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20140629GRAAETB53

0:00:06.0

Good morning everybody and welcome to today’s talk. Many of us were yesterday in Cleveland and we had a Green Tara empowerment. Many of us got back last night about 9.30 pm or 10 pm or if late, 10.30 pm. Now we are here today. Originally, it was planned that we broadcast from Cleveland today and I did not remember and last Sunday, when I talked to you I said, “I will be in Ann Arbor next Sunday maybe.” Then our program people called me and said, “You are supposed to be in Cleveland then.” So I looked up the calendar and they were right, it was supposed to be in Cleveland. However, the next two Sundays will be during the summer retreat. There will be no Sunday morning talks during these two Sundays. So I thought I better be here. That’s why we came back last night to try to be here today to continue with Tibetan Buddhism and we are now on the Mahayana introduction.

0:00:06.0

The Mahayana way or the Bodhisattva’s Way is almost the same thing. Both are Sanskrit. To so many of us it is Greek. We don’t know what it is. We simply say the words. Many claim to be Mahayana practitioners and we are. The practice we engage in is mostly the Buddhism that came through Tibet and that is really Mahayana, totally, whether it is the Vajrayana or the non-vajrayana. Both are Mahayana. Vajrayana is part of Mahayana. As I mentioned to you many times, traditionally, when you look in the Buddhist documents, when they talk about the three yanas, they don’t count the way we in the west do. We in the west somehow developed the system, maybe it was in the 60s or 70s, to count Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana. I don’t quarrel with that, because so many great earlier teachers have accepted and even promoted that, like Trungpa Rinpche and others. That’s fine, because from the practice point of view it is that way.

0:02:33.0

There are so many ways of dividing the three yanas. But normally the division is done into Sravakayana, Pratyekayana and Buddhayana or Mahayana. Sravakas are those disciples of Buddha who took teachings from him and relayed the Mahayana teachings. That means that they themselves don’t practice. They are Theravada and don’t practice Mahayana. So they listen to the Mahayana teachings and relay them. The word in Tibetan is nyen thö. Nyen means listening. They themselves said to Buddha,

0:05:41.2

Gom po te ring da jang nyen thö gyur

Jang chub dam pa yang dag drak par ji

Jang chub pa yi dra yang rab tu gyur

De wai da kyang nyen thö mi se dra (???spelling)

Today I have been a Sravaka.

I will listen to your Mahayana teachings,

But I don’t practice.

I learn and I convey the message.

Other human beings during the Buddha’s time were purely Mahayana. The Pratyeka Buddhas are self-liberating buddhas. They are not necessarily fully enlightened buddhas. They come in the periods in between official buddhas. Many times, when a buddha takes birth as official Buddha, many of them will pass away. It is sort of their desire and their duty. Many of them are sooth sayers and they sometimes sit in the air, so when they pass away their body drops. The deer park in Varanasi, where Buddha gave his first teaching on the Four Noble Truths, is known as trang sung lhung wa ri dag gi nga – “The Deer Park Where The Soothsayers Fell Down”. So even before Buddha gave his teaching there, this place was associated with a lot of Pratyeka Buddhas dropping their bodies. That’s the Pratyeka Buddhas.

0:10:11.3

So what do the Mahayana practitioners practice? Bodhimind, ultimate, unlimited, unconditional love and compassion. That is their major practice. What do they hope to gain out of it? The perfection of that. And that is total knowledge, totally enlightened Buddhahood. Buddhahood is the Sanskrit term. That is the goal and purpose and that’s what they practice. So the purpose of the Mahayana practitioners is actually to develop bodhimind and to maintain it and promote it and to become perfect in it. That’s their practice. When you say “practice” for us it simply becomes meditation. Sometimes practice simply becomes saying sadhanas or mantras or having a session. But generally, practice is for perfection and true practice of Mahayana has to be something that you always do. I don’t want to say it – by I am going to say it anyway: it is a 24 hour job. That sounds heavy and you may think: I cannot cope. But the real truth is that it has to be part of your life. It becomes the daily chore of your life. Truly, it is.

