Archive Result

20160731GRAAJHST55

0:00:01.0 Thank you. It is so wonderful to hear all three of you playing, John, Pam and Clarice. Thank you so much.

Welcome today to the Sunday talk. It is almost the beginning of August. Tomorrow is August 1st. Today is the last day of July. Time goes so fast and so do the days of our lives. That’s what I used to watch when I first came to the United States and began to learn my English. I was not busy, so I was watching “Days of our Lives”. So as the sand goes down in the hour glass, that’s how our time goes. Yet we are still alive. Even me, very particularly, could have really gone this year. It was in March, April and May and all these were really bad months and I could have really gone three, four times. Yet, I am still here, due to the kindness and compassion of the objects of refuge and due to your prayers that you do so much for me. Every Tuesday there is a tsoh offering and a lot of prayers are being done in the monastery and both, Dagyab Kyabgön Rinpoche and Gyalwa Drikungpa, have really helped a lot. During the emergency not only did they call me, but also ordered their monasteries to pray. Particularly, Drikung Rinpoche ordered all his retreat people, hundreds of yogis, and both, monks and nuns, to do longevity practices for me.

0:03:43.6 Particularly our good relationship, the clean, pure and sincere relationship between you people and me, due to all that, I am still alive. I don’t mean to talk about that today, but still, we are alive. Every minute that we are in life we have to make better use of, better use in the sense that as much as we can utilize dharma that is better use.

Normally I don’t talk about it in the lam rim based teachings, but I did talk about it occasionally. So today I am going to talk a slightly different way than usual. The usual dharma we talk is about avoiding negative actions and accumulate virtues as much as we can and taming our mind. This is Buddha Dharma. On that basis, and also the usual teaching basis, I talk. So today and the next few Sundays I would like to talk a slightly different style of dharma.

0:06:05.2The word “dharma” is Sanskrit, and I was told it means “phenomena”, although the virtuous Buddha Dharma is also called dharma, but basically it means phenomena. However, not from the point of translating that as phenomena, but as good ethics and virtue, the Tibetans particularly, lay and monk government officials, have a slightly different way of looking into dharma. They look into two points, known in Tibetan as lha chö ge wa chu on the one hand and as mi chö tsang ma chö druk on the other hand.

Lha is to be translated as “god”. So it is godly dharma or the god-side of dharma. That is the 10 virtues. They are of course just the opposite side of the 10 non-virtues. So that’s known as lha chö ge wa chu. The godly dharma – the 10 virtues.

0:08:36.9 mi chö tsang ma chö druk is the human side of good dharma, the worldly good dharmas has 16. Together the lha chö ge wa chu on the one hand and as mi chö tsang ma chö druk are known as the ethical principles of the Tibetan Himalayan race throughout. They were introduced in Tibet by Songtsen Gampo, the Tibetan king in the 7th century. Since then, till 1959, they were the basic ethical rules that Tibet as race, as a people and as a country, have followed. Some of them may be slightly old-fashioned, but whatever, they are great. So I would like to introduce those.

0:10:30.2 First the lha chö ge wa chü, the godly dharmas, which means avoiding the 10 non-virtues. You may be thinking that under the Mind and Mental Faculties teachings, I did talk to you about the 11 virtues. But when you look at it, there is not that different. In Tibetan Buddhist dharma we pray, “May I be able to avoid the three non-virtues of body, the four non-virtues of speech and the three non-virtues from the mind point of view.” That’s how we pray. Also we say,

da sog lü kyi lä ne nam par tsoh

nga gyi lä ne nam par she

gang yang nyi kyi nam sum po

mi kyi chö po so sor shah

I purify the three negativities of body activities,

The four negativities of speech activities,

The three negativities of mind activities

Together they make ten. For example killing, in this case is the killing of human beings.

0:13:02.8 I don’t want to go into so much detail, because the normal Buddhist teachings, particularly when it is meant for monks and nuns, are very detailed, sometimes too details and the details may lose the real ethical essence.

0:13:43.8 Killing a human being is considered a horrible negativity. Any human being, whatever the reasons may be, any killing, even as punishment or justice. The ending of any human life is a horrible thing, because human life is so precious, so important. It can do so much good, if the person is knowing and willing. There is so much opportunity and so much value. Ending that is a horrible thing, including for the purpose of justice.

