Archive Result

20120922GRNYFP Making Every Day Meaningful

0:02:47.1 JH Prayers

0:12:29.4 Thank you for being here today. I used to get to New York almost every week and now it has become so random, very, very occasional. I thought we will be talking on the basis of the Foundation of all Perfections. But they called it “Making Every Day Meaningful”. That is true and if you deal with the Foundation of Perfections, then every day of your life will become meaningful, for sure. I was sure we will be talking on the basis of the Foundation of Perfections, but whether base it on that or not, our job – I don’t know if it’s our job – but the purpose is that we are keen and interested in the spiritual path. Some people don’t like to call it spiritual path. I am old enough, so I know now. Some people don’t like to call it spiritual path because to them it means something else.

0:14:36.1 So I do get a lot of people communicating to me through email and other messages, they don’t like to call it spiritual path. They say it means something to do with new age or something. Whatever it is, it has something else to do, so people don’t like it. Whatever maybe, but we like something more than just the normal material life. That’s for sure, otherwise no one will be here, none of you and then I won’t be here either. So nobody will be here. So you like something. Whatever that something is, if you give it a name, fine. From the Mahayana Buddhist point of view, from the Vajrayana Buddhist point of view, we call it enlightenment, becoming Buddha. Maybe it’s too much for some people. “That’s not my goal”, some people may say.

0:16:16.1 Fine, whatever your goal is, but I think what we all don’t want is suffering. As we have been saying, “May all beings have happiness”. I think that’s what we are looking for. That’s one thing. “May all beings remain with the joy that has never known suffering.” Maybe that’s our goal. What is that? Maybe that’s our goal. When you talk about the Four Noble Truths, the Truth of Suffering, the Truth of the Cause of Suffering, the fourth one, the Truth of the Path, which is our practice and the Truth of Cessation. That is when the negativities are finished, no more – exhausted. I believe that’s called cessation. That cessation is the joy that has never known suffering, because that cessation doesn’t have any cause for suffering. So they will never know.

0:18:25.8 That’s my simple understanding. Maybe that’s what we are looking for. Maybe it’s too much demand for people. (side remarks to people in Tibetan)

0:19:42.2 Cessation means to me: that’s it. What does the word mean? The end, what is ending? Suffering. How do you end suffering? Because there is no more cause of suffering. It’s very simple in the Buddha’s teaching and message. Everything is cause and effect. When there is no cause there is no result. That’s how the cessation comes in. On the other hand we say there is “Joy that never known suffering”. That is the cessation. Suffering has ended and will never come back. That’s what we are really talking about. Maybe that’s our goal.

0:20:48.6 Maybe just to be happy for the day or the week or the month? That’s also good enough. Normally we say there are two things. There is an official line and there is what you really want. The official line is: you have to become Buddha. That’s your goal. Why do you settle for less than the best? You are capable and you can do it. You have the opportunity. That’s the official line and it’s true, there is nothing wrong with it. It’s true. But maybe it’s too much for some people. I do remember one time there was a very nice lady called Luise. She was very senior and now I haven’t seen her for a long time, but she is still very nice and pays Jewel Heart membership, as far as I know, at least last year. One time she asked me. I was doing some small workshop for 12 people or so and she walked with me during the lunch break in that courtyard and told me, “What do you think buddhahood is really about?” I made a short cut. Instead of explaining what Buddhahood is I said, “It’s like being God”. She didn’t say anything but kept quiet and we walked. Later in the evening she said, “If buddhahood is like God I have no interest for whatsoever.” (laughs). She is right.

0:23:31.8 She is right from every angle and I tried to make a short cut, by not talking about Buddha’s qualities, thinking that “While two people are walking, what can you talk?” So I said it’s just being like God and later she told me, “If it’s being like God I have no interest.” That was a very important lesson for me. Sometimes for us when we say, “My goal is to become Buddha”, it’s a very long shot. It’s very nice to bite what you can chew, so it really becomes being happy in general and particularly that week and that day. There is nothing wrong with it, if that is your goal.

0:25:03.7 Some people will say, “Hey, this is Buddhism and you can’t be seeking happiness [in this life]?” But if you can’t see happiness, what are you seeking? Suffering? So you can seek happiness, nothing wrong, as far as I am concerned. So if you want to go day by day, week by week, or life by life or forever – whatever you can chew that’s what you should bite. For many of us what’s right in front of us is much more important than what’s going to happen down the road.

