Archive Result

.2110Sound file Tale : 19950101GRAR8FP05

Speaker: Gelek Rimpoche

Location: Ann Arbor

Topic: Experience of the Buddha Shakyamuni

Transcriber: Steve Kelly

Date Finished 10.26.2017

Saved as ODF

Rimpoche: Good morning everybody I hope you had a nice night good, a good rest. It's beautiful here. Okay so we will continue to talk about what we did yesterday and today I did talk to you and I said I'd like to talk about the love and compassion.

We did give you a little sheet and you're probably thinking he's not talking on this. So what I overlooked yesterday actually I am the right view, the right thought, the right speech, the right content, the right lovely road, the right effort and I haven't talked about mindfulness.

And concentration somebody asked me to speak today specifically too on this. So the view, thought, speech contract, and all of them we covered yesterday actually. The only thing what I did not do is, hey this is the view, hey this is the thought, basically it is the conducting of one's life, the principal of all this, the basic principle, the base, the foundation of all this. 000151

The two schools of Buddhism

Now today I'm talking to you slightly more from the Mahayana Buddhist perspective rather than the Theravadan Buddhist perspective. Did I make you more confused by mentioning two different things? In Buddhism actually in traditional early Indian Buddhism there were two different schools, one school was called the Theravadan school and the other school was called the Mahayana school.

Of course everybody had their own little propaganda as to who was better but basically truly speaking there is no difference. The question does not rise of who is better. What really matters is both of them are absolutely necessary for one individual to have both of their sets of principles.

So that's why one doesn't say, one is better or which is better because for practical purposes everybody needs both principles.

Earlier in history Theravadan used to be called Hinayana. I'm sure you've heard this terminology, Hinayana means the smaller vehicle and the Mahayana means big vehicle.

So then when you talk about the Hinayana, the traditional teachings always talk about the Hinayana and the Mahayana. Then when you go to the Theravadan countries like Thailand or Sri Lanka and all the Theravadan countries, if you call them Hinayana they get offended.

Theravadans and the feminists

Before I came to Ann Arbor, maybe in the 1980s, there was an incident at a Buddhist seminar in Ann Arbor. They had a big Buddhist seminar and in that seminar a lot of incidents took place. Actually a lot of incidents took place. It's a big seminar, they called it the International Buddhist Seminar. In one incident, the traditional Theravadan Buddhist monks came and sat on the stage and all this and somehow a couple of novices or nuns complained. They complained how difficult it was to be a woman in the Buddhist order. They had strong support for the feminist movement and they started talking about it. 000525

Hinayana versus Theravadan

I was told all these monks got very annoyed, extremely annoyed. Then somebody got up and said in Hinayana principles something something. Then the monks said that’s it! Okay we’re walking out of here. So they walked away. The monks said it was because you have these members of the feminist movement complaining and you called us Hinayana. So we are out of here and they walked away. But after walking away, they let them go and the remaining Buddhists passed resolution after resolution. The International meeting kept on passing resolutions.

So I just mention that because if you're not aware of it they get very badly offended. This time it happens to be the monks but somebody else can do it. So now it has to be Theravadan but traditionally it's called Hinayana. Theravadan means self liberation not the small vehicle like Hinayana but instead self liberation.

The Mahayana's have no problem whatever they call it because they are the big vehicle anyway, so they kept the big name so no problem.

So the principles that I talked to you about mostly yesterday is the Theravadan part of it. It was the Theravadan principal of self liberation. It is how one individual within herself, by herself, works out the way to move away from the negative karma and how can one improves oneself to reduce those negative emotions.

(Rimpoche has an aside) Okay negative emotions. That’s actually what self liberation is, that is the Theravadan principles. 000804

Basically, let me repeat once again because you people have come from various paths and you try to do something for yourself. So it is extremely important. Step number one to watch yourself in this sense: what are your emotions, how your thoughts arising, what influences, how it affects you. Also its extremely important the effect of those negative emotions which I failed to mention to you yesterday. For example, like irritation - your irritation causes a lot of inconvenience and unpleasant feelings for ourselves 000857

If you get upset with something then watch your mind. The mind which is clear calm quiet and nice like a clean glass of water. now looks like a mushy muddy type of thing. These are the effects that you get.

Likewise with the positive effect, if you have some really profound faith to enlightenment or profound faith to the Almighty or some nice admiration or something and then watch your mind after that. What does the mind look like, the clarity, the calmness and the nice pleasant feeling.

