Archive Result

20160717GRAAST53

0:00:00.0 Good morning and welcome everybody today. Before I get into today’s talk, I have to say that I am very happy to say that my family, Che Een, Wee Lin, Ming Li and Ri wen all are here. I am happy and welcome. Now, since last time I continuously talked about Dharma subjects. I asked Mr. Mut today where I stopped and I didn’t get a straight answer. He said last time you talked about HH Holiness. Anyway, if I remember correctly, I began to talk lam rim based talks and I do remember we covered the precious human life completely and we did cover impermanence a little bit. So anyway, continuing in between there, I talk about precious human life.

0:02:29.7 We talked about the recognition of human life and the realization of how difficult to find it is. I always say that when we give teachings on the basis of lam rim, a number of people begin to look down, thinking that it is something preliminary, some pre-thing. But maybe this is very much the actual practice. The beauty of Tibetan Buddhism is that the very first day you sit down and begin to think about the first preliminary, like cleansing the place of your practice, that is the day when you begin your actual practice. The actual practice begins then, learning and talking about cleansing the house.

00:04:25.1 You may think cleansing the house is not a big deal. That’s what the house cleaners do. But the house cleaners clean your house, but you don’t get the positive karma that you have to build by yourself. In old Tibet, during the teachings it was always the tradition to say that in the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s palace, there are boxes, old-fashioned leather covered suitcases, filled with used brooms. These are brooms that have been used up almost to the end. Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche used to say that there are old brooms and the end that you hold in your hands is covered in brocade, but it is so used up that it is no longer useful. They have all been saved in those boxes. They are the brooms used by the Dalai Lamas, from the 1st to the 13th. They all did their cleaning themselves.

0:06:38.4 So cleaning yourself is important, even if you can afford to have people cleaning your house. If you do it yourself, it makes a difference to you. So practice begins from that time onwards. It is also very important to have a good motivation. If you don’t, then you don’t get the benefit, even if you did it by yourself, physically, cleaning your place. It is one of the most important ones at the beginning. Even sweeping your room, you must have a good motivation. Thinking, “It is dirty, so I have to clean it” it is the normal, usual motivation. That’s nothing extraordinary.

0:08:34.8 “If I don’t clean it, it is dirty and filthy and I will get sick”. All those thoughts are normal, nothing unusual. Here we are looking for the unusual motivation, “Not only for me, but for the benefit of all beings I clean my place. This is the place where I will meditate, where I will invite all enlightened beings.”

0:09:32.6 I am sorry, I am scratching my ear. Last week a number of you sent me email messages. Especially, one lady said that she has an older Tibetan lama who used to scratch his ear all the time and we didn’t check. Eventually we found he had worms.” That’s very kind of you, thank you for communicating that and noticing. But actually I have hives. That’s what happens and I don’t want to take benadryl, but I am trying to tolerate it. Besides, I am on dialysis and the skin is very dry. Also phosphorus. Normally, when you have kidneys, you pass out phosphorus. But without kidneys, phosphorus goes all over the place. They have special pills to eat to bind the phosphorus and then take it away during dialysis. So with all these together I have been scratching like a monkey. So forgive me. Thank you.

0:11:52.6 Such a motivation is a general motivation of benefiting everybody is the Mahayana motivation and it is very good. You always have an advantage using that - many times even if it is a neutral subject or if changeable mental faculties are involved, such as sleep, regret or analysis. There are four of these. I don’t remember the fourth one. [How the Mind Works: 3. General

0:13:43.2 So utilize this power of motivation. Many of our practices do that. When you go to sleep you can use Lama Buddha Vajradharma’s lap as pillow. Many of you know how to practice that. These are the Vajrayana’s advantages, taken out of the normal Buddhist practice. The motivation makes the difference. We sleep every night for quite a long time. If not half of our life, but it is quite a lot, every day 8 hours, or even 9 or 10, but at least 6 or 4. It depends on the people. But it is a very long time out of 24 hours. That’s why it is good to take advantage of the situation and condition.

