Archive Result

1010

201220120822GRMLDelam5 (rt120301)

00:00

Let’s go back to where we stopped yesterday. Again, if we had a very detailed teaching, then every day you have to go through with the qualities as well as the special significance and all of those. But when you don’t have so much time you can just say: where we stopped yesterday.

But remember, the root of all development, guru devotional practice and after developing that, how to develop oneself. These are three basic outlines.

Pre – Actual – Conclusion

Pre: we talked about the Six Preliminaries

At this level we particularly talk about the lama who is the collection of all gurus, all buddhas, all yidams, all dharmas, all sanghas, all dakas, all dakinis, all dharmapalas and thus the collection of all objects of refuge – Lama Buddha Buddha Vajradhara. That’s what you have. In Tibetan we say lama thubwang dorje chang. In the lama chöpa it is lama losang thubwang dorje chang. The other lam rim teachings mostly have lama thubwang dorje chang. In reality it is the same thing, the same person. It is your own spiritual root master, in the physical form of Buddha, in that appearance. That is the Lama Buddha. Then you have Buddha Vajradhara either at the heart level of Lama Thubwang Dorje Chang or Lama Thupei Wangpo or you can have him in reality as Buddha Vajradhara. It is always better to be Lama Buddha Buddha Vajradhara.

Every meditation you do here has to have this. In the space in front of you are these objects of refuge. That is the field on which you grow your luck, fortune, good karma. That’s what it is.

Yesterday we did that with the practice of guru devotion and today we go to the precious human life. Before we go there I have to review the conclusion of guru devotion. We said that you can single-pointedly focus or say mantras or anything. The mantra you would be saying here will be the Buddha’s mantra om muni muni maha muniye soha. You can also pronounce that …munaye soha. It doesn’t matter, both are okay. Traditionally, back in Tibet we used to say …muniye soha. Later, when we came to India, many great Indian Sanskrit scholars and teachers said this was Tibetan mispronunciation and that it should be ….munaye soha. When we do explanations on that we say this: thupa thupa thupa chenpo. Even in Jewel Heart we used to say ….muniye soha. We didn’t emphasize anything. Then Kyabje Lochö Rinpoche came on his second visit to Jewel Heart and first he gave teachings in New York City in Jewel Heart, where we said the usual Jewel Heart prayers and they include that mantra. He said, “Everything is wonderful, great. I have nothing to say, except this …..munaye soha. I don’t know anything. I am not a scholar” – (actually he is one of the greatest living teachers today in the Gelugpa tradition at least) “but Kunnu Lama Tenzin Gyatso Rinpoche, who is a great shiddha and Sanskrit scholar and a great being said to a group of earlier Tibetan teachers, including HH Dalai Lama and HH’s teacher, Kyabje Ling Rinpoche and others that ….muniye soha is a mistake and should be ….munaye soha.”

Then the next day our umdze started chanting …..munaye soha. So that’s what happened in Jewel Heart. So now we always do that, because of Kyabje Lochö Rinpoche’s remark in which he quoted Kunnu Lama Rinpoche. Kunnu Lama Rinpoche was teaching the teachers in Mussorie in 1960. There must have been 10, 15 teachers there. If HH Dalai Lama was present as a student they tried not to put so many people in that teaching. So only a few were there. So I don’t know who else was there, but that’s where Lochö Rinpoche’s comment came from.

Anyway, you don’t have to change how you say the mantra. Whatever you say is fine, but since two versions are being used you may be wondering why and that’s what it is.

0:10

Mantra is such that whatever you say, if you believe it, it works, rather than doubting. During the part on the guru devotional practice I didn’t get time to tell you the stories, but today, since we are talking about mantras, I might as well tell you.

Buddhism went from India to Tibet. It was developed in Tibet over a long time. Earlier there was a challenge from earlier Indian anti Buddhist teachers. Tibet was a fertile ground for the spiritual field to grow. So both, Buddhist and non-Buddhist teachers were there to grab the land, trying to do a number of things.

There were a number of debates too. Finally, for a long time, the debates were completely over. Then the last anti-Buddhist teacher from India came and challenged the Tibetans, saying “you are following a misguided path. I am coming to debate with you, since you people are not inviting me to be a teacher. Be ready.”

