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20150215GRAAST02

Good morning everybody. Welcome to this Sunday talk. As I remember, last week we talked about when we are having freedom within ourselves, when we have some kind of little control or management of our own life, without severe torture or pain dominating our life or our mind or emotions.

0:01:09.9 So when we are referring to freedom last week we are talking about mental, physical and emotional freedom. So right now, good or bad, we have probably the best choice of freedom in our life. Yes, of course we suffer physically, mentally and emotionally. However, compared with other lives it is possible to engage in our time and our life and this is not bad at all. As matter of fact it is good, actually very good. For those of us who live in the western society. As you see the people who live under ISIS or used to be communist. Now there is not so much communism, but there is other new dictators. I don’t know whether you call them dictators or not, but terrorists. If you are under their control, then you have no freedom. It is just like that American woman who volunteered to help people who are suffering in Syria. Somehow she lost her life, because she didn’t have freedom. So compared to that, what you and I have today is fairly good.

0:04:05.5 Yes, of course there is suffering. You must be saying, “You don’t know what suffering is all about.” Yes, I do know. There is tremendous amounts of suffering, no doubt about it. I am not saying that all those sufferings are not suffering. But perhaps you want to think about the homeless people. They are genuinely suffering. You also have people in the house suffering, with not enough food to eat and not enough time to recuperate. There is lack of food, lack of medicine, and those are severe. Then lack of insurance, lack of healthcare, lack of friends and these are of course big sufferings. Loneliness is also a huge suffering, no doubt about it. That’s nothing to laugh about either. But compared with losing your life and mental and physical torture, we are quite okay. That’s why the choice is in our hands. This is the time. Tibetan Buddhism talks about 18 qualities of the life, but I am not going to go into counting what these 18 are. But the most important thing is that you have the freedom, you have the choice. You yourself is your own personal boss.

You can do whatever you want to do. You don’t have to do what you don’t have to do. That is for you just now. So we have to appreciate that.

0:06:55.7 Of course we lose our freedom because we have to depend on other people’s needs and all that. There is limitation in our choice.

Anything you may want to do may not be freedom. Because one thing you want to do can create trouble for others. That breaks the law and all that. So that’s not necessarily good.

We talk about how great democracy is. It is good because you can make a choice. You have the right to choose and the freedom to choose. But democracy is not complete chaos, as we all know. Some people try to make democracy into chaos. This again is going too extreme. Anyway, that’s not my subject. My subject is that it is the right time, because I have my choice, you have your choice and we are in freedom. When you are in freedom, what would you do? You have to look into what’s good for you and what’s bad for you.

We all want happiness. There is no one who doesn’t want happiness. The definition of happiness may differ from person to person, as we see. Happiness now and happiness in the future, how does that come in? How do you make yourself happy?

0:09:46.7

If you say I am happy a thousand times, it doesn’t necessarily make you that much happy. Saying the words happy, happy, happy may have some effect, as you see when people keep laughing and laughing and somehow we see it has a little effect. Saying happy, happy, happy may have a little effect too.

But that’s not good enough for us. We are human beings, we are capable. We have wonderful capability, and wonderful mind that we can utilize. This mind has almost no limits to its capacity.

As we see, the more you use your brain, the more efficient, intelligent the person is. The more they can make a difference in their life. We see that. We know that. There is no question. That is why human mind has no limit.

0:11:35.5

Look today at scientific and medical development, environmental, our lives – are all improved. All of these are human mind results. Here we are talking about your and my mind. Not Son of God or some sort of divine something. Just straight forward human life and the mind that you and I have. We have tremendous capacity.

Our physical state may give limitations to our mind but that limitation is very interesting. Look at Stephen Hawkins – physical limitation no doubt, mental capacity – you figure it out. Strong relationship between physical and mind. Physical limitations can give you a little limitation in mind but mind limitation is it’s own limitation. Human mind has tremendous capacity, but we are unable to use it.

0:13:39.4

Buddha, the enlightened one, what does that mean? It means to be able to utilize human mind to maximum capacity. That’s why we call it total knowledge - enlightened. That is why learning is important, getting information. That is really power for human beings. And the human mind is capable. But what direction do we look?

So far, it’s very great in the West, no doubt about it, but we always look external to reduce pain, how it works with the outer physical. Inner mental level - yes I hear that a lot of scientists today, particularly Mind Life Institute are looking at inner mind. But they are also looking at the limited inner level of where they can understand and explain.

