Archive Result

18

20120624GRNLTB26

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…he is doing and that may not be a good practice. That’s why learning. Learning also we have emphasized learning about our life the best way. Buddha shared with us his experience of life, beginning with suffering and where it is coming from and whether or not there is an end to suffering and how the exhaustion of suffering looks like. These are basically the Four Noble Truths. We counted a slightly different way. Normally we say Truth of Suffering, Truth of the Cause of Suffering, Truth of the Cessation and Truth of the Path. The first two show how we enter into the samsaric suffering life. The last two truths get us out of the circle.

We are at the level of the Second Noble Truth. We talked about karmic causes and delusional or emotional causes. We talked about the emotional causes for a while and that should be enough. But again, it is emphasized as more important, because these are our addictions. Getting rid of these addictions is difficult, not only in the life time, but in life after life. Buddha said so and he has proved it and many things happening in our life tell us how these addictions are really holding in life after life.

For example, certain children do not need to learn how to hurt other beings. Certain children don’t need to learn how to be kind, caring and compassionate towards weaker creatures. These are the positive and negative addictions we have brought. Even among twin one can be kind and gentle to creatures and the other slightly harsh and rough and wants to teach them a lesson or something. That has nothing to with the parents or how the child has been brought up. It is simply this little infant doing this because of the addictions.

Similarly, some kids don’t have to put in much effort to learn. Some kids have to put in tremendous efforts to learn a certain subject, but a certain other subject is very easy to learn. These are little signs how the previous life’s addictions are affecting us today. I am not going into detail about stories of people who can recall their previous lives. There are separate collections done by different individuals. I believe it is available even on line. They are looking at the experiences of different children and recorded them. I don’t recollect the name of the person but a couple of people have done such collections and they are available on line.

The addictions we carry are so important. If we have negative addictions it is very harmful. If we have positive ones it is helpful. I am not if you call the positive ones addictions or not, but to me it’s the same thing. You can be addicted to faith or you can be addicted to attachment. Both are addictions, one is good and one is bad.

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I like to count them as addictions. Basically Buddha calls the negative addictions the Three Poisons. The first is hatred, then obsession and then the root of all of them is ignorance. Ignorance is not just not knowing. There are also lots of types of wrong knowing. Basically ignorance will boil down to confusion and fear combined together, pushing the individual to do wrong things. For example because of 9-11 we have adopted many funny things in our life. When you go to the airport you have to take off almost everything, your shoes, coat and soon we will be taking our pants down too. Maybe not, hopefully. But immediately after 9-11 we were still wearing shoes. Then the shoe bomber came and from then on we had to take our shoes off. Then we got the underwear bomber and I thought, “Now we have to take our underwear off”. Luckily they didn’t tell us to do that. But we have to go through a machine now which sees everything anyway. I don’t know who gets access to that. That’s somebody’s else’s decision. The negative addictions, like hatred and obsession bring all these consequences. Not knowing, ignorance makes us do all this, like taking off shoes, etc, with the excuse of safety. Can you ever imagine that people who love freedom will allow people to listen in to their conversations, to confiscate their things, read through your things? Americans were never going to accept that, but 9-11 made us do all this, because of fear and confusion. That’s what ignorance is all about. That’s what Buddha is talking about. Because of that ignorance and confusion we do all kinds of things. Very often we are led to the wrong things. We are led to war. I remember very well the saying, “We will bring them to justice or justice to them.” I am not for justice anyway. I am not for revenge. I do believe in consequences. I don’t believe in making judgment on whom? That’s very difficult to accept. But we have accepted all those things that are difficult to accept because of ignorance, this confusion and fear. These three, hatred, obsession and ignorance, are major negativities that we have to be aware of.

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Almost all our sufferings, not just according to Buddha, but if you really look at it, are brought by these three negative emotions within our life, everywhere, anywhere. Because of these negative emotions we try to protect ourselves and so we make war. The idea was to not have a fight in our land, but have it in their land. All of those are attempts at self-protection, but it brings tremendous amounts of suffering. We know it. Today there are wars in the middle east. There are declared wars and undeclared wars. There is mentioned war and unmentioned war. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are announced wars. But then you have a war in Yemen, in Pakistan and we have all kinds of special forces everywhere. All of those are happening on our watch, in our own time, in our life. It is very important not to have those. These are sufferings. People lose their life. They have nothing more precious than their life to lose. We may consider the figures, a hundred thousand killed, fifteen killed, twenty killed and they all seem to be the same figures. We are getting used to it. When you hear one person killed, two people killed, it feels very close to our heart and we are concerned. Now we hear about ten, twenty, hundred and then thousands and ten thousands and that is not only suffering for ourselves, but for so many human beings. Those who are getting killed are human beings, not just birds or monsters.

