Archive Result

20120617GRNLTB25

00:00

Good morning everybody and greetings from Holland. Also welcome to “Tibetan Buddhism with Gelek Rimpoche”. We are continuously talking about Buddha’s principles on the basis of the Four Noble Truths. Now the most important thing I still need to emphasize is the mind. The mind is the one what really makes a hell of a difference to each and every one of our lives, our efforts and whatever we call spiritual practice or religious practice. To me it is much more the mental activity than faith. Faith is important and I have nothing against faith. Faith is good and it is like the mother who gives birth to children. It is the one who nurtures the children through life. No problem with that for whatsoever. However, really, truly spiritual practice is not the faith, but dealing with the mind.

It is important. We did talk about how mind and mental faculties function within us. We talked about what sort of mental faculties make the mind function the way and how we want to. Actually, what we try to gain is our own control over our own mind. Right now, our mind is like a little wild crazy monkey jumping around. If we are not careful it is like what the Tibetans call “letting the monkey loose in the temple”. In the temple you have so many images and offerings and fruit and water bowls and if you let the monkey go wherever it wants to you can imagine what mess the monkey will create. Yet, if you have trained the monkey it will know exactly how to function and what to do. For example, nowadays, if you look at trained service dogs, they exactly know what to do. Two days ago I attended a wedding service – not really wedding service, but a marriage prayer. It was not actually a marriage. I don’t know how to describe it. Yes, it is, but it is not. Anyway, it was some ceremony that was not really a marriage, but one that functioned like that for them.

There were two service dogs who were supposed to bring the jewels to the couple. One of them is handicapped rather severely – bedridden. Then there was a kid who was also supposed to bring jewelry. But the kid didn’t do anything. But the dogs started to pick up the jewelry and brought it and delivered it. So when you train them that’s what they do.

0:05

Similarly, if you train your mind you can tell your mind what to do. You can be the boss of your own mind. Right now our mind is wild and crazy, running everywhere and will not focus. If we try to focus on something the mind will not even stay a minute or so. It starts jumping everywhere. If you sit down and think and just watch what your mind does, you will know it. I don’t have to tell it. You will immediately notice. You will try to think something and two minutes later you have forgotten about it and you are thinking something else, whatever the most vivid or strongest impact you have in your mind, that will follow. Most probably you will think about the Friday night discotheque you went to and where you have been drinking.

I used to drink a lot in Holland with a bunch of people – big jars of beer. We bounced the beer glasses against each other, here in Nijmegen. But lately nothing is happening. But when you think of it, the idea of beer drinking will pop up. Similarly, if you people have spent time on Saturday evening wherever, that will probably pop up in your mind. Or anything else that is vivid, some difficulty, some joy, some misery, some happiness, some sadness, will take over rather than that which you wanted to think about. That is one of our handicaps to utilize the spiritual path. Without focusing, trying to engage the spiritual path is a little difficult. You can say prayers, mantras and do some circumambulations and prostrations. You can do all that sort of thing, but without the mind it is a little difficult. So gaining focus and controlling the mind is a priority.

I forgot, you call that meditation. That is a little more sexy language than “focusing”. Anyway, that’s what you need to do. You need to train your mind to be able to focus. I am talking about the Buddha’s teaching on the Four Noble Truths. We have been talking about the first truth, the Truth of Suffering and we are in the midst of the Second Noble Truth, the Truth of the Cause of Suffering. It is easy for me to say that the cause of suffering is our negative emotions. But it is for you difficult to handle those negative emotions. In order to handle these you need to have a little control over your mind, otherwise anger, obsession, jealousy, etc, will pop up like toast out of a toaster – from nowhere, plop, it comes.

0:10

We need to have a little management in the mind. Training your mind how to focus is necessary. You can learn to do that on anything. The earlier Tibetan teachers used to say that you can use anything from cow dung to the yak’s horns to learn how to meditate. That means anything you want to pick up. But the Buddhist tradition will suggest to think and meditate on Buddha’s physical appearance. It is like in any other religion. Buddhism will say that if you meditate on Buddha there is virtue, there is positive karma, there is all kinds of benefit, including if you are familiar with the Buddha and Buddhist practice. When you are dying and you think about Buddha, that will prevent you from taking a wrong rebirth – if you believe in rebirth. I do believe in rebirth. If I don’t, I will lose my title of “Rimpoche”. Seriously – no, I am joking. But honestly speaking, I do believe in reincarnation and that’s not just simple blind faith. There are obvious reasons. You begin to see kids reflecting their previous life’s deeds. I said that yesterday. Even twins who have the same parents and have been brought up in the same conditions, yet one of them will be very happy to protect and help the insects or weaker, smaller life forms and the other ones can be a little harsh and mean – without anybody telling anything, without having any example. They automatically pick up different behavior.

