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20130407GRNYETB05

00.00

Good morning and welcome to today’s talk. We are talking about motivation in the Tibetan Buddhist teaching tradition. We are still on the subject of motivation. The recommended motivation is the precious bodhimind, Buddha’s most precious mind. When you think about this, the expression in the Tibetan language is dag pei zhen kye pai jang chub sem rin po che. That means “Considering others as more cherishable than oneself, such a precious, jewel-like mind.” That is the recommended mind. It is beautiful to talk about, but extremely difficult to manage. But it is not impossible. Many – like hundreds and thousands of enlightened beings and bodhisattvas – have gone through, having mastered and living their lives within that. That’s why it is not impossible.

It is difficult to gain, but once you get it, everything works out by itself extremely well.

That’s what we have been talking about. We have been talking about the process of developing that. We said that before we think about others’ needs as most important than our own personal needs, we have to think about equality of my needs and other people’s needs. We have to see that in our own mind. My priority is my needs; my needs are my priority. Others’ needs take second priority. This is in our nature. Unless we can equalize our own needs and those of others in our mind, then it is impossible to treat others’ needs as more important than our own needs and desires.

0:04:16

So equality is the first step. The last two or three Sundays we have been talking about equality. Equality is something that when I think about it, is not an unusual or foreign subject. The principle of American life and the life of any democracy is actually based on equality. If you don’t have equality, how is democracy going to come? No way. So equality is extremely important and people do accept that.

0:05: 31

This is unlike a long time ago, when there were difficulties with equality, even in this country. There were racial problems and that’s not only an American problem but that is everywhere else. Even today it is there. It is not gone completely, but it is much less than it used to be, at least in American. So the equality business is not foreign to us. It is very much at home as a democratic principle. It is not strange Buddhist terminology. It is not strange Tibetan Buddhist language. It is not Sanskrit, but it is in our everyday life.

0:07:00

Without equality, cherishing others is impossible. The first step is for us to establish equality. Your needs are equally important than mine. We have to accommodate both, and if possible, we have to find something very useful for both our purposes. That’s why we have to establish equality. There is no reason why my desire is more important than your desire. We say “it’s because it is mine. That’s more important than yours.” You can see un-equality there, un-equal rights. Since we all agree to be equal, it can’t just be equal in being human being or even in having equal human rights, but we have to treat others equally from our heart.

0:08:25

That is a basic principle of equanimity. It is strange language, but equality is nothing strange or unusual. When you talk about equality and fulfilling the desire of you and I or self and others, we have to be able to treat them equally. Again, this is not impossible, but every much possible and very doable. This is the basis of pure love and pure compassion. Without that we have a one-eyed compassion. Maybe that’s a new expression for you, but it is based on the good old Tibetan example of the one-eyed yak. The one eyed yak on the mountain side will only eat one side of the grass and leave the other side, because it can only see with one eye. So that’s the unequal expression. So equality and equanimity is the foundation of all basic motivation.

0:10:27

The second step will be looking at other people, and finding out: who are they to me? Who are they? Then we will begin to see strange things. We will look at one person, thinking: “This is my most beloved and nearest and dearest.” We look at another person, thinking, “This is my most hated person, horrible.” Again that is a very unequal feeling. It is natural and there is nothing wrong with it. If we notice there is nothing wrong. I may be talking that it is not the right way, but it is very natural. Perhaps, sometimes if you don’t have that, something is wrong too. It is natural. I am not saying it is right and good nature, but it is our nature. We do have it. We have to be really observing that mind for a little while, thinking about this. Why am I so much for the person that I like very much, the beloved one? Why do I have that other one so much?

1:12:40

We get very strong, valid reasons. The number one reason for the hated one will be: he or she is not a good person. If we like him or her, our reason will be: he or she is a great person. So we have all that pull and push in our mind. That is the basis on which love and hate develop. The pulling will pull people towards me and my. And we keep distance towards you and yours. We are not looking at equality from the point of the person we look at but at inequality from the point of view of our mind. This equality is so important for the activities of love and compassion, honestly. It is the fundamental basis. Inequality is also the basis for the addictions of love and hate. If you want to help yourself, if you want to improve yourself you need to look at that very carefully. I forgot to say, “You have to meditate”. That will be a little more romantic, rather than saying, ‘Look into it.”