The traditional Indian system was that whoever lost a debate has to follow the winner. If you lose you follow my path. If I lose I follow your path. That last debate was during the time of Sakya Pandita. At that time the great, outstanding scholar in Tibet was Sakya Pandita, one of the early five great Sakya masters. There are three white and two red. White refers to lay people, wearing white skirts and red to monks. And one of the red was Sakya Pandita, Kunga Gyaltsen. The Tibetan rulers at that time chose Sakya Pandita to debate on their side. Along with Sakya Pandita they selected another person, an adept, a siddha type of person, a yogi. These two went to the debate. Sakya Pandita was learned and he was responsible for the debating and answering questions. But in case there was some magical power play or something, it would be this yogi’s job. This yogi had a little dagger on his skirt. He practiced one yidam called Lhamo Tsundi. A lot of Chinese also practice Tsundi. Her mantra is om tsale tsule tsundi soha. But this guy didn’t say that. He said om chale chule chuliye soha. In Tibetan chale chuliye means crazy dancing.

After the debate which Sakya Pandita won, he tried to catch the other guy and said, “Now we are going to cut your hair and put you in monks’ robes.” But when he tried that the guy flew in the air like a bird and Sakya Pandita couldn’t do anything. At that moment the yogi pulled out his dagger and said om chale chule chuliye soha and put the dagger in the ground right on the shadow of the guy who was flying in the air. So that guy fell down. The Sakya Pandita got a little shock, “That is not Tsundi’s mantra. He is saying such a funny thing. If he can do that much with saying the wrong mantra, if he would say the proper mantra he must be something very fantastic.” So he thought he would talk to him. So he went to him and said, “What did you say there?” And the yogi repeated it. Sakya Pandita said, “That is not the right mantra. The right mantra goes like this…..” Normally that yogi would not have paid any attention whatsoever, but he was very impressed with Sakya Pandita, so he said, “Okay, I will try.” He said om tsale tsule tsundi soha and thrust his dagger into a rock. But it didn’t go in. He hurt his hand. After that he said, “Before I said chale chule and now I am going to say chale chule and in future I will also say chale chule” and he put the dagger in the rock again and it went through the rock.

0:18

So his strong belief and the thinking he built up worked. So the mantra is such that the correct mantra is important but if you are so used to it and so happy with it and you have faith in it, better keep it that way, you don’t have to change it. So Tsundi practitioners sometimes even boil rocks and eat them by using that mantra. For this guy everything was working with the incorrect mantra. So when tried to do the correct mantra it didn’t work. That’s how mantra is. So whether you say om muni muni maha muniye soha or om muni muni maha munaye soha or probably if you said om mum mum mum that would also be fine. It really doesn’t matter. But it has to sound something close.

Actually om muni muni maha munaye soha actually means “victory, victory, greater victory”. The first one means victory over narrow selfish interest, the second is victory over negative emotions and the third is great victory, over even the imprints of negative emotions. OM as you know is the beginning of the mantra as well as there are other explanations. The most important and relevant to us is A-O-M, these three syllables combined together, and that becomes OM, which is the body, speech and mind of individual practitioners and the object to whom you pray. So there are these two sets of body, speech and mind. Muni refers to the Buddha and soha means ‘lay the foundation’, the foundation of this body, speech and mind may be laid in that body, speech and mind. In other words put the basis of transforming your own body, speech and mind to that of Buddha’s body, speech and mind. Laying that foundation, laying the seeds, that is the transformation.

I remember what Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche told me one day in Dehli. There was an American woman called Mrs Night. Her husband was a major in the British army in India, ex combat. So Kyabje Rinpoche told me to teach Mrs Night. He told me that at the airport as he was leaving. I asked him, “What do I teach?” He said, “Something like om mani padme hum and om muni muni maha munaye soha and om tare tutare ture soha. I said, “I don’t know what om muni muni maha munaye soha means. Kyabje Rinpoche gave me a big look, “You don’t know? Thub pa thub pa thub pa chen po.” That means ‘victory, victory, greater victory’. And then A-O-Ma you know about that right?” I said yes. “And then soha is zhi sung.” He told me that at the airport as he was walking. Thub pa is a word often used for Buddha. We say Shakya Thub pa.

