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20131208GRAAETB39

00:00

Good morning, everybody and welcome to today’s talk. I am happy to say that I am happy to be back in the United States and here in Ann Arbor. Before I talk to you I noticed that Jewel Heart outside the United States, like Jewel Heart Europe or Netherlands, or Jewel Heart Malaysia, the people there have their own little directories, little booklets or available as computer copies of their contacts, like e mail addresses, phone numbers and address, also facebook, twitter or anything to contact people, any public information, not private information. All of them are available and accessible to everybody.

0:02:00.6

It’s not only the office. It’s not necessarily controlled by anybody, but maintained by someone on a rotating basis over a couple of months. Here in the US we used to have directories a couple of times. I do remember, however, we were not able to maintain that, so year after year it disappeared. I understand that the Sangha Council and especially Wendy is interested to maintain that and Bethany Locke volunteered to maintain that. But before that she needs the contacts. So she was thinking of e mailing everybody. The office does have e mail addresses in constant contact and so forth. But somehow these are not accessible to anybody anywhere at any time. So we thought of making one. So I suggested that Bethany make a book and everybody who likes to can be included and whoever doesn’t want to, they don’t have to. I suggested to Bethany to go round with a hat, like they do in churches to collect money, but here we will collect contacts and that’s going to be a little interruption here today.

0:04:45.9

Those who are listening from outside, if you want to be in that contact directory, make contact through the sangha council. So that will be through sanghacouncil@jewelheart.org. That will be available to everybody. So if you like to, send your information to the sangha council and they will maintain it. I guess that’s that.

0:06:08.9

Besides that I would like to say three other things. First, Jewel Heart Holland is doing very well. Their buildings are very good, as large as this and maybe more useful, because the way they did it, is by building a couple of apartments on top of the Jewel Heart center and they are selling them and they have buyers for all of them, more or less. They are giving me an apartment, paid for by the sangha mostly. They provide the structure, so inside that you have to make it yourself. So they are doing very good and we have the teachings this time mostly on Cittamani Tara. There were some 80 people attending that for 10 days, including 9 Malaysian and one Singaporean members attended. There were also 4 or 5 from the United States, maybe more, maybe 6.

0:08:42.8

Last week my talk was very short due to certain circumstances and I owe you an explanation. Number one, I didn’t prerecord when I had time. Then it became last minute for two, three reasons. The person who helped me there to do the recording, was not well and had to leave. Number two, I couldn’t postpone it to the next day, because Jonas was leaving the next day. So I had a brief period of like 40 minutes, and as we were recording we realized that we forgot the power cord and the computer was absolutely low on battery. So I did whatever the computer could hold. So it was just 25 minutes. Then they needed the time to transfer the file too and we didn’t have the power supply. So with all these circumstances it was a little short. My apologies.

0:10:38.2

Now I am back here today, talking to you and happy to be back. Also next Sunday I will be here too. We have a Saturday meeting at Jewel Heart in New York, but still I will be back here next Sunday. As you know, we are talking about Tibetan Buddhism. By the way, it is almost close to the end of the year. So we started this a year ago, particularly this year. When you really look at what we did, we talked about keeping in mind that Tibetan Buddhism is a very huge subject. It could be philosophy, it could be very strong religion, it could be a way of life, it could be the way and how people function and it is also the way of how one can be a good person. All of these are Tibetan Buddhism.

0:12:29.7

So we are not taking the philosophical aspects. Let the philosophers worry about that. On the other hand we can also not go against philosophy, because that is supposed to be for finding the truth in religion, though in the English language if you say “religion” you probably think that religion more or less is the Judeo-Christian, rather than any other religion. Other religions are religions too, but the normal language structure is such that when you are talking about religion you are referring to the Judeo-Christian tradition, rather than Eastern religions.

0:13:50.9

However, you cannot deny that Buddhism is a religion too. From that angle, religion is nothing but sharing the truth and serving the beings, truth-guided by the experience of earlier teachers and founders and masters. That way, philosophy and religion somehow overlap. It is easy for me to say: let the philosophers worry about philosophy, but you have to make sure that you don’t against that either, because Buddhist philosophy is based on the Buddha’s experience. In one way, if you look at the Buddhist teaching, it is very, very strong philosophy. Also, it is very strong logic. It is very logical. Almost every point is built on logic. The way and how Buddha presented or proved what he said is very logical. It is not very much mystically proved in Buddhism in general. It is very strongly logical. Besides, if you are logically wrong, you are more or less wrong, because logic proved it is wrong. It follows the facts. What we need is as individuals, like Joe Blow in any downtown city anywhere, how can I be helped by Tibetan Buddhism.