0:25:56.3 you know the one thing? Whatever happens down the road, whatever you take and get now, should not ignore what’s going to happen down the road. It also builds the future day by day. In other words, it’s the collection of the days and time. Each day that we use, each day we live on in future, each hour we live on, is built in now. No one can deny that. It’s really built in now. Now, whatever you do, becomes so important – to me. Whatever you do now is so important, because your future down the road or tomorrow or whatever will be shaped here. That’s exactly what we are doing. Like you people, sitting there, looking very holy. Honestly, what are you doing? You are shaping your future. Maybe it is holy. Maybe you are not pretending to be holy, but you may be really holy. I don’t know what “holy” really means anyway.

0:28:00.1 One thing I know is holy in India. They put a lot of colors on you. So that’s called “holy”. So maybe you are changing your appearance. I don’t know – whatever. Anyway, every day, whatever we do, becomes important. Now we talked about that a lot, but he did not really say what we should do. We didn’t say that. If we don’t say that it is not good. Many of you are not going to like it: I always thought, even in those days, when President Obama was running for President the first time, he kept on saying, “You and I will go and change history. We will change it together.” But he never said what change he was going to do. I was the only one even in those days saying: you are not saying what you are going to do. You are only saying “we are going to change it.” Then some people got upset. True. He is definitely, no question, hundred times better than George Bush, but excuse me, but His Holiness said that George Bush is the greatest President (laughs). But that’s because His Holiness sees everybody as nice, because he himself is nice. Sorry about that, honestly. (laughs). I will tell you the story.

0:30:18.3 When His Holiness was interviewed by Piers Morgan, Piers asked him, “Which leader do you think is the best?” and His Holiness asked, “Which leader – maybe Nelson Mandela or something? Yes, Nelson Mandela is very nice, very nice.” Colleen got up to the television and went there and said to the television, “Your Holiness, please don’t say George Bush!” But before she finished saying it, he really said, “George Bush!” (laughs).

My explanation is that because His Holiness is great he thinks everybody is great. It is a reflection to him. So what should we do? We have to do something. To be spiritual or whatever you call it, what is it? To me, the most important thing, when we look at ourselves, what do we see? We see two aspects of ourselves. The physical aspect and the mental aspect. You people know much better than me how to take care of the physical aspect. Just look at my physical body and you know it. If I knew how to take care of myself I wouldn’t be that fat. You know it better.

0:32:50.2 But now, whatever little opportunity I have is looking at the mental aspect. And I don’t know if I told you – I am not sure whether I told this particular group in New York, I am not sure – I had a huge struggle when I was young. A huge struggle about whether matter is more important than mind or the mind is more important than matter. Particularly when I was a kid, 14 – 18 years old, up to 19, I was studying and had the greatest opportunities to learn in the best monasteries with the best teachers who told me that mind is the most important thing. Whatever Dharma they might have told me, but it is all dealing with the mind.

0:34:09.6 Then the Chinese came in for almost 10 years of my young age and they settled in Lhasa and they had those loudspeakers going everywhere in the city, and right from the beginning they were shouting that the material is much more important than the mind. So that struggle probably China itself might have had, because on the one hand you had this huge Confucius, Buddhist, Daoist culture, than Christianity and all that on the one hand and on the other hand you had Communism, totally nothing but the material. If you really look at the Chinese leaders, they are all technocrats. That’s how they believe. They might have had that struggle there and brought it over to Tibet and a person like me had to struggle between whether mind is more important or matter.

0:35:52.8 Actually, matter is important. At least you can see airplanes fly in the air. You can see trains run fast and meditators don’t fly, except in some stories. You can talk about Milarepa flying, but that was 700 years ago or something. They do run fast though. I saw one person running fast, honestly. I saw one person running very fast. That’s what I saw, but other than that, there were no trains running. There is no spiritual train. Maybe, if you look in that famous Harry Potter story, you may have a spiritual train there, but other than that you don’t see it. But you hear it and you want to believe it; but on the other hand you see the airplanes fly, trains going fast, cars and trucks driving. So that was contradictory to me. I managed to go through with this for 20 years. It was only really way later, not even in India, but in the United States, that I really learned that mind is more important than matter. Matter is absolutely true. That is not a lie, it is not cheating. It is really straight forward, but again it is mind who did all that. The material alone will not do it. There is mind in between.

0:38:45.7 Actually, it is really the mind that makes the decisions, that finds the way and that makes the difference. Then particularly, for us, people like us, who are interested in spiritual things and Dharma and whatever, it is really the mind. Let me cut this short, and I think you will all agree if you think about it: the mind is the one.

