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19970830GRSRLR16

….day by day. This is one of the great ways to do it.

282 Odyssey to Freedom

This is how we take the essence of our life. This is the way we can fulfill our personal needs and others' needs. If you practice, even if you are in a family household, even then you can obtain enlightenment, just like Marpa did and many other Tibetans and great Indian Buddhist rulers, too. And if you don't practice, even if you sit on top of the Himalayas, nothing is going to happen. You will be like the groundhog who goes and sits under the ground, and comes back the same old groundhog.

To make such a profound practice perfect also depends on your karma, on your enthusiasm and willingness and praying to receive blessings; all of them together. Therefore, make use of your supreme field of merit and develop merit. Purify negativities. Purification and accumulation combined together will boost your journey.

You always have great respect and pray to the Lama yidam inseparable and also ask the dakas and dakinis and dhama protectors to help you to complete your journey.

From here the author goes backward again. I wanted to share this with you, so that you can see the way and how you can practice. First, go through that list completely and sort of have a rough idea, then try to go little more elaborately and try to comprehend. At the same time, do not just read the list, but apply whatever your understanding is, and say, " This is what it is, may I be blessed to be able to develop this and that." You can do that one step at a time, or you can do three or four steps together. Once you do that, if you keep on doing that, within a month or two, or three, you will begin to see the first development within you. It is such a wonderful way of developing ourselves. Really, it is almost unthinkable we have that in the United States, in the mid-west, in the middle of Michigan. It is an opportunity and it is great, so I hope it will have an effect and be of help to you. 04.37 LR7

LR6 283 Day Seven: Step 50 – 64

To conclude

I guess basically the Lamrim is over as far as giving the information is concerned. When I gave the first Lamrim teachings here, we talked in very extensive detail and it took about five years100. In those years we had those weekend teachings. We had people driving from Chicago, Cleveland and all different areas, flying from California, New York etc. We did that. And I am still not sure whether you have the Lamrim teachings completely together. So I wanted to have something complete, something which you can take in hand, and which is slightly away from the traditional way. I was inspired to do that because we started losing Lex and Allen and Gelongla and also people around put in so much energy and tried to do something. I thought you needed to have some sort of a simple solid thing.

Those who have the detailed information, you are being provided with a container in which you can fit everything together. Those who have not been able to spend time, you have been provided with the basis on which you can function, and you can pick up information here and there and build upon it.

Convince your mind. You need more information than you got during this week, because you need to convince your mind to change your neurotic habits. In order to convince your mind, you need more true reasons. You cannot argue with your mind, "You've got to believe it anyway. If you don 't I'm going to do it anyway." It doesn't work. The mind may keep quiet for one minute, but next it says, " Wait, wait a minute!" so it doesn't work. The mind is wonderful in nature, it is open-minded, you can suggest anything. Sometimes we say the mind is like a color-free crystal lampshade, and the suggestions, mental neuroses and positiveness, are like the bulb. These positive suggestions and negative suggestions influence the mind. They pop out and then your mind looks red, green, blue, whatever the color of the bulb that you have. That's how it functions.

1001987-1991.

284 Odyssey to Freedom

In order to have your point accepted by your mind, you need very true reasoning. True because your mind knows more than you. If it is a false reason you are giving, the mind won't buy it. The true reason you give, your mind will buy. It's an open mind. Once the mind buys that, then you begin to function according to that. That is the changing of the neurotic functioning into the positive way; that's how it works.

If you give one suggestion a single time, and you start looking to see if it is working, it won't work. You have to keep on giving the suggestion constantly; have patience. Constantly put forth the effort of the fourth paramita, enthusiasm, along with the third paramita, patience, along with the second paramita, keeping your commitment, along with the first paramita, being generous, along with concentration, along with wisdom. Each one of the points of the Odyssey to Freedom, if we apply them on ourselves combined with the six paramitas, then the mind will accept them. It needs repetition; pounding, repounding, pounding, repounding. If you keep on hitting the nails in there, it will go through.

Final Question and Answer Period

Questions about refuge: surrendering, acknowledging……

Answer: To me taking refuge to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha…1 they have the qualities to help me, 2 I need help

LR16 Our main purpose is nothing but simply to do whatever we could do to help. If you follow this properly, you'll improve on that. You can practice in the way we did the meditations this week. Especially this morning, I went from point 64 down to 1 and up again, and sometimes looping them around, which shows you how you can easily handle that. When you decide to put in effort, don't leave big gaps in between. If you can, do it every day. At least, you must do it something like twice a week, then it is constantly maintained with you, and it gets the opportunity to get within, to be internalized.

Those of you who have Jewel Heart chapters available in your area, you do have people there to talk to, and connect with, or do your large meetings and we will be meeting with you. All these are available. And those of you who are living all by yourself somewhere, you may remain in touch with people in Jewel Heart; we do have a web site, e have e-mail too, and, of course, the usual telephone is there; you can always remain in touch.

Thank you everybody for coming and staying here and tolerating these difficult conditions.

