Archive Result

20130811GRGRETB23

00:00

Welcome to today’s talk. This is a series of talks and a number of them are pre-recorded, because I am actually travelling in South-East Asia and later also in India. Because of the timing and the web-availability I am doing pre-recordings.

To continue from last Sunday when I talked to you from Ann Arbor, Michigan, we now reach to the 8th virtue. We call that shin jang. That is some kind of impact on the physical and mental level by doing meditation. The impact is such that some kind of undesirable behavior and function of mind and body both will be discontinued. The traditional Tibetan teachings say: the mind and physical body become fit to be utilized for better purposes. The idea or theory here is that it is a clearing of mental and physical obstacles. When you have those obstacles you can neither use your body nor your mind for better purposes, in the sense of concentrated purposes and building wisdom. Physically too, there is unhappiness, heaviness, inability to continue to sit, think or walk or sleep. Something is discontinued all the time. There are some people who can’t sit down right. They always have to get up and walk. Otherwise they experience discomfort or even physical pain. That can be due to physical illnesses, but other than that, some people have no illness or anything, but just can’t sit and do one thing continuously. They have to disrupt it all the time.

So all this disruption will be disruption of virtuous work or non-virtuous work. Whichever way you look, the discontinuity of efforts is a very good obstacle. Clearing that is a good condition – physically and mentally. That is what in the Tibetan language is called shin jang. It is really a perfection of body and mind. You practice and you are well trained for a physical and mental condition. That’s sort of the bottom line – though some people will call it “mental equipoise” and some will call it “mental high standard”. That’s language. But what you really understand is how to make your mind very adaptable and useful, make your physical body very adaptable and useful.

0:06

What can that be? To make body and mind individually usable there is some kind of joy, some kind of harmony. There could be mental joy and physical joy, both. It is not necessarily both going together. They develop individually, separately. That makes the individual happy to continue whatever they are doing. That’s the reason why I am not using English terminology for this. My knowledge of English is limited. I don’t want to give you people any misinformation. If I do that, it becomes a disservice rather than a good service, even if I am limited expressing this in English language. That’s because my English is weak and it is street language, I always say. To make it less of a disservice I am still using shing jang as terminology. So there is physical shin jang and mental shin jang. It is all because of concentration – or let me say because of meditation. That’s a little more romantic. What was physical discomfort somehow now becomes very suitable. So physical heaviness becomes very light. Miserable feelings are sometimes transformed even into joy. The bottom line is: you can utilize your body in service of whatever you want, meditation or anything. That’s the physical shin jang.

Mind shin jang is also because of the meditation. The undesirable, unwanted things [are taken care of]. Lack of enthusiasm, which we talked about the last two weeks, and lack of interest, is almost feeling like we have to pay tax. You have to pay, whether you like it or not and you are sort of dragging yourself through that.

0:10

That sort of mental agony will really make the mind not usable, unserviceable for proper concentration. It’s not necessarily about virtues alone. Even your business purpose or strategic purposes, if you can’t use your mind properly, then the strategy or policy cannot be that good, because of your lack of concentration, because of your mind’s lack of willingness to contribute to your cause. These are the problems you have to clear. By concentration or meditation you can get rid of it, in the sense that you don’t directly encounter that with your mind. You are taking away your mind from those important points. If you are focusing on certain things, these will make you happily use your mind for that as long as you want to. That sort of effect is called shin jang.

I would like to really say that the earlier Tibetan masters, particularly Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa, really said this, because he used it and it was effective for him. He said, “Concentration, single-pointed focus, is like a king who has complete power over your mind.” If you leave it on the focusing point it will sit like a mountain and cannot be shaken at all. If you send it, it will follow and focus on whatever you want to focus. Since Tibetan Buddhism is oriented towards virtue, if you let you mind go it will follow all the virtues, whichever one you direct it to. In other words, if you are thinking from the virtue- point of view, from the practice- point of view, yes. It can follow all the virtues. If you want to use your mind to have better policies or better analysis, whether it is physical, chemical, mental or material, if you let your mind follow, it will be able to follow well.

That will also bring that level of joy within the physical body. The level of joy means there is a level of comfort in your body and mind both. You are able to bring that by the work you are doing. That is really the concentrated power or shin jang.

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What does this really do? Spiritually speaking, physical body and mind both are capable of clearing your obstacles and blocks. Because of the power of shing jang, both body and mind will have very efficient conditions. That’s why it is virtuous. In case you obtain shin jang, then internally it brings you Samadhi or concentration or meditation. That happens automatically, naturally. It really increases the capacity of mind tremendously. Even physically you will not drag, and your body will go along and support the mind. This is very important. So, shin jang really means that it has something, some capacity, to utilize both mind and body better. Sometimes we have to have a lot of coffee so we don’t fall asleep. We don’t want to be lazy, we pop back up. Coffee is easy, but other people go way beyond coffee. They even use steroids or whatever. All this sometimes for the last couple of years we witnessed many of our great heroes having their medals stripped away, like Olympic medals and all these gold medals.

