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20130915GRGRETB28

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Good morning to you and welcome to this Sunday talk. As you know, we are talking about the essence of Tibetan Buddhism. This is done not so much as philosophy, theology or theory, but more as practical every day handling. So we begin with the motivation. That is also not just ordinary good motivation, which is not enough, but we have a very profound motivation called bodhimind. I did give the definition of bodhimind earlier. However, since we talk about generating bodhimind, we can say it is ultimate, unlimited, unconditional love and compassion. That is an easy sentence for me to repeat, however, for you, when you, those of you who are listening and those who really want to think something, you have to think about what is meant by unlimited love, unlimited compassion.

I am making short sentences here today, because this is not my subject. But to make it clear, how is it unlimited? Whenever you do something for yourself, your individual “me” is the most important and everything is geared around “me”, dancing around “me”, for “my” purposes, for “me” to be happy and better, for “me” to be rich, for “me” to be well-known and all that sort of thing. “Me” is the major principle and everything is to serve and put that first. So that I limited. You have to think that “I am not the only person in the world.” There are lots of others. You totally ignore all others and think about yourself only. So that is limited. Compassion and love should not have any limit. They should go beyond the limit of “me” and “my”. Plus there is seeking technically what is called Buddhahood, which means total enlightenment. That means total knowledge. Really to me, total knowledge is enlightenment and that is buddhahhood. There is nothing beyond that. In Tibetan language this is called sang gye, which means clear and fully developed. Sang means to clear all obstacles and gye means fully knowledgeable, fully knowing, fully developed.

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Also we use the word ‘total knowledge’. It is frequently used and is interchangeable with “Buddha”. That means we seek total knowledge, knowing everything. Many of us will think, “I don’t want to know everything. That’s not my interest. My interest is to achieve the best I can through contemplative work and do service for the people.” But think this way: if you want to serve and do something for people, there are all kinds of variety of things you have to deal with. When you have to deal with this you have to know what to do, otherwise you have to ask, “What can I do?” and let it be there. All you can say is “well, I asked the question what to do and I didn’t hear back, so that’s it. I am waiting.” So that’s becoming limited. And that’s why total knowledge is necessary. So bodhimind is the commitment of unlimited, unconditional love and compassion and to fulfill that seeking for yourself total knowledge. That combination of mind is what the earlier great Mahayana Buddhist masters have praised so much.

It is called the precious, jewel-like mind. It is also called a great horse, which can very comfortably take the individual from one joy to another, from one joy-natured life to another. It is also called a diamond-like mind. A diamond is superior to any other glass things. So the buddhas and bodhisattvas – I am using the technical Sanskrit terms here – praise this mind as ground – like, like the ground is providing the base for growing food and fruit and flowers. It is also a diamond jewel-like great ornament, which overpowers every other jewel. The sharpness of the diamond can cut others but others can’t cut the diamond. There are so many praises like that. If you develop that mind with you, you will be like a prince. In an old kingdom the prince would have more prestige than even the seasoned ministers. These may be very experienced and perfect, but they can’t compare with the prince, particularly the Prince of Wales. So it is sort of by virtue of being a prince, like the Prince of Wales, that you become superior to the seasoned ministers. That’s what this mind does.

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If we develop that mind, then by virtue of that mind we will be even superior to the seasoned “ministers”, the arhats. The arhats have achieved ordinary enlightenment. Bodhimind will give you extraordinary enlightenment. There are so many of these qualities, but most important is if one has developed this, by virtue of having this mind all the purifications through that will clear our obstacles. So purification will be done by itself. Accumulation of merit – or positive karma, though they are not the same thing, but makes us understand easier – will also be done automatically by virtue of having that bodhimind. So it is extremely beneficial. I am not sure if everybody is familiar with the the benefits. In certain quarters benefits are used so much, but this is one of the best ways to have great benefits for yourself. That’s why this motivation is recommended.

Even that is divided into two categories. One is simply wishing that one wants to happen will happen. The other is doing something through actions. The second one is more effective than simply sitting there and wishing. So when you want to do something, what is there to do? A lot of people ask me, “Where do I begin? What do I do?” So actually, the beginning of this is simply observing your mind and demolishing the already built huge mountains of negativities we have. We have to demolish them and build positive deeds as much as we can. For that we have given Buddha’s paraphrased words:

Avoid negativities. Build positivities. Tame your mind. This is Buddhism.

