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20120513GRAATB20

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Good morning everybody. I wish everybody who is a mother a very happy Mother’s Day. It’s Mother’s Day Sunday morning. So I thought a lot of people would be at breakfast rather than here, but welcome to Tibetan Buddhism with Gelek Rimpoche.

We have been talking about practicing Buddhism. The tradition teaches us that the way to practice it is through learning, understanding and meditating. For the learning aspect we chose to learn how Buddha taught, and specifically on the basis of the Four Noble Truths. The study of this can never be completed, but we briefly taught on the First Noble Truth, the Truth of Suffering.

Now we are on the point of the Second Noble Truth, the Cause of Suffering. I would like to make one thing clear. Earlier, one of Buddha’s disciple, Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of Love, when you read his works, suddenly you think,” This guy was there and there are all these conversations.” However, when you look very carefully, Maitreya Buddha is supposed to be the future official Buddha. There will be 1000 official Buddhas who declare themselves as Buddha. Right now we are in the tenure of Buddha Shakyamuni, the fourth Buddha out of 1000 in this fortunate eon. The next one is Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of Love. That is from the Sanskrit word maitri. He analyzes symbolically mentions that the Four Noble Truths look like a patient who got sick and finds the cause of the illness and the medicine that cures it and the treatment he has to receive.

The purpose of the First Noble Truth, the Truth of Suffering, is actually to recognize and acknowledge. Many of us are in the habit that we don’t want to talk about it and think about something we don’t like, particularly suffering. I used to know a guy in Texas, an oil guy. When I was in Texas in the 60s, for about six, seven months, he would like to give some money to help Tibetans in India. I told him, “Come and visit.” He said, “No way, there is too much suffering. I don’t want to think about it and talk about it.” That sort of shows us our tendency not to think and not to talk about suffering.

We do that when we are upset. We say, “I don’t want to talk about it. Leave me alone.” But here the Buddha says, “No, no. Know about, acknowledge it and dislike it. That’s great.” The purpose of the First Noble Truth is to know and not to deny. If you deny your purpose will be defeated. So acknowledge. Dislike it. For that you don’t have to put efforts in. No one likes suffering, though some people may enjoy. That’s because of the lack of true happiness. Then anything different is considered and nice and happy. But that is probably not correct. The purpose is to acknowledge, to understand, dislike and you agree you don’t like it. Then think about what to do.

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“I don’t like, so I am not going to talk about it” is not the answer. So it is important to do something. If you don’t like certain food, because it is either too sweet or too hot, then what do you do? You don’t eat it, right? You can avoid eating it. But we do have a choice. We have freedom. We can do it. But the suffering, the bigger emotional, physical, mental suffering, doesn’t seem to be like “I don’t want to eat this food, it’s too hot, too sweet”. You can’t just discard it. It just comes. It comes to us, to our companions and it comes to everything in our life, everything we eat, wear and it comes in our environment. What can we do about it?

This question was raised by earlier Indian sages for our consideration. Somehow a number of different thoughts really popped up among the earlier Asian traditions, not only Buddha alone. Somehow they all seem to know that it comes out from something. There are certain people that say, “This suffering just pops up by itself.” There are very few who say that and somehow their views are generally, commonly rejected. Everybody else seems to be saying that the suffering comes from something. It is caused by something. That’s why the cause of suffering comes up as an issue. Where does it come from?

Some people say that it comes from something we did, one little cause. Some people say that it can’t be that one little cause can make that much happen. Some people say, “No, it is the Creator’s choice. He made the decision, so you are going to get it.” They say that it is permanent too, that it temporarily appears and disappears and so on and that it is always there, nothing new. That’s what the earlier sages found through their meditative analysis and drew conclusions in that way.

Buddha came and said, “No. My discovery is that of course suffering has causes. But there are many causes and conditions. They constantly and continuously pop up. That’s why our suffering is continuously coming. But it is definitely impermanent, not permanent.It is so by its own nature, its own source. Not only is it impermanent, but even empty. It is not created by one or however many others. They are not created by a creator. It is through causes that the individual creates themselves.”

