Archive Result

20120701GRAATB27

00:00

Good morning and welcome to “Tibetan Buddhism with Gelek Rimpoche”. I like to say that I am happy to be back from zigzagging around. As you saw for the last couple of weeks I talked to you from Holland and last Sunday was a recording.

We are talking about Tibetan Buddhism and the question is how does one practice this? What does it mean to practice Tibetan Buddhism? We explored these questions and concluded that practicing Tibetan Buddhism begins with learning, then examining and then meditating. Traditionally, this is called learning, analyzing and meditating. So we have to begin with learning a little bit, not to the extent of becoming scholars or something, but simply to know what you are doing and what for and how. That’s the questions we are exploring at this moment. We really chose to start with the system that Buddha taught himself after experiencing enlightenment.

Enlightenment can have so many meanings. There is total enlightenment, partial enlightenment or big or small enlightenment, real enlightenment and even among Buddhist traditions there are various levels of enlightenment. There is the arhat level, which is a Sanskrit word. The definition of attaining the level of arhat is ‘one who has gained power of the enemy’ or ‘one who controls the enemy’. The enemy here is the internal negative emotions and their root. That is the small enlightenment. Then of course we refer to Buddha as totally enlightened. It means total knowledge. That means there is nothing left to be known, there is nothing that is not known.

0:05

If it exists it is exposed to you and you know it. From the Buddhist point of view that is referred to as total enlightenment. A simple little achievement of concentration or meditation or even a little clairvoyance or things like that are not necessarily the purpose of Tibetan Buddhism. Its purpose is total enlightenment, nothing less and nothing more. The simple reason is that the earlier Tibetan masters and teachers told us: Do not settle for less than best. Not only that. There are many other reasons such as that the opportunity to be able to attempt to gain that is very rare. The capability to be able to make that attempt is very rare. So there are many points where this is very rare. On the one hand we say this is a bad time, a degenerate age, a time where the economy is going down, where people are losing their job, their house and that it is not a good time. From the spiritual point of view we also say it is a degenerate age. In Hindi they call it kali yuga.

But for us, for you and me it is one of the best opportunities that could be given to us, like it comes only once in a blue moon. There is every possibility to make the attempt at becoming fully enlightened.

Number one, it is rare even to know about it, that there is the state called total enlightenment. Number two, it is not only known, like looking in the Smithsonian, but it is real and you can really have it. That total enlightenment is not an exhibit in the Smithsonian show room, but it is available in the General Motors dealership. You can pick it up and use it and drive it by yourself.

That is really possible.

10:00

Very few people will even know that. It is a well- guarded secret of the enlightened beings. Somehow it has come out here. Many different traditions, if you look, will present it to you as some object of worship. You cannot touch or reach it. If you make an attempt to reach that and become that you are regarded as crazy. They tell you that you are going to be burnt or washed away or thrown into a storm and all that sort of thing and it is made into something untouchable. That is not in the sense of the word ‘untouchable’ as the Hindus use it. They regard it as a lower caste, but here it is untouchable in the sense that it is simply and object of worship. But many Mahayana Buddhists come out and tell you that it is not for exhibition. You can eat it, drink it and digest and you can get nourishment from that. The vajrayana comes out and says: hey it is yours. Take it. If you can’t take it, too bad, it’s your bad luck. Otherwise you can take it. Nobody owns it. Anybody can grab it.

A very funny saying from old Tibet is popping up in my head. Americans will like this. In Tibetan Buddhism and particularly the Gelugpa tradition, the Yellow Hat sect, the tradition we are following, the highest position that one individual could go to is to become the throne holder of Tsongkhapa. That is known as ganden tri pa. ganden tri is the throne of Ganden and the person who sits on the throne is the ganden tri pa. It is an office they occupy for seven years of tenure. So the saying is this: if any kid has the intelligence and capability there is no ownership for the throne of Ganden. So anybody can become the Ganden Tri pa. So it is very democratic. It is almost like the position of the president of the United States. Anybody could become president as long as they are born citizens – not naturalized citizens. Then you are eligible. It is very similar to that.

Not only that, in the vajrayana many of the systems and customs are similarly democratic. I don’t mean the Democratic party, but small d – democratic.

0:15

So enlightenment also is possible and accessible to all. Let’s not talk about other tradition. Let’s just talk about Buddhism alone. As far as I know in the United States today, we have Zen Buddhism, which is very popular and then we have a little bit of Theravada Buddhism. Zen is part of Mahayana. Then there are other groups like Insight Meditation, including what Jon Kabbat-Zinn does. They are all fantastic. There are many ways of serving and helping and improving people’s physical, mental and emotional conditions. But none of them present the possibility that you can attain total knowledge. The Mahayana is the only one that talks about total knowledge and that it is possible to obtain it. The Vajrayana, as far as I know with my limited knowledge, is the only one that says that you can become totally enlightened even in our life time, if we are lucky enough and all things are right. So that is something very unique.

