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19930101GRARCOM14

Compassion in Everyday Life

Gelek Rimpoche

The Association for Research and Development, 1993

Gelek Rinpoche: Good evening everybody.

Audience: Good evening

Gelek Rinpoche: Okay, can you hear me alright? Thank you. So I would like to thank you, [person’s name?], for that wonderful introduction, [unclear], for the wonderful introduction. Also, thank for the center, everybody that bring me here, and for the opportunity to be able to see such a wonderful center, not only as a center of the great work that has been done by a great person, and it has been continuously preserving and promoting and continuously going on. So I’m very happy to be here and to be able see all of this, and I’m grateful to everybody, and also everybody who are coming, wherever you’re coming from, and thank you for coming here.

[2:15] And when I say the great work done by a great person and preserving it and continuously working on that, and I do have a very important point in the mind. As you know, in this, today, people will look to Tibet as sort of a spiritual source, or spiritual home, or whatever you may call it, but those are people who are open-minded, who are looking for spiritual development always look to Tibet as a sort of spiritual friend or home or something, to the extent that you almost call it a Shangri-la. Right? I mean they used to call it Shangri-la.

[3:26] And all this point, and when you try to look at it or why, what is in Tibet, why, and to tell you the truth, if you look at Tibet as Tibet it is a very backward country. It is not an economically advanced country at all. Fortunately it is a beautiful place, but besides that it is a very backward country. So much so that the communist Chinese called Tibet as the most darkened area, most darkness, most backward, most barbarian and all this sort of thing. And it’s not necessarily mean to Tibet, but that’s what they read it because they have no spiritual interest whatsoever. So that’s how they see it.

[4:25] However, am I right, today people are always looking to Tibet to as a source of spiritual strength. Is it because there is a continuation of a living tradition of spiritual practice? That Tibetan buddhism, whatever we have it today, whatever we’re bringing out today, it is not some kind of information alone, it is living tradition. And that makes a lot of difference, when you have a living tradition, and by the works with the people, and it is an unbroken lineage and living tradition – that makes difference.

[5:17] And that’s why I admire the work that the center does here, is the great person’s work, picking up continuously by the, ah, I don’t know what to call it, the disciples(?) or the continuity of the work, so it becomes a living tradition. And if you have a living tradition, and that makes a hell of a difference. So I really appreciate that. And otherwise, if you don’t have a such a thing the great work that’s been done will go in one of those big university libraries, the Library of Congress document, or somewhere else, and the paper will gradually accumulate under dust and so they file it. So that’s why I’m really happy to be continuing that. And that’s the one point.

[6:12] Another point tonight I’m supposed to share, the essence of the Tibetan buddhism. The essence of the Tibetan buddhism. Tibetan buddhism, the essence of Tibetan buddhism is love and compassion. It is an assembly, you can say, it is of love and compassion. There is nothing else. Love and compassion is essence of Tibetan buddhism. Normally, when we talk about the love and compassion we do get some kind of, sort of abstract idea, abstract, right? The word is abstract. So it’s sort of, ah, what do you call it, a sort of idea, sort of opinion, it’s over there, and it’s not so much to do with me or maybe it’s something to do with me but not a part of me. It’s sort of an idea, opinion, that sort of other side, rather than being with ourself.

[7:16] Can I get, excuse me, can I take off my jacket? (laughter) Thank you so much! I am trying to be wearing the jacket but it is [unclear]. So then when I say, when I say the Tibetan buddhism is sort of a living, on the other hand, not only a continuation of the unbroken lineage but the practice, whatever we do. The practice, whatever we do. And it is becoming a part and a parcel of individual, rather than the practice itself is something which you do occasionally and then the individual is something separated. So it becomes a part and a parcel of it. In other words I’m not trying to telling you that we always have to say mantras and doing all this. But what I’m trying to say is that the essence of the practice becomes individual habitual, ah, picked it up but individually as a habit. So when it becomes your habitual thing and it’s effortlessly you have that with ourselves.

