Archive Result

79

20120610GRNLTB24

00:00

Good morning and greetings from the Netherlands. Today we are talking to you from Jewel Heart Holland. As a matter of fact in Europe they are in the midst of a tournament of international football games. And over here the football is soccer rather than real football. People are very excited and yesterday somehow the Danish won over the Dutch. So we hope we’ll to better today and so on till the finals comes in.

0:01 So now we would like to continue talking “Tibetan Buddhism with Gelek Rimpoche”.

As you recall previously we have been talking about how does one individual practice Tibetan Buddhism. We drew the conclusion that it is done by learning, investigating and meditating, the three of them. Without learning you cannot investigate and without investigating you cannot meditate. Even if you do meditate that meditation will be subject-less or maybe just simply sitting. We talked a lot about whether simply sitting is meditation or not. We also drew the conclusion that it is. We said that there are two types of meditation: simply focused or concentrated meditation and analyzing meditation, gaining understanding. Then whatever you have understood you familiarize and personalize and meditate on until it becomes part of you.

What really delivers the good for your development is the analyzing meditation, rather than the focusing meditation alone. But on the other hand, without focusing meditation, analyzing alone will also not do. It will simply be thinking and analyzing. It doesn’t become part of the individual. It doesn’t become personalized. It should become an interpersonal effect for the individual and that is delivered by the focusing meditation. Whatever you have to focus on has to be a correct subject. The consequences of focusing on a wrong subject will be not necessarily great. Great or not, it is a huge waste of time, energy and effort. That’s why the subject you focus on should be correct. That will only come after analyzing. That’s why analyzing or investigating meditation is very important, before you even focus, because the subject you focus on has to be found.

0:05

Many people say, “Don’t worry, I can just sit idle and think about nothing.” Yes, that could be meditation, but it will not deliver so much the result we would like to gain. Of course you can gain some calmness, quietness and harmony, no doubt. But to utilize a great spiritual path such as Buddhism and in particular Tibetan Buddhism for such little purpose will be a huge lop-sided effort. Tibetans use an old example: trying to put lion’s milk into a horrible impure, not good quality, dirty cup.

The purpose of Tibetan Buddhism is to deliver total enlightenment to the individual. It is like lion’s milk. If you utilize that and put it in a dirty, unclean cup it is a huge waste. That example works in Tibetan culture and old Chinese culture. But I am not so sure whether it works in the west. Sometimes in the west, if you get a cup you get a cup. Whether it is made of gold or tin doesn’t matter. Perhaps that’s a cultural difference. When I was a kid I was told you need a nice, good old valid, ancient Chinese porcelain to put lion’s milk in. Maybe that’s just culture. The example may not be working.

Anyway, the whole idea is that if there is something you can do very well you don’t want to waste that by not properly providing things. For example, meditation can deliver total enlightenment or total freedom from the suffering world or at least guarantee a good future rebirth. If you use such a thing simply to get a bit of calm and quiet or just to reduce your blood pressure or some simple, little peace for half an hour or ten minutes may not be worth enough. It is like bringing a huge axe to cut a lice out of your body and into pieces.

0:10

Just like that is using a great meditation for a simple little purpose. But if you still think, “I can get benefit, so why not?” Sure, go ahead, it is your choice. No crime has been committed. But at the same time you have to realize that this is something extremely important and you can achieve something fantastic. In order to utilize that the proper way and gain proper benefit you need to know what you are doing. Just trying to copy how your right side person sits cross-legged and the left side person is sitting with a different hand gesture may look like you are doing the same, but the brain is working differently. We don’t see how their mind is working so we cannot copy. Sure, you can sit and copy how they sit. Even that is learning. Similarly you need to learn what you want to think, the subject you want to utilize and the sequences and purposes of that.

So learning is the first. I gave the example that meditating without learning is like an armless, legless individual trying to climb rocks. You won’t be able to do it. Without arms to catch hold of anything and without legs to stand on anything, you got nothing. You can’t climb. This is not my example. This is the example that early, traditional masters used, such as the great Sakya Pandita in 900s who said,

tö pa me pai sam pa de – lag drum ta la zep pa dra

Without learning, trying to medidate is like an armless individual trying to climb on the rocks.

