Archive Result

1212

20100904GRAAWisdom2

00:00 Mandala Offering

00:28

Welcome here today. Do kindly generate pure motivation of bodhimind. If you cannot, then please try to check your motivation and try to correct that and think that you would like to be helpful to yourself and others. In order to completely help others one needs to become a fully enlightened Buddha. Buddha said that this is the ultimate goal of spiritual practice. Along those lines think that “I would like to achieve that ultimate goal by becoming a Buddha myself and for that I will learn this profound path.”

Buddha shared this path with us 2600 ago. It was practiced and tested by the early Indian adepts as well as mahapandits, learned scholars and adepts who have achieved the result. This profound path disappeared in India during the early Mogul period. A very strong, powerful Muslim invasion in India destroyed all early Indian spiritual path, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Sikkhism and also Christianity. There are a long struggle and finally the Moguls came into power and destroyed all earlier traditions.

Buddhism divided into two: one went to the south and one went to the north. The southern side carries the Three Pitakas of Buddha’s teaching. That’s the real essence of Buddha’s teaching, n doubt. It has the morality, wisdom and concentration aspects. “Pitakas” is Pali language, one of the four major languages in India at that time. India has a tremendous number of different languages and dialects. They are all counted as “local human languages”. In Tibetan we say yu me rang zhin gyi ke – each province and area spoke their natural mother tongue. That’s all counted as one. Then there is Sanskrit and Pali – languages spoken by the gods – and then there is Pisha tse – the language spoken by the ghosts. That’s how traditionally in India languages were divided. The Three Pitakas or baskets (tripitaka) are mostly written in the Pali language. That tradition had to run away from Central India towards the south, because of the Muslim invasion. Maybe that was also a punishment for other practitioners. The word “fidelity” is probably also part of it. Maybe. It is not my business to talk about. So the Buddhists ran away into two different directions. The northern tradition went into Bengal, Kashmir, Assam, Ladakh, throughout the Himalayas, Tibet and into China, Mongolia, etc. That tradition carries not only the Three Pitakas as principles, but also the mystical aspects of Buddha’s teaching, the vajrayana.

The southern Buddhist tradition you can see now in South-East Asia. That couldn’t stay in India and first went into Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, then went to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and so on. That survived until the communists came and destroyed much of it. In Thailand, Sri Lanka, etc, Buddhism is still flourishing but it is mainly the Three Pitakas- oriented teachings, which we normally call ‘Theravada’. The northern tradition does have the mystical aspects of Buddha’s teaching, the vajrayana. However, it was only reserved for the palace, the kings and royal families. If there was a very loyal, outstanding general or minister, maybe they were allowed to practice a little bit, a piece of an initiation and maybe “a” practice. So it looked like it didn’t exist, but it did. It went in that way. It is very much like the rich, mystical aspects of Christianity, which I have been hearing about from my friends here. It is rich and wonderful and it is there, but it is only available in Rome somewhere. So in Buddhism they do that too.

0.11

They did that a lot in the southern side, but even in the northern side, including Tibet, there are teachings that were not supposed to go beyond the boundaries of certain palaces, monasteries. These texts are called he ma ma – they cannot go beyond the door. There was a Collection of Buddha’s Works entitled gyantse ten pa ma – of Gyantse Palace. I saw a copy of that in Mongolia and wondered how that got there, because the title of each volume said gyantse ten pa ma. That’s when I went to Mongolia in the early 70s, in the time of the Russian/Soviet Union period. The State Library had that text and nobody knew what these books were. I was rather shocked because the woman there said it had been there for a long time. Tibet also had that system of not allowing teachings to go out of boundaries and across certain door steps. For example the Naropa-style Vajrayogini practice we also do is one of the 13 golden dharmas of the Sakya tradition. It was not supposed to go beyond the Sakya monastery’s boundary. There were 13 such teachings. On top of that, anybody wanting to receive any of these initiations had to give 13 gold coins – for each of them. Those were 1 ounce pure gold coins. So it is not only Rome who has restrictions. Tibetan Buddhism also has that.

