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20130623GRGRETB16

Good morning to you. Welcome to the Sunday morning talk. You hearing me on a recording. This talk was recorded as couple of days ago in New York. As you know we are talking about the Essence of Tibetan Buddhism. How do people live their lives, how do we function? We began with the motivation, which was quite okay and we talked about bodhimind, the wishing - and action bodhimind. That should also be quite clear to you.

Within action bodhimind, what sort of action do we take? We looked at this very brief statement from Buddha:

Avoid negativity, engage in positive deeds. Tame your mind. This is Buddhism.

On that basis, what do we avoid? Avoiding negativity and engaging in positivity is called by the Tibetans dig pung ge drub – avoiding negative karma and building positive karma. We talked last Sunday about avoiding negative karma. I made a couple of mistakes last Sunday. I am not going to say that I mis-spoke, but I really made mistakes. The first is when I was talking about the 3 physical negativities, such as killing, stealing and sexual misconduct. Somehow I mixed lying in there too. Lying is actually today’s subject. There are four negativities by speech. So lying went into the physical negativities, but it is part of the verbal negativities. The four by speech are lying, creating disharmony by telling one story to one person and another to a different person and creating difficulties between them. The third is using harsh words, cursing, etc. The fourth is unnecessary chatting, uncalled-for noise-producing chat. These are considered the four negativities by speech that are to be avoided.

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Talking about lying the other, day I said that this doesn’t mean the usual used car salesman rhetoric, that type of untruth. These are lies but here we are counting the very big lies, like cheating people. One of them is that if one does not have spiritual development, pretending to have it. Maybe you don’t know yourself quite clearly, but pretend to be a teacher and expert of the spiritual path. It refers mostly to the spiritual path rather than simply your own knowledge. That’s because the spiritual path is unknown to so many people, which gives a tremendous amount of opportunity to those who cheat people, who tell lies. The consequences will be huge, not only for yourself, but also those who follow your untruth, your sermon or prediction or whatever. That’s why such a lie is considered to be big. All lies are not right, they are wrong. But the big thing is leading the people on the wrong path, misguiding them and creating spiritual disasters for people. The rest of them are quite easy to understand.

Creating schisms by telling different stories to different people is nicknamed in Tibetan as “he or she is talking with two tongues”, which are the tongue of telling the truth and the tongue of not telling the truth. Creating disharmony with that kind of speech is this negativity.

Next is harsh words. Sometimes these are so bad. Many people think that you are not hurting people if you don’t physical beat or hurt them. But harsh words sometimes can really hurt people so badly. We have a saying, I am not sure whether it is Tibetan or Buddhist. It says that the tongue is a very sharp weapon, so much so that it can cut people’s heart into two pieces. That is talking about harsh, mean words. That can really hurt a lot of people. When you are the subject to abuse by other people, when you know you are being abused and looked down on and ignored, how much do you feel hurt? Take that as example and put other people in your place. They will have the same miserable feelings that we ourselves experience. Knowing that, avoid harsh words. That is very helpful.

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Not only is that the good human beings’ character, it is also absolutely necessary for being a kind, compassionate person. We would like to claim to be compassionate – which we are, which you are. But we do have that anger or hatred popping up and it overtakes us and sometimes we don’t even know what we are doing. The only thing we need is that the person feels a pinch and pain, so we try our best. I understand that is how violence comes out. Violence begins with sound, with speech. Unless you are a professional killer or something you will not just hit a person. Most quarrels begin with conversation, using sharp words against each other. One says something and then you come back even harder than that, either by harsh, aggressive words, or by passive aggressive statements. That’s what we do. We exchange words between loved ones, such harsh words, between persons you respect. All these are negativities. With or without knowing we engage in them. Sometimes that is not necessarily done with anger, but with desire or even with love. Sometimes you want to register something in the heart of that person, you want to mark it. That marking is creating nothing but pain. So you want to create pain by using harsh words and then the other person uses harsh words and you use even harsher words.

That’s what people do, right?

I just saw a show on TV, New Jersey Housewives or something, where one of the people says, “My middle name is ‘Bitch’ and I know how to do it.” This is harsh words. Where I come from, this is the language that respectable people don’t use. Forget about spiritual persons, but just simply normal, respectable human beings don’t use that kind of language. It is below human dignity, honestly.

