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20110603GRNMIntroTibetanBuddhism

00:00 Introduction by Chris Frasz

Thank you very for coming tonight. We are very excited to have Gelek Rimpoche here to give a talk this evening on “Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism”. Gelek Rimpoche is the founder and spiritual director of Jewel Heart, which is a Tibetan Buddhist organization that works to preserve and disseminate Buddhist teachings. Jewel Heart has been spending a lot of time recently digitizing past teachings of Rimpoche and making those available at Jewel Heart, which has its main center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You can also find that at www.jewelheart.org. It is wonderful – all of the teachings and video casts, live webcasts, etc, you can access there. If you are interested in subscribing in order to have access to that, Ujjen Tsewang can give you information about supporting that cause and also Jewel Heart membership. We would like to thank deeply the Solace Spa here at Boyne Mountain for their generous and kind help to make this event possible. Sean Handler, the director of the Spa is here tonight. In addition to having this world class spa right here in Boyne Falls, which is incredible, Sean is also working to bring a lot more mind-body programs to the area. We thank him for supporting this particular talk tonight.

The flyers you have received have a lot of different programs and if you are interested in those you can talk to Sean or go down to the spa for further details. In addition to this evening’s talk tomorrow we will do a program on White Tara and that is going to go from 10 am to 5 pm, with a break from 12 to 2. It will be wonderful if you could make time for that. I am sure you would enjoy it. If you need any more information about that program you can see me or Ujjen in the back after this talk. With that we welcome Gelek Rimpoche. We are fortunate to have him here. He is one of the few English speaking Tibetan masters around who were still taught by some of the greatest masters in the Tibetan monastic system. He later went to India and is now in Ann Arbor as an American citizen. Welcome Gelek Rimpoche

0:03:30

Gelek Rimpoche:

Thank you Chris, for the introduction and for making the arrangements for us to be able to be here. Thank you Michelle and thank you, all the friends who made this possible. Thank you to the Spa for helping us to have this gathering. Most important, thanks to all of you who have come here tonight. It is such a beautiful place. I was driving up here and it was a beautiful, smooth, easy drive – no traffic – and it is very nice here with wonderful weather and I am very happy to meet wonderful people like you.

This is not my first time in this area. I have been coming for a couple of years and I can’t make it every year, but here we are and we have old friends around here and there are a number of Jewel Heart people who are studying and helping themselves and others through the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual path. We also have a small group of people here who are studying regularly. Our purpose is to [give you tools to] help yourself; just about that much. So thank you.

Tonight my subject is : Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. It is interesting. Thinking back, I came to the United States for the first time in the mid 60s. That was in New York at Cornell University as a student – a special student. You know why special? Because not so great, because you don’t speak English. But the university was kind enough to accommodate us, 8 Tibetans of my age. That was in the early 60. We came there to study politics and a little bit of economics. The funny thing is that the professor who arranged the program happens to be the chair person of the anthropology department, so a little bit of cultural anthropology. We had these graduate students come in and teach us – most importantly English, and a little bit of economics, something about demand and supply and they drew things with chalk on the blackboard. That’s all I learnt. What could you expect? I didn’t know any English and never learnt anything about cultural anthropology. I do remember being told about chimpanzees a little bit. That’s about it.

At that time there were little church groups in the Ithaca area who were interested in the Eastern spiritual paths. With my little English I couldn’t even put together a proper English sentence like saying, “Where are you going?” or something. But somehow they had me talk very often to the group. There was a minister who read a lot of books and had pictures and slides and all kinds of Tibetan deities were flying from this room to that room and from that room to this room. Then I would say a few words, mumble-jumbling and he tried to explain a little more. So people did have an interest then, quite a lot. But it was really not very clear what Buddhism was to them. It was something mystical and magical. This minister arranged a talk in Cornell University in the graduate library. The room was packed. Those deity pictures were flying and criss-crossing everywhere. I had no idea of what was going on. And he explained. There were other Tibetans who spoke English much better than I did. With their understanding they went over some mystical aspects of Buddhism. That’s why the deities and daggers were flying. In the dark room the slides came up everywhere. So people had a great deal of interest, but not much of an idea of – forget about Tibetan Buddhism – but Buddhism itself.

