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Welcome everybody here to “Tibetan Buddhism with Gelek Rimpoche”. I don’t know, I am Gelek Rimpoche, so anyway…That is the supposed to be the title. For a while we have been talking about the essence of Buddha’s teaching and particularly on the basis of the Four Noble Truths. The reasons why we chose that is that right from the beginning we raised the question that when you practice, when you take the benefit out of Tibetan Buddhism or the Buddha’s teaching, what are we supposed to do? What does this mean? Does it mean we have to meditate? Does it mean we have to be very practical? Does it mean we have to try to be very holy? All these questions we talked about.

To be honest with you, our idea became almost all of the above. We examined these and came to the point that we have to meditate. Then the question comes: what do we meditate on? How do we meditate? It is not so much a question of how we meditate, but what does meditation mean? What does one do? What do we hope to gain out of that? That is really a question. Years ago, forget about meditation, even yoga was not acceptable in the main stream. Now at least, yoga and meditation have become main stream. All the hospitals have begun to utilize them and yoga particularly came earlier, ten years before meditation. And now meditation is becoming more or less acceptable to so many main stream places. We have to really credit Jon Kabat-Zinn as one of the people who have done so much and it has been very beneficial, so that everywhere else they do that now too.

In a way that is a great thing for us. Talking about meditation, honestly speaking, came out of the Hindu-Buddhist tradition. I know very little about Hinduism, but when you look at yoga, there are seven different stages and the physical yoga we do here is mostly what is called hatha yoga. But when you do in much deeper, it is mental meditation.

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Similarly, a very rich source of meditation comes out of Buddhism. I don’t know if I have that understanding, but when you look into the Theravada Buddhist tradition, meditation is on the focusing point of whatever subject of object you find, you focus on it, thereby training your mind to remain peaceful, focused and concentrated. There are two major obstacles to concentration and you try to overcome and manage them. When you go in the Mahayana path, then the focus goes on compassion and love and that becomes the major focus. When you go to vajrayana, there is endless types of meditation, including visualizations. Visualization is one of the very important ways to get your mind not only acquainted with the object you are focusing on but it also is observing the subject or object within ourselves, changing the individual personality into that extraordinary personality. That is also reinforced not only by visualizations, but by self generation sadhanas and other practices. That is further reinforced by mantras. It is so very rich. There are tremendous amounts of resources in that. Truly speaking – I am not trying to be a Buddhist vajrayana missionary or Jehovah’s witness of vajrayana – but that is what vajrayana provides.

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By doing so it is not only altering the personality of the individual, but you will discard all negative emotions and the sources of negative emotions. Thereby you can stop negative karma and all suffering and obtain the cessation of suffering, which is the joy that has never known suffering. That is all achieved by vajrayana meditations. It is not just visualization, but everything combined together and that becomes the vajrayana practice.

With all of them we need to learn what to do, otherwise we don’t know. I came to the United States to teach first in the mid 80s, like 84, 85, 86 as a visiting teacher. From 87 onwards I began to settle here. First I worked for a professor in Cleveland, at Case Western Reserve and he taught Tibetan political history. I began to teach people like you and I hesitated to use the word ‘meditation’, thinking that nobody would know and people would freak out. Then one day I did talk about meditation and the moment I said the word, those 10 people with me in the Friends Meeting House starting moving and putting their hands in a particular position and adjusting the body posture. So I was stupid. You people were aware of meditation much more than I thought. Particularly, my training does not make a big deal out of calling it meditation. More or less, people would make fun of people and make jokes. That doesn’t mean we don’t do meditation. We do it every day so much, but we don’t label it, because it is part of your life. So you don’t label it separately. You try to bring awareness all the time, 24 hours a day, at least half the day when you are awake and bring alertness.

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Even before we were told about wandering mind and sinking mind we knew that sinking is a problem and wandering is a problem, without being told – as kids. The sinking also has subtle sinking and gross sinking. Nobody has to be told that gross sinking is a problem, because then you will be snoring very soon. But even the subtle sinking we knew was a problem. So it became part of life. They didn’t tell you, “Now you sit down, now you cross your legs” and so on. When you read back in your notes it was taught, but as kids we didn’t notice.

