Archive Result

20120219GRAATB8

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Good morning and welcome to Tibetan Buddhism with Gelek Rimpoche. Today I am talking to you from New York Jewel Heart and I am here in New York for two purposes. One is to do the Tibetan Buddhism with Gelek Rimpoche on Sunday mornings and also, to do a memorial service for one of our dear friends, Joan Hurley.

To continue with Tibetan Buddhism with Gelek Rimpoche, in the last couple of weeks we were talking about the situation of our lives and what is happening. We talked about the negative impacts and positive impacts in our lives. They are coming from our own deeds. Buddha chose to call that “karma”. On the one hand karma is like a law, but it is unlike in some tradition, where it is looked at almost like a third person, like some all mighty one, who makes the decisions and we have to either enjoy or suffer. We are talking about that and saying that perhaps it is our own deeds. Not only perhaps, but Buddha said it is. It is our own deeds and responsibility. So we are looking at the negative emotions we are addicted to. These negative emotions cause the individual to act accordingly and hurt people. Today I like to ask: Why so? What makes the individual unable to pay attention to ourselves and why are we always driven towards negative things? It is true. When you are addicted that’s what happens. Sometimes people don’t even know that the situation is like that.

Just yesterday was the funeral of Whitney Houston. Whether you report it or not, it is very hard to say negative things when anybody’s life is lost. However, it is quite obvious that it was the effect of something that drags the human life down over the years and finally ending such a wonderful and precious and outstanding life. This is what addictions do. We all know that. All our friends and people who are addicted to something or other, circle their life around these addictions. On one level they may get through, but then they get into another problem and if you get through that you get into another problem. So we know that these addictions do that. It is very clear to us.

But why is that happening? There are two reasons. No 1, there are so many negativities around and the causes and conditions for them. These are around a lot. We have many wonderful parties. People do enjoy drinking alcohol and smoking. It all happens right and left of ourselves. There are so many of them everywhere, either in big, commercial clubs or individual houses. That’s what’s happening. That’s why causes and conditions of negativities very much surround us. Our culture and society supports and reinforces that.

No 2. That is the lack of conscientiousness. If you don’t have that, you are much easier to be exposed and merge with that and go with that. That’s what happens to people all the time. The addictions we are talking about are not necessarily only chemical addictions, but also mental addictions, such as hatred, anger, obsession. People get addicted to these, because it seems that it works, if you engage in these negative emotions and behavior. Somehow it looks like it accomplishes your goal temporarily. That makes the individual even more addicted to them. Many don’t even know how to reach your goals and wishes. They try to simply do it only by using negative emotions, by showing their temper, by making abuse, by threatening. People do that all the time. These are feeding our own negative emotional addictions. The way we conduct our lives that makes that happen.

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For example we could be a late sleeper in the morning and don’t want to get up. So every environment you create you will make so that you don’t have to get up. You will reinforce all your life to feed your own addiction. Sleeping in late is also an addiction. If you have discipline in your life you will be able to rise early, give yourself time to think about your life. You just need to see what went right and what went wrong. The right and wrong should not be about achieving your temporary goals. If it is just that, then by showing anger or hatred it looks like you are achieving something, but in reality we are not achieving anything. You know and I know, we all know this. Yet, it will feed your addiction. It looks like this is the method you should apply.

There are people who in their lives do nothing but that sort of thing, just simply try to achieve something like that. This is how the addictions completely paralyze our good life, our good self. The good human being, the kind, gentle, sweet, nice, caring personality. That’s completely distorted by hatred and anger. It looks horrible. You make yourself look horrible.

I mentioned in my book “Good Life Good Death” the example of a person I was working for. He used to be one of the biggest bosses of the institution I used to work for. I had very high regards for this particular person, because he is simply the Director General. I didn’t know him personally. But in one meeting where we were together he lost his temper and showed anger. He looked to me like a monkey backwards. He didn’t look like a respectable person or gentleman. That’s how you will look like yourself if you get angry. If I am screaming and yelling and all that I know that I look like a monkey backwards. That’s how the negative emotions affect you, but even then you can’t give them up or correct them. That is because of a lack of conscientiousness. You are not even aware of it. You are not aware of the consequences you are creating for other people around. Everybody gets affected in their busy lives. They get disturbed and experience difficulties. Those who are affected directly go through tremendous misery and suffering. We are creating that for them, besides creating suffering for ourselves and looking like a monkey backwards.

