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20140928GRAAETB63

0:00:02.4 Good morning everybody and welcome to today’s talk. As you know, this year the Sunday talks are about focusing on the introduction to Mahayana Buddhism. Last year we did a general introduction to Buddhism and now we specifically focus on Mahayana. We base this introduction on Maitreya Buddha’s Abhisamayalankara, which is a prajnaparamita text, which as you know is Transcendental Wisdom. There is a huge sutra called prajnaparamita, which is wisdom. That wisdom teaching of Buddha gives direct teachings on wisdom and indirect teachings or sometimes they even call them hidden, on love-compassion, etc,.

0:01:48.2 As you know in the Buddhist system, love-compassion are directly not dealing with wisdom and they are very often referred to as method or the way of achieving. Wisdom is wisdom. These are the two paths in Buddhism, whether in Theravada or Mahayana. Somehow the terminology of ‘method’ is not used in English. In English people use love/compassion and wisdom. So the language of love-compassion is actually not only love and compassion. These are a major part of method, but it’s not just love and compassion alone. Those of us who are familiar with the practice know about the 6 preliminaries, like cleansing the place, generating the mind, creating an altar, meditating, making offerings and so on, plus the five paths of any yana or vehicle, Mahayana or Hinayana. All those, except the third path, are part of method, which in English comes under the love-compassion heading. Normally, when you hear love-compassion and wisdom, that’s what you are really looking for.

0:04:24.9 I do remember, when I first came to the United States about 30 years ago, in the late 80s or early 90s, Professor Thurman arranged an exhibition in New York City. It was probably one of the first exhibitions of that kind at that time. They had a huge thick color catalog, entitled “Wisdom and Compassion”. That expression seemed a little uneasy to me, because it is not normally used in Tibetan language. There we use normally “Wisdom and Method.” I remember thinking, “Who did this?” So it was Thurman who knows very well, plus the language they got from Khyongla Rinpoche, who is not only a great teacher but also a poet. So I just said “Oh” and that’s about it.

0:06:13.7 It was new terminology and because of the author I thought the fault should be mine rather than the author’s or the language’s. I remembered that because of the terminology. So in English you use Wisdom and Compassion rather than Wisdom and Method. If you use method probably everybody will say, “What’s that?” Then you have to explain all that which I had explained earlier. So it is two ways in the Buddhist ways: love/compassion and wisdom. Mostly Mahayana very much emphasizes wisdom. It is the major subject, direct and indirect. And both are equally important. It is very balanced. If it is off-balance it doesn’t work. It has to be very balanced.

0:07:45.0 Whether you are thinking of wisdom or not, whether you are thinking of compassion or not, any Buddhist practice, particularly Mahayana practice, really has to be completely together with compassion as well as wisdom. One doesn’t lopside the other. It has to be really equal.

0:08:25.4 Having said that, Maitreya’s Abhisamayalankara is sort of a synopsis of Buddha’s teaching on the prajnaparamita. Prajna is wisdom, actually and paramita means perfection. So it is the perfection of wisdom, I guess. I don’t know anything about Sanskrit, okay? I am presuming that. So in that synopsis, I mentioned repeatedly – and by it is stuck in your head – the 10 instructions, known as dam la in Tibetan. These 10 instructions we are utilizing as introduction to Mahayana. You can introduce Mahayana from anywhere. There is not only one way. It completely depends on the individual who is teaching. Many people will say that the bodhimind, the ultimate, unlimited, unconditioned love/compassion is Mahayana. Yes, it is Mahayana. People use that to introduce the Mahayana too. That’s also correct.

0:10:37.7 However, to get a comprehensive Mahayana understanding I picked up this system. Look in the Abhisamayalankara root text. Many of you may have the translation of Gareth Sparham. He was teaching at the University of Michigan for a while as adjunct lecturer, which I did too when I came here in the beginning. His translation was made available to many of you through one of those electronic means. If you look in there there are only one or two lines on this subject; that’s all.