0:16:59.9

We are taking that as our theme, particularly in these Sunday talks. They are designed and guided by these thoughts. We began with the motivation. We simply introduced the common, usual Buddhist slogans for the compassion-love-oriented motivation. Then we began to examine what that means and how it is possible. I remember clearly, we spent a lot of time on the recommended motivation, the ultimate, unlimited, unconditional love and compassion. This is known as the precious bodhimind or bodhicitta. Bodhimind cherishes other beings more than oneself. I do remember, we observed that for a long time. How can I cherish the needs of other people more than my needs? We talked about that for quite a long time. We observed quite clearly and carefully. If you look back you have a good understanding of love and compassion and a good understanding of care and that’s all quite well built within that. After having the motivation, then the question is: what to do?

0:20:06.9

We quoted Buddha’s words from the Four Noble Truths. We didn’t talk as detailed as in the Four Noble Truths, but we did talk a lot about the Four Noble Truths. There is a difference and that is: if you study the Four Noble Truths, you have to go really deeply in there and see the different aspects. We did not do that. We looked at the Four Noble Truths. We recognized them and took them apart as much as we could. And then whatever is connected with our life, we build on that. As a matter of fact, all of the Four Noble Truths are absolutely connected with our lives and not only with our lives, but even our everyday lives. It is part and parcel of it. We looked at it quite carefully, though we didn’t look the really philosophical way. It always pops up in my head that we didn’t do this and we didn’t do that. We didn’t look very specifically.

0:22:29.7

For example, the First Noble Truth is impermanence, suffering, selflessness and emptiness. These are the criteria. I didn’t go into detail into those criteria. I didn’t explore their opposites. I always have in mind that I didn’t do that – all the time, every time I talk about it. Somehow, I think I didn’t do that and it is true. If I did, it would become too much logic and too much philosophy and too much analytics. But for dealing with every day you have good enough understanding. I am justifying myself.

0:23:48.1

When you have criteria from the positive way there is also a negative way and then you compare them. That’s what it is. That’s how you study in detail. But we are not here to study Buddhism in that way. We are here to live our life and manage our life the best way we can and be positive and virtuous and helpful to ourselves and others. These are our purposes and goals and that’s why we didn’t go into such detail.

Not only that, when you go in that detail you have to go into the treatises of early spiritual philosophies, the Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools of thought before and during the Buddha’s life time. There were five different non-Buddhist schools with their own views and four Buddhist schools with their views. That becomes a little complicated. Without that complication it is a little hard to grab what we are looking at. That’s why I left that out, at least for these Sunday talks. If we do a Four Noble Truths study, that’s a different matter.

Many of you have heard that and many of you know already. So that’s that aspect.

0:26:31.7

Then we talked about the mind. Before that we talked about virtue and non-virtue. We talked about the eleven different mental faculties. We talked about negative emotions all the time. These bother us all the time. Although in Sunday talks I didn’t talk about the six root negative emotions and the 20 secondary negative emotions. But I did talk about these during the Mind and Mental Faculties teachings. We that in great detail and I think the transcripts are basically done and edited and completely available for you to read. Anne Warren has done the editing part a few months ago. So whenever the program people bring it out it will be available. As a matter of fact, it is one of those quite detailed available teachings. Many people have remarked to me that they have seen a number of translation and teachings and this seems to be in quite some detail. People talk to me about this one and about GOM. A number of people have mentioned that it is quite detailed, yet easy to use and handle. So I am getting good remarks from other Buddhist teachers and people at their centers.

0:29:23.2

We didn’t talk that here, but it’s available. Here we talked about the five mental faculties that are always available with the mind. If anyone of them is missing the mind doesn’t function properly. We call those kun dro in Tibetan, “following the mind”. The English name is omnipresent mental faculties.

0:30:07.5

There are five of them and we have done that already. Now we are dealing with the five object-ascertaining yul nge – mind recognizes and realized the subject and object you are focusing on and sustain it and see it clearly and hold it. So there are five of them: dun pa, mö pa, dren pa, ting dzin and she rab. In English these are wishing, conviction, remembrance, focusing or concentration and wisdom.