The suffering we create for ourselves is not only today but also tomorrow, next week, next month, next year and thereafter, the rest of our life. This is what the addiction to negative emotions do. That is just one example. The rest of them are the same, they just come in different forms to different people.

Many of them will look justifiable. Justification doesn’t mean anything to me. Where I come from, Tibetan Buddhism, you hear that anybody can justify anything – even the son who kills his own father for fun. That doesn’t mean it is right at all. Right and wrong should not be on the basis of achieving your immediate, circumstantial goals. If that is the justification, then anything can be justified.

The last US administration justified the war in Iraq – and almost everywhere else. So justification has to be truly right or truly wrong. Some friends will probably think: how can there by anything truly right? Truly everything is empty. I am sure you are right about that. However, there is still right and wrong, no matter how empty it might be. Right and wrong is based on the general result and consequences. It is not based on one immediate consequence.

The biggest justification of the previous administration was: curbing terrorism. It was true to a certain extent, but also not true. I am sorry I am touching a controversial area. I am supposed to be talking about Tibetan Buddhism here. But Tibetan Buddhism does deal with the reality of the lives of people.

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It is not just about a few people meditating in caves. That is great, no quarrel with that. But even some of the people meditating in the caves might not have given up the addiction to certain things. I have been there. That’s why I am telling you. It is easy to give up addiction to food – though that is very hard for me. It is easy to give up the addiction to wealth, it is easy to give up the addiction for clothes. But it is not easy to give up the addiction to fame, good name. That is very difficult, even for those who can give up the addiction to all of the other things. They will have great difficulty giving up their good name. There are meditators who close their cave doors completely and wall themselves in, except for a little hole where the food can get in and out – just like solitary confinement in a prison. But even some of those people will hope in some corner of their minds that someone will know that he is over there, someone will look up saying, “There is a great meditator up in the hills.” That is how hard it is to give us these addictions, particularly name and fame.

I didn’t intend to say this, but this brings me to the three important points Milarepa made:

Point 1: if you can really give up the addiction to your good name, you may be out of the human beings’ category. Milarepa says that’s fine. 2. You may land in the category of dogs. That will be fine. 3. But what are you going to get? The category of gods.

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That is how Milarepa looked at life. It is that hard to deal with the addictions. Too many addictions and lack of conscientiousness, that’s our problem. I am not expecting people listening today to become like Milarepa. I am not telling you to get out the human category. I am simply telling you: be in a good human category. That means being able to manage your life, not being the slave of your addictions. If you are then you have a big problem.

About 20 years ago I was giving a public talk in Hongkong in a hotel in Kowloon. There were a lot of people. I was saying the same thing, that we should not be addicted to the luxury materials so much. A gentleman at the back somewhere raised his hand, asking, “What do I do with my Rolls Royce?” I said, “As long as you drive the Rolls Royce, that’s fine. But if the Rolls Royce drives you, you are in trouble.” So as long as you have a life that in reasonably in your control you are okay. The great spiritually developed people can. It is said that they can choose when they live and when they die and where they get reborn. But what we can do is control our life to a certain extent, by managing ourselves properly. I just gave you the example of getting up early. The physical movement may not be the goal of your spiritual efforts, but it counts too.

Many people think it doesn’t matter however you look like physically, that you can be spiritually great, that you can be a hippie or yuppie and be a great spiritual person. True, no doubt, but there is a tremendous relationship between body and mind. The mind depends on the body and the body depends on the mind. If there is no body the mind is formless – a ghost or something like that. Not necessarily all formless people are ghosts. And a body without a mind is something else – we have seen that on television all day yesterday. So there is a dependent relationship between body and mind. As a matter of fact, all five aggregates and all six senses are completely interconnected. In order to maintain discipline within the mind you also have to maintain discipline within the physical condition. To a certain extent it helps. Unless you are completely capable of acting completely independent, like if you can do three different things simultaneously.