How does the mind work within us? That becomes very important for us. Mind is actually – this is going to be crazy talk, honestly – managed by our thoughts. I am sure many of you know it, but I am a little embarrassed to tell you that, because you are great, but the thoughts are projected by ourselves. If you let the thoughts go by themselves, they will come up, pop up and if you don’t manage them all sorts of crazy things happen. We may even call that person crazy. All kinds of though come up and they act accordingly and just don’t manage. So we scream, we manage, we accept, we reject all the thoughts that are popping up. So thoughts are projected. There are two things: automatically something is flashing, as well as corrected, projected thoughts.

0:42:32.4 When we try to take Buddha’s message, then thought projection is really what it is, what you are going to project. It is so interesting that we can manufacture what is going to happen by the way of thoughts projecting in our mind. We are literally manufacturing what we are going to do and what is going to happen. When you are not managing and letting it go, then the addictions project their way of perceiving things. So we get anger, we get hatred, we get obsession, because we are so used to it.

The other virtuous thoughts – we are not addicted to them, we are not even used to them. So everything we have to project with effort. That is where we begin. Then everybody says: you have to be kind – everybody. No one will argue with that. Everybody says that. Kindness, compassion, love, loving, whatever, these are the good guys. We all agree. Anger, hatred, jealousy, these are the bad guys. We are not supposed to entertain them.

So you maybe sitting down – or not even sitting down, you maybe walking, jogging, swimming or whatever, but when you begin to get a minute to look into your mind, see what thoughts are occupying your mind. First and foremost you can project kindness. Be kind, compassionate. We call that in Tibetan sem sang po, good thinker. That means you can think very well. That’s not necessarily kind. So correcting that becomes our first chore of being a spiritual person. I don’t know. I get a lot of objections from a lot of people, writing to me. They don’t like it when I call that “spiritual”.

0:46:43.7 Audience: Is there another word?

Rimpoche: Dharma. Maybe it is too religious or whatever. Some people don’t like that either. Anyway, it begins with kindness and compassion. It’s not that your mind is all of sudden - booom – different colored and becomes kind and compassionate. But kindness and compassion, when it enters into your mind you have to project it to other people, including yourself. Honestly, you have to include yourself to be kind to; to share your kindness with yourself. That is very important to me. That is the first thing – whether you call that meditation or spiritual or mental exercise or whatever you call it, it doesn’t matter, but give yourself a little time to reflect. That’s not only looking out. We are very well trained to look out. The moment we wake out we will hear NPR – maybe we are Democrats or you see the news or whatever. So we are really totally drawn outward. So we have to think inwards.

0:48:58.8 One thing – maybe I better not name it. Okay, I will name the teacher: Lochö Rinpoche. By the way, he is coming to Jewel Heart on November 7, staying for about 10-12 days. I requested him to teach on Tsongkhapa’s Speech of Eloquence. This is the real essence of wisdom. I mean you can’t teach the lhag tong chen mo or the Madhyamaka thing, so the Speech of Eloquence is the most important. By the way, then I thought that Professor Thurman had translated that and Jeffrey Hopkins I was told retranslated Thurman’s translation or something like that. So I thought I would call Professor Thurman. Yesterday I tried to call him. I called Tibet House. A nice Tibetan lady kept on chatting with me. So I learnt that a good friend of ours had an accident. It was not a car accident, but she broke her leg and things like that. So I couldn’t call, but I hope she is better.

0:51:28.5 At least someone told me on the phone yesterday. I hope she is better and we will think of her and send our prayers and good wishes. So I thought Professor Thurman may like to come and translate for Lochö Rinpoche, because he had translated it earlier. But I didn’t get through to him. That is not recent, it is a while ago that this accident had happened. I was told it is better. Some nice lady, I don’t know who she is, talked to me for half an hour on the phone from Tibet House.

0:52:35.7 Anyway, Lochö Rinpoche – and now I won’t name the other person, a very well known young incarnate lama, now that person has grown up and became very good. When he was younger he was not doing anything, just playing around with the Indian kids and the children of the Indian general who was posted in Dharamsala. So Lochö Rinpoche thought it was his duty to make that correct. So one day he decided to go through with his memorization and naturally he was going to fail. So Rinpoche got up and hit him a couple of times. Also, I think Rinpoche thought about it: is it better to hit him with a very respectable manner as it was used to be done or better hit him with a little disrespectful manner? He drew the conclusion that it had to be a little disrespectful. He didn’t really hit him much but he grabbed him down and put him on the floor and tried to put his face on the doormat, where everybody walks in and said, “Look at you” and started screaming and yelling and all that.

