Archive Result

19900605GRAATNT

Speaker Gehlek Rimpoche

Location: Ann Arbor

Topic: Tuesday Night Teaching

Transcriber: Vincent Wuisman

Date: June 5, 1990

0:00:00.0

Audience: …becoming a human being and then becoming an Arhat

GR: Interesting question. Ehm…To answer this question I recollect one story, one incident that happened in India during the earlier period, just about 600 years after the death of Buddha. There are eight very outstanding finest scholars known as six scholars and two extra, considered to be the most outstanding scholars of that time. One of them his name is Vasubandhu. He wrote a lot of books and teachings on the Abidharma, which is metaphysical knowledge and all this. He had five outstanding students known as more outstanding than himself. Each on a different subject. One is more learned than himself on the transcendental things. Another is more learned than himself on the Madyamika, the middle path doctrine, in other words emptiness and all this. And one is even more learned than himself on this Abidharma, which is the metaphysical point. Somebody asked him: How come, these extraordinary students of yours are so well connected and so well learned, how come? He tells that when he was young and memorizing the texts of his uncle who is one of those six called in Tibetan, we call it [tormi]… but I forgot…Asanga! So, he memorized Asanga’s texts and he used to recite them in the evening. Whatever he memorized, late in the evening he recited them without looking in the book. Memorize some and then say it. The technique of memorizing is: You memorize and once you memorized in the evening you repeat it without looking in the text. And also, you repeat it the next morning and the next evening. About two, three times you do that and then it is stuck with you. And then you can only look occasionally, that’s from my own experience. So, he used to recite them in the evening, and it took days. There is some kind of bird kept in a case. He said that this extraordinary student who picked up happened to be that bird. The bird kept on hearing it all the time and somehow it is connected to Dharma and spiritual development and particularly for that subject. So when later he became a human being and developed and became a student and became one of the most learned. Not only learned in the sense of knowledge, but in the sense of quality. You know I want you to remember one thing: Whenever I use the word learned I have a little problem with that. Earlier when I was learning and trying to compare the words it becomes ‘learned’ and it becomes ‘education’ on my head in English. But actually, it is Sanskrit ‘guna’ which is more quality as intellectual education, but in deeper touch plus intellectual combined. That is what ‘guna’ is. So when I say learned you have to think not of learned in the sense of only intellectual, but also for inner development attached.

That just came up when you raised that question. Even a bird who’s been hearing this constantly day after day, throughout that bird’s life. And when it becomes next life, it is able to pick up that. So, why not? Even Buddha himself had developed bodhimind, great mind of altruistic mind, developed in the hell realm rather than in the human realm, so. In hell realm he developed. He was and a companion were supposed to be bulls pulling some kind of [rough] cart. They pushed and that hell-god, whatever, had been hitting them. He developed tremendous amount of compassion to his companion who couldn’t even pull anything and getting beat from behind. He developed very strong compassion and he tried to help by pushing it from the side and this hell-protector got so angry he said: ‘You’re going beyond your limit’ and hit a hammer on him and he died and was born as a human being. That was the story about it. I don’t know how far that’s true, but the texts say. Anyway, that is how it goes. So, it is possible from the animal realm, even the lower hell realm, to contact with the positive karma and be reborn as human. That’s very much possible.

