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20140319GRUM

0:00:06.0

I was listening to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama when recently he addressed prayers in the Senate session. I got the you tube clip from that and listened to what he said, so maybe I can get something from his wisdom. He said three different known Tibetan prayers.

I may have to paraphrase the Tibetan words. I listened to them today and took notes, but then I forgot the note paper. He quoted

chö nam tham che ngu yin de/ ngon dro sem kye dag nyi chen…

He had that translated and written in beautiful English. But I am not able to remember that, so I have to paraphrase it what little I know about those words. I very simply says that everything, whatever happens, whatever we experience and go through, good or bad, joy or suffering, follows from the mind.

0:02:15.6

In other words, it is only the mind which makes all of those. I don’t mean there is no depression. I don’t mean there is no anxiety. I don’t mean that. But it is created by mind. It is the mind that makes all the difference to everything we do every day. Even if we don’t think about that, but it is.

This makes me think about something very funny, a very difficult struggle that I had in my childhood, as a teenager, at about age 14, 15, 16, growing up in Tibet. Tibet was a very important spiritual home. I did not realize that until I was in the United States. It was really my meeting with Baba Ram Das, also known as Dr. Richard Alpert that showed me that. Other American spiritual leaders in the ‘80s also said to me, “You came from the home of spirituality.” I was wondering what they were talking about. For me Tibet was Tibet, just another country that was less developed and was a little cold and filthy, where hygiene was not paid so much attention to. It is very high altitude and that sort of thing, but other than that, it is just any other place.

0:04:45.8

I did not realize that the alternative spiritual leaders here considered that as a spiritual home. Then, when you think about it, you know it is true. The life people lived there was really a very spiritual life. A – there was not so much modern development. That itself makes it quite original, quite authentic. All our food was genuine food, honestly. The grains we used were not genetically modified, not at all. It was real food. Sometimes we see the Hamburger people advertise, “Real food for real people.” But whether that is real food or not, after all the hormones they feed to the animals I am not so sure. But the food grown in Tibet was real, genuine food. It may not be looking as big and thick, but it was really very strong.

The water was definitely pure and the air was definitely fresh and wonderful. But from the people’s point of view, everyone was somehow spiritually very devoted or invested, particularly form the karmic point of view.

0:07:04.7

Karma was the real guidance for our lives. Karma guides the lives of people. So people would hesitate tremendously to hurt anybody else. That doesn’t mean they didn’t have any quarrels. There was some murders and stealing too. However, it was very rare, because that would have been the last thing people would engage in. They really honored karma, because they were afraid they themselves would suffer. People honor karma for their own sake, not for the sake of anybody else. We are taught as kids to say all the time “for the sake of all living beings”, but you are really thinking of yourself, that you don’t want to suffer yourself and that’s why we do it.

So that was the spiritual home that I was born and brought up in. However, in that principle, mind is more important than matter. When I was a teenager, in the early 1950s (I was born in 1939) the communist Chinese took over Tibet. They came in as friends, not as enemies, though it was a very strong invasion, no doubt about it. Those of you who are my age know what communism is all about. The young ones here probably don’t know anything about communism, how difficult it was. But my contemporaries are very aware of how terrible communism was. It was not the Chinese people and not China, but the communist philosophy, idea and thought. That was the problem.

0:10:09.5

It was a true invasion. Military divisions were coming from the south, from the east and north and all that, but they told the Tibetans, “We are your old friends, we are here to help you and serve you.” And we bought that at face value and we stayed together with the Communist invasion for about ten years, until I left in 1959.

During that time, my background, my culture and my religion, my spiritual background, told me that mind is the most important. On the other hand, the Chinese had put up all these loudspeakers. There was no radio broadcasts, and no wireless.

0:11:32.2

Everything was done with long wires and they put loudspeakers on top of every building that shouted three times a day about how matter was important and how mind was nothing. They said that mind can do nothing. I heard this three times a day – like a regular religion. So as a growing up person I had this funny little thing in my head, on the one hand believing that mind is more important and on the other hand hearing that matter is more important than mind and that mind can do nothing and that matter is real and mind is a joke.