It was not my intention to talk about that today, but it went in that way. My intention is to highlight that these are the reasons why we chose to talk about the Four Noble Truths. Out of those we tackled enough of the First Noble Truth. We also tackled enough of the Second Noble Truth. The First and Second Noble Truths are cause and effect of how we get into the continuation of this not necessarily fully happy life. Sometimes we are very unhappy and sometimes it is okay, but not happy and joyful.

The last two truths are the Truth of the Path and Truth of Cessation. Let me just do this. The total enlightenment and total knowledge that I briefly talked about is about the Third Truth. The Third Truth is about this: if I put in efforts what do I get? It is the good old American slogan “What’s in there for me?” The answer is: enlightenment, total knowledge. And as we said it means there is nothing that you don’t know. It is interesting.

0:20

Some people have difficulty imagining what total enlightenment is. One time I remember someone asking me, “Does Buddha really know the details of the sophistication that physicists and other scientists go through?” I said, “Should”. That person said, “I can’t imagine. I won’t buy it.” True, if you think about, does Buddha really know the minds of all the gazillions of people and what they are thinking and what they are going to do after their thinking and what the results of their actions will be then? Does Buddha really know all this? That’s a legitimate question to me. Faith-oriented people may laugh at that. But to me it is a legitimate question. If you are a fully enlightened person you would simply have to say, Yes or no. Yes, because bla bla bla, or no, because bla, bla, bla.

But a person like me, I don’t. Even among us, if there is a person who is fully enlightened, that person is not going to say, “I am fully enlightened”. If you do so we consider you cuckoo. That’s the word, honestly. Then your purpose of being enlightened is defeated. Your purpose of being truly enlightened is to serve people. You can’t do that if you behave like cuckoo. Nobody will listen to you. Nobody will pay attention to you. That’s one point. The second point and Buddha’s advice is: every quality you have, you should hide like hiding a burning candle inside a beautiful jar. When you have the quality within you, the glow will come out. You don’t have to display it.

That is an important point. Your quality is supposed to be hidden, not exhibited. As a historical fact, there have been one or two lamas in the 17th century who claimed, “I am fully enlightened, so any questions, shoot at me.” But in Tibet at that time there was no e-mail, no twitter, no facebook, nothing of that sort.

0:25

There was not even a postal service. So if you want to ask someone who lives in a remote area you have to find someone who could write the question down and then somebody who would carry and deliver the question and then within a year or two you could hope to get an answer. So it is good that he claimed to be enlightened and asked for questions, but I don’t know how practically it was. It was not. Other than a couple of those and some mahasiddhas who behaved slightly differently, in the normal, usual level they don’t show it. You don’t walk around telling people, “I am enlightened.”

There is a story. There was one great teacher, Takpu (Kyabdag Takpupa Chenpo). He was known to be clairvoyant. So there were three great masters together and they were having lunch. The senior one asked Takpu, “I was told you know everything, that you are clairvoyant.” Takpupa answered, “Yes, that’s what they tell me and sometimes I do.” The other guy said, “Oh good, so tell me what I have in my pocket.” I think he prepared before and had a wallet inside his monks’ robes pocket and that had various things inside it. So Takpu said, “Yes, I see a wallet.” “What’s in there?” “I see coral, turquoise and this and that and I see a gold coin.” So it turned out to be perfect. So that other guy asked him, “How do you see this?” “When I am looking at you I also see my bell that I ring during my practice. I see my bell behind you and within the inner rim where the tongue hits the bell, I see the reflection of what you have inside your wallet.” Maybe that was only for the three of them and was not supposed to be talked about outside, but then, this is about a little over a hundred years later, so maybe we can talk about that in Michigan.

So the great masters to have clairvoyance, etc, but they never claim anything. If you are claiming, that means you are crazy. That is sign No 1 you have to check. That’s how you check whether that person is stable, how many screws they have got loose. A few screws always get loose. That makes you a nice person anyway. But if you lose too many screws that becomes a little dangerous. That’s why, if someone says, “I am enlightened” or “I have clairvoyance” or something, that’s how it is. So anyway, cessation is total knowledge. It is not just knowing what’s there at present, but knowing what will be there in future, what different possibilities there are and after all those possibilities where it is really landing. It is easy to know the past. It is not that difficult to know the present tense. But it is very hard to know the future and even harder the complicated twists and turns the future is going to take and where it is going to land.

