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Happiness Amid Suffering

So tonight our group of people in this area who are studying with the Jewel Heart Programs all year round, put time, energy and efforts in to share your experience and things with the people here who are interested. They asked me to be here. Me coming here for one evening is no big deal, because you people are putting in a lot of time, trying to help yourself. And that’s really what it is all about.

The study that Jewel Heart does basically is whatever I have learnt since childhood back in good, old Tibet. It is very rich with the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and not only just very rich, but that’s very Tibetan Buddhism comes from, although Buddhism is from India and somehow Buddhism has so many different styles and ways of how Buddha dealt with the individuals.

0:02:13.9

The purpose is no doubt to ease the suffering and pain of the individual, but there are many ways. Some people are simply interested in easing certain pains for a short time. Some people would definitely like to have the cessation of pain, with no more pain left and only complete, total joy.

Some people want even more than that: to be just like Buddha himself was. That’s how Buddhism has so many varieties. Basically they are known as three different points of Buddhism: one is called Hinayana, which is the smaller vehicle. The people who are within Hinayana, don’t like to be called Hinayana, because that’s called “smaller vehicle”. So they like to call it: self-liberation vehicle. Then the other one is called Mahayana, the bigger vehicle. That takes you from the suffering to total liberation. Then the third one is what we call vajrayana, the diamond vehicle or something like that.

0:02:13.9

These three yanas (in Sanskrit) or vehicles look very different, because they come out in three separate ways. However, if you look at it, Tibetan Buddhism is supposed to be, or claims to be, the diamond vehicle, which is based on the Mahayana, the greater vehicle, which doesn’t function without the important points within the Mahayana. So it is really based on Mahayana principles.

0:05:48.2

Mahayana cannot function without the basic ground, the lower level. You may call it lower level, but it is really the ground zero level. That’s what we call the Hinayana, the smaller vehicle. The smaller vehicle is looking at yourself, seeing what you are experiencing, the suffering, or enjoyment or basically life itself. When you look at it, mostly to be honest, it is suffering. We all live our life in our physical body, combined with the mental occupation. It is the combination of these two together. I very often talk about it the physical body like an apartment and the mind is the person who occupies the apartment. So the combination of these two together really is life. You can’t have life as a mind without body. You won’t be a right person, probably a ghost or something. Maybe just a spirit. If you have a body, and not a mind, then you will be something else, and people won’t want to keep you around.

0:08:20.0

So life is the combination of these two together, functioning together. The mind is functioning, the physical body is functioning and that is what life is all about. If you look at that life very carefully, then no matter whatever you try to do, putting up a nice face, wearing a nice dress and nice make-up and trying to show the best whatever we could, but the body itself is a perishing material, I am sorry to say. It sort of goes down and deteriorates day by day. That’s what we call aging, getting old. Then we wear nice glasses. Maybe they actually look nice, but why do you wear them? Because your eyes are not functioning properly, so you need an intervention by glasses. You may have hearing aids and may be able to hide them inside as much as you can, however, it is because your hearing is deteriorating.

0:10:13.9

I put moisturizer on my hands every morning. Why? Otherwise it looks like old leather. If you put moisturizer, it becomes a little smoother. Honestly, that’s how it is. At the young age, you may not have those, but when you get older you will see all of them. It is the nature of our life.

This is not bad. You know how difficult or maybe not difficult, but how non-functional we can be, mentally, physically and emotionally. So Buddha labels this suffering. At the end of all, no matter whatever, the end is always there with something not right. If your goal is to become very high, the end of that is going low, falling down. The end of life is death. So everything, at the end it is always ends up with something that we don’t exactly want. People think that it is the nature that all people will die. Yes, true that is nature. When we are young and looking at them, we see that yes, the old will die. That’s natural, nothing wrong. But when you talk to an old person, “Do you want to die?” then they certainly don’t want to die. Nobody wants to die.

0:13:21.4

They want to live. That’s also natural. You are not going to get exactly what you want. Everything ends with something that you dislike and don’t want. So it is suffering. Sometimes there are very vivid, obvious sufferings. Sometimes there are some kinds of change that look great, but become suffering. Many of our joys are like that. They look great, however, if we have too much of it, whatever it may be, you end up with all these difficulties. That goes for everything, food, drink, sex – everything. If you have too much of it you end up suffering. That’s why lots of people say that everything in moderation is great. That’s true to a certain extent. But it’s not completely true, because at the end you are going to suffer.