0:15

Using harsh words is a terrible thing. It is cancer in one’s life. It is a really, really miserable thing. And if you pay no attention, it becomes a habit and it becomes your character. You become that. That is how a good person easily becomes a horrible person, because of such a little thing. That is one example, but not the only example of how that happens. People have to be very careful about lying, using harsh words, creating doubts and schisms and anger, disharmony. Buddha says to avoid all these. These are the four by speech.

I made one more mistake last Sunday. I said that the Judeo-Christian spiritual path has been available here for a thousand years. With that I don’t mean American. I am very aware that the American nation is only a little over 200 years old. With the thousands years I mean in the western culture. That is our culture, which has not necessarily begun in the United States only. That’s why I really mean. I wanted to clarify that. A number of you called me, sent me e mails and talked to me, saying or hinting about that. You people are very kind, thank you. I still don’t want to say that misspoke. I made a mistake here. So I like to admit when I make a mistake. I don’t want to make mistakes knowingly, but unknowingly, if I made a mistake, I like to admit it and apologize.

So that’s the four negativities of speech. Especially bad is creating disharmony between friends, especially between spiritual friends who are on the spiritual path together, who are moving forward to a better achievement. In the Buddhist tradition we call that sangha, which is a Sanskrit name and it means community. It is called “good community”. Saying that my community is good doesn’t mean that other communities are not good. I would like to make that clear. Sometimes we say that we are good and that doesn’t mean others are not good. Especially creating disharmony in a good community is considered a little heavier negativity, which creates negative karma, which is a little heavier than usual.

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So basically, I have covered the three physical wrong doings and the four wrong doings of speech. Then there are three mental wrong doings. The first one is being mean, trying to get back at a person. You can’t forget and keep on thinking, “I must repay that” and keep on thinking that all the time. That I have a big problem with. I really have a problem personally with punishment and even judgment. I don’t think one should punish anyone. But there people who really believe that they have to have punishment. They think without punishment we cannot manage. To a certain extent this is very true. I experienced that myself. When there are no consequences it is very hard to convince people not to do something or to do right. Giving consequences is the easy way. That’s why we have such difficulty to bring peace and harmony in the world. Sometimes when you take drastic actions they have miserable results, such as the wars that we went through in the last decade, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now the danger of going into Syria and other areas. That’s very dangerous. When war comes, you know that whatever happens in there, the consequences are not great. The human suffering is so much. The human loss of life is so much.

Natural disasters create trouble for us, as you know. We have terrible things happening in India, particularly in Uttarakhand. The temple there and the pilgrims are going through a lot. Natural disasters are happening everywhere, even in Delhi. They are very, very difficult. And these are negative consequences. And that is what is naturally happening already. Then we create man-made disasters, the wars and tolls they take on human life. The day to day life is so full of suffering. These are the consequences of punishment, of non-tolerance, non-patience.

0:25

I always have a problem with punishment and judgment. Some people – I saw on TV years ago – say, “I must punish these people on behalf of God”. That is very bothering for me. I am not somebody who can punish people on behalf of God. God can do whatever he or she wants to do. Who am I to punish some human beings on behalf of God? That’s not for me. Also, even imprisonment is something to look at. Imprisonment is our society’s way of putting people away. That is fine. Putting people away for the safety of other people as well as their own safety is a great opportunity for those people to think and change and restructure their life. This may take a year or years of whatever. That I don’t have a problem with. That has to happen. But looking at that as punishment I have a problem with. I would like to see all prisons as correction centers and the prisoners as candidates for improving their character, their individual way of thinking. That’s how we have to think. If we think that way we have a much better society. Other than that, thinking of that as punishment and taking away [things from people] is a problem for me. The mind of punishing can be mean. I don’t want any meanness with anybody.

Sometimes people may think, “If I don’t have some meanness, people will not respect me.” I noticed, when I was young, the meanness was very little within me. Honestly speaking, very little. And even if it popped up it didn’t last more than a couple of seconds. Somehow it disappeared. I am very grateful for that and very happy to share with my friends that I am very happy with this.

When I was young, in the society I was in as an incarnate lama, I did gain a certain respect. But many people will look at you as a very light person, because you have no heaviness or meanness. People may not respect you as much. But when I became older – maybe it is because of the age – people seemed to respect me more. So you don’t have to have meanness to gain respect.

