Archive Result

20130804GRGRETB22

00:00

Good morning everybody and welcome to today’s talk. As you know we have been continuously talking on the basis of Tibetan Buddhism. The emphasis is actually how one does in everyday life. Sometimes Buddhism – and very specifically Tibetan Buddhism – is very profound. Actually it is always profound, not sometimes, however, it can become a little complicated and people don’t know where to begin, how to practice and also understanding the practice. When we say “practice”, people sometimes think you have to sit down and meditate. Sometimes people think you have to say some prayers or have some kind of different attitude or atmosphere. Also the traditions in this country will also introduce you to that. It is very strange. I am looking back to where I was born in Tibet. I spent most of my young age, teenage and youth, in the monastery – from age 4 to age 19, 20.

Actually I could claim that I was born with the practice. I got to the United States in 1987, though I first came in 1964, but then I didn’t speak English and didn’t know anything. At that time some people in Ithaca, NY area forced me to say something about Tibetan Buddhism. They were saying, “He is a reincarnate lama”, so they wanted me to say something and I didn’t even know what to talk about. I didn’t even know the language. So one night I was invited by a minister, who happened to be – I don’t think you can call it new age - but sort of part of an open thing. He had announced that a Tibetan incarnate lama was coming to talk. I was told that I was invited for dinner. So went for dinner. And then a lot of people came, could have been 30, 40. Then the minister started talking. He had to say something. He had pictures to show and then he would say to me, “Isn’t that right?” and I kept on saying “yes”. And that was my talk! I was all “yes”.

0:05

That was in 1964. I did know how to say yes at that time. Actually I moved here in 1986-87, first to Cleveland, OH and then here to Ann Arbor. When I first came in I avoided talking about meditation. I didn’t know how people would accept that. I remember having meetings at the Friends Meeting House, which was arranged by Aura and Sandy. We met there and talked. I gave almost like lam rim based talks, without mentioning meditation. One day, for whatever reason, I needed to say that you have to meditate. I was watching very carefully how people were doing to react. I am talking about a short time frame, not years or months, but just a couple of weeks. I used the word ‘meditation’ and started looking carefully and everybody started moving and adopting certain hand gestures. It was amazing. People had the idea of meditation or practice as somehow a physical gesture, almost like Allen Ginsberg says:

……sit on the ground, and if the ground is not there, sit on a chair, first thing to do is keep your backbone straight…

That’s exactly what they did – with some hand gestures. That indicated to me that the word ‘meditation’ was acceptable, nothing strange. That was in ’86, ’87, could also be earlier. I really came in 1984 and I worked in Cleveland for an Anthropology Professor who was doing Tibetan history. From there I came up to visit Ann Arbor a couple of times and talked in the Friends Meeting House.

Since then the expressions I see from people when I talk about practice, they definitely pick up some sort of physical gesture, sitting down and concentrating. Sure, you have to concentrate. But practice does not necessarily mean that you have to sit down and “meditate” or say prayers. These are all practice, sure, no doubt. But all practice doesn’t have to be that. There is a difference between the practice and doing your commitments and daily spiritual chores – I am sorry. That sounds funny, but it is different.

0:10

The practice really begins with watching your mind in the sense of where does the mind go? You really need to watch it. But you don’t necessarily have to sit down. Whenever you are doing something, whenever you make certain decision it is going to affect people’s lives, your own life, your family life, other people’s life. Then you have to watch your motivation. That becomes very good practice. When your mind doesn’t care and you think, “Making profit is best for me or my family, but I don’t care what happens to other people’s lives” or “I am so sorry it affects other people’s lives, but it is my job and I have to do this for me”, if that kind of motivation pops up in your head, then anything you do with influence will probably have a negative effect – most probably. But one is still better than the other. If you think, “I don’t care what happens to anybody else, I have to do it, it’s my job” is worse than thinking, “I am so sorry that it affects somebody else’s life, but I have to do my job”. There is at least a sorry feeling. Actually there is an acknowledgment. There is some kind of slight hesitation of what you are doing and how it may affect others in a bad way.

That awareness, that little hesitation, has more value than not caring at all. That means that practice is really [caring] all the time what you are doing and that is the most important practice for us. Particularly, leading a spiritually acceptable life is really important. Otherwise, the sun rises every morning, the sun sets every evening, and that keeps on repeating and there is no awareness of anything about ourselves, our mind. Whatever comes up in front of you, you do it and dispose of and so on. That is the daily routine many of us engage in. That is not necessarily the best way to live our lives.

