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20100308GRTR6

6. The Third Noble Truth: Cessation of Suffering

Questions and Answers:

Audience: Will you elaborate on how to purify our karma? Also, what is the difference between karmic results and karmic conditions? How does one create them?

Rimpoche: Thank you for the questions. How to purify karma? I am glad you asked that question. Sometimes, particularly in the west, people think that if you have created karma that is a done deal. You can’t do anything. My understanding is this: It is not necessarily a done deal. Yes, you created the karma, and yes you are supposed to enjoy or pay for what you did. However, these are all dependent arising. Whatever you did to deserve the consequences, positive or negative, are the causal aspects of the karma. Then there are conditions. It is almost like looking at old-fashioned hand woven clothes. The thread, wool or cotton or silk, is running line by line up and down. Then another material goes left to right and thus is weaving the cloth.

Just like that through our actions we are providing the causes and then we still need the conditions to make it happen. Purification comes in at that point. We either choose not to provide the conditions or try to change the conditions or modify them. As the weavers weave the cloth, if you have pure 100% silk, both the causal thread that runs vertically and the conditions which run horizontally, then the weaving goes on and a mechanical instruments pushes them together. So if you provide the conditions with 100% silk or pashmino then you get a wonderful cashmere cloth.

In terms of karma, the causes would be like the vertical threads. The conditions are like the horizontal threads, that go back and forth and make the material stick – based on the vertical threads. If you have one pure thread and the other synthetic, it won’t be a pure cashmere cloth. It is modified. We have the opportunity to do this. Although we have created the cause, we try to not create the conditions or change the conditions. That’s possible. We even try not to have any conditions at all, hoping that the result will never materialize. That is done through purification. You are working on the conditions not materializing. The individual person then doesn’t experience the result.

Is it easy to purify? No, it is very difficult. You need four powers: the power of the base or foundation on which you work, the power of the antidote action, the power of very strong regret and I do believe in regret. I have difficulty accepting guilt. But that’s a different story. The last of the four powers is the promise not to repeat the negative action. If you have strong regret, you are not going to repeat the same old thing. Those four powers will work. You can find information on these four powers everywhere. Lots of books will tell you about them and I am quite sure my book Good Life Good Death also will give you methods for purification. I have also other transcripts like The Four Noble Truths that I have done with Jewel Heart which have a lot of information on this. Just go to www.jewelheart.org or you can contact Jewel Heart through Tricycle also. There are over 30 different transcripts on different subjects.

In other words, the knowledge and information is available in the language that you understand. You need interest and willingness and the wisdom that understands what this is all about and the enthusiasm that is willing to put efforts in. You also need the patience to repeatedly be able to do it. As a result of that you are going to be pure. Purity is also a dependent arising. It comes from a lot of conditions and efforts. Purity overpowers impurity. That is really how purification works. That’s my understanding.

Audience: What happens with you are just thinking negatively, without acting? Does that also create negative karma?

Rimpoche: Negative karmas as mental action karma and physical action karma and verbal action karma are all there. Yes [10:27] negative mental action does create some negative karma. But again, just like in the previous question, every negative karma is purifiable and every positive karma is destructible too. Dedication is the key to save and not destroy positive karmas. I can talk in more detail another time. Meanwhile you can look into the transcripts and you will know. Negative mental actions do create some negative karma but not as powerful as physical and verbal actions. It may not be necessarily that strong. It is an opportunity for us to improve ourselves. Our addictions make us very angry, but then you, the good person realize and recognize that you are getting irritated. Make sure that this irritation doesn’t overpower you and become anger or hatred. This is an opportunity for us. See the opportunity, take the advantage. That’s what intelligent people will do. Don’t let the addictions take advantage of you. You take advantage of your intelligence over your addictions.

Audience: Sometimes it is hard to see where my negative emotions are coming from. Yesterday, for example, I just got mad. The conditions were right, the anger was there when I was not expecting it. People were getting side-swiped by my negative emotions. Can you explain what this “just feeling mad” is about when there is no obvious cause in sight?