0:15:31.3 Vajrayana has so many of these advantages, but they don’t keep on telling you that we are doing this because of this. It becomes part of the practice. Similarly, regret. If we regret it can be good virtue or non-virtue. It can be anything. It can become hatred or obsession. It can be anything. So it is the motivation again. Even if you are regretting something that should not be regretted, even then that nature of that action could be modified by the motivation. It go into virtue or semi-virtue, rather than non-virtue. That’s why generally, motivation is so important. Helping all living beings, A-L-L living beings, is one of the best motivation, generally speaking.

0:17:29.5 So build up a habit in the morning, when you wake up and appreciate that you are in a great life and put the proper motivation like “I will not waste my time for the rest of my life, particularly today”. With that motivation, think that you will put every effort of your deeds into being in the service of all living beings to liberate all living beings. That’s why we say

May all Beings have Happiness

May all Beings be free from Suffering

May all Beings remain with the Joy that has never known Suffering

May all Beings be Free from Attachment and Hatred

We call that the Four Immeasurables. There is no equivalent. If you are motivated with that, it makes it better for you. Every time during the day, even when you are not thinking, even if you are engaged with Donald Trump, that motivation will save you.

0:19:54.3 This is not talking Republicans versus Democrats. Honestly. As the teacher of a non-profit organization you are not supposed to be engaged in party politics. This is not party politics. You could never ever think of Trump being the nominees of one of the great parties of the United States. But it happened. Whatever the reason is, it did happen. Tomorrow is the beginning of the Republican convention in Cleveland.

0:21:51.8 During the day time, unaware of driving, we smash so many insects. I am sure a lot of you are happy to be gardening these days. Whatever we are doing, we are not playing on the ground of a pure land. So even if you are pulling weeds or transplanting flowers or anything, it could cost some insects’ life. These are negative deeds. However, they are not strong negative deeds, because there is no negative motivation. There is no negative conclusion or satisfaction.

0:23:30.2 How are virtues and non-virtues made strong? By the motivation, action and conclusion. All three make it very strong. An insect gets cut into half while you are picking out one flower or vegetable for that matter. This is not a strong negativity, but it is very negative. However, if you have the motivation of serving all living beings in the morning, then those insects are also living beings, of the lower realms. Hopefully they will take rebirth in a higher realm. We talked about Buddha, when he was in a hell realm, pulling the horse cart of the officer in charge of the hell realm. Buddha generated great compassion to his colleague who was also pulling the horse cart with him. When he developed this pure, strong compassion, the hell realm officer said, “How dare you think like this?” And he hit Buddha on the head with a hammer. Because of this he died from the hell realm and took rebirth in a human life. We hear that story all the time.

0:25:53.8 So there are possibilities. Particularly, if you notice, don’t just ignore, but say at least OM MANI PADME HUM or also saying OM AH HUM is great. That is not only OM, but that is made up of O A HUM, which stands for body, mind and speech. But it is also the whole power of all buddhas’ vajra body - OM, vajra speech AH and vajra mind HUM. When you say OM AH HUM you are saying, “May I become the nature of all buddhas’ body, all buddhas’s peech and all buddhas’ mind.” That’s why it is so important and so easy. I was amazed when I first came to the United States in the late 80s. I met a number of American spiritual leaders, such as Baba Ram Das, Allen Ginsberg, and later Joseph Goldstein and they all told me OM AH HUM. I was wondering why they picked that up. It is not that I did not know that it is important, but they could have picked up OM MANI PADME HUM or any other mantra, like OM MUNI MUNI MAHA MUNIYE SOHA, or OM AMARANA ZIWENTIYE SOHA or OM TARE TUTARE TURE SOHA, OM ARAPATZANA DHI, etc. There are so many. But they picked up OM AH HUM.