0:12:55.0

For us, whatever we do, at least people who are here and those of you who are listening, why do you spend time, why do you take the hardship of coming here to the center or watch from your own home? Why do you have to earmark this particular time to listen and comment? Saying this is right or wrong or clear or not clear? We are getting a lot of responses and that’s very good. Thank you. So why do you do that? Because you are interested, whatever the reason may be. Everybody will have different reasons why you want a spiritual path. Some will say, “Well, I cannot do without a spiritual path.” I don’t know what that means. You still will wake up in the morning, even without a spiritual path. You will go to bed at night and you will sleep and you will wake up. However, hopefully it means something good. All of us are seeking joy, happiness and comfort. None of us want suffering, misery and difficulties. That is the very common basic human situation. Even birds and insects and anything that has mind and has not achieved enlightenment, will be in that situation. Buddhas do have mind, otherwise they are mindless buddhas. That won’t be acceptable. So they have mind but they are not necessarily seeking buddhahood, because they have achieved already.

0:15:54.7

Last year – I don’t know if you remember or not – I said that you cannot say that one who takes refuge to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha is as Buddhist and one who doesn’t do that is not a Buddhist. A lot of people say that, but the real truth is that one who accepts Buddha, Dharma and Sangha as true refuge is Buddhist and one doesn’t, isn’t. Buddha himself is a Buddhist – I hope, but he doesn’t take refuge in Buddha. So that’s the problem. Similarly here, buddhas have mind but they are not seeking buddhahood. So I can’t include him in “all of us who have a mind”, because buddhas do have mind, otherwise they are mindless buddhas. They are not seeking Buddhahood or total knowledge, because they have already achieved it.

0:17:52.5

Maybe it is a petty logical issue. However, many things that we prove, [we can only prove through logic]. Tibetan Buddhism and almost all the eastern religions are such that they are all thousands of years old. So the scientific proof was not there at that time. So the best and largest proof was through logic. When using logic, it applies to everything the same way, otherwise if it works with one but not with the other, you have so many exceptions and you defeat your logical reason. That’s why even though sometimes it sounds silly, it doesn’t matter. Still, it is the truth. So the Mahayana’s goal is to become fully enlightened.

0:19:26.8

Last year we talked about the Theravada level and there the goal is freedom from suffering, from pain, from misery. Mahayana changes that goal to total knowledge, knowing everything that’ there to be known. It is sort of unimaginable for us. We do have a friend in Jewel Heart, a young Chinese guy who is working with NASA. His father is an engineer, some old guy. A couple of years ago we were somewhere, I think San Francisco or somewhere and he attended one of my talks. Afterwards he privately asked me, “Do you think those enlightened ones, the buddhas, really know the difficult points of engineering work, the very complicated mathematical things?” I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say no, because then it wouldn’t be total knowledge. And if I had yes, I am not sure whether that would have fit in his mind or not. So I had no choice but say, “They are supposed to.” Then he said, “Impossible”. True, in our common knowledge, this is impossible without training and that also life-long training. So it is impossible to comprehend many of those sophisticated, complicated mathematical engineering points. That’s very true. So I can’t say to him, “You are not right”. But also I can’t say that the enlightened beings with total knowledge don’t know that. So sometimes you get in a box like that.

0:22:13.2

Coming back to the point, that’s why you have those instructions. You are not going to get so many new ones here. But those instructions are basically instructions. Let me tell you this: who are the persons who receive these Mahayana instructions? Of course bodhisattvas, but not only them, but even those who have not entered into the path, who are pre-path, almost like us, the lay people. Lay people here includes monks and nuns and just “normal human beings.” I have to watch my mouth. It sounds like the monks and nuns are abnormal. I mean the usual human beings.

0:24:06.6

“Entering into the path” conveys two meanings. One is that we practice and we call that entering into the path. But the true entering of the path is the first of the five paths, the path of accumulation of merit. Then comes the path of action, the path of seeing, and the path of meditation. Finally the path of no more learning is the fifth. This five paths – system of Buddha is measuring where the individual practitioners are. So most of us are on the path of trying to enter the path. That’s where we are.

As I said earlier: who receives the instructions? The bodhisattvas, of course. There is something called “continuation of dharma meditative state” – chö gyün gyi ting ngen dzin. That means you are always engaged in dharma activities. Earlier I said: 24 hours. That doesn’t have to be that you can’t do anything. It doesn’t mean you cannot have fun. It doesn’t mean you cannot go here and there. It is all of it. No wonder the bodhisattvacharyavatara is called “The Bodhisattva’s Way”. It is some kind of life style of bodhisattvas. It is more or less a life style. I am not making a final statement, but I think it is sort of a life style: always having a good motivation, always being kind, yet strong and not a doormat and always trying not to be stubborn.