These sorts of things tell me that there is something before we enter into our mother’s womb. Buddhist tradition tells me that continuation is the answer and the reason for continuing. I am the continuation of yesterday’s me. Yesterday’s me is the continuation of the me from last month, which in turn is the continuation of last year, which was the continuation of youth, which is the continuation of the child, the infant, and so on. You can trace it back to the mother’s womb and then you say: if everything so far has been a continuation, then why would that not also be a continuation?

But there are other people who will say that simply the genes create the person. So the genes are the person and they happen to be there and the person pops up. That is another view. But for me there is something before that.

0:15

The mental attitude of the individual differs even between twins and that tells you there is something more than that. There are many more reasons how you can see it. For me there is a very convincing story of an Indian daughter who got killed in a bus accident and was reborn in the next village. Years later she refused to accept her own birth parents as parents, saying that she wanted to see her mother and father and she identified them by name. So after years of persuading the birth parents took the girl where she wanted to go. So they went to the next village. Near where the bus accident had taken place, she took her new parents to a yellow colored house, where nobody was apparently living. She started shouting and an old lady popped up and she recognized that old lady and said to her, “I am so and so.” That old lady happened to be the grandmother of the girl that died in the accident. The girl inquired of her old parents and the grandmother said, “They are out at the moment.” They managed to call them and they came back and they had a big reunion and she even asked where here bangles were and her homework from school. These are very convincing reasons. I can’t tell you more detail because I don’t remember. But this is one of the really convincing reasons for me.

Similarly, the memories people pick up. So many times it happens. You don’t know exactly where and what had happened, yet you have seen it. You went through this situation before. You try to recollect. Maybe you dreamed about it. When I was a kid there was no VCR, no video, no camcorders. So you couldn’t have seen it. But you did see it and you check whether perhaps you had dreamt about it. Sometimes that does happen. But sometimes it is not even a dream. So what is it? What happened? You are left wondering many times. Obviously it definitely happened, because you recall the event and it has to be from your previous life – what else?

There are so many reasons like that which convinced. Maybe I brainwashed myself. I do believe in reincarnation with reason, not without reason and not just because Buddha said so. Buddha himself did say absolutely clearly, “Don’t buy anything I say just because I said it.” That was 2600 years ago. He said, “When you buy gold, you look at it, cut it, look inside if it’s okay”. You make sure it is not just white metal which is gilded. Then you pay the price of gold for that and you have a problem. So you cut it and rub it against a strong stone. Why? In the old times there was no other way to check what karat gold it really is, where it is 24 karat, or 19 of 14 or 17 karat. There is no way of knowing.

0:20

When you cut it and rub it the good gold remains nicely. Then you also burn it. When you burn gold it will become liquid and nothing else will come out. Then when you are convinced, then you buy the gold. So Buddha said, “Don’t just buy it because I said so. Check with your intelligence, cut it with your wisdom, rub it against your experience and when you are convinced you buy.” So I tried to follow that. I didn’t buy reincarnation just because Buddha said so, or because I have the title of reincarnate lama. I had lost everything anyway in 1959 when the Communist Chinese took over. My old wooden throne was left back in Tibet and there was no way I could claim it. Everything was gone. I had no hang over on the title of Rimpoche for whatsoever. I am still not keen to sit on a throne today. The last thing I want to do is sit on a throne. But sometimes, when you talk, you have to be on a platform, because people in the back won’t see you.

0.22

You don’t see their face and they don’t see you. So you are not communicating with them. That’s why I need a platform. But I don’t need a throne. I don’t have hang up for a throne for whatsoever, nor for brocade dresses, none of them, really for whatsoever. So there is nothing hanging over for the title of reincarnate lama. The reason I believe in reincarnation is because it is obvious for so many personal and different people’s experiences and other incarnate lamas who have taken rebirth and try to remind us of some of their previous life’s incidents. It happened many times, more than once. More than once I have experienced that. These experiences convince me that there is reincarnation.

Besides that it is not easy for me to accept that when I die I go zoom – into a black hole or darkness. I will not buy that. That is very difficult to accept. We continue. Yes, of course I won’t see the other people and they will not see me anymore. Yes, this life has ended. These are the criteria: you don’t see me, I don’t see you, we don’t communicate. But that doesn’t mean I have gone zoom black. I have not gone into a black hole.

0:25

I continue. My mind continues, my consciousness continues. So, if you are continuing in future it also means you had continued previously. Both previous and future lives are reality for me. If that’s not reality, then there is no reason why we have to take any hardship of discipline. Why do we have to make sacrifices of material luxury and comfort? Why can’t I kill as many living beings as I want to? There is no reason then, because there are no consequences for me – if I don’t consider peoples’ suffering as consequence. There is no reason why we have to consider people’s suffering as consequence, because it will not affect me for whatsoever. So life ending at death is unacceptable. Likewise, life beginning at rebirth is also not true. So it is a continuation. When it is continuing, why shouldn’t I have different lives at different times and have different consequences? It’s because of my deeds. I am responsible for all my deeds. Whatever I do I will have consequences. I will have results, rewards or consequences. That’s why I have to be honest with myself. That’s why I have to be true to myself. That’s why I have to be as virtuous as possible. I can’t hurt anybody. I shouldn’t, though with or without knowing sometimes we do. But then you have consequences. So the karmic responsibility is this. That’s what the essence of the Second Noble Truth really is.