0:12:43.7

The question was not settled for until I got to Michigan. After years in Michigan I came to realize that it is the mind that really makes the difference. You don’t function without mind’s movements. If you get up and walk, first you have a thought that you want to get up and then you follow that thought and get up and when you have the thought to walk you follow that thought and walk. Everything we do, it is the mind that really makes the difference. If we don’t pay attention, that’s a different story. But the moment you think about it, you know it is the mind.

0:13:45.9

So now the question is: who controls whose mind? That is important. No one control’s nobody’s mind. Even me who went under Communist control couldn’t control my mind. They controlled my physical movements completely and kept bombarding me in my ears about how mind is nothing and can do nothing and that matter is real, but they didn’t control my mind. My doubt remained, my debate remained, my thoughts remained – all of them. So you begin to realize it is the mind.

So where does our stress, our depression, our anxiety, etc, come from? The anxiety and depression and stress is not a disease you get infected by. It is not a virus, it is not a bacteria. It is the product of mind. Mind makes it. Mind says, “I can’t take it, it is impossible, I have to do something and break out.” The mind is pushing the individual. So we create that. Then there are the condition outside, whatever you are going through, loss or fear, fear of losing, etc. We are really dominated by tremendous amounts of fear – everybody.

0:16:13.0

Everybody has so much fear. We may say, “We don’t have fear, we are free” and all that. Very true, we are free, but we have tremendous fear. Nobody is imposing that fear. We ourselves create it. As kids we are afraid of not making it. We are afraid of making mistakes. Even young infants are afraid of monsters coming from under the bed. We have to make sure there is no monster under the bed. The parents will say, “I looked and there is nothing there”. So the kid gets a little relaxed. But that sort of fear develops into other fears and we carry them tremendously.

There is fear of losing, fear of being left alone and being lonely, fear is getting sick without any help. There are all kinds of fear that dominate us – the fear of having no money, not enough anything. These are the biggest fears we create ourselves. In one way it may be good for our preparation to safeguard and worry, but if that goes too far then it becomes very difficult. So we develop so much anxiety and fear and that dominates us so much and we get so nervous.

In addition, people with circumstances, such as our heroes who went to war in Iraq or Afghanistan, come back wounded, physically and mentally, not only physically. That creates another problem. That is real, absolutely real. When the mind makes a problem, the problem is real. The person who doesn’t have the problem will wonder, “What is the person so afraid of?” We may even laugh at them if we don’t understand what that individual is really going through. But for that individual it is very real.

0:19:42.0

It is as though somebody was torturing them or beating them up. Their suffering is that real. Some of us will seem a little better. We are able to put a little more lotion on our face and some look a little worse, but all of us are suffering tremendously. One of the earlier Tibetan masters said,

thog me gya sar po mo su dra la te ten

cha lu nam gyur pun dro che tsun tsa ma tok

do gi mi tsi kye wa nyam nyam do do we

ge den tro ja nam gye nam dzö de gyur wa

When you look at people who are higher and those who are lower (economically or politically or whatever) some are monks, some are lay, and some may look very much showing off and some may look weak, but everybody is suffering with their own individual suffering. There is no one who is not suffering. We are passing our life with suffering, day after day. We are all equal and all the same in that. There is no difference. So it is sad that all our friends are in that situation.

This is true. Now the question is: where does this fear of “I am going lose” and “I will be left alone” “I am going to be poor”, “I am going to get sick” come from? All of them are there because we have such strong habits. Our mind is habitually holding the self, the ego, the me. “Me” is really what we are worried about.

0:23:11.8

It is me and me and me. “I am going to be poor”, “I am going to get sick”, “I am going to lose”. Naturally, it all boils down to me, protecting my own ego. That is really our bottom line. It is coming from me. We don’t have to go to school to learn how to protect “me”. It is there, in our blood. We are born with it. There is so much self, so much me, me, me. That’s why everything becomes narrow and very difficult and torture.

0:24:29.3

Now suppose you thought about others a little bit, for a change. What about others? The moment you think about others or you think, “As much as I worry about me, there others there too”, you shift your thoughts from thinking about me, me, me to thinking of others.

