Archive Result

20150208GRAAST01

0:00:03.8 Welcome to the beginning of this year’s Sunday talks. At the beginning of this year there were a lot of activities here, particularly the winter retreat, so a break in the Sunday talks was not inconvenient. So we delayed them until today.

In these Sunday talks we first introduced the Theravada principle of Buddhism and last year we introduced the Mahayana path. That means those of you who were listening on Sundays, could have, should have or would have a good background of the Theravada principles, which were taught within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, as well as of the Mahayana path. It would be appropriate to use this as introduction to Vajrayana, but that’s not good. We shouldn’t do it. We may do some Vajrayana-based talks a little bit, but introducing Vajrayana on Sunday open talks like this might not be good for everybody, because Vajrayana is slightly restricted. There are a number of things that for people without appropriate prerequisites may not be completely suitable.

0:02:43.4 However, Tibetan Buddhism, no matter whatever, is the same thing. The thought I have in my mind today is a verse by the great Indian Mahapandit Chandrakirti. He is the Madhyamaka or Middle Path emptiness/wisdom introducer, the one who clarified the earlier great Indian Mahapandits called Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna is considered the banner holder of Buddha’s teachings on wisdom. So these early, early, 1500 years old teachings needed to be commented on and clarified and Chandrakirti did give clarifications on Nagarjuna’s wisdom of emptiness.

0:04:13.5 Then of course in Tibet, Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelugpa tradition (1357 to 1419) made it absolutely clear and even clarified it more and it became much better, so much so that many of the later Tibetan scholars will say, “Before you came, Tibet remained in darkness, as far as wisdom is concerned and you made it very clear.” That is although Buddhism came to Tibet in the 7th century. Then the great Atisha, one of the most important Bengalian scholars and teachers, came to Tibet in the 1100s. That is how Buddhism developed in Tibet, as you know.

0:05:32.0 It was very gradually. Early on, when Buddhism came to Tibet, first just a little book and image came, nothing else. For five generations they didn’t know what this book is all about. It was something very rare and important and belonged to the royal family, which they kept very secret. It was a secret because they didn’t know how to read it. So it became secret by itself. They considered it some kind of treasure and kept it for five generations and nobody knew how to read it. It happened to be one of the Avalokitesvara sutras and five generations later, people began to read and understand and explain a little bit. Some Indian monk came and interpreted a little bit. Then from the 7th century onwards, [there was more explanation]. This book came quite earlier. Then people began to learn how to read it and even a Tibetan script was created. There was no Tibetan script until then. This script is based on Devanagari and Sanskrit. Many people say it is Sanskrit, but it is not, very definitely not. Also a lot of times it is based on Urdu, too, which is a Muslim language, from Kashmir. So then they began to understand that.

0:08:19.4 Also Buddhism didn’t come to Tibet so easily from India. It came with a great deal of difficulty. It was extremely difficult. Finally, finally, for the last 1000 years, Buddhism really, really flourished in Tibet.

0:08:54.1 In 1959, the very day the then Tibetan government collapsed, that very day all the great monasteries collapsed. That didn’t have to happen, but it did. Whatever the reason was, the monasteries could have continued under Chinese control. But they would have been a lot of restrictions, because it was Communist. Communists don’t like anything organized. The monasteries were very well organized, at least the part of people getting together. There were 10,000 monks in Drepung alone, which the Communists would not have liked, for sure. However, it could have continued, but it did not. It really collapsed that very day the government of Ganden Potrang collapsed. That’s when Buddhism collapsed completely in Tibet. For 1000 years it had been flourishing and was the source of every spiritual….

0:10:51.7 I was shocked when I first came to America and met a couple of the spiritual leaders here such as Baba Ram Das and Joseph Goldstein and so on. I was new and Bob Thurman and Nena took me around. In Omega, in 1987-88 they were all so excited and telling me, “You are coming from the homeland of spirituality”, little knowing that I got kicked out of Tibet. So when they were talking about Tibet being the homeland of the spiritual path, it is really true. It had been for 1000 years, but then in one day, it collapsed, honestly. Not only the three great monasteries collapsed, but also the tantric colleges and many others, except Tashi Lungpo, because of Panchen Rinpche, remained intact and was only slightly damaged.