[8:49] So that is the one great thing for the Tibet think it had, at least up to ’59 we have that. And after ’59 I do not know what’s happening now. But I don’t know what’s happening outside Tibet or inside Tibet, that’s a different issue. But those of us few who have been fortunate enough to be able to bring and to broaden that view what would in Tibet, all Tibet, before ’59, so we are taught these sort of things are has to be part of your life. In other words love compassion is something which you don’t leave it there and it becomes part of you. And you are become sort of become love compassion thing.

[9:40] So how do you do that? That question rises, how do you do that? Love compassion is something great but it’s not we always have it. I’ve been talking this almost 3 or 4 days here, it’s the same thing. What do we do? How it becomes part of ourselves? It is all something, it is definitely part of ourselves. Within ourselves, within each one of us, we do have a wonderful nature, a nature of human being, of being itself, we do have a nature, almost you can say god nature. But as a Buddhist from the Buddhist background, I say Buddha nature (laughs). It is the same thing but you call it Buddha nature. That is a technicality.

[10:39] So the Buddha nature is with, every single beings have Buddha nature within ourself. There is nobody, not a single person, who does not have Buddha nature. There is nobody who will not have compassion. When people see people suffering and they feel it, they feel it within yourself. Right? We do that all the time. When there’s some journalist, when they pick up, when I was talking this morning about Somalia and 2 years ago, or 1 year ago, 2 years ago, Ethiopia, right, and when you see those pictures they show on your television in your living room, and the children suffering and people suffering, we feel. And every American, and everybody had felt it as though it was a pinching on your body. And isn’t every kind person had felt that? And that is clear sign that we had good nature and compassion and love within ourself.

[12:00] But in order to show that compassion, in order to hear that compassion, you do need certain and, ah, miserable picture, you have to see it. Otherwise you don’t feel it. The reason is, because it is recognized but it is not functioning with us very well. You know what I mean? And why it is not functioning, because we have obstacles. The wonderful nature is with us, however, the nature of the wonderfulness is covered by our anger. Jealous. Hatred. Attachment. They have covered. So when we share with the other person, when you react, interreact with the other person, instead of showing the wonderful nature we give this cold shoulder. Right? Hmm. So why do we do that?

[13:18] Because it didn’t work(?), because these, what do you call that, those, I’ll call them delusions anyway, those anger, detachment, hatred. I’ll call them delusions. Those delusions unfortunately have become a part of our habit. Or you may go to the extent that we’re very badly addicted with anger, attachment, jealous, anything you mention, you think of it, we’re very badly addicted to it. So simple. We look very carefully and anybody say something funny, and look at you a little funny way and immediately we react, and we will have no problem to use F- word or whatever. Right? (laughter) We can say that, we don’t have a problem. We do that, it is an automatic. You don’t have to think about it or to say. We don’t have to do it, you get it, you get upset, you get angry, and you can show your temper without any difficulty. We don’t have to learn how to show temper, how to become a temper tantrum. We don’t have to go to school and learn it. Right?

[14:54] But on the other hand, we have to go and put time in to meditate and to learn how to be patience. How not to be temper tantrum. We have to learn that. But how to be temper tantrum we don’t have to because have that habitual pattern within us. Get it? These habitual patterns, these negative emotions blocking us to show the beautiful nature and our love compassion, to be able to share with, is been blocked by these particular habitual patterns.

[15:42] Now for me, when I say spiritual development, when I say improvement of the individual, or enlightenment of the individual, for over here, to me it meant removing those negativities and try to show the beautiful nature within us, try to mature that and let it be shine out so that the blocking thing of the negativity should be removed. Get it? Okay. Now, the difficulty lies here. That are all very fine to talk, and nicely, but when you have to do it by yourself how do I begin? Where do I start? How do I do all this? How do I generate love compassion? How do I become very kind person? And that is the difficulty that everybody would like to be nice person, everybody would love to be kind person, compassionate person. What Buddha recommended everybody should be, if you really want it, unconditioned, unlimited love and compassion, should be able to, unconditioned and unlimited. We don’t have that.

[17:26] Whatever the love and compassion, whatever we have, we have it conditioned. We do have it conditioned, don’t we? We do. We do have limitations as well. And in a normal American way you said what’s in there for me? (laughter) Don’t you say that, alright? What’s in there for me? What’s in there for me? If I have to do that for you what’s in there for me? It’s conditioning your love. It’s conditioning your compassion. It’s a clear indication that we have conditions. Love and compassion not unconditioned, unlimited. We have limitations. I don’t mind loving my family but beyond that I don’t care or I do care but not that particular family, not at all! Not mine, never! (laughter) And that is the condition that we have.

