Archive Result

20140316GRAAETB43

0:00:04.3

Good morning and Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe it was one day earlier. At the same time, today is a very important Buddhist festival day. It is the day that the Prayer Festival, known as mönlam festival, is held. Many of you are familiar with the word mönlam. It is one of the important Tibetan spiritual celebration days. Even after we came to India in 1959, for a number of years, we have been doing it continuously. We missed one year, but then the prayer festival was continued in India by the Tibetans. Nowadays it has become so popular. It is called Chö trul mönlam festival. Chö trul is the magical month, the first month in the lunar calendar in Tibetan Buddhism.

0:02:37.8

Why is it called magical month? Because this is the month in which Buddha had a magical competition with his challengers. There were 6 other masters, great Hindu masters, anti-Buddhist masters, actually. I don’t know their names in Sanskrit or English but in Tibetan two of them are known as Wösung and Dzog che. Wösung means probably Kashyapa in Sanskrit. So there were six of them. That happened when Buddha was at the age of 57. He had become very popular and famous in India, in all these little Indian kingdoms. I still have a problem with the names in Sanskrit. The names of those Indian kings were introduced to me in Tibetan. They translated the names into Tibetan. So we call them like Gyalpo Sakye, Gyalpo Magheda, Gyalpo this and Gyalpo that. So in Sanskrit I don’t know, but one of them is definitely called Bimbisara.

0:04:51.7

During that time there were all these little kingdoms in India and almost all the royal families became disciples of Buddha. According to what I know, according to what Buddhist literature tells you in Tibetan, those six other teachers were very challenged by Buddha’s popularity and had a little difficulty to receive good treatment from the families in public, particularly from the royal families. So they were a little bit inconvenienced. So they thought, “We will have a magical competition between Buddha and us. If Buddha plays one magic, we will play two of them. So we will defeat him, so that people will think we are okay and good.”

0:06:36.0

That’s how they were planning. Some Tibetan documents will also tell you that some of them were dealing with the devil. Whatever it is, this is a 2600 year-old story, and generation after generation, in different languages, all kinds of things will come in. So those guys went to the rulers there and put the challenge, asking for a magical competition, so that everybody would know who was good at it. It was not the question who was better spiritually, which is something that you can’t see and figure out. So that’s what those six challengers did.

0:08:34.1

Finally, they sent messengers to Buddha and he agreed. Then they were supposed to build a special place for the magical competition, somewhere between Varanasi and Kushinagar in Bihar. We went there on our last India pilgrimage. Unfortunately I only know the name in Tibetan: nye yö. That’s where Buddha had the summer retreat and somewhere there they built a place. So Buddha agreed that after seven days there would be the magical competition.

0:10:09.6

Buddha went around in different kingdoms at that time, here and there and all these six would follow Buddha everywhere. They were thinking that Buddha was running away from the competition and they said, “Now is the time where we have to prove that he can’t challenge us.” They started following him around the different kingdoms. Finally, when they reached to that place, Buddha said, “In seven days.” According to the historical books that I have read, those guys came very early in the morning, saying, “Today, the seventh day is over. Now we are here. The king must order Gautama – that’s what they called Buddha – to have the magical competition.” So the king sent a messenger to invite Buddha and the name of the messenger was Chiu Lama, that means “Small monk” or something. So the way Buddha came was by flying in the air, like an eagle.

0:11:59.3

He came in that way. Then he was meditating on the fire element out of the five elements, air, fire, water, earth and space. When he came in flying, because of the power of the fire element, the place of the competition caught fire. There was a big fire. So these six said, “Great, if Gautama is great, let him protect this place from the destruction of fire.” The moment they said that, Buddha stopped his meditation on fire and all the fire died down. And not only that, that fire had burnt the dust and dirt and everything and made the environment very beautiful.