However, Tibetan Buddhism, while these restrictions are there, wants to give opportunity to the people as much as possible. That’s why it becomes available everywhere. Sometimes you do make people pay 13 gold coins. When Allen Ginsberg asked me for this initiation I told him, “Bring me 13 gold coins”. But the earlier Tibetan masters were so kind. Not only did they make these teachings available to so many people, but also tried to make them as public as possible. Yes, they do carry restrictions and there are downfalls for sharing secrecy with unqualified persons. So these masters took the risk and made them available as much as possible. That is because the opportunity becomes so rare. It is a little rarer than a blue moon. The period of functioning of Buddha’s message is very limited. Out of that, the period of the Mahayana path is even more limited than the general Buddhist teachings. Out of the Mahayana, the vajrayana path is even rarer than that. Among that, the teachings of Jamgön Lama Tsong Khapa, the refined gold teachings, are extremely rare and difficult to get. Yes, there are restrictions, but we try to give opportunity as much as possible, not because we want a particular teaching to become popular. We sabotage as much as we can to prevent them from becoming popular. But we do give opportunity to people. This is something that we have to talk about: becoming fully enlightened Buddha within the reasonable period of one or two life times. Nowhere else besides the Tibetan Buddhist vajrayana, in any religion, nobody even talks about how to do this and nobody achieves. People talk about praying and worshipping and meditating. They talk about kindness, compassion and wisdom, but no one talks about becoming fully enlightened within a short period of one, two or three life times. No one. That’s why it is so rare and important. Somehow by sheer luck we have found that.

That competes with our life which is not very long. In my case, I am 72 according to the Tibetan system and according to the Western system of counting I am 70 years old. Whatever happened in my life is all just like yesterday; honestly. I was born and recognized as incarnate lama in Tibet, brought into the monastery, studied, struggled, tried to meditate, got nothing, then debated, tried to learn, couldn’t learn, with great difficulty couldn’t figure out what is what, yet still continued on and on till the Chinese intervened with guns, bombs and soldiers. Then I ran away to India, struggling to preserve the culture and serve His Holiness and tried to help to help the refugees, bringing them education and traditional culture, plus trying to learn English and Hindi, trying to adapt to the Indian culture and western culture, trying to learn how to speak and how to behave, even how to sit. I didn’t know whether you could sit at a table with your arms on the table or what to do.

There was a representative of the Dalai Lama in Dehli called Shekapa. He was a good old, former Tibetan government official.

0:22

He called himself finance minister. In any case, there were four of them dealing with the accounts. He taught us how to sit at the table. He brought an apple and showed us to cut an apple, how to use a fork. It sounds very silly, but he taught and we all obligated. He told us, “When you are in Northern Europe you are not supposed to put your arms under the table. If you are in Southern Europe you are not supposed to put your elbows on the table and England you are supposed to….” And all that sort of thing. He himself did not speak English, only Tibetan. He would pick up an Indian newspaper and pretend to read it. There were young translators and he would ask them every day, “What’s the news today?” They told him, but after a while they got fed up and started saying, “Nothing”. Then he said, “Oh, this paper must be empty”.

After that period I went round teaching Buddhism in Malaysia, Holland, Malaysia. I came to the United States in ’77 and then later by invitation of Aura and Sandy I came here, first I came to visit in ‘84’ and ‘85’ and ‘86’ and finally moved here in ’87 through a job in Case Western Reserve, working for Dr. Mel Goldstein on Tibetan History. Then I came up to Ann Arbor and all this is just like it happened yesterday. All this is gone and seems like yesterday. Our life is so short. We are competing with all these daily activities and chores and the time limits we have and then we have the commitments of practice and it becomes very difficult, no doubt. For this very difficult time we need a basic structure of an individual practice. Then we need to boost our practice so that it can be done quickly, efficiently and in a short time – because of all the competing other activities. Then the biggest challenge is our whole life and that is running – with or without knowing.