We have covered avoiding negativities and talked about what negativities are. Basically we pointed out ten and also the three poisons. We mentioned what they are in nature, what they look like, how they affect the individual. We discussed this already with you.

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Also we talked about building positivities or virtues. What are they? We identified eleven important points, including non-violence. We talked about that two Sundays ago.

Now we are at the third part: tame your mind.

We talked about the mind. There are a lot of people who do not accept mind at all. I talked about that last Sunday. I don’t know whether they are right or wrong. That’s not my call. But here I try to present what little I know. I did say last Sunday that I don’t have such a great knowledge or understanding to pinpoint “Here is what those who don’t accept mind think and this is what those who accept mind think.” I don’t have the great experience of saying, “This is mind. It looks like this, smells like this, tastes like this, feels like this.” I can’t do that. Whatever I can tell you about mind is following from what my teachers have taught me and what I have read and learnt from the Buddhist traditions. But there are two important points. There are groups of people who don’t accept mind. They have their own facts and figures and functioning for everything. Those of us who accept mind will think that mind is more important than matter.

I told you last Sunday how I have struggled in my teenage years with these two viewpoints that clash with each other, through learning from teachers as well as listening to the yapping noise of the loudspeakers throughout day and night. I didn’t come to a conclusion back in Tibet, but many years later in America I began to think that the mind is more important than matter. For whatever movement we do it is the mind that takes the decision and we just follow the thoughts. So now I can say that I accept that mind is more important than matter. We spent almost a whole hour last Sunday talking about what mind is all about. Still it is not clear. I would like to tell you the definition given in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

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In Tibetan language it is: sel zhin rig pa. That’s two important points combined together. I looked it up in many dictionaries just before talking to you and almost everywhere sel zhin comes from one word: sel wa, which most of the dictionaries and people who use them seem to be translating as ‘clear’. To me there are so many ways to understand ‘clear’. But mostly I am thinking of it in the sense of ‘sharply defined’ and ‘distinctly perceptible’. That means it is clear. There is no confusion and no interruption. The second term is rig pa and almost everybody translates that as ‘lucid’. ‘Lucid’ itself means clear. It is a clear image, true to whatever you are perceiving. That is the definition of mind.

Mind is the one who picks up and I did tell you last Sunday the three different ways to understand ‘clear’. The most important here is that the mind has the quality of being clear without depending on any external light coming from outside and clears the darkness. It doesn’t do that. Mind has its own quality. By being mind, whatever the subject of object you focus on, you get a lucid picture within you. It is not a duplicate, it is not taking a photograph, but it is just perceiving whatever it is lucidly, unmistaken. I don’t mean there is no mistake in the absolute sense. But there is no mistake in perceiving whatever is presented and projected. It appears absolutely clear. By nature mind has the capacity to perceive that. When you perceive that, what happens? Mind is almost becoming of it. It is not like eye consciousness sees green trees and you see the trunk and branches and leaves and the air around it and the leaves are shaking. Then when I move my head, that picture is no more there, right?

Likewise, here the mind, when you see the tree trunk, when you see the leaves, the branches, accepts a duplicate, a perfect, exact picture. You perceive that in your mind. You can’t say that your mind becomes a tree trunk, but it is sort of becoming accepted and it becomes reality within the mind itself. Whether it is wrong reality or right reality, that’s a different matter. But it is becoming of it.

Likewise, it works with emotions. When anger pops up all your senses are entertaining it. Then your mind will perceive that anger and is not only engaged with that anger but mind becomes that anger. When that happens you as an individual person become an angry person. In case of obsession you become an obsessed person. That’s because how you perceive. We read very often that some crazy people have so much obsession, either with a great artist or a movie actor or a someone like Princess Diana. There are groups of people who are very obsessed. Some are obsessed because they want to make money, others are just simply obsessed, because their mind is entertained by this obsession all the time and so that mind becomes that. Then the person becomes an obsessed person. Everything is not important to that person except following that obsession and they will hide or climb on a tree, take binoculars and look. They can’t get in because the body-guards won’t allow it. So they hide somewhere else and all that because mind is becoming that obsession and then the individual becomes that.