Drub dang den pa nam da ne

sang gye la sog kön chog sum…..

That’s what we have done for the last months, just these two lines. Drub dang refers to drub pa rang gi ngo wo la dam pa. den pa refers to the Four Noble Truths. sang gye la sog kön chog sum means Buddha, etc, the Three Jewels. Again, let’s look at the word Three Jewels. In Tibetan it is kön chog sum. It doesn’t mean jewels at all. Nothing to do with jewelry. But they do use jewels as metaphors. Kön chog literally means the most important, rare thing. That could be jewels, so in English people started calling that the Three Jewels. Now it is commonly adopted.

The first, drub dang means practice. There we introduced the nature of the practice, the Two Truths, absolute and relative truth, including their definitions. It is so important, wherever you look in Buddhist practice, there is always the meaning of the two truths in there. It is always applied in your practice.

0:14:11.2 For example, if you say a lot of mantras. Saying mantras is a relative practice. When body, mind and speech are synchronized it is absolute practice. That’s how you have to think about it. Simply saying mantras is relative practice. Again, that is the mantras in the way we say them, like Om this and Om that, for example, Om Mani Padme Hum. Saying that is relative practice. But in case you noticed, each one of those words is beings. Each one of those beings is part of the objects of refuge and part of you. Then it becomes absolute practice, particularly, the nature of reality, if you are thinking that. Therefore, the two truths are everywhere, so important. Even if you say just Namo Buddhaya, that’s what it is. That’s why in the nature of the practice we talked the two truths.

0:16:26.7 Then as purpose or focus of the practice we talked about the Four Noble Truths. The base or object on which you practice is the Three Jewels, the Three Refuges. We spent quite a lot of time talking about all three and we talked about the 8 qualities of Buddha, the 8 qualities of Dharma and the 8 qualities of Sangha. If you think you have heard a comprehensive explanation of refuge through this and through earlier Lam Rim teachings, unfortunately not. It is not comprehensive at all, but you have got a huge chunk with both of these together. Yet, it is not totally comprehensive.

0:17:45.6 Also, you can make it as simple as looking at Buddha by thinking that his body is Sangha, his spiritual development is Dharma and his mind is Buddha. You can see all three together in one person. That is also comprehensive and good enough and it is almost perfect. Yet, when you take a path and check what really Buddha is, then you go in great detail. The historical Buddha may be Buddha, but he is representing Buddha. You can’t say he is not Buddha. He is. But Buddha is not only the historical Buddha. That’s different. Also the body of the historical Buddha, there are two ways of looking at that.

Buddhas Manifest Everywhere

0:17:45.6 At the enlightened Buddha’s level, every part of Buddha’s physical body, is Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. From that angle, every physical part of Buddha is Buddha. Besides that, differently from us, every physical part of Buddha has a mind of it’s own, even the hair pores. And that mind is part of Buddha’s mind too. It is unlike us. In our case, our mind influences and controls and receives messages and sees things and hears things, smells things and tastes and touches things. At the Buddha level each part has its own mind and functions completely with cohesiveness. It looks like one mind, yet there are hundreds of those with total knowledge. Also there is a time factor. We do have past, present and future and they don’t.

0:20:31.5 They are always present, not in the past and future. Even us, if you think carefully, always live in the present. Yes, we look at the past and at the future, yet what we really know and experience is only the present. Whatever we experience and wherever we are, it is only the present. We remember the past and we foresee the future, but we live in the present. But in case of Buddha, everything is present, seen and felt as present. And the Buddha knows the future and the past, but as present.

