Archive Result

20140615GRAAETB51

0:00:00.0

Good morning and welcome to today’s talk. Last Sunday I thought I would come and talk to you, but it somehow didn’t work out well and you had a previously recorded talk. As I like to remind you, last Sunday every Sunday we talked about Tibetan Buddhism and that also the principles in common with the Theravada or Hinayana path.

This year we like to focus on the Mahayana path. As you are aware, Buddhism is such an interesting thing. When you are looking at it, you have so many ways of approaching it. In one way, you look from the tenets’ point of view, from the point of view of theory and philosophy. That was most important, because earlier, Buddhism came out as outstanding in India where there were so many spiritual schools or thought and so many orders. Buddhism came out as the most outstanding one in logic. Almost everything could be proved. In those days there was not the scientific development we have today.

0:03:13.2

So the most reliable point of proving anything was through logic and Buddhism was outstanding in that. We call that pramana and prajna. So through wisdom logic it is possible to prove Buddha’s teachings. So the philosophical approach was very important.

0:04:03.5

Side by side with that came the practical parts. Sometimes the philosophical issues have nothing to do with practice and are not appropriate for a spiritual path. As much as philosophy is important it has to go together with the practical path. Then as time went on, certain winds changed and philosophy became more important than anything else. Simultaneously, certain portions of the tradition tended to think, “Let the philosophical points be deal with by the philosophers and let us worry about how to solve our problems.” So the practical application became more tight and on the point.

0:05:28.2

Now, in today’s Tibetan Buddhism certain practitioners are extremely engaged in finding the truth. The point really is to find the truth. The goal is to become free from suffering and to have total knowledge. The Mahayana goal is total knowledge. We call it Buddhahood or enlightenment. It means to know everything that is to be known. That doesn’t mean simply knowledge. This is an interesting point. In Tibetan we have the word yön ten, which includes not only education, but quality. Whatever you learn, you become part of it. It becomes your practice and it becomes part of you or you become of it. Quality means that the goodness of that nature is somehow attached to and influences the functioning of the individual human being. A human being who is angry and short-tempered and hatred-oriented, somehow can internally change. Somehow they are not so much short-tempered and angry anymore but become much softer and gentler, kinder and then become more forgiving.

0:08:24.3

“Forgiving” maybe western culture and language. It is more accepting the situation, becoming part of it, cooperating with reality and making best use of it, getting away from pre-projected perceptions of self and self-dealing. We talk a lot about becoming gentler, kinder, more helpful and all that. But when you really look down, this goes in two ways. One way is of course accepting the reality. Many people can’t accept reality, because they project something and then struggle for that. That’s what a lot of people do. A lot of us do that. We project something and try to get in there. That becomes our struggle.

0:09:59.4

Younger kids do that, older people do, we all do that. We project something and then try to get that. That becomes our struggle. That’s what we do in this country. And we are lucky. When you go to third world nations, there is much more reason to struggle. There is the suffering of suffering: no food, no medicine, no clothing, no shelter and then extremism and war. That’s everywhere. In this country somehow we are very lucky, happy and fortunate. Sometimes you have to appreciate. If you don’t appreciate, then everything is not right. Everything is not right, because it’s samsara. To be honest with you, in samsara nothing is going to be right. But here we don’t have as much suffering as we see elsewhere.

0:11:34.5

You don’t have to look very far. Just look at what’s happening in Iraq. A lot of good Americans thought, “We have to go over there. They are killing each other. And we have to stop them from killing each other and then we leave.” Yes, but now you see what happened. Because of hatred and anger [it continues anyway]. And then religions that are supposed to be the solution for suffering become the source of suffering. And that [is mixed with] nationalism, thinking “It is our land”, “It is our religion”, and “the borders are not right, this is artificial monkey business”. Maybe it was artificial monkey business that the British played in the late 19th and early 20th century. They did play monkey tricks. The whole idea was this: if they don’t get along well, the crown of England will return back to control. That was the substance of the agreements and treatises when the British left countries that became autonomous or independent. That was British monkey tricks, no doubt about it, but over the years it became the international reality.

0:13:45.6

Otherwise, where does reality come from? There is no such thing as a reality right from the beginning, self-existing, independent, self-standing. There is no such reality anywhere. It is all because of society, because of people. That’s the whole idea of Buddha’s statements about interdependent nature, the interdependent system, or dependent origination.