So meditation is really important and that’s how we really make a difference in our life. But it is necessary to know how, otherwise we will just be sitting there daydreaming. As a kid – I don’t know how old I was, maybe 6 or 7, I had a private instructor who was a great teacher. He had two other students along with me. One was an extremely learned geshe. Later in India even HH Dalai Lama took a lot of teachings from him. He was not from Tibet, but from India, in the southern Himalayas, a place called Kinnaur. The other was called “business man”. Now I am thinking he was a retired business person. He was probably okay financially for himself. I always used to think he was a rich man. But when I am thinking back I don’t think he was that rich. But he managed. He had a little house that had a nice, little downstairs apartment with courtyard, kitchen and somebody cooking for him. Upstairs in his house there was an apartment for my teacher, Gen Yundrung Rinpoche. At the right side of his apartment was a room for Geshe Rigzin Tenpa. Gen Rinpoche gave teachings in the afternoon, after lunch. He have lam rim teachings. In the evening we were supposed to review his teaching. That was the actual meditation. I was a young kid and didn’t know. So I was made to sit in between Gen Rigzin Tenpa and this Tsonpö-la, the business guy.

To me it seemed the evening meditation went till way after midnight. But I don’t think so. It must have been two, three hours at the most. But for a little kid it is too long, way too long, presuming it was way after midnight. No one will move. Gen Rigzin Tenpa would sit very straight and not move. Then when I looked over to the business guy, he sat like this [hunched over with head tilted to the right]. And he wouldn’t move either. And so it went day after day, every day, for years. They were meditating. I don’t know what I was doing, just sitting there, maybe day-dreaming and maybe trying to think about what he said.

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One day I asked Gen Rinpoche, “What am I supposed to do?” He said, “If you don’t know how to meditate, just repeat and say it. For example say: human life is precious. It is difficult to find. Just keep on saying it and that is good enough.” So if I made noise I would be disturbing the others but they won’t bother, they would know that I was saying something. We were sitting very close, almost lined up.

So it is necessary to learn. But what? Buddhism is so huge. There is no way. So we thought we begin with the Four Noble Truths and that’s the reason why we spend a lot of time on the Four Noble Truths. That is our first learning. Now I have to really go back and conclude. We cannot continue the Four Noble Truths endlessly. When we did the teachings on the bodhisattvacharyavatara in Ann Arbor every Tuesday night, I thought at one point that it had been two years and that’s getting too long. So I said, “Well, it has been too long, a year or so” and somebody said, “Actually it has been six years”. So we did that for 6 years every Tuesday night and I thought it had been a year or so.

We don’t want that to go on endlessly. I want to conclude. The conclusion is that first why did Buddha make a big deal of teaching the Four Noble Truths? It was his first teaching after he became Buddha. He said, “I had a fantastic experience, but if I talk to anyone nobody will understand me. Therefore, I remain silent.” Then the mythological gods like Indra and Brahma came and gave Buddha the dharma wheel or dharma chakra. That is why the wheel is an important Buddhist symbol. Even the teachings of Buddha are referred to as First Turning of the Dharma Wheel, the Second Turning of the Dharma Wheel and the Third Turning of the Dharma Wheel. They are in those categories depending on whether they were made according to the time or other theoretical points, but more or less it is based on the subject.

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So the wheel became so important because Brahma gave the wheel, his own hand implement, to the Buddha, saying, “Teach”. Indra also gave his own implement, the conch shell. That’s why the conch shell is a very important Buddhist symbols and particularly for teaching. So then Buddha decided to give teachings and he first taught on the Four Noble Truths. I repeated that so many times to you, so you probably know now. The first Two Truths are the negative aspects, suffering and the cause of suffering. The last two truths are positive truths: the path and the cessation. They are also cause and result.

The first two are known as the negative aspects of the truth and the last two are known as positive aspects of the truth. In reality we have complete cause and effect of what we are, what is happening with our life, what will be, how it should be, how it could be and all of that is completed within that.

Even when we look at suffering today, we all have it, no doubt. We all have suffering, if not this, then that, mental, physical and emotional. The question is: where does that come from? Why is it here and why me? And many will tell you, “Don’t think that way. Don’t think ‘why me’?” But I think you do have to think that way, simply I have the cause to go through this suffering. I have the cause. Somehow the conditions happen to be right, so it materialized. That is the reason why me. Do I like it? No, I don’t. What do I do? Very simple. Can I stop this? Well, the present ones maybe not, but you can prevent [future sufferings]. How? By not engaging in their causes.

