Archive Result

20120520GRNYTB21

00:02

Welcome to this talk on Tibetan Buddhism. As we know we have been talking about the practice of the path that gives us if possible, ultimate liberation, which according to Buddhism and the Buddha and according to Tibetan Buddhism, is to become a Buddha. There are certain other traditions within Buddhism for whom the ultimate goal is freedom from suffering, which we call nirvana. According to the Sanskrit language, there are these two terms. One is samara, referring to circling life after life in a life that is by nature suffering. It may not be direct suffering all the time, but in nature it is suffering. When you get away from that then you become what is called nirvana. So the normal Buddhist slogan is that samsara is suffering and nirvana is peace. When we are looking at the practice, the whole idea is that one individual, let it be oneself, whoever you or I may be. To be driving away from the circle of suffering, samsara, towards nirvana.

Some quality of nirvana is the absolute enlightenment like Buddha himself has achieved. Some quality of nirvana is simply to gain freedom from samsara and not necessarily total knowledge. Aryas are special persons who have seen the ultimate truth directly. The name in Sanskrit of achieving the freedom from samsara is arhat. In other words, arhats have obtained the cessation of suffering, the Third Noble Truth. It is the cessation of suffering and the causes of suffering.

So these last couple of Sundays we have been talking about the Four Noble Truths of Buddha’s teaching. We have completed talking about the First Noble Truth. Actually we can’t say we have completed that. It is such a deep teaching, but briefly, to get a strong idea and understanding, we have done that.

0:07

We are at the Second Noble Truth, the cause of suffering. We already talked last Sunday that under the cause of suffering we have the karmic cause and the emotional cause. The karmic cause is very important, and you can ask whether it is just the Buddhist system or whether it is reality. In my opinion it is reality. Karma is the one that does and undoes, that makes and destroys. It is very important, very powerful. Also karma is something that we ourselves created and we ourselves are responsible for, whether they are positive or negative results or consequences.

Karma doesn’t come by itself. For example, in this very Second Noble Truth, as we have been talking earlier, there are certain earlier schools and sages who held the view that karma and no karma, joy and suffering pop up by themselves, without any cause or reason. They just happen. That is a very big understanding in Asian traditions and also in the west. If you really look many people see it that way. They do not know why and think it just happens that way. There is the expression “we are born to suffer.” When you become educated and begin to think you begin to realize things just don’t happen. There are reasons for everything. That is the reality.

0:11

We may call them earlier Indian schools of thoughts, but many people really think that things just pop up. Many people will think it is not just going to pop up and there are reasons. Then most people will think there are one or two reasons or at most a couple more. We don’t think that there are so many varieties of emotions and actions and reactions that are creating all we experience, all the suffering and joy and even neutral things. So the Buddha, in the Second Noble Truth, when talking about karma and emotions, Buddha also said that the Second Noble Truth is the cause, the source, the condition and the very condition for suffering. So Buddha gives four specific points on this Truth. And each of the Four Noble Truths has four points like that. Remember, during the Truth of Suffering we talked about four things as well. So all together there will be 16 varieties of establishing the Four Noble Truths.

Many of you may not be that familiar. Normally, when you talk about the Four Noble Truths, you only talk about the three or eight or sixteen types of suffering in the Truth of Suffering. When talking about the Second Noble Truths we usually only talk about the karmic and emotional cause.

But the bottom line, whether you say condition, cause, very condition, or source, is this: it is the responsibility of the individual. No one experiences the joy or suffering of others. You can’t. A little bit you can share joy and suffering in a family, when there are right economic conditions. That happens, but the individual is the individual, so the individual suffering is the individual’s and the individual joy is the individual’s.

0:16

The family sometimes would like to share the pain and suffering of an individual family member, but they can’t. You can share sympathy and try to show a little bit of a long face and try to sit there. That’s all you can do. You cannot physically or emotionally experience what the individual is going through, whether joy or suffering. Many people will try. Love makes them want to share the experiences. But the conditions are such, the situation is such that it is individual. That’s why the individual is responsible for their good deeds and bad deeds. Why does the individual become responsible? Because they acted in a particular way, performed, acted, did it.