The thought of others, thinking of others, will bring a little more fresh air to our narrow thing. That little fresh air will give us a little opportunity to have a little compassion, a little care and love. The moment you are able to think about caring for others, having love and compassion, I don’t know whether that is going to help others or not. Hopefully it does. But it will definitely reduce your own huge burden of “me” and “I am going to suffer”, “I am going to be tortured” and “I am not able to fulfill my desires”. So all of them are going to be a little more relaxed and it opens up.

So some of the words His Holiness used in the Senate can be translated as: if you have compassion with you, then joy and happiness will follow you.

That’s what I wanted to pick up today. All of our difficulties, when you think about self - I am sorry, it is very funny talking about this in a university – it is not right, because here you learn everything about how great you are and wonderful and building yourself, right? – and I am talking about thinking about others, which is a little contrary to what you learn here. However, you are not the only person in the world, honestly. There are other people too. So you have to think about the others too.

0:28:01.5

One great thing about America is that you really do have caring and compassion. American people do care about others. They don’t like others suffering. They would like to share joy and happiness. That’s a very good idea Americans always have.

My own personal experience was when I was kicked out of Tibet in 1959. I came across the Himalayas as a completely penniless beggar. I was well to do in Tibet. There may have been four, five automobiles in Tibet in total. I owned two of them, one pick-up truck and one station wagon. So it was not so bad at that time. But later I became a penniless refugee in Northern India.

The first thing we got was USAid. They gave us vitamin pills, some red, little pills. Whatever they were, I just ate them. Then I got pyjamas that were huge. They didn’t fit me at all, but that’s what it was. Then I got some pants and coats that didn’t fit. Some still had $20 in the pockets. That’s the kindness of the American people who are sharing their extra, whatever they have, with the suffering people.

0:30:42.7

Here you had the Tibetan people crossing the Himalayas. For me the experience, as I wrote in my book “Good Life Good Death”, was like being picked up by helicopter in the middle of the 1800s, carried over the Himalayas and dropped in the 20th century. That was my experience of crossing. When there is no food and no clothes to wear, the first thing we got was US Aid. That is great and it shows that people care and have compassion. They really do. And I am talking about ourselves. So we do have compassion. We do care and we love people and share our love. We do have that within ourselves. So we have to use that for ourselves. So use that to overcome your anxiety, to overcome your depression. If you keep on thinking about yourself alone and drag your mind inside, that becomes narrower and narrower and narrower.

0:32:23.5

Thinking of others, love and compassion, good things will follow. As HH Dalai Lama said in the Senate, “If you have compassion, good things will follow you.” Whether they follow or not, they are changing your mind capacity. Your mental capacity is thinking about other people, helping other people. I don’t know if my meditation on kindness and compassion helps other people or not, but it is guaranteed to help me. So we should use compassion and love for our own good. But if you don’t think it is for the sake of others, it doesn’t become love and compassion, but something else. But still, it does the work. That’s really how it is.

0:33:46.2

Besides that, compassion has so much caring. It is really very much an antidote to thinking, “I can’t achieve this, I am going to be miserable”. You are thinking, “How can I bring joy and happiness to the people. How do I make my loved ones happy? How do I make my children happy?” That is how compassion begins. And it is the exact opposite to thinking, “I am going to be suffering, I am going to be tortured.” It is just the opposite mind. Using that mind will make it work differently. It is the natural law. I don’t mean that in the sense of law, but in the sense that it naturally happens – every time, everywhere.

0:34:54.1

And above all, it is mind. It is really the mind that makes all the tricks we experience. Everything is our mind creating a trick within us. And all of you as educated, intelligent persons, know yourself well. So if you are intelligent, if you are educated, you have to think slightly different. If you can think slightly different, share a little kindness, a little compassion, be a little concerned with the people’s suffering. If you keep on thinking, “Oh, they are suffering, too bad, that’s horrible. I don’t like to see it, I don’t like to know about it and I don’t want to talk and even think about it”, that’s not right. By not thinking, by not doing anything, it makes no difference, neither to yourself, nor to them. But if you think and try to make a change, I don’t know if that is making a difference to the others, but it will make a hell of a difference to yourself.

0:36:34.1

So I think that normally people will say, “Compassion is for helping people.” But for me, compassion is really to help yourself. My compassion for others – if I have any – is for my own benefit. I get the benefit, because by sharing the compassion with others I lose nothing. I gain tremendously. A – you gain respect, B – people will like you, honestly. At least you can see all this. Switching between narrow self-interest and a little open minded compassion and caring will make a hell of a difference in our lives.