0:08:09.3

Besides that, in the buddhist and what the Buddha shared of his experience, when you look at the hell realm a lot of people think Buddha doesn’t have a hell at all. That’s not true. A lot of people don’t talk about it. A lot of people don’t like it. People try to avoid talking about it. I noticed that even hindu, when you look at the background of hinduïsm or buddhism wherever you look the hell realm was mentioned. It was very much there. However, it is different from that of what I learned of the western understanding of hell which is sort of permanent. Once you get in there, you’re sort of doomed completely. I don’t think that is true. I mean the Buddha doesn’t talk about that at all. We have things like people falling into lower realm for a period. For as long as a football, the soccer ball when it hits down and comes up. That much period going into hell and then coming out. It is nothing permanent, forever doomed. The picture presented by the Tibetan Buddhism that I know of. And a number of things, incidents, stories, incidents that happened during Buddha’s lifetime. The questions asked him, and he gives answer. They say: This fellow went for hell for about eighteen days of eight days, or a week. Many incidents are there. But it is change of life for sure. Even if you come out of hell into another realm you die and then you’re reborn somewhere else. That takes place. It’s not everlasting. It could be for a few individual cases, but it is not a sort of blind gate. I don’t even think it permanent, for sure, for in Buddhism it’s changeable. Everything is impermanent everything is changing, so there’s nothing permanent. But it could be a longer period. The shortest period like the ball you hit and bounces up, that period. And then days, two or three days, or hours. There are a lot of incidents like that. Nothing of that sort of permanent thing you have.

0:11:49.3

Somehow a corner of your mind, when you talk about hell, you think that’s sort of permanent a doomed place. I don’t think that’s right. Since we talk about a circle, I can’t see that’s right, but Buddhism doesn’t say that okay? I’m in a bad habit. I’m not a […]. The Buddhism doesn’t say that at al. It circles, it’s a circle, beings go up and down in circles. Whatever you have heard, the human beings are possible to be reborn as an animal. Sure, it is possible. Not only is it possible, but we also even meditate. After some time, you will be introduced. Even that human body we have. If you have instead an animal body completely with hair or opossum or something. It is possible. You go to sleep and the next morning you could be an opossum or …it is all possible. An opossum, we have one living down there, and a skunk, also possibly become a human being and becomes our most beloved deity. That’s also possible. That’s why samsara is such a big… and the circle is huge, tremendous. And we all are subject of circulation. So therefore: It is very much possible.

0:14:29.7

Audience: […the cause of an animal being reborn as a human?]

GR: I can tell you another interesting story. Though it is right, most of them you […] get the opportunity and all this. But as an animal it is not that you cannot create virtue at all. As an animal you can also create good positive energy. I can tell you one interesting story: During the Buddha’s live there’s one good old king, the ruler somehow thrown out by his son, kicked out of his kingdom, and landed in the street. And he is going around and tries to become a monk. He goes to the arhats and every arhat they first say ‘yeah, yeah’ and [… some they started…] because they could not see some kind of good energy or karma within him at all. And finally, he landed with Buddha and Buddha said ‘yes, he’s okay’ and the arhats said ‘Buddha you have said to be a bikshu or monk in your order you have to have a very positive karma and this one we see nothing.’ And he said, ‘Well arhats…’ Arhats is some sort of second class high level people. So, he said ‘What an arhat sees and a buddha sees is different. You have capacity of seeing this much and I see this: Something like a hundred or couple of thousands lives before he happened to be a fly and the fly landed on cow dung. And the cow dung was carried by a river which it moved around a stupa, and which created some kind of positive seed of karma for this person.’ So, karma is something very strange and the karma is very subtle. It is very hard for us what is really a positive, what is really negative and how far it can go. It is very hard for us. So, it does have something, some small incident like that creates some kind of karma. Once you create this karma it remains with you, unless it is destroyed it remains with you. Like you and me: We carry a tremendous amount of positive and negative karma, a tremendous amount. By sheer luck we happened to connect with one of positive karma so therefore we’ve been able to be reborn as a human being. Not only reborn as a human being but also interested in spiritual development. And also have the opportunity. All this happened because of positive karma connected by sheer luck. By the time you day it can get connected to wrong karma, bad karma, it is all possible. We get millions of backfalls of karma you carry at your side. Always, always we have that. Some people think that you… a number of people I have been talking about it, all of your actions and things you carry that at your side from your childhood, but according to the Buddha that you have this karmic bag you carry life after life. A tremendous amount. It is huge. We all have. Good and bad there’s no shortage of karma. I really mean it. To be reborn as a human being, to be reborn as animal, skunk, to be reborn as anything, we have millions of that. So, that is the situation, it can get connected. Even when you don’t have it, don’t produce animal in that lifetime maybe not be able to do anything, but it can be connected with one of the karmas.