0:14:40.1

Recently I was in New York for the opening of the film “American Rimpoche”. Somebody asked, “If everything is empty, how does liberation exist?” I gave the simple answer: because of emptiness liberation exists. Nagarjuna said,

Ka la tong pa nyi rung wa – de la tham che rung wa gyur

Ka la tong nyi mi rung wa – de la tham che rung ma yin

Whenever there is emptiness, everything is possible.

Whenever there is no emptiness, nothing is possible.

Everything is possible when there is emptiness, because there is space, there is room. There is a way of functioning. When there is no emptiness, nothing can be done. It is static and all blocked, pre-fixed, not changeable.

Where I was talking there was a pillar. I am looking at the pillar and said, “Look at this pillar. Is there something really called pillar right from the beginning?” Was it that the pillar was born out of the ground or landed from the sky? No. today’s pillar is made of cement and metal. There are millions of particles combined together, taking the physical shape that serves the purpose of holding up the beam. That becomes the pillar. That is how the pillar is not self-existing, but dependent origination. That is one example. Just like that, everything else exists in the same way, including us, the practitioners, our practice and the results we hope to get and the path we follow. All of them are dependent origination – ten jing drel ba jung wa or ten drel.

0:18:23.2

This is the main point that people who are looking at the spiritual path and people who are looking at true reality, are looking at. We are looking at that point saying “what is me?” Instead of looking at a pillar we look in and ask, “What is me? What is the truth of me?” Who is it and what is it? Is there somebody called me? Does that exist or not? These are the main points that early Buddhist and non-Buddhist spiritual paths and schools of thought and ideas developed. Identifying what is “me” came to five well known early Hindu schools and four well-known Buddhist schools. That is the main point. And only the Buddhists, Mahayana and Theravada, talk about selflessness. Everybody is trying to establish the self and point it out. You want to liberate yourself. So if you don’t know yourself how can you liberate yourself?

0:21:25.1

So first you have to identify who is liberating whom from what to where? These are the main points of the spiritual struggle. Those schools came up because of that. Non-Buddhist thoughts are totally based on the idea that there is certainly a self-standing “I”. While screening the person they try to establish what is the self. While identifying that self, different schools came up. That’s why the wisdom part is the most complicated and most difficult. What is even wisdom itself? All agree, without any question, that is about the truth. All agree without any question that the self has to be liberated. All agree without any question that this is the aim and purpose. But while looking at the self, differences arise.

0:23:56.7

I am talking about Buddha and equivalent teachers of his time. Different divisions came up because of searching for the truth of “who am I?” That is actually not an easy question. We can dismiss it by saying, “I know who I am. I am So and So.” But that is simply a name. You can say, “I am Joe Blow”. But who is that? Maybe it is the Joe Blow who works on cars in the garage or the Joe Blow who works in the real estate office or the one who works in an insurance company.

0:25:16.6

Between the profession, between the name, parents, state, country and city you shift gears and you can’t find the person. There is Karla with K and Carla with C. You are shifting gears because we are not really finding it. When you go deeper and deeper into it, all non-Buddhists and even some Buddhists think that there is something or somebody to be called that. That is the

point of division between the schools and thoughts. Practically speaking we say that Buddhists and non-Buddhists are divided on the basis of taking refuge. However, if you really look deep down it is about finding the self, the “me”. That is the real point of division.

0:26:53.1

Taking refuge is a theoretical point. Yes, that’s what people follow today and yes, it is reality. I am not saying it’s not. But the truth is that taking refuge or not is still [within] relative truth. Otherwise, what difference does it make now? I think it is like Hillary Clinton’s point. The person who died is already dead. By now what difference does it make? That is true and that is what she thought. But it has become a controversial issue. So just like that, what difference does it really make? In reality, none. But for all practical purposes that is the definition.

0:28:15.6

Still, truly, the point is searching for the truth of the self. That’s why the division between Mahayana and Hinayana is based on compassion rather than philosophy or wisdom. Perhaps the Theravada points are more practical and the Mahayana points a little more “gone beyond”. I don’t want to say it, although they themselves say it all the time, with gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha. – gone beyond beyond all the time. So it is not that easily practical on that compassion. But you people now should know that the real division between Buddhists and non-Buddhists are really on the basis of the truth.