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That is how the individual mind is led to recognize the suffering. If you don’t recognize it then it is a big problem. If we don’t know that suffering is suffering, then that is a huge problem. There are people in jail who think it is a wonderful palace and they have their own little kingdoms built up there, with gangs and so on. Such a guy is not going to get out of that prison at all, because he enjoys the prison. It is not that the prison was made enjoyable to that person, but the person’s mind itself refuses to accept suffering as suffering. Does that mean the person doesn’t suffer? No, otherwise, if that’s true we can all do that. It just means that this person makes the best use – in the wrong way – of the unfortunate circumstances and making sure it will continue. Even if he gets out sure enough he will be back soon. That’s the problem of not knowing, of ignorance. I don’t want to say stupidity, but that’s what I am thinking, honestly.

What we avoid is that we need a change, a change from the causes that cause this very suffering. It will boil down to negativity, negative thoughts and actions, these two. Without thought there won’t be any action and without any action there won’t be any karma. That’s the very simple bottom line. So we create tremendous amounts of positive and negative karmas, which are endless sources of suffering and joy. We have not only suffering, we also have tremendous causes of joy. We cannot link that properly because the conditions are not right. Suffering comes easy, because conditions are right, so they link, they click and they materialize.

When you work with this you work against the causes and the conditions. You just can’t work against suffering itself. What are you going to do? Beat up the suffering or what? Gang up on it? If that helps we can all do that. But it doesn’t. So we have to look into the causes.

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Buddha made it easy for us, because of this own personal experience. It is he who did the whole research of where suffering comes from and what it really is. He found out that the bottom line is our negative emotions. Negative emotions influence our mind and make mind into negative nature. That negative mind will create negative deeds. These negative deeds bring the suffering. Very simply. It is the cause and result of suffering. You work on the causal level, not the result level. When there is no cause the result will be ended. Cessation comes. If you can’t end the cause it will continue to create suffering. It is like the good old-fashioned river valley projects. In the olden times you would take all the rain water from various mountains and lead them into a dam in the valley. When you cut all the water sources the dam is going to be empty. No more water will be coming from anywhere. Just like that, that was Buddha’s example. So cutting the source is the Second Noble Truth. When you cut the second, it stops the first. Cutting the second is engaging in the fourth. This is interesting. That is called the Path to the Cessation of Suffering. True dharma is cutting down the negativities and negative emotions, changing the mind from the control of negative emotions to positive emotions. That is true dharma, whatever you may call it. You may apply compassion or love or wisdom or all other activities, such as generosity, morality, etc. But that is changing the negative emotional mind and its influence into a positive mind and positive influence.

When you do that it is the true path, the true dharma, whether you practically call it this or that. So looking at the Four Noble Truths, recognizing the suffering.

Maitreya Buddha says:

Nä ne she ja ne gyu gyur ne pang dra la

De ne thop je mä ne ten pa ja wa thar

Dung ngel gyu dang den gor pa dang de chen lam

She ja pang ja reg par ja shing tenpar ja

The purpose of the First Noble Truth is to recognize, to know, to acknowledge. Question yourself if you like or dislike it. You will answer that you obviously dislike it. Then, where does that come from? From the source, the cause of suffering. Yes, it is karma, but where does that come from? We create it. How? Our mind is influenced by negative emotions and then we engage in negative deeds. Our mind gets jealous. Then we physically punch you. That is natural. That’s what it is. So we should avoid that. So, know your suffering and then avoid what makes you sick. We are very good at avoiding the things that cause us pain.

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We don’t want to eat this and don’t want to eat that, we have gluten allergy and we are very good at avoiding what makes us sick physically, what goes in our mouth and what we wear. So why don’t we do that also with our mind? Why not? Because you will see very different results. The sick person will take medicine and get treatment in order to make themselves well. We know that. On the spiritual path what are we supposed to do to make ourselves well? Let’s see if we can stop suffering and its causes. That becomes the cessation. To try to get the cessation, know the suffering, avoid its causes, obtain the cessation and engage in the cause of the cessation. That’s the Four Noble Truths.

That is very simple and easy when your mind gets used to it. And that is every day. You don’t necessarily have to be a “card carrying” Buddhist. That is simply being a good person, simply being helpful to yourself and others. That is the very basic, fundamental spiritual basis for us to function. That is how I think that works. I guess, that much I have to say.

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Now I would like to make a couple of announcements. We are very fortunate that Kyabje Lochö Rinpoche will give teachings at Jewel Heart Ann Arbor, from Nov 9 – Nov 20 or something. He will teach daily from 2 – 6 pm. He will give a teaching on Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa’s Essence of True Eloquence. This is the real cream of the crème on wisdom. It is translated into English and there are two English translations available. One is by Professor Robert Thurman called Central Philosophy of Tibet- A Study and Translation of Je Tsongkhapa’s ‘Essence of True Eloquence’. Princeton University Press, 1984. The second translation is by Jeffrey Hopkins called Emptiness in the Mind Only School of Buddhism – Dynamic Responses to Tsongkhapa’s ‘Essence of Eloquence’, Vol 1 – Buckly University, 1999.