Sometimes I have a problem with justice, particularly capital punishment. I don’t like it, we don’t want it and we shouldn’t have it. No one should have the right to kill anyone. Killing of human beings is so terrible. For me prisons are necessary, but I would like to see them as correction centers rather than punishment chambers. Particularly, when you watch movies about prisons, you see they are horrifying and so bad. Hopefully those movies are exaggerated, but they show you that prisons are the place of gangsters, where the gangsters rule. That’s not that great. If they were good corrections centers, that would be great.

0:16:58.7 The number of years that a jury of your peers or a judge decide you need to be able to correct yourself, that should be good correction, rather than punishment. Human beings are already suffering so much. They are tortured so much by so many thing, so why should we add additional punishments? We shouldn’t. But at least we must pay for what we did wrong, without paying with life. The number one priority is society’s safety. They will lock you up, because if they let you roam free, your addiction is not corrected and there is danger for other lives. That’s why locking people up has sometimes some justification. I will not say it is necessary, but it has some justification.

0:18:45.8 But capital punishment is horrible. I use to see on TV shows that people say, “I need to punish on behalf of God.” But you don’t punish people on behalf of God. God is capable of punishing. Why do you have to be instrumental to substitute God? I think that’s a misunderstanding, although certain [aspects] of our culture tell you that. But I don’t buy that, personally, because God can’t do certain things he or she wants to do and you have to act for God, that puts a limit on God’s capability – if you accept God’s existence. So I don’t buy that. Besides that, you become the actor to take action to end somebody’s life. So you are creating another killing karma. That will have consequences. It is the continuation of violence. That is very definitely not right.

Putting people in prison and giving them some punishment is already violence, but it is not such bad violence as ending someone’s life. It is slightly lighter. Here you have to have a good, sensible understanding, in my opinion. We can say that all punishment is not good. There should be no excuse for punishment. There should not be any punishment at all and I can correct myself. That is also true, but knowing our human behavior, you are not going to do anything against yourself, so maybe in order to keep law and order, [some locking up and corrective measures are necessary]. I used to watch “Law and Order” sometimes, so that name rolls off my tongue.

0:22:38.9 So due to needs of law and order it is sometimes necessary to keep certain people locked up. So the judiciary system are there, although as I said I have a little problem with the idea of justice. If you do justice without killing people and without corruption, then [it is not so bad]. If you watch movies about prisons you really see how bad they are. Without all these corruption, it should be reasonable acceptable in order to maintain proper order in human life.

0:23:46.3 Our society is such that if there is no such system there, it sometimes can go very wild. Right now, we are facing a lot of terrorist threats everywhere. Particularly, a few individuals who think they are acting on behalf of their religion or their race or whatever their twisted minds are thinking they have to do. There is no proper punishment. The biggest punishment human beings can give to other human beings is ending their lives. So most of those lone wolf terrorists get killed anyway. But that doesn’t become punishment, because they think they are doing something great for themselves, for their race or whatever. So it is terrible misinformation, without any proof whatsoever, that 70 virgins are waiting for you, ready to go to the pure land, to a good life. That’s I think is misinformation and misguided, wrong information. The normal fear that people have of losing their life usually prevents them from doing the wrong thing, but that is even blocked by this misinformation.

0:26:28.4 Believing is such a thing. Mind can be purchased by any thoughts. Mind can be influenced by any thought. It can be utilized by any thoughts and ideas. That is why this terrible wrong information that this will bring you a lot rather than God’s punishment raises to me more crime than actually killing one or two people. Human mind is such that many times we like to believe something. True, I believe in Buddha Dharma and all of you believe in goodness. Many of you believe in Buddha Dharma, many of you believe in the Judeo-Christian tradition and many of you believe in the Hindu and the Muslim tradition too. But many of our beliefs are without good reasoning.

We don’t have good reasoning. Somehow it has become quite sensible to us. We like to accept it. There is no valid reason. We have not developed it yet. Throughout my life in Buddhism, I know that goodness is virtue and badness is non-virtue. I have some valid reasoning here, because goodness brings good and badness brings bad. Violence brings violence and peace brings peace and harmony. That’s a valid reason.

0:29:34.7 What will happen after our death? Somehow we are buying it, although we are not totally convinced. Even those of us who are Buddhist practitioners, like me for 76 years. Yes, I am buying it. But do I really have proof? I have not seen it. I believe it, I presume it. I can’t be wrong, because there are hundreds and thousands of Buddha’s followers before, for the last 2500 years, who achieved this and that. I don’t think they are all a hoax. That’s how I buy it. But do I truly have proof black and white, scientifically? No, I don’t. But I presume that virtues bring virtuous results and non-virtues bring non-virtuous results. It is a little more than belief, because I can myself that violence brings violence and shouting, yelling and bullying brings more shouting, yelling and bullying back to the individual – unless you have been bullying a bunch of fools. So if you are bullying a bunch of fools, they will buy what you say – as we are witnessing now. But other than that, intelligent, educated people will not what is bullying and what is violence. Buying outrageous lies presented as truth is also outrageous. Honestly.