6.43: specific retreat announcements and informal talk

22.15 Q and A

Audience: When Tokden Rinpoche was here he gave oral transmission. Can you explain what that was?

Rimpoche: Oral transmission is the sound of whatever practice you do, if you hear that sound. You again hear it from one human being to another human being’s ear, that sound. Sort of transmitted orally. If you give explanation on that then it becomes a teaching. Oral transmission means just to transmit the sound. You have had that a number of times, but what he did was the Ganden Lhagyema and Foundation of all Perfections. That’s what you received.

Audience: Those who want to take refuge seriously (in tommorrow’s White Tara initiation) what are they aggreing to and what are the implications?

22: 46 Rimpoche: Great. I think you have to make up your mind before you take this initiation then. What you are agreeing to is relying totally on Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, both the historial Buddha and the Buddha within you, the Dharma and Sangha within you. That is what is called refuge taking: relying on. That is what you are really committing to. Then also, by taking refuge to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha you do not worship ghosts and spirits and all those, who themselves are not free from suffering. By taking refuge in Dharma you don’t harm or hurt anybody. Non-violence should be in your principle of functioning. By taking refuge in Sangha, it will also tell you that you don’t want too much association with non-virtuous friends, because they are a danger to you losing.

Friends are very important. It is very hard for one bad person to become a good person. For a good practitioner, a good person, to become bad, is very easy. That’s the reason why – it is very easy. They normally give you the example. Let’s say the monks have a household with senior teacher, deputy and then a couple of other younger students altogether and they share all their lives together in one group. It’s almost like a semi-family type of thing. About that they say: if the teacher sleeps late, all the students are bound to sleep late. All the bad things are quite contagious and easy to get, easy to catch. It is like a flu or other virus goes around and everybody is getting stomach problems and have to run.

0:27:15.5 Then they have to cough and sneeze and do all this and you doing that. Just like that, a non-virtuous friend is very easy to affect us. By taking refuge to Sangha you try to maintain virtuous friends. It is very simple; if you are keeping company with somebody who is smoking cigarettes, then chances are that much more that you are going to pick it up. And if you are keeping company with people who are not smok-

275 Day Seven: Step 50 – 64

ing, you have a lesser possibility of becoming a smoker. That works for all the negative and positive karmas. By taking refuge in Sangha, you try to maintain the company of good friends. That's what you are committing to.

Audience: Can you explain a little bit more about the five paths?

Rimpoche: Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Soha – there is a tape on that. We have both audio and video of that teaching series. We did that for 6 months to a year. So tonight, I simply say Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Soha. But basically, path is to accumulate merit

0:29:31.8

That is called Path of Accumulation. Then on the second step your priority will be to take some action, different actions. There are four stages: heat, peak, patience and best of Dharma. Path Nr. 3 is the Path of Seeing, realizing the true nature. Path Nr 4: whatever you realized you are meditating on that. It has 10 stages or bhumis. Then comes the path of no more learning. The first Gate is path of accumulation. The second Gate is the path of action. Paragate is the path of seeing. Paramsamgate is the path of meditation. Bodhi Soha is no more learning, becoming Buddha. Just very brief.

Audience: Will all human beings ultimately be liberated? Is the consciousness that we have that goes from life to life, a permanent thing, does it go on all the way to liberation?

0:31:38.8 Rinpoche: All human beings are bound to get enlightened eventually. But there is a technical difficulty. The technical difficulty is if you say human beings are permanent, it doesn't work. If human beings are impermanent, then why don't they disappear? They don't disappear, they change. Trungpa Rinpoche used such an interesting word, he called it 'continuation of discontinuity'. That is how human beings continue: as a continuation of discontinuity. Everybody will become a buddha eventually and it is entirely up to us. The opportunities are there and you can do it. If you don't want to — fine, try again next time.

Audience: Can you share some more about Allen Ginsberg?

Rimpoche: As you all know Allen as been a wonderful friend and part and parcel of Jewel Heart.

He was so concerned, so caring for the well-being of the people, America and Americans and all people, and particularly people in Jewel Heart, people in Naropa Institute and all of those he worked with so much. We all know and don’t even have to say how much he has done. He has tremendously contributed to Jewel Heart in various ways, by giving inspiration to people, helping me to say the right thing and helping each and every member of Jewel Heart. He would take each one as sort of a personal family member. It’s been really hard, we miss him terribly.

I am sure many of us remember, that even whoever wrote the clumsiest poetry, he would sit there and talk to them, correct the language and try to make it perfect as much as possible. And for me personally he tried to bring the correct language, tried to get me to read some English books, tried to make me say the right things and really throughout his life he made the efforts to make me speak English so that people can understand better. In short, I would really like to say he put his heart and soul toward the benefit of people. Things that he did in the 60’s, if those had not been done, the openness of the 80’s and 90’s would not be there. The openness of the 80’s and 90’s, and the actual Dharma practice which affects millions of people’s lives, he made possible to take root, through all these efforts that he made. If you keep on counting what Allen has done, you can go on talking for eighteen years and you will not be able to complete the picture. That is how much of a contribution he has made.