0:15:10.2

So the purpose of the Buddha in sharing his experience of enlightenment was to ease the pain, end this suffering, not only for himself, but also people who he came across. Remember, Buddha was born in India as a prince, who was responsible for all his subjects. So he was completely taking responsibility for easing the suffering of his subjects. So he knew very well through the material world, through the material development that it is a very long way to overcome those pains and through the material development it can never completely be overcome at all. So he looked for the spiritual path.

0:16:45.8

Buddhism is not the first spiritual path in India. There were many great Hindu traditions even before Buddhism came to India. There were many. However, Buddha somehow was not satisfied with those great teachers he had from those traditions. He was really looking for personal experience of really overcoming the pains that he didn’t want for himself and for his parents and family and he didn’t want his subjects to suffer from that. That’s why Buddha dedicated his life to that. But the result was that it didn’t only benefit his family and subjects, but everybody else at that time and even now, 2600 years later, even in the middle of nowhere in the Birmingham area, people like you, great people, wonderful, educated, intelligent, yet you have come in bad weather over here tonight and see what this fellow has to say. Honestly, that indicates that whatever Buddha discovered, whatever he shared, that went through all these generations, throughout everywhere.

0:19:16.2

Buddhism is something completely new here. You know that better than I do. It is new. It only developed here in the late 40s and 50s in the United States. There was nothing before that. Then came the 60s and people who lived then, like the Beatnik poets as well as those LSD people, tried to find out scientifically. There was Timothy O’Leary and Dr. Richard Alpert and others, brilliant scientists. They were not physicists, but they were scientists and they were looking through scientific eyes to ease people’s pains, to make people more comfortable and they made discoveries and kept on saying that they were in uncharted territory. Day by day they discovered things. Baba Ram Das, who was then known as Dr. Richard Alpert, told me personally that they were taking notes at the night, thinking they were making great discoveries in uncharted territory and they were sharing their notes and all that. Then suddenly an elderly lady came who they respected, maybe she put some money into their research or whatever, so she came and gave them a copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and they saw that whatever they were discovering was in that book.

0:22:14.1

They began to realize that this was not uncharted territory, but already written down there. Many generations went through this somehow. So the 60s opened the situation up and that’s why you people are open-minded and you are here today. Really, that’s what it is.

0:23

Now the question is: from here, where do we go? What to do? That’s the real question. The thing is this: the sufferings we are looking at, maybe we are looking at them as of now. Many may not be looking at them at all. But they are coming and they will overcome us. Slowly, very slowly and very gradually, but they are going to take over one day, for sure. So what do we do?

0:24:24.3

Yes, we should take care of ourselves, our diet, the food we eat and what we drink. But that’s very limited. That can help you to a certain extent, but not completely. We all know that. Nobody has any doubt. On the other hand, if you do meditation, it will help you to relax your mind and get a little mental peace. It’s not going to completely reverse that suffering we are looking at. It is never going to reverse it, no matter whatever you do, even if you become a fully enlightened Buddha, even then it is not going to reverse. This is going to take place. But then, what do you need? You need protection. The suffering may come to you. Suffering will go. But it should not “get” you. The suffering should not make you miserable. Suffering may affect your physical body. It may affect even if your life, but even after that you should be happy and even within that you should be happy and the suffering should not get you. Are you with me at all or are you just thinking these are fairy tale stories? Honestly. In my life time I have seen many great teachers and masters who also have suffering like Parkinson’s disease. I have seen great teachers who have Alzheimer’s. I have seen all of those. I have seen very little Alzheimer’s, but more Parkinson’s. But even those with Alzheimers, whatever they really wanted to know and remember, they did. It didn’t affect their memory much. Persons who suffered from Parkinson’s I have seen. Some were shaking very badly. One of them tried to give me a little scarf and a little piece of something, but it was waving around everywhere. But whatever he was telling me was very definitely nothing to do with this.

0:28:47.0

It was the beginning of my Jewel Heart work in the United States when I went to see one of them. He was really shaking terribly and I asked him for one of the great teachings of the traditions called “Heart Transplant” in the Vajrayogini tradition and he said, “Oh yes, okay.” Then he started saying, “In the tradition of the early Tibetan teachers…..” in the whole time that he talked to me nothing was shaking and nothing else was happening. Everything was absolutely smooth and then it was over, all the shaking came back. Scarves were going up and down, he was knocking down the tea on the table and was doing all kinds of things.