0:33:04.2 So this is my reasoning. We see that goodness, kindness, compassionate acts, bring some good results. At least they bring some peace and harmony within other individuals besides you, like your spouse, your family, your friends and colleagues. The person becomes a little kinder and gentler. These are valid reasons. You see it, we see it, we all see it. Many have no valid reason. They simply believe it. That believing is sometimes a problem. Many of the problems we face, so many, if we look back in our recent history. Jim Jones, Heaven’s Gate, Waco, Texas, all of those and every year there is something or other that continues. These have no valid reasons. People just sold it and bought it.

0:35:19.8 Sometimes we see very similar things in our politics too, though politics is supposed be more sensible than just believing. But somehow people make no distinction, although they know it is politics and not religion. The way they buy it is the same way. And that is little worrisome and problematic, because this country is so great, so wonderful. Believe me. You see I am asking you to believe me. I have been born in an independent Tibet and remained there for 10 years. Then Tibet was controlled by communists and I remained under that for 10 years. Then I went to India as refugee for 20 years. I remained under Indian democracy. It is a democracy, the biggest democracy in the world, definitely bigger than the United States population-wise.

0:37:46.4 But it is not as great as the United States. There are a lot of shortfalls. Then we saw the Soviet Union period, the USSR period. We saw Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and finally Gorbachev. We have also seen all these fascist dictators throughout. We saw the Shah of Iran. We saw his goodness and his badness. We saw Ayatollah Khomeini and all these other dictators, including little Noriega in Panama and Saddam Hussein and the Syrian President Assad and even to a certain extent the goodness and badness of Egyptian President Mubarek. We saw the Pakistani dictators, like Zia Ul Haq. Bhutto was democratically elected and Zia Ul Haq had him killed. Then there were generals after generals, although at present there is supposed to be a democratically elected prime minister.

0:41:04.0 We also saw the goodness of Gandhi, the goodness of Mother Theresa, the goodness within Nelson Mandela, within Dr. Martin Luther King. We are seeing the goodness of HH Dalai Lama as well as Bishop Tutu as well as His Holiness the Pope. All of them we are seeing. So we do have some experience, we do have some knowledge. We can judge some things on the basis of our direct knowledge. It is not that when we say that goodness brings goodness and bad actions bring bad and violence brings violence and peace brings peace that there are no valid reasons. It is because of our own personal experiences that we can judge this. I counted from Hitler onwards till today, right?

0:42:47.2 We also saw a president that is not necessarily bad, but not intelligent enough or even foolish sometimes. Unnecessarily we got into the Iraq war the second time. And still it is continuing. Obama tried to get us out as fast as he could, with all kinds of criticism, but still, in action not intelligent enough. Incapable leadership sometimes brings difficulties. Not necessarily bad, but it does. We just saw it again ourselves. We had 8 years. The leadership does something odd. That can create a lot of difficulties.

0:44:33.5 As I am continuously saying, we are the best in the world today. Honestly we are. I have seen it myself. I saw China, I saw Japan. I lived in India. I saw South-East Asian countries. I saw all European countries. I did not see any African countries yet, but we all know they are not greater than anything else. I live in the United States and I saw Canada and Mexico and all the Latin American countries. We saw New Zealand and Australia and nowhere else do we have such a beautiful, wonderful, kind, democratic country like the United States. We are not the only one that is democratic. There are others, like Great Britain and all the countries that influence by Britain through the British Commonwealth. They all have democracy. But they have parliamentary democracy, rather than Presidential democracy.

0:46:14.4 Presidential democracy is such that like we do in the United States, we do elect our president directly. We don’t elect a party to power. Parliamentary democracy, like Britain, elect the majority party in the lower house. Just like us, we have the Congress and the Senate. In Britain, the lower house is known as the House of Commons. The upper house is the House of Lords. So the Commoner’s House has the political parties. And whoever gains the majority, that party selects the prime minister. The prime minister functions like our president. The Queen of England is also the Queen of Canada and of all Commonwealth countries. She has no direct power, though she can object. She is sort of a representative figure.