The basic structure here is the mental structure. The mental structure must be based on something. Otherwise we see a number of people who will just sit there and whatever thoughts come and wherever they go, they will follow there, thinking, “I am a traveler in my thoughts”. You put your body in a corner of your house and your mind is traveling to all sorts of imaginary pure lands, millions of miles away and doing funny thing. Then you got to come back and then start the same thing again. You can do that for 4, 5 years or 20 or 30 years, but you will come back the same old mole that went underground in fall and comes out again in spring – whether you see the shadow or not. Doing that is really a big waste and achieves nothing. Some people do that. Some others create some beautiful little thing by putting together ideas from here and there and give it some new name like “blue mandala” or “green mandala” or whatever. Then you do the same old thing and it will make no difference to the individual. That is a waste of time too. Some people would like to be very learned and they learn and learn and are so well informed and talkative, but nothing is happening in their hearts and no movement in the mind, just a lot of knowledge up there. That’s also not right. It might not be a complete waste, but still – you got nothing. All the information you accumulated, the day that you die it will all go away. If you write it down it may remain and help some people – maybe.

Last night I said that you have to recognize each one of the negative emotions. Take for example rage. Sometimes the rage is so much. You don’t hear what people are talking or don’t see what’s going on. The rage just takes over. That’s not the fault of the individual person. You are helpless and completely overpowered by these emotions. You don’t even know what you are doing. It becomes close to being a crazy person. A crazy person doesn’t know what they are doing. We all know that. We would like to go there very often, not knowing what we are doing – it’s like finding a little escape in there. We like to go there for one or two days, but sometimes you can’t come back and get stuck there.

All these are not spiritual things. The spiritual thing is to get that rage down. Normally you would hit the ceiling. Allen Ginsberg, when he was informed that he was going to die told me that “normally I would not only have hit the ceiling but would have gone beyond, but today I am completely calm and quiet and relaxed and I helped the doctors to speak, because they were hesitating and showing a long face. So I knew exactly what they were talking about. I told the doctors to tell me if the reality was that the situation was fatal.” I asked them, “How long?” They looked at each other and said, “Maybe two months”, and he told me, “Judging by my physical condition, I don’t think I have two months, maybe two weeks or so.” So there was no rage.

You all know how Ginsberg normally was. Read the famous “Howl” poetry. But then he became that gentle, kind, sweet person. This is the improvement. Ram Das asked me once when he came here, when he was already in the wheel chair. He said, “I would like to ask you a personal question. Do you really think the western people achieved any spiritual result and if so, give me an example, but don’t give me the names of scholars and learned professors. Give me one example of someone who has achieved.” So I said, “What about Ginsberg?” Allen had passed away already. Ram Das said, “Yes, that’s one example we have available.” He repeated that 3 times. That’s how the spiritual path should affect the individual.

0:35

We were talking last night about freedom from pain. Today we talk about becoming a Buddha, which is more than having freedom from pain. It is total knowledge, knowing everything. The ultimate level of perfect morality, of perfect wisdom, of perfect meditation reaches to the Buddha level. That’s why the Buddha level is introduced as our goal by Buddha – within the vajrayana, the mystical aspect of Buddhism, because it provides the method of reaching that. Even within buddha’s teachings other traditions don’t provide the method to do that. Others provide methods to get freedom from pain and suffering. Pain management exists in our daily mundane life. All of us are subject to getting pain one time or another – maybe all the time. Mental pain is with us all the time anyway, for everybody. On top of that we have physical pain, which in Buddhism is called suffering of suffering. We all have mental, emotional and physical discomfort all the time. On top of that we have acute physical pains.

In my case, after getting looked at by different doctors for a year and a half, a New York doctor did a lot of computer and electrical tests and finally told me, “Your knee pain does not come from the knee, but comes from your spine. There is a crushed disc at vertebra L5. So the nerves get pinched. You bend your body to the front to avoid pain. Then you realize you are bending, so you go back and then the pain will shoot. You can’t walk straight because the pain will shoot.”

I had been told it was gout and then that is was arthritis, then something else. The thing is there is gout and there is arthritis, no doubt. But the major pain is coming from the spine. These are the additional pains. They are not necessarily man-made – or maybe they are. Maybe I am too fat and the spine can’t carry and hold me and crushes down. That’s all possible. In any case that’s what happened. Like this, everyone gets different pains. Then we have that thing called aging, and that thing called illness and then we get the death. All those are like icing on the cake for our usual pains. That’s why Buddha called that suffering of suffering.

