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20130324GRNYETB03

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Good morning everybody. Last week on Sunday in Ann Arbor I said I will see you next Sunday, but I happen to be out and you are seeing me on the screen. So last week we talked about the motivation and how important the motivations are in everyday life. We said it is important to have a good motivation when you wake up in the morning and try to keep that good motivation throughout the day. We just simply mentioned to be good and kind and helping. We didn’t really talk too much about the motivation.

Recommended by Buddha’s teachings and particularly the Mahayana Buddhist teachings is the precious bodhimind. “Bodhimind” is a technical word that refers to an incredible mind that really sees every living being, everybody who has a life and a mind, i.e a sentient being, as the closest and nearest, dearest person and cares for them. It is some kind of unimaginable kindness towards every single living being. That’s what we call the precious bodhimind or precious Buddha mind. Such a mind you can imagine and think that you have that mind. I refer to that as ultimate, unconditional, unlimited love and compassion. In other words, when you are getting your love and compassion better and better and better, how far can it go? It can go up to that level, almost to everyone. When you can focus on everyone without any closeness and distance, feeling equally loving and equally caring and that strength of love and compassion does not have any limit. It is almost like say “the law is blind”. And it should be up to that level. That’s why it is ultimate, unlimited and unconditional love and compassion. When Mahayana Buddhism or Tibetan Buddhism talks about that precious mind, they are referring to that category of mind.

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If one could really gain that, almost everything whatever happens is like it says in Shantideva’s bodhisattvacharyavatara: “Since then, whether the individual is sleeping or is without any awareness and conscientiousness, whatever they do, every effort and every movement becomes not only positive, but also brings total enlightenment to the person.” Whatever you do thereafter, as long as the nature of the work you do is not negative or non-virtuous, then everything becomes extremely strong and great positive deeds. When we are talking about a good motivation we are referring to that particular mind.

That is not easy for us to get. At the beginning we can have at the artificial, imagining level, pretending to have it, mentally imagining and trying to live with that. That’s what we mean by this precious bodhimind. So in the beginning at least think, ‘I would like to be in such a state’, ‘I would like to be at that level’ so that everything I do for the day and for this particular work at that moment and whatever I do I do for that purpose. That way we keep the motivation.

Is is really possible for us to gain such a motivation? Is it possible for me, Joe Blow in the downtown American city anywhere, New York, Detroit, Ann Ann Arbor, Chicago, Cleveland or Singapore or wherever? The answer is yes. It is not only possible, but it can definitely be done. Buddhas have done it before, bodhisattvas have done it before and many great beings before us have done it, teachers, simply good persons, so why not us, why not you and me? We can do it for sure. But it is not instantaneous. It takes effort. I don’t want to use the term “Mind Training”, because you may misunderstand it to be like the “Silva Mind Training”. There is a danger of going into that direction. So I don’t want to use that term, but you may call it mental practice. We do need that.

The first and foremost step is equanimity. This is another funny term. On the one hand, it contains equality. That is something great we enjoy. Every American can accept it when you talk about equality. That’s what our goal and that’s what our democracy is all about and our freedom. So we know that.

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But Buddha’s equality is more than that. It is more than equal rights. That can be a little difficult. This morning I was thinking about this. It is interesting. The Tibetan – or rather the Sanskrit word refers to this as precious mind. And there is a suffix; a few words come before precious. It says to let go of yourself and cherish all other beings. It is such a precious mind. That is the old-fashioned expression. It means to let go of selfishness and cherish others. When you think about it, that is almost next to impossible for our mind right now.

Right now, when we think about ourselves, “me” and “my”, no matter whatever we do, it is there. We try to to pretend we act for everybody. We all do. We can blame the politicians, that this is their language, but in reality they don’t care and that they only care for their votes and their elections and their own pockets. But letting go of oneself and caring for others is extremely difficult for anyone. Particularly considering that others are equally important to ourselves is hard. Theoretically we accept that, politically we accept it, but in our honest mind, in our heart of hearts we cannot accept that. We think, “I am the most important” and “If I don’t care for me, who else will care for me?” We all use that expression and even I do. It is very useful too. When I talk about Buddhism and love and compassion I have to say, “If you don’t care for yourself, who else will care for you?” It works, it makes a difference, it helps people, so I use it and it is true. But now when you think about it there is more than that. If I say, “Leaving me out, I care for everybody else”, that mind is extremely difficult to bring. That doesn’t mean you really have to let go of caring for yourself. But you should care equally for you, just as much as I care for myself.

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That is the difficult aspect. It is possible and the mind really needs to be trained for that. Then the mind will be comfortable to think about it and say it and work with it. That is going to take a hell of time. When you talk about equanimity, it is easy to say the word and also equality and equal liberty and so on, but when you really truly compare yourself and others then we automatically choose ourselves. There is no question, there is no argument. It is beyond discussion. This is how our mind works. Whether that is true or not, check with yourself. You don’t have to talk to anybody else. Sit down and think about it. Then, no matter, even if yourself you try to tell yourself that ‘considering only me is not right’, we all know that, but even then we have that. Practically it is very difficult to get rid of. It is there. It is always with us. It is attached. Everybody loves compassion, but the love and compassion we normally talk about is a comfortable love, a comfortable compassion. At the level of your own comfort, then we have limits to our compassion and love. We have selected compassion and selected love. There is probably a danger of that being attachment and even obsession, and a big question whether that love is pure or not. These are the questions you have to ask yourself and give yourself a little opportunity to explore within yourself. Then we will definitely see how strong the influence of selfishness and the concern for our own well-being is. All that will take total priority in everything we do in life. We talk about family, about children and a few people may be able to consider the children and the family more important than themselves, but if you let your mind play you will notice that you yourself is more important to you than your own family.