Directly you can see the effect of the positive and negative emotions which we always get – one after another. And I’m also very fond of giving interesting examples. Examples like if you’re sleeping like over here in the hotel down there the Ramada Inn or something and you sort of open your window and all this the ocean movement you can hear and you have very beautiful sleep and then when you wake up you relaxed in your beautiful mind and you looking forward to the day excited and nice and suddenly somebody irritates you in between. Then what happens is the beautiful feeling and the wonderful excitement looking forward has been sort of dragged down.

That’s the loss for the individual because you don’t get that sort of nice rested wonderful feelings, you don’t get much. Whenever you have that it is sort of taken away by little irritation. So these are the negative emotions that we have. It affects even immediately forget about long term what happens. Don’t forget about it, it is your karma don’t forget you can’t forget. But even directly you can see all this. So immediately after that you can see this.

And anger some people say anger is wonderful without anger you cannot fight social injustice and this and that and it is empowering, it is wonderful.

Yes you can blow it up and scream and yell and then immediately after that you will see that you’re tired, it’s like you lost the hot air out of your balloon and you’re completely tired. All this sort of thing you have. These are the effects of the emotions. And then the positive emotions they somehow constantly remain with you. And even years after you can look back and say wow yes I had a beautiful feeling here I had a beautiful this things and beautiful that thing.

Sacred Places

Also you get positive effects out of sacred spaces. I was listening to the announcements that you are doing this earlier. 001249

I’m so glad that you are going to those sacred spaces and they can affect the individual. Traditionally, Tibetan teachers will tell you one thing. If we are powerful in the spiritual development we can bless and make those sacred spaces which are very powerful, we can contribute towards that.

When we need help, when we are not that powerful, then that place will help you. There is a tremendous amount of relationship between the internal sacred place and the external sacred place. There is a tremendous relationship and this relationship affects the individual who are sort of open-minded, looking for blessings, or looking for influence or looking for improvement and that really helps a lot.

So I’m so happy to see that you are leading a number of tours to a number of sacred places both in the East and West. It is a great fortune that you people have. We, the traditional Tibetans, try to go to the sacred places in China or India or something which was very difficult because we don’t have those planes or motors. We had to go on the mule’s back which took like 15 to 20 days. There’s no hotels or nothing so you had to carry all your food and clothes, everything. So if you are traveling in a group 10 or 15 or 20 people, you probably have like 20 or 40 or 60 mules to carry your food, clothes and other needs.

Even with all those difficulties people do have a yearly trip going to the play ground to India or China. China is little too far away for the Tibetans. So they went to Indian and things like that, we do do that up until the 1940s..

Then it came to 1949 and the communist Chinese came over to Tibet 1949, 1950, 1951 and by 1951 or 1952 then they started issuing permits to go to India. Then they started all sorts of things then everything began to change and maybe it’s convenient and they started having that money exchange which the Tibetans never liked.

Tibetans and the Chinese

Earlier the Tibetans used to carry their silver coins. You know we do have paper money notes but it was not that great. So what happened is when they would go to India or something they actually carried the silver coins. It was 100% pure silver coins that we make and we had to carry load after load of silver coins. 001637

Then in the 1950s when the Chinese came, first they stopped the silver coins going India and they started issuing little pieces of paper that says you go across the border and there’s a bank and if you need money they give it to you.

So Tibetans hated that from the beginning because they felt like because they were carrying those silver coins and giving these to the sacred places and making offerings or whatever it is and they felt that they did something worthwhile. When it changed into the paper then they lost some kind of funny value, which may be stupidity, but they lost that.

Sacred places and spirits

So anyway I should not be talking about that. Well, I might as well talk about it. The sacred place is extremely important. So any meditations that you do where you have a sacred place to meditate helps tremendously. It helps you to create good feelings because you provided a good atmosphere externally. Internally, it helps you because when there’s a good atmosphere there is a good number of spirits and all this. And they try to help you.

Then the sacred places where you go they are loaded with great many spirits and a great many beings and then they try to help you. So that’s why it’s very important - the value of the sacred places. These are totally external.

Internally each one of our physical points, the chakras and the physical points if you are aware of it, are important. If you are not aware of it, I’m not going to talk much. Each one of our physical places, the heart, the throat, the crown, the forehead in between the two eyes and the eye, the ear, the nose all of them have again an external relationship. Each one of those is a sacred place which I’m not going to talk about much because it may not make much sense to you. But there is an extremely important relationship between the sacred place and our internal physical body. The total of this basic physical body it has connection..