What is our goal? Not so much to get rid of suffering of suffering. That’s what we try already and do anything. What we really need to get rid of is the pervasive suffering. That is always nagging and always there. Always something goes wrong and someone else gets better and something else goes wrong. That whole nagging thing doesn’t only bring the suffering of suffering, but the constant mental and emotional and physical nagging that we have. Everything is not right. Everything has something different. That’s why when someone asks us, “How are you?” we say – or at least think – “could have been better”. That might not incapacitate us but it’s always there. That is pervasive suffering. Truly speaking. To be technically correct you have to say that pervasive suffering is against wisdom and so on. So that’s what our target is. That’s something we cannot treat physically. Of course physical treatment is very helpful. Getting a good massage from a skilled person is great and very helpful. And we do all that. But this nagging pervasive suffering can only be handled mentally.

The way we can handle that is only through meditation - just like education makes a difference to the individual. Your knowledge will tell you that if you do this it goes against this and this and this and that knowledge will hold you back. Just like that, meditation will do this. It will influence the mind itself. Our mind is completely addicted to wrong doing. It is addicted to get enraged. The moment there is something you don’t like, you scream and it looks like the whole world is collapsing. It seems the sky is falling down on you. That’s what they say about rabbits. When they go to sleep they keep one eye open, because they think the sky will fall on them. And the sky did fall – something happened that you didn’t like. The sky is not falling, but our mind does not know how to manage. Actually, our mind does know how to manage, but you don’t want to manage. Honestly. You know why? Because we are addicted to doing it. We think that if we don’t express rage there must be something wrong with us. When you don’t fly into a rage you think, “I should have raised hell but I didn’t. What happened to me? What’s wrong with me?” Actually, nothing is wrong with you. It means that you are improving.

0:45:06

If that is not happening it means you are not improving. But that can only be improved by sending the message to your mind yourself. Your mind will trust you, it won’t trust anybody else. Your mind will be very suspicious of anybody and everybody else. But you are the one who can make a difference to yourself by sending the right message. It is like with computers. If you have the right program, the right software, then computer does wonders. If you don’t know, even if you have software and hardware, then there is nothing. It is like my I pad here. I have had it for a while, but I still don’t know what is head and what is tail. I brought it here today to show you. I don’t want to show off my I pad, but I want to tell you that if you don’t know how to use it, it is like this. To me it is like a piece of furniture. So even if you have everything, but if you don’t know, you can’t use it. So you are missing an opportunity.

We have short and busy lives. We can’t afford to miss any opportunity. Something is very strange here. Usually, you may say, “Okay, I can’t do it today, I will do it tomorrow.” But we don’t have tomorrow. When we die it is very uncertain whether we come back as a human being with knowledge and conditions like we have today or as a little snake in the bushes. Who knows what is going to happen? That’s why cannot afford to miss this. It is really a once in a blue moon chance. That’s why our life is precious and our opportunity so great. And we have this beautiful mind that can do everything. These computers and I pads are produced as the result of our mind. It is not the other way around. The computers don’t produce us. We produce them. We manage them. We know how to use them, though they can get out of control too. This beautiful mind can make a difference in our mind at many different levels. In education, technology, science we do a lot, but what we are lacking in is the spiritual path. It is not external, but internal. It is not developed very much in this country and in the west. Secondly, whatever has been developed is not the usual daily affairs of black and white outside.

Plus, if you go into Tibetan Buddhism, it is so complicated, so big, so many volumes. First of all it is a different language. Then that language has many meanings. You really have to be an expert on the language. Lastly, there are so many volumes and on top of that you have this sect and that sect and comments like “we are good and they are bad” and “I am the best”. Each one of those sects will tell you that. They will say, “We are dzog chen, that’s the best”. We will tell you, “We are Gelugpa, the best – refined gold.” The dozog chen people will come back and say, “The Gelugpas only know how to talk, but they don’t know how to achieve.” All that adds to the confusion. So in order to handle that we have made small little things for you. We have the lam rims and ngag rims in the Gelug tradition and teng rims in the Sakya tradition. The Nyingmas have the kun sang la me zhel lung and the Kargyus have the Jewel Ornament of Liberation. The bottom line is that these are all the same.