0:30:00.0

Theory, definition, card carrying allegiance, etc, is based on taking refuge or not. But that’s sort of theory. It is the definition. But that’s when Buddhism becomes only for practice and what you do rather than a combination of practice of theory. The truth is this: If you don’t have the theoretical points you don’t have the practical points either. Then the practical points are simply blind faith. You rely on people that are reliable and just follow them blindly. That is blind faith. There is no truth that is picked up by logic. Today, scientifically, we are picking it up. Groups like Mind and Life and other scientists are not looking for Buddhism, believe me. They are looking for truth and solving the human problems to make things easier than they were before.

0:31:53.8

And then, in doing so they find that they intermingling with Buddhism. They probably noticed there was something there that they can’t really, truly point their finger at to say “this it”. But they can see it’s there and so they are mingling around. That’s exactly what it is. The truth must be backed up by either logic or scientifically or practically. You have to be actually able to see it. The scientific development is very practical. Human beings can comprehend things with the help of whatever gadgets they use. They look through those and see particles and then they divide and divide and at the end of the division they found something that they called “can’t go beyond this” and then they developed better gadgets and divided again and so on. That’s what it is.

Who is “Me”, What is “Me”?

0:33:39.7

Buddha said that there will never be an end where you cannot divide anymore, no matter how subtle and how beyond it may be. Always there will be parts. That’s Buddha’s idea of east never touches west. You are in between. There is the east side and the west side and these two never merge. Never. That’s why it is forever dividable. If you go beyond physical divisibility, then something else comes up, sound, vibrations or whatever. Everything is dividable, time too is dividable, into past, present and future. There will never be indivisibility, according to Buddha. Then there are other schools, thoughts and ideas and they have to accept indivisibility. You may reach to the atom, but then you realize that even the atom is dividable, into protons and electrons and neutrons and so on. These are names given by individual human beings and they made these labels and that’s how it becomes reality.

0:35:27.7

Why did Kathy become a reality? Because her parents thought, “Oh, we will name our daughter Kathy.” And it was the right authority who decided on that label “Kathy”. Then the other siblings also called her Kathy and then she became Kathy. So because the label was given by the right authority the person became Kathy. If the parents had chosen not to call her Kathy but Mary she would have become Mary. That’s the clear sign of non-self existence. Everything exists dependently.

0:36:32.8

If you have kids you choose their names and those kids become these persons. Then if somebody else comes and says, “That’s not Kathy, that’s Mary”, you say, “You are wrong. This is Kathy and that’s Mary over there.” That’s how it is. It is truly emptiness. Then “No it’s not Mary, it’s Marilyn” or “No, it’s not Marilyn, it’s Maria”. That is how it changes. It is possible to change like that because Mary, Maria, Marilyn or Kathy are all not truly existing. They all depend on the label which is given by the correct authority, the correct person. If the wrong person labels it doesn’t become. If a neighbor’s child is born and we name it and start the kid by that name and the parents call it by a different name, what’s going to be right? The parent’s labeling will be right, because we are the wrong labeler.

0:38:33.0

But then again, even if you are the right authority, but you give a wrong name, it doesn’t work. It’s very funny, emptiness has lots of rules! Let’s say a child is born to a family and the parents decide to call him “prince”. That’s the wrong label, because he will not become a prince, but at best “Princey”. People will call him “Princey” later, he will not be an actual prince – although even all princes do not necessarily become king later. So this is emptiness with rules and regulations.

0:39:41.5

That’s how it works. So remember, all the points of the different spiritual schools and spiritual schools are based on the point of finding the truth. The Christians present their own truth and so do Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. Then finally you have to see which becomes reality for you. It depends on intelligence. The goal is to liberate yourself, and on the path compassion is easy. To some people compassion is difficult and truth is easy. For scientifically-minded people truth is easy and compassion is more difficult. For those who are like me, the jolly ones, compassion is easy and truth is difficult.

0:41:38.7

That’s how people are. The point is: who are you going to liberate? Who is “me”? That’s it. And this whole summer we are talking about “who is me?” Mahamudra, Dzog Chen, U ma, all of them talk about who is me. Some will sit with wide open eyes and look into space, some talk a lot, some argue, but truly they are digging into what is me. Good luck and thank you. That’s where we are.

0:43:10.4 end (chanting four immeasurables)