[18:29] And all of them is due to our habitual patterns, the addictions that we have. We discriminate among the people, actually, we discriminate. We call it, we group all the people, my friend or whatever, you know, we put it in a category, in a compartment, sort of make it closer to me. And then we group all the people, put it in a compartment called my enemy and push a little bit outside, push a little bit, keep yourself with distance. And the true reality is, it is true someone did some funny things that you irritated, somebody did some kind gesture, we’re grateful. But true reality if you really look from the point of each and every individual, whether in this group or whether in that group, and if you look from their end they try to do best for themselves. Right? And each one of them are, if you look at this group or that group, they all wanted - what? A little better life. Or a little better happiness. A little better more joy. A little better more comfort.

[19:58] And that’s what basically that they’re thinking, all of these people thought that by bringing that they can get a little better joy. Right? So, the division are very big within our, within our whatever you call it. To our object(?). You know when you look at individuals we see the distance, we see all of them. We see all of them. So these are what Buddha tried to call is a delusion, dualistic, all these sort of interesting names are there but the point really lies because we cannot really share our great love and compassion, unlimited, unconditioned, because we ourselves are not really able to generate it properly.

[21:05] You get me? Unless we develop a good love and compassion within ourself, actually no matter how much you try to share, you have nothing to share. So this morning I talked also, so the challenge it begins at the home, again. So the love compassion is also begins with the individual, believe it or not. And you may expect a Tibetan Buddhist, Mahayana Buddhist, talking about the total altruistic attitude and the love compassion, but in order to have unlimited, unconditioned love and compassion, to be able to share with others, we have to have love and compassion for ourself. Period.

[22:03] One of the great teachers called Tsongkhapa, at 1357 to 1490, incidentally I have the book here, Tsongkhapa’s book, one of the big books, very famous book called Lam Rim Chenmo, Tsongkhapa book. Tsongkhapa says (reads passage in Tibetan). Okay? (laughter). Okay. When you think that you yourself is deprived of joy and having tremendous sufferings and you don’t feel much about it, you don’t have much feeling for yourself, you don’t feel compassionate to yourself, maybe I’m not translating very well. Anyway, (reads passage in Tibetan). Okay. So when you have that condition when you think of others, love and compassion, how can you expect to develop love and compassion to others because when you think of yourself you don’t have love and compassion to yourself at all. And that is true. It is experienced words.

[23:31] Unless and until we develop very strong love and compassion to ourself we cannot develop strong love and compassion to anybody else. If the person is not capable of loving yourself you can never love others unconditionally or conditionally. Not possible. So the first and foremost step what the Tibetan teachers with their personal experience of 1,000 years is recommending, develop love and compassion for ourself. So the first thing you have to learn of loving is loving yourself. And compassion on ourself. So that is, begins(?) most important. Once when you feel it within yourself then we can feel with others easily. And if you don’t feel it you’re out of touch. How can you feel it with others?

[24:50] I was a watching, I’m sure all of you remember, I was watching during the presidential debate between George Bush and Bill Clinton and they started accusing each other out of touch – remember? And Clinton was asked the supermarket and how much the price is and this and that. And he has everything ready to say, how much a packet of milk cost and a packet of meat costs and all this. And when George Bush went to the supermarket he was so surprised the supermarket is very advanced(?) – remember that? So that is the out of touch side, and when you are out of touch you cannot feel it.

[25:38] Do you get me? If you don’t feel the pain yourself you can never feel how others feel it. And the Buddha recommended that. Buddha give the pain has one good quality. Yeah that’s, it needs to have one good quality, is pain brings compassion. Believe it or not, pain brings the compassion. And when you feel the pain you can feel the compassion. You know there’s an example what they give, it is a very funny example, is very funny example. The example that you have is, it’s very funny, when two people fighting together, and they were not think of(?) big things, you know two guys going stand up and fighting with a knife, that old style(?), and fighting together. And if you are a brave person, the person is a brave person, when the person see he’s loosing his own blood, right, and what will happen, that make him mad and fight more, right? And if he were coward when you see the other people loosing blood you run away. Been there, right? The coward run away when he sees the other people bleeding blood, he run away. The hero or the brave person, when they feel it’s their own blood they get more angry and fight.

