Archive Result

20120923GRAATB38

00:00

Good morning everybody and welcome to “Tibetan Buddhism with Gelek Rimpoche”. For the last couple of three or so Sundays I had the pre-record the talks because I went and visited Malaysia and Singapore and that’s a 12 hour difference and I thought it might have been a little difficult to get into some place at 10 at night and then start speaking. So to safeguard, in case that didn’t work, I recorded some talks earlier. And once that had been done your mind will say, “Well, if it doesn’t work [to have a live talk] it’s fine. There is already a recording.” So we have been a little lazy. Apologies.

Then of course last week Geshe Yeshe Thapkhe was teaching here. Here was only teaching on the weekend, so if I would have taken the Sunday morning out it would have been cutting into his teaching quite a lot. So I thought, better not and also he did give a wonderful talk. Then yesterday I went to New York. That was very nice. I haven’t seen our Jewel Heart New York sangha for a long time, although we have a wonderful Fall Retreat coming to Garrison, probably next week or maybe the week after. It is from the 5th of October, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So what we are doing there is this is a beautiful poetic writing by one the great teachers called Jangkya Rölpe Dorje. He lived in the 1700s. He became the personal guru of the emperor of China at that time. The way that happened was very strange. The previous incarnation of Jangkya Rölpe Dorje was the guru of the then emperor, who happened to be the father of this emperor. So the son kept on asking this lama, “Pray for me. Make me the emperor.” He kept on nagging him all the time. So one day he said, “Yeah, you will be emperor soon, after I am gone.” Then when he passed away, that son became emperor. Then there was some problem. Some Buddhist monks rebelled against that emperor. Even in those days, in the 1700s they rebelled against the emperor. So he issued an order saying that anybody who is bald-headed, chop their heads off.

They couldn’t identify the rebels and that’s why the order came to chop the head off any bald headed person. The emperor thought suddenly, “I issued that order, but maybe my teacher who made me emperor is also there. So I better be careful.” He sent a special messengers trying to find out whether his teacher’s reincarnation was there or not. It is a very interesting story. So the boy was about 7 or 8 years old and ran away from his monastery in a little retreat area, where there was a beautiful river running and beautiful pastures and slopes. That boy kept on telling his attendants, “Tomorrow somebody is coming to get me. Take me home.” The attendants said, “O my god. That is terrible. They are going to catch all of us and we are all going to be killed. Please don’t say such things.” But the body kept on saying, “Yes, that’s what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

0:07

Sure enough after a while the body said, “Yes, yes, they are coming now.” The others didn’t see it. But after a while over a little hill top they could see a huge Chinese caravan coming. They tried to rush the boy to run. But he wouldn’t run. So the Chinese came and caught him. They didn’t know why the emperor wanted that boy. They thought it was for punishment. The never knew what it was about. There is a beautiful story on that but to cut a long story short at first they made the body walk and they all went on horses. Later they gave him a horse. The orders kept on changing. The Chinese have such a big bureaucracy at that time. About a month later the boy was their boss. They were carrying him in a palanquin and all that sort of thing. The interesting thing I thought was that one the chieftains who met him on the road later asked him, “Why did you run away at first?” The boy said, “The order said that every bald headed person should be killed. So who is not going to run away? Is there anybody who is not afraid of losing their life?”

So then the chieftain had nothing to say.

Maybe it was not the order of the emperor but something made in between. I don’t remember. I saw it later somewhere. So then he got there and became extremely learned and even many of us will say that he was the last great mahapandit. That is Indian language. Now we have political pundits yapping all the time on television. This is a spiritual pundit. So that is Jangkya Rölpe Dorje.

So his poem is called Recognition of the Mother’s Face. In that he talks about the mother, the elder brother and himself, but it is actually his personal experience of encountering with the wisdom of emptiness.

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It is about how he himself merged in it and how it comes and functions. It is very beautiful and very briefly speaking I wanted to receive this teaching for a long time and then last time, when we went to India with the tour, we asked Lochö Rinpoch for this teaching and he did give the transmission to us, me included. It took about two hours or less, in Delhi. Later I was supposed to give a little more detail on it. So that’s what’s going to happen in Garrison and all are welcome.

I wish we had some scholarships there. For Tibetans we do, for Tibetans, Mongolians and Himalayans. But not for us. Nobody wants us to study. So a group of people gave scholarships to those people because they want them to learn a little more. It is the preservation of our own culture. I think that is where that money is coming from. So if you can make it you are welcome.