In that manner they had competitions one after another. Neither is there enough time, nor do I remember all of them, but every day there were different magical shows. On the second day, the feast was offered by one of the other kings and according to what I read, something happened with a tooth pick. The tooth picks then were different from those we have today. At the time of the Buddha, he was ordering his disciples to use tooth brushes. But they were not real brushes, but little wood twigs. They would chew the end of the twig and through that it would become a little hairy and that hairy part of the twig was then used to clean the tartar on the teeth. That was the tooth brush then. This was 2600 years ago and there were no brushes and no electronic brushes. There was nothing of that sort.

0:15:13.0

When that king offered the feast, Buddha picked up one those tooth picks and put it in the ground and it became a huge tree, with beautiful flowers and fruit together, simultaneously. Normally, that doesn’t happen, right? Normally, flowers come first and then buds and then fruit. But Buddha manifested all of them simultaneously. That type of magical competition went on for 8 days. On the 8th day all those six ran away. Then it became Buddha’s magical performance for a few more days. Altogether that went from the first to the 15th day of the month. It was the year when Buddha was 57 years old. So this is why this month is called the magical month.

0:16:47.5

Then to commemorate that event, in 1409 Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa, at the age of 53, (1357-1419) was told by Manjushri, the Buddha of wisdom, “If you could repair the central temple of Tibet (today known as Jokhang) that would be very good.” So that temple is still in the middle of Lhasa. There were three images during the time of King Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century. Songtsen Gampo had to have those three images, which are supposed to have been made by one of the manifested samsaric gods manifested in human form. That happened during the Buddha’s life time. One is depicting Buddha as an 8 year old kid, the other as 25 years old and one is at age 12. So there were three different images. So for the Tibetan king at that time, in order to develop Buddhism in Tibet, it was very pivotal to have those Buddha images. They were all made by this one guy during the Buddha’s life time and were consecrated by Buddha himself. One was in China and one in Nepal. This king went round and asked for the hands of the daughters of those rulers. What we really wanted was the Buddha’s images, not really the daughters. But there was no way to get these Buddha images, except through marriage to these daughters. The Buddha images would come with that.

0:20:22.3

That’s the reason why he asked. So Songtsen Gampo had three queens: one Tibetan, one Nepalese, and one Chinese. The Chinese one was called kong jo in Chinese, which means “princess”. She brought the image that then came to be in the Central Temple of Lhasa. This is the image of Shakyamuni Buddha as 12 years old. Then the Nepalese queen brought the one of his 8 year’s size. Later, in our life time, the bigger one was in the Central temple and the smaller one in the Ramoche, slightly to the north. That’s another temple, the basis of Gyütö monastery.

0:22:10.0

To make a long story short, that is as very important temple in Tibet. During the earlier Tibetan kings’ period there was tremendous respect and offerings and all that. This gradually decreased and at the time of Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa, nobody was looking after that temple and it was still a temple in the center of the town but it had become like an abandoned building. A lot of beggars were living in there and were cooking there and putting their food in the laps of these images and using them like shelves. All that type of thing was happening. So Manjushri told Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa, “If you could repair that temple and re-organize those important images it will be very helpful for a lot of people.”

0:24:05.9

Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa decided to do that. So he started raising funds for repairing that temple and he asked one of those rulers to sponsor and so on. Finally, they collected a huge amount of money. For that time it was huge. Even Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa himself and his disciples [contributed]. At that time he was teaching somewhere near Lhasa. There were about 500 disciples with him. Anything anybody offered was put towards the preparation for this Tsuglakhang, the Central Temple. So they collected a lot of money. To cut a long story short, when Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa was 53, in 1409, the earth ox year, on the first day of the year, he started.

0:27:03.5

When we do retreats, on Friday evening we do some kind of orientation. But Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa did the first gathering there on the new moon day, in the evening. There were over 10,000 people there. The first tea offering was paid for by Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa and his disciples. Then the actual prayers started on the first day in the morning. So then he started teaching on the basis of Buddha’s Previous Lives stories, the Jataka tales. To commemorate that, from that year onwards, until today, on this very day, the Ganden Tripa, the head of the Gelugpas, will teach a session on the Jataka tales. I think HH Dalai Lama is doing that too these days and I was told that he is giving the Jataka tales teaching on the internet today, which is probably now 10 hours ago, because of the time difference between India and here.