It is not that Buddhism never came to the United States. It came in the 1950s. That’s my understanding. A number of Buddhist teachers came from Burma, Thailand and Sri Lanka and they were here then and started centers. Also a Tibetan Buddhist Center from Mongolian origin opened in New Jersey but people didn’t have a very good understanding until the 1960s. My Cornell visit was in 1964. Around that time the Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche became active in the west [moved to the US in 1970) and he was surrounded by people like Jack Kerouac [died in 1969] and Allen Ginsberg and other beatnik poets and many other artists who took deep interest in Buddhism in general and particularly Tibetan Buddhism. In the 60s I was there for one year as a special student at Cornell, but that was really a privilege, honestly. You get all the privileges of graduate students. You don’t have to take exams. That’s very good. Fortunately or unfortunately I later learnt that the program was arranged by the CIA. There you are. Anyway, it was a good learning experience, opening the eyes to the world, after I had just come out of Tibet a few years earlier. I began to see the importance of democracy, appreciating how people have rights and liberty and self determination. It is really great, because I was born in independent Tibet. But when I was about 10, the Communist Chinese took over until I was about 19, almost 20 in 1959. That’s when we could no longer tolerate the soft, sweet and gentle talk of the Communist Chinese. It began to squeeze us more and more and more. First they came as liberators, then they became like the parents, “the father and mother of the long lost child of Tibet”, and finally they became the masters. That tells you how they do it.

So in 1959 we had no alternative but run away, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We ran without knowing where we would end up, just crossing the mountains and hoping that to the south of these mountains there would be freedom. That was India. We were running across the snow in late March and early April. We crossed those snow mountains, not knowing whether we would get through or not. We were thinking that there would be some peace and happiness on the other side of the mountains. That’s how we crossed from old Tibet into India, where we encountered a very different life. In my book Good Life Good Death I said that it was like being picked up by helicopter from the middle of the 1800s and dropped across the Himalayas in the 1950s and 60s. That was my experience in those days. Meanwhile Tibetan Buddhism was the only great thing the Tibetans had. For generations they kept it pure. For a thousand years they cherished the pure teachings of the Buddha, including the vajrayana, the mystical aspects of Buddha’s teachings. This is just for initial understanding, because if I keep saying the vajrayana is the about the mystical aspects, many Tibetans would not be happy with that.

0:20

They kept that pure and it was very helpful to the Tibetans. The Buddhist teachings talk about “all living beings” all the time. From the moment you open your eyes Tibetan Buddhism told us “for the benefit of all living beings”, however, I think they were thinking for the benefit of Tibetans. They maintained it being pure and perfect, without influence or interference. For that Tibet sacrificed other kinds of development. They shut all the borders and relied on the high snow mountains to create almost like a forbidden city – type of country. They relied on the high altitude and snow, so that no one could come in and they did not permit anyone who would like to come and keep in touch, even for the sake of learning. But when invaders came, they couldn’t stop them.

There were two such invasions in the 20th century. First the British invaded Tibet in 1904 and the 13th Dalai Lama and many others ran away to China. Then the Chinese attacked Tibet and the Dalai and entourage ran to India. Other than that they never allowed anybody to come. The sole reason was to keep Tibetan Buddhism pure. They were afraid of contamination. It is not that other cultures are dirty and contaminated, but they really wanted to keep Buddhism in its pure form. That’s why in the 1950s, when the Communists came and wanted the Tibetans to roll over to their system, they found it was easy to do, because the Tibetans did not even have proper rifles. Even if there were, I don’t think anybody would have known how to shoot straight. It was easy to run over. My forefathers kept Tibet isolated to keep Buddhism pure. After we came to India, what could we offer to the world? Nothing. We did not have liquid gold in Tibet. We might have had a little gold, but not much. We were not rich. We didn’t have technological development. The only thing we could contribute to the world was the pure spiritual path of Tibetan Buddhism. That’s what His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been doing for the last 50 years. People like me and a number of others are trying to do the same and there are a number of universities and other institutions and a number of individuals who tried to present Tibetan Buddhism to benefit the people.

