Archive Result

20151206GRCLST42

The subject you people have chosen today is gross and subtle impermanence. It is very interesting these days since the events that are taking place in the world, particularly in Japan, they are gross impermanence. That is sad indeed and no one could have foreseen what happened there. History tells you something similar happened 200 years ago or something. If that were not enough, it is a nuclear problem also. That is like a one two three punch.

At the same time, it is amazing to see the dignity of the Japanese people, even those old people. You know, no one is crying or screaming. They maintain their dignity. They don’t rush. They patiently wait for their bottle of water or blanket no matter how long, maybe for 3 or 4 hours. It is the culture and dignity and caring of the people. People don’t say it is you fault and everybody is wrong except me. I was particularly impressed with the interview on BBC with the woman who just lost everything. The reporter was provoking and said, “Don’t you think you should be angry with your government because they didn’t take care of you?” She said, “They have so much to handle. They are doing their best and the world community is doing their best ….although if I could get a blanket and a bottle of water it would be helpful.“ Here, they would knock other people’s heads up. That is a big difference. I don’t know if it is culture or tradition, but I see their dignity. Also, the moment they said to go, everybody left. Because of that the death toll was less than it would have been. Although it is a lot, it is not that much.

I was telling one of our friends last night about midnight. We were talking and I said, “Look, if this happened in Taiwan, what would have happened. Everyone would have been gone. “ It was very unfortunate that this happened, but it is good it happened in Japan. I am sorry. I don’t mean that, but anywhere else, think about this happening in Indonesia. Singapore would not have been that different,

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but in Indonesia or Malaysia, the death toll would have been higher. The death toll is not going to be 10,000. It could hit a million. I just saw a house going along. The ground is gone but the house is carried by water, like a boat until it hit something else. And you can see fires. It is sad. It is gross impermanence. That is why we should admire and appreciate Japan. They don’t expect; it was over in what, 9 or 10 minutes altogether? And the biggest city, Sendai, I was told it was totally flattened during World War II, and now again. Someone who used to live in Japan was telling me last night that this nuclear station was too old and they were supposed to close it a month later. Now we have the problem. Whether they were or not, they were going to close it down like in 20 more days. It was 20 days too late. It is really funny, all this.

As spiritual practitioners we should dedicate all our positive virtues for those who lost their lives and for those loved ones who are left behind, and to all and particularly to the Japanese. What we can do is dedicate our virtues. Hopefully that has some effect. It is bound to have effect.

And then also learn and listen. If you do not want consequences, you should not have the cause. There are two things we can see here. One is of course we can see from the positive and negative point of view; the negative karmic consequences are the result of negative Karma. So that reminds us that negative karma brings negative consequences.

Truly, directly speaking, looking at this nuclear thing. Virtually we don’t know anything. If something goes wrong, we don’t know how to handle it. Honestly, no matter all these great experts. They have different opinions and discussions. That is fine, but that is no time to have different opinions and discussions. Things melt and if the radiation goes out, it is going to affect millions of people. They agree on faults and they will come and give their opinion on the news channel. Throughout the world it is happening. That’s really what it is. We don’t know really what is happening and we don’t know how to handle. It may or may not be safe, and that we have to think.

It is also laziness. Everybody else, somehow they talk about it. They say this happened in Japan so are we safe? I am glad they raise the questions, but I am sure in three weeks later they probably forgot. That really tells us that we really don’t know how to handle it. That is quite clear no matter all those nuclear physicists and all of those. Probably they don’t know how to handle it. They have different opinions. Maybe one of them is right, maybe none of them is right. Last night I saw on 9 o’clock CNN they get all those opinions. A Japanese guy, a famous physicist and also a spiritualist was on. He said, “I have been telling them; just follow the footsteps of Gorbachev. He said what does that mean? Gorbachev got all their opinions. He said, let them have opinions, but let the soldiers go and carry the sand and bury them. They have been doing that for six or seven days.” That is what he said. I never heard that before. It really shows we don’t know what to do. Then will it be safe or not safe? Something is going to go wrong for sure. The Japanese build so strong and they said it is for a level up to 8 earthquakes. They could handle it. But this happened to be the 9 level. So be careful, but the natural forces are stronger than that. No matter what the effort, something will go wrong.

I have no opinion. On the other hand if you know how to handle nuclear energy sensibly, it is such a

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benefit. It is wonderful energy. Was it Einstein who said in an open letter I discovered this and hopefully turned out to be a wonderful thing in the world and you are turning it around and making bombs? You know if something goes wrong, we don’t know how to handle it. That is why I said it is appropriate to discuss gross impermanence today. That is really what it is.

I did say here of course we should express our concern and our feelings to the people of Japan. And particularly those who have lost their lives and the families of those who lost their lives and are left behind. As Buddhists we dedicate our virtues and pray they will be guided to a better life in the future.