Because of that connection our psychic body also has a tremendous amount of connection with the great world where we are living. So I will not go in that detail because that is not even my subject. So I better keep it to my own thing which I’m supposed to do.

So what I’m trying to tell you is the basis of all this is now begins to fall on the love and compassion. Love and compassion is a fundamental basis for which people can conduct their own life and livelihood or whatever it is.

Love compassion is the Mahayana principal self liberation is the Theravadan principal. So both are needed for one individual practice. If you have a very good self liberation but you don’t have love and compassion you will be very cold proud guy or proud person - sorry. You will be a very cold and proud person and what is the use? Not much value in there. You will see a number of spiritual practitioners who are very what you call it not on the ground but they are very proud you know. Arrogant, thank you that’s the word. They are very arrogant. These people have a problem which is their lack of love and compassion, their lack of caring.

Lack of love and compassion makes you arrogant

Even if you are great spiritual practitioner, a spiritual developed person that will also have pros and cons. A lack of love compassion makes the individual an arrogant person. 002208

Even if you meditate on love and compassion that happens to some people because of the way and how they meditate on love and compassion - instead of reducing arrogance and it builds up arrogance too. So I will come down to that before I do that I like to basically introduce you to the love compassion which of course every one of you knows.

Every one of you is rich with that. However it is sometimes interesting to pinpoint on that. So once I was in India in Dharamsala where the Dalai Lama was living.002313

I was there and I was with one of my late great masters, Gebje Ling Rimpoche who is the senior tutor for the Dalai Lama. I was having lunch with him over there and just chit chatting around. You know the way these great teachers you know they give you a lot of great teachings but they also teach in the chitchatting. The formal teachings are the formal teaching and informal teachings are over jokes or over tea or at the comical expense of some other person who’s just sitting there all these sort of funny things.

So we were having lunch and I just simply asked Gebje Ling Rimpoche what is this business of love compassion? He says why? I said I needed to know and also people are asking me questions. So he said oh yes you don’t know about love and compassion surely you don’t. I said no.

Napkin teaching

Okay I’ll tell you and he took the napkin out and showed me on the napkin. He said see here one napkin? This side is love then he turned around and this side is compassion, he turned it over that’s it. (Audience laughs)

So it’s not advanced trying to tell you something it’s not. So basically what I learned is that love and compassion is actually one mind, one mind, it is one napkin with different aspects.

This mind with one aspect becomes compassion and with its other aspect will become love. 002525

It is one mind. When I say aspects, when I say one mind, what does that mean? It is one mind because both minds, love and compassion, are focusing. No I’m talking from the Mahayana background today, okay? It focuses to all sentient beings, because the object of the thought is all sentient beings.

So it is the focus point, the focus point. So now the separate aspects, the compassion aspect of the one mind is extremely caring for the people and completely wishing the thought “how do I separate those sentient beings from the pains they are experiencing”?

So how can I separate the individual and the pain? Right? Sometimes when a child is having a terrible pain or something the parents or the doctor or whatever who’s caring for the person will almost become helpless if they can’t get in there and remove the pain physically they will not hesitate.

They’ll wish I could just take it away and separate these two. It is that sort of feeling of caring. That is the aspect of compassion. Are you with me? That is the aspects of the compassion. On the other hand, again the love will be strongly wishing them joy and how can I make you happy? How can I make you better? So much so that you almost want to get physically inside the person and do something like change a switch or something. Do you know what I mean? Physically change a switch and make that person happy and joyous.

It is that sort of mind. It is one mind focused on the sentient beings, whether it is one individual or all sentient beings whatever it may be. And two separate purposes, one wishes to separate pains, one wishes to make them happy.

So that explains one napkin this way and that way. So that is exactly what it is. The message I didn’t get straightaway over there with Ling Rimpoche so I didn’t say any more, I had to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t ask any more questions in that moment.

But then when you’re thinking, gradually that’s when you get it. That is exactly the aspects of that one mind. So when you meditate now the question comes how does one develop that within one’s self? How do you do that? When you meditate, during the meditation, a number of people will tell you how to meditate on love or on compassion.

It is a traditional teaching. It is a traditional way and number of Buddhist teachers will tell you just sit cross legged. Since I am talking about meditation, I have to about this anyway so I might as well explain it better.

Basically the meditation postures of course you know I’m not going to repeat much. However, traditional Eastern meditation still tries to tell you sit down and have crossed legs, sit down.