0:21:15.1

Audience: […] How do you integrate this with your spiritual practice?

GR: This is an important question. Almost all your work can be integrated as your spiritual practice, provided the nature of the work itself is not non-virtuous. If the nature of the work itself…if I am a butcher and I have to integrate my work to a positive, it would be very difficult. Because I am a butcher my job will be killing. If you are selling meat, it’s different, but if you have to cut the thing. Every time you have to kill somebody. That is difficult. Or when you have to cheat everybody then… I didn’t even know…I was two years ago I tried to buy a secondhand car in Cleveland, with a friend of mine. The guy said, ‘oh this is a very nice car and wonderful.’ And I thought Okay. And then he said: “Do you know who you’re talking to?’ ‘Yeah, a car seller’ He said ‘You’re talking to a second hand car dealer. Don’t you know what that means?’ Hahahah. So, by nature you have to be sort of lying all the time, then it is difficult. …More or less, you can operate in a spiritual practice. And the way and how you have to do is the difficult part. I think the motivation is important. The motivation and awareness. Motivation, if you have the motivation of helping attitude. Wanting to help. Motivation of honesty, service giving and helping. And as a practitioner here you’ll be great to be training every morning way in the morning how you set up you r motivation, can help. For 24 hours after that can become a positive work even though you have to be competing with others, even though you have to be competing with others it is possible. I was in Singapore a year ago and a friend a young one came around and they’re bankers. All of them came together, all bankers. They are sort of very sharp bankers. Not easy bankers. And all of them came together. They work together in a single room for a while and then they go out. They use their mind capacity tremendously. So they said ‘Well we don’t have much time to practice., but we want to be buddhist oriented and spiritual practitioners. Could you give us some kind of short, short, shot that is positive and also protects from giving badness. Each one of them said ‘I can be sharp, be on the telephone 24 hours. And I am a killer. I kill all my opponents. And I run into market, I kill right and left and that’s how I build up this banking. Now I have this darkness coming in my mind. So, they want something two things combined and a very, very short one. So somehow, we worked out some formula for them. But the best way is the motivation. Motivation of helping other people. Then honesty. And the helping attitude immediately raised questions. Saying ‘Yes Rimpoche it is easy for you, helping attitude, but we don’t run a charitable society. We run a business. If we keep helping others our business is nowhere! Hahah. We have to get out and get our opponents aside. How can that be a helping attitude? My answer was ‘Yes, you can be helping attitude. Like a bank: If you’re a banker and a number of people put their money in your bank, and they rely on you. Many people do that and rely on that. It is in their hands. They’re playing their money, right? Other people’s money. The bank doesn’t have money, right? It’s the peoples money. That’s what they play. So people who put their money they rely on the bank. So what happens is, if you are helping everybody that’s correct. But you also have priority on it. You cannot say I’m working for all sentient beings, that’s what the buddhist recommend, I’m helping all sentient beings. I cannot be right or wrong. I have to be right I cannot be wrong. You can’t do. But you’ll be helping everybody at the same time you have to be [prior]. There are people totally relying on you. So that’s your service. You sort of order your service to them. So instead of having the attitude of how to cheat others, rather then how to help those people who are relying on you. And then […] That will be sort of help-some. That goes for the school, whatever the organization must be it does the needed thing. That’s what it is, priority.