As far as the conditions everywhere and particularly in Japan, I really hope that will be a very good stimulation in their economy. Honestly. Particularly if they put out some money. The world can donate something, but the Japanese can afford. They have a lot of money and they should give to the people. The ground is gone and their houses are gone and that is what they could build. If you give them money and they have their national feeling and everything else, they will do very well. Hopefully, it will be a very good economic stimulation for them. Japanese economy has not been good for the last decade or two, so this may turn out to be good economically, hopefully.

It reminds us of the ugly faces of samsara. You know the earthquake in Haiti, it was about 7 points, but it almost wiped out everything. Can you imagine if it was 9 points there? Nothing would be left. This morning there was an earthquake in Tokyo with a magnitude of 6 points. That is what I heard. Jamyang told me; he heard it on the news. It is really unfortunate. We should see this is what samsara is and this is what the Buddha meant when he said that samsara is suffering, and that is what we see.

When we don’t have those instances, we forget and we go on living our lives as usual. We always expect to get up in the morning in the same way as we did yesterday, and we do expect to go to bed in the same way as we did last night. But then something happens in between, and that is suffering in samsara, the first noble truth. That is definitely the framework of what Buddha said, the basic framework of impermanence. Impermanent means that. If we get up the same way and go to bed the same way for centuries or for a million years, there is no impermanence. It is permanent. But that doesn’t happen. Something happens, a disaster like that and everybody is all over the news and everybody talks.

Then individuals have consequences and disasters happening in their lives every day, losing their parents, grandparents, or young ones, loved ones, everything, everybody. This happens every day, disasters hit and maybe losing your home maybe not by a tsunami, but by economic consequences. All this is happening every day everywhere. The world attention is not drawn to it but the suffering takes place. We experience that every day. Those who have economic consequences of losing their homes, it is a tsunami on its own, absolutely a disaster for that family. That is because it is impermanent. That is what is meant: it is impermanent.

Then in you go a little more subtle than that. There are so many of us who have glasses. That is another. Some will have some hearing aids. I don’t see anybody anyway. Maybe we all have very good hearing, But all of those, and the salt and pepper, and becoming more white, more grey. And of course, the bald ones. All of those are really a little more subtle than that of economic turmoil or it doesn’t hit the newspapers. It is impermanent.

Even more subtle than that is the change taking place within ourselves. The sufferings that you are talking about are all interrelated with impermanence. When you talk about the three, suffering of birth, illness, aging and death, they are all related to impermanence. We age because time has gone, right? Our physical body we have has a manufacturer’s defect. In my case I was made in 1939 so I can definitely complain to General Motors because there is definitely a manufacturer’s defect. These manufacturer’s defects are more obvious as the time goes. One of the signs is glasses. Hearing aids, salt and pepper color hair and then wrinkles. Luckily, in my case I am fat, so if I get a wrinkle, I am happy! Even if we start looking at our friends it is more built up. But then you know in normal cases there are wrinkles, and each one of them are nothing but messages saying that you have that many years or decades in this particular body. That is even more subtle than what we have been seeing and talking about.

It was either Buddha or one of his disciples saying that this suffering of age has one good quality. That is that it comes slowly. It really comes very slowly. So we don’t notice much. If it came suddenly, we could not handle it. Can you imagine a beautiful young woman or man whomever it may be going to sleep tonight and waking up the next morning in the body of an old person…losing teeth, not hearing, not seeing? How could we take it? Now I remember. It was one of those Kadampa masters. Our body changes slowly and that it is great. If it came all of a sudden, how could we take it? It happens little by little. It is okay so we can tolerate and somehow manage. These are the little subtle changes, but it is a clear sign of impermanence. This is amazing. We don’t realize, but we do know, we have knowledge. We know it is going to change and we can’t get out of it.

We can talk about it and say you have to prepare for your old age. We do all kinds of preparation! You buy disability insurance and you buy health insurance and life insurance even and all that. We talk about old age pensions, savings and social security and all of those. We talk about it and we think about it. We do it very casually. Then the problems come, and things are not right or things are not enough, and we have to worry about it. Is Social Security going to be privatized and go to Wall Street and then down the drain? Or is it going to be saved? We do worry about it. However, we don’t worry about it much from a spiritual point of view. There is so much lack of a spiritual path within American life. So much lack of spiritual life from the point of view of American society.

I don’t know if you people saw the launch of our new website two days ago. I spent 3 decades of my life travelling everywhere and I do see a tremendous hunger for a real, authentic and pure spiritual path, even in Cleveland itself. Or maybe you go somewhere else, to a very conservative area. Even then in all these areas you find a spiritual hunger. Somehow it is not filled. We have the traditional church, and we become very skeptical of church. And the church itself becomes some kind of Sunday social event. And today the church doesn’t survive without rock and roll. It is really funny, but churches do that. They have to do that just to survive. On the other hand there is really a spiritual hunger.