It doesn’t matter if you sit on the chair you, can meditate on the chair too. But sitting down on the cushion, sit crosslegged is the traditional Asian style whether it India or Tibet or Japan or whatever it is. That is the Asian style. 003036

I’m not sure, how does the native Americans do it? They sit crosslegged too? Okay, maybe it’s American tradition too sitting crosslegged. You sit with the cross legs and put your hands together of course you know put your hands together. Okay, well there is a Hindu Buddhist difference, since I am talking about it I might as well.

The Hindus will normally tell you sit in this way or that way and when I first came to the United States I was talking and when people would say let’s meditate for a while, normally what I do is whenever I talk I would have people sit in silent meditation for little while. I’m not doing that here because you meditate all the time so I’m not doing it here. But the moment you put hands this way or that way, I noticed that.

Adapt the Hindu tradition to this when you sit crosslegged the leg goes like this what you call here the lotus cross and we call it the Vajra cross. The Tibetans will say Vajra cross and here they say lotus cross anyway. Whatever name you may put on it, it is just a label. In reality it is crosslegged, whether it is lotus cross or vajra cross, what that makes a difference. And that’s that.

Hand positions to reduce anger or attachment

We are told to put your hands together like this or this it doesn’t matter. If you have more anger hatred etc. if you want to reduce them then put your left hand on top of the right-hand.

If you have more attachment and you want to reduce attachment more then put your right hand on the left-hand. Basically that’s what it is. Simply because the left side of the body represents the feminine side of it and the right side of the body represents the male side of it. It is the macho showing anger etc. is the male energy. The attachment and all this are the female side.

I’m talking about the negative emotions only, they both have positive emotions too. So the attachment et cetera is the left side of the energy. So whatever you want to reduce more accordingly you put the one hand above another. It is an important point to join the thumbs at the center and joining the thumbs together will make the male and female energy connected. 003400

You know completely separated at least at the hand point if the thumbs are not together. You can feel the energy going around you can always feel this. This is the traditional way, I’m not going to talk about this because you do have Chi Gong teacher here named Roger Meyer right? They will tell you how the energies moves you can feel it just put you to hands like this you feel how the energy moves.

So that is a clear indication of why you can put these two thumb tips together. Then you can feel the energy. If you just go like this you can you feel it. If you just go like this. If you just have a hand like this you will feel the energy. Don’t you feel the heat? You can feel it.

You can roll it, you can make a roll, you can make a ball and you can take it around, these are part of Chi Gong the little that I know. So anyway all this basically it indicates to you how the male and female energy goes. That’s the reason why they tell us to put the thumbs together. I just went out from there, sorry.

So that’s that so then sit. You know Allen Ginsberg has a very beautiful poetry he sings with a little harmony and he sings with that and he says if you want to meditate it is never too late, the first thing that you do is sit down on the ground. If the ground is not there sit on the chair, if the chair is not there sit where you are.

Straight spine and energy flow

So that’s true. So the first thing to do is keep your backbone straight. So that is keep the spine straight. The reason why you have to keep the spine straight as straight as possible is because that is the way the psychic channels work.

If you keep the channel straight then the energy within the channels moves easier. If it is crooked like this, the energy also has to move crooked because the energy is inside the channel. So if you keep it straight it will help the energy movement be straight movement. 003635

So that’s the reason why they tell you to keep your backbone straight it’s as simple as that. The channels are straight, when the channels are straight, the movement of the energy is straight, when the movement of the energy is straight, it works much easier. Then they will tell you to keep your head slightly down rather than up like this. 003659

There are other Tibetan traditions, in another one they will tell you to look in the air and blah blah blah and these angels appear here and there that is a different thing. That’s a totally different subject. Because nowadays people hear things here and there read books here and there so I have to mention a little bit all of the time.

Otherwise they’ll say oh yes he said this but this book says that. So that’s a totally different thing. However basic meditation they say you try to keep the head a little down, simply to try to reduce your pride also. The pride is one thing the Americans always build the pride but on the other hand, certain types of pride you don’t need.

By reducing ego pride, you rebuild divine pride.

It also creates a lot of trouble. In the spiritual field field, you need divine pride. You don’t need ego pride okay? That’s what it is. You need divine pride. By reducing ego pride, you rebuild the divine pride. That is the real Buddhist teaching.