Our good deeds are responsible for our good life. Our bad deeds are responsible for our bad life. Also, along with this, some incidental, accidental things are happening. For example, what has happened at 9-11 or July 15th in London or what has happened in the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. All these types of incidents and accidents happen in one’s life. But one has to be at the wrong place at the wrong place. This is not outside of karma. It is very much within karma.

One individual does have the karma to lose their life in such an incident. That karma has materialized through the conditions of being in the wrong place where the wrong thing is happening. That is very much within karma. When I talk about good deeds beings responsible for good things happening and bad deeds for bad things happening one may be wondering what about these incidental and accidental things.

0:30

Incidents and accidents do happen because of karma. It is not certain that it will happen, but when the conditions are right things materialize. We do have very strong karma or all kinds of things and when the conditions take over that connects us to the incidents and accidents happening. That’s the reason why within the criteria of the Second Noble Truth the life is not given by one single cause. From the Tibetan Buddhist point of view it doesn’t come from just one single karma. It is many different karmas with many different conditions. The conditions shape the karmic connections. It changes.

Remember, one of the most important Buddhist points is dependent origination. We exist dependently. So we depend on our conditions a lot. Causes and conditions are really guiding and shaping our lives. For all of them the individual themselves is responsible. It is also the creation of the individual. If I do good things I will have a better chance of becoming happy and joyful. If I do bad things I have a greater chance to have a bad life and suffering. Because of this dependent origination, because of karmic consequences, because of the conditions, that’s why it is happening.

Everything is fit to happen in life. There is original karma, original life, different conditions, different karma. That’s why we have illnesses, disturbances, handicaps, healing, miracles, all of them happening in our life, because it fits exactly into the Second Noble Truth of the Cause of Life, samsara. It exactly fits. Although we say it is the cause of suffering, it is the cause of all life. The karmic causes and delusional causes both fit in this. It is not necessarily only the delusional cause but good karma and good efforts are also involved. All the good lives are the result of good karma anyway. It is not good enough from the Tibetan Buddhist point of view. Tibetan Buddhism really wants total freedom from total suffering, getting totally out of suffering, mental, emotional and physical, everything. Total control of one’s life, total knowledge of what is happening with ourselves, with others. Knowing totally everything. That’s the goal of Tibetan Buddhism. Many good karmas and good works are not good enough because of that reason. But other than that good works, good karmas, give us a good life. That is okay. That’s how we continue.

0:35

It’s not necessarily the best way how we continue, but we are continuing. The best way to continue is through your own choice, with your own free will, including when you want to go away, when you want to come in, what would you like to do. When we talk about Buddha being enlightened we are talking about Buddha choosing when he or she will be taking rebirth where and how, in what time, in what kind of environment, what kind of companions, what kind of facilities. Everything is completely the choice of the individual. That’s what we look for. That’s why we look for everything. Just being good is not good enough.

Of course, if you do something good for the environment, if you do something good for the poor, for the weak, for others, for yourself, that’s all good, no doubt about it. Some of them may be complete virtues too. But even then, it may not be aimed to develop a perfect life. You may have difficulties within that. Everything can be okay, except…You can be happy, but…..This is what happens in our life many times. Even if you become Miss Universe, you are not fully satisfied. You will say, “Everything is perfect, except…”. All of those handicaps, all of those little things, of something being a little too short, are because of not having perfect karma. If you have perfect karma there is nothing that is short. Everything is perfect. That’s how karma does not just cause suffering but all the life. When we talk about the Second Noble Truth of Suffering, it is actually the cause of life as we accept it today. That’s what it is. The first two Noble Truths is about the experience and the causes and conditions of life within the limited functioning that we have.

I may be talking a little Greek here. When I say “limited” I am coming from the view of total freedom, of totally not having any control by anybody except yourself. In that way we are limited. That limitation cannot be. That’s why I have a little hesitation talking about limited life, good but not good enough and all of that.

0:40

With this, I would like to say thank you. And as you know, all of you can listen on the website every Sunday, which is 10 am east coast time, which is 4 pm in Europe and 10 pm in Malaysia, China, Singapore and so on. You can always get on at www.jewelheart.org and access the live webcast, if you have web access.

We would like to end with the Four Immeasurables. This will be led by Naomi.

0:41 Chanting of Four Immeasurables

0:43:03 end