0:30:05.4

It goes to the spiritual path, the same thing. Spiritually, if we are practitioners, we are all totally responsible and be of service to all sentient beings. But then, that’s a priority. Like here, you come in Jewel Heart and sit and meditate; our priority. That’s how it works. For the attitude you have to check that way. If you take that attitude and make sure you don’t engage in the non-virtuous […] I think that’s the… You know, the most powerful of mental thing is the motivation. If you have the motivation of cheating, lying and whatever, no matter whatever you do, even if you sit and meditate or say mantras. Some Tibetans we have the habit of saying these. When you have to kill some insect you say ‘Om mani padme hum’. Every Tibetan does that, everybody. When they hit an insect they say Om mani padme hum from the mouth. That doesn’t do any good. It may give something to that but actually you’re creating bad karma saying Om mani padme hum. That doesn’t do any good. It’s the same thing. If you try to have good motivation that will do [by nature]. But as long as you have a good motivation, do whatever the best you could. Take your priority and do it that way. Probably it is sort of incorporated in there, because of the motivation. Of course this is not only us, we can sort of go ahead and do…

0:32:07.8

What I like to talk to you tonight is more or less… You’ve been talking a lot on the first noble truth, I’d like to go on now to the second noble truth. I think we should go on to the second noble truth because it is an important factor. All this suffering and problems we encounter because we have a karma. Because we create a karma. As I said in response to your question…[…]

Anyway in the long life you go through you create a tremendous amount of karma. The moment you say karma, you immediately start thinking some kind of romantic thing. It is not. It is noting more than action. Nothing more than action. Every action that we take. I want you to think very carefully here. Physical, mental or speech, any action that we take we create karma. You don’t have to have an ear[monk] certain action say ‘Well, this is my creation of karma. What I’m going to do here is not creation of my karma. You can’t do that. The karma is karma. There’s nothing to hide. There’s nothing to make because it is only true to yourself. So therefore you cannot hide. Any action, whatever you do, you cannot hide for yourself. You know what I mean? If you do something behind somebody you can hide and say I did so and so, don’t let him know. We can hide this. But you cannot hide anything from yourself, from ourselves, because we did it. Knowingly or unknowingly we did it. We cannot hide. We have the karmic imprint on our consciousness. We always carry.

0:35:04.8

Remember when you talk about karma you don’t need any special action at all. You just simply act anything for creating your own karma. Good, bad, or neutral. Is that clear?

So, the actions that we take is the key for our karma. Every action that we take. Physical or whatever we take it is also influenced by our thoughts, right? If we don’t think. If there’s no thought, we don’t do it. Even if you don’t think you think, right? Even if you don’t think you think there is some kind of thought which influences the action. It very much depends on that thought. If the thought is positive than the action can be positive. If the thought is negative the action becomes negative. So whether the action becomes positive or negative the karma is positive or negative. That’s how karma works. That’s why I said to you: The motivation is the one important. That means…what I am trying to tell you again, when you are interested, when you are aware of the spiritual development, work for this, one thing you have to remember: You cannot make a big gap between, say, my spiritual life and my everyday life. I don’t think you can make a big difference. Everyday life and everyday spiritual life is interlinked. Whether you know it or don’t know it. Whether you are aware of it or not aware it is very much interlinked.

0:38:13.5

Not only interlinked it is very hard to make a distinction. Very hard to make a distinction because within the karmic principle every action whatever you act will be karma-producing. So therefore it is very hard to separate even. Every action from the bedroom into a public place and back to bathroom, whether you are alone or together, whether you’re in groove in [Kampong] meditating or are shopping in the middle of shopping mall, whatever you do our life actions are interlinked with our spiritual life. You have to be clear. Because karma is the founding in our life. Even if you think from the Christian background they say you cannot hide anything from god, right? And very similar to this. You cannot hide anything from yourself. So anything you do is interlinked. And that is, in a positive way or a negative way interlinked with you spiritual practice. Every action.

