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20121202GRAATB48

00:00

Good morning and welcome to the Sunday talk “Tibetan Buddhism with me” and I am Gelek Rimpoche. Although last week I did say here in Ann Arbor that I will be here personally for a couple of weeks, I did get the opportunity to be able to attend teachings in India in Drepung Monastery, for Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa’s lam rim teachings. There are 8 great commentaries, including the Great Lam Rim, Middle Lam Rim, Short Lam Rim, Quick Lam Rim, Smooth Lam Rim, the 5th Dalai Lama’s “Manjushri’s Words”, etc. and in addition to that His Holiness is giving 18 different lam rims. So I have the opportunity and I am taking it. So when you are hearing this I am in India. This is a recording and I have been recording the next couple of talks also and they will come to you that way.

Last week, if I remember correctly, I did give you the definitions of those Four Noble Truths. I did not give you all four. I did talk to you about the definition of the First Noble Truth, which is the Noble Truth of Suffering. I did say

Rang gyur/ lhen gyün chi kye pai/ sa cha kyi ngö po te/ dug gnal den pai ngo wo/

It is a contaminated thing which is born out of karma and delusion.

So it is a contaminated thing which is created by its own cause of delusion or afflictive emotions and its own karma. That’s the brief definition of the First Noble Truth.

Now I might as well give you all four definitions together. When I was talking to you live I was going with this and that, but since I am going to do this as a recording I might as well as give you all four definitions.

The definition of the cause of suffering, the Second Noble Truth:

Rang de/ dug ten kye pei / lhen gyün kyi ri kyi dö pei te/ kun jung den pai ngo wo/

Either delusion/afflictive emotional – or afflictive emotion-influenced karma, which will be able to create your own result of suffering.

That’s sort of defined in a sense to give you an idea of when we talk about the cause of suffering. It is the causal level, not the result level, which will bring your own result, which will be suffering. Either it is your karma or your afflictive emotion or both.

0:06

The Third Noble Truth is:

Rang nyi/ thob je pa je me lam kyi ngo ke je/ pang je pang pa/ so so tang gor te/ ngo den kyi ngo wo

This is a point of stoppage of negative functioning or negative cause or negative result. When the negative is stopped, what makes it stop? The direct meditative state, the direct, fully concentrated state without obstacles or obstructions. The word in Tibetan is pa che me lam [lit: path without obstructions, sometimes called ‘uninterrupted path’] It is the meditative state that has no obstacle at all. That very state is single-pointed. There is no dualistic experience. Therefore it is focused one pointedly only, which is the direct antidote of the cause of suffering, which we address as ignorance.

By strong engagement with that meditative state you cut all your obstacles. “Obstacles” here is referring to negative emotions, the creation of negative karma and any thoughts that create afflictive emotions – anyone of those, that are either negative deeds by virtue or which by their virtue are causing negative deeds of which are the result of negativity. They are all totally stopped. That stopped stage is the defined point of the Third Noble Truth, the Truth of Cessation.

It is a cessation in the sense that something has been finished or exhausted. However, that is exhaustion not in the sense of being empty as in “emptiness” or nothing being there. Here it means something that you gain by stopping, by completely exhausting the negative within you. It is something you gain. That is great positivity and that is the defined point of “cessation”.

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The Fourth path refers to the activities the individual engages in to be able to obtain that cessation, which I mentioned to you earlier some time back, to obtain the “joy that has never known suffering”. That is the cessation, I think. There is no such thing called suffering, it never, ever existed at that point.

Ngo den top je kyi thab ngu sam de yi gyun/ kyi ri pei dü pe/ pa lam te/ lam den kyi ngo wo

“Path” means the activities that are able to bring that to the individual. Each one of these individually I have talked to you over almost a year now. So you know. You hear a lot of things, like the 37 wings of the buddhas’ activities, or “The Eight-fold Path” or even the Four Noble Truths itself is the path that leads to that cessation. Also you hear about the Four Mindfulnesses and the Ten Transmissions of the Wisdom Teachings. All of those are the path. We also talked about the path in terms of the Three Yanas, the Theravada – Mahayana and Vajrayana. They are all details we somehow have filled up completely.

Now I am giving you the theoretical points and definitions. The defined points I am giving to you, why do I say this and from where do I get it?

I would like to quote from one of the collections of the early Indian teachings, called ten la a pe du wa. In that the question is asked: what is the meaning of suffering?