Anyway, the conclusion is that either you say mantras or you dedicate and in between sessions what to do I already talked.

0:25

Now today we begin again with the same process: kyab ne kun tu la ma lhag pail ha thubwang dor che chang la sol wa deb. Do we have any transcripts of de lam or nyur lam available here?

Audience: We have a short transcript from your teaching on Delam in Cleveland.

Rimpoche: There should be a big transcript from my nyur lam teachings. Does that de lam transcript go according to what we are teaching here? Since it is lam rim it is supposed to go the same way.

Audience: I think your teaching today is more elaborate.

Rimpoche: The nyur lam transcript is definitely there. It might not be edited, but it is definitely there. You should get it. So at least after this teaching you can read it and it should build nicely. De lam and nyur lam goes the same way. There is no difference. Actually, Panchen Losang Chögyen wrote the de lam first. Then Panchen Losang Yeshe or Palden Yeshe, one of them, wrote the nyur lam as a commentary to the de lam. So it really goes the same way.

We are now on our second outline. And that is:

After guru devotional practice:

How do I make my life worthwhile

That also has two:

Asking how to do it – the need why one should do it

Actually how to do it

The first outline is emphasizing that we need to make our life worthwhile

That also has: actual session and in between session. All the outlines go the same way.

The actual also has Pre – Actual and Conclusion.

Pre – is the same thing: kyab ne kun tu la ma lhag pail ha thubwang dor che chang la sol wa deb

You make strong supplication to Lama Buddha Buddha Vajradhara as the collection of total refuge. Then you begin to think: I and all mother sentient beings, right from the limitless beginning, until now, for a long time, have faced strong, constant difficulties. Even in this life itself, if we look back, how much struggle have we engaged in. It is way beyond our comprehension. It is way beyond being possible to do, but we have done it. Whether you have it or not, whatever, we have those difficulties and struggles and we went through. This is one life time. But it is much more than that. Sometimes more sometimes less. In a number of lives we have had the same struggles. Why? Because we couldn’t take the opportunity. A – we didn’t have any opportunity [most of the time]. B – even if we had it we couldn’t use the opportunity. We missed it. That’s why this struggle is continuing.

0:33

Why did we miss the opportunity? We couldn’t get it on time. Why? A – sometimes we don’t even have the knowledge or even information. B – it didn’t seem to be that important. C – the priorities we had very something different. For all these reasons we missed the opportunity.

In one sense you do say that it is me alone who is struggling and working for me. Yes, but yet we are always advised to think “all living beings”. Why? Because there are many advantages. That will come later, and I cannot go on postponing everything till later, but you know, there are a lot of advantages. Even my little happiness is also the result of deeds of other people. Not only that, if I can do something like say, saving somebody’s life, how happy I will be. So benefitting others is the cause of individual happiness and satisfaction, joy. Really. That’s why always think about others. Not only is that the Mahayana system or culture, but there reasons such as this. This is the time where I will make sure that I don’t miss the opportunity.

How can we make sure we don’t miss it? If I realize this is important and rare, these two together that will help me not to miss it. It is like an alarm clock. If we don’t want to miss something we put and alarm clock. That will make noise and we will be alert and aware. Our awareness comes back. If you have a strong understanding of the importance and rarity of the opportunity you are not going to miss it. You are going to be very, very prepared. That’s why recognizing the precious human life and its importance, the difficulty to find it, are necessary.

So I pray and supplicate my request to the Lama Lhag pai Lha to develop these particular developments within me. Development is nothing but a strong awareness, constantly reminding about this precious human life. That’s point 1. Point 2 is its importance and Point 3 is the difficulty to find it. These are the three things. By making this request light and liquid are coming from the Lama Lhag pai Lha, purify my negativities in general and particularly those that are obstacles to this, like not paying attention or laziness or forgetting and that type of thing. After purifying, not only the obstacles are purified, but you do look crystal clean, light nature. You build your life, luck and fortune, etc, all the qualities. Especially you develop the stage of the precious human life. After the guru devotion, that is step one. So your mind is sort of engaging in that way.