0:54:36.2 Then Lochö Rinpoche told me the points he pointed out. Point Nr. 1 was: you just get up and run around like an Indian general’s kid. I asked him, “Rinpoche, what do you mean by that?” He said, “Well, you are supposed to be an incarnate lama, a Dharma practitioner, so you have to think about the Buddha Dharma and the living beings and kindness, compassion and be concerned about people. That should be your first thought. Am I right?” So I said, “Yes, of course.” So he continued to say that he told his young incarnate lama, “So you don’t think that, you just run around like the general’s son.” So the first thought – I don’t know whether you think about the Buddha Dharma or not – as a dedicated Buddhist maybe, but if not, at least think of being kind, compassionate and be a loving person, not an obnoxious person.

0:56:21.6 Some people are obnoxious. I tell you truly and that’s one advantage I have when I talk to you as a group. I am not talking to anyone of you. I am not pointing out anybody’s problems. So what is being obnoxious all about? It is thinking, “What am I going to do? What makes me better? What makes me superior to the person next to me?” If all your thoughts go on that, that makes you obnoxious. If at the moment you wake up you think of “what makes me better?” then [that is obnoxious]. But no one here wakes up and thinks, “How can I steal something, how can I kill somebody?” That’s not even a question to us. The people who are doing that, they do it. But that thought won’t come to us, but we will have thoughts of selfishness.

0:57:39.4 Really selfish. How do make myself look better? How do I make myself better in this or that? Yes, our professions sometimes ask us to be competitive, but it doesn’t have to be your first thought in the morning: how to compete. When you are having a serious competition, it maybe. One or two days are forgettable. You can forget them. But that should not be a regular thought. If you keep doing that without any control that will become your thing. It is very interesting. Thoughts and ideas and ways of talking – all of them become the character of the individual – honestly. That’s why it is so important to watch the first thoughts every morning.

0:59:23.0 When I was a kid, the moment I opened my eyes, I was told to pray. The words I was told to pray were:

May the wisdom eye open.

May the practice of sutra and tantra be completed.

May I be helpful to all living beings.

These three things I was told as a kid to say and think about and I did that for a while and when I became wild in my thirties and forties I forgot. Until then I did everything and nowadays I think that way again. Maybe I am becoming too old. We have a saying: when you become old you want to go back to your old character.

1:00:29.3 If you become an old bird you want to go to your nest. So maybe that’s what it is. That’s I think what there is to do first. So you pay attention every morning to your first thoughts. Keep on paying attention. If it is a little late you realize you didn’t think that for a little while, doesn’t matter. Whenever you realize, whenever you remember, give yourself a minute or two to think about it. Even if it is as late as after breakfast or something, even then it doesn’t matter. Better late than never. Then it becomes your habit. Actually, it is getting addicted. Get yourself addicted to think that way. It is supposed to be a good addiction, not a bad addiction to think that way.

1:01:51.7 Then throughout the day, try to remember that, not all the time, but three, four times, so that for everything you do, you have that influence. Getting rid of the obnoxious thoughts, bringing in the good thoughts will change you to become a better person. When you become a better person everything will open to you, honestly. Things that should open to you sometimes don’t open because of the selfish thoughts. We don’t recognize the selfish thoughts. We don’t. If you do you will be perfect, but you don’t. If you keep on watching your thoughts and deeds, your influence, your ideas, after a little while, looking back in your life, maybe even after years or a year or months or days later, you begin to see that your motivation has a little stain here and there. This is so important. You don’t have to freak out when you recognize that. You don’t have to freak out at all because everybody else does that, not only you alone, but everybody else does that.

Remind yourself that you did that. Then, if you keep on thinking that, you maybe a little embarrassed about it. Nothing wrong with this. It is welcome, because such a little embarrassment within yourself is great guidance for you.

1:04:29.5 This is the guide for you how to act, today, tomorrow and thereafter. Remembering that, recognizing that fault you have, until it becomes a big earmark within your mind, keep on going back a little bit. You don’t have to tell anybody else. You don’t want to tell. If you do tell somebody else somehow you feel, “I give up that worry, I offloaded it”. But nothing is really loaded off either. If you keep that within you, it will remind you, remind you and the next time it comes back, maybe you recognize it after you done it already, but doesn’t matter. That will happen a number of times, but there will be a time when you begin to notice it before, like, “This guy is here now again, he is popping up again, so I have to be careful.” That is how you make improvements, without even talking about blessing or all that.

1:06:26.7 That is how mentally you can function. Then on top of that you can bring the blessing. Blessing really does work. It does make a big difference. Blessing here comes from the Lama-Yidam inseparable. That is our door step, our bridge, our link. So that means seeking blessings, then purifying negative deeds we have. The first step is correcting the thoughts.

As I mentioned to you, it doesn’t have to be what the books tell you, “Oh, I am supposed to think bodhimind”. That doesn’t correct much; it becomes a sort of routine activity. If that happens it doesn’t help much.