If you really, truly look, from Buddha till my later masters, throughout the lineage, throughout any lineage, there will be non who have liberated themselves without learning. None. You may say that mahasiddhas didn’t learn anything and that they are mahasiddhas. Excuse me. They were not stupid mahasiddhas. They did learn. Without learning they could not become mahasiddhas. If you are not familiar with what a mahasiddha is, these are people with crazy wisdom. But there won’t be crazy wisdom without wisdom. So without learning that won’t come. They may behave sometimes like crazy, maybe even running around naked in the midst of downtown, but even then they are not stupid, they are well educated. There is no one who ever freed themselves from suffering without learning. Yet you are not required to be a scholar.

0:15

Many of us, if you think of becoming a scholar, it is either out of the question or it would take too much time. But you need to know what you are doing. If you don’t know what you are doing better not do anything than trying to do something without knowing what you are doing. Therefore Tibetan Buddhism begins with learning, analyzing and meditating. So we decided to follow Buddha’s way that he explained when he appeared as official Buddha. Remember, there are hundreds and thousands of buddhas, but there is only one official Buddha at a time. We are in the tenure of Buddha Shakyamuni who happens to be the official Buddha who came to India 2600 years ago. He went through with all these 12 principals events of a buddha’s life. One of the most important ones is his life of teaching. He began his teachings with the Four Noble Truths. That’s why we decided to follow that. So we learn the Four Noble Truths, then investigate them and then we meditate on them.

We are at the learning aspect and did discuss the First Noble Truth already. We are still on the Second Noble Truth. We have been talking about this for a number of weeks. We considered two categories of the Second Noble Truth: karmic aspects and mental aspects. The mental aspects are considered more important. Karma is nothing but our deeds. No one creates my karma except myself and no one creates your karma except yourself. We all produce our own karma by ourselves, nobody else. We create either positive or negative by acting, creating, managing, functioning, by thinking, by speaking, by acting physically. Why do we do all that? Because of our thoughts, motivations, emotions. We act wrong because we have a wrong motivation. We act right, because we have a right motivation. It is mind over matter. I have been talking that here yesterday. That was a big issue for me when I was a teenager. It was the beginning of the time that the ancient Buddhist teachings began to clash with the Communist Chinese ideas that said that matter was more important than mind.

0:20

That is very practical, no doubt about it and because of that practical-ness it was shaking the core of my understanding. I can’t say it was shaking my core belief, but it made me wonder what really is important. After coming to India and the West, and maybe it is because I have become older or because my open view throughout the world, or because of my dealing with the brilliant western mind I have seen that mind is more important than matter. I have seen so many great poets, scientists, Buddhist scholars of Western origin, many great friends and seen how their minds work. So I have drawn the conclusion: it is obvious that mind is much more important than matter for the individual. Mind provides and produces matter. When you begin to look at the scientific result it is nothing but the invention of an individual, brilliant person. When you begin to look at that invention it is nothing but the result of thoughts and ideas. These thoughts and ideas are not matter, they are mind. Even if you look at today’s scientific developments you realize that had there not been Einstein, today’s science’s stand would be different. It is because of that one individual and a number of others, their ways of thinking that we have come this far.

Mind you, their mind has discovered atomic power. It’s left up to the individuals whether they use this power for the better or for worse. We as a people chose to make bombs out of it rather than find the best use. When you look at all of that it is absolutely clear and obvious it is the mind that produces everything. Today we can travel distances much quicker. The internet has been invented. There is twitter and facebook and everything is a mental creation. Even the hacking going on in the computer systems are mental creations. It is mind plus technology. Without mind there won’t be technology. That’s what it is. So it is really the mind. Similarly in the spiritual field. The positive and negative deeds are the mind. This is our mind, your mind and my mind. There is not somebody else’s mind hanging up there blessing it.

0:25

There may be. I can’t say there is not, but everything is not an invention of that. If there is somebody up there blessing it they should be blessing it to be good, rather than to be bad. But we seem to do lots of bad things. We found atomic power but made a bomb out of it. That tells you that there is no one up there blessing it. If there is somebody up there they should not allow it to go that way. But on the other hand we always like to blame somebody up there when there is trouble and disasters. Then we will say, “Where did God go? What happened to him?”