So in the morning Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa gave teachings and in the afternoon he, along with all the monks and lay people, gathered at the Central Temple, and facing the image of the Buddha, made offerings, according to rituals. In the Secret Biography of Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa, it says:

Chö pa de wa chen po jin lab ne

Chö jor gyal wa se kye nye bar je

I don’t remember the other lines. I am quoting what I do remember. It means:

All the offerings are blessed by Samadhi, mantra and mudra.

Mantra is mantra and mudra is gesture. So it is meditating and saying mantras. It is like in the tsoh offering in lama chöpa: ting zin ngag dang chak gya jin lab pei…. Blessed by samadhi, mantra and mudra….Ting zin stands for meditation, ngag for mantra and chak gya stands for mudra or gesture.

0:30:56.6

So Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa made those offerings in the afternoon and also, this is the time he completely repaired the Central Temple of Tibet, including repairing buildings falling down, repairing the mural paintings and all the images. All of them were offered gold wash and opening of the eyes and so forth. Particularly, he offered to the central image of the Buddha a golden crown with the images of the five buddha families. In other words, the Buddha in form of the nirmanakaya, that is, the buddha looking like a monk, that’s how the statue was before. Tsongkhapa changed that and the Buddha was now dressed in Sambogakaya form, which means the enjoyment body, with exclusiveness. He changed it from the monk-looking image into the vajrayana- better than bodhisattva – look.

0:32:58.1

That starting of the mönlam is considered one of the four most important events of Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa’s life. Today the mönlam is organized by every Tibetan Buddhist sect, Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, Gelug, everybody is having the mönlam in Bodhgaya today, but originally it was started by Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa in 1409. He was 53 years old and it was the earth ox year. That’s when the first mönlam was started, to commemorate Buddha’s magical power competition.

0:34:18.0

In Buddha’s life there were hundreds events, but there are 12 most important and out of these, four are considered most important, in the sense that somehow, if we do one good thing it becomes 100,000 good things. It is that multiplication. One is, Buddha became buddha, which is the Vesak Day, the 15th day of the 4th month of the lunar calendar [June 13, 2014]. Another is the 22nd day of the 9th month [Thursday, Nov 13, 2014]and that is when Buddha returned from Heaven, where we went for a 3 month-retreat. That was one summer retreat. And that day was the day of his return. The third event is this magical competition, on the 15th day of the 1st month [March 16, 2014] of the lunar calendar. The fourth one is his teaching, which is on the 4th day of the 6th month of the lunar calendar [July 31st, 2014]. These four definitely have multiplication of the virtues.

0:36:32.6

In my simple conclusion, Buddha says: there is virtue and non-virtue. It is also Buddha who says that non-virtue brings negativities and that virtues bring positivity. If all of these are true, then when he says that the virtues multiply on those four days that also has to be true. It is the one person making all these statements. If one is true, the others are all true.

0:37:15.0

By the way, Buddha says one thing:

Sun, moon and stars can fall on the ground,

The ground under the water can become dry,

The peak of the high mountains can go under water,

But buddhas cannot lie.

That far Buddha has gone. When talking about karma we mostly have to rely on Buddha’s words. In Buddha’s principle, it says, “Don’t just buy it, because I said so. You check and find out for yourself. Use your intelligence.” But when talking about karma we can’t do much, so Buddha had no choice but to say what it is. And at the end he made that statement.

0:38:44.4

One more thing. Later, the mönlam became a very important festival in Tibet, the first festival in the year. It was also the graduation – examination day of the learned scholars of the three great monasteries and others. Also it is important to notice, when I was young and what I remember, there were three kinds of monks. One kind is the “inner monks”. These are the purely celibate monks. Then there are the “outer monks”. In Tibetan these are known as bu gendun and do gendun and ensisur. These are the three categories. So do gendun are people with vows, mostly the upasaka vows, and that includes married people, yet they are in monk’s form. So these are not inner monks but outer monks.