0:15:34.1 I don’t think any scientist is looking whether there is a future life, what brings a future life or what makes it good or bad. They say they don’t have interest but that is because there is no money coming in – neither from sponsors nor from people who don’t see how they can make money out of that, so they don’t invest.

They invest money in insulin for diabetics because there are 45 million diabetics in the United States that need insulin. They see that, and they know they will make money because there is a need. But what the deepest power or mind can do, what really the capacity of the mind is, no companies or industries will make any money out of looking at future lives. So they don’t invest money. So the poor scientists, what can they do? They can’t go hungry, whether they have interest or not. Maybe they have some personal interest but there is not that much interesting of making money out of it. So they don’t do that much strong research. I think anybody cannot do it, because no one is going to make money. That’s Number one.

0:18:13.6 Number two: The point is that each and everyone of us will go through with our future. And our future is really unknown. It is a mystery. It takes its own shape. We plan what to do tommorrow, next week, month, year, but it is not necessarily going to work.

Also we do not plan what to do in the next life. Because there is no really eye-witness there. That’s why we do have that problem.

Yes, we have the problem and if we don’t tackle the problem, our opportunity and capability we have today [will be lost]. Our capacity today is the combination of the physical body and mind. This mind occupies this body and has capacity to learn, to listen and express. Learning is something everyone can do. Dogs, cats, birds, horses, can learn but they are limited. Human beings learn more than that. And that’s why we looking at human capacity.

0:20:44.7 That is the relationship between the mind and this physical body with this human life – we can speak, see and hear. Dogs cannot speak, they bark. They see and hear, but that is limited. Their understanding is limited, much less.

So this opportunity of a wonderful life, this body and mind together, goes with every minute. It is like the “Days of our Lives” show with the sand timer sands going down.

When our life is gone, then our opportunity is gone. Whether no interest, or no money or whatever, the opportunity provided to us will go that way. So whether someone pays money or not, but it is for my good, if I take a little interest seeing what is.

How did I come to be here today like this? How will I be tomorrow? Meaning next time. Is there such a thing called next life? What happens when I die? We all know we will die. What happens? What does that mean? Where will I go then? Will I disappear completely or evaporate like steam? What happens?

Some of us will say, “Yes, I know what happens. I will be either cremated or buried. In Tibet, we have sky burials, but that is our body gone, not us.

That to me is the separation of this wonderful mind and this wonderful beautiful physical body. When that is separated, that is death to me. You don’t come back to this body.

The body decays, it is a perishable commodity. So it perishes. It goes bad. It becomes unserviceable to the mind. Mind cannot remain there anymore. Whatever the pain or another reason, mind is unable to stay in there. So then it goes, departs. For me, that’s death, but for you, you have to figure it out, because we do all go through that.

But that’s not the only point. The point is the opportunity we have now will not be there. The intelligence we have now, will it be there in the next life or not? The understanding and capability of executing your information or translating your information into practical things, is that going to be kept the next time or not?

0:26:36.6 These are the questions you have to think about if you are interested in the spiritual field. If you are a Buddhist practitioner, this is dharma. Dharma doesn’t mean only worship or saying mantras or praying. Praying is dharma, no doubt. Worshipping and saying mantras is dharma, not doubt. But dharma is not only that. Dharma really is figuring out your mind, your capacity. What happens to all this existence, how do we exist, how does it function, dissolve, go away and what then?

Particularly Buddha Dharma – the real dharma is dealing with the mind, between the negative and positive. Good and bad actually. What do you mean by bad? When society says bad/good, is that all true? Maybe, but maybe not. Look at ISIS. That society will say kill, kill, which is good from their point to view, but we all know it’s not good. Generally society is right but not always. That’s why, if you are interested in spiritual practice, you have to figure out what constitutes good and what bad and how does it work with you, the individual and with you, the society?

Some may think that’s not dharma, just social welfare – but it is true dharma because it affects you and others. So that is the most important for us to figure out, what is in there for me, what can I do for myself?

WHAT TO DO WITH THE MIND

So do we have direct evidence that good deeds bring goodness? Human capacity is such that human beings have the knowledge that doing something good, something helpful brings you happiness.

0:31:20.3 If you are able to save a life, like someone who had a car crash, or has a life threatening illness and if suddenly you are able to take them to the hospital and help save their life – how happy you are. You know it.

That’s why human beings have the good instinct or understanding that good brings good and bad brings bad. If you kill someone and you are a normal human beings you are very upset, remorseful, regretful and that shows the human instinct knows that good brings good and bad brings bad. If that is true then the good deeds we have put in will bring a good life; bad things we put in will bring a bad life.

