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00:00

Good morning and welcome to “Tibetan Buddhism with Gelek Rimpoche”. As you recall, the last two Sundays I have been talking about the purpose of spiritual practice. We talked about who, what and what for. Purposefully we talked about “what for” first. If you don’t have the reasons why you have to do a spiritual practice, your spiritual practice will not be fruitful. That’s one thing. Then, even if you do get a little result, it can do a lot more for us. So we have to be clear. That’s why we have been talking about the purpose of spiritual practice.

I mentioned last week that there are two purpose: long term and short term purposes. The long term, from the Tibetan Buddhist point of view is to become a fully enlightened Buddha. We can and should do it. That is the best. That’s why Tibetan Buddhism chose that. Most Buddhism, particularly Mahayana Buddhism, gives you that as the purpose of spiritual practice. The number two achievement is freedom – freedom from suffering for yourself in this and future lives. These are the two purposes.

Improving the individual, reducing anger, reducing hatred, obsession, etc, are great achievements, but they can also be achieved without having a spiritual path. Without Tibetan Buddhism you can definitely achieve that. That is our good human being’s nature. Good human beings know that hatred brings hatred and obsession brings obsession, jealousy brings jealousy and they all bring misery and they are all rooted at the ignorance level. I am not so sure if they know that it is rooted at the ignorance level. But with a little explanation everybody will know.

Good human nature can provide less anger, less hatred and actually non-hatred, non-anger, love, compassion, etc. That’s really good human nature. As a good human being you can achieve that to some extent. Maybe you cannot do it to perfection, like attain the perfection of non-hatred, non-obsession, non-jealousy, but you can get it to a certain extent. As a good human being with good nature and kindness you can do it.

I also mentioned to you that these are the influence of love, compassion and affection. Not only we carry these within ourselves, it is like we have some kindness – gene. That is the root of compassion, caring, love and affection. We all have it as human beings. That’s a human quality. Even animals carry that to a certain extent, but they have very strong negative emotions like hatred, anger and fear. Humans have less of that. That root of love and compassion can be enhanced by the relationship between your mother and yourself. The physical care the mother is giving, picking you up and touching you against her warm body, will affect you. If the conditions are good, human improvement can continue without spiritual contribution.

But the total eradication and total development of non-obsession and non-hatred cannot be obtained. That can only be obtained through a spiritual practice. It doesn’t matter whatever tradition it comes from, as long as we see the object of negation [i.e hatred, obsession, etc], as well as compassion, love, faith and knowledge are qualities and objects to be obtained. As long as you do that without a spiritual path it can develop to a certain extent.

8:00 A spiritual path should do better than that. It can deliver the total eradication of all negative emotions, such as hatred, obsession, jealousy, fear, etc. If you totally eradicate them your quality will be so much improved that what is left will be compassion, wisdom, love, caring. That is the temporary spiritual purpose. The long term purpose, as I already said is Buddhahood, to become what we call “totally enlightened.” That means to have total knowledge, knowing everything that is there to be known truly as what it is and what it is going to be. I am talking about direct knowledge as well as indirect knowledge, not just direct knowledge alone.

This is going to be a little boring to you, but I have to present this, to be true to Tibetan Buddhism. I hope I will be able to do it well. What does it mean to know everything that is there to be known? It includes all existence, past, present and future, all together. The expression the early Buddhists used is this: you have a transparent fruit in the palm of your hand. When you look, you see the fruit as well as the writing in your palm. This is the example from 2600 years ago, so the mirrors and glass might not have existed yet. As far as I am concerned I am wearing glasses and when I look through them I can see my glasses as well as the writing in my palm. It would be simple to give that as the example.

0:11

Whatever the reason, they give you the example of the transparent fruit. Either way, when you look through glasses you can see the glass as well as the writing in the palm. Total knowledge sees that totally, together, past, present and future. Seeing the future means to see what there will be. It is not just being able to see what is supposed to happen, but then it changes. If total knowledge doesn’t see that it is not total knowledge. It is lacking something. Total knowledge should see all of that simultaneously and everything and everybody. It is almost unimaginable. But that is what we mean by total enlightenment or Buddhahood. Buddhahood is not a result for Buddhists only. Everybody is eligible to become a Buddha, if you can provide the proper causes and conditions.

I would like to bring the causes and conditions in. We divide existence into two categories in Buddhism. One is the usefulness. Everything serves its purpose. When you drink a glass of water, the glass serves the purpose of holding water and delivering the water to the individual’s mouth. The purpose of a watch is to give you the time. The purpose can be achieved. Then there are things that don’t serve any purpose at all. Those that do serve their purpose are considered impermanent.