I faced that problem when my book “Good Life Good Death” came out just after 9-11, 2001. My publisher pushed me to do a tour of the United States. Everywhere I went, the first question was always, “Why did God decide to look the other way when 9-11 happened in New York and the Pentagon?” What could I say? I can’t say there is no God. I can’t say “I don’t know”, although truly I don’t know what happened. For me it was sure that all the people who died there died because of their karma. There is a not a single doubt in my mind. But I cannot say it. Why? Because people will tell me that I am victim bashing. So all I could say was: they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, bla, bla, bla. That was my excuse to pass the time. That’s what I had to do.

Anyway, it is mind over matter. Basically there are three: positive, negative and neutral. That’s all. Neutral is changeable. I did talk about the mind. There was a question and the person who raised the question and sent drawings happens to be here today. So we will talk about that a little later at the end. The question came by e mail and it was about the mind and the emotions likened to a crystal lamp shade and colored light bulbs. That person includes the electrical cord, socket and electrical supply as the source too. So I brought the question here to answer it in today’s talk, but the person asking the question happens to be here, so we can talk a little later. Last week he sent the question in from California and today you happen to be here too.

The neutral mind is changeable. All positive minds are changeable and so are all negative minds. All minds are impermanent. Therefore they are changeable by nature. Basically I tried to make it easier for us to handle. There are positive, negative and neutral minds. Positive circumstances and conditions bring positive ideas, negative circumstances and conditions bring negative ideas.

0:30

Let’s take faith. One happens to be going to a temple, to church or synagogue or wherever. It is profound, an extraordinary situation in the presence of something beautiful, wonderful. It could even a beautiful morning with sun shine, with a cool breeze, standing right in the middle of Stonehenge in England, or looking at a beautiful church or temple. For me, back in Tibet, standing right in front of the most important Buddha image in the center of Lhasa. Standing there with profound respect, profound thoughts and profound admiration was the condition, the circumstance. Through that profound faith will develop. That is a positive mind. Anything influenced by that, all deeds I engage under that influence thereafter or after some time, all of them become positive deeds. Similarly, going to holy places in India and Nepal. Can you imagine? Mind you, we were standing right in the cave of Vajrayogini in Pamping in Nepal. And we went to the temple in Bodhgaya. But lately that temple has become so commercialized. Sometimes you don’t get that much feeling. You used to get huge, profound feelings in Varanasi, where Buddha gave his first teachings. Lately I have been there twice. It has all be excavated and the archaeological survey of India dug everything up. So you don’t have that old, nice environment. I remember the old Buddhist stupa where teachings were given and beautiful garden pastures, totally green for miles, looking at quiet, beautiful trees.

You can still get that when you go to Lumbini as well as other less developed areas. Varanasi is not that developed either, but the archaeological excavation are digging up everything and it looks like a war zone. So you don’t get that peaceful feeling.

0:35

So individuals will have different conditions and a very strong, peaceful, calm, peaceful, clean, crispy feeling comes – profound faith. Faith is not the only profound positive emotions. There are 11 of them, but faith is one that is easy to talk about. So I am using that as an example. So with that influence of faith, compassion is easy to develop. Care is easy to develop. Anger is difficult to pop up. Hatred is almost very far away. You are unwilling to entertain obsession. Jealousy is for the time being happily ignored. So a positive emotion does that. Any action undertaken under that influence will be positive, unless it is negative by nature. Mostly likely one will not engage in killing while having profound faith. If the influence of profound faith is continuing with you, you won’t engage in killing or lying or stealing or sexual misconduct.

But those influences can fade away and negative influences can come up and then we can engage in all these negative deeds. And while these are going on it is very difficult to develop positive emotions. You are not going to develop faith right at that moment. It is very hard. When a person is very angry, really mad like hill, if someone is talking to you about faith at that moment you will not be entertaining that at all. Likewise you are not going to entertain the antidote of anger, patience. If anyone tells you to mind your patience at that moment they should probably be ready to turn their cheek right and left, because they are going to feel a little prick on their cheeks. That’s what the emotions do. At this point we need to recognize the positive and negative emotions.

The negative emotions are a little easier to see. Hatred, anger, obsession and so on are easy to remember – at least the names. The actual recognition may be a little difficult. What really is anger? What really is hatred? What really is obsession? Anger is not hatred. We all know, but constantly, continuously being angry and irritated about the same person, subject, country, group or whatever, that develops and becomes hatred.