Rimpoche: Sometimes you recognize the obvious causes. Sometimes you don’t. But there must be something that triggered your anger yesterday. It could be anything, even just not having a good night’s sleep last night, or maybe you had disturbing dreams. Maybe something you expected to happen did not happen. Or some unexpected thing suddenly happened. We have the addiction of getting angry very strongly. It is always lying within us. It is a huge monster within us. Anything can trigger it. It could just be the wind not blowing the way you wanted. That can be triggering it too. The addictions are so strong. All our negative activities are coming from the negative addictions within us. We have that life after life. For so many life times we have carried that addiction with us. That is tough, really tough. Sometimes you lose control of yourself. Addictions take over. You don’t even know what you did. I don’t know whether that is excusable in a court of law. I don’t think so. They may not agree with what we think. Sometimes the addictions completely overpower you. It is almost as if you are not you. You are a different person.

People often say that when somebody suddenly did something horrendous, “So and So is not the same person that I knew”. It seems like it was a different person. That’s it exactly. It is not the nice you, but the addicted person who is an imposter of you. That’s how you can create some terrible or not so terrible negativities. When we do that we are hurting people, even small while lies do. You may think that a white lie means nothing. A teenager may tell the parents, “I was not sleeping, but I was studying.” In reality that teenager was on the computer visiting some strange place with strange activities. They don’t want to tell anybody that they were doing this and so they tell “a white lie”. It is still a lie. It hurts, not only yourself. You of course wasted your time and didn’t study. But it also hurts the person who loves you and is taking care of you. That really hurts them and is a negativity. Negativity is nothing less or more than hurting somebody. We may think it is not a big deal. Maybe so. But maybe it is a very big deal. It is definitely a big deal for those who get hurt. So that’s how we have to think about that.

Audience: I try to remain compassionate and calm. But I find that some people in my life who are addicted to being frantic and negative get pretty upset by my not getting hooked. So much of relating to others is based on sharing chaos that it can seem as if one was being superior when one is not caught up. Is that attachment to ego?

Rimpoche: interesting question. Whether that is attachment to ego or not but it is a good thing that you are not bothered by the other person’s irritation and pushing. But there is another danger there. Sometimes the other person is getting so upset. You maintain your cool and try to be superior. Then it changes to be very condescending to the other person. When you reach that point it is no longer the coolness you think it is. It becomes more difficult. It becomes a negativity. You are creating negativity, you are causing negativity, though you think you are not engaged in any, but you are. That’s because you are hurting the other person. You are making him or her look bad. It is embarrassing them. They feel bad and you are purposely doing it. That is called passive-aggressive. That hurts people. It is so important to recognize that. If you are enjoying that at the expense of others, you have to be careful. Other people also have feelings. Otherwise you are doing great. Thank you

Hi, it is good to be talking with you. I would like to say that in between that week we had a lot of beautiful things happening. I am in Michigan in Jewel Heart. We have had a beautiful winter retreat with 140 people who spent about 10 days doing retreat. Within that, on the 15th day of the first month of the Tibetan calendar, the full moon day, we had retreat events taking place. That is an important event for Buddhists in general and in particular, Tibetan Buddhist followers of the Mahayana tradition.

For Tibetan Buddhist followers it is important, because they consider that full moon day the day where Buddha showed magical powers and activities. That’s why it is called chu trö da wa – magical month. And that has a magical full moon. And those of us who were in retreat in Michigan with Jewel Heart did experience that magic on that day. The magical power that Buddha showed is one of the important events where other spiritual teachers were challenging Buddha at that time. I am not sure whether they were anti-Buddhist, but they were probably not. They were probably great teachers, maybe even Buddhist.