The individual doesn’t become whoever they are obsessed with, but obsession becomes them and they become an obsessed person. You do nothing but that. That’s how mind works and that’s what mind is all about. Somebody asked me yesterday, “If your mind is lucid, what’s there to be tamed? Lucid is by nature lucid.” Yes, true, by nature mind is lucid. I don’t know English well, so I am learning. But the thing is this: the mind is lucid with regard to whatever is presented, lucid with regard to whatever it is exposed to, to whatever is given to you. But that’s not necessarily right or wrong. That is a different story.

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Taming your mind here means moving your mind to the right direction. Anger, hatred, obsession, jealousy, etc, all work together, combine together and one brings the other so easily. Doubt too and fear is another one. When you entertain them so much, when you engage so much in fear then you become fear. The way the mind perceives is like that. Mind has that capability. It is it’s nature to become of that. It is not exactly becoming that. There will be a lot of philosophical and theological differences, but I am not worried about philosophy and theology and not even about logical arguments. I am simply thinking about how an individual can work with it. Mind is almost like a magnet. A magnet collects all the metal dust. When there are left over hairs or threads or other things stuck to your clothes you can use this lint remover and it takes all the lint off. The mind is almost like a lint remover or like a magnet. It takes on everything that is presented. Right or wrong is not the question. It’s mind’s nature to take it. When it takes it, since it is not form in the sense of physical shape, it becomes what it takes.

I am getting the picture of a mushy-mooshy liquid type of thing, but I can’t say that, because it has no shape, no color, no tangibility. But it functions. I often give the example of a clean-clear crystal lamp shade. It is crystal and clear, but if you put a red light bulb inside of it or underneath it, it takes on a red appearance. When you put a green light bulb it looks green. When you look from a distance you will say, “Look, there is a green lamp shade”, although you know that it may be the green light bulb that is affecting the crystal lamp shade. Green is presented and we accept it as green. Red is presented and we accept is as red. That’s how mind works.

So positive emotions are accepted by the mind. Negative emotions are accepted and that’s why negative emotions bring negative actions easily.

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Positive emotions bring positive actions easily. Becoming that will produce action. That action will make a difference to people. They get hurt or helped. If others or you get hurt it becomes negative, non-virtuous. I don’t mean negative in the technical sense, but in the sense of virtue and non-virtue. That’s how mind works for us. When you tame the mind, it is absolutely clear to you what’s in it. My mind is only known to me, nobody else. Clairvoyance may see it, that’s a different story. Some gadget may read the mind later, but that’s a different story. My mind is absolutely directly known to me. My past mind may not be my direct knowledge, but it is the memory and it is the reasoning that brings it back to me and so my past mind is clear to me. My present mind is directly occupying me, so it is absolutely clear to me. In this case it is clear in the sense of being with no interruption. My future mind will be clear to me. So my mind is known to me.

Now I am beginning to confuse you. I talk about mind and about “me”, right? You know it is there. That’s not my subject yet to talk about that. But I think it’s reality. There is my mind and there is me. Also there is oneness and there is separation. That’s what you really have to see. We as Tibetan Buddhists trained in the monastery understand that it is oneness with a separation. We do have a language for that: ngo wo chig la / tog pa ta de [same entity/ different isolate, see Daniel Perdue, Debate in Tibetan Buddhism, p. 415, Wylie: ngo bog cig la/ ldog pa tha dad]. But if I keep explaining that I probably waste three, four hours. So I am going to leave it there as it is. So yes, it is oneness as well as separateness, all together. That’s possible in the mind.

For example faith. When you engage your mind in faith then your mind is becoming that faith. That faith is becoming part of your mind. I told you last Sunday that there are 52 different mental faculties and all are oneness with the mind and yet there is separation there. So when faith is engaged by the mind the mind becomes faith. However, there is separation between the faith-functioning mind and the hatred-functioning mind. You can separate them. Faith functioning does not become hatred functioning and hatred functioning does not become faith functioning. But both are part of your mind and your mind becomes both of them. So the struggle is about whether the positives or the negatives are going to occupy your mind more. When you say that mind is addicted with hatred, obsession, attachment, etc, then without effort mind will go there.