0:12

Similarly we have Lochö Rinpoche coming here. He will be arriving in Michigan on November 7th. To start teaching on Nov 8 maybe too son. So perhaps he will begin on November 9 or something. Unfortunately the timing will not be very convenient for people who are working. We are hoping that it will be from 2 pm to 6 pm. For the people who don’t have to maintain a 9-5 job or 8-4 job it will be much easier. But those who have to maybe you can make some adjustments. The teaching is Tsongkhapa’s Speech of Eloquence. It is the real heart of Buddha’s teaching. It is like taking the heart out and putting it on your table. Lochö Rinpoche will not be doing the teaching in great detail. The original text in Tibetan has maybe about 60, 70 pages. The detailed teaching on this takes normally a month and a half or something, starting at 12 and finishing at 6.30 or 7.00 every day. So it would be a month or two. But we will try to finish it in 10 days. That will be very lucky. Lochö Rinpoche is now 87 or 88 now, so I am trying to make it very easy by making it the afternoon and not the early morning and not in the evening. That’s how I am looking at it.

All are welcome, there are no restrictions, no vajrayana restrictions, nothing. We are supposed to have a very nice translator, an American gentleman. I was hoping Professor Thurman would be able to do it, because he translated that book, Tsongkhapa’s Speech of Eloquence – a huge volume, I thought. That was many years ago. Two, three days ago, somebody told me that Jeffrey Hopkins re-translated that, based on Thurman’s translation. Professors do that, right? So maybe there are at least two translations available. So we will have that opportunity.

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I would also like to give you the greetings of the Jewel Heart members in Malaysia and Singapore. They all are very happy and they are very grateful they are getting the teachings and instructions from here. They are very dedicated. They may have their own little personal things. Everything is not smooth like the palm of a child’s hand. Maybe there are some bumps here and there. Other than that they are all very, very nice and very grateful and send their regards to us.

Also the New Yorkers yesterday. I was very happy to see a lot of them who I had not seen for a long time. It was everybody there, really packed. Very nice.

0:19

Now on to business. This is “Tibetan Buddhism”. If you remember, we were talking about the Four Noble Truths. I keep on thinking that we have to end the Four Noble Truths, otherwise it will become endless. The one thing is this: the quality of the Buddha’s teaching is such that if you touch anywhere everything comes out – the same thing. It is great. Somewhere, somebody has to cut it, otherwise it will run. I thought of closing – and it is nothing really closing, but there is no teaching of Buddha that is not included in the Four Noble Truths. Honestly. There are the Collected Works of Buddha, the Buddhist Canon, which runs into some 100 odd volumes, depending on which edition and language it is. The Chinese have much more than the Tibetan version has. Then the Mongolian version is less. All of those have something to do with the Four Noble Truths. That’s because the Four Noble Truths are about how we deal with our life. Again let me remind you: they are the Truth of Suffering, the Truth of the Cause of Suffering, the Truth of the Cessation of Suffering and the Truth of the Path to the Cessation of Suffering.

The first set of two truths is called the negative set. One is cause, the other is result and these are the negative aspects of our life. Very simple: we engage our mind in the negative thoughts and emotions and that will make us act negatively. That hurts people and ourselves. The result of that is suffering. There are countless sufferings, one after another. These two negative truths are mostly running our life.

Along with that there are the two positive truths: the Truth of Cessation and the Truth of the Path. These two also run together. We are human beings and human beings do not act negatively all the time – just because we are human beings. No matter how horrible somebody may be they do not act negatively all the time. Because we are human beings we also do some good deeds. It is always mixed. Even if you look at horrible historical figures like Hitler, Stalin and so on, in between that there are some good acts, willingly or voluntary or not. They did it. Just because they are human beings.

The good things will give us good results such as this wonderful human life and this wonderful mind, which is capable of understanding and thinking and communicating. That’s a good thing. It provides us the base to make ourselves good. I spent most of the time yesterday in New York talking about something like that. The title of the talk was “Making Life Worthwhile – on the basis of the Foundation of Perfections. I don’t know, I have not been to New York for so long. I don’t know where we were in the Foundation of Perfections. I had no idea and I asked a couple of people and they also didn’t know.

0:25

That shows we are not following the Foundations of Perfections. I thought it was great for me in the two, three hours we spent there to contribute something to their life. I began to talk about the struggle I went through. I talked to you people earlier about whether the material is more important or the mind. Now I learnt that the mind is more important. I was very stupid and naïve. All of you are such wonderful and educated persons and talking such a stupid thing in your presence is a little embarrassing, honestly. However, this is what it is for me. Really, without mind nothing happens with the material, honestly. When the Chinese communist party told everybody throughout Tibet by loudspeakers everywhere, day and night, that material is more important than mind, I sat down and thought that materials do make a difference. The airplanes do fly in the air. The trains and cars run faster.