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People are dying. These are sufferings we experience. Not only that, we personally experience them too. We lose our people. Families have one less member. The father has one less child, the mother has one less daughter. The husband becomes widower, the wife becomes a widow, the child becomes an orphan, without father or mother. All these are sufferings we have. No matter whatever we are doing, there is constant continuation of suffering. That needs to be ended, whether it is political, individual, military, economic, karmic, spiritual or whatever, suffering is suffering and that must end. The spiritual path is supposed to provide solutions and help for ending suffering. Many times we have sectarian, religious wars everywhere. If you really look deeply in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, everywhere there is a huge amount of sectarian war. It is the Sunnis against the Shiites, the Shiites against the Sunnis and all that. Religion is supposed to help and find solutions to end suffering, but that changes into the purpose for fighting and killing. That is really bad. And that is not only with the Muslims.

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It is happening everywhere, in many places. We have difficulties everywhere and even Buddhists have those problems. Buddhists are supposed to be examples of compassion and love, but we did witness monks burning themselves during the Vietnam war and we are witnessing Tibetans burning themselves for whatever their cause is that they are fighting for. This is violence, not matter who did it, for whatever purpose, whatever the reason maybe. I see it very difficult to justify. This is coming out of ignorance, out of hatred, out of obsession. So that is not that great. Somebody may ask me, “But what other solutions do you have?” I don’t have any solutions to offer, but love and compassion is the key Buddha gave to us to achieve our purposes. Other than that I have no political, economic or other solutions at all. But violence is not the right solution anyway.

When we are looking at the cause of suffering, this is it: hatred, obsession, ignorance. So we have to get away from them, we have to replace them with love, compassion, caring, appreciation and respect. That is what we talk about all the time. That is what we think all the time, but sometimes our actions contradict that. When that happens, no matter whoever the person is, it is contradicting your principles. It is important for us to remember and recognize and correct our actions. Correction is important. If we cannot correct we will always remain in that problem. We don’t want that. We are human beings. We are much more intelligent than we think we are. So we have to behave like educated human beings. Wrong doing needs to be recognized, changed and then we have to the right thing. That is how the individual improves. That is what Buddha’s teaching is all about. This is what Tibetan Buddhism is all about. Tibetan Buddhism really looks inside the individual very carefully. It looks at the emotional things and how they affect the individual, then their deeds, actions and functioning. It looks at what consequences they bring. These are the core activities of Tibetan Buddhism.

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When you are interested in Tibetan Buddhism, that is what you should be looking for. When you try to learn from Tibetan Buddhism, that is what we should try to learn. When we try to practice Tibetan Buddhism, that’s what we should try to practice, rather than praying, believing and saying rituals. There is nothing wrong with saying rituals, nothing wrong with saying mantras. But that’s not good enough. You must have an effect in your life. If you don’t have that, then your purpose is defeated. The purpose of dharma practice is to change yourself to the correct things. It should not be like the change of 2008, where Obama didn’t mention how and to what the change was going to be, just change, change, change. Here the change is from negative to positive, from not good enough to good enough, from good enough to very good, from very good to excellent. That’s what we need to change. That comes out of our understanding. It is our own mind. It is mind over matter. That’s the truth. I struggled with that, but realized that everything related with matter, which gives us more enjoyment – or more suffering, all are the result of mind. Mind has been able to capture an idea, translate the idea into practical application and that gives us a different life. Whether it is in the medical field, scientific field, economic or political field, mind is is much more important than matter.

And that is true to the spiritual. The idea is originated from the spiritual path. Mind is the one that matters in everything. Our mind belongs to us. Your mind belongs to you. My mind belongs to me. I manage my mind. You manage your mind. We do have a solution for our problems and that is our mind. It is how we handle our mind, creating positive mind and discarding negative mind. For that you need some idea what is positive and what is negative. Most of you know very well, however, some of you may not know. Some people may think that making a lot of money is a positive thing to do. Maybe. I will not deny, but that’s not enough for us. Creating wealth is something that even animals can do.

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They truly do. I like to share a little story that I encountered in the Buddhist practice. It was in the 1100s and there were the earlier masters who would do mandala offerings made from precious jewels and grains. They would have a plat with different sized rings and they would fill the rings and thereby create heaps. With that they would make universal offerings to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So some of them would have a lot of nice items in there, like a piece of gold, turquoise, coral or pearls or lapis lazuli, emeralds, amethysts, all kinds of jewels, semi-precious and precious. They are all mixed together in the mandala.