0:40:07.2

So whether we have a positive or negative action very much depends on our habitual pattern. Most of it our habitual patterns we work with all our lives, all the time. So we have to very carefully watch our habitual patterns. If you pay no attention to your habitual then you’re not paying attention to your spiritual development. Remember: Your spiritual development does not remain in the temple. It remains with you. Wherever you go, whatever you do. It is linked with your habitual patterns. Your habits. So you have to be very aware of the habitual patterns. How it works. Our habit is such a thing. Everything that happens, we will repeat the same thing. We will repeat, always go back to the habit. So you have to be very careful. And if our habits are not good, that will affect our spiritual development. If our habits are good it will affect our spiritual development. People talk about mindfulness, awareness all this because you have to be mindful. Not when you sit and meditate because then you choose to be mindful, right? You do it. But you have to be aware of this, to be mindful when you are suddenly encountered with something outside. When you are in public life, when you are under pressure, when you are under some kind of pride, when you are under a very shocking circumstance. This is the time when you stand up, you fight between your spiritual and whatever is there. Positive or negative goes on that [phase].

0:42:58.3

When you are the at most fear provided to be positive. You are here to be with the positive and during that period it is very hard for the negative to take it, though sometimes when you’re listening or meditating you can get very angry for no reason. Thought it happens even then the atmosphere helps to produce good atmosphere and it really helps, right? But then…the better when you’re out there under tremendous pressure, with ten different people want ten different things at the same time. So, it becomes impossible and you start yelling. Then you loose… It is one’s habitual…So it is very important to watch. Because most of the karma is produced by the habitual ways.

But then, to change the habit is a very hard one. It is not easy. It is a very hard one. If you have, say for a couple of months a habit of getting up late in the morning, or whatever, if you have to change, Even after two or three days it becomes a habit, if we have to change that; very hard. Changing habits is the hard one. If you are smoking you have to leave the cigarette, it’s very hard because it is a habit. If you are drinking coffee, if you want to leave that it is hard because of getting addicted. I have to say that habits, mental addictions. When you have to change that it becomes difficult. Similarly we also have the habit or addiction of non-virtuous. We have addiction of anger attachment, hatred, and jealousy, which is very strong. A very strong addiction like we see caffeine and nicotine addictions are difficult to catch. But that addiction we only picked it up in the last couple of years in our life.

0:46:06.2

But then this anger, hatred, jealousy addiction we picked up number of lives! So it is even harder to cut that addiction. Really! What we do…We do constant attachment. You people lose the battle three hundred times a day. Doesn’t matter don’t give up. Don’t give up. Keep on fighting. You may realize what has happened after twenty four hours, or a week or even a month later, doesn’t matter. Just realizing is something important. If you keep on recognizing, acknowledging that you get angry. And when you get angry, don’t deny your anger, at least to yourself. Try to acknowledge. People in a habit of denying anger they say ‘Well actually I am not really angry but I blahblahblah. You know we say that, so though we are completely overpowered by anger, which even shows in your ears, completely red, it shows it but even though we deny to ourselves. So we are keeping ourself just to protect our addiction as we can see that in addicted people on the street. Some keep on denying: ‘I can stop anytime. I’m not really addicted, but I can stop anytime and I can leave anytime. These people go on saying it. That is our habit. So similarly we deny our anger, we deny our jealousy, we deny but we are overwhelmed. It even shows by our face and ears. But then we keep ourselves denying. But it doesn’t help at all. So instead of deny that recognize. Acknowledge and then try to change. Tell yourself, make a note to yourself, whatever you have to do draw some […] which reminds you and put it on the wall. Do whatever you have to do and try to acknowledge the [flaws] that we have. That is how you cut that pattern and that is how you move and create positive karma.

0:49:36.2

Otherwise it is very hard to create positive karma. If you try to earmark a, say time, the future evening I create positive karma, it goes over there. That’s […] evening. Ours is a large percentage of our life. Look into it. I mean that’s a good thing, it may enforce you, reenforce you to remember, give you strength. For example. But that’s not enough! When you think about your own karma, your own whole spiritual path, that’s the way. Look in that way and actually aware of your life and how you act, what you think and try to acknowledge those negative forces that come from within ones life. It is very helpful if you could review sometimes how much negative thoughts come in my mind. How much positive have I contributed to my own […]. Should try to review it. It is sometimes helpful. Sometimes it is a little discouraging but then it can also bring some improvement.