That was up to here the pre – level. Now the actual: importance and difficulty to find. I think I haven’t done the oral transmission yet from here on yesterday.

0:40 (Rimpoche reads the next portion of the oral transmission from this point on).

0:45

When I am reading this to you it is easier for me to say it that way: thinking about the importance of life and the difficult to find such a life. Why is it difficult to find such a life? Many of us will say, “Well, this time I couldn’t do it, hopefully next time I will. I will pray very strongly that I will do it next time.” People say that, don’t they? Why do you pray strongly to be able to do it in the next life? Just do it now! Praying strongly “I may be able to do it better in future”

takes the same effort as actually doing it. Start thinking: What is this precious life? In Tibetan it is dal jor, two syllables. But don’t try to learn Tibetan. That’s not going to help you. But de means leisure and jor means richness. From our usual point of view we have neither. We don’t have leisure. We are so busy. We have to take time off from work and can’t get it. It is so difficult. So where is the leisure? We don’t have it. And jor – we are not rich. We don’t have all the facilities. So both, leisure and richness, looks like not applicable for us. It doesn’t seem for us, but only for princes and princesses. That’s what we think. But the reality is that we do have opportunity. We do have time. Honestly speaking, if we look in our life, we have done so much and we are doing so much and will continue doing so much. Look at our own background. For me, I have spent my first 20 years in old Tibet, which turns out to have been the best part of my life. That’s just be virtue of being in the monastery and having teachers, by virtue of having attendants who pushed me like crazy. If I didn’t do it they would beat me up. With all that, it came out to be the best.

Thereafter I was in India for 20 years. I did all kinds of things, good, bad, ugly, everything. Then I spent 20 years in all parts of the world. Let it be 30 years by now. I have done so much, so much good, so much bad and most I wasted. I wasted my opportunity, my life and everything. So I had the time and I will have time until I die. So we think we don’t have any time, but we do. I am talking about myself and you think about yourself.

For the first 20 years we went to school and this and that, then off to university, getting married or not, producing kids or not, but maintaining family. All of us have done so much. That’s because we had time. But with all that, did we do something solid so that we don’t have to worry about my future and future lives? No, we haven’t. We might have contributed something here and there, some virtuous good thing here and there. But truly speaking we didn’t. Even those people who are doing great and who claim and think they are doing great, and actually they are doing great, however, very few of them will really have a solid thing – very few.

Particularly people who are considered to be good and who think “I am doing great”, when you look at them, their greatness, their goodness, is very limited to some service, some help. I am not criticizing them, they are all great. They give food and shelter, medicine and all that is great no doubt. But they could have done much better, but they didn’t. That’s because they have no idea, honestly.

Today’s western education doesn’t really accept those. Contemplative work is the greatest they can accept. No one will ever think about becoming a Buddha or a bodhisattva. If you and I think that way and we talk to somebody they will probably consider us crazy and cuckoo. They probably think you are not serious. They probably think that “this is just how the Buddhists think, that’s how the Buddha presents, that’s how people do, but you really don’t mean that you yourself are doing to do this, are you? Are you crazy?” That’s in today’s educated world. And they are genuine. They are not looking down on us. They probably don’t believe it. That’s why the opportunity is so limited. There are lots of people, actually most people who are really trying to do their best. The best is only that much. That is our problem. That’s why we didn’t have the opportunity before. Maybe we had the opportunity to be crazy. Maybe. You cannot say it’s not. It could very well be crazy. We all could be crazy. If we are crazy, the Buddha is also crazy. We are all following the same thing.

Anyway, so we do have time and opportunity. Leisure doesn’t mean having nothing to do, but it means the opportunity to do something.

Then, richness. We do have richness. They are not talking about richness in terms of money. They are talking about being rich with opportunity. Actually both are talking about the possibility and opportunity. We do have it. That’s for sure. Our life is really capable, capable of delivering whatever you want to.

0:58

Rimpoche continues reading some oral transmission……So this is saying that this life can deliver and give us the opportunity to deliver exactly what great future life you want. You can deliver that. To become rich, there has to be a cause, such as generosity. You can do that in this life. Even if you are the poorest of the poor, even then you can be generous. We talk that later. You can be very moral. You have to be moral. You are moral. We are not immoral at all. We don’t entertain or admire immoral people. Morality is extremely important.