Then the No 2 person gets the gold. Then they are not happy, saying that they robbed their glamor and name and function. That’s what we see. This is an internal, spiritual, non-chemical steroid you can utilize for your own spiritual development. That is concentration. It can go both ways: concentration is concentration, whether you concentrate or meditate on positive things or negative things. Both happen. So if you gain this shin jang, then of course whatever way you are using your body and mind, it will become that much powerful – like taking steroids.

That should be briefly enough for this mental factor No 8.

0:20

No 9 some people don’t like. That is what is called “conscientiousness”. Some people don’t like conscientiousness, because they are so fond of doing whatever they want to do and think. We even say, “Do whatever you want to do, touch whatever you want to touch”. Some people may not like conscientiousness. But it is there, whether you like it or not. Even though, politically we say that we don’t like it, even those of us, me included, who don’t like conscientiousness much, but it is still there. What is it conscientious of? Very simple: non-attachment, non-hatred and non-ignorance. So conscientiousness is almost like enthusiasm, very similar. Enthusiasm makes you really want to do it. Conscientiousness will make you conscious and aware and alert, very similarly to mindfulness too.

Many times negativities will occupy our mind without our realizing. We may think we are saying our positive prayers, yet we may just say the words from our mouth, but our mind is not on it and not aware of it and after some time certain words come up. It happens to me, that’s why I am saying that. Certain words come up telling you that you have reached down to the end of the book somewhere. Then you think, “Oh, how did I get there?” Anyway, it went. Maybe that is not a broken commitment and will help, but besides that there is not awareness at all. So then at least it doesn’t have any negativities and it is positive by nature, however you could have done better, with being conscious of it, with being aware. Things could have definitely gone better. That is lack of conscientiousness.

It serves two purposes. One is that your mind and yourself somehow engage with virtue and meditation. On the other hand it protects you and your mind from contaminated things. So the mind gets so easily involved in contaminated things. It is happening all the time. So enthusiasm, conscientiousness and awareness protect us, our mind, our body. In other words, the good old normal American saying is: keep out of trouble. That is getting close. Keep away from the troubles of mind. Mind trouble is such a terrible thing. The earlier Tibetan teachers give you the example of a wild monkey in a temple. Those of you who went to Lhasa and that area, you saw those temples. There are so many images, well-decorated, so many bright, gold and silver things and along with that, all these water offerings, food offerings and light offerings of butter lamps. There are so many bright – almost like Christmas tree type of – decorations.

0:25

If you got a wild monkey in such a temple, what will that do? It will jump from one shoulder of an image to the other and then to another image, from one lap of an image to that of another image. It will jump around and knock down all the water offerings, make everything wet, knock down the butter lamp offerings and throw over all the liquid butter. It may even catch on fire. The monkey will bite into every food offering and make it unusable. It will knock down every beautiful flower decoration. That’s how the mind works in your temple of your own physical body. This crazy wild mind does that.

So the first thing is to protect the mind. That’s what conscientiousness will do. Also, the conscientiousness does one more thing: whatever you put efforts in, whether into material or spiritual development or mental development, it allows to be able to complete, to function, to work. Otherwise, everything will be forgotten. “Oh yeah, I forgot, I am sorry”, “Oh yeah, I forgot that too, I am sorry”. We always have to say that, because we have no conscientiousness. So conscientiousness is such that it will make you successful in whatever your mind is striving for. It will give you material success and spiritual success or even art or writing or poetry or composing or music or whatever.

Nowadays there is so much disruption. If you look in the TV, how many channels we have! The normal, usual channels are not good enough. We have cable. So how many channels are there! Sometimes we can get 1000 channels. Each and every one of them is an interruption, a disturbance to your mind, and even to your physical body. If you keep on watching the TV all the time, how tired you become, physically and mentally you become senseless. I am telling you that from my own experience. Mentally senseless and physically very tired – that’s what these interruptions do. So conscientiousness will protect you from that. It is a type of mental faculty.

0:30

It makes you stay away from trouble and also makes you continuously put in efforts to fulfill your purpose. That’s a really good one.

The early Buddhist teachers will give some kind of definition: conscientiousness will protect you from the control of afflictive emotions as well as bring you to a better level of enthusiasm. While remaining there, you will continuously put efforts into bringing your virtuous activities further and at the same time protect your mind from contaminated thoughts and actions.

These four points are there:

Not under the control of afflictive emotions

Reinforcement of your enthusiasm

Maintaining yourself in virtue

Protecting your mind from contaminated thoughs

These four combined mental activities is defined as conscientiousness.

The word for conscientiousness in Tibetan is ba yul. One of the nine chapters in the bodhisattvacharyavatara is on conscientiousness. That will show you how important on conscientiousness is.