Then the second step is seeking blessings and purifying. Seeking blessings will accumulate merit. Purifying will purify negativities; plus you say mantras, sadhanas or prayers or whatever you do. That will be the icing on the cake. Otherwise there is no basis, no foundation. That is what happens. When you don’t correct your basic thoughts, your basic ideas and you do a lot of prayers and sadhanas and this and that, but if the basis is not there, it all becomes sort of lip service. Sometimes it’s only the lips moving and you don’t even know what you are saying and you don’t even know when you finished it. It sounds like it is finished. That is a problem.

1:09:30.6 That is how. For me the most important to make the day and the life worthwhile is correcting the mind, the thoughts. Every time you change the thoughts and suggest [positive thoughts] you have to do it with effort. Sometimes there is tremendous difficulty putting these thoughts in. There will be resistance, there will be other thoughts, there will be wandering mind, not focusing, falling asleep, thinking something else. The time goes and all this will happen. But I think constant effort will make the efforts you have to put in now to correct thoughts become effortless. It’s not effortless without taste or meaning, but with the full strength of awareness. That will be to me the first: 101. Nobody would like to hear 101 because we all are experts anyway, but my apologies. We have to have that base done.

1:12:04.5 Interesting. We learn so much about the meaning and everything. We are very good at saying that this school thinks this way and that school thinks that way. That school is theoretically this way or that way. We become very good, but then when you think about what you think that question becomes a little strange. You don’t get an answer, sometimes you even react to that as an inappropriate question.

I remember one time, working in the University of Michigan as Tibetan lecturer. A professor came for his tenure position. He gave a wonderful lecture about whether the ultimate yana or vehicle is one or three. This is a very big issue between the Hinayana or Theravada and the Mahayana. The Mahayana will say that the ultimate yana is one, because ultimately everybody will become buddha. That’s how it’s going to be settled.

The Theravadan principle will say that the ultimate yana is three: everybody is not going to become Buddha. Some will become Buddha, some will become arhats, totally freed from samsara, the cycle of suffering. The professor kept saying that this Buddhist thinks this way, that Buddhist school thinks that way. So I asked, “And what do you think?” He said, “What? That question is not asked in the academic set up.” Maybe he is right. In the academic set up you don’t ask that question. But for us it is important to ask ourselves. That school is thinking that way is fine, but what do I think?

1:16:35.9 I think that is very important. Maybe it is a little naïve, but I think it is important. I thought that is an important point we can talk about: making our life worthwhile. Then any Buddhist practice has a very interesting thing, I have to say here. Tibetan Buddhism particularly, has so many different paths put together. It is not one single little thing. So many things are put together. Even the Four Noble Truths, the very basic principle of Buddha’s teaching, that also has four components you have to see.

Suffering, cause of suffering, cessation and path to cessation. You have to at least there are two negative aspects of cause and effect and two positive aspects of cause and effect. You have to see that. Likewise, every other practice within Tibetan Buddhism has a little complexity. It is not just one, it’s not just sitting and thinking nothing. It doesn’t go like that. Tibetan Buddhism will tell you to meditate. That doesn’t mean: sit and don’t think. Honestly. Sitting and not thinking is also meditation, but Tibetan Buddhism will not tell you to do that. They will tell you: sit and think; think a lot. Do analyze and draw conclusions and then focus single-pointedly.

1:20:36.0 All of those are a little complex. What are you going to think and what are you going to do is very important. If you read the Buddha’s teachings it is everywhere, tremendously, particularly the way Buddha taught is mostly [in response to] incidents that took place. They asked Buddha questions and he gave answers, he gave teachings on that. It is sort of all over the place, honestly. Although, when they made the Kangyur and Tengyur collections they tried to classify the subjects together later. But if you open a book up it is going to talk all over the place anyway.

1:22:15.2 So some sort of comprehensive [order was needed], at least put them together. The early Tibetan teachers gave a very good example. You have materials for making food, like salt, dough, rice, vegetables and all of them and you have them all there separately. It is very good to have them separately. If it is mixed already from the beginning it will be inconvenient. Yes, true, the food could get very salty or have no salt or whatever. It can be very funny. At the same time, if things are missing it’s not right. So you have to put them together and make it. So like that, Buddha has provided all the materials, based on his experience. A great many of Buddha’s disciples and teachers thereafter organized them. We have to have something organized to be able to do something with Tibetan Buddhism.