On this basis we talked about beginning with the motivation and the motivation we recommended is bodhimind, the ultimate, unlimited, unconditional love and compassion. At least it should be there in wishing form, if not action. Wishing alone will not do. But that’s where we begin. Really beginning of the practice is trying to understand what is ultimate love and compassion and what does that do to people? How does that make people better, gentler, kinder?

0:15

Whenever you have to do something, simply wishing is better than nothing, but not good enough. We have to act. So what sort of action do you take? That is important, because in the west people will say: what do I do? Being kind is one thing. Caring is good and important, but still, it is not active enough. What do I do? We say that. It is in our culture and that’s a good thing. We have got to do something. Remember, I gave that little statement that Buddha said:

Avoid negativities, build positivies, tame your mind. This is Buddhism

That’s what Buddha said. We call it ‘bus stop buddhism’. You know, at a bus stop, if someone wanted to know what Buddhism was all about, that’s what it is. If you have not good definition of Buddhism, then your friend who knows that you are interested will ask you and they may think it is all about death or something.

One time I was travelling between Amsterdam, Netherlands and New York. There was a person next to me in the place. It was an overnight flight and I had to read my commitments. I had a little Tibetan booklet and reading from that. The book was in the Tibetan style book form. I unwrapped it and started reading. The guy next to me was watching and when I finished he asked, “What are you? What is all this?” I said, “I am Tibetan and this is a Tibetan Buddhist practice.” So he said, “Oh, you are Buddhist. That is the religion of death, right?” I said, “Oh, I don’t think so.” He said, “Well, I was told that Daoism is the religion of living and Buddhism is the religion of death”. So people can get that idea.

And then, talking about vajrayana (or tantrayana or diamond vehicle), many people think it is all about sex. They think that Buddhism is about sexuality. But it almost has nothing to do with the dealings of the individual’s rough mind. The essence that Buddha himself had mentioned again is these three points:

Avoid Negativities, Build Positivities, Tame Your Mind.

0:20

We talked about avoiding negativities and how tame them. Physically there are three, verbally there are four and mentally there are three. Together these ten are to be avoided. Then on the opposite side there are ten to be built. We did talk about six or seven already. Now we are talking about enthusiasm. We talked already last week but I didn’t finish what I needed to say, so I will try to continue with whatever we can today.

Enthusiasm by its nature is not necessarily positive or negative and nor is it counted as neutral. But it can be used for anything. As you know enthusiasm is something that you need everywhere for whatever you do. If you are spiritually totally engaged, you absolutely need enthusiasm. If you are materially engaged in any activity, business, research or whatever, you do need enthusiasm. Otherwise it is very difficult to accomplish whatever you are doing. Where there is no enthusiasm there is no interest. When there is no interest, you are not enjoying what you are doing. When you are not enjoying what you are doing, you feel forced to do something that you don’t necessarily like. Hopefully you don’t hate it. In some cases you grow to hate it. So then it is torture for every minute you have to engage in it. You know it very well. That is not going to give you a good result anyway. It is sort of an obligation. It is your job and you have to do it. But you hate it. That’s what people do. Then the result is not going to be good. We all know.

Enthusiasm has to be applied to whatever it is – spiritually or materially. If you have enthusiasm it makes it much easier. It makes whatever you are doing enjoyable. So it becomes one of those tools. Someone told me I should not use the word “tools” because it sounds like you are a mechanical person or something. May that’s right. I don’t know English. But to me it is a …..thing….I don’t know what to say….

Audience: A tool?

Rimpoche: A tool, yeah, honestly. So basically I did talk to you earlier.

0:25

Buddha said if you have enthusiasm that will not bring any tiredness, sadness and regret, then there is no such a thing that human beings cannot do. That’s a big statement. So there is no such a thing human beings cannot do if they apply enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm then we get problems like “I have been burnt out.” “I am tired of doing this.” “I should have been out of there years ago.” All of those are coming from the lack of enthusiasm.

