Archive Result

20120408GRAATB15

00:00

Good morning, happy Easter, and better late than never, Happy Pass-over as well. Today I am in Ann Arbor, addressing you. Last week I was planning to talk to you from Hongkong, but somehow I had to put a prerecorded speech up. I am sorry, that’s the first time I did that. Sorry about that. But still, it’s the same message and the same person, just prerecorded. I also would like to report to you that I went to Hongkong. One of our old Jewel Heart senior students, a professor at Columbia University and also working in China, has translated so many important Tibetan texts into Chinese. For example, Liberation in the Palm of your Hands and Tsongkhapa’s Speech of Eloquence and the latest he showed me is Maitreya Buddha’s Uttaratantra. There are so many important Tibetan teachings he translated into Chinese language, both into the original Chinese script, as well as a modified or simplified script. He has a number of people who are reading his translations. There were about 500 people coming from the Chinese mainland to attend these weekend teachings in Hongkong. Altogether we had a one evening lecture at the university and about 200 students attended that. Then we had 2 days of teachings. On Saturday I did the “Three Principles of the Path” and then on Sunday I did the White Tara initiation with explanation. Over 500 people came to that. Saturday was attended by some 300 people. Some attended all, but there were a lot of different people for each event. It was nice and a little helpful, and I hope that my little knowledge of buddhadharma has served them a little bit. I can see they are extremely hungry for dharma, really, really hungry. They are going out of their way to cross over to Hongkong to attend the teachings. Then there were Hongkongnese people as well. So although this was a short trip it was very, very helpful. I just wanted to report that to you.

0:05 Now I would like to continue talking about we had been talking here. Briefly speaking to practice Buddhism there are three things: learning, thinking – or contemplating – and meditating. Learning doesn’t mean to become a great scholar or teacher. At least you have to know what you are doing. I just want to bring this up to date. One shouldn’t do what one doesn’t know. That’s very important for every spiritual path. It is an unknown road and you should not do something that you don’t know how to do. At least you need to know what it is.

Yes, it is Buddha’s teaching and the great Tibetan Buddhist tradition. But what is the individual supposed to learn and think and meditate? These are the questions. Otherwise you simply go and “meditate”. Meditation is now somehow accepted as one of the alternative methods for gaining health and happiness, something like yoga. But that meditation probably means just sitting down and focusing and trying not to engage any thoughts, just bringing attention to every movement. You all know this. Many people know that. That’s good and there is nothing wrong with that. I need to say this. But as a Tibetan Buddhist student and spiritual person I have to say: that’s not enough. It’s good to bring some calm and quiet to people and reduce your blood pressure and give you a little relaxation. It’s great for that, no doubt about it. But to make the spiritual journey perfect it is not good enough.

0:10

That’s why learning becomes important. You have to learn about the subject or object that you are going to meditate on. If you don’t learn anything but simply sit down and watch your breath at your abdominal movement or counting the breath going up and down or in and out the left or right nostrils or both together, that’s very limited focusing. Some people have a little better object to focus on, like an image of Buddha or Tara or something. That’s a little better than counting the breath. It’s better in the sense that you learn to keep your attention on a certain subject or object, plus you accumulate positive merit, because you are focusing on Buddha or other enlightened beings. That will bring positive karma. It is also an opportunity to reduce negativities. Focusing on an image of the Buddha or Tara is a preferred object to meditate compared to counting the breath.

But you do have to count your breath in order to learn how to focus. I have an interesting story. A long time ago I had a friend in Texas, a healer. He told me about “meditation”. At that time my language problem as well as the lack of clarity of what he meant by meditation prompted me to say, “I don’t know what that is.” Then he said, “I will teach you.” I said, “That will be very fine.” So he lit a 4 - 5 inch long stick of incense. In the air-controlled room the smoke want up straight. He kept on telling me: “Keep on focusing on the smoke at the point where the fire is burning the incense until the incense has burnt down.” Then I began to realize what kind of meditation he was talking about. It was focusing. So focusing on the image of the Buddha or Tara, etc, is better than focusing on incense smoke or counting your breaths. Counting breaths helps because it connects with your physical movements. The body-mind relationship is very strong. The physical movements here draw the attention of the mind. That’s why counting breaths becomes important. But that’s not good enough for spiritual practitioners. We do recommend to contemplate and meditate. So where do you begin? That’s the real question.

0:16

You can begin the Buddhist from any level. Traditionally, in Tibet it begins with the guru-devotional practice. Traditionally, in early India, it began with the refuge. To correspond these, the guru devotional practice is part of refuge, because Buddha is the most important guru. “Guru” is a touchy word and so is “pundit”. These are Sanskrit words accepted in the western world. There are political and economic gurus and pundits. Those are the people yupping all the time on television. So the moment you use the word “guru” it becomes a touchy subject. But the use of the word “guru” for spiritual practitioners and for politics are probably two different things.