There is also collective karma, like that of a country. The economic conditions in a country affect everybody. So does war. That’s common karma. But again, even within that you will see very specifically that different people have different experiences.

It is true, when 9-11 happened 3000 people died. But there are so many different ways in which they died. Some died by falling from the windows. Some got burnt. Some got choked. Some got smashed. 3000 people died in a common karma, but each and every individual experienced it differently. So although there is common karma, yet there is a lot of individual room to play. It is something very important to remember. You are responsible for yourself. You can help somebody but you cannot do it for them. Sometimes we would like to. We would like to get inside that person and change or switch their experience on or off, where at the brain level or heart level, wherever you could. But it is not going to happen. Nobody could do it, nobody. The only thing we can do is communicate, talk to the person, try to understand, try to get that person to go along with your thoughts. That is all we can do. That’s because of the individual karma.

Karma makes the individual totally responsible for themselves. So the actions of the individual become extremely important. And how and why do you get engaged in these actions? Because of your thoughts and emotions. That’s why the emotional cause is even more relevant than the karmic cause. The karmic cause is almost like the by-product. The emotional cause is the real one. That is why our emotions are important.

Within the emotional causes, in the Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist tradition, at this point you are introduced to some of the positive and negative emotions – more on the negative emotions. The reason is that once you know the negative emotions, you have the choice to either go along with them and act accordingly or don’t go there, go the other way. That is our own choice. That’s why it is important to know them.

One of the Buddha’s disciples, the Buddha of Love, Maitreya, sums up the Four Noble Truths as being like disease, cause of disease, treatment and cure. The first thing is if you are sick you have got to know that you are sick and next you need the right diagnosis of what’s wrong with you. If you don’t know you are sick, you may be sick as a dog but running around saying, “I am okay, just a little headache, giddiness, vomiting feeling, little tired, short of breath, but I am okay.” You think nothing is going to happen. But if you know that something is wrong with you, you will try to do something about it. You find out if it is reversible or not. You have to know what caused the disease.

In my case I am a diabetic. If I didn’t know I am diabetic I would love to eat sugar and doughnuts and rock candy. I still eat it, but there is always hesitation with all of that. The reason for knowing this is so that I can avoid eating sweets.

0:26

If I don’t avoid eating sugar there is no value of knowing that I have diabetes. I might as well as not know and soon drop dead. So the purpose of knowing the causes is that I can avoid them and act the other way around. That’s why Tibetan Buddhism introduces the negative emotions. They are our challenge. Our problem is suffering, not joy. Where does suffering come from? It comes from those negative emotions, like anger, hatred, obsession, jealousy, ignorance and so forth. Here we really introduce those emotions. We are all educated persons. We know what anger is all about what hatred is all aout. We know what hatred brings to us. We are not naïve or stupid. We know. Not only we know, but have experience. We went through suffering throughout our life, if we look back. Earlier we had fascism. Then we had communism. Then we had all those dictators, like Saddam Hussein, Gaddhafi and so forth. Then we had terrorism. Right now they are very big on terrorism. It is not long communism, but terrorism. So nothing really is overcome. Yes, Hitler is gone, and so is Saddam and Gaddhafi. Yes, Idi Amin is gone. Osama bin Laden is gone. However, we continue to suffer. It is just a matter of changing faces and names. We still suffer from terrorism and it will entertain us for a while and afterwards something else will pop up. That’s what samsara is really about. That’s what the circle of lives is all about it.

0:30

Where does that come from? We may say it is karma and conditions and emotions. But really they are consequences of our negative deeds, manifested in different forms. Sometimes it is huge, sometimes it is not that bad. When you really talk about suffering and samsara, think that way. Don’t think that it is over there and that this is the name for it, that the Tibetans call it this and in Sanskrit it is called that and in English we call it that. That separated it from the individual. We have to actually personalize it. This is our life we are talking about and not only this life, but the lives we will experience. That’s why the purpose of the First Noble Truth is to know, to recognize. The purpose of the Second Noble Truth is to avoid. Pinpoint where it is actually coming from. When we pinpoint that it comes down to one of the negative emotions which influence our mind, our thoughts, our ideas and those will be expressed by our words and those again will become actions. They will become part of us. We are getting addicted to them and they become our character and personality of the individual.

