Archive Result

20150308GRAAST05

0:23:01.1 Good morning everybody, and it is nice to see the temperature is in the 30s and it looks like the teens are broken, hopefully – who knows. So the change of time has taken place today. Spring forward and fall backwards. Some people were talking to me last night about spring forward, with their hands moving that way, but explaining backwards. But you can’t argue, so you let it go.

It is also interesting to notice that a beautiful memorial took place for Bloody Sunday this weekend. One good news is that today is the International Women’s Day and the Vatican is having a great gathering, recognizing women’s service in the Holy See. We hope there will be women priests and everything, at least in the Holy See – to be holy.

0:25:09.1 With that we will continue. It is interesting to see the talk that we are doing is the continuation of Chandrakirti’s words of when you have independence and freedom you can do anything. That is the subject we talked about and remembering Bloody Sunday and the Holy See meeting are all talking about freedom, the right to do whatever you want to do. When you have every right to do what you want to do it doesn’t mean much and when you don’t have it, it means a lot. That’s why for example in Tibet, people don’t exactly have the right to do what they want to do. It may or may not be really as we talk, that somebody is saying, “Hey, you are doing this and what is it?” immediately, but it looks like some kind of funny cloud of suspicion and not trusting people and anything you do will gradually, with other excuses, be tightened up. The Tibetans used to call that putting on a wet leather hat on people’s heads. Then when the leather dries it will gradually squeeze, right? Truly, that’s what is happening and people are more worried about it all the time. It is not they will just catch you and say, “ You did this and that”, but somehow with another excuse it will happen. In deep reality, another thing is going on.

0:28:26.7 That’s what is happening if you don’t have freedom. This is the present situation in Tibet. But that’s not only in Tibet, but throughout all places, wherever there is no freedom. Even those extremists who are creating trouble, like ISIS and all that, give the illusion that you don’t have freedom and that America is taking their freedom and that is the continuation of the struggle. I really think it is the illusion of not having freedom, so they have to struggle. So is becomes fashionable and young people are interested to support that. Somehow they have been able to create that illusion.

0:30:05.9 And it is strong, because whatever has happened in Iraq. They can create that illusion easily, because all the Sunnis have been completely ignored. No matter whatever you say, that’s what it is. That’s why all this is happening. Amazing, sometimes I am thinking, when Saddam Hussein was going down, one of his ministers, maybe the Defense minister or somebody said, “ Now you have opened the mother of all wars.” So the current situation is really a continuation of the Sunnis’ right to be struggling and then people took advantage of that situation and that’s what’s happening now. Maybe my estimate is wrong and I hope I am wrong. Unless and until you change people’s minds, it will be very difficult. We know already very clearly that the barrels of the guns don’t change people’s minds. Nor does a bundle of dollars. We have seen that very well during the Iraq war.

0:32:06.1 The mind is something that we have and it is also completely under our own control. Physical torture can be given by people to other people. Mental torture can be given and we saw how they did physical torture over the last 16 or whatever years. So the torture is changing the people’s statements. But does that change people’s minds? Certainly not. Your mind is yours, no matter whatever.

0:33:35.6 I know one fact. There was a great Tibetan scholar in the early 1900s, a modern day Tibetan scholar called Gendün Chöphel. Many of you have heard about him, I am sure. He was a great poet and wonderful person and modern in the sense that he was the first person who was expert in Tibetan culture and adopted a lot of the outside culture, mainly Indian and British and was very much involved in international politics, particularly in India, like the formation of the Indian Congress. It happens to be the person who even wrote the national anthem of Sri Lanka. He dressed like a Burmese monk and went around with Burmese monks to the South of India and landed in Sri Lanka. He was a great poet and they needed some monk to write a national anthem and so all looked at each other and let him write it.

0:35:10.9 He spoke English fluently too. He was a great scholar but also a little naïve. He didn’t know who was paying for him. Somebody was paying for him. It happened to be the Nationalist Chinese government – not the Communists. Neither Gendün Chöphel, his boss, nor anybody else except the British intelligence and Indian intelligence knew that. So the British got very suspicious of him, because he was also involved with the formation of the Indian Congress under Gandhi and Nehru – actually more with Nehru than Gandhi. He was also involved in the sensitive borderland between India and Tibet. He was organizing there and attending their meetings and so on. So the British Intelligence marked him. Then he went to Tibet and he was actually drawing the Tibetan map. He walked the Himalayan borderlands. The world at that time accepted the McMahon line as boundary between China and India. Gendün Chöphel found that mountains after mountains and miles after miles were not covered in the maps, because they didn’t do nice surveys in the Himalayas. There were huge gaps. So he wrote the map and then, without paying attention he mailed that map by post to Kalimpong in India. The British government at that time was carrying the postal service in Tibet. So the British took the map out and didn’t deliver the letter.