Panchen Losang Chogyen said that if you ask someone who really knows, they will tell you that these are all the same thing. They just have different titles and [the yidams] different faces. Some have horns, some have tails, some have fangs, some are beautiful. Bottomline: it is the same thing. So we made this into a tiny, little practice which everyone in Jewel Heart has seen. When we go into other things we sometimes neglect that connection and talk about one thing called “Yamantaka” or “Vajrayogini” or “Cittamani Tara” and all our emphasis will shift and we begin to neglect. That is our problem. We are not serving you well. But normally we do introduce the lam rim to you many times and particularly we made this “64 Odyssey Steps” bookmark and all the senior students in Jewel Heart worked on this. They practice and meditate that way. That is the basic structure of your practice. This is a mental process, not just prayer.

In Christian church they have prayer and singing. Unfortunately, now some churches have been made into rock ‘n roll entertainment, rather than what they are supposed to do. Maybe they put the practice into rock ‘n roll form. If you lose the basic principle you are losing the real structure. If that happens you want to climb the steps but they are no steps to climb. Then you fall.

That’s why we made this basic structure. They are the outlines of “Odyssey to Freedom”. The “Odyssey to Freedom” is the essence of lam rim, the essence of sutra and tantra practice. We made this the early part of pre- courses, because we would like to provide the opportunity for everybody. Then people begin to think, “Oh yeah, I did this “Odyssey” years ago. It looks like something that once you read you don’t have to think about any more. But that’s not the case.

We are not providing you with novels to read in order to entertain you. We provide you with things that you can think about and practice all the time. Each one of the other courses will give you additional materials to compliment this basic structure. The basic points are in the “Odyssey”. If you don’t have this, you don’t have a basic structure. Without basic structure you don’t have steps to climb. If you don’t have steps to climb you fall. That’s why it is always important to get back to the structure. There are some things in that structure, like “creating a sacred environment”, “arranging the offerings”, “positioning body and mind”, “envision supreme field”, “offer solutions”, “present symbolic and boundless imagined offering”, etc. These are the prerequisites for practice as well as the 6 preliminary practices. If I remember correctly, these go up to step 13. Some you have to do physically, but mostly you have to do them mentally.

Step 13 is: acknowledge the spiritual master. That is also the first line in the Foundation of Perfections” and the first line of the lam rim steps. It is the first meditative situation in the nyur lam. That’s not because the spiritual master needs the acknowledgment. That’s not because the spiritual master needs respect or because the spiritual master needs a retinue. No. All that is totally not the case. It is because of me, the practitioner. I need the spiritual master, because my spiritual master is the total embodiment of all enlightened buddhas. That includes all yidams, whether it is Yamantaka, Vajrayogini, Heruka, Tara or buddhas, bodhisattvas, arhats or whatever they are. They are the embodiments – not even symbolic, but actual – of all enlightened beings.

Their personal connection to me is through the spiritual master. That is really important.

1:00

That is the basic link, the bridge between the enlightened society on one side and the samsaric suffering society here. That is the only link, the only bridge, the only connection. Traditional teachings will tell you that the spiritual master is like a magnifying glass. You see that example everywhere in the lam rim. A magnifying glass is put between the solar rays and whatever it is that you want to ignite. It collects the sun rays, hits pinpointedly on the material and you can start a fire. That’s why spiritual masters are called sources of all siddhis –all achievements.

The tantras say:

gang-gyi drin-gyi dechen ne, kechik-gi ni tob gyurwa

lama rinchen tabu ku, dorje chen shab pe la du

O Guru Vajra-holder,

Your body like a magic gem,

Your kindness instantaneously

Lets me reach the great bliss state,

I bow to the lotus of your foot!

That’s why it is called rin po che – jewel-like. – your body like a magic gem.

The lama chöpa also says:

GANG GI THUH JE DHE WA CHEN PÖ YEENG

KU SUM GO PHANG CHOH KYANG KAY CHIK LA

TSÖL DZE LA MA RIN CHEN TA BÜ KU

DOR JE CHEN ZHAP PAY MOR CHAH TSEL LO

I praise you, who with great compassion bestows

In an instant the three bodies of great bliss.