0:27:33.4

Stubbornness is a big problem. Not for your friends and colleagues alone, but for yourself. All the stubbornness comes from the lion-like pride. The pride here is not just simple pride, but is really a superiority – or inferiority complex. This is not self-esteem, but you are thinking, “I know better, I am better than those people.” That is deeply inside, “I am better than others, because I am from Brooklyn” or something. I am kidding. “I am from Brooklyn and I have a Yankee hat.” Somehow you are not open and when you are not open, you shut down tremendous amounts of opportunities. When a stubborn person is talking, they always talk and never listen. They always convey their view, insisting that is how it is. Maybe it is. I am not saying it is not, but you are not giving any opportunity to yourself to hear others’ opinions. You are not necessarily the best. No one will think that, not even those stubborn ones. They will not think, “I am the best.” Maybe they think, “I am the most beautiful”. I don’t know.

0:30:13.8

But no one thinks: I am the best. Some bodhisattvas are so stubborn, like oxen, with their big horns. I used to make jokes about German horns. We had late Gelong-la, who was actually Austrian, but we called him German. He was quite stubborn and I used to tell him, “You have German horns”, like thinking, “we are the sharpest and best, like our German knives.” Anyway, the bodhisattva’s way is to be very open-minded. So those are the instructions and from whom do you receive the instructions? From Buddha him or herself. That’s how you receive them. If you receive the continuation of dharma Samadhi or meditative state, then you encounter all enlightened beings. You talk to them and receive instructions from them. That’s what we seek.

0:32:27.3

However, to receive instructions from Buddha you don’t have to reach to the path of accumulation or path of action. That state of continuation of meditative dharma state is either falling on the first or second path, the path of action. The path of action has four parts: heat, peak, patience and best of dharma. So I think on the level of patience that happens. That is also the same time where you gain immunity from falling to the lower realms. So tob nyen dro yang mi tong. And I think the chö gyün gyi ting ngen dzin happens on the same level. But it is possible to develop even at our ordinary level. That’s all possible. We saw it happening and it happened and it will happen. That’s what it is.

0:34:02.6

Whether you hear from Buddha him or herself, they are about 10 different instructions. The first is the base of development, which we touched on last Sunday. That’s the two truths. I gave you the definition of absolute and relative truths. If I remember correctly, when one focuses on the subject of non-duality, that’s the absolute truth. Duality is the relative truth. That’s the definition. Non-duality means that nothing else is perceived. Truly speaking, when you achieve the third path, that’s when it happens. The third path has a pre – and actual and conclusion stage. And when the practitioner focuses on emptiness they only see emptiness, without any duality at all. They see only absolute emptiness, nothing else. They don’t even see anything else, not even the self. Nothing. To convey those messages, look at the famous sutras, particularly the Heart Sutra, where it says: no nose, no tongue, no form, no sound, no smell, no touch. All these no, no, no is because there is no duality. You are simply totally absorbed. This is called pak pain yam sha ye she, the Arya meditative wisdom state.

0:37:19.3

That’s a special meditative wisdom state. We talk about the law being blind. It doesn’t know whatever color or creed you have. We say that, right? Just like that, that very particular meditative state sees nothing but wisdom. It hears nothing but wisdom, feels nothing but wisdom, touches nothing but wisdom, tastes nothing but wisdom. So is totally focused. That is non-duality. Some people will say, “I focused so much, I forgot other things, so I was in a non-dual state.” No, that’s not non-dual, it is still dualistic. Why is the non-dual state called absolute truth? Because in that particular special meditative state there is the truth in the presence of that meditative state and therefore it is absolute truth. In that meditative state, what is not true and not trustworthy is called relative. Relatively it is true, but absolutely that very particular wisdom doesn’t see.

0:39:29.9

Whatever they see, they see non-dual. So it is not existing in their view. That is how relative and absolute truth [are linked]. Why is it called truth? Because in that meditative state’s view it is truth. That’s the basis, the two truths.

0:40:09.1

The next one is the Four Noble Truths. All of you have heard so much about it, because it is the basic principle in the Buddha’s teaching in general. It is a very general Buddhist teaching. There are certain points why there are four, why Buddha chose suffering as the first and not cause of suffering, why he made cessation of suffering third and not the cause of that cessation. How can I get cessation without having the cause? Things like that we discussed last year and we also counted all of those, as you know.

0:41:20.0

But there is one important point I would like to raise. Last year, whenever I presented the Four Noble Truths as Truth of Suffering, Cause of Suffering, Cessation of Suffering and Path to the Cessation of Suffering, you have a good idea about it. Also, you have heard that the Four Noble Truths are running in a threefold circle. So the purpose of suffering is know it, the purpose of the cause of suffering is to avoid it. The purpose of cessation is to obtain it and the purpose of the path is to practice it, to meditate.