0:21:41.0 We talked about the five special qualities of the Sambogakaya or Enjoyment Body. We have this interesting language. The Sambogakaya has the very exclusive Buddha field and somehow reminds me of those clubs. The gangsters have that and many business people also have their own little exclusive clubs. Even different groups have their own clubs, like the Jewish clubs and all that. We don’t have a Tibetan club, because there are not enough people for that. When you first become Buddha, at the mental level, the first stage is Dharmakaya. Maybe it’s not like first, second and third, but you can’t say them together. So the first we talk and think about is the Dharmakaya, the mind level of the mind becoming total knowledge. And then comes the physical exclusive body and then there is the common body, shared with everybody. We remember the historical Buddha, the Indian prince who became Buddha and who taught and shared his thoughts and gave us what we have today as Buddhist practice throughout the world. That is the Buddha Shakyamuni who happened to live in India. That is the body we can see and that has the qualities of the 32 major and 80 minor extraordinary qualities. All that is the Nirmanakaya, which is the manifested body that everybody can see and can talk to. When this Buddha gives teachings everybody can listen and learn and try to copy and mimic and become that. That is how Buddha taught and that aspect of Buddha is the Nirmanakaya or manifested body, which is accessible to us.

0:25:06.6 Comprehensively, we say “this is Buddha” and he identified himself and others identified him as Buddha. On the other hand there are also buddhas among us, tremendous amounts of Buddhas. They do not necessarily claim to be Buddhas and they don’t necessarily show that they are, but they are very Buddha and there are many of them. There are tremendous amounts of Buddhas among the Christians, among the conservative Christians and liberal Christians. There are Buddhas among the politicians, and among the Buddhists and among the Hindus and all religions, even Muslims. I am sorry, I shouldn’t use the word “even”. And they are even among ISIS. That is how the enlightened beings take birth and use it as a way of serving people, in any form.

0:27:08.5 In the traditional teachings it will say that there are blind buddhas, there are deaf buddhas and midget buddhas. So there are buddhas among the midgets, a lot of them. There are buddhas among the deaf and the dumb. They even go to the extent of saying that there are buddhas among the bridges, trees and so on. That’s what the traditional teachings will tell you. So today, among human beings, there are buddhas for sure.

0:27:40.0 That individual person may not know that he or she is a Buddha, and also his or her colleagues and friends may not know that this person is a Buddha. But the buddhas are doing their work and they are helping and doing everything and that is how buddhas function. Sometimes I can hear the Christian priests say, “God functions in mysterious ways.” That’s exactly what it is.

0:28:49.5 That much about the Buddha.

The Dharma has also 8 qualities and all of those, but the bottom line is two points: again, relative and absolute Dharma. The relative Dharma is the informational aspects. Dharma means spiritual development, really. It means overcoming negativities. The positives you can by overcoming the negativities and that is your spiritual development. That is not magical. It is not. It is solid, very grounded, very scientific even. I don’t know if anybody says that. When I say that, probably I don’t know what scientific means. But actually it is scientific, because it’s on the ground, exactly overcomes negativities and through that there are solid positive gains and that is called spiritual development. We begin there. We did not begin with total knowledge. We did not begin by flying in the air.

0:30:33.3 Milarepa could fly in the air, but he did not begin this way. He began as a little kid who was tortured by his uncle and auntie, because his father had died. They tortured him and robbed him and his mother completely, their life, their wealth and everything. The uncle and auntie were not financially well to do. Milarepa’s mother was very well to do after his father died a long time ago. It was a very rich family. So since Milerepa was very young, they chose his uncle and aunt to be the caretakers and bring the kid up. So the caretakers became the owners and they tortured the kid tremendously and deprived him of everything. So the kid always tried to hit back and challenge them. He went through tremendous anger and hatred and went out of his way to find ways to physically fight them, also mentally and spiritually.

0:32:10.0 He went to a black magic school and found the best black magic teacher available and when he developed some black magic power he went back home area and sat on a mountain top and played his black magic. He produced a tremendous, unheard of, huge hailstorm that was completely focused on the village and the home and fields of the uncle and auntie. It went on for hours. He was looking on from the high mountain and was still not satisfied. He didn’t like the village people, because they all supported this rich uncle and auntie. So he punished them. Still, he was not satisfied and continued with his black magic. Their children were getting married and he made the house collapse and everybody, every guest and everybody and every horse, everybody died.