0:12:24.1 Then when the Cultural Revolution came, of course there was no way the monasteries could survive. It is almost like the Jewish story. The whole of Jewish [culture] died in Europe and began to breathe again in America. The same thing happened. Tibetan Buddhism began to breathe in India. And today in South India, we have the three great monasteries again and this year I couldn’t go, but the last two years, when HH Dalai Lama gave Lam Rim teachings there, I went and there were about 20 – 30,000 monks there. So it is really re-breathing from the monk’s point of view. And wherever there are monks gathering, that is considered to be Buddhism flourishing.

0:13:46.1 But this is not what I had in mind to talk to you about today, somehow it went there. I wanted to talk about Chandrakirti a little bit, because I want to bring a verse from him. But if I keep talking about Chandrakirti then I will be doing that. But one thing I would like to say: as far as wisdom is concerned, Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa wrote a poetry-oriented praise to Buddha, called “Praise to Buddha by the Interdependent Nature System” dependent origination. That talks about praising Buddha for showing how our life is dependent origination. Everything is dependent arising, dependently existing. In that poem, Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa says,

49 Kyö kyi da me thek pai tsül

Yö dang me pai tha pang te

Ji zhin drel war lung ten pa

Lu drub zhung lug kun dä tsal

The night-lily grove of Nagarjuna’s treatises –

Nagarjuna whom you prophesized

Would unravel your unexcelled vehicle as it is,

Shunning extremes of existence and non-existence –

50 Dri me kyen pai kyil kor gyä

Sung rab ka la thog me gyu

Thar dzin nying gi mün pa sel

Log mei gyu kar zil nön pa

Illuminated by the garland of white lights

Of Candra’s well-uttered insights –

Candra, whose stainless wisdom orb is full,

Who glides freely across scriptures’ space,

51 Pal den da wai leg she kyi

Ö kar treng wä sel jä pa

La mei drin gyi thong wei tse

Dag gi yi kyi ngal so thob

Who dispels the darkness of extremist hearts

And outshines the constellations of false speakers –

When, through my teacher’s kindness, I saw this

My mind found a rest at last.

This talks about Nagarjuna’s treatises, like growing night blooming flowers in the flower field. It was dark for a long time and because of the treatises of Nagarjuna, they began to bloom. Such a blooming garden could exist because of the moon shine of Chandrakirti and when I was that by the kindness of my gurus, I began to relax my mind.

0:16:34.5 Such a great teacher is Chandrakirti. Chandrakirti’s moon is two books. One is explaining the meaning of Nagarjuna’s treatises and the other explaining the words of Nagarjuna’s treatises. Traditionally, in India, in Buddhist literature, there is word meaning and meaning meaning. These are two different things, which we don’t talk about today. Today we say whatever it is. We don’t want complicated things. But traditionally, the meaning was one thing and the words were another thing. And then you have to tally them together. That makes it a little more difficult. The difficult-ness is something funny. A person like me didn’t learn much, but a little bit in the monastery. There is another friend of mine, who passed away, Tarab Rinpoche, from Denmark. He was very good and we talked a little bit and noticed how we were taught as kids made it very difficult. The terminology is never explained. Buddhist philosophy has completely different terminology. Even if you know Tibetan, if you don’t know that language, you don’t know anything about it. It is completely different. Names are different, the terminology is different, explanations are different, everything. It is almost like a different language. The dialectical [methods] are totally different. The debate system is totally different. Even the book language is different. So Tarab Rinpoche and I thought and suggested to make it easy and simply explain the terminology. Many of the earlier teachers and geshes opposed that, saying, “If you make it easy they won’t learn anything. There will be no Buddhist scholar left.” Really amazing. Sometimes you have to put a little effort into it. So of course, we try to make everything as easy as possible. But traditionally, they make everything as difficult as possible (laughs), maybe, but that makes the person learn much better the way we learn.

0:20:24.7 Anyway, these are the great early Indian pundits that Tibetan Buddhism really follows. Tibetan Buddhism was not created in Tibet. It is really Indian Buddhism. It is really Buddha’s Buddhism. That goes for every Buddhism everywhere, like Chinese Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism, Cambodian Buddhism, Laotian Buddhism, Burmese Buddhism, all of them are Buddha’s Buddhism, not anybody else’s. There is one teacher and that is Buddha.