Oh Lama like a wish-fulfilling jewel,

You hold the Vajra. May I become like you!

Through your kindness even the ultimate joy state of the three kayas can be delivered within the matter of seconds. These are the beginnings of the meditation – on the Odyssey book mark it is step 13. Not only is it the source and the gateway, but also when you finally become a Buddha you do so in the nature of the mind of your spiritual master, who is Buddha. That means both ways, your spiritual master who is Buddha as well as when you become enlightened in the nature of the guru’s mind that is Buddha’s mind. That’s how you become a Buddha. So it is important in the beginning. It is also important in the middle, because it is the best field of merit. It is the source of clearing obstacles. It is the ultimate achievement also at the end. It is just like when we say that compassion is important in the beginning, middle and end.

This is not whatever people say or think. That’s not the point. The point is what you are thinking, what sort of connection you are building to your spiritual master. That is entirely in your hand, not anybody else’s. There doesn’t have to be a physical connection. There doesn’t have to be financial connection, but there does have to be a mental connection. At which level that is going to be is the individual’s choice. Buddha says to look at the guru just like Buddha. That’s the hinayana level. To look at the guru as a Buddha is the Mahayana level. To see the guru as inseparable from Buddha and yidam is the vajrayana level. So the three yanas have a different way. Actually, it is not the yanas, but the practioners of the yanas. If I am a hinayana person I will build the connection to the guru as like the Buddha. If I am a Mahayana person I will build the connection of the guru as Buddha. If I am a vajaryana person I will build the connection as inseparable from Buddha. It doesn’t matter whether your spiritual master is alive or dead or whether you have one single master or many. It is the spiritual master as a lump.

That is point No. 1 on the Odyssey book mark. Developing this can be a life-long practice. It can even take one or two life times. This is not just Buddhism. Almost all the eastern religions like Hinduism have that. They do the same thing. When I was listening once to Ram Das’ lecture at the Power Center I become convinced that he has a strong, solid recognition of the spiritual master. It proved to be true even after he had a stroke. He told me, “My stroke is my guru’s grace.” Who else is going to think that way, unless you are crazy? He is not crazy, but he looks in that way. He is uplifting his own spiritual development. Don’t think these are old Tibetan tricks. Really, it does happen that way.

Step 14: “Investigate qualities of the spiritual master” is related to that.

You also have to check the spiritual master he becomes your spiritual master. That is very important, extremely important. If you don’t check but just go for it, then all these unfortunate things can happen, like Jim Jones. We can’t just not check and follow the advertisement. That can be a big problem.

The qualities of a hinayana spiritual master are only two: well protected vows and knowledge. The Mahayana qualities are 10: The qualities of the tripitaka plus 7 others. The vajrayana master qualities are 20: 10 plus 10. We have to see all these qualities. That is your job, not the job of the center and not the job of the advertiser, not the job of the PR person. The PR person will try to make a beautiful rose flower out of a little jigsaw puzzle piece. Their job is to make everything they sell as beautiful and attractive as possible. The PR person is working to bring money in and so they have to make every look fantastic, even if many times it is not true. So don’t follow the advertisers. Follow your own trust, your own intelligence. You are educated people, not a collection of sheep or donkeys.

Sometimes dharma centers and traditional Indian centers will treat you like a collection of sheep or cows and tell you to go this way or that way and boo this way and that way. But within these sheep there will be one intelligent one who will try to take a different route. There is a commercial about that, but I don’t want to go into it. Once you are convinced you have to build the whole thing and then there is no looking back. Until you reach that point you have to check.