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Even among your family, the most important is you. We have this old Tibetan saying. One kid is supposed to have said,

“I hate it when people are fighting. But when my father is fighting with others I like to see my father win, because he is my father. But when I have to fight with my own father then I like to see that I am winning over my father because it is me.”

Whether that is a saying or a joke or whatever, it is speaking the nature of our thoughts and shows how our mind cherishes oneself so much and is ready to ignore everybody else, and not only ignore but even sacrifice for the sake of saving oneself. It is not a surprise, when someone walks into the room that one person will be hiding behind another. So we are ready to sacrifice another person to save ourselves. If you are hiding behind a table, chair or cupboard or something, that is understandable, but hiding behind other human beings, behind your loved owns, behind even your children, many of us will do that. That shows the self-cherishing in our mind is so powerful. It has such a strong grip. It holds us so tight. We have intellectual knowledge and we know that selfishness is not good. We pretend we don’t have that. All of us do. We can blame the politicians and point out that they are acting in that way. But when we look at ourselves, we do the same thing. We make joke about politicians and laugh at them, but we do the same thing ourselves.

That shows how much selfishness we have. When we talk about equanimity and equality, it is about you and me, it means that me and others are equal. So yes, theoretically and politically, we accept that, but practically really we don’t. That’s where we are today. When we talk about the motivation of the precious mind, when we talk about pure love and pure compassion, that is another thing. Many of us feel quite comfortable with love and compassion, but when you look carefully it is more attachment than pure love. The moment we use words like “all sentient beings” or “all living beings” we begin to feel uncomfortable. It is impossible to imagine and impossible to think of loving all of those. That shows us: where is the pure love within us really?

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I hope that what I am talking to you this morning is not too harsh; I think it is the reality. Sometimes, we need to throw that in so that you have some idea of what pure love is really all about. We can dismiss it and say “without attachment it is pure love”, but what do you mean by attachment? The love we are comfortable with is the one with attachment. We have love-addiction. There is an advantage too. I am not saying that every love is bad. Look at families. Whatever family dynamic has been cemented, that is love. Whatever society has done to keep itself together is through love. So even though it is with attachment, it is very useful. Honestly. But in the long run, from the Buddha’s and the bodhisattvas’ point of view it might not be the right love. However, even that has a lot of advantages. It even makes the individual cool down. You may be burning with anger and hatred, but that love will be like a little bit of cold water poured over that huge burning sensation. You know, I don’t have to say it. We have all experienced that comfort that this love can give us. That’s why we are addicted to it. That’s why we enjoy that and that’s why we also suffering. There is the first love and then there are problems and then we are tolerating those problems. If we have to develop tolerance for the purpose of something very positive it is quite difficult. But we tremendous tolerance in the service of attachment. That is human nature. It is not human nature as such, but it is our addiction. It is our addiction to love and comfort. For the sake of that little comfort, for the feeling of soft and gentle care, for the sake of feeling loved, we are willing to sacrifice so much. That shows the human capability – when it is going the wrong way. We are willing to tolerate everything.

If you are a spiritual practitioner that very addiction, that very tolerance should be able to be used for pure love. If you do so then every work you do, every effort you make will become absolutely worthwhile and absolutely beautiful and beneficial for not only yourself but for all beings. The benefit to all beings is actually the benefit for yourself. Many of those are very funny. When you look at positive and negative, virtuous and non-virtuous, there are lots of twists and turns.

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Doing something for the benefit of others and even making sacrifices or doing enjoyable things or whatever, all become virtues, because you are serving and helping those who need it, the weaker sections of society. We always look at the economically weak or health-wise weak and educationally weak. But truly the weaker section is more than that. Actually all of us are very weak in our virtue. All of us are very, very weak in our positive karma. All of us are very weak in our capability. All of us are very fragile through hatred, obsession, hatred, attachment, jealousy. When you talk about the weaker section of society we don’t have to look in the ghettos in the inner cities. They are weak, I am not saying they are not. But we are weak too, you and me, who are here today, we are all weak, very weak in our faith, in our pure love. Perhaps that is even not existing. We are very weak in our tolerance. In every one of us there is tremendous weakness and fragility. When we talk about the ‘weaker section’ we are talking about ourselves.

When we talk about helping everybody, that is actually the way to helping ourselves. Otherwise, if you just say, “I want to help myself and therefore I am going to do this and that” then it is becoming selfish. That’s very funny. In order to make it it pure love and pure service you have to make these twists and turns. These are the mental techniques, using the energy and efforts and turning it into positivity. That’s why every Tibetan Buddhist prayer, right in the beginning says,

“For the benefit of all beings, I would like to do this and that”…The words are put there, because the earlier teachers were so great. They thought that people will forget. They are not organized and some people of weaker capacity can’t even think straight, so for them just even to say the words may remind them of something. That’s if you think what you are saying. Then you are going to get something. That’s why every prayer we say, every mantra we say and every effort we put in, the beginning of that has to be the motivation.

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Then as a Buddhist you also take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And then you generate this compassion/love oriented thought. That is the first step of getting into Tibetan Buddhism.

That’s why I introduced the motivation to you, particularly the motivation of love and compassion. So that is Step One, developing love and compassion and that is equanimity to begin with. When I say, “I love people”, that is acceptable to any American and to anybody for that matter. But when you talk about loving equally, loving all of you equally as much as I love myself” it is different. The word is “all of you”, not one of you. That doesn’t mean that love one less than all. But you love all equally. That I think is what equanimity is talking about and that is the first step.

So I hope you will remember that and next Sunday I will be talking to you again. I am going to close here. Thank you so much.

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