0:38:18.6 Then the British told the Tibetans that there was danger in Tibet. They were not telling exactly or straight away, they gave little hints here and there and finally they said, “That danger comes out of the intellectual group” and finally the Tibetan government captured Gendün Chöphel and lashed him. They accused him of making false currency notes or something. They had to accuse him of something, right? So when they lashed him 200 times or so he said, “Yes, yes, I have something to tell.” Actually he had nothing to tell. Whatever he knew he had written about and he wrote books and about history and everything was there and he had nothing else to say. But when they lashed him so much he said, “Yes, yes, I have something to say”, so that they would stop lashing. Then they sat down and wanted to talk about it. But there was nothing more to say. So torture does that. It changes people’s statements and words, but doesn’t change their minds. The mind can only be changed if you are happy with it and convinced. Torturing and bullying are almost the same. Some people bully. There are many ways of bullying. Some people just yell and shout out loud. Some people will show temper and tell you, “You don’t know that, hhhrrrr!” That’s bullying.

0:40:40.9 So freedom means being free of all that. And you have the choice of what you want to do. That’s really what it is. Then it depends what you see of your life. Do you see your life as you want? Are you happy? Good enough. Do you see your life as okay but no exactly as you want? Then you have the right to be what you want to be and then, why is it not? It is an age-old question. Ever since human beings exist we carry that question.

Every since human beings exist we try to answer that question by various ways. All religions have come because of that reason. Religions tell us that there is a solution. Some solutions are simply made based on a belief system. Some solutions are simply convincing and insisting on one’s way of thinking by force and discipline. Many will use threats, threatening future consequences – including Buddhism. I don’t know whether it is threatening or not, but it becomes threatening. If you do this you will suffer, if you do that you will suffer. It is a little threatening. Many have threats, and many have reasonings. Fortunately – and I am not saying that because I am Tibetan Buddhist – Buddhism happens to rely on reasoning. Reasoning is the same thing the scientists do today. It is reasoning and logic is used. You may or may not get proof. In principle Tibetan Buddhism fortunately is based on logical reasoning. That’s the reason why Buddha said,

“Don’t just buy it, because I, the Buddha, say so. If you buy gold, cut it into pieces, burn it, rub it against rough stones and when you are fully convinced, you may buy it. Otherwise throw it away.”

That statement tell us that the truth is based on reasoning. They are all searching for the truth. Every philosopher does that – searching for the truth. All religions are also doing that, although many people may identify religion different from philosophy and put religion under being faith-oriented and so on. But all religions try to be philosophies, based on philosophy. Otherwise, what are they based on? Philosophy is trying to find out facts.

0:46:42.5 Fortunately, Tibetan Buddhism relies very much on reasoning to find the truth. We are talking about the four conclusions of Buddha. Every phenomenon that is created is impermanent. It is impermanent not only in the sense that one day it is going to go. That’s not the point. Everybody will know that. My mind picks up: every Tom, Dick and Harry will know that. Everybody will get old and gray and decay and perish. All that is bound to happen. We all know that. However, when you talk about impermanence you have to think a little more than that and that is: the moment anything becomes existent, the moment you function, it becomes existent in it’s own nature of destruction. In other words, destroying itself is completely impact in it. Causes and conditions are totally impact. That is why the moment it is established it starts going down. Human beings are given a little time to mature or build the physical body, till age 25. Some people say 35, but that’s not true. It’s 25. If you keep on growing up to 35, we would all be giants. It’s up to 25 and then it starts going down. Those of you who are 26, you have to think that you have started turning down. You created already the cause of being an old woman or old woman, a ragged old woman or a grumpy old man. That already starts when you are 26.

For Peace: Tame your Mind

Impermanence is such that it has a complete impact of it’s own nature of destruction the moment it has started. It is always going down. That’s impermanence, not that sometime it’s going to go. If you say all phenomena are impermanent, that’s what you have to understand.