But don’t check forever and never reach a conclusion. It is not good to be suspicious of everyone until the cows come home. That’s not right, because then your life will go. It is good to be critical. But the critique has to be limited. It should not be for the sake of criticizing, but in order to figure out by yourself. If you do it for the sake of critiquing, then everybody, including Buddha, will be seen as full of problems. That happened to buddha’s cousin. He was constantly jealous of Buddha, so whatever Buddha did, the cousin had to compete with him. So it happened even to Buddha in his actual life. So it happens with everybody else. That’s why we have these big scandals everywhere. Some of them are true, some of them may not be. People talk about scandals, which is right, and it should make things improve. But people also don’t talk about what good was achieved. Today we talk a lot about the scandals of this ……nanda and that …..nanda and this osho and that baghavan, but we don’t talk about what people have gained out of that. Everybody gained tremendously. We don’t focus on that, but only on what went wrong. But that is in the American blood. We do that. We always would like to see what’s wrong with Obama and with Hillary. First you had George Bush and were happy for a while, but then you couldn’t get him off. Only time took him off.

In any case, critiquing should be done to help ourselves. Who cares who the other person really is? What I need is the mental pure relationship. That is important for all of you and particularly those who have not been with us for very long. You have to start with a clean state.

I have so many important things to talk to you about. Spiritually, of course, that’s why we are here. We are here to serve you and bring your spiritual path up and make you a better, kinder, gentler person – kind to yourself and kind to others. If you are not kind enough to yourself, you can’t be kind enough to others. First you have to use yourself as guinea pig and pick up kindness and compassion and love. That’s how we try to serve you. I would like to do this job totally free. We don’t want to charge. The biggest problem I faced since I came to the west is that we have had to charge for everything. 1.18.26

. Every single damn thing we do we have to charge. For everything we have to charge, nickels and quarters. That’s not good. Right from the beginning, when Aura, Sandy and Ruby and I began Jewel Heart we had two goals: one was to get me a green card. There were about 30,40 people around at that time. The second goal was to make Buddha’s teachings, his message and the spiritual practice, free to everybody.

Then things came along. Kathy volunteered to work and did work for years for $3,000 a year. Then Debbie joined in as book keeper. We couldn’t do it otherwise. Aura and Sandy started and then Carolyn Hastings helped. Those days were nice. There was another teacher who tried to give money to Jewel Heart and he had a bunch of checks and told me, “I tried to give these checks to you and nobody is taking them. I don’t know how you people are managing, but I wanted to give you this.” Those days went like that. Even if money came in, I saw a bunch of checks lying on the book shelf. Those were the good old days. Then we got bigger and registration and boards and administration came up and we had people working and we needed a building and thus the expenses came in and it became necessary to charge. But that’s not right. We don’t want to charge, honestly. Everything should be free, especially for the members. The retreats should be free, the teachings should be free, everything should be free, honestly, except there are some costs to run the facilities. But nowadays the charges are so much.

We need to emphasize how we can get to your goal. I can’t do it by myself. I can hardly look after myself. Nor can the office do it. You may think the office is there. But they are capable of functioning in the day to day jobs and deal with what is right in front of them. We do have a board. But we hardly meet and so we had to make an executive board to make decisions. But everybody needs to be involved in this. It is nobody else’s idea. I looked at the budget of Jewel Heart and give or take it is about a $1 Million budget. It is $100,000 less but more or less it is a $ million. And there is no extra anyway, nothing elaborate. It is really hand to mouth.

I really thought, “What can I do?” – particularly if I am not here. I f I am here, you people are so kind. We make an appeal to you and you give extra, whatever you have, $20, $30 to $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 or whatever. That is because I am here. When I am not here your spiritual path does not end when I am ending. It has to be self sufficient. We can’t go on and ask everybody every time “please give, please give”. There are organizations that every time you turn around have a huge appeal coming. Like the Tibet Campaign have 3, 4 appeals every month – and they are all urgent! We can’t do that. Last year we fell short in the budget by $100,000 and we made a sustainability campaign. You people were so kind and within a few days it was done. But you can’t do that every year either.

So I thought simple and straight forward. I divided the $1 million budget between 2500 people and then it comes to $480 a year for each. This is $40 a month. I looked at and I believe this is doable. So many people come here who are interested. We try to serve them. We had one problem. We tried to link the membership to the teachings. But this is not a business. That was not my idea originally. It was brought in and I didn’t have the guts to object at that time. We are not business people. It is not: we give you teachings and you give us membership. It is not a give- and take thing. That may be good in American culture, but it is bad in dharma culture. Honestly.