0:15:04

The earlier Tibetan Buddhist teachers told us: watch your mind. I guess that’s what they are talking about. We should watch our own mind. Mind is not tangible, not form that we can look at with our eyes. So looking at the mind means looking at by what thoughts our mind is occupied. These thoughts are what we can see. That means looking at the mind. The purpose of this is to help and to correct, if it is wrong, just like when we look into a mirror. We see the reflection of our face. When we see that something is wrong, maybe there is a bit of food stuck on our cheek, we can remove that food from our cheek. Similarly, when we look in our mind, we are looking at the reflection of the mind in the mirror of our own mind. What we see is love and hate pulling our mind this way and that way. It is really a huge pull and push we subject ourselves to all the time.

0:17:38

When you are under the control of pull and push you are not grounded. You are flying in the air. You need to be grounded. That doesn’t mean to be physically heavy on the earth. Mentally being grounded means not to let ourselves be pulled and pushed by love and hate. When love is pulling too much you have to manage and see both sides of the cheek. When hate is pushing you too far away you also need to see both sides of the cheek. You are intelligent and sensible, so you can begin to correct yourself. That correction is really spiritual practice to me. I said many times that the word dharma or, from the Buddhist point of view Buddha dharma is translated in Tibetan as chö. That means “corrected”, the past tense of “correction”. What is corrected? The wrong motivations, the wrong mind. What is a wrong mind? There is no such mind called wrong mind, but there is the mind that is influenced by addictions like anger, hatred, obsession. From that point of view these are wrong minds.

0:20:00

When you correct them you give yourself peace and harmony. Truly speaking, peace is not something you look for outside and then think, “Ha, this is peaceful.” It is not like putting your body under a hot shower or something. Peace is only within our own mind. Honestly. If you don’t have the turmoil of pull and push of obsession and hatred, then you do have peace, based on equanimity and equality, not only of self and other, but equality within ourselves, within our own mind alone. If we have equality there, it is great peace. Disturbing that peace is when you make yourself subject to anxiety. Hatred brings anxiety, you know that. I don’t have to tell you. Obsession brings anxiety and fear brings tremendous anxiety. All these emotions are the ones that won’t give us peace. When you get away from very strong powerful emotions like these, then settling down a little bit is the beginning of peace and harmony within yourself.

0:22:14

Of course, peace and harmony in the outside environment is absolutely necessary. If you are in a war zone, it is very difficult. Look at what is happening in Syria today, what has happened in Iraq and what is still happening in Afghanistan. We all know this very well. Just like external disharmony is a danger and worry, internally the same thing is happening. We live in the internal war zone between love and hate. That is playing out in our own mind and if we ourselves don’t solve that who else is going to do it? Really, nobody else can do that except ourselves. We cannot do it, unless we know about it. Otherwise we have all these huge emotional symptoms and we say, ‘Oh I am sick and I went to see a doctor and they know nothing about it. They told me that nothing is wrong, but I am not happy and I feel sick and horrible’. So we live in this war zone of our own mind, which is then interpreted as a physical condition. When we do that it becomes a bigger problem. I don’t want to say that it is too late, because it is not too late.

But it an additional huge problem. Not only don’t we have peace and harmony within us, but we torture ourselves and the symptoms of that then become physical conditions. That is the first effect.

0:25:11

Along with that it also affects your companion. It poisons not only yourself but also your friends, your companions, your family and everybody else. Sometimes, when you look at people, we see the signs of their struggle. Even physically they get a little twisted. We have struggled so much and we are struggling and the root of all that is within our own mind.

What we are talking about here today is the root. A person like Buddha knew that. When you say, “Buddha discovered”, we think he had some kind of supernatural development. But I don’t think so. It became supernatural later, but first Buddha really discovered that to help himself he had to do this, figure out this mental torment, being torn between love and hate. It is the lack of equanimity in our own mind. So there is no peace, let alone love.