0:30:13.7

Then I told him, “Whatever I am doing is not that great.” But he said, “I can see that it is so useful for so many people, don’t give up. Don’t change your mind, don’t change your mind. There is a lot of help for so many people, so don’t, don’t.” That’s exactly what he said. I was happy to be quiet and not talk about Buddha, Dharma and all that. I could have just gone and spend my time whatever the way I wanted to, you know, touch whatever I wanted to touch, do whatever I wanted to do, rather than have restrictions.

0:31:03.3

But this is what I mean when I say, “The sufferings don’t get you.” The sufferings are there. Sometimes people may think that if you do a Buddhist practice you can reverse death and old age. But that’s not true. Many Buddhist practitioners have shiny bald heads and you are getting old like me. I am getting old, no doubt about it. I could have left my body frozen in Ladakh last month. I could have. Actually, quite easily. Had Colleen not been shaking me and pulling me up and holding me up I would have nicely slipped away there, you know. Whatever. So that’s not going to be reversed. But the suffering shouldn’t get you. Honestly. You have to really know that the purpose of the practice is this. Many people think that you simply don’t get sick and you don’t get this and you don’t get that. Yes, it does help to a certain extent. But it is not completely and forever. Life is such that it is impermanent.

0:32:57.7

It is nature. It will go. So you, particularly you younger people, you are bright, intelligent and you are great and this is the time that you should also pick up this besides making money. Yes, you have to make money because you have to pay your bills. I am not telling you not to be worried about money. I am never going to say that. I never said that. Yes, you do have to worry about money, because you do have to pay your bills. Yes, you do need a little savings, because you will be old and you will need it. Yes, you have to have some savings, because you have to support your kids. All of that. I never say you never need money. You do.

WHAT TIBETAN BUDDHIST PRACTICE CAN DO FOR YOU

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Every Sunday I do a talk for about an hour. So yesterday I said clearly that if you don’t need money, if you really become a true practitioner who lives a very simple life, just surviving and managing, it is great, no doubt. But most of us are not in that category. We can’t. Even if we pretend to be, it will be artificial. We won’t do it nicely. So there is no point. Yes, you do have to make money. But you also need the spiritual path. Whichever spiritual path you take, that doesn’t matter. There are great spiritual traditions, such as the Judeo-Christian tradition, which is very familiar here, as well as the eastern traditions like Buddhism, Hinduism or anything else. As long as they are great and good ones, it doesn’t matter, honestly. But it has to be good. What I don’t want you to do is a little bit of black magic and a little bit of white magic and all that, disguised as a great spiritual tradition. That will be a waste of your life. Yes, you may become a powerful black or white magician or whatever. You may be able to do something, like hurt some people, harm somebody.

0:37:06.8

People who you don’t like you can put down a little bit; people who you love you can bring up a little bit. So that’s magic does, especially black magic. But every politician knows how to do that! Honestly - and everybody, even business people, will also know how to do it and every one of us really knows how to do that. So for that you don’t need a spiritual path. You do need a spiritual path to have this little gap between you and suffering. When the suffering is really taking place within you, you will be above the suffering and watching it, rather than being completely subject to that torture. Particularly mental sufferings and emotional sufferings are definitely something you can take care of by yourself, very particularly the emotional and mental sufferings.

0:38:47.9

Physical sufferings come because the physical body is by its own nature perishable and will go bad. I am sorry. No matter how fresh the greens are that you put inside the refrigerator and do whatever you do, they will gradually become yellow and crumble. That’s what the physical body is. But you can take care of the mind and the emotions. We are tortured now – particularly you younger ones – more by the emotional and mental sufferings than physical ones. Of course, we are all tortured by money anyway, because we don’t have enough. No matter how much we have, it is never enough anyway. So we are tortured by that all the time. But we are tortured more mentally and emotionally. That you can take care of. Tibetan Buddhism shows you how you can take care of it. That’s what you do the meditations for. You really do it yourself in such a way – I don’t know how much I should say. That’s really what it is.