0:30

And that is even only about people and their lives, I am not talking about deep spiritual development. That is the knowledge point of view. So Buddhahood is total cessation. You have to see two point here: the physical and the mental aspect. If you don’t see it that would be a failure. If there is a Buddha today that Buddha should look like us, should be among us and have all our usual difficulties, illnesses, diseases and so forth, everything. If not, it will defeat the purpose of the manifestation. So it should be there. However, he should also have the perfect quality of the physical thing. That may be a little more complicated. The moment I touch this area it becomes a little complicated. There is the outer physical body, the literally physical body. Then there is a psychic physical body. I am sorry my mind is not going on the lines of the Four Noble Truths, but somewhere else. But that’s really what it is. They are all there. So we have to consider as Cessation all of those physical levels, plus the mental level. There is the major mind and then the subliminal mind. Then there is what the Tibetan Buddhists call the mental faculties. In our case these are more or less emotions. I can’t say yes, but more or less they are. Those of you who have been with me for a while will remember that we did work on those during the teachings on Mind and Mental Faculties some years ago over a period of more than a year. The transcript of those teachings is available. It is in the editing stage, but we can make it available electronically for the members. If you look there you will really know.

Particularly I want you to pay attention to the first ten of them. There are two segments of five. The first five is about the emotions that always follow the mind. If anyone of them is missing that will become difficulties of mental functioning. The second five help the mind to sustain the subject or object you are looking at. If anyone of them is missing you will have psychological difficulties. If you are looking at the mental faculties as a spiritual practice, pay attention to the 11 virtues and the 6 root negativities.

0:36

If you want to look at your mind level just a simple human being, then you don’t have to pay attention to these but simply look at the first ten. That will help tremendously to make yourself mentally healthy. These are drawn from the mental perfection of Buddha and looking where what goes wrong. So they have been separated out and labeled and it is almost like a study was done and it was presented in that way. It will be helpful to see the mental aspects.

How does one get to that level of cessation? That is through the Fourth Noble Truth, the Truth of the Path to the Cessation. There are so many paths. Many people will present the Eight-fold path, the Four Mindfulnesses or the 37 ways of achieving the Buddha’s path. So there are many, but whichever the way they talk, the bottom line will be how one individual makes up their mind and puts his or her motivation, how they put their mind to focus on what. That’s really what it is. Those who don’t think that the result they can get is total freedom or total enlightenment will simply present you with a method to focus, to keep your mind steady and sort of under control. Those who think that the result could be a little more than that will tell you to understand the suffering, cause of suffering, their consequences and most importantly, how does one get into it. Then learn how to reverse that process.

0:40

That path of knowing how we winded in and how we can rewind back has two parts. One is called the Mahayana path, the other the Theravadan path. The principle of the Theravadan path is the self, the individual. You are concerned with yourself and you have to make it or break it. You are the one, it depends on you. The Mahayana says, sure, you are the one to make it or break it, but if you make it you cannot forget the other fellows, because somehow they are very, very connected with you. Buddha tells us that they are all our “mother sentient beings.” That is very difficult to swallow. Tell a young mother with a little baby in a stroller walking through the mall, “That little baby is your mother.” However, there is truth in it. Anyway, that is the path of love and compassion.

Talking about upcoming retreat:

The most important teachings on love and compassion is what this summer retreat is all about. We are starting within a couple of days, on July 5 for 10 days here in Michigan. It is not only a teaching as information but as teaching transmission as well as oral transmission. It is both together. Next Sunday, when I am talking to you, that will be in the midst of the retreat that will already have started. We will inform you what we are talking about and thinking and where we are going and all that. In the meanwhile, for the next few days, do enjoy yourselves before we start. Those of you who are coming for the retreat, read those commentaries on the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, particularly Meaningful to Behold and the one by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night. That means that the opportunity is like a lightning and the life is totally like darkness. In the middle of the night a lightning comes and you may be able to see a little bit. That is the opportunity. That image is probably taken out of Shantideva’s words. So we are looking forward to everybody being there.

0:45

I am sorry I didn’t have much time for questions and answers. Next week there won’t be much opportunity for Q and A either. Next week will be part of the session itself. And it will be same subject. We are talking about the path and particularly the Mahayana path, love and compassion. So it is part of that teaching itself. But it will open to the people who come in for the Sunday mornings. If we don’t fit in, be prepared to sit outside and hopefully there will not be so much sunshine, but also not so much rain, although we do need it badly. Thank you so much.

We will chant the Four Immeasurables now. Please do not close the webcast before that

0:47 chanting Four Immeasurables. 0:48 end