Many great scholars and Buddha’s disciples and followers studied and explained it and made it much more convenient for us to practice. It is not simply sitting and meditating, something that can analyze our life and makes us think about our life and we recognize the problems we face in one life and also many lives and try to solve these problems. All of those are practices that we are able to do today. That’s because of those great, kind masters, who have come earlier. And their teachings are continuing today, not as words and messages alone, but as living tradition, really living tradition. It is alive, the practice is in life. It is not simply sitting, meditating and watching.

0:23:07.5 That could be done by anybody and everybody. Today everybody does it. Luckily, many of the hospitals here accept meditation, because it helps the individual to reduce their blood pressure. It helps to relax their minds and that way it is beginning to be accepted as one of the tools to help human beings and service human beings.

But neither the hospitals nor the scientists have any interest whatsoever to look into the real problem of humanity, honestly. The scientists are very afraid of going beyond anything they can comprehend, extremely afraid. If you say that the problem of day are delusions, ignorance and ego, the scientists are not going to listen. They will probably close their ears with both hands and shake their heads, although scientists are very open, and places like like Mind-Life Institute are doing great things, no doubt about it. At least they are beginning to look into the mind.

0:25:13.6 At least they found that the meditation on love and compassion makes the individual happy, because some kind of brain cortex moves from here to somewhere else or whatever. So they are doing great there, but if you say the problems of today come from ego, they are not going to agree. Like the ISIS problem, is terrible, no doubt about it. Beheading people and burning people alive, who can imagine, unless we are back in medieval times. In European medieval history they said that if the women are too light they are witches and they burnt them. We have something like that in the history a thousand years ago and we talk about, but today burning people alive! All of these are ego problems. And if you tell the scientists or anybody that, they will laugh at you, for sure. They are not even going to entertain or even look.

0:26:38.8 But it is really our ego problem. The individual ego problem. And that cannot be challenged by guns or drones. Yes, you can smash them in one area, but they will pop up in another area. You will smash them in that area and they will pop up in yet another area. And then the home-grown things will come and you can’t go and bombard Miami or any other United States city. Then the United States will chase them. So this cannot be challenged by anger or by guns. It really has to be challenged by understanding.

In our old language you can say: education, but at least understanding. You can see human mind and that cannot be changed by the barrel of the gun. You know that. We tried that at the beginning of the Iraq war, with guns in the right hand and dollars in the left.

0:28:14.6 So do you want dollars or you want guns? We will shoot you. That’s how it went, remember? All these millions and millions of dollars went like this in Iraq. So what happened in the end? That’s it. So it really proved that guns cannot do the job. Al Quaida maybe gone, but ISIS came and somebody else will come. That’s how it happens. Really to solve this problem, you have to solve the problem of the human mind. The human mind’s problem is the ego. It is really the one who holds everything. It is really the one who influences everything. It considers “me” the most important. Whatever we do, when we look at it, “me” as the most important is in our blood. Each and everyone of us does have that. For sure. Even if you don’t have it, it is not necessarily great. You need it too, because if you don’t solve your problems, who else is going to solve them?

Finding True Freedom

0:30:15.0 Your problem is your ego. Your ego is your problem. Ego is also a confused mind. It is a mixture of hatred, obsession and very strong selfishness and ignorance, all together. That makes the individual clearly not see their own problems. Even our problems will take comfort in it and ego encourages our hatred, our obsession and makes out obsession grow and our hatred grow. The biggest enemy inside is ego. That even the most open-minded scientists are not going to look for. They will be very afraid of looking, because what are they going to find? How are they going to draw conclusions? What are they going to explain? They will not be able to do it. So that is somehow left for the spiritual people to handle. And you need to handle that, not only for yourself, but for everybody.

0:32:27.2 Our urgent need is as Chandrakirti’s verse says, (Madhyamakavatara, Ch 2,verse 5)

GANG TSE RANG WANG JUG CHING THÜN NE PA

GAL TE DI DAG DZIN PA MI GYUR NA

YANG SAR LHUNG WAI ZHEN WANG JUG GYUR WA

DELE CHE NE GANG GI LONG WAR GYUR

If, when living in good conditions and acting with freedom,

We do not act to hold ourself back,

Once we have fallen into the abyss and lost our freedom,

How shall we raise ourself from there in the future?

If you look into today’s life, you have freedom. You can do whatever you want to do

and not do whatever you don’t want to do. You have all available facilities.

If at this moment you don’t tackle your problems, and you lose your freedom,

how are going to handle it then? In case you fall down you will not be able to manage.