I really wanted to de-link that. One of our responsible senior staff members told me, “I tried to link that up for eight years and now you try to de-link it.” That’s fine. People work hard. No matter what we say, they are all sincere, dedicated and wonderful. They don’t waste a single penny and don’t hesitate to catch everything everywhere. We are good at that. I also like to tell you: we have never been in the red, except the last two years. We never had a single extra dollar at the end of the year either – a true non-profit organization. If something goes wrong we collapse. We are at that level. There is no cushion, nothing. That’s where we are. The biggest problem we have is this building. We have a huge mortgage to pay. Every month it is $7,000. That is also just the interest, not the original mortgage. That is our biggest source of expenses.

So I am looking at $480 a year. Every individual can be a member, they don’t necessarily have to attend teachings. Of course you people here are who the society really belongs to. That’s you. Every other dharma organization, like Rigpa or FPMT, have a membership of 20,000 or 40,000, 50,000 or 100,000. Six, seven years ago our membership was 300. We made Ujjen-la and Debbie responsible to raise that number up and we raised it to about 400 now or a little bit more. There is so much sympathy for Buddhism, so much interest in Tibet, but we are not reaching to those people. I know some people have difficulties of raising membership. That has been expressed and that is true. But we are not asking arms and legs – honestly. We are asking a pack of cigarettes, or a movie ticket or a glass of beer. If you really look, that’s what it is.

When you look at that, if you could all please join as members it would be great. It is $480. You can pay monthly, annually, bi-annually or whichever way you want to. Also it would be great if you could interest a couple of your friends who are interested. They don’t have to come and listen to an old man. That’s why I tried not link the membership with the teaching. They are just supporting what you and I are doing. Therefore we don’t want to make any differences in types of memberships. Some people are giving less, others much more. But we try to make the membership at $480. When the number of members will go up to 1000 we will to try to make certain things free, so that you don’t have to pay for teachings. My biggest bother is that every time we do anything, every time the gong is beaten, it is time to collect money. That really bothers me. That is really bad.

We want to reach to 2500 members and then we will be able to do everything free, because all expenses are paid for. That’s what we would like to do. I would like to ask you strongly to think about it. You have been so generous, so think about it and kindly do it. It is very doable. Our aim is not that big. It is a big jump from 300 to 2500. But looking at the other organizations it is not that big. We probably have the smallest number of members of all Tibetan Buddhist centers, even the small ones. We are the smallest.

In the FPMT they have a branch called “Lama Yeshe Archive”. They have their own separate membership and even they have more than we do. It is just one little branch of their organization. So I would like to make this appeal on behalf of everybody and hopefully everybody will be kind enough to acknowledge that. Whatever your current membership level is, whatever you are paying, you should increase it. If you can do it immediately, great and if not, by next year. We are hoping to reach our goal in 2012. It is not possible to make it happen right now. So we are giving ourselves some time so that finally we can make every teaching free. I hate registration, honestly, every time. The moment you walk in there is registration.

But on the other hand, everybody does. I was invited to give a speech in California at Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Center of Jack Kornfield. I went with Ruth. It is a huge place and when we came there were already 700 – 800 people. When we entered through the door, half the door was shut, only half the door was open. There were two ladies standing there with baskets saying, “$20 please, $20 please”. I thought since I was the speaker I didn’t have to give and I slightly went to the side a little bit, but one of the ladies jumped right in front of me with her basket and said, “$20 please”. I was embarrassed and took out my wallet and gave $20. She said, “Thank you and next time, go through nicely, don’t jump the ranks.” People do that. Afterwards, they gave me the $20 back and apologized. So they must have been facing the same problem as we do. They also had car pooling and all that.

So that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The idea of raising the membership is all coming from me, including the delinking from membership and what you get for it. We are not a business. If I have a business I sell you this and I can charge you $10 or $100, that’s my choice and then it is your choice whether you buy it or not. Right? We don’t do that. We are here to try to do something good for ourselves and for our future generations and for humanity. So I am urging you to support us. It is your sangha, your society, your dharma center. Thank you. 1:43

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