That’s how Buddha looks at it. Then what types of causes are there? Buddha says that there are two categories. One is karma and the other is the negative emotions. They create negative karma. Positive emotions create positive karma. I like to have a little basis, otherwise I will simply talking. If you have a base it will establish something within you. If you don’t, it will be obstructed. While there are two causes, karmic and emotional, the emotional causes are the bottom line causes, more so than the karmic ones.

Karma is something we all talk about and seem to know something about. But when you really look at karma, it is not some huge monster or a God-look-alike. Many people say, “Christians have God and Buddhists have karma.” Then it looks like the same thing. But it is not.

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Karma again, is also impermanent. It is not something that was made and is solid like a judgment, but is simply our own deeds. There may be time for me to talk more to you about karma, but I want you to have some idea for now. Karma is not something big over there that makes all the decisions and pronouncements like some big judge who is sitting somewhere. My own karma is my deeds. Whatever I do and think, actions, thoughts, motivations, all count. Karma is such a thing. On the one hand it gives us tremendous freedom and choice and on the other hand it gives us tremendous tightness – honestly. Wherever you turn, karma is there. You can’t get rid of it. It is almost like the body and its shadow, even more so. Karma is not another person, it is our own deeds and thoughts. When we think of something positive, karma registers positivity. When we think of something negative, karma registers negative.

Now we are in the electronic age. You know that everything gets through everywhere electronically. We need some little equipment to see it, whether through an I phone, I pad or whatever other gadget. That’s there so that they can collect some money. But in reality information is going everywhere. If it were not everywhere it would not possible to catch it with your I pad or I phone. It’s already there. It’s like that with karma. It is always there. It is invisible, however, it is pervasive. Its job is only to register and acknowledge and making sure that what you do you get it. Your efforts for positive deeds is not wasted and your efforts at negative deeds you can’t get away with. That’s what karma does. It is not another person, but somehow it is there, a pervasive registration. It is very difficult to cheat, very difficult to corrupt.

Otherwise, corruption is very easily everywhere. The big ones have big corruption and the small ones have small corruption.

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Somebody told me, “I don’t want to deal with Indians, they are all corrupt.” True, they are. But their corruption is about 10 rupees, which is around a quarter of a penny. But the corruption in Washington is not about a quarter of a penny. That’s what it is. Karma cannot be corrupted. It is very difficult to alter or change it. It is an unseen process of whatever we engage in. The karmic registration takes place and it may or may not materialize for a long time. I am not talking about ten, fifteen years, but ten or fifteen eons. On the other hand it may materialize tomorrow. There is no priority or first comes first business. It depends on the individual. But let’s not go into that, otherwise I could go a very long way.

Who is making karma? We ourselves, not God or Buddha or Bhagwan. Karma makes ourselves very responsible. It gives you tremendous freedom of whatever you want to do, but at the same time it is your responsibility. That very karma, when it is connected, why does it sometimes take so long? because it doesn’t connect with the right conditions. For karma to be able to materialize you have to have the cause, the original karma and then conditions. When the conditions are right, things can happen that minute, the moment they conditions are right.

I just said there is no opportunity to change or corrupt. But there is room to play, honestly. That is because of the conditions. The individual can work. This is what the spiritual people are supposed to be doing, whether East or West. Why do we always say, “Try to be good.” What is the difference for me? As the good old American saying goes, “What’s in there for me?” What’s in there for me is that I can delay or even terminate the conditions to make a bad karmic result ripen. That is the room to play. That’s why people want to be good.