So somehow we are in such a great opportunity. Number one, we are human beings. We happen to be. You must be thinking, “What is this crazy guy saying?” You know, I am coming from the reincarnation background. If I don’t believe in reincarnation I lose my job [as incarnate lama]. You will all say, “He is not a Rimpoche, get him out!” That’s a joke. But the thing is: I am from the reincarnation background. Reincarnation does not mean we continue in our life forever. It means that this life keeps on changing. Sometimes it is better, sometimes worse, sometimes the same thing. That is reincarnation.

0:34:53.1 Some people say, “We are human being now and we are going to get better and better.” There is no guarantee. Form the Buddha’s point of view and from anybody’s point of view nobody can guarantee you that you are going to be better. No one can guarantee that, except yourself. It totally depends on you. I almost like to say – though I am not saying it – I am going to be my own future life creator today. Actually, whatever I am doing today, I am creating my future life and so do all of you, each of you. Whatever you are thinking, however you are moving, whatever you are doing, you are creating your future. The future is the result of today. Today’s life makes your future, honestly. That’s really the truth. That’s why you may be able to guarantee your future life is going to be better – no one else. If someone is trying to sell you a false certificate, don’t buy it. You are wasting your money. No one can guarantee, no one.

0:36:56.7 As Americans you understand, you are independent. You know yourself and you can do whatever you want to do. So do not do whatever you don’t want to do. You do have that privilege right now. I was under communist control in my young age and we didn’t have that privilege then. You don’t have that right that we are so proud of: my rights. Under the old communist control – now the communists are gone anyway – it may not have been as bad as under Hitler’s control, but communism was equally bad. We didn’t have those rights that you do have. So you have your life in your own control. This is the freedom that Chandrakirti is talking about. This is true freedom.

0:38:32.4 So when you have that freedom you better do something that will help you. If you let your life be controlled by your addictions, you are not helping yourself, but harming yourself. The consequences of killing will be losing your life, shorten your life. The consequences of stealing is that we will become poor. The consequences of immorality is to become ugly. The consequence of patience is to become ugly too. Ugly is not so bad. You go to hell too and to the hungry ghost realms and all of those. That is how karma is working. It is entirely in the individual’s hands. So really, it is in your hands and you have to empower yourself, and you have to manage your life on the spiritual path. As you do in your daily life, you have to manage yourself in the spiritual life.

0:40:36.7 You don’t want to be managed by others, no matter who the others may be. You don’t want your life be managed by your mother, mother-in-law, husband or is there something called husband-in-law? You want your life to be managed by yourself. Likewise, in your spiritual life also, you have to manage by yourself. Others can suggest, give information, show you the path, but they cannot enter into your body and change it. That’s why you have to mange your life by yourself.

How do you manage? What is positive? What is negative? You have to have information. If you don’t have that, then you may try to do the best you can, but that might not be the best. It may be letting you down. So we will be talking on those lines. Today is the beginning and I really want you to remember that you have the freedom, you are independent, your life is under your control. If you don’t take charge, then….

If you are good spiritual practitioners, you have to take your life in your own hands.

Chöpa tsem pel tse yi na

Na dar rang go la ti she (spelling??)

If you are spiritual practitioners, make sure

You put the nose rope onto your own horns.

Earlier Tibetan teachers said this. In Tibet yaks were very much the livelihood for many Tibetans, particularly the nomads, just like the native Americans had buffaloes as their livelihood. They eat the meat, wear the skin, make tents and everything. The same thing for Tibetans with their yaks. They keep the yaks and because they will try to run away they make holes in their noses and keep a piece of wood there on which hangs a rope, so that they can keep them. That is called na da and they pull that. If someone is holding the rope and pulls that you have to go. No choice, because either it is going to tear your nose or it is going to be painful, so you got to go.

0:44:02.8 So the early teachers said, if you are spiritual practitioners, make sure you put the nose rope onto your own horns and not let anybody get that. If someone tries to get that, poke them and get away. Because once you lost that you are under somebody else’s control. That is the earlier teachers’ advice. So the same thing is true today. Make sure you control your own life and manage your life. You are, but make sure you do it well. That is your spiritual practice.

0:45:15.0 Thank you for coming today. Hopefully next Sunday, the15th I will be talking to you through webinar. I guess that’s it.

0:46:03.1 May all beings……….0:47:40.8 announcements 0:49:17.5 end