I am supposed to introduce Tibetan Buddhism. What is it? Generally speaking, in Buddhism, there are three major segments. One is commonly known as Hinayana. Hina in Sanskrit means “small” and yana means “vehicle”. Another vehicle is the Mahayana. Maha means big. So it is the big vehicle. When I was in the United States in the 60s it was the beginning of the Japanese introducing the Honda Civic. There was a commercial “Get America on the Honda Civic”. That was in 64, 65. It was the period when Barry Goldwater was running against Johnson. Then there were also the good old Cadillacs. The smaller vehicle is like the Honda Civic and the big vehicle is like the Cadillac. Of course the Hinayana people don’t like that term, although it is the traditional term. They changed the name into “Self Liberation Vehicle”. But the whole idea was not that it was small and one is looking down on it, but rather that it is a compact and contained vehicle, capable of carrying one individual wherever they want to go, from A to Z for the purpose of themselves. That is why it is about self liberation. It is mostly self concern, rather than concern for others. It means to looking after yourself, taking care of yourself, with the thought, “If I don’t take care of myself, who else is going to take care of me?”

The Mahayana agrees that yes, you have to take care of yourself, but you also have to care of others. What about my companion, my spouse, my family, my children and all others? Where

Are you going to draw the line? We are all interconnected. We are all together. We all have to worry about it. That is the Mahayana part.

0:30

So what does Buddhism really do? It is simply one individual person called Buddha Shakyamuni 2600 years ago who came up in India. He was a prince in one of the biggest kingdoms of India. All the people around him hoped to become a chakravartin raja, a universal king. There were so many kingdoms but there was nobody who could manage them altogether. People always want to rule, even in those days. Everybody wants to rule over the others. In that kingdom they were hoping for a universal king and were thinking that Buddha maybe the one. Before Buddha was born these people from the kingdom consulted soothsayers and fortune tellers. They said, “If you can keep him home, he will be very unique and become a universal king.” His parents wondered, “How can we keep him hope? We are the king and queen.” They thought about it and then built a new palace and introduced new rules that no sick and old people were allowed in. They created a very specific beautiful universe for that particular young prince. That prince, however, was always wondering what was happening outside of the walls he could not get out of. Inside it was very beautiful, but every now and then people would disappear. People he saw the day before would no longer be there. So he wondered what was going on out there.

Allen Ginsberg wrote a poem with that in mind. In that poem he said,

“When I was a kid in my home in Patterson, New Jersey, I was wondering what was behind that big tree that I was not allowed to go beyond. Later, when I was 10 years old, I went beyond the big tree and found – a glue factory.”

Just like that the little prince wanted to find out what was going on out there. Finally he managed to get out and he found – suffering, not a glue factory, but suffering. It was the suffering of death, of ageing, of illness. The first question he had was simply, “Am I immune to this?” thinking that he was a most important and unique prince. His guide told him, “No you are not.” He asked, “My parents, the king and queen, are they immune?” “No, they are not.” “What about my subject that I am supposed to protect and help?” “These are your subjects.”

So Buddha’s goal then was to find out how to handle this suffering that he, his family, his people and people in general were being tortured by throughout their lives. Death, illnesses, aging, etc, became his major concern. He couldn’t find any solution in the material, regular world. It was only the spiritual path, working with your mind, affecting your mind, improving your mind, a mind that could manage the betterment of the individual, physically, mentally and above all, spiritually – once and for all. Finally, Buddha did find the stage of Buddhahood, of total knowledge or enlightenment. He said, “I, one individual, have found the profound stage of enlightenment. If I could get that, all of you can get it too. Why not?” I am the example and I am showing you. That is Buddhism. Buddha didn’t make something huge by sitting down and collecting ideas together and wrote books and curricula. It was simply the way how he managed suffering. This was not just pain management. He showed that suffering doesn’t have to bother you, that you can overcome suffering, that you can get rid of suffering once and for all. That is really true Buddhism. That is not even a religion. It doesn’t involve worshipping but is simply looking after oneself. And then Buddhism came up in India, and like all other things then was divided into southern and northern Buddhism and that’s how the different streams of Hinayana, Mahayana and vajrayana came in. The Tibetans had the same problems that Buddha faced 2600 years ago.

0:40

They were looking for something to manage by themselves, something simply and easy. Buddhism was not the first religion in Tibet. There is a Tibetan indigenous religion called Bön. There were later also Hindus and Muslims but the early Tibetan rulers wanted to have Buddhism. They could not get it, because the Indian Buddhist teachers were not willing to go to Tibet. That would have been like committing suicide. You had to go way up there – over 16,000 feet high, with the lower parts of the country being at around 10,000 feet. They were not going there. The Tibetans also did not just want any teacher, but specifically asked for someone who was brilliant, younger, capable, somebody they hoped to be like a crown jewel. But they didn’t get that. Tibet has sacrificed a lot in the search for Buddhism. Actually Buddhism came first to Tibet in the early 700s, but somehow it got mixed up with magical mystical aspects. It was about how to fly in the air and how to put daggers through rocks and that type of thing. That occupied Tibet for 300 years. So they really wanted to have something really nice, something that Buddha really experienced and what the early Indian masters practiced. Finally, they got this Bengalian guy Atisha who also happened to be a prince first. That master started the pure Tibetan Buddhism. That was in the 1100s. So the Tibetans suffered for almost 400 years, not getting pure Buddhism.