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That is even if you don’t want to consider others, but yourself alone. Even then that’s what’s in there for you. Negative karma needs negative conditions to ripen. We do have the karma to get angry or have hatred. But that’s not going to arise unless there is a condition that makes you mad, something you cannot tolerate. Otherwise you are not going to have hatred running around all the time. Every person is a good person. We are all not lumps of hatred. We are good persons. But our anger and hatred comes up because something happens. And that is the condition that allows the deep karma of hatred to come up. My understanding is that every spiritual person tries to be spiritual not because they just want to be deep and be deep down somewhere on some different planet. This is the actual reason why we have to be good and why we cannot hurt other people, why we must help ourselves and others. All these are simply for that reason. Whenever you have love, kindness, compassion, altruism, they all become positive because of this reason. Hatred, anger, obsession and all of them become negative because that hurts another person and yourself. That provides the conditions for the wrong causes we have to materialize. That’s the reason why we engage in meditation. That’s the reason why we engage in all the positive deeds and even in quietness, silence. It gives us the opportunity to be in touch with ourselves. Then we will follow the right direction.

That is what the Second Noble Truth is all about. Officially, I should say that what I am saying here are things that I didn’t say in other teachings. But I have to mention a few here too.

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The Second Noble Truth is karmic and emotional. As for karma there are basically two categories: positive and negative. We all know. The basis of positive and negative is what helps and what hurts. Theoretically speaking the scholars and practitioners and sages will talk to you different things, but for us the bottom line is what helps and hurts.

For positive karma also Buddha showed us two different categories. There is the one what gives you results as a human being or samsaric god. Then the other one is called mi yo wei le in Tibetan. Literally translated that is unmovable or unshakable karma. I meant to look in the Tibetan-English dictionary this morning, but didn’t get an opportunity.

The immovable karma is positive karma, even a little better than the one that gives you a future life as human being or samsaric god. Sorry, I am introducing a lot of those little things. But above the samsaric god category, there are two more. One is called the form realm and the other the formless realm.

The form category is coming out of the four concentrated states. We did have a chart which I called the “General Motors Chart”. Maybe that will be available on the website next week. There are 17 layers of different lives. The unshakable karma is connected with the form – and formless lives. If you know that it will make a huge difference. The causes of taking rebirth in those formless realms are all meditation. For us it seems to be perfect and wonderful, but for Buddha that’s not good enough, because it doesn’t really get rid of suffering. It merely postpones it.

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If you see that you will understand much better. But if you don’t want to go in there, that’s fine. Positive karma is good enough – for the time being. And negative karma we don’t want anyway, because it has negative consequences. So the Second Noble Truth, the cause of suffering, is karmic and emotional. Our emotions change us.

I give an example very often. I thought I did a great job thinking of that example. But then I saw that Geshe Rabten, a very well-known teacher who lives in Switzerland, used the same analogy in his teaching book. My idea is that the mind is like a clean-clear crystal lamp shade. That analogy didn’t come up in my head easily. Believe me, I thought a lot about it. In that clean-clear crystal lamp shade you put a clear light bulb and from outside the lamp shade looks nice and crystal.

If you come in and change the light bulb to a red bulb and then walk far away and look at the lamp shade you will see a red lamp shade. Then come and change the light bulb to green and look from far away and you see a green lamp shade. But the lamp shade itself remains the same thing: clean-clear crystal. Only the light bulbs change. They are our emotions, like hatred, obsession, and so on, cool and hot ones, whatever they are. These influence our mind, which is like the clean-clear lamp shade. That’s why emotions are the real causes of good and bad to ourselves.

That’s why the ancient teachings say: watch your mind, watch your mind, watch your mind.

It’s not like watching a bird with binoculars. You are watching inside of yourself. Maybe it is like watching a bird. Something blue comes up and you say, “Oh, yeah, a blue bird”, until you realize it is just a piece of blue cloth and you get disappointed.

When you watch and recognize, you appreciate and you have disappointments, everything. Just like that, when you watch your mind and it becomes a little too red, try to make it a little cooler and greener. If it is too green, like neon-light green, you won’t like it. Then try to make it a little better. Balance it. Watching your mind means that. Watch your mind where it is taking you in your Second Noble Truth. If it is in positive direction be happy about it. If it is in a negative direction, do something. That’s what I wanted to say for today. Sorry, I didn’t give you the opportunity to ask questions. That’s all I wanted to say and thank you and see you next Sunday.

Thank you. 0:47 Chanting of Four Immeasurables 0:49