The reply given to that is:

Something created by afflictive emotional activities.

0:15Then what is the meaning or defined point of the cause of suffering?

The reply is:

One that brings the First Noble Truth:

lam den kyi ngo wo yin de/ dug ngel ten pai dön k ache na/ me pa/ nyön mong pa le zhu wei/ du je kyi dön du/ kun jung ten pei dön ka je na me pa/ dug ngel kye par je pei dön du

Third is the Cessation:

The question says: what does Truth of Cessation mean?

The reply says:

De nyi nye war zhi pei dön du/

Very pacified, peaceful

That is because there is no suffering. Sufferings are exhausted, so it is peace. This will continue.

Then lastly: what is the defined point of the Path to the Cessation, lam den kyi dön ka zhe na..

The answer is:

Achieving the Third Truth, which is Cessation.

This way I sort of gave you the definition of officially filling up what the First Noble Truth means, what does the Second Noble Truth mean, what does the Third Noble Truth mean and what the Fourth Noble Truth means. This is sort of the back-up for why I should say that. This is the traditional source where Buddha had mentioned that. That should be just enough for you to be able to get brief definitions of the Four Noble Truths.

The other day we also talked about the criteria or divisions with the divisions. That is not necessarily in the sense of dividing, but rather defining each one of those truths. That’s because there were 16 wrong views earlier in India, according to the Buddhist traditions. The correction of these 16 wrong views will be the defined points of this.

I am apologizing because my English is not good enough here. That’s my difficulty here.

0:20

When we are defining self or person or “me” or “I”, then of course there are earlier schools of thought that say that “I” is permanent. It is always there, it has been there all the time and it will be there and it is here now. So it is permanent. In order to contradict and point out that it is not permanent, that’s why we talk about impermanence. We talked about that last Sunday. It is quite clear and I do not need to add up anything.

The name itself is suffering. We talk about suffering. There are schools earlier on that also expressed that “self” is joy, pure, permanent and existent. These four points. According to the Buddhist idea, “self” is not pure, it is impure. We talked about contaminated. We are saying that it is not uncontaminated.

It is very strange, I must tell you here. I had a number of talks with my friends who are medical doctors. Many of them will tell you that our body is absolutely clean. When you cut it, you will find everything is absolutely clean and pure and if it is not, that means you have a disease. But “self” itself has a disease. It itself is impure, from the spiritual point of view. Also from the material point of view it is impure. From the point of view of mental desires it is contaminated. From every angle, from everywhere you look it is really contaminated. We are full of jealousy, hatred, obsession, meanness and so on. So you cannot go and round around like a headless chicken and say we are pure and uncontaminated, because we are not. We are really quite contaminated, not pure.

So it is not pure, not joy, not permanent.

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Why is it not permanent? Let’s look at our own five skandhas or aggregates. They are not permanent, because they grow sometimes and disappear sometimes. So they are not permanent. They are suffering. Why? Because we don’t have the freedom. We are not free in our own will. We are being controlled by other means, such as our karma, our negative activities and for that matter also our positive activities. Anyway, it is not freedom, because it is controlled by others. That doesn’t mean other individuals, but “other” in the sense of other terms and condition and times and conditions, anything that is not truly, independently free. It is controlled by other means, which means we are suffering. We are empty, because there is no one who is owning it. There is no one within that. There is no ownership because it is so many impermanent things combined together and functioning.

These are the reasons. It is impermanent, because it doesn’t stay permanently all the time. It is changing, sometimes growing, sometimes decaying, sometimes destroyed, sometimes developed. It is suffering, because it not self-controlled freedom. Or else it is freedom without anybody’s control. It is controlled by other means. That’s why it is not freedom and therefore it is not joy and therefore it is suffering. It is empty, because there is no ownership.

0:30

There is someone other than me that is the owner, someone who says it is responsible. It is selfless, because it is controlled by many other impermanent things, like time, conditions, events, etc, many things. That is why it is impermanent, suffering, empty. Don’t think of the empty as in emptiness. Don’t think of selfless here as there is no self, from the wisdom point of view. It is, but a little more gross than that. There is no one who we call the self or me. It is all just conditioned.

These are the four important criteria of the Truth of Suffering. That’s all I would like to talk to you about today. Next week you will hear about the Second and Third Noble Truths, etc. Thank you. 0:32 Four Immeasurables played by John Madison. 0:34