So in the 1100s there was one old Kadampa geshe who made this offering and he did not re-do it for a couple of days, but left it there. While he was meditating he noticed a little mouse coming around and circling around the mandalas offering, smelling it and try to climb up a little it, walking around. Then it picked up a few little things and went home. The next day it came again and circled around the mandala offering. So the Kadampa geshe noticed and started paying a little attention. There was a big turquoise hanging on the edge of the third or fourth rim. From the ground level the mouse couldn’t get it, without the grain heaps falling down. So he brought four other mice with him. He himself lay down on the back, legs outstretched. Another mouse climbed on him and reached the turquoise and pushed it down, so that it landed on his chest. Then the other mice came and grabbed that mouse by the hands and legs and dragged it home, with the turquoise on its chest. So even the mice know how to collect money and wealth. So that’s’ not good enough to be human being. With our intelligence we must understand what is good and what is bad. We must understand what hurts whom and what helps whom. These are necessary. Human intelligence should be better than that of mice, better than that of cats and dogs. We have to be, because we are human beings.

Understanding that, we should become helpful as much as possible and not do anything harmful, changing the root level of ignorance. We have to change the ignorance of wrong knowing into knowing right, and the ignorance of not knowing into knowledge. When we talk about learning, that’s what we mean. We don’t mean to pick up hundreds of book and becoming a scholar. No. We don’t have to write thesis, articles or points. You don’t have to write anything. But you have to know what you are doing. If you don’t know what you are doing then you are simply a puppet.

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When I first came to the United States 20-30 years ago I was hesitating to talk about meditation, thinking that people don’t know and won’t like what I had to say. Then I realized that the moment anyone talked about meditation people would sit down, adjusting their sitting posture and hand gestures in different ways. Why? Because they just looked right and left at the other people near them and copied them, without any idea what they were really doing. They were simply trying to do what the other persons were doing. That is not good enough in the spiritual field. If you don’t know what you are doing you are better off not doing anything. Whatever you do you should do knowingly. If you know, then you can distinguish between right and wrong and everything. Mind you, we are educated human beings and we do know what is right and wrong.

If you like to accept. We may not like to acknowledge. I agree it is very hard to tell what is right or what is wrong. For me, when I am not hurting anybody, including myself, through any action, that is right. I am presuming that I am right. If I am hurting anybody, including myself, then it is wrong, because I am hurting. Otherwise, right and wrong is difficult to tell. What’s right for one party is wrong for another. What’s right for Israel is wrong for the Palestinians and vice versa.

That is difficult. I try to draw the line at where you are hurting anybody. It is not an easy line to draw. It is difficult. But there is some point where you can stand on your ground, saying “I am doing right” or “I am doing wrong.” That is important, and the cause of suffering is coming from there. That’s what that is all about.

One thing I have to tell you here also about the criteria of the Second Noble Truth. Buddha gives four: cause, condition, source, and the very last thing it what makes it materialize. Remember, for the First Noble Truth I gave four criteria. So similarly here at the Second Noble Truth, there are four criteria. Why? Because there are people who believe everything is happening because of no reason. Everything is happening because it is supposed to happen. Or everything is happening because of one reason only. Buddha tells us no. It is coming from causes, but not a single cause. There are many causes. There are conditions too. If there is a cause, but no conditions, things will not materialize. Conditions have to be right. Suffering is not grown from anywhere without any cause, nor is people’s suffering grown out of one negative cause. Nor is it the creation of anybody else. There is not somebody who decided to send sufferings to us, so we get suffering. Buddha tells us that it is not somebody else’s mind who makes this. It is not a single cause, but many. There have to be the right conditions and it has to be the right moment that sparks the situation, so that it can materialize.

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These four criteria are important. I will be talking to you more about that at a later date. When we are talking about the cause of suffering, we talk about the karmic cause and the delusional cause. The delusional cause is the negative emotional cause. For positive results there have to be positive causes, for example faith, morality, discipline, concentration and so on. All of them will give us positive results. Discipline does not necessarily a positive result. Whatever you are having discipline with in the subject will be increased. If it is negative it will give you negative consequences, if it is positive it will give you positive consequences. Basically, discipline is a positive emotion. Morality is a very important positive cause. Without morality nothing really works well. Morality is extremely important generally in the spiritual path and particularly Tibetan Buddhism. When we are talking about morality we are not talking about sexual orientation. We are not talking about that at all, as a matter of fact. It is very important to know what morality really is. The usual understanding of morality is that is only about sexual things. But that’s not what we are talking about. We are talking about which actions of individuals cause suffering or joy to other people. That is the moral issue. There is nothing else. When you are causing suffering that is a moral issue.