0:30

Meanness, if you really look carefully, doesn’t really give you respect. It will make people try to avoid you. It is better not to come into contact with that person much, because he will catch you later. That’s what people say many times. So meanness doesn’t have goodness at all. Also it has the desire of harming others, always wanting to harm people, like poisonous snakes who have the mind of hurting anybody coming nearby. A poisonous snake covers the surrounding area with poison so that no one comes near. So if we are very mean and want to hurt people we behave like poisonous snakes. Not only you are poisonous yourself but also you make the surrounding area poisonous. You also affect people who like and love you, like your family and those who are connected with you, with that meanness and hatred, always wanting to hurt. So this is one thing not to do.

Then of course, from the Buddhist point of view there is the third one, wrong view. That is something you have and you try to believe that it is not there. Or you try to believe that something that is not there is there. You make your life miserable by doing that and create a very terrible negativity for yourself and others who come into contact with you.

These are the three by mind. So today we covered the four by speech and the three by mind and the other day we talked about the 3 physical ones. These are the 10 negativities. They are meant to be avoided, because they create disharmony, unhappiness, even in your own mind, even if you are living by yourself, in a beautiful house, with a beautiful view, beautiful environment. If you cover yourself with all these negative thoughts and ideas of the 3 mental negativities alone you will make you very miserable, very tired, unhappy. That is the consequence of those thoughts.

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If you want to be happy, avoid those thoughts. If you want to relax, relieve yourself of these thoughts. They will make you like a little Barbie doll that is tied up with ropes. The three negative mental activities do that. If you want to enjoy your life, if you want to have a good time for you, by yourself, then avoid those. Each and every one of them ties you tighter and tighter. These are the obligations that force you to be like a slave. There is no person standing there physically to do this and that, you make yourself unhappy, unrelaxed, waiting to take revenge, harm other people. You have to be very alert for that. There is television show called “Revenge”. I saw it a couple of times. Each person in there is having a miserable time, because they themselves created all the trouble for themselves. This is a great example for us to see. Without knowing we make ourselves be controlled by those. We make ourselves slaves to these emotions. That is the real source of unhappiness, these three mental negativities. All negative emotions are connected with these. Anger is very much connected. Hatred is part of it. Jealousy is very much connected and is almost a branch of it. Then obsession is very much part of it. So almost all of our unhappiness really comes from those three points. If you read certain texts and transcripts there may be a little bit of old, technical language that is used here and there, but the reality really is that we have to avoid mental negativity, and especially those three. They make you into a slave of your own mind. You make yourself a slave to them. If you want to be happy and have joy and a comfortable life, you take care of those three. Make sure those ugly heads don’t pop up. Hit them, smash them, destroy them and when you can’t destroy them, suppress them. When you can’t suppress them, cut them into pieces. Most importantly, do not entertain them.

0:40

If you don’t entertain them you can’t control you. If you are not controlled by them, they are not going to create any trouble for your life. Sometimes we may think, “I I don’t do that, people will look down on me.” I said that earlier and gave you the example of my life as a kid and as middle-aged person and as old man. I can see myself that meanness and hatred does not make you a deep, heavy person. Honesty, kindness, compassion, genuine love, genuine caring, makes you very great, deep person. It doesn’t make you shallow, but very deep. Meanness and hatred and obsession will make you a shallow person, not deep. So the hesitation, “If I don’t have meanness and hatred and obsession I am not a strong person” is not correct. That is a wrong view. That is really misinformation that brings us a lot of misery. That’s what it is. When they say, “Avoid negativities”, the first action is to avoid the 10 wrong doings. That’s very important. Then, by avoiding the 10 wrong doings, you will be creating their opposites, the 10 positives. That is not killing, not lying, not cheating, not engaging in hatred and so on. These are positive deeds. When Buddha says: “Avoid negativities and build positivities”, that’s exactly what it is. So I like to cover that much today and say that avoiding the 10 wrong doings automatically builds the positivity in you and always maintain kindness and compassion as your motivation, as your encouragement, as your goal. The good old Tibetan monastery talk says, “I live with compassion, I lie down with compassion, I sleep with compassion, I get up with compassion, I walk with compassion, I eat with compassion, I drink with compassion, I act with compassion. I always function with compassion.” If you do that your life will be perfect.

Compassion is always with love. Love and compassion are together. There is no separation. That’s how we should function in our life.

Thank you and next Sunday I will be in Ann Arbor – probably during the retreat, so I will talk to you next Sunday too. Thank you very much.

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