My guess is the people’s understanding and capacity have become much more than simply when our grandmothers lived. In that period it is okay if you just pray and worship one day a week. Now the people’s knowledge somehow becomes much more. Today you can’t just say it works. People will ask, how does it work? Who got it? What did they do and where did they get it? They really want to know. That is why unless it is something wonderful, it becomes difficult to manage. It becomes difficult. But in the case of Tibetan Buddhism it is somehow proven to be authentic for over a million years. Honestly, no one, no one questions today. With all the curiosity, everybody does not question its authenticity.

On the contrary, I was so surprised when I came to the United States and I was taken to those spiritual gatherings by Bob Thurman. So many great teachers were there: Ram Dass, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein; the whole gang! And everyone there told me, “You come from the source of the spiritual. “ I did not notice that much. It becomes the spiritual source and it is true. If you look today, though I know nothing, wherever you look, Hindu/ Buddhists, Judeo -Christian traditions, sharing with the people is very limited. It is unfortunate. It is almost to the level of simple worshiping and praying. Nothing wrong with it, but it is just one of a hundred things as well as in Judeo-Christian traditions, not only in Hindu/ Buddhists’ tradition. The wonderful ideas the individual has, somehow they were shut down and other things were meant for scientific, not spiritual.

If you look back early about a thousand years or 1500 years, if you look at Buddhism in India and Tibet, in all the early years, each and everybody has established critical analyzing, each and every point. Thereby by they used their intelligence, not shutting their intelligence down. Buddhism encourages you to use your intelligence. In the West when they talk about meditation they only talk about relaxation and count your breath. This counting or focusing is a simple method of stabilizing the mind.

It reduces your blood pressure. If I go to the doctor and I meditate for two seconds it will reduce

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the blood pressure in two seconds. It can change the pressure from 150, 160, 170 and reduce it if you do for a couple of minutes or even seconds. They will tell you , oh you are relaxed now. Is that good for you? I don’t think so. Is it bad for you? Certainly not. Will it reduce your blood pressure? No, it is a simple thing out of the meditation.

And within the meditation, again, the analytical meditation will make a difference in our lives, not just concentrated meditation. For example, you can definitely do meditation on impermanence. It is recommended. They recommend the nine step meditation. Within nine you can meditate on 3 root, 3 reasoning’s and 3 resolutions on impermanence. You may say it is a sophisticated way of brainwashing people. It is true. They tell you to meditate on gross impermanence and death. In the West we don’t talk about death. People do feel sad when they think about death. And people will get angry, saying, “Don’t die on my watch!” No one is dying on you. They did not choose to die. They would like to live. We will do all kinds of things. People are willing to sacrifice so much for that very short life. They hook up all these machines and no one knows if they are alive. The doctors do. Doctors tell us they are still breathing here. Maybe. Maybe the doctor knows, or the nurse knows. The individual will not come back in that situation and see us. Some do, but most of them don’t. True, they are not dead yet, but so much torture, how many machines. It is amazing.

One of our friends, probably many of you know him, the guy from Chicago. He had an operation years ago and he needed to go to the bathroom. The urine is not coming out and he is having tremendous pain and the nurse came and gave him an injection. He makes another noise and they give him another injection. After a while they stopped coming and then he threw glasses against the door. The nurse said why do you do this and he said you are not listening to me. They kept on giving him injections and finally he called someone who spoke Tibetan. He said, “I don’t need an injection, I need to pass my urine.” Then they brought something for that and his urine was gone and he relaxed completely. That is really the reality. They have guidelines and they follow the guidelines, but the problem may be totally different. Who knows? Anyway this is samsara’s ugly face. That is why it is called the suffering of death. And

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it is not only physical suffering. There is mental suffering. Worrying about separating and worrying about someone who is left behind and the fear of the unknown, it is tremendous. All of those. A lot of people say if I will go zoom, I will be happy. But you are not going to go zoom. That is our impermanence, honestly.

You can meditate on that. There are a number of different meditations on that, a number of them. Even in the common Lam Rim teachings they say death is definite. You may say I don’t have to meditate on that. You may say I know that I will die. But we don’t think that way and prepare for dying. We prepare for living. We may be told you have only a few months to live and yet we prepare for ten years later what is going to happen. So when Buddha introduced gross impermanence he wanted to change our minds. Most certainly, we will not live forever, but our life will be interrupted. We don’t know when it will happen. I told you earlier you have a manufacturer’s defect. Even if you are faultless, you have a manufacturers defect because it doesn’t last that long. The bones break and the skin cracks. I don’t want to go too much beyond that. The mind becomes confused. Let’s not go there. We all know that is what happens.