1:00

It is one of the most important things for us is morality

Ngon du je ne tsultrim le she mä…. - The great Indian mahapandit Chandrakirti said that the direct cause for us to get a good future life is morality. There is no other than morality.

This life is capable of maintaining good morality. I do hope I will have time to talk about morality in future. If not, I can mention a little bit here.

What we think of as morality and what many in the west talk about in terms of morality are two different things. In the west, morality often only refers to sexual orientation and sexual activities. Here, when Buddha talks about morality it means doing the right thing and avoiding the wrong thing. That is morality. It doesn’t really mean whether you are straight or gay. It doesn’t mean that at all. If you are killing people, hurting people, that is immoral. Particularly killing, causing people to lose their lives in war, all those are immoral activities. Unimaginable profiteering is an immoral activity. Creating such powerful weapons to destroy life and civilization is immoral activity. The problem in the west is that people don’t emphasize that in the west, because it hurts business or government policy or whatever. So they don’t want to talk about it. They like to talk about whether you are gay or lesbian or straight or crooked or whatever and make a big deal out of it. But that’s not the point. We are misusing very powerful moral conduct for some sheepish thing. That’s not morality. Morality is applicable to everybody, to everyday life people, to scientists who make decisions in the laboratory right now about what our future will be 25 years or so down the road.

The politicians who are sitting in their office and make decisions about the lives of hundreds and thousands of people, morality is applicable to them. The generals on the war front or rather back wherever they make the decisions, for them morality is applicable. That doesn’t mean that sexual issues are not important. I am not telling you that. But that’s not the only point. Morality is so much bigger than that.

1:07

In short, it is every moment of our life, every move that we make, every thought we put in. To all of them moral issues apply. That’s why not only in the Buddhist culture but in the culture of Mahayana, not only me, but all living beings are somehow stuck to us, like the shadow and the body are stuck together. In every practice we say “I and all mother sentient beings….”

From the moral point of view that becomes so important. Whatever you do becomes so efficient and effective. That difference we can make in this life. We have the opportunity, because we have this mind. Here they say “patience, enthusiasm”, etc, but the bottom line is the mind we have. Our mind is capable of doing anything you want, everything you want. I complain that it is too hot, you up there complain that it is too cold. We are all able to complain because of that human achievement called ‘air condition’. When it goes too much in one direction and you sit high up closer to the ceiling you get a little bit more cold air up there. And I am deep down here with all the lights on above me, it is hot and I am sweating. Plus yesterday I had low sugar, plus somebody shut off the air condition and also opened the door. That made it very miserable yesterday. We are able to complain because we have the opportunity. Human mind delivered this. The capability of the human mind is such that you can make it very cool in Malaysia. You can control the temperature. Who did it? Our mind. A machine by itself wont’ work if human beings don’t manage it and produce it in the first place.

1:11

That shows what this human mind is capable of. We made bombs too. Einstein didn’t have a supernatural mind. It was a normal, human mind. He could explore and develop nuclear energy. And then an additional mind can come and put it to good use or bad use. We can switch them round. This is human capability. You and I have it, we all have it. But if you want to get that mind rotten by using only limited possibilities that we are already used to then that’s about it. The rest of our capacity remains asleep. That is called waste of time, waste of opportunity. That is actually true. When they talk about the precious human mind and its importance that means you can generate morality, generosity and so forth. It is actually your opportunity. From the spiritual point of view even in our short life time we can obtain total enlightenment in this life with this mind. We are capable. You may think, “Not me – la, maybe So and So”. But with that you are putting yourself down. We all have the same mind. Buddha himself said, “First you and I were equal and then I put a little effort in and became Buddha. You entertained laziness and remained there.”

That sounds like I am yelling at you, but I am not. This is what it is. This is the importance. You have it, I have it, we all have it. How long we will have it, we don’t know. But we have it. What Now I pray and meditate and seek the blessings from Lama Thubwang Dorje Chang that I may be able to utilize this life, so that it doesn’t become like an article in the Smithsonian, a museum piece that you just watch and that’s about it. If it‘s our own we can use it. We pray that we will be able to utilize it, that the opportunity I have now may not become a museum piece. Honestly.