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You are trained in that and you are comfortable going there. But engaging in positive minds like non-violence or faith or knowing how to be shameful and knowing how to develop hesitation, having patience or enthusiasm, that’s a struggle. The mind is under your control. When you look, you can direct it. Observe yourself and you can direct it. So taming your mind means: don’t let the mind go in a negative way, but try to keep in a positive way, constantly and continuously, as much as you can. Thoughts are part of the mind. Some people will tell you, “Watch your mind, whatever is popping up, peel it off.” What is popping up is your thoughts. Thoughts are part of your mind. I will say here: all 52 mental faculties are part of mind. That’s what I mean with saying that there is oneness, yet there is separation. Maybe you need to think about this a little more. What difference will knowing that make to you? It will give you a little insight. At the present level, whatever mind you have, if you look in a positive subject, like the Four Noble Truths – whatever your understanding for example you gain of the First Noble Truth or the Second Noble Truth and Third Noble Truth and Fourth Noble Truth, you may have that as information, you may have that as knowledge, you may have that as some kind of deeper movement, but whatever may be, that very part of that mind is the mind that will become total knowledge.

From the Buddhist point of view that will become Buddha, because it accepts everything and takes it in and becomes of it. Then total knowledge it totally built up and that’s how it is. That’s why training the mind is almost becoming like spiritual practice. That’s what it is. And that defines your own future, in a positive way or negative way. What mental faculties are you engaging in more?

I haven’t talked to you about the mental faculties at all, except the 11 virtues and the non-virtues. There are certain mental faculties that sustain the mind and certain ones that always accompany the mind and make it work. These are important, but that’s not really spiritual or contemplative, but again, to know the mind all of those have to be brought in the picture. Mind is focusing on certain things and then certain mental faculties will work and connect the mind with the object or subject you are focusing on. Then becoming that is the nature of that mind.

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Improving that becomes the more you present it better the better it becomes automatically. That’s who people can develop and learn more and become educated. That is how people become qualified – because mind is the basis on which all is maintained. But then mind also goes. When it goes it will leave all of them there. Mind becomes subtle. There is the big nice mind having all that and when it has to go it becomes extremely subtle, so that it cannot even define right or wrong, virtue or non-virtue. It becomes such a subtle, neutral mind. Such a subtle neutral mind is referred to in this tradition as nyug ma lhen kyi kye pai sem (short nyug sem). It is the simultaneously-grown mind of primordial connection. I do not accept primordial, however, primordial connection is something else. The question is, if you don’t accept primordial, then how it is being connected, right? Whether you accept primordial or not, whether you think it is there or not, mind perceives and every perception is not necessarily right. There is wrong perception that becomes right temporarily, but ultimately it can be proved as wrong. So then the mind will reject it. Mind has its own mind. You can direct it, you can push it, you have to really sell it and you have to make sure your mind buys it.

That very subtle mind is extremely subtle, no physical and even no mental [components], not even a vibration, nothing, much subtler, gone beyond any physical marking identity. I don’t know if it is as quantum physics says: appears and disappears. If that is right or wrong I don’t know. But it goes to an extremely subtle level, with no way of tracing it, not physically and not even mentally. And that is the one who transits - for those of us who accept past, present and future lives. That mind travels and when that gets from past to present [life] it is naturally there. When I use “nature of mind”, since it is Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhist theory has a different way of understanding the nature of mind, many very different ways. But I am not talking about that. I am talking about the reality of it. That very subtle mind becomes more gross, more gross and more gross and then it is recognizable as mind, which perceives and projects and entertains thoughts and things. It becomes that way.

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That becomes our own reality. When we make ourselves engaged mostly in the positive, virtuous ways, then it is beginning to open the wonderful things in our life and lives. When this continuation is totally left with negative feelings and attitudes and left with anger and short temper, showing a temper tantrum then it is continuously becoming life after life of being and angry person. The consequence of anger is ugliness. Even if you are reborn as a human being, you are reborn as an ugly human being, crooked, like the hunch back of Notre Dame – that type of ugliness, the face, the physical character, the individual, all becomes ugliness because of the anger. Therefore, it is all in our own hands right now. If you want your mind to entertain anger along with hatred and obsession and jealousy, along with a superiority/inferiority complex and then you make yourself like the hunch back of Notre Dame, physically, in this life as well as in future lives. But on the other hand, since mind is manageable, as we see, mind becomes what it looks at, then mind should be entertained and focused on positive-ness, kindness, compassion, love. It will be enjoyable for yourself and those who are with you. You become fun, you become beautiful, you become wonderful and your future lives will be likewise.

So it is in your own hand, whether you are going to tame your time or whether you will let your mind continue to be run by addictions. So you have to tame it. The way you tame it is by using the two previous statements: avoid negativities, build positivities.

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