[27:08] Likewise, and when we’re fighting in the spiritual path when you feel it’s your own pain you should be able to generate compassion better. It is the one quality, one good quality that pain and suffering can give you, is the compassion. Get it? That’s true. That is true. So if you remember the example here, the coward person and the, what should you call it, the hero, the heroic person? Heroic person, and that is the example. So what do we do when we see, when we feel pain and the difficulties? Instead of running it away to a corner of a house or wherever we run away, normally we run away some corner inside the doors, and I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to speak to anybody, I don’t want to see anybody, you retreat, right? And that is the, I believe, is the coward style. And nobody want to be coward, are we? Is there anybody want to be coward? Nobody. Everybody would love to be heroic.

[28:29] So therefore, when you have that sort of a pain or any pain for that matter or suffering and difficulties, you have to take advantage of it. Don’t let it run you over, but take advantage of it. And make into love and make it into compassion to yourself. When your mind get used to it for that and this love and compassion really become a part of you because you do have the seed inside you. This only need some kind of little practice from outside, a little grease from outside, a little push. In other words it’s in there but somebody has to press the button and turn it on and that button only you can push, nobody else. You can push it. So that’s the way how you can use it and if you keep on using it, love compassion will become part of your life.

[29:36] Instead of [recording blanked for about 6 seconds] it is possible, it’s definitely possible. I don’t mean to say that um, I don’t mean to say that I have experience or anything, but somehow I do have a couple of funny incidents in my life. Once I was having a corner(?) in Ithaca, upstate New York, right, Ithaca. There was only assistance(?). There were 8 of us, 8 Tibetans, and I don’t know why we were there because I didn’t even speak English at that time. I really doesn’t know anything and they really taught me A B C D over there, you know, really. I was one of 8 monks, 8 of us, and there was some kind of very special program and they taught us economics and international politics and cultural anthropology and I learned nothing actually (laughter), because I don’t speak the language. In the economics the professor teach some thing(?) and draw some lines and call it demand and supply or something, you know, where you supposed to meet some lines, that’s all I could learn, nothing else.

[31:22] The politics I learned a little bit, little bit basically, because I do have interest in certain thing and at that assembly, coming out of Tibet, all of us believe that we can go back the next day or something. So have some kind of interest at that time anyway. So pick it up a little bit, of a political system here and there a little bit, but basically, that’s sort of the only thing I learned. However, one friend among us is very short-tempered always. When something goes wrong he go straight away #@%*. And he never fought with me at all, but he been fighting almost everybody. And one day I saw, heard him, we were downstairs and I was downstairs, actually, and sort of living in the living room and looking through the magazine. I don’t know how to read it but I’m looking at the pictures, the color pictures turning over and that’s what I do. So they’re fighting upstairs and finally he come down and he went and sat over there with the air sober. And I should have shut my mouth but I didn’t. I said, look here, you lost your temper again? (laughter) Turning the page and say you lost your temper again? And before I realized, then POW over here, you know. (laughter) [unclear]. I didn’t know what happened, you know. And then I realized he got up and he slapped me, right? And, um, I’m Tibetan, I know this myself, I’m Tibetan, maybe I’m a wimp or whatever it is. I’m a Tibetan master, what should I do, should I fight back or what should I say? If I fight back should I hit him or what? If I don’t fight back will he repeat that all the time? All these exact thoughts going on in my head. You know really, before I did anything these thoughts came up on my head and I don’t know what to do. Luckily another person, guy named Eric who happens to be British and who teach us, graduate student who teaching us the economics, walked by. Luckily and that settled the matter there. So I don’t have to do anything and settle it.