0:50:39.4 That is one of Buddha’s big dharma conclusions, Buddhist philosophy conclusions, Buddhist science conclusions. It’s Buddha’s conclusion. That’s one. Two: it says that all contaminated ones are suffering. We are practitioners in the sense of seeking a better life. That’s what I am thinking. Being practitioners doesn’t mean we are involved in certain cults, trying to have some kind of red thing on your head, we are not trying to do that. The new age picked up a lot of that. Remember, we used to chant OMMMMMMMM, creating some kind of mystical thing, right? That helps sometimes, definitely, to build atmosphere. Building atmosphere makes a difference, because the external atmosphere affects the internal mind and that’s why many religious practices or cults or any one of those, mind tricking practices, will create a certain atmosphere.

0:53:00.4 Some atmosphere creation has valid reasons. For example, if you use colors, like yellow, red, green, etc, to bring a mental level. Trungpa Rinpoche did introduce that technique. That’s the five Buddha colors. All the mandalas we talk about have these four color on the different walls. Our mind is such that it can’t have all five functioning together at the rainbow level. So you begin with one, then two, then three, then four and finally five. These are valid reasons. Also OM or OM AH HUM is the essence of all Buddha’s mantras. These are all valid reasons. People who are using that may or may not know the valid reasons – or reasons at all. They simply will use it. it does make some difference. On top of that they will add up something like “tingggg” in the middle of all that. Music makes a difference for the minds of the people.

0:54:58.0 In other words, music is a vehicle to express your thoughts as well as to get the message to you. That’s why people use it to create the atmosphere of whatever message you want to give. That’s what happened in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and even now in some places people do that. Some places like us, we don’t do that. We do have music before the Sunday talk now, because our musicians are so kind and John has been doing it every Sunday morning before I get here and that is bringing atmosphere. We have other musicians and they should do that too. It is not only John’s punishment. So everybody should do it. A know a lot of people carry guitars and do all that. They should do it voluntarily. Nobody is punishing you, nor is it John’s territory. So everybody should do something. I wanted to put Karla’s music up. She gave me her CD and it is very nice and at the eastern gate outside the mandala. So why not? Very good. Then some people object, but that doesn’t mean a lot of people objected. Maybe there was one vocal, outspoken person making noise. That’s the cracking chair. That doesn’t mean we have to listen to them, because there are 200 – 300 people listening to this webinar and only one or two object. That doesn’t even mean one per cent or even one tenth of a per cent. So sa kye tham che dugnal wa is that contaminated phenomena are suffering. We as practitioners or seekers of freedom and joy, have to think about that. This may be logically right or wrong, I am not sure and critics can say something, but what we really have to think is that when your mind is not tamed properly, every thought creates suffering. When your mind is trained properly, every thought creates peace, harmony.

0:59:06.5 Suffering is actually, though we have suffering and contamination and this and that, but what really counts for us is the basic mind itself. When the mind is not tamed or pacified the thoughts produced by that mind will be disturbing and suffering. This is true. If your mind is at peace, that peace-mind will provide good things. When the mind is not at peace, but influenced by anger and hatred, the thoughts will create disturbance and that will create suffering. That contaminated things are suffering has to be understood in that way. That means that Buddha’s conclusions are so great. That’s point two.

1:00:52.3 The third is that nirvana is peace and that is simple. That means that when the contaminated thing within our mind is exhausted, when it is all gone, then it is all peace. Nyang gen le de pa zhin shin gye pa-o. Nyang gen is either suffering or un-peaceful, worrisome and when that’s gone, then it is at peace.

1:01:31.8 It is that. When the contaminated mind is finished, what’s left is only peace. Simple. Now the difficulty is that every phenomenon is empty. That is the fourth point and that is difficult. I thought of talking about that today, but I did not have enough time. I was a little bit late and thank you John, for filling in and then secondly we have something important to present to you today. That’s why I am going to stop here for a minute and also I was told that we are capable of communicating with different centers who are tuning into the webinar. There are certain things that our webinar people would like to present.

1:03:06.5 short presentation of how to log into the webinar from the JH website.

1:06:35.9 Next Sunday I will be here and continue talking about that every phenomenon is empty and selfless: Chö thamche tong chen dag me pa. That’s going to be the next one and we will continue to meet at 11 am, not changing back to 10, because that’s what I can do easily. I guess that’s it.

1:07:23.5 May all beings………..1:09:08.2 Announcenents 1:09:23.8