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19970916GRAABWL24

Tape 48 side A of 09/16/97

This is the first meeting after our usual summer retreat. It went very well. We basically used the lam rim but tried to do it in a little bit modernized manner. We organized the whole lam rim into a shopping list - type of thing and numbered all the points and called it Odyssey to Freedom. During the retreat I did a daily presentation of two to three hours in the morning. After lunch we divided up into groups. There were discussions and in the evening we got back together and I talked more and we also had a question and answer session. That worked very well. A number of people have called me to say how helpful it was. There has been good feed-back.

Now we will continue to talk. We are not going to get anywhere until we are getting enlightened. So we have to continue to talk. But we will have some change in format. On one Tuesday I will be presenting and on the next Tuesday you will be meditating on that. I doubt whether you can turn that into a discussion group but it would be good to have a shamata - oriented meditation. People are very fond of sitting meditation and there is a great need for it here in the Ann Arbor - Detroit area.

Likewise we will also be talking again in Detroit - Southfield at the Unitarian church. Over there I will be doing it the other way round. So when on Tuesday there is teaching here, they will be meditating in Detroit and when I teach in Detroit, you will be meditating here.

We are now at the beginning of Chapter III of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara. I believe we got as far as verse six.

Verse six

With folded hands I beseech

The Conquerors who wish to pass away,

To please remain for countless aeons

And not to leave the world in darkness.

That is the request to remain. We are talking about that here as a preliminary to develop the bodhimind which is - as I very often say - the mind of unlimited, unconditioned love and compassion. This love and compassion is absolutely necessary for us to develop. We do need that. Why? I think most of us know that we need it. There are a lot of reasons. It is just a matter of recognizing these.

If you don’t have love for yourself, what kind of person would you be? You would be a person who totally neglects himself or herself, not because of others, but just for the sake of laziness.

Then we have already talked about how precious this human life is. Look at the capability of this human life, seeing it, feeling it, recognizing it. With all this, if you still don’t care for yourself, how stupid is that? Can one find anybody who is more stupid than that? Probably not. In short, if you don’t care for yourself, who is going to care for you? One has to care for oneself. You have to love yourself. We enjoy love, we appreciate it, we cherish it. We want the capability to love. If I don’t know how to love myself, I am not going to be capable of loving others. When the question of love comes up, I would not know what to do. How can I expect to love someone else?

It is important to recognize that we need love and compassion. There is no question - we do. We need it for the sake of ourselves and for the sake of others. Can we develop it easily? This is not possible, although we do have a certain amount of love, a certain amount of compassion. We may be good-natured human beings. We don’t want to see violence. We don’t want to see people suffering, being tortured - even in a movie. One reason is that we forget that it is only a movie. Another reason is that there are sparks of our own kindness coming out. We just don’t want to see violence. It is important to remind yourself that it is just a movie. It is not real. If you can develop that properly, you have a very important point. With every suffering you can say, ‘This is my deluded mind which is perceiving things in this distorted manner. In reality it is pure nature.’ If you can do that it is great. But it is a long shot. I will not recommend that to everybody at this moment. But that is one of the techniques. It is good to really know that the movie is a movie, that you are not in there, involved in the action, but rather just sitting there and watching and perceiving and acknowledging that nobody is really getting killed, that it is just a movie, that it is all made to entertain the individual. This is awareness. This is the development of wisdom. Wisdom actually functions in that manner. You know it is not real, although it sounds real, feels real, you get the pinch as if it was real, but if you remember that it is not real, you will not be completely overpowered by those sufferings. If you spend a little time on that you will be able to do it. However, right at this moment I will not recommend to do that. You know why? If you try and you are not able to handle it, it could backfire. Then you will say, ‘I have been defeated. I fought the neuroses and the neuroses won.’ It is the other way round of Allen Ginsberg saying, ‘I fought the Dharma and the Dharma won.’ So right a the beginning level you should not use that method.

What we really want to is to challenge our neuroses by using our normal love and compassion. Again, you don’t have to look for something extraordinary outside. We always chase after something extraordinary outside. As a result we get nothing. This is absolutely true. I have seen it in so many places, whether in the East or in the West. I have seen it with my own eyes. My life experience of sixty years tells me that many of us chase after some extraordinary thing. We are really running after that. If you do that, you get nothing. It is within ourselves. It is a matter of developing that within ourselves. There is nothing out there to grab. It is not like looking for a gold mine or and oil field, not at all. Each and every individual has to develop that within themselves through a gradual process, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, bit by bit. That is how you get it. And if it works right, even enlightenment is not that far - even though we always say how far away it is.