0:48:13.9 Many democracies like India have a president, but the president is selected by the majority of the party in power in parliament. Again, it is like rubber stamping. With all pomp and show, with all the decorations, the president sits higher up than the prime minister. But all the power lies in the hands of the prime minister, because the prime minister is the one representing the public. He or she is selected by the party in power. We in American have presidential democracy, in which we elect the president directly, which not so many countries in the world do. Not in Russia, not in China, not even in democratic countries like England, India, Australia and Canada, etc. So we are unique and beautiful. Economically, we go up and down. We went down quite badly 8 years ago.

0:50:19.2 Remember, it was one of the worst economic downfalls since the Great Depression in the 30s. But we recovered quite well. We don’t see the results directly yet. There is some difference here. We put up trillions of dollars to rescue our economy. China put up a similar amount of Chinese dollars to rescue their economy. But they are a dictatorship. So they distributed all the money throughout China, including Tibet, through the banks and they told them, “If you don’t distribute this money within 90 days, we will not only take the money back, but we will double it and punish you.” So within 90 days, they reached throughout China. Everywhere, they had a stimulation package.

0:51:56.8 But for us it has taken four years to reach. We only begin to see roads being repaired here and there in Michigan this year. In Ohio they rushed it a little bit because of the Republican Party Convention this year. They rushed it two years earlier, because they have the Republican House and Republican governor. So they put the money through straight. But Michigan began to touch our roads and bridges only last year here and there, a little bit. So it has not even reached. But dictators can reach within 90 years, if they want, throughout China. They did manage. I was told that sometimes people would come and ask for a loan to build a chicken coup. So they gave money to build chicken coups or make goat skins or something. So they had to give it within 90 days, otherwise the government would take it back and punish them.

0:53:35.7 So that’s why sometimes dictatorships work. But we don’t want dictators. Even though they sometimes work, but that’s not an advantage. So we are really great, honestly. If you look from the worst point of view, yes, there are tremendous faults. We are losing our middle class. General Motors used to support generations of people working there in stable and lucrative jobs, supporting families in generation after generation. All of that is somehow going. It is also true that we have a problem with the economic system. The middle class is completely squeezed. There is either rich or poor. The gap is tremendously huge. There are very few rich people. 98% of people become poor, and 1 or 2 % become rich. Or maybe it is 90% and 10%. That’s all very true and Nafta is another problem. That is also true. But we are good and we can correct that.

0:55:41.1 Nothing is a done deal. Human beings created the problem and human beings will solve the problem. We created our problems and we will solve our problems. As far as the freedom of choice and liberty goes, pursuing our happiness, there is no other country in the world like us. It is pivotal that we should keep our life as it is. It is so important. We cannot lose it by a simple little mistake we may engage in and our anger in particular can do that. Our anger towards our politicians and economic policies and simply anger about not having the right choice, such a simple little thing could bring a great disaster not only to us but the whole world. So we should never do that. That is in our hand.

0:57:41.9 So that will be one of those human dharmas: serving, honoring the good conditions of humanity. That’s one of the human dharmas: good, moral ethics. Maybe I am talking a little too much. I am sure there are questions. I was told there was one. Thank you so much and I will talk to you next Sunday, perhaps from Jewel Heart, if I can go there. But this is much easier for me. Thank you. Any questions?

Audience: 1:00:02.3 Are you concerned that your political outspokenness could cause divisiveness among Jewel Heart members or cause some individuals to feel that your dharma teachings are available to them, because they do not share your strong political views?

Rimpoche: I don’t. Our relationship between you people and me, from the Dharma point of view, is much stronger than whatever is happening to third persons. For example, a lot of people in Jewel Heart supported Bernie Sanders. I don’t. I support Hillary. But that doesn’t cause the Dharma not to be available to our friends or anything like that. We are beyond that. Actually, we are beyond worldly matters, no matter whether it is politics, economics or social issues or anything else. We are beyond that. I don’t doubt that and I have much more faith in our people than that. So I am not worried about it.

1:02:14.5 Also I like to presume a little bit of an advisory position. I like to suggest [certain things]. However, I have no right to force or push or make you do something that you don’t want to do. As you know very well, no one can make you do something that you don’t want to do. So our people are such we know that very well. Therefore I don’t even think about it. So that’s my confidence in myself and in you and everybody. Honestly. That is how I function in our everyday life. So I don’t worry about it. Any other questions? No, okay, well then thank you so much and we will see you next Sunday. Meanwhile, remember, there are 10 godly dharmas and 16 worldly dharmas, which make the individuals much better persons and that was Tibet as a spiritual country and we kept that from the 7th century onwards and I am going to talk to you about that continuously. Thank you

1:04:54.7 May all beings…….