0:40

We have seen it clearly in the last 10 years. We learnt tremendously about terrorists. We learnt about how to hate and fear them together. We developed hatred. Most of us don’t like “terrorists” or anybody who is identified as terrorists. They are almost outside the subjects of compassion, as though they are outside of living beings. We go to that extent. Constant, persistent, continuing anger brings hatred. Extremist Muslim groups everybody will be afraid of. Most of us have fear and hesitate and don’t want to deal with them and would like to avoid them. Politicians will say that there are only one or two or so extremists, not all the whole group of Muslims. But see how you feel yourself. This is how our mind is getting influenced by hatred. This is how our mind entertains fear. Fear is there for sure. We have tremendous love and affection for ourselves. Many people will deny that, but deep inside our mind we have tremendous – not only love and affection – but also tremendous selfishness and self-grasping. Anything threatening that is threatening my ego, me. That’s why the fear comes in. Fear almost puts us in a porcupine situation, ready to shoot any arrows you can shoot from your body to protect yourself. That is how fear changes us. It changes our love into selfishness, not only self-protecting but almost self-grasping. Grasping at and protecting ego and “me”, we are holding self- superior.

That’s because of the fear that the self is threatened. That’s why we are ready to attack anyone before we get attacked. Unfortunately I have to recall George Bush’s words. They are popping up in my head. “I get you before you get me.” Politically he said, “I will bring you to justice or bring justice to you.” These are the interesting words they use, but actually those are the thoughts pushing them.

What are we supposed to do? Recognize these thoughts. Acknowledge that this thought is not nice. Politically it may be correct, but spiritually it is not correct. It is wrong. It is narrow, selfish self-interest thought, ignoring everybody else, except yourself. I am not talking about one nation like America. I am talking about ignoring every other human being, except one individual. This is applicable for all different matters. It goes for individuals, families, nations and anything. In other words, these are the contributions to “me” and “my”. They are the deepest sources of narrow, selfish self-interested negative emotions, which bring anger and hatred as protection and obsession as way to progress, jealousy as a way to disturb, ignorance as the foundation of existence of these negative emotions. Recognizing that, rejecting that, perceiving or accepting faith, compassion and love will be the right thing to do.

For example, if you have faith, you have a basis to develop. If you don’t have faith you don’t have that. Many people may think, “What the heck is he talking about? This is Tibetan Buddhism and we don’t talk about faith in Tibetan Buddhism.” That’s not true. Faith is a very fundamental thing. Earlier Buddha himself has said,

De pa ngön dro ma ter kye pa de

Jön ten tham che sung che pe bar che

He says that faith is like a mother who gives birth to a child, who nurtures and brings up and matures a child. Buddha further goes on

De pa me pai mi nam la

Ka chö ka yang mi ge de

Sa bon me yi tsig pa la

Nu gu mi gye chi zhe nong

When there is no faith there will be no positive result,

Like when you burn the seed of a crop.

Whether wheat, barley or corn or whatever, if you burn the seed, no matter whatever you provide, water, moisture, manure, heat, ground and whatever, nothing will grow, because the seed has been burnt. So without faith there will be no spiritual result. So it is very important. I am glad I picked up faith as subject.

0:51

Faith is like a ring for the enlightened beings, in Tibetan Buddhism the buddhas and bodhisattvas, and generally speaking all enlightened beings, including God and everybody, and the compassion and care of those enlightened beings is like a hook. They are swinging the hook all the time to help us, but if we don’t provide the ring, if you only have your bald head, the hook can’t hook up and may even cut your head. So that’s not right. So faith is like the ring and the compassion and care hooks in there and can pull. It is then easy to help. But we must provide the ring of faith. I guess that’s what you can take home today. I will be talking to you next Sunday also from Holland. I hope by that time we have won the football game. Thank you.

0:52__________________________________________________________________________

Off line:

Joe, I have your question. It is in my i-pad, but you are there, you can speak yourself. This is now not on the internet. I should have done it through the internet, but somehow I have been over-carried. Do you want to look at it? Nicole you have it, right? Did you print it out? Give it to him. Anyway you talked about the source, the socket, the wire and you drew the lamp and everything. So I didn’t put them together.

Joe: inaudible, no mike

Rimpoche: you drew the wall and the electrical socket. But it’s not connected. What’s behind the wall? We know. You can ask any builder and they will tell you. Behind the wall there are some wires and those are connected to the electrical supply outside somewhere. If you touch those wires you get a little freak out. But if you are wearing some rubber you will be fine.