1:24:03.9 The purpose of doing that is the goal. Truly, Buddha set up the goals, the best is to become Buddha, second is to be free from samsara’s suffering and the third is to at least have a good future life. These are the three goals that Buddha introduced to us. Let’s call it Dharma. When you look into the Dharma, one of those three has to be your goal. This is something very funny. Many of us may not even agree. At the most we will say, “That is very great, but I also hope to benefit [now].” They tell us that if you are working for achieving a better life with more comfort, more easy and smooth, or being a little materially successful in life, these are not part of Dharma at all.

1:26:02.0 As a matter of face, true Buddhist teachers object to that. But if you tell that to ourselves, then half the people in the room will switch off their interest. Honestly. In one of Thurman’s translations of the Three Principles of the Path he even wrote: “Switch off the interest for this life”. It is a direct, true translation but it will switch off a lot of interest for a lot of people. So I don’t know how people will take it, but truly, you know, we are called “liberation seekers”, not “material seekers”. So we seek liberation. Liberation from what? From our negative thoughts, influences and causes. Remember, we began talking about the “Joy that has never known suffering”. That is the cessation of suffering. When the cause and the result of suffering are exhausted, then you get the cessation, which is the joy that has never known suffering. So that’s what liberation is all about. That’s my guess, because I am not liberated, so I don’t know.

1:28:25.1 But my guess is that. Probably that’s what it is. As long as we have the negative emotions and that particular attachment, that will tie us. Attachment is called by the earlier teachers the “glue for samsara”. It will make you stick. If you have a heel on your shoe that is coming off, what do you do? Apply glue and stick it, so it will not come off. Like that, attachment is the glue for samsara. Liberation seekers are seeking liberation from attachment. But we won’t like that, because we enjoy the attachment. Honestly, we do. Who doesn’t? Anybody? If there someone who doesn’t enjoy attachment, raise your hand – unless you are going through a divorce or something (laughs). I don’t see a single hand.

1:30:13.0 So that’s what it is. So that shows how attached we are in samsara. That’s what it is. When I throw out attachment like this, some young people may be thinking, “He is talking about my girlfriend, my boyfriend.” I am not talking about that. Don’t worry, relax. When we talk about attachment we are not talking about the boyfriend, girlfriend business at all. Yes, it may be attachment, for sure, there is no denying that. But we are not talking about that. We are talking about something more than that. We have a tremendous amount of attachment to our identity. I am not talking about the identity card. I am not talking about the driver’s license. I am talking about the physical and mental identity, to which we have tremendous attachment. Who is attached to that? The entity that is within that identity. As long as you have that attachment – between that entity and identity – it is contaminated. That’s the definition of contamination. That doesn’t mean you have to separate the identity and entity. The separation of these to me is death. Death is the separation of a particular identity and the entity, ourselves.

Then you get another one. That is what reincarnation is all about it. It is one after another, different identities. The identity changes, but it is continuing. We have a fear of getting into the vacuum of void. When I am talking about the glue for samsara, the attachment, I am talking more about that rather than physical attraction to different persons. That is very temporary, as we all know. It changes. It is extremely temporary. It changes by how you think, by how the other person thinks, it changes by how the air blows, it changes by how people talk, by how people look. It is so fragile, so temporary and we know that. We like to deny that, but that’s the reality.

1:35:07.3 And that is not the samsara’s glue. The samsara’s glue is the real attachment. Actually, if I say this word, I am sure it’s wrong. The word itself I think is wrong. But I think it is really attachment to yourself. I am sure theoretically it is wrong to say that, but to understand it works better. We have very strong attachment, more than to your girlfriend or boyfriend. It is very strong attachment to ourselves, honestly. That’s why girlfriends and boyfriends don’t get along well. It’s because two homes are standing there and struggling. That’s why self-attachment is so strong. That is our biggest problem. So when you begin to look into Dharma this is one of our targets. What we have to defeat is this. If you can’t defeat that it controls you completely. So every effort we put in, everything we do, even breathing, all becomes a service to this very attachment.

1:37:33.7 I think that is maybe too jumpy, but it is our second point. After the first point, being kind and compassionate and bringing that into your life, the second point is seeing what is the problem. The bottom line of the problem is this attachment. I am trying to make it very clear. I am not talking about the little attractions of people here and there. It is much deeper, the self-attachment. It is not giggling stuff, it is more, much more than that. Somehow we are all very much soaked in it. Young or old, learned or not learned, spiritually developed or not developed, all of us are soaked in it – unless you become very well spiritually developed, in which case you don’t have that. When you don’t have that, sometimes you become a little silly person too.

1:39:10.6 It is hard sometimes to make the distinction, when you lose that attachment. It is hard to tell whether you become a very good person or a little silly goat. It’s hard to tell. I don’t know whether silly goat is the right expression. No?

Audience: Silly goose

Rimpoche: I don’t know, I learned it as silly goat, whatever. Do you have to take a break? Is it too long sitting? Maybe a little break then.