Dun pa is sort of desire.

Dun pa dö pei ngö po la/ dön do nye wa che pa-o.

It is sort of desire, but not only the desire to gain or obtain whatever you want. It is desire to have it, desire to clarify, to make it certain. In other words, dun pa is almost like wishing and also make the wish materialize. That’s why this particular mental faculty becomes the basis on which we build our enthusiasm. Our enthusiasm is built on that desire, the desire to have whatever, the desire to make it happen, the desire to have clarity. That’s what basically this wishing is all about.

0:34:46.7

I already talked to you about it last week or the week before. My bad habit is that I never take notes. I also am never in the habit to prepare. That doesn’t mean I didn’t work for it, but if I try to prepare something it never becomes good. It becomes horrible. I tried so many times. It becomes big words that I don’t know the meaning of and then it becomes very difficult. When H H the Dalai Lama came here in 1994, I had a prepared speech. It was a disaster. Since then I stopped to use anything prepared. Number one, I had those cards that somebody had prepared but the cards were not numbered and they didn’t come out properly and I don’t know how I put them, but some were upside down and some straight forward and above all I couldn’t read the hand writing and I couldn’t pronounce those words. It was such a disaster. I sort of covered it up as little bit, the best I could and also you can’t joke, because His Holiness is there.

0:36:54.4

Otherwise I could have made jokes and make people laugh. Anyway, before I try to talk to you I do look a little bit to remind me of the subject I am going to talk about and who explains what. So I look it up a little bit. That’s what I do. Sometimes I have it in my memory, a lot of them, like this statement: Dun pa dö pei ngö po la/ dön do nye wa che pa-o.

It is somehow in my memory. I memorized that when I was seven or eight. I wasn’t so sure whether those words were really referring to the first or the second mental faculty. They all sound the same, dun pa, mö pa, and both are very close to each other. So I needed to look it up to make sure I am comparing oranges with oranges rather than oranges with apples.

0:38:30.8

I think we did talk about dun pa two Sundays ago. Today I am supposed to talk about the second one, mö pa, conviction. I told you it is the base for enthusiasm. But how is that so? The funny thing is this: a lot of people have difficulty to meditate and to practice. There is not so much. Some people do, but many do not have enthusiasm. To many it becomes almost like paying tax. Honestly. You have the commitment, the time is 5 minutes to 12 midnight and you got to do it, otherwise you are breaking your commitment. So then it drags on till 1.30 or 2 am or 3 am. So it becomes very difficult, because that makes you deprived of your sleep and that affects your life the next day and one pushes the other and that’s because the lack of enthusiasm. If you have enthusiasm you will always want to practice and always look forward to it. Some people are able to be disciplined and do a certain portion of the practice in the morning and a certain portion in the evening or all of them before they do anything else. So these are the lucky people. Otherwise it becomes difficult.

0:42:14.1

But most people are good and no one breaks their commitment and everybody tries not to break and tries to maintain. Some people may have forgotten certain parts or portions, but even if they remember in the middle of the night they get up and try to do it. That is admirable and wonderful. But all this happens because we don’t have the joy that is expected to come out of the practice, the mental and physical joy called lü sem shin jang, which is a very wonderful, joyful and blissful feeling. That’s not the bliss we are talking about in vajrayana, but some bliss feeling you have. There is happiness and joy and that will make you choose your priorities right and make these things happen. But we don’t have that. You don’t get it till quite high up. So what do you do? Substituting that is this very mental faculty: desire. Why? Desire on the one hand is a negative emotion, but it can be changed or transformed into positive emotions. If you know about the quality of your meditation or practice, if you know the consequences and good results of your meditation or practice, if you have somehow the information and knowledge, that will build your interest. With a little effort that can build your desire. That way this very desire will be not only not negative, but also a very strong substitute for those mental and physical joys that make the individual engage in the practice effortlessly.