0:40:29.3

The third category is the ensisur, which are Vajrayana practitioner types, dressed half like monks and then with different funny dresses and in the west, we have seen those pictures, before Tibetans came out of Tibet. They are men with little hair knots, funny little shawls and maybe big drums. All of those people fall into the category of ensisur. So they all gathered together for the mönlam. The inner monks get in place and the outer monks would have their own place and the ensisur would have their own place. When Jamgön Lama Tsonkghapa first had the mönlamü, there were over 10,000 people – not just monks. Those were just over a couple of thousands – monks and nuns. They consider that one of the biggest gatherings in Tibet of full-fledged monks.

0:42:07.1

That was 2000 – 30003, I think. Within the monks there were also two categories, those who were eating food and those who were not. But they all got together. Those who ate food would sit down and say prayers and ate their food. Those who were not eating, didn’t sit down, but did circumambulations around those who were sitting in the temple.

0:42:52.7

There is a lot more to say. The mönlam did not just end that way. That was just the beginning of the mönlam. And then there were lots of other activities. Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa made offerins and Venerables gathered together for 15 -16 days, however the offerings were continued till the end of the month. Also, the books I have read say that every day there are thousands of butter lamps being offered. In the day time they limited the butter lamp offering by half, to about 500 or so. But at night time it was doubled or tripled. There were periods where from walls inside and outside, everywhere, butter lamps were put. Even outside in the courtyard and on the roadside, everywhere, there were butter lamps, so much so that it says that up to the Potala, even the trees could see the branches’ shadows at night. With a little bit of poetry they said that all the stars ran away at night, because the butter lamps were so much.

0:45:09.5

Looking in the sky, everything was pinkish-reddish. You couldn’t see stars. They all felt a little shy and stepped aside. So that is the mönlam festival. Many of you see mönlam here and mönlam there and even in New York it is now celebrated, with a concert for Tibet House and all of those are mönlam festivals still going on. This is now, in 2014 and it was started in 1409. And it is still continuing. In Tibet, even after 1959, they continued the mönlam for a couple of years. However, mönlam gatherings, according to the Chinese, became an excuse for the Tibetans to organize demonstrations and they banned the mönlam. I don’t think after the 1970s they never had any mönlams at all in Tibet. But it is continuing in exile.

0:46:48.2

So I thought I would take this time to talk to you about it, because you can see everything happening on the internet and most of you listen to His Holiness. That’s why he has the Jataka tale teachings today and I thought we should share this and also tell you that there are days where our virtues multiply so much. It happens to be one of them today. With this I would like to say ‘thank you’ and I will be here next Sunday. I hope the internet will pick up soon and we will put the talk up on the website, if not tomorrow, but the moment the internet works. With that Thank you.

0:48:10.1 Four Immeasurables 0:48:40.7

From Wikepedia:

The Jokhang temple was first constructed by King Songtsän Gampo (see also internet variant Songsten Gampo) probably in 642. It was originally called the Rasa Tulnang Tsuklakang or The House of Mysteries, The Magical Emanation at Rasa [the early name for Lhasa]. Both Bhrikuti and Wencheng, the Nepalese and Chinese wives of Songsten Gampo are said to have brought important Buddhist statues and images to Tibet as part of their dowries, and they were housed here.

Ramoche is considered to be the sister temple to the Jokhang which was completed about the same time. Tradition says that it was built originally to house the much revered Jowo Rinpoche statue, carried to Lhasa viaLhagang in a wooden cart, brought to Tibet when Princess Wen Cheng came to Lhasa. Unlike, the Jokhang, Ramoche was originally built in Chinese style. During Mangsong Mangtsen's reign (649-676), because of a threat that the Tang Chinese might invade, Princess Wen Cheng is said to have had the statue of Jowo Rinpoche hidden in a secret chamber in the Jokhang. Princess Jincheng, sometime after 710 CE, had it placed in the central chapel of the Jokhang. It was replaced at Ramoche by a statue of Jowo Mikyo Dorje, a small bronze statue of the Buddha when he was eight years old, crafted by Vishvakarman, and brought to Lhasa by the Nepalese queen, Bhrikuti. It is said to have been badly damaged by the Red Guards during theCultural Revolution.[2][3]