0:51:34.0

A very simple, common understanding. Actions create karma. Actions how we act according to our mental […]. The mind influences particularly our habitual …our habits. If somebody says ‘Whoo’ to you, you say ‘Whoo’ back, right? That is automatic coming out of habit. We don’t have to think. We automatically do, somebody says ‘Whoo’ and we say ‘Whoo!’ immediately without even thinking. Though there is a thought. A thought of wanting to say whoo is there that’s why you say whoo. Some people when said ‘Boo’ it goes in one ear and comes out the other and they say ‘Hmmm’. That’s possible. There’s no limit in mental capacity. Mental capacity has no limit. Tremendous capacity. Really, so many things can happen together in our mind. We have the capacity. That’s why human life is so great, because of this mental capacity. Both, body and mind, tremendous capacity. So that is what it is.

0:53:15.7

We like to say that some animals are very intelligent. Monkeys are very intelligent. Cat is very intelligent. Yes, but then when you compare to your own intelligence there’s no comparison. That’s why a human life is so great and so important and so valuable. Human beings can do that. That’s the reason why we great opportunity here. To watch your own mind and character. Try to change it. But first even don’t…It’s very hard to change it. Try to recognize. Pay attention. What do you do? All of a sudden somebody pushes you or hits you. Sudden things watch it very carefully how our mind reacts. We always have this, if you like it you’re sort of going out all the way, the moment we have some sort of difficulty immediately taking […] against. All these sort of…immediately we do that. We go out of the way and suddenly we blame him and you know. All this…that’s what happens. And also anger, hatred attachment, what I mean is that it functions together. Though we name separately, we say all have separate consequences and all produce different karma, but when you start to watch your mind carefully they mumbo-jumbo together. Really mumbo-jumbo together. Anger breeds hatred, hatred breeds anger, angers brings jealousy, jealousy brings anger. All this together. It’s like a dice: One side is six, one side is five…but it’s rolling dice so it is all like that. It does have different aspects but one dice. You cannot have a dice with only one six. It’s there. No matter if six is up or down. Very similar in that way it comes. The persons foremost act, when we try to think, the persons foremost act is watch it and acknowledge. That’s what you carry with you. That practice goes with you.

0:56:44.9

Now I have to tell you why, otherwise you’ll say ‘what I do is my thing. I can do what I want to do’. That’s fine but what happens is, whatever you do you’re creating your own karma. When you create your own karma you live in a prison. That’s how your positive [stand] and negative [stand] really go up and down. Within that you yourself judge, nobody else is judging. You’re your own judge. You, yourself are your own witness. There’s no third or second witness. But then, your karma is your karma. However, when we try to talk about spiritual development we’re dealing with karma. We try to cut down the negative and we try to create positive. Karma is a tremendous thing, but when you deal with that you deal with the cause of the karma rather than the karma itself. You can deal with karma, but if you don’t deal with the cause of the karma no matter how much you work, you try to clear all the karma, but if the cause is not clear tomorrow they’ll produce another, the day after tomorrow another. It’s endless. So, the dealing what you have to do with karma is the cause of karma. The cause of the karma is your action, personal action. The personal action is in dealing with your thoughts. That thought habitual pattern and addiction. These are the main causes of our own karma. Try to watch it. When you watch it try to recognize. […] they say don’t try to fight, try to recognize. Acknowledge, acknowledge, acknowledge. And then write some note, do a review of yourself, and do whatever: a note, a poet, a song, whatever you do, paint, try to project your own form, whatever you can understand. And then later on you can try to move and change it gradually, but at this moment you try to watch because the cause of suffering is the second truth. It is the karmic inner delusion. Karma and delusion, the karma, the action is influenced by the delusion. The first is watching. And I’m not going to go beyond that. I’m going to stop here. Try to watch it. Try to meditate. Any questions?