If you are intelligent, you will see that. You see it by watching yourself and by watching others, and by watching society. There are some people who never have remorse and are never happy. There are exceptional cases. But most people are that way. But that is unusual.

So this tells us good deeds bring us happiness, calm, quiet, relaxed and happy. Bad deeds bring remorse, upset, anger, misery and all that. We see it.

So as an intelligent person, what would you do? Avoid those deeds that bring negative results, as much as you can. You can never be 100% right. Too much righteousness is not necessarily good. No one can be 100% right, nor 100% wrong. We have that mixture. And it’s there because we did it – we thought of doing it or were forced by our emotions.

That’s how it happens, isn’t it? So whatever we do, with our without our control of understanding, we did it – physically, verbally, mentally, emotionally.

We did it because we thought of it in our mind. Then our mind pushes our system and then our physical body, or our speech or our thoughts within that will execute that.

One thing, there are original creating thoughts and executing thoughts. Original creating thoughts keep thinking. Ideas pop up, sometimes with or without control, sometimes with a good excuse and sometimes with no excuse. No right- minded person will ever engage in any action without thought. Sometimes there may be a very quick reaction, too quick to notice the thought. But there is definitely thought and then the action.

0:37:19.8

So between the thoughts and action, you have a choice. You just have to slow down and think. You have a choice there. Thought will come and you may not execute because new thoughts come. Such as I can’t do that because it will hurt them, or it will hurt me.

So that’s that. Even if you don’t think or don’t care enough that it’s going to hurt the other person … if you care you may stop and you might not –but you know it will hurt you – in the process and in the result. So if you think that you can stop that wrong thought. That means you corrected your wrong motivation. That means you are correcting the wrong doing into the right. That you changed negative into positive. That means true dharma. That really means changing your mind from negative into positive.

Why? Because positive-ness has so much good consequences and negative have terrible consequences. So for me as an individual trying to stop the negative is serving me and putting into right because I am reducing cause of suffering and therefore not fruit of result of suffering and that is how we avoid suffering.

We may not be able to see it directly black and white but if you think enough of yourself and other, you will move. When you understand and can think about it, it will make a difference in your life. I have seen that with my friends, changing their mind, their behavior and becoming much more wonderful kind and compassionate persons. And that is good. Because it doesn’t hurt you or others and it helps you and others.

Also helping others is helping yourself. You don’t have to wonder mysteriously, how do I help which a lot of people do. Helping others is helping yourself and harming others is harming yourself.

It becomes a virtue and you get the result. I am talking from karmic perspective. Watch your life and how it is happening and the karmic functioning is absolutely there.

Mind is much more important than material matters. We will also see if you observe people carefully, observe yourself carefully – you will see it all. Unless you are purposely shutting down or overly influenced. If you are intelligent, neither overly influenced here or there but just straightforward, you will see. Knowing and seeing for yourself is much better than anyone else telling you.

So that’s what it is. And I’d like to link up to the talk last week with the quotation from Mahapandit Chandrakirti,

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

DE LE 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?

Paraphrasing: Whenever you have freedom and don’t use it, then when you lose that freedom you can’t do it.

One more verse from Chandrakirti, in which he praises compassion (Ch 1, verse 2)

GANG CHIR TSE NYI GYAL WAI LO TOK PHÜN TSHOK DI

SA BÖN DRANG NI PEL LA CHUN DRA YUN RING DU

LONG CHÖ NE LA MIN PA TA BU DÖ JUR WA

DE CHIR DAG GI THOG MAR NYING JE TÖ PAR GYI

Because for this bountiful harvest of the Conquerors

Compassion itself is like the seed, like water for growth,

And like ripening remaining for long enjoyment,

At the beginning I praise compassion.

Because of the reasons above, the compassion is the only important thing at the beginning to motivate, compassion is the only important while you are contemplating, compassion is the only important during the fruit level.

It is like if you are growing fruit, the seed is important and then heat, moisture and fertilizer are important. Without compassion, then the fruit will not be that great.

So I have been doing these couple of talks to see how our mind functions, what the capacity is we have, what opportunity we have and how impermanent it is and then the question is what can be done with it.

Thank you for listening to all this funny nonsense and I hope it will have some help for some of you. Next Sunday I will be in Ann Arbor in Jewel Heart and talking from there. Today I am in New York where it is extremely cold, yet sunshine. Sunshine will challenge the cold and will be a little warmer I am sure. That’s it. Thank you so much.