After making that request, light and liquid come and purify all negativities and particularly developing the real understanding. To understand is one thing, but to make it have a real impact on us is another thing. When you really have an impact of how important it is that will cut down our laziness, like sitting idle, lounging. We do that a lot. We like to do that in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, at night. We like lounging. We do it all the time, even in the shower or bath. We complain that there is no time, right? But if our lounging time is cut down we feel a pinch of discomfort and even being upset. That is because we are enjoying lounging around and that makes us lose our time. Meanwhile our important life is going and we pay no attention. There is no impact on us.

The development we are looking for here is to have that impact. Laziness very nicely divides our time and takes it away. It goes on, without putting efforts into cutting. To decide “I can’t afford to lounge, I have to go” is not easy. That is pushing and forcing and that is difficult. When you are really busy and have to do something your lounging time is cut out. You don’t feel miserable or disturbed or cut off, because you have given the importance to something else. It is the same thing here. This is life is important because it allows us to do so many things.

It is very true. Not only we have to understand but we have to make an impact on us. We call it ‘spiritual development’, but it really looks like organizing our life, cutting down laziness, cutting down waste of precious time. Everybody will accept that time is precious. Nobody will argue with that. But why is it so precious? There we differ. We all agree that with time we can do so many things. But what kind of so many things? There we differ. Buddha is telling us about the total freedom, the total control of your own life, your own destiny. That’s what it is all about.

1:22

Thinking about those things is meditation within the framework of the Lama Lhag pai Lha as preliminaries, then actual practice and concluding with light and liquid developing that stage. That covers the importance of the life.

The second point of the precious human life is: It is difficult to find. Again, you have the Lama Lhag pai Lha on your crown. Not only is this life important, but if I have to find it again that will be extremely difficult.

(Rimpoche reads some more oral transmission)

1:25

Now it is the difficulty to find. One of our lazinesses will say “Today I am so old, so sick, so dull, so busy, so this, so that but in future I will definitely do it. I pray that I will be able to do it in future.” But the future is difficult. Buddha said that human beings taking rebirth as human beings is very rare. That’s because the cause of taking such a good life like we have, the basic foundation for that is perfect morality. When we look in our own morality we know how much perfect morality we have. Every place, wherever we look there is something that no one should know about. We have lots of sensitive areas that we want to hid and don’t want people to know about. That shows our morality. So the base is gone. On top of that we need generosity and all others. We all try to be a little generous here and there, but perfect generosity is questionable. That is difficult. Then our own patience, enthusiasm, concentration and wisdom and even trying to be a good, kind person, gentle, caring – all of them have some little difficulty here and there. So talking about the future is very difficult. Particularly we have that life with us right now. Why should we have to hope and look for the future? Just try to make the best use of what you have now, rather than hoping, “Can I get another new life, exactly like this one?” Better make use of it now. If you could easily buy one or make one available, sure why not? But you don’t know that. You have to put a lot of efforts in. So why not make use of this life right now? Honestly.

So what do I do? Well, first learn the path through your great master who is like Buddha and through Buddha’s teaching, particularly the Mahayana path and particularly the vajrayana path, which is capable of delivering Buddhahood within the life time. That’s what I like to do, that’s what I should do. I may be able to do this. I may be blessed to be able to do this. Make these strong requests.

1:30

Now, what to do is introduced next: follow the Buddha’s instructions, the ones of Mahayana and vajrayana. Light and liquid are coming from the physical body of Lama Lhag pai Lha, enters into my and all sentient beings’ life system, the physical-mental-emotional stream, purifies all negativities in general and all obstacles. Our physical body becomes luminous and pure. Life, longevity, luck, fortune, quality, knowledge, all build up. Especially, the development of the importance of life and the difficulty to find make a very big impact on us. Then finally, in conclusion, say mantras, do single-pointed meditation and do the dedication.

In between the sessions also focus on the subject you are meditating on.

Now comes the major teaching. How to follow Buddha’s teaching

1:32

I will stop here. I will be back here at 3 pm. Da gi ji ni sag pei ge wa di…mandala offering lam rim dedication – 1.34