[34:11] But as a result of that when I did not reply him back or anything, and he felt so bad. He felt bad and particularly as a Tibetan I do have a little title called Incarnate Lama, I think all of them put together (laughter). And all of them put together and I think he’s feeling bad. So we usually eat together for dinner together, and he didn’t show up for the dinner. He didn’t come for dinner. So the next day morning breakfast we eat together, he didn’t show up for breakfast also. Also not for lunch the next day. So we do, the set up, I don’t know whatever the set up is, there’s an older lady, a German lady, comes and cooks for us. So she come and told me, hey Rimpoche, you better go and call that guy. He got named, and call that guy, for he had no food, you’d better go and call him. I said okay. So the lady’s name is Amalia(?), I remember. I say okay, Amalia. I went up and told him and he was so small, and he doesn’t know what to say feeling himself so small. This much small. And he felt throughout the time in the United States. And I think about 2 or 3 years ago I saw him in Australia, the same person, he still feeling bad. (laughter) It’s really true, he’s still feeling really nervous.

[35:54] So if you don’t react, if you don’t answer anger by anger, then sometimes bad thing can happen, too. But on the other hand if you don’t react and people will think you are coward or stupid or they try to overrun you or whatever it is, they’re all possible. However, in the long run you’re a winner. I have another incident in my life, again. I used to work. The Indian government hired me to run a Tibetan service of All-India radio. India has one radio station throughout India because somehow media is a government run thing. So (sings station ID tag) (laughter) So they have that. They have one radio station throughout India, one thing. It’s called All-India radio, and they have a Tibetan program they wanted me to run, and I run that for 3 years or something. And it is a huge organization, I mean it’s a really big bureaucratic organization which you never know who is the big, you know, the really, really deep somebody or other. Anyway the picture that we get is the Director General of All-India Radio. Director General – that’s the big guy over there. I used to have a great respect by virtue of his title. I don’t even know the person at all, person changes, right? By virtue of his title, and I do have a great respect for that guy. That’s because of his title. And ever since I worked, that’s the only one president that they didn’t change. I don’t even know what happened. Really, truly I don’t even know what happened. Some kind of a program thing, he got so upset and during a meeting and the group of people, and after the meeting’s over he told me, you wait for a little while. And I waited for a little while. And he was sort of keeping himself busy, right, on table and not saying anything for a while. And after some time, there’s a chair and I sat down on the chair and he goes, Who told you to sit down here? And so, then he started shouting and screaming, and I couldn’t figure out what he felt. And suddenly looked at his face and you know what I thought? The backside of the monkey. (laughter) True. And he absolutely looked like the backside of the monkey turned around. Really true. And that is the total image I got, and look how he’s still yelling and screaming, and I could not help but laughing. And I couldn’t hold it back. (laughter) Truly I couldn’t hold it back, I started laughing and giggling. And he started screaming, you’re laughing at me, he said. And I can’t help it. And he said I [unclear] you, whatever that is. Anyway, he started screaming and I still laughing and he said get out of here, and he chased me out. And that’s exactly what happened. And I can’t help it. And anybody said, why did you do that, he’s the big boss, blah blah blah, but I couldn’t help it.

[39:57] So if you would remember that, if you started shouting and screaming on other persons, and remember the other person’s looking at you and they’re going see the same thing. (laughter) And that is the disadvantage of anger. Not only that, ever since that time almost I lost respect to that guy, too. No matter how big the title there, and lost the respect of the person. And also he was the [unclear] man, I saw him twice there after, and he started avoid me all the time. All the time, yeah. So that’s what happens. So the anger in turn, it has become quite an expensive loss.

[40:59] And then there’s another one point. Some people will tell you anger is necessary to fight against the social injustice. And I was giving talk in New York the same time, it was the same time this year. Same time, yeah. This is October, right? Same time about two years ago in New York. I’ll have to remember that. There’s a poet, the young poet Andrew Harvey. He wrote a number of books on Mahamudra and all this. I did not know his anger habit. There’s one guy from the corner somewhere and keep on asking questions. How can you justify the social injustice, how can you fight a decent battle, all sorts of things. And I give him the example at that time, if you use anger as a material to fight social injustice, you might not be able to complete. You cannot complete. You cannot achieve. Yet instead, if you can use the compassion, if you use the caring for the people, the care for your future generations of the down-trodden people, or if you have the care, the love compassion really means do anything you can, right? Caring for them, you want to do anything for them how. So if you have that care and that compassion, if you use that material, that as your fuel, then the social fight against the social injustice, not only it continue it will succeed, too.