0:27:25

Love has to be built on a very strong, solid ground. Otherwise it becomes attachment and obsession, instead of love. On the one hand we say that it is very difficult to make a distinction between love and attachment. On the other hand there is a huge difference. It is like day and night. Attachment is “I am the most important and I want this…” We say without hesitation, “I want this, I want that”. In Asian cultures we hesitate to say, “I want that”. But in western culture people say without hesitation, “I want this, I want that, I don’t want this.” In a way, that is straight forward and good. But on the other hand it is me that is talking. When I am being dictated to be “me” it is very difficult to have pure, genuine harmony and peace within me.

These are the internal problems we have. Although I am talking about motivation I am truly talking about how our mind is working, how our thoughts are working and what we can do about it. What can Tibetan Buddhism contribute to improve my mind? These are very important points to me.

0:30:13

For me, personally, these things help me tremendously. There will be a time when you don’t want to entertain your anger any more. There will be a time when even if you look for your anger you can’t find it. Sometimes you even have to pretend to get angry and start yelling and screaming, otherwise you look different. I am talking about my own, personal experience. Sometimes people get so angry that they literally shake physically and can’t even breathe. So you have to look for it in your mind and the time will come that it won’t be there automatically anymore and not only that, even if you search for it you can’t find it. So this will be the beginning of receiving peace in your mind. The disturbance in your peace comes from obsession and hatred.

0:32:09

It is very easy to explore and use. We witnessed that the last couple of decades. We spent our time entertaining and building and encouraging our hatred. That really destroys harmony and peace among us and within ourselves.

In short, if we are not building peace in ourselves, it will be very difficult to have peace outside. Many of us have the goal to achieve peace and harmony in the world. I am afraid peace and harmony has to begin within ourselves. The good old American saying is true: Charity begins at home. Peace and harmony likewise begin within ourselves. If we are not at peace it will be very difficult to talk about peace and try to bring peace. Somehow I never believed that the big nations or United Nations can bring peace. Yes, they try, for sure. They are meant for that. But can they really do it? No, it is the individual mind that makes the difference. One person builds peace in their own mind, then two persons, then three, four and so forth. Then you go beyond that.

0:35:07

That is how peace and harmony has to be established in the world. That’s my opinion and my experience. Look at our own religions, whether Hindu-Buddhist tradition or Judeo-Christian tradition or Muslim tradition or whatever. That’s supposed to be the solution for peace and harmony. They are supposed to be the givers of joy and sources of happiness, the path to liberation, but we have fought so many wars on the basis of religion for hundreds of years. So it is not any organization can do it, it is the individual, one by one. So I am responsible for myself and you are responsible for yourself. Your peace has to be created by you and my peace has to be created by me. We can help each other and contribute to each other and we want to make sure that we do. We also want to make sure that we don’t add disharmony.

0:37:27

Our people’s habitual patterns and addictions are such that the moment we do something good we also do something bad together and we contribute that. That way we dirty the environment. That’s what we do. That’s how even the religious organization have become. Instead of instruments to bring peace and harmony they have become instruments to bring disharmony and even war. These are the deeds of individuals. So peace begins also with the individual person. Peace brings harmony and that brings joy and that brings appreciation and that brings love and that brings compassion and that brings an ego-less, self-less dedication and you become what we call a “bodhisattva”. That is Buddhist terminology. It is a person who seeks the ultimate goal.

0.39.23

When we talk about watching the mind, motivation, these are the important points we consider. In one way, when we talk about motivation, it looks like a very preliminary type of thing. On the other hand this is a major, major contribution of Buddha to people’s well beings. Buddha has given us this message and a great number of Buddhist teachers have passed on this message based on their own experience on to us. We have received the message and now we have to take and consider if it suitable to us as individuals.

0:40:44

Do I like it or not? No one is going to force you. No one can tell you to do something that no one wants to do. The information is here. Whether you like it or not, depends on you. I guess that is total freedom. It is free choice. There is no commitment, no force, nothing. This simply is the information and it is up to you to see whether it is suitable for you or not and if so, take it and try to see and utilize it and think about it and see if it is making any difference to your life, even for a day, an hour or even 10 minutes. If there is a difference for 10 minutes then there is a difference. If there is a difference for one hour, there will be a difference for one day. If there is a difference in one day, then there will be a difference in one week, one month, one year, the whole life. That is how we try to improve ourselves.

Thank you and next week I will be talking to you live from Ann Arbor. 0:42:36