But they did challenge Buddha and not only from the philosophical point of view and point of view of presentation or spiritual point of view but they literally challenged Buddha by showing their spiritual power. Buddha accepted the challenge. [25.30]

He challenged back their magical power. So there was a magical competition. They were showing horrible incidents taking place, Buddha protected that and they couldn’t do it. When they were showing a magical flower garden Buddha manifested a mad elephant that destroyed the whole garden. When they manifested an elephant to attack him, he lifted one finger and it became a lion. All these beautiful magical things were going on and that’s since then it is commemorated as the magical month. In Tibet in the early 1400s, Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa, the great Tibetan master, whom Tibetans consider to be Manjushri, the living Buddha of Wisdom, and who is the founder of the Gelugpa or Yellow Hat Sect, started a festival in Tibet called Mönlam Chenmo. All the monks around Lhasa in Central Tibet gathered at the main central temple of Lhasa, the Jokhang. That temple hosts the famous Buddha image that was supposed to have been in Buddha’s life time. From India it first went to China and from there it came to Tibet. Ever since that time there has been this huge prayer festival every year in Lhasa and that is in this magical month.

So we happen to be in this month right now and it is wonderful to be able to talk to you about the Third Noble Truth. Magical powers are not so much emphasized in Buddhism, but they are very much there, alive and strong and powerful. We don’t talk much about it, because it is not the major emphasis in Buddhist teachings. Buddha was a wonderful teacher and he taught things that are true and relevant to our lives even today, 2600 years later, in the middle of America. It is still totally relevant today and is really functioning. That is wonderful. This was possible for Buddha because he had become Buddha. Being a buddha means to have total knowledge. There is no limit to the Buddha’s mind. There is nothing he doesn’t know, and he knows everything, past, present and future, simultaneously and clearly, like looking into the palm of your own hand.

In your own palm you will see all the lines of your hand that palm readers would interpret. Even if put a plate of glass over it, that glass won’t block anything. You will still see the palm readings. Just like that, Buddha has the power that nothing can block his knowledge. He sees everything as transparent. He sees simultaneously what is happening now, what has happened in the past and what is going to happen in the future, with you and you and you, in the east, west, north, south, etc, millions of people’s thoughts, knowing what is going on in their lives and how they function and everything, without getting mixed up, separately and clearly understanding every detail. That is called total knowledge. That is called enlightenment. That is the quality Buddha obtained.

Just like his knowledge has no limit his speech has no limit. His quality of speech is such that although he may speak in one particular language, everybody will hear this in their own native tongue. Today we get translators. We do have the capability. Look at the United Nations. At any time there will be two dozen translators translating into two dozen languages simultaneously. But Buddha’s quality is such that no translators are required. That’s his speech quality.

Buddha’s physical qualities are according to the Buddhist traditions the 32 major and 80 minor physical signs. They all physically appear, beautiful and wonderful. It is a little different than anyone imagines. If I today were sitting in my room, and if I had no knowledge of what Buddha looked like and Buddha appeared to me, I may run away. However, if Buddha actually comes it is so wonderful and calming and pleasurable that anyone who sees him becomes worthwhile and it gives them joy and happiness, not only in all your senses and consciousnesses, but it brings peace and joy within your mind and even in your physical conditions.

So there are tremendous qualities of becoming a Buddha, in body, speech and mind. The quality of the individual being is to be completely compassionate and with total knowledge. These are unimaginable qualities and the activities that come out of that are limitless and almost effortlessly. There is a tremendous amount of compassion and wisdom.

Buddha’s life stories, the Jataka Tales and Avadanas and others are now available in English. You will really see his extraordinary qualities. The Third Noble Truth, the Truth of Cessation, will deliver these results to you and me and everyone. It is the extraordinary result of spiritual practice that we are looking for. Even if you don’t get to this level you can still get to the arhat level. And arhat is totally free of suffering, the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change and the pervasive suffering. The attainment of arhat is synonymous with obtaining nirvana. The Buddhist slogan is: samsara suffering and nirvana is peace. It means that the individual is out of the suffering nature of samsara and gets into the environment that is free of all suffering, where is peace. That is called nirvana. That is the extraordinary cessation of suffering. Cessation means the exhaustion of suffering and the causes of suffering.

To remind you: The First and Second Noble Truths are called the negative ones: suffering and the causes of suffering. The Third and Fourth Noble Truths are the positive ones. The Third, cessation, is the result and the Fourth, the path to the cessation, is how you get to this level.

This is what I would like to talk about today and I am so happy to be able to do this, because of the very specific time of the magical day and magical month. Fortunately we have had a slight experience of a magical incident and I would like to share that with you.

Thank you