We talked about that in Tibet: Previously Milarepa flew in the air. Local people said, “Oh such a dirty fellow, let’s avoid his shadow hitting our body.” He was supposed to be the man who committed horrendous negativities. That’s what Milarepa was earlier. So he was flying and people tried to avoid his shadow, because they thought if the shadow hits you it’s bad for you. That’s what happened. So we talk about that. I haven’t seen that but I did see the airplanes going up in the air – in Tibet. They made this huge noise and after a while you recognize the noise and then you see them. So all that was a struggle for me. It is stupid, but later I began to learn that without the human mind behind none of these things happen. It is the human mind which is making the things works. Now I phone 5 is out. If you are an electrical wizard it will be very useful. For me I am going to get one. You know why? Because I have an old I phone, the first one, actually, and they refuse to support that now. They say, your phone is too old. If it still works it works, otherwise we are not going to do anything. So I waited and applied and now I am going to get it.

0:30

But my mind is not good enough to be able to manage, so I will use only 25 % or less of the capacity of what that little thing can do. That’s not the fault of that little thing but the fault of my brain. It’s all like that. Human mind is the one that really makes things work for us. All the gadgets help us to achieve and advance, but it is really the mind that is more important than anything else. What we need is the desire to help and guide yourself properly. When you have that desire to make yourself better then you begin to see what is wrong now. This is important. If you don’t see what is wrong now there is no need for change. If you see what is wrong today then you have to change. It is important to know what kind of change we are going to make. It is easy to say: “change”. You won’t like what I am going to say, but during the last election Obama comes up and says: You and I will go and change history and turn the page. Everybody was so happy. And I keep on saying: what is he going to change? Some people were even getting upset with me, saying yes, we are going to change. But only know he wants to tell us what he is going to change. That is important. Saying “change” is easy. But what are you going to change? Some changes are good, some are bad. Really, if you are going to change you have to know what you are going to change, from what to what, where and why. These are important, because we are not stupid. We are intelligent human beings. So we do something, knowing why and what we are going and what we hope to gain. That is fundamentally important to me, particularly in the spiritual path. Why? Because many of us, me included, will just simply sit there and hope that everything becomes holy and there is love and light and all kinds of things, but have no idea what we are doing. That leads us sometimes to disasters.

That is unfortunate. Even if it doesn’t lead to disasters, it is a very good way of wasting our time, not even knowing we are wasting it. But we are intelligent and wonderful persons and have to make sure what we are doing. We need something better. That is a comparison. Better and worse are dependent. This side and that side is dependent arising. East and west are dependent. Better and worse are dependent arising. Like it or not, it is the honest truth. That’s why you need to know from where you are going to change to what. That’s important. I think that is the first step for people who take the dharma or spiritual practice. Some people don’t like me call it ‘spiritual’. I get a bunch of communication from people who don’t like me talking about “spiritual” things. They think that what we do is superior to spiritual. That’s not necessarily from people in Jewel Heart, but outside so many of them communicate that to me. I don’t know what is more superior than spiritual. The purpose of language is to communicate and we want to communicate now.

0:36

Buddhism tells us to become a Buddha. That’s very nice and also a very long shot. We don’t have to deny that we want to become Buddha. That is fine. It is the traditional teaching and the Mahayana tells us that this is the purpose and goal. Fine. But we have to bite what we can chew. If we keep on biting for enlightenment we may get nowhere. I remember when I was a kid I got this big rock sugar and tried to bit the whole thing and got nothing, except a little bit. So bite only what you can chew. Then it has nice taste, is sweet, juicy and it helps and it is great. The spiritual practice is also like that. Yes, the ultimate goal is to become Buddha. That will be fine. Leave it there. Temporarily you have to make yourself better – today. Really, it is important today. Today is very important. You have to make yourself better today and tomorrow. So every day we have to look in that way. That is our goal – to make one day better. Take it day by day and sometimes hour by hour. I keep on talking that we have to do something to make ourselves better. It is almost like talking about change without saying what to change.

What is there to do? Three things, remember: Morality, concentration and wisdom. Combine them together in everyday life and it doesn’t have to be the perfect wisdom of emptiness. Wisdom, whatever you can manage, put that wisdom in your daily life. Keep your morality, whatever you can manage, in your life. Focus whatever you can focus and make it the best. That’s how we spend our life. Make your life better day by day. When you do that you will see different results within you. That’s what you need. That’s something we can chew, so what’s what we can bite. If you do that your life will become dharma, spiritual or non-material, superior or whatever.

0:40

Enjoy that every day. Otherwise, the days go too fast. It is already end of September. The New Year was not that long ago. Now it is end of September. That means nine months are gone from this year. Out of 12 there are 9 gone. That means there are only 3 left. That is how it works with our life. It goes. When it becomes too late then it is too late. Until then it is never too late. Just try to manage. That is a good thing.

0:41

I don’t want to delay you and I have more to say, but next week Sunday I will be here talking to you. Also the summer is going. So we thought we have a little get together in my house. There is a little bigger lawn now. We will do that after the Sunday talk here and then all those of you who can make it are welcome. The details I haven’t worked out yet. Two or three Sundays after that it will be cold. We won’t be able to sit out there. Hopefully it won’t rain.

That’s it. Thank you. 0:43 Chanting Four Immeasurables – 0:44 end