I would like to repeat: the most important guru in Buddhism is Buddha, nothing more and nothing less. So guru devotional practice, though introduced in Tibetan Buddhist practice in the beginning, is definitely part of the refuge. Refuge is the door way to Buddhist practice. To be Buddhist is to have refuge and the doorway to practice Buddhism is honoring karma. They are all important indeed. But for us, particularly if you are interested in improving yourself, making yourself a better person, contributing to the improvement of the world and the environment, it is a little too steep a climb. So from the Tibetan Buddhist point of view, where can you begin?

0:20

When Buddha became Buddha, what did he do first? That’s where we begin. Buddha became Buddha after lots of sacrifices. According to the usual historical points he spent six years in seclusion and took only the bare minimum of food and meditated in the forest. His physical body almost came to look like the branch of a tree.

That is because of the heat, the wind, the dust and all this moisture – all together. He meditated like that for six years. After that he proclaimed that he had become fully enlightened. He started calling himself no longer Gautama, but Buddha. Everybody is looking for what he gained. What is that? He said, “I have a tremendous experience, profound, like uncontaminated nectar. But if I try to explain that to anyone, nobody will be able to understand. Therefore I choose to remain silent in the forest.”

After he was silent, so many made requests for him to teach and share his experience. Finally he came out and talked about four most important points, which are commonly known as “The Four Noble Truths”. When you want to know something deeper in Tibetan Buddhism I think that we should really begin with the Four Noble Truths. That is how Buddha first taught. This is absolutely relevant in our life today, in 2012. It is as relevant as it was 2600 years ago. What you have to learn, to meditate and practice is the Four Noble Truths.

The Four Noble Truths can be a very simply subject, or it can be very deep and profound. Buddha’s teachings are such that they are on the one hand absolutely simply and fit for all. Yet on the other hand they are so profound that only few can really master them. When we say we have to learn, contemplate and meditate, that’s what should be done. When you talk about buddhadharma, that is the word that everybody uses for Buddhism or Buddha’s teaching. People who are interested should know what to do. That’s what we should be doing.

I have been telling you that practice is learning, contemplating and meditating. That is practice. It is not just doing some physical thing or sitting down and meditating or saying prayers and mantras, or singing or chanting. Ask yourself the question: what do I mean by practice? Different people give different answers. I am telling you that they are all fine. Praying is fine. There is nothing wrong with that. That will give you good results. Your prayers may be answered – sometimes (laughs). Sometimes it gets you nowhere. It really happens that way. Sometimes they are answered quickly and sometimes you get nowhere. That is true in the Judeo-Christian as well as the Hindu-Buddhist traditions. That is not the fault of the objects to whom you pray, but it is the fault of us, the individuals. That sounds like something the Catholic Church would say, but I have different reasons. It is because of the obstacles and negativities we have, which come from negative karma and wrong doing. They become blocks.

0:30

You can be praying to whoever you are praying to and the person you are praying to maybe in front of you but you can’t see them. We don’t see them – not because we don’t have eyes and ears. We do. But it is because of the negative karma, which becomes a block, filter or blind fold. That’s what happens. The negative karma becomes a wrong filter. You hear the wrong things. Some people do hear something, but they hear the wrong thing, because of their negative karma. When I went to the scientific conference “Being Human”, one scientist did a demonstration with people wearing this funny looking hat. The most brilliant person there was supposed to be Richard Davidson. So they put the hat on him. Then people clapped on the right side, but when they asked him what he heard he said, “People are clapping on the left.” So when people clapped from the other side he heard it wrong again.

The negative karma of some people makes them hear wrong instructions. I used to have a friend who came to Jewel Heart and he heard voices. He was a professor at the U of M. He followed those instructions. I am sure many of you remember. The instructions he heard was that he should eat bacon wrapped in butter. He did that without questioning. Finally he landed in hospital. And the Social Service people came and asked me questions like “What type of instructions do you give to people? Do you encourage them to eat bacon?” (laughs). Although I am fat I do not encourage people to eat bacon wrapped in butter. He literally made that three times a day during a retreat. So naturally he ended up in hospital.

Like that, people do hear different things but don’t get the right message but the wrong message. Our own negative karma does that. That’s why purification is needed and that is part of contemplation. I wanted to bring to you the idea of the Four Noble Truths. The next couple of Sundays I will be here and will be talking about them continuously. Today I am just going to count them. The first is the Truth of Suffering. This is absolutely relevant for us. We all have plenty of suffering, more than we want. Everybody has it, honestly.