0:45:53.7

That will do a certain part of the work and bring about enthusiasm. And if you have enthusiasm plus discipline plus desire you can almost do anything you want to. Human beings are capable. The human mind doesn’t really have any limit. You can do anything you want to. The only problem we have is that we are half-hearted. When you are half-hearted you cannot achieve anything. Just like if you have a two-pointed needle. If you try to stitch a cloth with that one will go this way and the other will go that way. So you can’t go through. You cannot stitch anything. That happens when your mind is half-hearted. Dun pa will make your mind together, along with desire, along with enthusiasm. It makes you work better. That’s how it affects. Until you get the physical and mental joy, your mind has to be managed on the basis of this mental faculty. This is also a very strong antidote to laziness. The more laziness goes down, the more enthusiasm will come up. The more enthusiasm comes, that much more effort is put in and the more effort you put in, the results are bound to be positive. So although I didn’t talk to you about the second mental faculty it is almost the same. All these five are interrelated very strongly. But when you look at them carefully, each of them, when you are able to separate them, has a job to make your mind right. So recognize each mental faculty and each job and responsibility they have have.

0:49:51.3

Whichever is missing within you? Emphasize, recognize and put efforts into building that. If you do manage quite okay between these 10 first mental faculties, you will be able to manage your mind quite well. Not perfectly, but quite well. You will be better off than having a third class psychologist or therapist. That’s because you know, you have the knowledge, if you watch it carefully, without influence of anything. You know what is bothering you, what is missing. You have first-hand knowledge. The second person treating you will have to guess at each and every one of them by questioning or listening to you. More or less by listening to you. If you keep listening, whatever the person has built up will be put out. That gives relief. That’s number one. Number two: while you are listening you pick up certain points about which thing is missing. Then you have to guess that and start treating. So I think you can treat yourself quite well by doing that yourself, better than a third class therapist. You have the direct knowledge.

0:52:27.7

But if you are misguided by yourself, is your mind is misled by one of your emotions, then you get into trouble, if you treat yourself. Your mind is not “there”, it is influenced. When that happens it is like a red lamp shade because of a red lamp shade or a blue lamp shade because of a blue light bulb. The lamp shade itself maybe a clean clear crystal lamp shade, but it looks like red or green, because of the influence of the light bulb, which in this example are the various emotions.

0:53:45.8

If you are looking in your own mind make sure your mind is not tainted or colored or blinded by any one of those emotions. The best thing for you to do is for a very short time, but very often, for a minute or two or even shorter, take note and then let the mind go under the control of something else and then pick it up again. Then you build it up and you see what it is.

0:54:40.4

I was talking or thinking this morning. When you look in your mind everybody will have one problem or another. More or less everybody will have it. There will be very, very few people who don’t have any problem. I doubt if you find even one. So everybody has it. But to what degree and how powerful are those problems? Sometimes they are so powerful that you lose every awareness within you. That is a big problem. Sometimes it may not be that big of a problem, but it influences everything you think, you walk, you eat, you drink, whatever. That’s a very big problem. Everybody has a problem, but the degree of the problem makes a difference.

0:56:31.9

Also the degree of the problem has an impact whether it is manageable or not. Most people manage because it is manageable. Particularly if you have information and knowledge about this subject you have more windows to look through in your mind. More balance you can create. Honestly, I tell you it is the balance. When the balance is lop-sided then you have both, mind and physical. When the balance is lop-sided you have a problem. When the balance is straight you don’t have a problem. But deep problems are there, everyone has them, till we get rid of the root of samsara. Till then problems are there. But balancing is the most important, both physically and mentally. Even physically, food and everything is about balancing. If you can balance and have a little of this and a little bit of that is not a big deal. But if you are eating Amy Joyce’s doughnuts, like 24 a day, then you got to become diabetic, what else? There is nothing wrong about that. 12 at one go and 12 I used to take home and eat – in addition to all three meals. So what else can you expect? That’s where the heavy physical body comes from. And nowadays I can’t even walk properly, because of that. These Amy Joyce doughnuts have built up.

0:59:16.5

And you can’t get rid of them. They are not made with good oil and good sugar, all of those, but when are eating them you enjoy. I even enjoyed doughnuts in India this time. Colleen was blocking me but there are very specific doughnuts in a very specific place that I like. Anyway, so if you can balance, then everything is manageable to a certain extent, mentally, physically, emotionally, all of them. If you are off-balance you are crazy, no doubt, no matter whoever you are. That’s how we are. So hopefully you manage and I think that’s the way it is. Sorry about it. I guess I better shut up, because it is over the time already. I hope that book is going round. Good, thank you.

1:00:48.7