During Tsongkhapa’s period was a great teacher, Bodong Rinpoche, who was supposed to be a master of controlling his mind. His collected works are over 100 volumes, almost as much as the whole Buddhist Canon. He used to go for walks around a big stupa he built near his residence. He had four secretaries at the four different sides of the stupa. While he walked he dictated to them. One subject was metaphysics, another was the wisdom of emptiness, the third could have been the vinaya rules, and the fourth could have been something totally different, like medicine or astrology. So he was walking around and dictated all those and the books were written. So if you have complete control, when you are quite used to it, you can manage that. But we cannot manage two things together. It is very hard to drink coffee while driving a car, plus then we get a telephone call. That shows us we are not in control. For that physical control helps the mental management. Some people may not like to call that discipline, so let’s call it management.

If you can manage your mind and take it away from the addictions, in order to do that you have to do one step first: you have to know that what you are doing is wrong. If you don’t know that you won’t want to drag yourself out of that. You will be completely unconscientious and let the air go and let it take you wherever it takes you. Whether you are swimming or being taken away by the current, it doesn’t matter, you just let it go. There is that saying in Tibetan: Maybe some are great persons, but usually not. The saying goes: your temple is burning but you are simply laughing. The offerings are being eaten by dogs and monkeys and you are simply laughing. So you don’t care. That is a positive example, and the bad side of that is: whatever bad thing is happening in your life you are not paying any attention.

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Then that defeats the purpose of being a good human being. You cease to be a good human being and become an ugly, horrible person. The good human being is one who can think right, who is kind and cares, not only for themselves, but also for the majority of the people, are considered to be good. That is an important point. Addictions go into action because of lack of conscientiousness, too many negativities, too many negative causes and conditions that trigger negative emotions, in other words, too many opportunities to be bad. These are the causes of losing our battle against our negative emotions, our negativities. The reasons why we have to have that battle is because of our addictions to negativities, to hurting ourselves and others. We think sometimes that is “a good time”, “good opportunity”, “good satisfaction”. That is true delusion. That drags us way down the road. Not only this immediate time, but these addictions have another problem we are not aware of: you get more addicted. You will like to do it.

For example there are kids who are two or three years old and they like to hurt insects and creatures that they can control and bully. They will bully and hurt them. Some other kids like to be kind and gentle and try to save them and treat them well. We see that every day in our life. Two different kids, maybe even from the same parents, even twins have different characters. Why? Addictions from the previous life. As a matter of fact, that is a sign that there is something called previous life.

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That addiction automatically affect one kid to be kind and gentle and care for those creatures and the other to be harsh and harmful and get a stick and beat them. When you are letting addictions control you without any block or observation you are building more addictions. Let’s say you have a killing addiction. Then you would like to kill more. You can’t live without killing. You go crazy without killing. That’s addiction. We can see this today in some people. We all acknowledge them as some kind of trauma they went through, so they can’t manage their life in the normal way. That’s true, because it is trauma and addiction – all of it. You have been doing it, so you like to do it again.

Conscientiousness is awareness of what you are doing. You have to have it, whether you call that mindfulness or awareness or watching yourself, or insight. You are watching your mind, not only your body. Whatever you call it, you have to understand what you are doing, otherwise it becomes very difficult in life.

In true karmic life, ignorance is no excuse. You cannot say: I don’t understand. I don’t speak good English, so I like to hide under the shelter of ignorance, saying, “I don’t understand, I don’t know.” You may get away with a few things here or there, but truly, ignorance is no excuse. Therefore, as a good human being we don’t do that. We are all good human beings, because we are born with that extraordinary mind. It is the mind with the connection with the human physical body, which makes the capacity of the mind limitless. Honestly. Look back in history, the spiritually developed beings like Jesus, Buddha, etc, were human beings. The human body and mind provided that. Look at the scientists. Whatever we have today, all beautiful scientific results are achievements of the human mind - the same mind that you and I have. I am not saying that, Buddha said so. He said that “at first you and I were equal. Then I put my efforts in – in other words conscientiousness – and I have become a Buddha and you have become my disciples.”

That is what it is. We have the same mind and capacity and this wonderful life. Whether we use it or not, whether we use for good or bad, that is in our own hands. Perhaps that is our birthright. Tibetan Buddhism says: do not let yourself be swept away by the addictions. Apply awareness or conscientiousness. Don’t get controlled by negativities. Be positive, be good, virtuous. Don’t be afraid, be good. This is one point of Buddha’s message that comes through Tibetan Buddhism, which I wanted to share with you today.

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