0:28:39.5 It is great. Those spiritual leaders knew how important that is. And it is very easy to say, much easier then OM TARE TUTARE TURE SOHA or OM MUNI MUNI MAHA MUNIYE SOHA. If you say something then it becomes the icing on the cake. It is not only the motivation, that makes it into a neutral state, or to a certain extent virtue, but then saying mantras and dedicating your virtue is really the icing on the cake. I like to talk to you about that today, because the motivation is something very easy. I talk that very often, all the time. But every time you will hear something additional, because this is very easy and we engage all the time and every time. That’s why this is important.

0:30:38.3Like a good motivation is important, the dedication is equally important. If you don’t dedicate you lose. Remember, during the Al Gore election campaign in 2000, he talked about social security and putting it in the lock box. Remember? Everybody forgot. He said put social security in the lock box and keep the key with the president. So dedication is the lock box. If you don’t dedicate your virtues, they can be destroyed even by a minute of anger. Anger is such a powerful non-virtue, more powerful than the California forest fires on the west coast. They consume hundreds of acres of green trees. Anger burns millions of virtues. As we utilize purification as key to balance negativities, the negativities use anger/hatred to balance their side, because they burn your virtues, so they cannot give you the result they are supposed to, because you cannot maintain the seeds. The seeds become rotten by anger or hatred.

0:33:29.2 Anger and hatred are very close and come together and then they always link up with pride. That pride is not self-esteem but pride. I am talking about Donald Trump’s pride, who says, “I know everybody. They all love me.” You know what I mean. Jim and Rochelle played Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Jim said, “I know all these Kirtis, Dharmakirti, Chandrakirti – I know all of them. I love them all and they love me. All of them love me.” I am talking about that type of ego pride, rather than true self-respect or self-esteem. Self-respect and self-esteem is something you need.

0:35:09.2 We always want it. You cannot treat yourself like a doormat. You have to have self-respect. But you don’t want ego-boosting pride. There is a big difference, if you really look. The ego-boosting pride is very well exhibited on television by Trump. There is a big difference between that and the self-respect that you and me, every normal Americans has. Compare it and you see the difference. We have to thank Donald Trump for giving us a good example and really introducing pride, the ego pride. I am talking about Trump as individual person, not as Republican party nominee. Just to cover my….head or tail.

0:36:58.6 Honestly, where else are you going to get such a great example, where you can see it publicly. Compare it with your pride and think about it. So in order to prevent those negativities, such as anger and hatred that burn your unlocked virtues, you use the dedication. Most important, dedicate to all beings to become fully enlightened, whatever that means. Totally, to have total knowledge and become totally enlightened. That doesn’t waste your virtue. Don’t think, “That is a very long way off and I will probably will do something better in between.” Probably not. You know why? Not only does it not get wasted, but it keeps giving you results until it is finished. Therefore, according to how long the virtue is remaining, that much benefit you have.

0:38:46.0 That’s why we should dedicate. In Buddha’s teaching, all of them have tremendous advantages for us. It is up to us to adopt them. Motivation and dedication doesn’t take time. Don’t only have the motivation during the practice. Have the motivation every day. Have dedication every night. They are the two most important activities: the beginning of the day and the ending of the day. The end of the day will cover the night and sleeping period. If you wake up in the middle of the night, you have to reset your motivation in order to make the remaining 4, 5 or 6 hours of sleep into virtue.

0:40:14.8 You have to reset it. And appreciation, etc, is as usual, every morning. If you could build that up, that itself will help you tremendously. Many people will say, “I don’t have time. I don’t have the intelligent capacity.” Very true. Tibetan Buddhism is so interesting. When I think back in old Tibet, many of the elder generation, the old ladies and old men, many of them were not that intelligent. They did not have an education, neither dharma – nor usual education. So it is very difficult for some to even learn OM MANI PADME HUM. It takes weeks just to be able to say it. But everybody has an opportunity to practice dharma and that is the motivation. To add up to make it even better, the dedication.

0:42:02.4 Altogether, that makes your day perfect. So that’s all I wanted you to remember today. If you have any questions, please send them to programs@jewelheart or the webinar. So then I will answer next week when I talk to you. Okay, thank you. I have to cut it here today.

0:42:53.1 May all beings………… 0:44:36.5 announcements - 0:44:39.5 end of recording