[42:56] I don’t believe Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi Ji, if Gandhi just started fighting against British Colonial rule by anger, India would not have burned to death, for sure. It is Gandhi’s compassion to, maybe limited to the Indian role or whatever it is, but to his own people, Gandhi’s compassion, and then with that compassion and non-violence he succeed. Right? So that the, ah, Doctor King and all this, and the people, if you look at it, his Holiness the Dalai Lama, and if the Dalai Lama started to get angry and banging his shoe like Khrushchev did in the UN, and he’s not going get anywhere, right? We know that. But he use compassion and love and he really cares for the Chinese people. He really cares. And he’s using the compassion as a weapon and the care still goes on. We thought that Tibet gets bad for a couple of years ago and revive again, I think this will continue anyway, whatever it is.

[44:21] So it’s the love and compassion used as a fuel to fight social injustice. Or, personal injustice, whatever it is, whatever it is. It is much more effective than that of using anger. And I used examples that were of that very thought. And Alan Ginsberg, I said if Alan Ginsberg used compassion at that time when he tried to lift the Pentagon up with Ohm. I’m sure many of you know that, in the 60s when he was a fight the anti-Vietnam war demonstration. If you use that as a compassion, as a key and fight with that instead of using Ohm, if you used Ah the Pentagon might have lifted up I said. Alan Ginsberg he does his finger immediately, and he said he does his finger and he says well, I did not lift the Pentagon physically but it made changes in there so in reality it lifted. And he just sort of said that.

[45:37] Anyway, the point is really that if you use the love and compassion rather than anger for anything, it works far better. I’m giving you the example of Gandhi Ji, Dr. King and Dalai Lama. And that go for the individual as well. Within your house, within your family, within everything, every single dealing where you don’t like it or you have to fight, you fight with love and compassion. And then that becomes habitual pattern of a individual. That works great. And to be able to do that, for the first you have to experience the love and compassion on yourself. Don’t ever forget pains that we go through, each individual. And those pains, and when you have those pains, take advantage of the pain and develop compassion. And then when you see the other people are having similar to your hurt, you know how they feel it. And the bad will probably, almost, will not like you get angry at all even though you’re badly irritated. You realize you cannot afford to get angry because you realize other persons having similar pains.

[47:18] Love compassion. First you experience. Whatever you experience that, don’t leave it outside. Lot of us will do. When you go in the meditation room you’re allowed to meditate love and compassion. We like to be very great person. However, we move out of the meditation room when you go out in, what you call it, in the big world, whatever you call it, big world, and when you go there you forgot what you have been meditating in the chapel or meditation room. Then you become useless, totally useless. I mean, you may not be totally useless but effect is not good enough for the individual. So whatever you meditate inside the meditation room, the effect you must be carry with you when you deal outside. And that is why experiencing the kindness and inspire. That is exactly, we don’t want the loving kindness as a beautiful word and leave it there, but bring it back with us and experience. That’s what it is.

[48:45] So, that’s a lot of the ways on how you meditate and develop love and compassion. So with that begin over there, but basically the first and foremost you have to develop, remember the kindness that other people have given you. If you don’t, you know, if you don’t feel the kindness of the other person then you really don’t have the feeling of caring other people. It’s difficult. It’s our habitual pattern. Unless somebody done something for me, why should I do something for that person? We always have that attitude. You may or may not like to admit that, but it is always part of our attitude. So you have to remember the kindness given by other people. The Tibetans go the extent of a, sort of, you know, seeing every sentient being, every human being, one time or the another time, be your mother. So recognizing every sentient being as a mother being. You call it to the extent of looking at them as a mother being. That’s what the Tibetan Buddhist tradition said, not only you have a kind mother and a compassionate to others, but sort of treat them as your mother being. So the mother’s kindness and compassion that mother had shared to the kids or to your children, to the children, one should not look at as oneself as a child and look at as my mother, what my mother’s kindness.