1:41:01.1 (unofficial during break) What is the third point? It is the package. The package of that and number one…..back ground noises…)

1:42:31.2 (after break) Ok, thank you. We had point 1: motivation, point 2: what is point 2?

Audience: bottom line attachment to ourselves

Rimpoche: I don’t know if attachment is the bottom line or not. There may be another layer underneath. That is one of the most important things: attachment, but there may be another layer underneath, so I am not sure attachment is the bottom line, but it is there at least on the surface. I think Tibetan Buddhism tells us about the “Three Poisons”. One of them is attachment, one of them is traditionally called ignorance, but it is not only the ignorance of not knowing alone, but an ignorance of confusion, wrong knowing and to a certain extent, not knowing. And then you have hatred as the Third Poison. These are the three poisons. So they say to avoid or letting go of the three poisons.

1:45:24.4 Even in the commonly accepted language of letting go, people use that very much. But we don’t talk much about what to let go. These are the three things to let go, these three poisons. And the bottom line underneath all of them is supposed to be the ignorance, which is confusion, not knowing, fear all combined. They give the example of the darkness of not knowing. Even in the Three Principles they talk about the individual being shackled by hands and legs, put in a cage, the cage thrown in the river, which is actually four huge raging rivers criss-crossing from all four directions, and that also in the darkness of night, rather than at day time. That is the example from the Three Principles if you are familiar. That’s probably is the bottom line. Attachment is just above that. That is our second point.

1:47:53.1 Even if you can handle the attachment it will make a big dent for us. Now the third point is what you need and that is faith. Not because Jewel Heart is a faith-based organization. That’s supposed to be a joke. Faith is very important. I don’t want to touch that subject because of the time, but still, if you have no belief for whatsoever it is not right. If you have no faith for whatsoever, then something is missing. You do need faith. What you don’t need is stupid, unintelligent belief. You really have to make that distinction. A) you need faith in cause and effect. If you really look with your intelligent mind there is no result ever experienced without creating a cause. Also if there is a cause, then when the conditions are right we are experiencing [the result]. That is a very important point, with understanding and bringing in faith.

1:50:51.8 Temporarily you can accept that argument “Because Buddha said so.” That is very, very wrong reasoning, not perfect reasoning. However, it does help the individual a little bit, until you find your way to observe the cause and effect, the karmic thing or dependent origination. You can understand dependent origination; not from the logical point only, but from the experiential point. When you experience things in your life, when you see if there is no cause or even if there is a cause, when the conditions are not right, no effect materializes. Somehow we know that. We know that from our human experience, from scientific knowledge, our understanding. Somehow we have a sense of that. We don’t understand it [fully] by no means, however we begin to know. When I am talking about faith I mean faith in karmic functioning, faith in dependent origination.

1:54:43.8 If you are Buddhist then you also develop faith in Buddha, also with reasons, not because it’s Buddha. The reason is very simple: whatever that guy said is true, honestly. There is not so much contradiction to be found. That is a good reason. If somebody is telling you the truth all the time, believing that person is with good reason. If someone is always lying, trying to believe them is naivety. So we built a number of things and we piggy back purification and accumulation of merit at the beginning, even after the good thoughts; generating a kind motivation, conducting your life according to the principles of cause and effect and conditions.

1:56:31.3 Then developing faith in what’s happening in our life: cause and result, dependent origination, these are important points with what’s happening in our life. And then we also piggy-back seeking blessings. If you develop faith in Buddha Lama Yidam inseparable, then that’s already piggy-backed in. That comes along with it, with purification and accumulation of merit. So that’s about it – at least 1-2-3 points of what to do. Maybe I am finished with that I wanted to say. Nothing more that I know. I don’t remember anything now.

1:58:16.1 You know there are two things here. One thing: I like to open it up for questions and the second thing: I am supposed to be getting out from here by 4.00 pm, so there are 20 minutes. If we open for questions we will be talking a lot. Maybe we limit it to two questions.

1:58:46.0 Audience: You were speaking about the correction of the thoughts. I remember, during one of the meditation courses you also taught that if we do not attach to the thoughts, if we just let them go that you also get exhaustion in that way. So are those two different processes, depending upon which one you are able to do at any given moment?

1:59:23.3 Rimpoche: I don’t know. When you formulated the question a different thought came up in my head. When you talk about correcting thoughts, to me the word “Dharma” in Tibetan it is chö. What does that mean? It is the past tense of correcting. When it is already corrected, it becomes chö. When it is not corrected it is the addictive emotions. So the word chö, you can explain it as Dharma and it is holy and it is what Buddha said and you talk about relative and absolute Dharma. You can do that. But on the other hand, to be on the point, Dharma is really a correction. You are correcting the addictions you enjoy. Correcting from that becomes the betterment. If you are addicted to attachment, correcting it. It is not detachment, but non-attachment.