1:00:25.6

Audience: [how can I. I have so many people I feel attachment to and so many that make me angry. When I get mad at somebody it is not because of what they did but because I’m already angry…I don’t understand how getting rid of it helps…]

GR: Well, attachment and love are two different things for me. You can have compassion through love and…I won’t tell you to cut your love out hèhèhè. The love is there. Attachment is…It is very difficult to make a distinction between the love and attachment, but attachment is exaggerated. Love is not exaggerated. So you watch that carefully. You have compassion. You have everything through love. When you have attachment that is exaggerated and possessive: I want it. You make something out of nothing. We have a saying in Tibetan: You produce a prince charming out of a clown. You know what I mean?

Audience: You make a mountain out of a molehill

GR: That’s the same way…Hahah…exaggerate. And if you want it, you’ll find it. If you’re attached to somebody you make that somebody…you keep on and building upon it can become a prince charming. Really you can produce it completely, becoming completely blind of faults. Attachment is exaggerated and love is not. So the compassion, true compassion is brought by true love.

Audience: [attachment]

GR: If you go deep, attachment is ‘I want it’ It is a sort of crave. I want it and if I don’t get it destroy it. To that extend. That is attachment.

Audience: [

GR: Well…

1:05:22.0

GR: I’m out of…Do you all do a meditation in your house? Compassion? No you don’t. Some people do. It would be nice if you do it every day. It will have effect. And if you do it only one day a week it may be difficult to have effect. How many do this in the morning? Okay.

Audience: What time of the day?

GR: Doesn’t matter but at the beginning level it would be good if you could do it early in the morning and late in the evening. If you’re not tired. And the end of the day, meditation might not be…Try to do that meditation every day and see how much you can get. And meditation, just sitting physically alone does help. Concentration is most important. Watching whatever you do, concentrating is very important. Concentrate on that is very important and will give you a lot of help. The recommended period of sitting is 4 to 5. Within the one 45minutes you may be doing 300 times at the beginning. You lose your concentration. Then bringing back. Loose your concentration and bring it back, you may do it 300 times in 45 minutes. Doesn’t matter. Keep on doing it. Then you can sit longer, the creation of concentration will increase. And when that increases the impact you get within your body and daily life, dealing with the outside, you’ll see the effects immediately. When you start increasing your concentration power it will affect your other life. You can take more pressure, you become stronger, you become a much more happier person. These effects you can check. Recommended is 45 minutes. Try to do it every day. Even if you miss one, don’t give up. Pick up the next day. One of our obstacles is: I missed today, I couldn’t do it. So, now I miss a week and then forget it. That’s not good. Even if you miss a month, doesn’t matter. Pick up. Try to pick up. Try to do it. That […] doing is really a big help. That will give result, rather than do it sometimes when you like it and keep on sitting there too long and some other day you don’t like it and you don’t want to do it. That won’t help. Constant. Every thing you do, constant. Even if you’re watching yourself should be constant. Like earlier when we talked about habitual patterns: You go out today and be very careful and tomorrow maybe. And then by the afternoon you’ve forgotten completely. That won’t do any good. A constant thing, don’t have to be strong at the beginning. Don’t have to be […] completely. That’s not good. That will reach nowhere in the spiritual path. Go smooth. Put your effort in it. Go on keep on doing it, that pays. If you take the bucket outside and a drop of water falls, just leave it and then you look back two days later and the bucket will be filled up. So it is only a drop anyway. Right? But if you don’t leave it there, when it is not constant, some big gulf of water comes out and you try to get it and then throw it out. It doesn’t work. So constant effort is very very important.