That suffering doesn’t come from nowhere and just lands on us. It comes from somewhere. So what is the cause of suffering? What conditions make it work? The Second Noble Truth is the Cause of Suffering. The Third Noble Truth answers the question: Is that it? Is that the end of it? Can we do anything? The Buddha keeps on telling us: Yes you can. These suffering are all not true, they are not permanent. They can all be changed. There is something called Cessation of Suffering. That becomes the Third Noble Truth. Then how do I get to that Cessation? The road to the Cessation is called The Truth of the Path to the Cessation. So that’s just counting them.

0:37

Each of them has some criteria, purposes, reasons about what we are supposed to do with these. We will continuously talk about that. For example the Truth of Suffering. What does that mean? The normal understanding, what people normally think, is that our physical body or our mental level is clean. I don’t know how to explain that. People can easily misunderstand that. Even many medical doctors tell me that if we look inside ourselves it is absolutely clean. To me that is not true. If our body inside is absolutely clean where does cancer come from? Why do we have diseases and difficulties? Then there is the idea that if you have diseases you can cut and remove them. But according to the Buddha that is not clean. It is un-clean. That’s why we get sufferings.

I had this conversation with one our Jewel Heart medical doctors and scientists, Dr. Ben Shapiro. That is probably 10, 15 years ago. Later he told me, “Yeah, you are right, there is something to think about here.” Buddha shows us why we suffer so much: because we are un-clean. Many of us will say, “We are clean, you may not be, you are a dirty Tibetan or Indian or something”. But that’s not the point. What does “clean” mean? We think we are absolutely clean. I am just going to give you those contradictions today so that you can think about. We think that life is happy and joyful – but probably it is not. Most probably we are not happy and joyful, because we are in the midst of suffering. Whether we have physical or mental agony or not, but that can easily happen. All of us are really clinging on. We are just depending on the right conditions and anything, right, left and everywhere, can create suffering. It happens and it is the reality. Many people think that if you can get a little something to numb yourself that this is joy.

0:44

You don’t know how much damage that does to your intelligent mind and your wonderful physical body. All that indicates that we are in the midst of suffering, not necessarily joy and happiness.

Then we think we will be always there permanently. But the truth is we are examples of impermanence. That is easy to understand. Then we think that the self is something deeply existing. We think it will always be there. Tsang de tak dar- These are Tibetan words. We think we are absolutely clean, joyful, permanent and self-existing. That is the common understanding of self as part of the Truth of Suffering. But Buddha says we are un-clean, suffering, impermanent, and the self does not exist. Every phenomenon is by nature empty. So the normal understanding and Buddha’s discovery of the Four Noble Truths differ.

I just wanted to throw that out for you to think about. This is slightly unusual. Normally we talk about the three kinds of suffering, eight kinds of suffering. This is a little deeper, a more intelligent way of thinking, which I think all of us can handle. It will be very helpful later.

With that I am just giving you the beginning or seed of the idea. Then I will talk more next Sunday. I will be here.

0.48

I do understand we have a couple of on-line questions from e mails?

Audience: What is the definition of a reliable mind as opposed to an unreliable mind? How do we know whether a mind is reliable or unreliable?

Rimpoche: This is a very important question. Generally speaking our mind is reliable, especially the direct knowledge of our sense consciousnesses. Our eye consciousness is what we see, the ear consciousness hears, the nose consciousness smells, the physical consciousness touches and the tongue consciousness tastes. That is direct knowledge and it is reliable – unless it is contradicted by another reliable mind. Suppose a person is suffering from jaundice. That person will probably see snow mountains as yellow mountains and white bed sheets as either yellow or khaki or something else that is different from pure white. That consciousness is unreliable, because other eye consciousnesses, however many are in the room or place will contradict that direct knowledge. The criteria of the mind as reliable is that it is not being contradicted by other reliable minds.

Sometimes language can create some issues but these are language problems, not problems of the mind. For example, let’s say that this glass is called “mug” by some people. The guy who calls it “mug” will say, “This is my mug.” Somebody else will say, “This is not a mug, this is a glass.” So this is a language problem, not a mind problem. Direct knowledge is reliable, provided it is not contradicted by another direct mind. That’s how we know if a mind is right.

Audience: Some time ago you said that spiritual development can be blocked by karmic factors that are not the same as the negative karma causes by harmful deeds. Are there karmic blockages that are different from negative karma? If so, what are they?

Rimpoche: Negative karma is the result of harmful deeds we have done. But every karmic block is not necessarily caused by harmful deeds. There are some neutral karmas that become karmic blocks. That’s probably what I had in mind at that moment. But generally speaking negative karmas becomes karmic blockages for positives. Vice versa, positive karma becomes karmic blockages for negative events. It really works both ways. I think that’s what it is.

I would like to cut it here, although there is one more question. We can answer that next time. Thank you for being here today.

O:54:35