0:40:43.3

We do have something called sadhana and self-generation. When you look into those sadhanas, those of us who do sadhanas, we generate ourselves into a completely different physical body form to the one we have. We pretend to be switching between our physical body and the one we created, a beautiful, youthful form. We pretend to be switching. We may not be able to switch at the beginning, but there will be a time that you will be able to switch. That is the whole purpose to do that category of meditation, so that when this suffering and torture comes, it will be only the body that is taken and not you. These are the vajrayana special qualities. That opportunity is really actually in front of you. It is not very easy to come in but with a little effort and a little difficulty you will get through. That is I think what we offer ultimately in Jewel Heart, not at the beginning.

0:42:45.1

At the beginning we show you how to keep your mind calm and it’s a little easy, simple, the usual breathing in and out and generate a little compassion and a little love and all that. The whole purpose is that at the end you will be able to do that – not only for yourself, but for everybody else. That is the purpose of the vajrayana dharma practice. You need to know a little bit about mind and about emotions. The Jewel Heart courses are around for that and designed for that and ultimately geared to enlightenment, giving you a little road map how to get there. That is the main thing you will see within Jewel Heart after a number of years that you put in. It is not going to be overnight. It is not going to be one cause or two causes, or one year or two years, but those of you who are in Jewel Heart, many have been doing this for 25, 30 years. Still, we are struggling. It will be there, but it’s not instant. In other words, it’s not an instant tv dinner. It’s not available that way. You need to put in a lot of efforts.

0:45:13.8

So it sounds like I am here to discourage you, rather than encourage. But better to know that it is not going to be instant, because it is true. It gradually develops. Okay, so maybe that much. Do you have any questions?

0:45:47.5

Audience:

You said that meditation not only helps us but also others around us. So how does meditation help those around us?

Rimpoche: Two ways. One is that when the individual is doing great meditation and it is influenced and affected by your friends and persons who are connected with you. Because it improves you and your improvement will affect other persons and that’s one way.

The second way is: if you can achieve a nice meditative state by yourself you can also get a certain power that will influence the environment and the inhabitants, the individual people. It is not even only influence. There are certain practices like mantra practices. Mantras are certain words you repeat. People use mantra for all kinds of conversation purposes. So sometimes when you people repeat they even call that mantra. But certain mantras have a power so that when a practitioner travels one way the air blowing from that person’s body affects so many people by that air blowing through. Sometimes we talk about air-born disease in the bad way which affect people terribly. Likewise this air-born blessing helps tremendously. Things like that, there are many of them. But the most important help is by showing your own experience, your own gains, how did I overcome my anger? How was I able to reduce my anger? How it makes my life much easier. How it makes my life so that people like me better, because I don’t bite them. Honestly.

0:49:39.6

Knowing yourself, you gain the improvement of like say, reductions of anger or obsession or hatred. And then sharing that with others. When you have an extremely angry situation, do nothing. Just sit down. Don’t make any hasty decisions. Even if you can’t do anything, keep on counting your breath, in, out, in, out, slowly and all that. So what happens, is you are giving your mind a little relaxation, so that the burning sensation, which occupies the mind completely, burning charcoals or something will be reduced a little bit. A little cooling takes place. Once this powerful emotion of anger goes down, common sense will come up better. So you will begin to make your own decisions better, rather than be influenced by anger, which leaves you with even worse consequences, as we all know.

0:51:30.9

Sharing that alone with other people will help them tremendously. Dharma is all about this. What happened to me and how I dealt with it, when I had these difficulties I did this and this is helpful. You may do it and it may work with certain people. With some people it may not work. But that’s not your fault. It requires a lot of things happening. They need to have certain virtues, certain karmic connections, and all this. When that clicks, then it happens and it helps just like that. When it doesn’t click, you try and try and try and it doesn’t do much. This is what it is all about. It is neither the fault of dharma nor your fault, nor the fault of other persons. Simply you can’t click. That’s what happens. That’s the most important way of helping. Buddha recommended and he said all these blessings and so on. But the most recommended is to explain how it works with yourself, and sharing your own experiences of helping with others. That is true dharma. And truly, that’s how it helps. Is that okay for you? Thank you.

0:54:02.6

Audience: Thank you for coming. If we had eliminated fear and ignorance on the planet, would that bring to an end most of the suffering?

