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00:00

Good morning and welcome to today’s Sunday talk on Tibetan Buddhism with Gelek Rimpoche.

We have been talking about principles of Tibetan Buddhism for almost the whole year. This is October, so there are two more months, meaning a couple of Sundays. Mostly we have been talking about the principles of Tibetan Buddhism. If I recollect who we started was with the question: where does it begin, taking the advantage of Tibetan Buddhism? How does that help me as an individual in downtown Ann Arbor – since we are in Michigan today? But you can think similarly of downtown anywhere, whethere it is Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Shanghai - or since many of our listeners are in Brazil – downtown Sao Paolo or Rio or wherever you are. You can think, “How does that help me?”

I said that when I learnt I learnt in three ways how Tibetan Buddhism affects me. Being a Tibetan, born and brought up in Tibet, almost like at the end of the Renaissance period there has benefited me, no doubt. But even then, under those circumstances, I also went through a process. What I learnt about this process are three steps: learning, contemplating and meditating. Meditation is the major thing. However, I was taught, and it is the true reality, that you have to know what you are meditating on. It is great to meditate without knowing what you meditate on. People do that a lot and it is still beneficial. It helps a lot. As you know, more or less, meditation has become some kind of mainstream health care method, just like yoga. It is a great thing. It benefits people. You can get mental relaxation.

0:05

Many people do – I don’t know if I am supposed to say it, but it came up to my throat, so might as well as throw it out – use joints to get mental relaxation. That’s a fact. Maybe one is not supposed to say it. But meditation does almost the same thing. Joints being a chemical affect your blood, just like alcohol, right? Meditation is mental and it takes a little time to physically feel it. First you get familiar, then you get used to it and then your rhythm or your breathing and your mind and everything has to be synchronized with the meditation and then that first affects the mind, then the body and all of you. Actually the effects of meditation are a little longer lasting than the chemicals. That’s one thing and it‘s a great help and wonderful.

But [you can do much more:] cut down and reduce our negative emotions and deeds. When I talk about joints you may be thinking that we are a bunch of hippies here. But it’s not that everybody smokes joints. A few people may do it. I should have said “medical marihuana” anyway, that would have been more polite. Some people may use that and that’s fine. It is legal and fine and everything. But not everybody does. So you don’t have to think that everybody who is with me is a joint user. There are just a few. We all know that. But that’s not a big deal. In a way……well, I better keep my mouth shut. I only mentioned it because of the effect that you get. I am not saying that meditation is the same as smoking a joint, okay? But it can bring help similar to it. I am telling you that because I know, that’s why.

But we need to cut down our real problems that bring suffering to our life and lives and these are not physical, they are mental. The moment you say mental, the way you focus on the mind you can really think three different things: positive mind, negative mind and neutral. You are not going to find anything extra outside this. It can be neutral, like you keep on day-dreaming or whatever, those types of things. These are neither positive nor negative, unless you have a good motivation. If you have a motivation like compassion or bodhimind in the morning that will influence the whole day. Then your day dreaming has a very good chance of being positive. Without that motivation, day dreaming is day dreaming. That’s mostly neutral.

0:11

Then you have positive deeds, like faith and being mindful and aware of enthusiasm. The subject I talked to you last week was on enthusiasm. It was recorded earlier. Then also wisdom and even meditation itself can be positive or negative. That depends on what you are meditating on and what your motivation is. They are all instruments or tools. You have generosity, morality, patience, enthusiasm, concentration (which is meditation) and wisdom. All of them are almost like tools for us to deal with life and the individual. If it is influenced by positive thoughts like compassion and love, then it becomes positive. But it could also be influenced by attachment and hatred. Then the consequences can be negative. When we say that we like to have something solid spiritually, that to me means making a positive difference in our life and lives thereafter. That is solid for me. When it is not affecting our life and lives after then it is simply a good feeling, or a bad feeling and the technical language for that is “love and light”. To me, to be honest with you, that is wishy-washy, rather than solid.

To make it solid means to have it take effect. And I mean positive effect. Otherwise there can be negative and neutral effects too. But we need positive effects in our life and lives. The principle of whether it is affecting our life and lives is not based on what you feel.