How is this done? What does on conscientiousness do for spiritual practitioners? If you have committed negativities in the past, on conscientiousness will make you correct that and purify and do whatever you have to do. So it corrects past negativities. While doing that, it makes a big impact on your mind and that will not repeat. You should not do it again in future. So future negativities will find it hard to come in because of the great impact of conscientiousness. And not only past and future, but also now, in the present, you also don’t forget what you are doing.

For example, you think, “If I do such a thing it will be a downfall. It is not the right thing to do.”

Americans are very fond of “the right thing”. Everybody says, “This is the right thing to do” or “this is not the right thing to do.” Sometimes we even become too righteous. However, doing the right thing is very, very important to a large number of people, particularly Americans. If you really want to be right, you have to have conscientiousness. That will make you not only correct your wrong doings from before, but will make a big impact, so that future negativities won’t easily come and even in the present you don’t forget and are aware. So it really makes you alert.

0:36

That alertness will definitely bring a continuous function. Earlier Tibetan teachers such as Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Yellow Hat Sect, said, “This is the base of the perfection of ordinary and extraordinary attainments.” So it’s very, very important. Before the Tibetans, even in India, the great Nagarjuna described conscientiousness as being like nectar (Skt: amrita). Nectar makes you win over evil, such as the nectar of immortality will overpower obstacles to longevity. To a lot of people this looks like a fairy take story or something. But there is such a thing called immortality. That will make your life longer. In India, at the turn of the 19th century there used to be sadhus who lived over 200 years in the forests. Suddenly they would come out and meet their disciples or connections in certain areas. They would give them a date and place and show up. It happened many times. Even in the west, very recently I saw the movie called “Shadow”, with Genghis Khan’s attendant comes out of the tomb in the museum and creates humungous difficulties in society, trying to restore the Mongol empire.

But talking about “Shadows” and that crazy guy, they are talking about their previous life and all of them are not totally baseless, although it may look like a fairy tale or a novel or made-up story. But it is not totally baseless. There is such a thing. One nectar is medicine, which overpowers the illnesses. All medical treatment, including surgery, are therefore nectar. Nectar doesn’t have to be only liquid. Medical pills are not necessarily liquid. So there are liquids, but not all medicine is liquids.

So there is nectar against illness, which is medical nectar. There is nectar against death, which is the nectar of longevity. Then uncontaminated nectar is the nectar that protects you from contamination.

So Nagarjuna says, “Conscientiousness is nectar. This is said by Buddha.”

0:41

So in order to develop good virtue within you, you should always maintain great conscientiousness. Such conscientiousness will be extremely helpful. As we say it is the base on which it functions. We do a lot of things unconsciously, even if we do positive virtues, make ourselves sit down and meditate. People do that. They have a separate room for meditation and burn beautifully smelling incense and the incense is so good that the moment you open the door the whole house will be filled with that beautiful smooth smell of good incense.

The incense we are getting today are mostly saw dust mixed in. Actually really good incense, if you make one incense stick, if you make it with really good materials it will probably cost you $5. The materials you use are white sandalwood dust, red sandalwood dust, akaru wood, deer musk and negi, which is some kind of a shell of some sea animal. That has to be continuously rubbed non-stop for 48 or 78 hours. Then it’s terrible smell will change into wonderful, lasting smell. I do know somebody in old Tibet who does that job. That person has a little apartment, but the whole street has this yummy smell, beautiful, not too strong, not too weak, but a very gentle, yet persistent beautiful smell. The combination of these substances plus many others makes a good incense. You need 25 really good materials, not counting saw dust.

Today we would all like to buy a box of 10 or 20 sticks for $3, $4 or $5. That’s not going to be very good incense. It’s going to be filled up with saw dust.

0:45

If you have the good incense your whole house will be filled with this beautiful smell and it is your quietest and calmest room in your house – beautiful. But even then your mind will not stay there. You are sitting right in front of an image, a picture of your guru and Buddha and so on, you are very enthusiastic, but a second later your mind is busy somewhere with something else.

There was this example in old Tibet. There was this government official who was also engaged in business and who wanted to do some continuous spiritual practice. He started doing retreat. Whenever he did retreat he would sit in sessions. That includes saying mantra and counting them. That’s a meditation of its own. But instead of that he would tell his attendant, “While I am sitting in retreat, make sure you put pen and a pad of paper on my table.” So then he would sit for an hour or two and when he had finished the session he would come out with a list for each of his servants, to collect this from that person, and to give this much to this person and that he forgot to collect from so and so. So all these lists would come after the session. So that’s lack of conscientiousness. This is an example so you see what conscientiousness does. You make your own judgment, whether you need it or not, and if you want to accomplish anything and succeed, you have to have conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is there, even if we choose to ignore it. That mental faculty is very much in within our mind.

Thank you

0:48:19