When the scientists today create the future life of ours 20 years down the road, the moral issue becomes extremely important. If there is no moral consideration then everything depends on profit. When everything is driven by profit and worked for profit, when everything that everybody is looking for is money, money, money that is ignoring moral issues.

Human respect, honoring human dignity, respecting human beings – these are important moral issues.

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Particularly people like me who claim to be Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist need to pay tremendous attention to these moral issues. Actually, to have a perfect practice means to make your morality perfect. Morality is the fundamental base on which we build our practice. Plus we gain concentration power, plus we try to develop wisdom. Whatever power of concentration we may have, if we don’t have wisdom, just simply sitting alone might not be enough for concentration. We need wisdom. These three things, morality, wisdom and concentration, are the three ways how we reverse negative emotions into positive ones. This is how we transform negativities into positivity. That’s how we try to stop negative deeds and try to increase positive deeds. All these are done with these three things: morality, concentration and wisdom. These are the three keys to reverse the cause of suffering from being a cause of suffering to becoming a cause of joy. This is the beauty that Tibetan Buddhism has. I will be happy to share that with you.

This is a pre-recording. So I don’t have any questions for anything. Thank you so much. Good Day.

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Do you have any questions?

Audience: When you say mind over matter, scientists today tell us that mind is brain. So it is matter.

Rimpoche: That’s true. Absolutely true. Today’s science does not know about mind yet. There are groups of scientists, well known and very great who are doing research about mind now. They begin to see that mind is different from the brain, but they are afraid to say it – for two reasons. One, they cannot figure out exactly what it is, two, no matter how famous they may be they are afraid of rejection. They are really very careful. For example, there is a professor called Richard Davidson from Wisconsin who got a $15 million grant to do research – every year. It is huge. Departments after after departments have been built. He meditates but he is afraid to say that. He hesitates to say, “I meditate.” Only last year he came out with a statement saying “I do meditate”. So his critics immediately said that his findings are biased because he meditates himself. He answered, “By meditating I understand better.” Simply meditating is difficult for mainstream scientists to accept. Forget about the brain not being the mind. These [meditating] scientists know that very well. They know there is something else other than the brain. They can’t say it but there will be a time when they will be presenting their findings.

Audience: Other well-known scientists say that within 50 years we can show you that there is no mind, but only brain. But what about ethics, if there is only brain and matter?

Rimpoche: The idea that there is only brain and no mind is accepted by a limited circle of scientists. That will change, for sure, but when we never know. They have to, because that’s not the truth. Science is all about the truth. Then, some of earlier scientists will insist that whatever they found that’s what it is. All human beings do that. They try to prove it again and again. Then there are other scientists who will present their findings. As a matter of fact I did meet that German professor, Thomas Mettinger who you study with. I saw his presentation at a conference called “Being Human.” Joe and Helen were there too.

Another professor did an experiment with a hat and people who had that hat on said that noise was coming from one side when in fact it came from the other side. It has something to do with how the air travels. You wear a hat and listen, blindfolded. One side of the audience will clap and shout and they ask the person which side the clapping came from. And the person will say it had come from the other side! And if they clap from the other side, the person will say it came from this side.

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It was a very nice conference for the whole day and each and every scientists were presenting all their findings. At the end three of us, me and Jon Kabett-Zinn and Richard Davidson commented and tried to said what it is. But who am I to say? But I did ask Jon Kabett-Zinn to do a workshop in Jewel Heart Holland and he said okay. He said not this year, but plan it for next year.

I was really amazed about Dr. Ramachandran’s findings about helping the handicapped. People without arms, when seeing a reflection [in the mirror] feel their limbs and their functioning and all that. I think it is fascinating. Each and every scientist is indeed fascinating, great. I wish they had much more time than they had been given. The time given to us should have been given to them. Honestly. Anyway, it was fascinating and it is available on line.

I guess we go home now for today. I forgot the “may all beings” last time. Somebody has to remind me tomorrow. We need Jonas for that.

Audience: We will remind you.

Rimpoche: Okay, so see you tomorrow.

Audience: Dedication, Rimpoche?

Rimpoche: We already did that anyway.

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