1:11:07.4

A number of buckets. If you put the bucket outside drop water. It keeps on dropping. ‘Drup’

If you keep on waiting it is very slow, but if you put it and the drop is going on, when you come back later the bucket is filled up. That’s exactly how every virtuous action, including making food offerings or anything if you do it day after day after day then it reaches somewhere. Otherwise, you have constant sometimes and sometimes nothing.

Audience: When you meditate in the morning, and you don’t do these [four…]

GR: Doesn’t matter. It is said after you wash you clean yourself and then you sit crossed legged and meditate which is recommendable. I can’t do. Either in the bed or I get up and wash. But that is recommended: Take your bath and then sit down. If you burn incense, it creates some kind of atmosphere in the morning. Try to pick up that habit. Burn incense. Because Jewel Heart needs to sell incense. Hahahah!

1:13:21.4

But it really helps. Incense creates a good atmosphere it helps. But make sure not to burn the carpet or something! Hahahah. It helps you because there are a lot of ingredients in there, so it helps by creating some kind of atmosphere. You have to help yourself to create an atmosphere. That’s what can help. And then you try to do this thing. When you do this sort of thing daily and then you come here, that will give you some kind of force to pick up awareness outside. That should be the spiritual development. I give you this analogy: It is like a fighting. It is a positive and negative fight. A war fighting between the positive and the negative, fought within ourselves. And when you are clear about the negative and build up total positive that is the ultimate achievement. So, it is a sort of fighting. So, when you provide the atmosphere with all these sorts of things, you get a lot of support and all these sort of things, you’re bound to win! But your danger only lies when you’re out there with no support, that’s when you lose. But when you provide the atmosphere, support and all this sort of thing, constantly within you. That sort of carries forth with you and when you are landed out there that gives strength. That gives you strength. In other words, also here: Building a habit. That helps to be aware, bring awareness. To be able to.

1:16:05.7

Recommended is: Take a bath clean yourself, get a sort of clarity there. So, then you stand…If you can’t do it doesn’t matter. The moment you wake up, you do it. That’s okay. But it is much better if you can get up, wash, and sit in a separate place, that’s better. Unless you’re really used to it. When you’re used to it, it doesn’t matter. You can sleep and meditate. That’s a different matter. But until you get fully used to it if you have a different atmosphere it helps. You’ve got to take any help you can get. Whatever.

1:17:12.5

I guess that’s that. I have nothing more to say. And if you don’t have any questions, I suppose we can do a little meditation and conclude it. This meditation I’d like to be…like to generate a positive motivation…whatever action that we take we take for the benefit of all sentient beings…Each one of us sitting. We are not alone. We are surrounded by all sentient beings. Each one of us leading all sentient beings to spiritual development. So, we need help and support to ourselves and all sentient beings. We seek support in the form of blessing from Buddha, bodhisattva, and all enlightened beings…We receive the blessing of the Buddha and the bodhisattvas in the form of a buddha, light-nature, millions of them, some big, some small, dissolve to our body. By dissolving this to our body we transform pour self from an ordinary body into a body of a buddha. We became buddha. We look like a buddha. And our action of the buddha being here. And now we generate light from our heart. Tremendous powerful light. Not a single light but millions of different beams getting out of our body, originated from our heart. Pure being, pure buddha every part of our body radiates millions of lights and light reaches to all sentient beings. All beings and particularly any special that you want to help maybe visualize here and give light to those particular ones. And by the power of that light reaching to all beings clears all the non-virtuous obstacles. Evilness, unhappiness, everything. Everything unwanted just disappears by the touch of this light. All their sufferings be removed by the power of this light. All beings touched by this light become happy and joyful. They develop extraordinary blissful joy within them…. Light gradually withdrawn. Leave the joyful behind…light gradually withdraws and withdraws. Leaving me in the buddha nature, very positive, joyful, loving, kind, altruistic, dedicated. And then we pray and express our wish that we like to remain in that matter and bring all sentient beings to that state… Now I like to do that and may I be blessed by the bodhisattva’s and all enlightened beings to be able to fulfill my desire.

Thank you.