[50:37] I don’t think it works in America. You know what I mean? In America they always like to be in the mother’s unkindness all the time. (laughter) So what you do is the other way around, if you have ever been a mother, how much you have been shared mother’s love and compassion to the children? If you look from that angle you know it. How much the mother has given care to the children. Those of you who have been mother, you know it. And those of us who have never been mother, and we have to look at it from the angle how the mothers give the kids how much care. No matter, whatever the kids going to ask or say, the mother really stand there and does whatever it is. I have interesting story actually. During the Buddha’s lifetime there’s a, this is story is very funny. During the Buddha’s lifetime, this story will give you two messages, okay? So during the Buddha’s lifetime there were a person called Angulimala. So Angulimala, it is Indian language. “Anguli” I think is a palm, right? Palm. A finger? Okay. This one, okay, anguli. And the mala is a rosary. Also I’ll call it palm bead. Palm bead. So he has a wrong spiritual guide. The wrong spiritual guide told him if you can kill 1,000 human beings and cut their finger and put through a string and wear it and come back to me and I’ll liberate you. So the guy goes and started killed everybody he could, took a big knife and started chopping everybody, kill everybody and chopping their finger. So by the time and it’s become 999 or something, and he couldn’t get anymore person around because everybody run away. And as Angulimala is 2,000 or 500 years ago, and don’t think where the police is, I know this, okay? So everybody run away by that time. So nobody is around and he can’t get the last finger. So he sees his mother around because mother is the one who completely not running it away, afraid that he might kill me, but at the same time somehow she wanted to help. So she’s sort of hiding there(?) and running around, tried to help her son, whatever she could. Though she knows very well he’s killing everybody, she’s around. And he also has hesitation to use his knife on his own mother. So he’s going around like that, and about that time Buddha appeared as a monk or something. He appears there. And then he says Ah, that’s great, I don’t have to use the mother, and I can get this guy over here. So he started running after that guy, and he’s walking slowly. Slowly. But no matter how much he run, he couldn’t catch him at all. [unclear] So after some time he’s getting tired and he called him and said Hey, wait! Hey, wait! And when he said it, wait, he said, Buddha replied, I’m waiting, you come a little faster. I’m waiting. So that’s how they began a conversation. And through that conversation Buddha came gradually able to convince him that whatever he’s doing is totally wrong and no one’s going to liberate you. And if you press that teacher who told you to liberate you out of this, if you go back probably he cut your palm as well, so better not. And Buddha been able to convince him and later he became purified, he purified all his negativities and he became one of the arhats, which is a Sanskrit word for a highly developed person.

[55:16] So that’s what happens. So I’m trying give you that two messages. One, the mother knows he killing everybody, even though she can’t runaway she tries to see what she can do from a distance. And that’s, if you look at yourself as a mother, and looking how much you share toward your children and you know the mother’s kindness. But don’t look at as did my mother do this, okay? Don’t do that. But if you look at in that way, and you can see that. One the other hand it is also possible, no matter how much negativity that one has, it can be purified and you can become a person because the Buddha nature, the wonderful nature, is within ourselves. All of this negativity, whatever we have, it is a temporary block. It can be purified. This very story will give you two of these messages. Maybe more, there’s more, but two messages important here. You can use that.

[56:40] So, according to the Buddha, no matter, all the sentient beings, wherever, whoever you look, and each one of them, each one of them has been one time or another, my nearest and dearest. It is the way that we don’t recognize each other because of the change of our life, because of the change of our life, change of identity, change of our physical appearance, the change of our name, the change of our look, we don’t recognize each other. Otherwise, there is everybody, one time or another we have been together. We have a common relation, we have depend our life to each other for a number of times. Each other has protected, saved, each other’s life countless times. That’s why the Buddha found it, as a personal experience out of the love(?) and that’s what he shared with us. So, what do we do today, dividing the group of people, calling enemies or friends? It is only because we have limited view. Our view is very limited to a shallow period and a direct experience of a couple of years, forgetting the bigger thing. That’s why we divide among ourselves as enemy, friend, color, whatever, any division you know, and all these divisions are because of that. In reality all of us are dependent on each other for a number of times. We have interdependent relationship. Interdependent relationship is a totally exist with every sentient being. Today we begin to pick up, we begin to learn the world is small, and we call it world is small. In depending on each other we see that. Buddha is said that goes with… [recording ends]

transcribed by Kay Pierce

12/4/21