the root of obsession and likewise you go beyond ignorance. I won’t say “and the root of ignorance” because ignorance itself is the root. I am sorry I am sitting at the table today, rather than on the throne, but after giving the Sunday talk the set up is still here and it is more comfortable for me to sit there. So I am sitting at the round table. It is not a round table conference but a little more convenient. In Holland I am always sitting at a table on a chair, so that is a little easier for my knees as well as anything else.

Wishing to have that state is one point. The second point is that I don’t want that state just for me, one person, but for the sake of all living beings. It is easy to say, but difficult to practice by all of us. Words are easier than actually contemplating that by ourselves in our rational mind. Sometimes it is okay, but sometimes it is very upset. Sometimes it is crazy, sometimes up, sometimes down. Sometimes you develop rages and then it becomes difficult. So therefore it is easy to say but difficult to actually get. Is it impossible to get? No, it is very much possible – absolutely. You just need to train yourself. There is a technical Tibetan Buddhist term called lo jong. The moment we hear that term we tend to think, “So which lo jong is it? The Seven Point Mind training of Chekawa or the 8 verses of Langri Tangpa or the Peacock like training.” That is very technical. In reality lo is your mind and jong means leading your own mind to the right point. Training yourself is the important point.

20:22

You learn to think: I want this state of buddhahood, but not for me but for everybody – in which I am included. So it is the expansion of your objects of compassion and love. It is the expansion of the subjects that you care about. We don’t have to really learn how to develop love for one person. Perhaps we are more experts in that than the earlier great teachers. Probably they have destroyed the attachment quite strongly. I think we are more experts in that than they are. We haven’t destroyed that, but have been building it up and building it up very well through culture, custom, human behavior, news media and everything else. But the other way round we don’t have that much. So we are more expert in having feelings for one person than the earlier spiritual practitioners. Some people think that this means we are going in the opposite direction, but I don’t think so. We are not doing that at all. It is only a matter of expanding it. The question to whom it should be expanded to? What do you think while you are expanding it?

Buddha says this love should be expanded to all living beings. That’s beyond our comprehension. Even if we focus on just a handful of people we have so much love and hate. Just when it comes to just one person we find we have a love and hate relationship. With our spouses, girl friends and boyfriends, everything is love and hate. Honestly. That’s what we have with even one person, forget with a handful of people. Think by yourself, you don’t have to go anywhere else. Think about the last week or even just one day – how much struggle you have with hate and love and hot and cold. In one day, how much we change! That’s our first challenge. Smooth that out. Love and hate comes because your desires have not been fulfilled. That’s all. There is nothing more. You have an agenda and you want to fulfill that agenda. If you can’t fulfill it you are willing to sacrifice all your relationships. If that’s not crazy what is? So we are all crazy. To recognize that is not that big a deal. Who cares who has the key to the car? It is only a matter of a few seconds. By the evening it will be back on the table anyway. So tomorrow you can grab it first. If you can think that way it is not a big deal. But if you can’t, then you have to insist, “It is mine. It has to be right here, you can’t take it away.” That’s how our mind works. I am using the car key as an example. Anything goes on the same lines. You have your own experiences within the same day. Think about it.

If I remember correctly, a common acquaintance got divorced because the milk carton was not properly closed in the fridge. That was a few years ago.

Audience: That was probably not the only thing that went wrong, probably it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Rimpoche: In any case, it shows how silly we are. We don’t realize the silliness. We think it is a huge issue. Even when you say “that’s not the only thing that went wrong” shows how heavy it is considered to be. That’s what happens. Getting hit on the head would probably be a little more serious than disagreeing which way the milk carton is put in the fridge. Se we let silly things deprive us of our happiness. Those of us who have been separated will know this truly. Some are separated because of circumstances. Some are separated because of change of life, i.e death. Some are separated because they can’t agree how to put the milk carton in the fridge. That’s how our mind works.

We want to uplift our mind from that pitifulness, make it a little bigger and more meaningful. The way to lift that up is to see the silliness, and try to be a little bigger and better than that. Expand it a little more. Try to see the other person’s anger. Although it seems to be directed at you and maybe it is, but there is probably a reason.