0:37:56.0

That is the beginning. That is the beginning. I don’t mean it is the beginning of Buddhism or religion. I mean it is the beginning of opening our own happiness. Unless and until you are able to open that you will not have much happiness. Everything, whatever you do, even between two individuals, is calculated. Everything is because you want to do something for your own good, to make yourself a little better and more comfortable than your other companions. So the moment you begin to think at least about equanimity and equality, it gives you tremendous relief.

0:39:01.8

Then, after equality, begin to think about other people’s difficulties and that will give you better relief. After that, if you are thinking of relieving their suffering, how you can best relieve their suffering, that gives you more happiness. If you can help it, if you are able to do something, how happy all of us will be. How happy both parties will be, right?

0:39:51.2

So you see the key to our suffering and misery, whether it is anxiety or depression or even illnesses is this. Of course physical illnesses are cured by chemical treatments, like giving you medicine and all that. No doubt about it. But why do you get sick? Because you are not happy, because you have problems. You have mental difficulties, you have physical difficulties and that brings illnesses to us. Even those illnesses will be relieved by this mind. So the key is mind. Whether you going to be happy or suffer is your choice. Compassion and love are really the tools. No matter wherever you go, any religion, east or west, Judeo-Christian, Hindu-Buddhist or whatever, wherever you go, what they really will give you is love and compassion.

0:41:16.5

Somewhere else they may say, “It’s God’s love” or “It is your love”. Whatever they may say, the real truth is love and compassion. Compassion is nothing more than caring. Honestly, compassion and love is one mind with two different aspects. One wishes to be happy and bring happiness, the other wishes to remove suffering. It’s one mind with two different aspects. When I was here for a while in the mid ‘80s, I went back to India, Dharamsala. In those days, my old great masters, the teachers of the Dalai Lama, were there. The senior teacher gave me lunch one day. Somehow I got mixed up a little bit with the western people. I was not right on the protocol, the old Tibetan style. During the lunch conversation we normally don’t ask questions openly. But I just said, “What is love and compassion all about?” It slipped out of my mouth and I was thinking what the difference between them was. I didn’t ask that in the nice, protocol way of doing it. It somehow just slipped out. After slipping it out I got a little scared too about what he will think. He was eating. So he just picked up his napkin, unrolled it and held it up and said, “This side is compassion” and then turned it round to the other side and “this is love”.

0:44:05.9

This sounds very zen. You hear that sort of comment in zen, not in Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetans talk, talk, talk, right? Zen will have one word here and there. So it was more like zen. So when you really look at it, one napkin is one mind. One side of it is the desire to free from suffering and turning it round is the wish to be happy. In one way, talking about love and compassion seems very romantic and something very mystical. But on the other hand it is simply thinking of joy and happiness for all, including ourselves. That is another point I like to make.

0:45:16.3

A lot of people think that compassion is only for others, not concerned with ourselves. A lot of people say, “Don’t worry about me.” But if you think like that you don’t realize that you are getting burnt out, particularly care givers. They give too much, forget about themselves and burn themselves. If you get burnt, there are two points. I don’t like that term. A lot of people do. I just don’t like that word: I get burnt. You know why you get burnt? Two reasons. One is that your compassion is limited. The other reason is that you pay no attention to yourself at all. Making yourself a sacrifice for it, you are forgetting that if you get into difficulties, who is going to take care of you? That’s why you have to have compassion for yourself as well. It is only for others but also for yourself.

0:47:11.9

In Buddhism, where I was brought up, the first compassion is for yourself. They don’t call that compassion, but renunciation. Very strange. People think that you have to renounce every good thing, but exactly not. Just the opposite. It is compassion for yourself, for your own concerns. The biggest compassion for yourself is that you yourself are lacking joy and suffering a lot, from general sufferings and specific individual sufferings. Recognizing them and thinking about them is the first compassion for yourself. And then get rid of your suffering. That’s why renunciation comes in. The moment you say renunciation a lot of people will say, “Oh, you give up everything and go.” But I say no. Buddhism doesn’t take a vow of poverty. You don’t want to be rich, but a vow of poverty is not that big in Buddhism. You are renouncing the suffering, your own suffering, including mental, physical and emotional sufferings. Actually, you make your mind very strong and reject those pains and those mental agonies. Your mind can shut them up if you try to do it.