The essence of the teaching that Atisha brought to Tibet in the 1100s can be summarized into three most important points. The first is that we should not always be overpowered by attractions such as the luxuries and comforts of life. Our goal normally is that we want to be happy. But the definition of happiness differs from individual to individual. What is happiness to us? To some people it is a lot of money; to some it is a very luxurious life. To some it is all of the above. To some it is to have enough comfort and nothing to worry about. But the majority of people go for money, wealth and luxury. So the first point is to choose happiness as your goal, but that happiness should not be short-lived but be with you all the time. I said ‘all” the time, speaking from the background of reincarnation, life after life. Happiness should not only be up to the time of death, but even beyond. As long as I exist in whatever form, I should have that happiness. That should be the goal of my spiritual path. That is my purpose, the mission of my life.

Two: yourself alone is not enough. What about your spouse, your children, your family, your friends, their friends, the childrens’ spouses, the grand mothers and everybody, including the mother-in-law? So we must have compassion and love to all human beings and to all beings.

That will be true love and compassion. But a good goal and a good compassion is not enough if you are stupid.

You need the third aspect: wisdom. That doesn’t just mean knowledge, knowing where to go and what to do, but true knowledge of reality. What is the true reality of ourselves? That is the third point.

These three most important points are the essence of Buddhism: freedom from suffering, joy and happiness for our life and then not only for ourselves but for all, and thirdly, knowing what to do. That is the essence of Tibetan Buddhism. That’s it.

0:50

Within Tibetan Buddhism there are a number of other things. Today you heard that tomorrow we are doing White Tara practice. Tara is a female Buddha. When we say ‘Buddha’ you probably get the image of that Indian guy sitting cross-legged with one hand stretched down and the other in the lap holding a begging bowl. But there are also female Buddhas. Tara is very important and is a Buddha, just like Shakyamuni Buddha. Tara is very good for healing, not only mental but also physical. Through meditative practices healing can be done. When I was here in the 1960s and talked about meditation, most people didn’t get it. Most people asked, “What’s that?” I came back to the United States in the mid-eighties. By that time I could speak a little bit of English. But I didn’t want to talk about meditation because I knew that people weren’t familiar with it. I was in Michigan and Ohio and gave some little talks and one day I mentioned meditation and I noticed that everybody started moving in their seats, sitting cross-legged and shaking their body and adjusting how they were sitting. So everybody was aware of meditation and knew what it was. But they only knew one type of meditation: concentration, almost thinking nothing. That is a part of meditation, no doubt. It gives you mental relaxation and can reduce your blood pressure. It does that, really. I know it personally, because I have high blood pressure. When I run to the doctor’s they will tell me, “Hey, your blood pressure is high.” Then I say, “Give me a minute” and after a few minutes of sitting down the blood pressure will have dropped by a huge amount. Then the doctor already knew,”Oh, yes, you have been busy running around and now you need to relax. So take your two minutes and then check again.”

That is nothing to be surprised about, that’s usual, that’s nothing. But the White Tara Healing Meditation is not just simply reducing blood pressure. It internals heals you through your elements. The earth element includes flesh and bones, etc. The liquid and moisture in the body is the water element. Heat, digestive power, etc, is the fire element. Circulation and movement is the air element. Then the space is the 5th element, but you may or may not include it. When the four elements are balanced we call that “I am well and healthy”. When they are imbalanced you have discomfort in your body. You get illnesses. But you can rejuvenate those energies through the power of the female Buddha, through your own meditative power, through the power of the mantra. Concentration, mantra and help from enlightened beings will do it. In other words, it is the help of God. Bringing them together, trying to balance, that kind of healing has been going on in Tibet for thousand years. There are so many stories and they are fact in the Tibetan people’s life. Now lately, the same has been happening also to Caucasian people. This is our personal experience and it makes a hell of a difference. Although it is restricted, we are trying to make it a little less restricted, without having to become Buddhist or getting involved in vajrayana practices, but trying to make it a little bit relaxed, yet true to the tradition, without requiring prerequisite activities, just a little bit. I have done this for a number of years and the results have been great for a number of us. We hope to share that with you here tomorrow. The morning session will be 10 to 12, and the afternoon session will be 2.30 to 4.30. If you are not doing anything and you would like to experience that you are welcome.