0:33:50.8 This sinful, mean person finally met the great master Marpa Lotsawa, the founder of the Kargyü tradition. Because of him Milarepa not only became a sage, but really became Buddha Milarepa. He began to fly from his cave to other mountains. Some old village ladies told their kids, “This is that dirty guy flying over us. Don’t walk under his shadow or you will get negativities.” So people avoided even his shadow. But later they came to know how great he was.

0:34:52.1 So that is how you become Buddha. You don’t become Buddha overnight or within two, three years or decades. It is a gradual process. It really builds up drop by drop. As we know, if we keep on saving a drop of water every day, one day the bucket will be filled. Likewise, the spiritual development is saving up every day, so then one day you will become Buddha. That is how people become Buddha. And that is the true refuge. It is your future Buddha. Your Dharma is your actual refuge, because it overcomes the negativities. That’s why they give you the example of medicine, doctor and nurse. The medicine is the one what overpowers the pains and illnesses, that gives you health. Buddha guides. So Buddha is like the doctor and Dharma is like the medicine and your Dharma is your absolute true refuge.

0:36:28.0 We also say that all the time. But last Sunday I said that according to the uttaratantra, the absolute refuge is only Buddha. Now you may that today I said that the Dharma is the absolute refuge and you are contradicting yourself. Somehow, fortunately I don’t critics. It’s great. Otherwise they would have a good time with this. Of course, now you can quote from videos and all that, but the thing is this: when you really search for Buddha, what is it? That very development within the person who is Buddha. The really true Buddha is that development. The true Buddha is that very mental state of development within the Buddha. So it is not a contradiction at all. The true Buddha is the true Dharma. I guess that’s it.

0:38:23.4 So briefly, I would like to conclude this refuge part, otherwise this will not conclude. I just have to say something about the benefits of refuge. More or less that is the same as the 8 benefits of refuge that you have heard before during the lam rim teachings for a number of years, in addition to the advantages and disadvantages. They are the same thing here, actually. One thing, when the true development of refuge comes within the individual it becomes the landmark of being Buddhist. That also becomes the basis of all vows. The vows we know are mostly Buddhist vows, so without being Buddhist you don’t have Buddhist vows. These vows are for example, the self-liberation vows, and the 24 hour 8 Mahayana precepts and similar to this there are the 8 vows, just not for 24 hours, but life long. These are upasaka vows. There are also upasaka vows that are complete and incomplete. There are single point upasaka vows, two point upasaka vows, three point upasaka vows, four point upasaka vows and five point upasaka vows.

If it is four points, these are not killing a human being, not stealing, no sexual misconduct, and no lying. Not taking intoxicants is the fifth. We do have among us certain upasakas who didn’t know what vows they took and ended up finding out that they can’t drink anymore. And I appreciate that. Sexual misconduct is sexual misconduct. It is not necessarily one partner at a time (laughs) – so whatever. So refuge is the basis of these vows and most importantly it is the basis of the bodhisattva vows and very importantly, the vajrayana vows. The vajrayana vows are what really delivers you quickly. Without vajrayana you are talking about eons and eons, not lives and lives, not even generations and generations, but eons and eons.

0:42:40.7 With vajrayana you are talking about within the life or hopefully, we all hope, at the time of death. If not, yang dag kye wo kyo nyi ngö drub nyi - within several lives, but at the most, sixteen lives one will become Buddha. That is provided one has the opportunity to take the vajrayana vows and maintain them. Taking is one thing; maintaining is another thing. Maintaining them is very, very important. Otherwise there are more faults than benefits. Anyway, it is still better to have the faults of vajrayana than [not having it at all].