0:14

They change. Everything that is created is impermanent. That doesn’t mean only things that we create. Non-created things that can be known are impermanent. So objects to be known are divided into these two categories: permanent and impermanent. Why do I bring this uneasy subject in here? We said earlier that the spiritual practice is about who, what for and what. We have dealt with what for. Now it is about “what do you practice?” What do you do?

Simply put there are three things: view – or understanding what things are, then meditation and lastly how to conduct your life. The view is the basic understanding. I do not want to use the term ‘philosophy’. I am purposely avoiding that. The reason is that philosophy is a different understanding than spiritual understanding. Spiritual understanding of the view is to understand the nature of whatever you are looking at.

0:17

Why did I bring the categories of impermanence and permanence, created and not created in? Created includes what is manufactured. But on the other hand not everything that is created is manufactured. Everything that is manufactured is created. That sounds a little silly. But it is the reality. You may be thinking, “Created by whom?” It is created by its parts and parcels, by its terms and conditions. That also refers to cause and result. Cause and result, terms and conditions or parts and parcels, everything that is created is impermanent. That is the number one view or understanding of Tibetan Buddhism.

It is one of the four logos. The second one is: every contaminated thing is suffering. Then every phenomenon is emptiness and nirvana is peace. These are the four things. That is not to be treated as philosophy, but as information to the individual for what to know and what to do. That is a very important basis.

0:20

Every created thing is impermanent. What does that mean? It will change. It will change from whatever it is into a different thing. Every minute and every second it keeps on changing. Even the permanent monuments keep on changing. We all know it very well. A few Sundays ago I mentioned that one day I saw that the head dress of the Statue of Liberty was taken down for polishing and re-painting. That’s because it is impermanent. It is changing. Whatever metals it is made out of is getting tarnished. Whatever it is painted with is getting washed away. So you have to re-do this. That is a clear sign that even the permanent monuments are changing. So certainly we ourselves and everything else is always changing. We change our mind, we change our dress, we change our looks. We change our age every year and we change everything, even our skin, though we are not snakes. But you know, we change that. Everything is changing. Change is one of the principles of existence. We need to know and understand that and meditate on it. Then we function in our life with the understanding of change and impermanence. That is the number one thing what to do.

Some of you may be surprised about that. You may have been expecting me to say: Recite OM MANI PADME HUM. Yes, you can say OM MANI PADME HUM, that’s great. If you keep saying that you will definitely get blessings and it will affect you, for sure. But if you understand why you are saying it and what it means and what it has got to do with impermanence, then every single world of OM MANI PADME HUM has value and makes a huge difference. But I will talk to you about that later. Just now I am giving you the first point: every created thing is impermanent. That includes ourselves, our life, our environment and all inhabitants. Everything is impermanent.

The Tibetan word ta wa is translated as ‘view’. It includes not only what you see and know. The purpose is that you should know and function accordingly. Knowing that all created phenomena are impermanent includes our life, our environment and our lives, gives us huge freedom and a huge opportunity. We can make a difference by ourselves for ourselves.

That tells you that the choice is yours.

0:25

You are your own master. Your future is shaped by you. It is your own deal, your own responsibility. Freedom comes with responsibility. The responsibility is that if I am making my future I would like to make it a nice future. I cannot afford to make it a miserable future. I cannot afford to make a suffering future. I have to make a good, comfortable, joyful, helpful future for me as well as my companions and people who are connected with me, people who deal with me, people whom I talk to and have dealings with and those who I meditate about. That includes the whole universe, the whole existence, all living beings. That really gives us tremendous freedom as well as tremendous responsibility.

When I say ‘view’ it is not only a philosophically accepted point, but it really means how we conduct our life and how we function in our life. That is the number one point. Get the understanding of “all phenomena are impermanent.”

The next is: all contaminated experiences are suffering. I will not emphasize that today, because it will be a little too much. The third one is that all phenomena are emptiness and the fourth one is: nirvana is peace.

0:29

What to do here includes not only what to know and understand but also to meditate and not only that, but try to make it part of our own character. That is a huge change if you think about it. It is slightly difficult. We are taught that everything is permanent. We don’t talk about impermanence. We want everything to be what it is. That’s not only in the west, but also in the east, where we have the saying: even if you have only three days to live in your life you will be planning as if you live another hundred years. That is common talk, so it is not western culture versus old Tibetan culture at all. Even the old Tibetan culture has the same thing. We are planning to live forever even if we have only three days left. We do that and this spiritual path is against that culture. It is difficult to go against that culture, but it will make a huge difference and fundamental change in the life of an individual.

With this I would like to say thank you so much.

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