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Feeling is one thing. Our mental and physical feeling of today can be influenced by anything. Even reading a novel will affect you. Even your day dreaming will affect you. So feeling is not a reliable reason for a solid spiritual path. A reliable reason has to be a reason that never lets you down. That’s what you need. What is the reliable reason that never lets you down? For me it is karma. For you – you have to find that out yourself. I cannot tell you that it has to be karma. I learnt from Buddhism and I practice that myself. So I know that good things I do affect goodness for me and bad things affect bad things for me. I learnt that not only as learning through hearing and reading, but through understanding and internally it comes out. That’s a different learning than what you have heard and have ideas about or what you have read and have an idea about. There are several types of understanding here:

Understanding gained following the words you heard and understanding gained following reading books and other information go together. That is part of understanding gained through learning.

Then you analyze and critically examine whether what you have learnt is right or wrong. Then when you find that it is right you have found one more better understanding than simply that through learning. It has a stronger basis. On that basis of learning through analyzing, you convince yourself of what is right. You don’t just trust a person, you don’t simply follow something because So and So said it is right. That will help and also harm. But in your personal experience what do you gain? Personally, truly convincing yourself is different.

0:19

Take a subject like impermanence. That means that everything changes. We are experiencing impermanence. The week before last we had beautiful sunshine and summer here. Then I went for one weekend to Garrison and came back and all my flowers are dead because of this two day frost. They are gone! So it has changed. Of course it is seasonal change that repeats every year, no doubt about it. Sometimes it comes a littler earlier, sometimes later, but it is impermanence, because it is changing. Change means impermanence. It is the same thing. Impermanence means it is changeable. When you look at impermanence you don’t have to convince yourself more than what you see, feel and know. It is a totally well- known fact that we have established in our mind. That is what I am talking about: gaining true understanding following not only information and reading, but through knowledge. That is solid knowledge. That is using Tibetan Buddhism through learning, analyzing and meditating. Out of these three steps that is the learning aspect.

The subjects to learn are so vast. So we thought we follow the Four Noble Truths, because that’s what Buddha taught. I have to also conclude these Four Noble Truths. I can’t keep sitting here and keep talking about it. Apparently it is going to be the whole year that I talked about it, but I don’t want to go into a second or third year. We used to have our meetings on Tuesday nights and started with the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life – how to function if you are a bodhisattva. After some time I said that maybe it was getting too long and we had already been doing this for a couple of years and then Dr. Tony King said, “It has already been six years”. I didn’t realize it had gone for that long. I don’t want the Four Noble Truths to go for that long. I will definitely conclude this subject in a couple of Sundays.

I did talk about it in quite some detail, but now it is time for me to close the chapter. I can leave it there, saying that’s what it is, but I think I have to say a little bit more to put them all together. That’s what I will do over the next couple of Sundays, a couple in November and a couple in December. Some of them will be recorded and for most of them I will talk to you live, like this.

What we came to is learning the Four Noble Truths. You know why? If you really know the Four Noble Truths, if you have solid information, or functionable information on the Four Noble Truths, you can manage your life spiritually, positively. You can. That’s why Buddha taught first the Four Noble Truths. All the teachings of the Buddha are part of the Four Noble Truths. They are labeled Four Noble Truths, but almost all the teachings of the Buddha can fit into them. There will be nothing that does not go into one of those four. Whoever, wherever, and not only Buddha, but also his disciples thereafter, up to now, 2600 years – whatever experience those Buddhist teachers shared with us, all of them will fit into either of the Four Noble Truths.

0:25

It looks like small and easy, but it can be made into bus stop Buddhism or it can be a huge subject that scholars can study and learn and express their understanding throughout their life. That’s why it is like an eye to look out at any existence. It is like an ocean that can collect all the rivers of the various continents. Honestly. That’s why the Four Noble Truths is in a way an easy subject, in a way it is difficult and in a way it is sophisticated and complicated and it is also easy, because you have suffering, the cause of suffering, the way to get out of suffering and the result. It is quite simple. That is the basis of our life. No matter whatever you think about, any melodrama in our life, all of them will fit in there. Either it is suffering or cause of suffering or joy or the cause of joy. Give me one that is not included from your own life. You won’t have it. Think about it. It is so important. I don’t know what word I can use. It is so comprehensive. There will nothing in our life-long experience that doesn’t fit in that. Anything. Not only our physical deeds, but even any thought that you could ever entertain, that could ever appear in your life, all fits in here. It is such a thing in our life, really, getting a grip on that, getting organized.