Joe: inaudible….

Rimpoche: This or that side of the wall? …..Who knows. You can ask Ron.

Anyway the whole idea is that you want to drag it a little deeper than I was. One thing I noticed on your drawing is that you drew a red bulb and then you had a little red and that red did not reflect in the lamp shade. My idea is that if you have a red light bulb switched on under a crystal lamp shade the crystal lamp shade will look red, rather than just one little spot, maybe stronger in the center, but the whole lamp shade will look red. I am using that as example for the emotion of anger or hatred. Changing the perception of people who are looking from the other side of the lamp shade. Rather than seeing a clean-clear lamp shade it becomes the reddish lamp shade. That’s my thought. You have penciled in a little red on the lamp shade, but the whole lamp shade is left in a neutral color. So my thought was that I was trying to convey the changing of the whole look. I don’t know if it is coming from ego or the narrow selfish thing, but it doesn’t matter.

0:59

Rimpoche takes tie off and comments on doing so, no audio for a while

1:00

Quite a number of people listen to this Sunday program. The last report said we get about a 100,000 hits. The majority are from the US and number two is from China. Number three is Brazil. So it is huge. So if I wear something that is not right and crooked, I get a lot of calls.

Any other questions?

Audience: inaudible, no mike

Rimpoche: Well, if you are convinced, you are convinced. I am just joking. It is.

Audience: I did a course with Tsultrim Allione and we were taught to sit there and look at a certain point for an hour. The eyes had to be open and the mouth had to be a little open. What is the meaning of this?

Rimpoche: I don’t know, I don’t do that. People sometimes in conferences will say just to sit. People will do that. Normally I do OM AH HUM. I sit there like anybody and I will not behave differently. But I focus on OM AH HUM, as we normally do. Then OM takes energy and every manifested activity from the heart center of your mandala with the sound of OM, without saying it. With AH you are holding it. You can take it in through the nostrils into your physical body, but it depends how deep you want to go. You can also take it into your central channel, wherever you want to go. Then HUM you are manifesting it out and let the air breathe out your nostrils. The instructor may be saying this or that, but let the instructor instruct. That doesn’t go in my ears. That’s what I do. I do both, taking energy and everything in and holding and re-manifesting it.

1:04

In the Tibetan you would normally see: tro wa dang du wai dze pa jen du jur

For short: tro – du, tro du – which means tro for manifesting out and du for collecting back. You can read that in every sadhana. So that’s what it is. I don’t sort of follow the instructions in those conferences. But they do give you good relaxation and if you are happy with that, there is nothing wrong with it. But if you think that is going to give you enlightenment, no.

Audience: I saw pictures of nuns sitting in a meditation box and for the whole day looking like this, asking myself ‘what’s the sense of this?’

Rimpoche: I have no idea. Sorry. Even the old tangkhas are tangkas, sometimes the artists will draw what they want to. Honestly. There is a rule as you know, but not everybody follows the rule. Everybody does whatever they want to do. That’s fine. As you see today. You draw a beautiful, very traditional, wonderful tangkha. But there are similar artists who draw all kinds of things. Particularly, nowadays we see a lot of younger, upcoming Tibetan artists who are drawing all kinds of funny things. They are very good artists, actually. It is not very good for the tradition, but good for art work. Very good. The other day, one of the Tibetan guys was drawing something funny. He had two or three tangka type of pieces. They went on sale in Hongkong at an exhibition and each went for $350,000. Somebody bought those and resold them in London for double the amount within the same month. Jamyang told me, “What is this? Drawings with god’s faces and ghost’s tails!” The traditional Tibetans think that. So people will do anything, doesn’t matter. That’s not necessarily right and not necessarily wrong. The best thing is not to judge quickly and give room for everybody to express whatever they want to and we appreciate what you do. That’s a different story.

1:07

Audience: [You said to absorb all the energy, how much can I take in?]

Rimpoche: Take in whatever you can take in. Collect every energy in mentally. You know, all of them should be for bringing compassion, care and love. So if one mouthful of energy is not enough, take two mouthfuls.

I am going to close the shop now. We will be here tomorrow round about ten, maybe a little bit late. Thank you.

Let’s do some dedication. We chant the Four Immeasurables

1:09 Chanting Four Immeasurables 1:11 - close