Buddha adds up one more thing. Enthusiasm does not only help human beings, but even non-human beings. He is referring to spirits, etc. It makes you accomplish all meditative powers. It will make your life, either at day time or night time, not worthwhile. It builds all qualities. There are so many. Great qualities will increase, like growing flowers. There are many more. In short, enthusiasm makes you accomplish what you want to do, either materially, spiritually or whatever. Positive, negative, whatever, enthusiasm makes it complete. From the spiritual point of view that enthusiasm is understood to be applied to virtuous activities. It is not the language, but the understanding, the culture of the spiritual path. It is sort of obvious that we are talking about spiritual things. But actually it is applicable to all things. So now, what makes you not to have enthusiasm? It is not that simple. I was about to say it is very easy, but it is not. Particularly for a person like me it is not easy? You know why? I am a very lazy person. So a lazy one like me talking to you people who are really quite enthusiastic in everything you do in your life is not suitable.

0:30

However, I had the opportunity, so it is part of the message that I have to pass on and it may help you, who knows. You may find some use in it. The Tibetans have a saying:

If you don’t have enthusiasm but you have wisdom, it is like a dead body.

So it is useless.

If you have wisdom, it may be great, like a good tree, but that good tree will be rotten under the skin of laziness.

These are two interesting examples. Even though language and culture has changed, it is something vivid you can remember. Without enthusiasm wisdom is like a dead body. Even if you have a great wisdom, without enthusiasm it will be like rotten under its own skin of laziness. What can you do with a rotten tree? You have to get rid of it. It’s no longer useful. Maybe you can use it as fire wood or something. That’s about it.

The opposite mental function of enthusiasm is laziness. Buddhism is very interesting. They will divide and identify so that one can get it very easily. I am looking here into a Tibetan text and want to read from it and you know why? Because I am one of the laziest people, and talking to you is not that good. So I am going to read it, so that my weakness is not telling you. Buddha was asked one time, “What do you think people should not have?” And he said,

“Laziness. Why? Because it takes you further away from accomplishment of total enlightenment. Laziness will take further from generosity. It makes you distant from morality. It will put distance between you and your patience, your meditation and your wisdom.”

In that sense if you have laziness you can’t achieve anything easily. You cannot easily accomplish activities of generosity or of morality. Morality needs effort. Laziness takes you away from that.

0:35

One of Buddha’s great disciples was asked about laziness and he replied,

Laziness is the basis of all negative, afflictive emotions. Whoever has laziness will not have great spiritual development at all.

Laziness is made into three categories.

1. Addiction

If you are addicted to anything it makes it very hard to get away from that and do what you need to do. If you are addicted to drugs you will spend time on drug use and do nothing else. Similarly you can get addicted to anything and everything. You can get addicted to drugs and alcohol, but also to anything else. From the spiritual point of view any activity that takes you away from progressing on your spiritual path is something you can be addicted to.

You can also get addicted to the spiritual path itself. That’s not necessarily bad. Some people get very addicted to compassion. Some get very addicted to love. That’s good. Nothing is wrong. But if you get very addicted to attachment it’s not good. It gets you into a lot of trouble. We all know. But even though we all know we can’t do it, because we are addicted. So being addicted to anything is one of the first obstacles to enthusiasm.

How do you deal with this? In two ways. The first choice is gentle, extremely gentle. You try to understand, you try to get it. Try not to do the wrong thing. People get addicted to everything, even politics. So you gently have to take them away. People get addicted to cheating. So very gently you have to take that away. First you yourself have to be gentle with yourself, kind, gentle, and show your understanding, listen to yourself, think about it, how much you are willing to do. You have to make a bargain with yourself. You may be limited to yourself, certain hours a week, a month, a year or whatever, with the intention of reducing it. Go gently.

0:40

The other way is to do it forcefully. You can do that mentally or also physically. Mentally, think about impermanence, death and what happens thereafter. This will burn your laziness a little bit. It is like putting a fire under your butt – if you think carefully. Physically, here comes a big difference. You have to force yourself. You don’t want anybody else to tell you what to do. But you have to be good enough to know what to do. And if you can’t do it yourself, go to somebody else who can help you do it. That somebody else can do it gently or forcefully, like accuse you or do all kinds of things, like shouting at you.

In the olden times, where I come from, if the shouting and accusing doesn’t help, then you have something else, like physically spanking. All that is part of it. Where I come from, old Tibet, the teachers beat the students very often. In our case today we would absolutely see it as abuse. There is no doubt about it. But over there, at that time, with the understanding of the individual who is engaged in that it is sometimes very helpful. Even in my case, I used to get quite a lot of beatings. I remember one or two things very well. Normally, people who were living with me were the teachers, managers and attendants. They are all there to force you, including the attendants, even my own attendant, who was a very kind person. He used to take me to the gatherings and take my robe and it looked very respectful and he would fold my robe over my shoulders and at the same time pinch me and tell me, “Behave yourself” – but with gestures of great respect. Anybody looking from outside would think, “Oh, he is serving very well”, but in reality he was pinching me. I used to get all these pinching marks everywhere. I picked up that habit.