We are addicted to hatred. Our personality changes and we become hateful persons, persons whose lives are controlled by hatred. Not third persons or second persons, nor is it a split personality taking over. It is the individual person themselves becoming that. When hatred is so strong, fear is so strong, it gets reinforced by all kinds of media, then even all the American people can become hateful persons.

0:34

We experienced that, even collectively and individually everything happens that way. Really, if you look carefully and think carefully, every information we get, some information will go in and some won’t. The information that goes in becomes our character. You know you have to do something accordingly, otherwise you have difficulties. Maybe for no reason. But it changes you as an individual. It is like when you change a light bulb it changes the color of the lamp shade. It is becoming that color. That is exactly how the negative emotions work.

All of them, hatred, obsession, jealousy, etc, are based on ignorance, a lack of clear knowledge, confusion and fear, all combined and mumble-jumbled together. Actually that makes the individual dumb and stupid. We act according to that, dumb and stupid. You realize, when it is a done deal that ooops it was stupid. But then it’s a little too late. If you know before you act you are wise. If you know afterwards only you are stupid. That’s exactly what it is. You don’t call that wise. Being wise is knowing before you act. So wisdom is a lack of confusion, a lack of ignorance, less ignorance, less confusion. That’s how it works.

0:37

Maybe I have to end here. Are there any questions?

Audience: Where does forgiveness come in?

Rimpoche: That’s very simple. Just ask yourself: are you willing to forgive? If you find you are not, then what are you going to do? You can’t do anything. You can’t hit the person who hurt you, you can’t destroy them. Even if you hit them they will still be there. If you try to destroy them they are still there. For your own good you are better off forgiving. The other person may say, “He or she is so kind and forgiving me.” And you will feel better and you will have satisfaction and others will admire you and say, “Wow, that’s a really good person.” For your own good, forgive, even if you don’t care about the others. But if you cannot you have to work with yourself. What would you like to do? You say, “I would like to destroy that person.” But where does get you? This is called analytical meditation. You analyze the anger that does not want to forgive, which says, “No!!”

0:40

“Well, I don’t know what exactly to do, but I am not going to forgive and I will wait for an opportunity to take revenge.” That is mean and an additional negativity, which will create additional negative karma and additional suffering. Your mind will let it go and you will think that way and you recognize, “Oh, oh, do I really want to do this?” Your intelligence will tell you, “No, I don’t want to do that. I am not willing to go there. Therefore, I better forgive.”

Audience: and if you are on the other side and wait for someone to forgive you?

Rimpoche: Well, better shake the person until they do! (laughs). I would like to share some old Tibetan story that is popping up in my head just now. It may or may not work very well with today’s world, but let me try. When I was back in Tibet pre 1950s, for us the Tibetan government was such a huge thing, in my view and in the view of everybody. It was almost like the sky, with nothing above. We never knew that the government was made by people. I never knew that people have power. I thought only the government has power. We all thought it is huge. The example I am thinking of is this:

There was an old beggar lady, sitting on a bridge near Lhasa, called turquoise roof bridge. So the government came and kicked her off this bridge. She was so angry and went underneath the bride and sat there for 18 years, being angry with the government. Nothing happened. She tortured herself for all this time. She wasted 18 years of her life and achieved nothing. That’s the result of not forgiving. If another person is not able to forgive you should tell them a story similar to that. I am sure there are lots in the western culture. It is just my lack of knowledge. I can’t pick up the right story that makes sense to you. I am Tibetan and these Tibetan stories make me laugh as well as make sense to me. You have to know the terms and conditions of that time. Today, if she sits under the bridge, she sits under the bridge, that’s about it.

I am sorry I was late coming here earlier, but I have to conclude here. Thank you very much. Next Sunday I will probably be talking to you from Garrison.

Thank you 0:46 – chanting four immeasurables – 0.47