0:30

If you don’t like the anger being directed at you then you can avoid the reasons that caused the anger to rise. It is not that you want to please the other person. Well, there is nothing wrong with wanting to please, that’s fine. But you have to understand a little more than that. If you really look at that anger carefully, the person who got angry has a variety of reasons. This is important. I would like to tell you but also want to warn you first. I would like to tell you that anger is meaningless and silly. But I would like to warn you: you can’t use your understanding how meaningless and silly is as an advantage in ignoring and dismissing the other person’s suffering. People could do that very easily, saying, “How silly, what’s the point?” That will be more harm than help. So you cannot do that. The way they got angry may be absolutely silly. Somebody may be crying day in and day out over a glass that was broken. We can say “that’s silly – I give you another one; don’t cry.” But to that person it is real suffering. The sentimental value of that glass that was broken cannot be replaced. You can replace the glass but not the sentimental value. Whatever the reason, for that person it is real.

We must acknowledge and understand that. We cannot deny their suffering, no matter how silly it may look to us. Even if it is silly, it is not for you or me to say that, because for the person who is suffering it is really true. For example, a crazy person may think that the whole world is about to collapse, that the sky will fall on their head. That person is really suffering. We cannot sit over there and giggle and laugh and say “what a silly person.” It may be true. The sky is not falling on anybody’s head. But that person is seeing it. The Tibetans say that the rabbit always sleeps with one eye open, worrying that the sky will fall on his head. So he can’t get a good sleep. The sky may or may not fall, but a hunter may be after the rabbit. So whatever the justification, to a suffering person their suffering is real.

The person who hears voices or sees different things, who experience absolutely unreal things in front of our eyes, is undergoing tremendous suffering. We don’t experience what they are going through. We only experience their reaction to the suffering. So dismissing that is completely out of the question, particularly between people who live together - whether you are married or not. How many times do we say, “Don’t worry about it. Nothing is going to change. Nothing happens.” That may be true, but it makes the person suffer more. You have to realize that. So dismissing that has to be completely ruled out. The craziest person may be saying something absolutely untrue, crying and asking for compassion. You can’t think that that person is crazy. They are seeing or hearing or experiencing things for whatever reason. Maybe they drank too much or are too high or maybe it is some chemical effect or maybe it is physical or mental. There is something there why that person is suffering. Remember that at all times. Most of our difficulties come because we don’t acknowledge our own mistakes. We may or may not realize that. We may say, “That’s not the point”, but the point is that he or she is crying. That’s silly. There is action and reaction. All that you cannot easily dismiss.

After establishing that clearly in your mind, you then observe the suffering itself. Then you may clearly see that some of them are not true. But the way to console people is not by saying that it is not true. You try to experience it together, but even if you can’t, at least you have the knowledge of it. Not dismissing it, try to bring it to a different level, whether through changing their mind or environment or whatever circumstances you have to adjust. That’s how you handle it.

For you personally it may not true, it may be false. Everything is false, honestly. We are in samsara. We are not in nirvana. Samsara is run by faults and controlled by faults. It is managed by faults. That’s the difference between nirvana and samsara. Nirvana is truth and run by truth. It’s experience is truth. Samsara is false because of our karmic circumstances. Like a crazy person experiencing their suffering, we are going through the same thing at a different level.

0:40

The crazies are going a little beyond and we are in a little better shape, but still, all this is in reality false. But for a period, under certain circumstances, it is true. The relative truth has to be honored. For that crazy person, who is suffering in absolute craziness, that experience is relative truth for that person. That’s why we cannot ignore their suffering. Understand the suffering people’s experience, either your own or that of others. The moment you have to go a little beyond that we have to bring wisdom in. But in order to have good compassion you have to first bring in love. You are not going to feel love for another person unless you have a reason. You have to build the reasons. Again, the reasons you are building is not your imagination. You may think that but it isn’t. It is the truth. It is absolutely true. You can build them through the Seven Stage Development or through the Exchange Stage Development. Both are absolutely true. It is not imagination. It is not a mental exercise. It is real. Buddha says: all beings are your mother beings. It is true. That doesn’t mean that everybody is my mother at this moment. Probably everybody is younger than me. So how can you all be my mother? Is a young mother going to give birth to an old guy? That’s not what this is talking about. It means all beings have been my mother at one time or another, probably many times.

If you understand the truth of reincarnation you won’t have a problem here. If you don’t get the truth of reincarnation you have a hell of a problem. A woman may think, “How can that little kid in front of me be my mother? I gave birth to him. I am his mother and not the other way round.” That’s true, but on the other hand, in a previous life he was your mother. That is also true. Buddha says that you cannot point to a single being who has never been your mother. That’s sounds funny – everybody thereby becomes a motherfucker! (laughter) sorry for my language. Before we get into more trouble, let’s stop for lunch.

Sazhi pokyi…….45:05 announcements 47:35

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