2:01:29.5 I think there is a difference. With detachment you don’t care, you are completely disconnected. Non-attachment can be. You don’t have the attachment what you think of it, but neither are you detached. Changing that, correcting that, becomes Dharma. Anger, irritation, changing that into understanding, patience and maybe even enthusiasm, when you say correcting, that is the real Dharma. I know I didn’t answer your question.

2:03:09.1 When you say letting it go, if you just thinking to let go of whatever you are thinking, you know meditation is a little crazy. There are two types: focused or concentrated meditation and analytical meditation. Among the earlier Tibetan teachers some only accepted focusing meditation as meditation. Analytical meditation was not accepted as meditation by some teachers. Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa said both are meditation. He even gave an example: a man with a horse. Without concentration the wisdom, no matter how much you analyze you cannot defeat the afflictive emotions. In order to defeat the afflictive emotions you need some decisions arrived at through proper critical analysis. That really is mounted on the horse, so that the horse and the horseman can defeat the enemy of ignorance.

2:06:05.2 For developing only the focusing meditation, then any thought that pops up should be let go. That is helping the individual to focus on concentrate on the mind or whatever. However, if the end result of that very period – I am not talking about a long time – comes without any point of focusing, then it is focus-less. You find nothing. You are letting go, letting go and find nothing. That probably is a fault, it is wrong. Letting go, letting go, letting go, something has to come out of that. That something that has to come out, where are you going to get that from? From the critical analysis.

2:07:47.6 Without any thought, just sitting blank alone is what nowadays is called meditation. That is good for certain purposes. Whether that’s good Dharma or not, probably not. It is good to focus and settle down the mind, if you have a deflective mind. Then sitting down will settle it. Some people are very restless in their thoughts, many of us are. If we then do analytical meditation a lot, sometimes that even contributes to our restless thoughts. But if you don’t get anything from letting go, then it goes blank. It reduces our negative emotions, for sure. According to the Buddha, it is the cause for us to take rebirth in one of the formless realms called “Thoughtless”. There is “space-like”, “consciousness-like”, “nothingness” and “Peak of Samsara”. There are four of them. And this is how we take rebirth in them. That means it is definitely can produce the result of reducing negative emotions, for sure. But whether that is very helpful for you or not is a different question. Maybe we can’t talk about that today but that’s what it is.

2:10:46.1 I would also like to remind you. I don’t think I can take any more questions. I like to remind you that we will be meeting in Garrison on October 5th, on Friday. The subject we chose is almost the same thing: The Recognition of the Mother’s Face. I’s about whether or not you recognize your mother. If the mother comes with make-up we may not recognize her. Better bring a bucket of water to be able to wash it off. So all of you are welcome and then that’s for the weekend.

2:12:04.9 Then we are very happy to announce that Lochö Rinpoche is coming to Ann Arbor – unfortunately. Some of you did their best, trying to get him to come to New York. He may be coming to New York, too, but the 10 days teaching is going to be in Ann Arbor on the Speech of Eloquence. I mentioned that earlier. My thought was that Thurman had translated that text and that Jeffrey Hopkins re-translated, somebody told me. Anyway, if you can make you are welcome, particularly those of you who don’t work. You have the leisure of freedom. Of course you are obligated to the family works and all of those, but those of you are free, I think it is a very good opportunity.

2:13:31.3 Audience (inaudible)

2:13:48.4 Rimpoche: Geshe Yeshe Thabkhe is one of the greatest geshes. So we are going to have him around a little more than we used to, because somehow we may be thinking of settling in the United States. If he does that will be great. It is debating that with himself right now. Truly speaking, there are not so many great geshes available anymore. Lochö Rinpoche, yes, no doubt about it and Geshe Söpa in Wisconsin is great, no doubt. And then Geshe Lobsang Tharchin, another great one, is no longer around. And then, when you start looking around, almost all are new geshes, I don’t see many great old geshes available. So Geshe Yeshe Thabkhe is great. Those who have heard him teach on the weekend in Ann Arbor will know he is great. He is going to be here October 13, the weekend after Garrison.

I don’t think Lochö Rinpoche’s teaching will be online. It is a transmission. It will be teaching and oral transmission. Through the website I don’t think there is much purpose. So I am thinking maybe not, but let’s see what happens.

2:16:02.9 Thank you so much and excuse me, I have to run. Forgive me. 2:16:18.4