So anyway to reduce the ego pride you keep your head solid down and that’s it. That is the posture. And keep your tongue touching the pallet, we call it the pallet right, the back of your teeth and gums over there and this tip of the tongue you touch there. That is considered important. Three important reasons, one important reason it helps you not to become thirsty you don’t have to get up and run to get water.

It is not recommended to drink water. You know people take a sip of water during meditation during practice and all this normally we don’t recommend that. When I say it is not recommended, it does not mean that we object to it but it is not recommended.

So if you don’t have to do it, you shouldn’t do it. So that’s the reason why they tell you to touch the tongue that’s one reason. Another reason is if you fall asleep if the tongue is touching your palette, it doesn’t look bad. Not so many things are going to drip out of your mouth, so that’s one thing. (Rimpoche laughs). I just made that up anyway.

Okay so that’s how you sit. Then first and foremost these are the simple physical postures and that you can easily learn and do it because if you do not know how to sit, you have to look at the other person to see how he sits and what he says. 004024

So anyway you just copy the other person and people who are doing it and copy that. And that physically you know. But mentally you cannot copy because you can’t read the other’s mind, unless, well a lot of people do but most of us don’t. So what do you do? The mental aspects Kwan lah gom…

There is one Tibetan master in the 1300s. He raised a number of questions. One of the questions he said what is the first thing you do when you meditate? You know when we have Tibetan books that are translated from the Indian Language, the first letter they write is in the Indian language. It is in the Indian language then they say blah blah blah whatever it is. The it is in the Tibetan language then the translation comes. When you turn the page open the first thing that you see is in the Indian language.

The first thing you do when you meditate is watch your mind

So the question the Tibetan master said “what is the beginning thing to do when you meditate like in the Indian language in the books. That was the question. The question was answered 200 years later by another scholar and the teacher actually is a matter fact it was the first Panchen Lama. You have heard of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. The first Panchen Lama answered that question 200 years later. He said the first thing to do is watch your mind. Watching your mind, observing your mind. So observing your mind and watching your mind.

Alan goes on and says you have a surprise and a surprise and the poetry goes and when you sit down and meditate you have surprise and surprise and you can tell the superpower sitting meditate and all this poetry he had.

Your mind as the monkey in the temple

But the surprise really is you are going to catch this busy mind of yours and the traditional teachers will give you the notion of a monkey in the temple. These is a crazy monkey in the temple. It is jumping everywhere touching every imaginable thing and making every noise that they can.

You know you think it’s here but it jumped over there and then maybe he’s knocking down the candles or the flowers or whatever you know making noise and throwing the water off and jumping on the head of the Buddha or you know whatever.

If you have a monkey in the temple you find that right? And all of a sudden you walk in and open the door and look and you see that monkey jumping and it’s a big surprise. It is like that. 004345

When you begin to watch your mind you’ll see the mind is jumping from one place to another and thinking you know maybe reviewing or maybe planning whatever who knows?

They do mean whatever you’re going to catch that monkey jumping around. That’s your first surprise. So then see where is this monkeys going, what is he doing? I told you yesterday, see how do the emotions come in, what is making that happen – that’s is really, truly what watching you mind is.

This is just one way of doing it, actually. What thoughts are coming up? Any thoughts coming up? If you start peeling them off, leaving them out, peeling them off, leaving them out, you can do that. But really the most interesting surprise is you see the monkey jumping around. That is fantastic to watch. Let’s not disturb the monkey. Let’s watch it a little bit, see what the monkey does right? And so you’ll find probably it is jumping out and bringing some kind of attachment, jumping down and getting angry and all this. 004507

Or think about somebody else now it is jealous or think somebody else and appreciate them they are nice and wonderful. Don’t think it’s only negative that you have inside you have both positive and negative. Observe it. Try to make yourself the observer and watching and acknowledge and remember it. Remember it is very important. Remember it. Remember how the mind really functions.

I’m afraid I’m teaching you different meditation. There are a million different ways of meditating okay that normally in America they acknowledge as meditation. If you watch the mind, how is this monkey acting? From which shelf to which shelf is he jumping? When it is on attachment shelf, how does the monkey act? When it is on the anger shelf how does the monkey act? When it is on the hatred shelf how does the monkey behave? When it is on the jealousy shelf how does the monkey behave? When it is on the faith shelf, how does the monkey function? And you know when it is some kind of positive compassion shelf how does the monkey behave? When it is on the love shelf, how does the monkey behave?

If you could do that you have done a great favor for yourself. Really then this is the beginning of the recognition of the function of your mind and the connection between your mind and your emotions.