When I first came here I used to pinch people too, and some friends were joking and called me the “Pinchen Lama”. So old habits transfer. I used to get other beatings too. One day I do remember. One of my managers, actually Sonam’s (from Chicago) uncle. One day he got up and did three prostrations. I knew then I was in big trouble. After the prostrations he grabbed me, pulled me up from my cushion and put a rope on my leg and swung it over a beam under the ceiling and then pulled the rope. Naturally, I, as a little kid, went upside down. The lower monks’ robes I was wearing, like a skirt, went down over my head. Under that he had a little fire burning chilies. So that smoke was coming. Then he beat me up with another rope, over a hundred times. That was a big beating. For 7 days I couldn’t ride a horse. I had to stand in the stirrups, because if I had sat down it would open up the wounds.

0:46

Things like that are physical force to get away from laziness of some kind of addiction, whatever it was. I don’t even remember what it was. This was the old culture. I am not saying you have to do that. You should not do it. You are civilized people. This was a primitive method. Civilized people don’t do that. However, you have to take care of that mentally by yourself. You need the discipline. If you do not discipline yourself it will be very difficult to manage. Basically, if you meditate yourself, the physical body we have is very transitory, very temporarily. It is going to be dismantled soon. It is perishable material in which we are living. It is almost becoming like a yellow vegetable in your fridge. Soon it is going to be rotten. Before it gets rotten, when you have limited time, make better use of it.

Even after death, looking from the reincarnation point of view, we don’t have any certainty where we are going. I cannot say that I will be Mr. So and So or Miss So and Son in my future life at this place at that time, where am going to be. We don’t have the spiritual development to say and confirm that and make sure it will happen. We are not there yet. You will be – later, but you are not there right now. This is one of the reasons why you should not let laziness take you over.

Also enthusiasm also needs to make it work – whatever you are doing. You have to develop like and love for this particular thing you are doing. That begins with seeing the qualities and benefits. Think about them. Think about helpfulness to you, your people and other people.

0:50

Take that step. So if you hate your job, transit from hate to neutral and from neutral to liking and from liking to admiring and from admiring to enjoying. Then love it. Your mind is yours. You have total control. You can move your mind to whatever you do. Particularly today’s economy may be a little better than it was, but still, it depends who you listen to. If you listen to MSMBC it’s great. If you listen to Fox News it is horrible. So who knows? Honestly. So when you have difficulty getting a new job you have to make yourself happy with your new job, with your work, with your spiritual practice and first of all, with yourself. If you don’t like yourself, all these problems will come because of you. You may blame others, this person and that person, and then you change, but it will still continue. For two, three days it may continue, but after that it will continue. That is a clear sign that the problem is not outside, but it is with yourself. So take care of that first. The way to do that is by changing your mind. The way to change your mind is by thinking about the qualities and benefits, rather than reinforcing your suspicion and dislike. Then it becomes huge and you make a disaster. But if you think about quality, betterment, hope, then even if you don’t become very successful, but at least you won’t create a disaster. That’s how you move.

0:53

End of this week I will be travelling to South-East Asia. I will be teaching one week in Malaysia and one week in Singapore and then another week I will be in India for a conference. I will be back here by around September 15. In between that, I am not done yet with this subject, so all the Sunday talks are going to be pre-recorded. I would like to record some today. Tomorrow I can’t, so I will do some more on Tuesday. I have to record 6 talks. That’s about it. Enjoy your summer, whatever is left of it. The weather is getting colder and colder. I was wondering what’s happening with the summer. That’s it and all the best to you. I hope everything is okay and see you in September. I am actually going to California at the end of September, 27, 28, 29. So I will be only in Jewel Heart here on Sunday, 22nd of September. While I am in California, Geshe Yeshe Thapke will come and teach and he will begin with the 400 verses of Nagarjuna [Aryadeva?] and I don’t know how much he can finish. Hopefully he can finish next year or something. Some people wanted to have the 400 verses. That’s also a wisdom teaching. That’s all I wanted to say – thank you.

0:56 Chanting Four Immeasurables 0:57: 48