0:43:49.5 There is the story of Buddha’s disciple Wösung. That’s Anand, but not Buddha’s attendant Anand, but another one of Buddha’s close disciples. He was giving teachings to some 200 people or so and it was quite obvious that all those people were going to attain the arhat level. Before Ananda appeared, Manjushri suddenly came in and gave them a vajrayana teaching. They all became suspicious and horrified and they all became terrible and were supposed to go to hell. So Anand got a shock and went to Buddha to complain, saying, “Before I could reach, Manjushri tricked me and did this and that.” Buddha then gave his verdict, “What Manjushri did was great and what you did was wrong. Although you know they were going to be liberated and arhats, but because of Manjushri, by the time they would be liberated your way, now they will go to the hell realms for a short time, take rebirth, enter through vajrayana and become Buddha, actually by the time when you would be leading them half way through to becoming arhats.”

0:45:46.6 So vajrayana is more rare than the appearance of a Buddha. There are many Buddhas who don’t teach vajrayana. We are very fortunate that Buddha Shakyamuni gave the vajrayana teachings within the Mahayana path. There are 1000 official buddhas in this fortunate eon and only the 4th Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, has the vajrayana. That’s the first time among the 1000. There will be one more, the 11th Buddha Lion’s Roar. Then there may be one, the very last one. So even among the 1000 buddhas in a fortunate eon, only 3 carry the vajrayana. So how rare and how important it is! How precious and what a great opportunity. That’s what we have. So the basis for taking the vajrayana vows is also provided by refuge. It is the basis of all vows.

0:47:16.1 That is a benefit. It is not simply unlocking it. It is hidden behind, behind and it is unlocking it. That’s what happens. So there are 8 benefits. I thought today we would touch the wisdom eyes, but we are not going to now. There is the actual practice, and that is nothing but enthusiasm. I may not have to talk about that separately for one day, because the actual practice is enthusiasm. Laziness is not practicing. Actual practice is enthusiasm. Honestly. Whatever helps you to get enthusiastic, that is what you should do. That’s why you shouldn’t do the practice for a long time. Doing that will make you lazy. You have so many commitments to do, but I am not sure whether all of them are doing to be practice or not. But whatever practice you do, you should focus on really enthusiastically.

0:48:58.1 They give you three kinds of laziness and the antidote to the three kinds of laziness are the three kinds of enthusiasm. Maybe I should say it now, because I don’t want to spend another week on that. There is much more about refuge, anyway. Maybe I cannot complete it today. Did I tell you the difference between Mahayana refuge and common refuge? Yes, I did and today we talked about the benefits. One other benefit is that refuge purifies all negativities committed before. It also creates tremendous amounts of merit. Merit is good karma. If the merit from taking refuge to the Three Jewels could be expressed in physical form, then the whole existence would be too small to fit it in:

kyab sum so nam su yö na – dung sum de ya nö tu shog

gya tso chen pö chü yi teb – pü chi cha w aka la nö

For example you cannot measure the quantity of water in the ocean by taking it out by your hand, counting one, two, etc. Likewise, that much merit comes. Every morning you say NAMO BUDDHA, NAMO DHARMAYA NAMO SANGHAYA or you think that. Thinking is more important than saying it. Saying is there to substitute for thinking. If you can do both together, great. But if you don’t think, if you just say the words, then – it is just better than not having it.

0:51:55.3 Another benefit it that it gives you protection from obstacles. It is not completely guaranteed. Don’t think, “I took refuge refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, so I go in the midst of gun fire, I am not going to be wounded.” You may not get wounded. It may help you, but it’s not guaranteed.

It also helps you to fulfill your wishes. Temporarily you will not go to the lower realms and ultimately you will become Buddha. That’s very true. Temporarily you will not go to the lower realms. Really hear me. Particularly by the time you are dying, if you are a Buddhist, if you have taken refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, if you think of Buddha you will not take rebirth in the lower realms. That is Buddha’s guarantee. This has a lot of meaning. So temporarily you will not fall in the lower realms and in the long term you will become Buddha. That’s one of the benefits.

0:53:49.4 I may have to talk to you separately about enthusiasm, because in one way I thought I can do a short cut, but on the other hand that short cut may not be great. I guess that’s it for today. Thank you so much. I will be here next Sunday.

Thank you 0:54:32.2 May all beings……… 0:55:02.0