You know mind is of course colorless shapeless it’s not tangible you cannot get hold of it, you cannot describe whether it is fat or thin or overpowering you don’t because there’s no physical shape or round or flat or long or whatever you know you can’t describe that.

However you can see the mind how it gets influenced by the emotions like anger or attachment and all this. It really gets very strongly influenced.

So normally I do give an example. The mind which has no physical shape or anything but it looks like a clean clear crystal lampshade you get the picture? A clean clear crystal lampshade. It has no color right? Clean clear crystal. Then suddenly you have the bulb inside then suddenly anger emotions pop up like toast out of a toaster. 004836

From nowhere Pum! Suddenly its there and then what happened is somebody put a red bulb in there and switched it on. It is red and when you look from a distance you’ll see it is a red lampshade right? It’s a red lampshade so what happened is the connection between the emotions and the mind the mind is influenced by emotion of anger so it looks like it is red there you know.

That is how the mind is affected. You know what I mean? So these are our emotions this is how our emotions affect our own mind. 004936

So when you are observing mind when you are observing, remember I said what does the monkey do? So when you’re observing that, that’s when you’ll see how these emotions are coming.

Then you begin to recognize, when I say acknowledge, acknowledge then you can really acknowledge. And you don’t have to worry about it. You might say oh I am just one person how can I do all these things together? It’s not a problem.

The mind is such a thing. It’s like sometimes you get an electrical light that goes like boom boom boom all the time like that. The mind is functioning like that and there’s so many aspects of it. There are so many faculties functioning there. So the remembering or acknowledging faculties when it comes it says oh yes that is what I’ve been doing you can definitely acknowledge that.

You might be losing what you are acknowledging but you’ll be able to remember it because of its immediate affect with you. You may be looking at the past of the mind functioning, past like a second before, not even a second.

This is the period, in this (Rimpoche clicks his fingers), it is divided like 75 times. This is how the Buddhist keep their time. So we Tibetan are never on time (Rimpoche laughs) because we keep 75 times in this. 005110

This period is divided 75 times (Rimpoche is clicking his fingers to illustrate). So anyway you may be watching each one of those past time segments however maybe you’re watching a memory - it doesn’t matter. But you’re really seeing it when happened. It looks like what is happening but actually it is what had happened but it looks like what is happening – so the acknowledgment.

So the acknowledgment of this will help you to understand how your emotions are coming to you and what effects it has on you. Then if you don’t like it, you can block that. You do have the power. It is in your own hands, you can block it.

Learning to block is a gradual built up skill

Sometimes you helplessly get angry even if you don’t want to. Sometimes you helplessly fall into attachment even if you don’t want to. You do that but it doesn’t matter if in the moment you acknowledge. Acknowledgment gives you a power to be able to raise your own consciousness over and above so you are not controlled by the emotions.

When you don’t have acknowledgment you’re under the spell of the emotions and you don’t know what to do with it. You don’t even know you’re in there. But acknowledgment will help you immediately to gain recognition and power and then if you don’t want it, you can say I don’t want it. I don’t want it I don’t like it.

But still, in the beginning, you will fall. Just by saying I don’t like it I don’t want it, this is not going to prevent you from falling into that emotion. If you think that way that’s a mistake. But still by repeatedly doing this acknowledgment, you’re doing it, and it builds your power gradually. You may call it willpower or whatever it is. If you keep on building it up then, in time, you’ll be able to do it.

Like children when they learn how to walk, first they fall right? Now of course you have those mechanical things which will prevent them from falling but if you let them go in the normal way, in the normal circumstance, they will keep on falling. 005341

Even though they keep on falling, they get up, they walk, keep on falling, they get up and walk. keep on falling, get up and walk, and then time will make them able to walk without falling right? You are falling less and less and less then after little while you don’t fall at all - you walk. That’s exactly how you empower your own mind away from those negative emotions.

You learn, you turn yourself, you empower yourself. You have to do it. You are responsible to yourself. No one can jump inside you and throw the switch. Though your compassion may like to do that to your children but you know you can’t do it.

Likewise the enlightened beings would like to jump inside you and switch it around but they cannot. So only you can put the efforts in. The enlightened beings support you but you empower yourself - you do it yourself. You are your own master. This is the principal of meditation. I suppose I have to stop here for a coffee break. How long is the break? 20 minutes thank you. I’m sorry to be boring you with my (audience laughs and applauds)