A have a couple of friends who are book editors and they told me that it is always easier to keep the Four Noble Truths in mind and then the subjects you are dealing with works better. They are talking about books on mental health, nutrition, mind, and all kinds of things. They are finding that easy to organize based on the principle of the Four Noble Truths as base. Not only is that effective in our life, but it also makes you organized. I wish I could demonstrate how you can organize your closet based on that, but I haven’t got there yet.

0:30

The tool that you use after enthusiasm is concentration or meditation. I am supposed to refer you to the transcript called GOM from my talks. I cannot blow my own horn, but I should say it is a jolly good book on meditation. What happens is that first we introduce who meditates, then what you meditate on, then the problems that come first, then the problems when it changes at the second level and what are the symptoms and how you handle them. So it is sort of comprehensive. When I look back you can see a number of transcripts, some 30 transcripts. This is one of them and when I look that is one that is not so bad. I can’t say it is great, but it’s not so bad. So you can really benefit. No matter how much I talk I cannot do better than that transcript. But briefly speaking, when you meditate you need to have a point on which you meditate.

This last weekend we were in Garrison, talking about the beautiful experiential song of a great master from the 18th century. I began to realize that normally I would say “the subject on which you meditate”. But I began to realize that the subject and object change. It is so funny. For complicated things I think in Tibetan. And there subject remains subject and object remains object. The subject is the self or observer. But that changes in English. Subject and object keep on changing. So that’s why I better not say “the subject on which you meditate”, but “on what you meditate”. So first you find the object. Once you have found the object, you focus on it. While focusing on it you have two problems. Either your mind will wander or sink. Wandering means that you will think about something else. You think are meditating but you will be thinking about last night’s TV show. That’s where my mind goes.

0:35

That’s the wandering mind. Then you bring it back and try to focus on whatever you are focusing and then the focus is not clear and you are struggling, trying to hold it and then you lose it and go between holding and losing and suddenly find you are sound asleep when somebody wakes you up! Or you snore and wake up from that. This is sinking. These are the two gross problems. When you have handled these, when you have managed these, then the subtle problems will come. That is a little more complicated than just wandering and sinking mind. It looks like you are focusing but you don’t have the grip, you don’t grab the subject.

When I was a kid, I was given an example that may or may not be a good example, I don’t know, but the example that was given to me is this: a little butter lamp. The Tibetans have these butter lamps, silver pots or whatever and in that they put liquid butter and a wick on that. The pot is filled up completely. Then somebody will tell you, “Take this from here to there”, maybe 2, 3 feet away. So you are holding it. It is hot and it can burn you if you are not careful. If you tilt it here or there it is going to burn your hand. It is hot, liquid butter. If you get that on your hand it will burn you – and it makes a mess. And then walk with that. So simply being focused alone won’t do. You really have to concentrate. This is what I mean with having a grip, the mind grabbing the subject. It is like the good old American automobiles. When you drive them they really grab the road. You know that. Nowadays they don’t do that. They jump around. But the cars in the old times would really grab the road. Just like that, not only it goes, but it grabs.

The power of grabbing, if it is strong it becomes good mediation, good focusing. If the power of that grabbing is weak, it means it is controlled by one of the subtle problems of either wandering or sinking. That is how you know yourself and you manage. The goal is to get free from those problems and then what you focus on who focuses, subject and object, become almost oneness. That is the essence of concentration. That is the essence of meditation. And that becomes the tool for the individual to pick up the character positively. That is really how the subject meditation changes you. That’s why you hear people say: you become what you think. That changes the person and that goes for positive thinking and negative thinking. That will influence the individual.

0:40

I often give the example of the lamp shade and light bulbs and colors. Mind is like a clean crystal lamp shade. Emotions are like light bulbs. When you look from the distance the lamp shade becomes red or green. How does it get influenced? This is exactly what I said. That is the essence of meditation or concentration. What you are thinking that is what you will become. So you have to think right, otherwise you will become wrong – which you don’t want to, right?

0:41

So that’s about it. Now I would like to say a couple of other things. This coming November we have Kyabje Lochö Rinpoche coming here. I thought that is very fortunate. Rinpoche has been my teacher, my master, since my childhood. That was in the monastery. Rinpoche is older than me, but not so much, I think 10 years or so. I am 73 and Rinpoche must be 86 or so now. Also he is one of the now best known spiritual teachers and also a great scholar. He has both, the experience and the scholarship, together within the one person. He is one of only few. If you look in the great monasteries today you will probably find one or two or three at the most. The present Ganden Tri Rinpoche is also very great. He is the head of the Ganden or Gelugpa tradition, the throne holder of Tsongkhapa. Then there are couple of abbots and geshes and that’s it. And even the Ganden Tri Rinpoche is also a student, a disciple of Lochö Rinpoche. So we are very fortunate to have him.