The third round will be: yes, you have to know suffering, however, there is nothing to know. Yes, you have to avoid the cause of suffering, yet there is nothing to avoid. Yes, you have to meditate on the path, but there is nothing to be meditated. Yes, you have to obtain the cessation, yet there is nothing to be obtained. These are the twelve rounds of the Four Noble Truths. You are very well informed about that.

0:43:46.1

But at the Mahayana level of the Four Noble Truths, there are sixteen rounds. That’s because there are sixteen misrepresentations or misunderstandings of the Four Noble Truths. Each one of them has to be refuted in your mind. Actually, how do you establish those in your mind? I am not talking about that as a philosopher, about debating dialectically. I am simply talking about as practitioners. Let’s look at the first, the four criteria of the Truth of Suffering. These are

impermanence (mi tak pa)

suffering (dungnal)

empty (tong pa)

no ownership (dag me)

There were teachers and practitioners from the Vedic traditions, particularly from the Samkhya school, who said that it is permanent, not impermanent. If you look, then many traditions that are close to us in our culture, will think that way too. Many of us in the west think that if you go to the hell realm you go there forever and will never come back. You vanish in the hell realms for millions of years and they almost say and think that way. So that becomes permanent. Buddha says that it is impermanent, because is simply changes. Because of changing, it doesn’t become permanent. That’s the truth. Changing is a clear indication that it is impermanent. The meaning of permanence is that it is not possible to change.

0:47:54.8

So when it is changing that shows it is not permanent. Then “empty”. This particular criteria is not the emptiness type of empty. We will talk to you more about that in the next Sunday talk. So there are sixteen wrong views or misinformation about the Four Noble Truths. They are very much interconnected with the definition of self too. I think in our upcoming summer retreat there will be so much about “who is me?” That is a very important point of the subject. Who am I and what is absolute truth and what is wisdom all about? That is very much going to be the subject of the summer retreat. Hopefully we are going to be able to complete the Madhyamaka or if not, at least to a certain level, wherever we could go. These are going to be very much interrelated.

0:50:42.9

On the Mahayana path – and on the Theravada path – there are always these two: wisdom and compassion. The Four Noble Truths are a base for compassion as well as for wisdom. Wisdom is nothing but searching for the absolute truth. And at the path of seeing, it is the non-dual, concentrated focus on emptiness. Non-dual means there is nothing else. There is no meditator, there is no subject of meditation, there is [no] meditation; there is nothing. Everything has become one. That’s why they call it space-like emptiness. There is nothing else to be pointed out.

That’s really what emptiness is all about.

0:52:01.6

So far, all these years, you have heard a lot, but there is a lot you didn’t hear. I am sorry, honestly. That’s that. So what you are going to take home is the Mahayana. Every one of us is a Mahayana practitioner. What you practice is love and compassion and what you are seeking is perfection and the goal is to be fully enlightened, a buddha with total knowledge, whatever you want to call that. This is not ordinary enlightenment, but ultimate enlightenment. How are we going to get there? Through the two paths, wisdom and compassion.

0:53:18.2

You have to have both. Wisdom alone will not do. That will give you so much insight, but almost all the relative matters are totally ignored, so much so that the focus of awareness of “this it is”, like “this is the flower, I see the flower, I know the flower, this is a yellow flower”, that’s how you really focus. We used to make jokes too, saying, “The phone is ringing, acknowledge that the phone is ringing. So now I have to pick up the phone. Acknowledge that. I must get up. I must walk to the phone.” And by the time you reach the phone, it stops ringing! So you acknowledge, “The phone stopped ringing. I must go back.”

0:54:42.8

I am not making fun of this. The idea is to show that you need that much awareness. Non-duality, total focus, is not easy to develop. So you have to have perfect awareness. You have to be aware of everything. Each and everything you have to draw attention to and acknowledge, perceive and recognize and hold and then pick the next one. That is how certain trainings do it. The whole idea is to get insight, deep insight into the non-dual state. The non-dual state has to be a state of emptiness. Anything other than emptiness is not going to be the subject, because it is not true. How do you know it is not true? Because that particular special wisdom said so. Funny, eh? Anyway, thank you so much and the next weeks will be the summer retreat and then after that we will continue. I don’t know where I am going to be then.

0:56:33.8