0:49:34.8

At first attempt you are not going to be able, nor on the second or third and so on. But if you do it 30, 40 and 100 times and 300 and 3000 times, it will make a difference. It is your mind. The mind, when you make something and then you say it and you make a decision and then you move it, that becomes your character and your destiny.

All of us have our own mind. If you want to suffer and invite suffering and be crazy and invite craziness and run around and behave like crazy you will become crazy. People will call you crazy. But if you reject to be crazy and reject behaving like crazy and if you go normal, you will become normal.

0:50:47.5

That’s when it has not gone too far. When it has gone too far, then whatever your mind does is difficult. Still, mind is the only thing that will make a difference, nothing else. Chemicals are helping, because they balancing, no doubt about it. But mind is the most important. And if you don’t take care of your mind by yourself, who else will? So it is really not only the people who are suffering. We are all suffering from all kinds of things. But we can handle all of that by our mind. The way and how the mind handling is, is through meditation. I am so sorry, I don’t want to bring meditation in here. But that’s what it is.

0:52:02.6

On the other hand, don’t think of meditation like a religious thing. Think that meditation is just settling……….Now it is a little better. Meditation is now done even in hospitals and everywhere. It is a little bit better than before. Meditation does not have to be religious meditation. Meditation to settle your mind, meditation to bring harmony within your mind, meditation to reduce your anxiety, meditation to reduce your worry, if you want to meditate on that, you meditate on compassion and love. Just sitting alone will give you relaxation, but it will not do that good. Just thinking nothing and sitting alone is a kind of meditation and it will give you relief. It will help you, however, it is not enough. If you meditate on compassion and love and you will see the result yourself, after a month long meditation you will see a difference. I don’t mean meditate a month long from morning to evening every day. But every day little bits of time, maybe 20 minutes or half an hour, if you can do that on love and on compassion, then you will see the effect on yourself and you will notice the difference yourself.

0:54:07.4

You lose nothing. You might have lost a little time. But if it makes a difference to your life it is worth it. If it doesn’t, then I am sorry, I wasted your time, honestly. So try it. Don’t think about meditation as religion. Actually our happiness is again a mental product. Wealth helps to sustain happiness, but wealth is not happiness. Very rich people commit suicide, because they are not happy. They don’t do it because they are happy. Happiness is a mental effect. That affects the mental faculties and that affects your physical body. And that is happiness.

Truly we don’t know happiness. In Buddhism, I was told that the ultimate happiness is the joy that has never known suffering. We don’t know that that is. We have only heard about it. But what we do know is the mental happiness which affects us physically too. If both, mind and body are happy, then you are emotionally happy too. If you are emotionally unhappy, it disturbs everything. What makes us emotionally unhappy? Hatred, obsession, etc. These are the things that make us unhappy. They make us suffer tremendously.

0:56:45.2

All our sufferings come from either hatred or obsession. And of course, according to the Buddha it is ignorance. This ignorance is not necessarily the ignorance of not knowing, but the ignorance of wrong knowing. It is self-grasping, ego-grasping. That’s what we do. We grasp our ego and think, “I am not going to be happy” “I am going to be miserable” and so on. When your mind goes in that direction, it has no limit. It goes all the way, millions of miles away. That is ego-grasping, which is really the cause of both, hatred and obsession.

0:57:55.8

Getting rid of that, and rejecting that, choose love and compassion. You will be much happier. And if you have happiness you live longer and healthier. You can do all kinds of things. You can help yourself, you can help others. So maybe I am running out of what to say. I should say thank you so much for everybody being here tonight and I hope you have something to take home and let me repeat that again:

All our happiness and sadness is a result of our mind. So you have to know carefully and your happiness is in your own hand and it is within your mind. You have to give it to yourself. Actually you have to take it by yourself. And don’t take the sufferings which also come from your own mind. So that is also in your own hand. Thank you.

0:59:39.4 Fade out music.