Do you have any questions?

1:00

Audience: Can you tell me what is the origin of thought, where thought comes from?

Rimpoche: Yourself. My thoughts are mine. Nobody taught me or pushed me. It doesn’t belong anywhere. It is my intelligence. And also, what is the origination of me? That should be the question, honestly. What is the difference between my thoughts and me? How much difference is there? That’s interesting. To me, there is a slight difference between me and my thoughts. It is me and my. When you say, “Who is me?”, when you ask, “Do you remember me?”, then you do that through a name. You say, “It is me, Joe Blow”. Who is Joe Blow? Probably your parents have given you the name or maybe somebody else has. The funny thing, in Tibetan culture people ask lamas like me to give the name for the children. Lately, in the last 40, 50 years, they all go to His Holiness the Dalai Lama to give the names. It is the Tibetan culture that the lama then will give you part of his name as the new name. The 14th Dalai Lama’s personal name is Tenzin Gyatso. So when he gives names, everybody will be Tenzin this and Tenzin that. Two years ago a friend of mine told me that he was in Washington. He said, “I was in a large group with many young Tibetans and if I sit on the stage and shout, “Hey, Tenzin!” a hundred people will say, “What?”

So a name is a label that someone gives us to identify the “me”. That becomes our ID along with our face. The Secretary of State will put your picture on the driver’s license and put a stamp on it. That identifies you. That [our body] is a borrowed identity. We got it from our parents and we own it until we die. Then it changes. It is a borrowed identity. The question is really: Who am I? On the other hand it also doesn’t matter.

There is a Buddhist magazine from New York City called Tricycle. They introduced the annual Change your Mind Day. They have this big festival in Central Park in New York City. They asked me several times to speak there and one year I did go. It was a hot summer and the sun was shining very hot. People were asking me, “What are you going to talk about?” Truly speaking, I never prepare my talks. If I do it doesn’t work. I can’t read properly in English. I never learnt that. I would make a fool of myself. So normally, I only say what I know. Besides that I don’t say much. So I said, “Whatever the other speakers are talking about I will follow up on that.” So I walked around in the park. There were about 200 – 300 people sitting in the midst of the hot sun and there was one lady in a black robe sitting on the stage, sweating like crazy. She had been sitting there morning till evening, entertaining everybody. When I walked in I saw all these different Buddhist teachers. They all started saying hello to me and I couldn’t hear what the speaker was talking about over the loudspeaker. After all the “how are you’s” were over I sat down for a minute and tried to listen what the speaker was talking about. They were talking about “Who am I?” and “What am I?”. The thought came up in my head, “I don’t care who or what I am. Whatever I am, I am. But I do care about what I will do.” But I wasn’t sure if I could say that or whether people would be disappointed. That thought went through my head. So I thought I would ask somebody. I looked around and couldn’t find anybody except Joseph Goldstein from the Insight Meditation Center. He is a very tall guy and I am a big, fat, short one and was sitting on the floor. Even in those days I had difficulty getting up and walking. So Joseph Goldstein walked by and I thought I would ask him if people would get disappointed if I told them that I didn’t care who I was. I started to walk behind him, but he was walking so fast I couldn’t catch him. Meanwhile the loudspeaker started saying, “Our next speaker, Gelek Rimpoche, is walking down there. Please come back. Come up here!”

So I had to go back. Then I didn’t know where I would connect my talk. But at the end I did say, “I don’t care whoever we are. We are simply dependent origination. Our conditions, our karmic conditions and our physical conditions and mental conditions are just combined together. Then we become. So it is dependent origination.” When I said that half the people didn’t like it, others were wondering what I was talking about and the others liked it. The truth is that we are dependent origination. We rely on physical, mental, emotional and karmic conditions. When they are right we become existent. Thoughts, my and me and everything comes from that.

Thank you for the question. It is a difficult one.

Thank you so much for being here tonight.

1:11:43