These two translations are available for those who can. It is a great opportunity. I am sorry we cannot make it either early morning or evening, because of Rinpoche’s age. He is older than me, probably by 10 years or more. So 2 – 6 pm is the appropriate timing. You can partially attend and tapes will be available later. I don’t think we can make it available on line. Sometimes too much on line becomes not necessarily that great. To some people it is great, but to many it becomes a little too much.

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Then another thing that is happening is that HH Dalai Lama is giving teachings in Mundgod, Karnataka, India, from Nov 30 to Dec 13 for about 14 days. There are traditionally known 8 great commentaries on lam rim, including Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa’s big lam rim, his middle lam rim and small lam rim, then the nyur lam, de lam and the 5th Dalai Lama’s jam bel zhel lung and many I don’t remember. So there are 8 of them known as the 8 great commentaries. Plus, I think he is going to give 8 more. Some of them have teaching transmissions, some of them have only oral transmissions. He is giving all of these, but I don’t think he is completing them this year, because there is no way he can complete all that in 14 days. He will be doing that in Ganden monastery and Drepung monastery in Mundgod. We as Jewel Heart are not organizing a tour, but anyone who would like to go, please do and whatever we can help to find a place to stay or make food arrangements, we can do whatever we can. But we are not guaranteeing anything. So if you want to go with Jewel Heart, it is not an official Jewel Heart tour at all. We are not charging you anything and we are not taking responsibility of anything. But we will be able to assist, because it is the monastery and we have connections and dealings with it. Even the Nyagre Khamtsen yesterday evening sent a message saying that if anybody from Jewel Heart wants to come we will vacate the monks’ quarters for you people. It is very nice of them to say that.

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If you are going to have to get an Indian visa, unless you already have a multiple entry visa. India also has a problem that if you are in India for 2 months, then before 2 months you cannot go back to India. After that Mumbai problem they made that rule. You have to get separate visas and all kinds of things. Also, in order to go to the Tibetan settlement you need an extra permit. That has to be arranged in Dehli. We do have a travel agent who could do that. If you contact Ujjen-la he will try to help you, if you are going. We are not organizing your trip. You have to get your ticket and I recommend with my experience to fly either to Bombay, Bangalore or Madras. Don’t fly to Dehli. From anywhere in Northern India you have to go to South India. Madras is not that far. Bangalore is not that far, Bombay is not that far. From Bangalore, Madras or Bombay you have to go to a place called Hubli. That is in Karnataka State, near Mysore. Bangalore is in Karnataka, Bombay and Madras are not. But you can fly or take the train or bus. But remember, Indian buses and trains are not like traveling in the United States. Everything is very difficult and also you have to very careful with the water, because you get sick.

That doesn’t just mean drinking water, also fresh vegetables and fresh fruit are the biggest culprits, because that’s where you contact the water. You may not drink the Indian water. At least you try to get bottled water. Another thing is brushing your teeth with tap water. So there are many ways of handling those and I am sure Ujjen-la can tell you. There is something called iodine, some chemical powder that you put in the water and then it is okay. I used to live in India and I used to know that. Even the vegetables you can wash with that iodine powder. I don’t know if it is iodine or not. It is a little red powder. You put it in the water and soak the vegetables in there and wash them. Then they are sort of okay. But don’t take a risk. Don’t listen to me. You never know.

If you boil the water it is perfect, but I know for fact if you boil water you have to boil it for 20 minutes. You just don’t boil it until the kettle whistles. That won’t do for Indian water. After 20 minutes you can drink it.

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Also we have a picnic today at my house. You are all welcome…..[further details about picnic schedule and how to get to Rimpoche’s house] 0:58 then Four Immeasurables –

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You may be wondering how much that will cost for Lochö’s Rinpoche’s teaching. I don’t think there is any cost at all. Maybe there is some suggested donation. Suggested donation will all go to Lochö Rinpoche. And Jewel Heart doesn’t take anything out of it. So there will be no charge. Maybe I am going a little bit before the official announcement, but if people are wondering, that is how we would like to do it actually. Hopefully, we will begin to have no charge. We will start that in Jewel Heart. That is really what we are looking for.

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