As far as his experience of passing away, I was in Mexico and Allen made a phone call and when I picked up the telephone he said, “This is Allen Ginsberg.” I said, “Well how are you? How are you doing?” And he said, “Well I would like to make my report. This is Allen Ginsberg and I have just been diagnosed with liver cancer, and it is incurable,” and all these formal things that normally Allen does, he did all of that. It was sad indeed, and then he told me, “Boy I am so surprised that I took it so well. I thought a few years ago I would have hit the ceiling, but I am so surprised at myself, how well I took it. I made it easy for the doctors to say it. They walked in the room and I looked at them and they said, ‘Not very good news.’ So I said, ‘Cancer?’ So he said, ‘uh huh.’ Then I said, ‘Incurable?’ He said, ‘uh huh’. So I helped the doctor say it easily.” That’s what Allen said. And then he told me the doctors told him one to four months, but, “Judging from my own weakness I don’t think I have that long. Maybe a month or two or so,” he said. Then for Allen, he accepted it, he really accepted it easily and for me, it took three days to accept. It was not easy for me. I had to sit down and think, “We all die and all this and that.” It took me three days to accept. Allen seemed to be accepting it straight away. And not only that, he immediately got busy finalizing, and it was almost like a celebration going on there. People were going in, coming out, it was like a big ceremony, some kind of a festival. Of course, you all know, he started calling a number of people, and told he was very concerned about Jewel Heart and he said Jewel Heart has not been able to become established properly financially. He said, “That is my biggest worry.”

So it was like a big celebration for Allen, the way and how he departed. And it was also open, completely, absolutely open. He had a life that was absolutely open, he had a death that was absolutely open. I was sort of surprised when I reached there in the evening. There must have been 70 or 80 or even a 100 people there in the hall and Allen was on the bed. I called Phillip in the morning. I had just been informed of what happened. So Phillip said he would call. I said, “Don’t call, just go there and do your practice.” So Phillip spent the whole day there. There were so many people, so many people, about a hundred people must have been there, all sorts of people; famous people, not-so-famous people and everybody. There was food, plenty of Chinese food on the table for people to eat, and apple cider, orange juice, coca cola and all that type of thing available there. There was a doctor who tried to explain what was wrong, his cousin. It was like a festival or picnic or some kind of big party and within that, also way in the other side, we tried to say our prayers; all the bells were ringing and the damarus were singing, all of them happening together. And also picking of souvenirs by different people, all happening simultaneously. So there was nothing hidden. He made his life open and died in openness. And I needed a few minutes’ quietness, so when I walked in, everybody came behind me. I looked around, I was almost getting, people almost jumping on top of one another trying to see what was going on. And I turned around and said, “Could you give me a minute?” That was what happened.

He actually passed away about 2:38 and his consciousness remained till 11:30 (the next night). I was observing very carefully and so about 11, 11:25, I looked, and the consciousness was still there. And at 11.30 it was gone. So this period passed and we said, “Now you can call the undertakers.” We had been postponing their coming. We had been postponing and postponing by every two hours, four hours. That was exactly what happened and finally we were very fortunate to bring Allen’s body to Jewel Heart in New York, where we had the Mahamudra lineage prayer said, and his body was rolled in. We were able to have a meaningful service in Jewel Heart. That was Sunday night. And also, there were quite a number of us, so what we did was complete self-initiation of Heruka, Yamantaka, Vajrayogini, all of them we were able to do. The time was such that it worked out. Early in the morning, around a little after five or six a.m., around about that time, there were not so many people there. We were almost alone. There might have been one or two. So I took the opportunity to give Allen the complete initiation of Vajrayogini at that moment which I was very happy to be able to do.

We miss him terribly, but we dedicate all our positive karma to fulfil whatever wishes he may have, wherever he is. Those of us who really think a lot about the way and how to commemorate; it is to remember his concern, his message and his teaching, honesty, openness.

For me, one great thing was, during the early part when Jewel Heart was forming, Allen taught spontaneous poetry in Ann Arbor. For me to make an attempt to learn poetry is a joke because I can’t even speak English properly, so forget about poetry; however I went there. In the workshop, Allen said, “Whatever you think, say it right now at this moment or look through the window and what you see, say it.” That sort of workshop. I was not participating. I was sitting in the corner there and suddenly Allen said, “Rinpoche, what do you think, say it right now.” My thought suddenly came, “I don’t want to fall into the shoes of Jimmy and Tammy Fae Baker.” That was the period [when that scandal was in the news]. He talked to me for a long time, not only during that period, even much later. “If you are afraid of that, you have to be open. Whatever you do is up to you, but be open. Don’t have anything hiding behind. If you don’t have a closet to be worried about, everything’s fine.” And it was great advice to me and so I have tried not to hide anything. And that is a great help and that also has been a tremendous personal help.

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