Rimpoche: Individually yes. Collectively, you can never do it. Individually yes. Individually, the causes of suffering is ignorance. Buddha points the finger at that. That is not necessarily the ignorance of not knowing alone, the ignorance of wrong knowing, wrong knowledge. Both of them. Very particularly wrong knowledge. That makes people confused completely, not understanding clearly. So, the sufferings are actually grown in the shadow of ignorance. And fear doesn’t help, though some fears sometimes may have some advantage for us. I always think and say that suppose you say and think, “I am fearless and not afraid of anybody.” And then you try to walk around in the middle of Detroit, thinking “I am fearless.” You know what you are going to get. So that way, certain fears have some advantages, but in general, fear is a big problem. Actually, fear is part of ignorance. A combination of confusion and fear creates ignorance. Ignorance is something that is truly not there. But we think it is very much there and it controls us. Its tool is fear. It uses fear as tool and that way ignorance controls everyone of us.

0:57:25.3

Buddha’s wisdom is to replace that ignorance with wisdom. The real target of the spiritual path really comes out against ignorance, particularly at the fundamental level, the Hinayana level. Where does suffering come from? Suffering is not created by you, not by anybody else. It is your own ignorance that makes you suffer. So the root of suffering, when you dig down, is really that ignorance. The moment you eliminate that through the light of wisdom, when it disappears completely, then it is time that you have overcome all sufferings. So that is individually possible and hopefully we all do it and we will do it sooner or later. We all will do it. That’s our goal. Collectively, a room full of people can do it, sure, but not the whole world together. That is not going to be the end of the world. I don’t think that apocalypse is going to happen. That’s what it is really all about. Hopefully that answers your question.

0:59:50.1

Audience: Can you please explain in more detail the Buddhist concept of emptiness?

Audience: In detail?

Audience: Or not in detail…….

Rimpoche: Good question. This is very much related to the previous question. We talked about ignorance and fear. Buddha’s concept of emptiness means that it is empty of that ignorance. When you find that ignorance is gone, disappeared, then it becomes empty. That’s called emptiness. You don’t disappear. That ignorance disappears. You don’t become empty. That ignorance becomes empty. And so it becomes not empty, but emptiness. Okay? Thank you.

1:01:32.7

Audience: You said that karma shouldn’t get you. That is in all of us at some unconditional, unconscious level. My understanding of spiritual practice and meditation is to make it more of a conscious experience that we can work with, so that the suffering can’t get us.

Rimpoche: I didn’t say ‘unconscious’, you said that. I said that suffering does not get you. I didn’t talk about getting a morphine injection, so that suffering doesn’t get you.

Audience: Some of get lucky and just figure it out and do amazing things and so I wonder: is the “you” the mind or the soul or a participating spiritual practitioner. Who is the “you” that the suffering doesn’t get?

Rimpoche: Ah, that “you” is the individual person. The individual person is separate from the person’s physical body. The physical body is a necessary tool to stay in life, however, it is about time that you discard that and until you are ready to discard that, that individual “me”, the self or you, does not necessarily suffer as your physical body suffers. It is difficult to conceptualize in our normal way, because we don’t see a separation between the individual physical body and the self. The moment you say, “Where are you?” the person will say, “I am here”. So we always refer to the physical body as the identity.

1:04:54.0

That is the part of ignorance that we are talking about. Lack of ignorance may not be completely wisdom. A reduction of ignorance will already see that the self is different from the physical body or even mind. I hope I am not confusing people more. That’s the difference. If your physical body is you and your physical body suffers then when the physical body is left and burnt or cremated, then you should be cremated. But you are not, because you are taking a new rebirth. That is the separation. I think the physical body is part of the world. Whatever the world goes through, that physical body goes through. But you yourself as an individual person is not getting destroyed by that. Suppose, one individual is caught in a tornado, like the one last night in Illinois and getting killed. The whole thing is gone. The physical body of that person is gone. But the person still continues, not as ghost or spirit, but the transition is taking place and the person is going into the future. It is that separation. And when you begin to see that separation, then one suffers doesn’t necessarily suffer the other.

Then you can argue that if you enjoy something and the physical body enjoys…..anyway, you can think funny things, I better not go there. So thank you.

So, maybe I can say thank you so much for tonight. All of you coming here and if you are not here, this will not take place. So it really happened because of you. So thank you. And hopefully we could do a little service for you. Thank you.

1:08:28.6