As I said earlier the timing is a little inconvenient. I cannot make Rinpoche teach in the odd hours of the morning or evening. So it is only going to be from 2 pm to 6 pm for 7 to 10 days. The teaching is on the Speech of Eloquence of Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa which has been translated into English by Robert Thurman and his translation has been rebuffed by Jeffry Hopkins – half of the translation. So Rinpoche is going to talk about that. And Robert Thurman is going to be here too. He said he wants to translate. He likes to do that because he would like to confirm his translation (laughs) – or clarify it. Anyway, whatever. He said he can’t be here on week days, but will be here on weekends. He has classes on Thursday and Friday. So when he doesn’t have classes in Columbia, NY he will come here and he would like to translate. We do have a good translator I was told, an American monk, a geshe probably and then Thurman. So I think it will be great.

0:46

Also we would like to inform you that we are not charging anything. Whatever donations people may give will totally go to Lochö Rinpoche, except expenses will be taken out. That will be travelling expenses of Rinpoche and retinue. Other than that, everything goes to Lochö Rinpoche. My goal is to have all the teaching be free. That’s what we want to do. That’s our purpose. In order to do that we have got to pay the mortgage of this house. In order to do that we have to pay the mortgage of this house, we have got to pay the staff and the insurance and health care and all of that. These are our major expenses, I believe. We have to meet them somehow. We really totally depend on membership and donations. That is 99% of our income. We don’t have government grants, we don’t have any companies supporting us, and no individual philanthropists are paying our bills. We really do that. We don’t talk much, but the membership and the donations are the major thing go be able to do all that. Hopefully we will be able to not charge anything. That’s what we want to. Right now when I looked it up I was told the membership has gone down. I also noticed that we collect membership and my idea was to have 2000 members or 2500. That will meet our budget obligations. Then we won’t have to charge anything for anything. Right now we don’t have that. We only have 300 – 400 members. That’s all. That has also gone down quite a lot. Then we have to charge for Digital Dhama. Not only cannot you now pray with credit, paypal doesn’t go either. There are all kinds of problems. I saw yesterday somebody was trying to pay with credit card. It said: pay by paypal. When you go to paypal it says: give this number, give that number. That person worked for three hours and it didn’t get through. That’s our administrative problem.

Our membership is one thing. If membership is met we don’t have to charge anything. Otherwise you have to pay for this thing, for that thing and it is almost like a televangelist. We don’t want that. That is not our goal. That’s not our purpose. I just wanted to remind you about the membership. The membership I put at $480. It is very steep for a lot of people, no doubt. But you don’t have to pay it all together. You can pray through credit card or whatever way you want to. You can pay it monthly. That is a much easier way to do it. But that way it will be helpful. It will not only help yourself but will help to preserve the great culture which really contributes tremendous joy and happiness for the life and lives of all people. This is one of the great preservations. It is also service to living beings, to all people. Whatever little hardship of money that goes to this also brings positive virtue, because you are not going to get any money of out if. There is no direct monetary benefit. So that has to be spiritual benefit – if your motivation is right, to help all beings. If you use that motivation, then even 50 cents can get you back 50 million in future. That is how karma works. The Buddha dharma is supposed to do that service. But if you don’t build that connection then that’s that. No one can do anything. Even the commercial people will tell you: this is great for you, but call 1 800….right? That’s what I noticed when I first came to America. “This is great for you, call 1 800….” Then I began to realize that you have to initiate it. That’s the positive way of thinking. The negative way of thinking is that it is a commercial. You can throw it out. But the positive way of thinking is a great protection. They cannot force that on you unless you initiate it. If you initiate it you get connected.

0:53

It works the same on the spiritual path too. I don’t say that all the time, so I would like to take today as advantage to remind you, because it is almost end of the year. Thanksgiving is not too far now. Even if you don’t get your membership, of you have a little extra, like $10 or $5 somewhere, instead of wasting that, if you donate it to Jewel Heart it will help not only yourself, but also everybody else.

I am very sorry to turn this into what looks like a commercial appeal, but forgive, sometimes I have to do that.

With that I would like to say thank you and we will have the dedication of the Four Immeasurables. That’s it. Thank you.

0:54 Four Immeasurables – 0:56 end of file