When you don’t get it right you look everywhere and chase after something extraordinary. There is something with a different name, it looks and sounds different. You may think that you just need the right method to turn on some switch and the right light will pop up. That is not very scientific. It is not just one method where you turn a switch or a key and everything fits. It does not work that way. The key will not fit at all in the beginning. They key is actually right in the middle of the neuroses which we all have. And it has to make a dent, an impression. Then finally the key will fit and you can switch on whatever you want to switch on. But people always look for something extraordinary. They are fascinated by names and beautiful words like compassion, wisdom, love. They try to bring things in from all directions, love from here, compassion from there and wisdom comes flying in from somewhere. In reality, however, nothing comes from outside. We have to develop everything within ourselves.

Now here we are talking about ultimate love and compassion. In order to develop that, first you have to develop ordinary love. Without that, you cannot develop unconditional, ultimate love. How can we build a house without preparing the ground and without a proper foundation? You can build an ice castle, but that is not going to last - at least these days.

In order to build the base for the great love and compassion there are a lot of preliminary requirements. I believe we are right now talking about those preliminary requirements. For example we have already talked about rejoicing. We did talk about requesting dharma teachings which refers to making available the information you need.

I don’t know what kind of projections people get when I say dharma teachings. In the West people get a funny notion. People here are not going to ask any questions about whether dharma is something superior or not. You take it for granted. You also perceive it as something separate from you out there somewhere. You may look at it as Buddha’s teaching, as a book or as something invisible. Look at your own mind. The word dharma is familiar to you. The moment you say dharma, what kind of projection do you get in your own mind? My guess is that there could be two different projections. The ones that have some information on it will say, ‘Yes, I know what that is’. The others are the ones who don’t know what that is at all. So what kind of projections do the ones who think they know what dharma is get? It is probably something external that you must try to reach out for. But that is wrong. If you have a projection that it is the teachings contained in books, messages, etc., again, that is something external. I cannot say that it is wrong, but it is not as relevant to the individual. The relevance to the individual is the dharma within. It has to make our own mind stream which is rough, unsettled, wavering, flickering and raw, into a mind stream which is stable. In that manner this becomes dharma within you. Leaving the information as something external out there is not going to be that helpful. We have a better opportunity than that.

It is like going to a temple. If you know Buddhist temples, they are very rich in images, whether you go to Tibetan ones or Chinese or Japanese or Indian ones. Especially the Tibetan and Chinese are very rich in that. There are tremendous amounts of variety in images made of gold, silver, bronze, brass, wood, lacquer, etc. And all these tangka paintings. We can go there and look at them and say, ‘Very nice’. But that is externalizing. Maybe it is helpful in some way. It has some merit and good karma. But it does not effect the individual too much. At the most you can say, ‘It makes me feel good, I get some good vibrations, I feel very calm in there’ Perhaps, when they burn incense in there, they burn something else with that! [laughs]. Maybe that makes you feel calm. I am just joking. I am not suggesting anybody burns marijuana along with incense. But looking at images is an example of externalizing. These images are something separate from me over there and I can say, ‘That is Buddha, that is Tsong Khapa, that is Manjushri’. It is almost like going to the museum or zoo. That will not have much effect. You may think, ‘I am going to the temple, it is special, it has blessings.’ You may also fold your hands which is something you don’t do when you go to the zoo and look at some cute little monkey. That is our attitude. Otherwise we are doing the same thing. That is not the point. The point is that we should not externalize. Dharma should not be externalized. Try to internalize it. It is great to have a Buddha image and a Buddha tangka, but if you externalize it, it remains external. It is good to think, ‘I want the qualities of that Buddha, and whatever it takes, one by one I will get all of them’. When you go with that attitude, that is a vivid example of beginning to internalize, even just looking at a Buddha image or tangka. There should be a difference between looking at a Buddha image in the temple and looking at a chimpanzee at the Detroit zoo. The difference is that one is an external thing and in the case of Buddha you are trying to internalize.

Likewise, when you perceive that Dharma is somewhere out there, you probably think that you can get some kind of blessing, some kind of shivering, cold shower - type of feeling, and that is again just spiritual materialism. It is not spiritual. What is really spirituality? It is when you internalize Dharma, being totally influenced by that Dharma. Then any neuroses that you have will be weakened, shaky. We will still pick them up, because that is our usual habit, but they will be weakened. This is not philosophy or history. This is just how people practice Dharma. This is a very important point. I would like to make it as clear as possible. People always tend to project some external thing. They will like to look up to the clouds or in the water or on the ground. They watch television thinking that otherwise they miss some opportunity. People do that. A number of people that we know are even looking for UFOs. The reason why they like UFOs is that they think there is some extraordinary spiritual thing happening with the UFOs. People are willing to go out of their way and even risk going to jail just to go and chase UFOs. They are even prepared to get killed.

With all that the problem is not realizing that spiritual development is within ourselves. We could not internalize. We are making everything external. You have to begin to internalize everything. We know that the neuroses are within ourselves, not something out there. Out there - that is just the conditions. When somebody tries to insult you, they provide the condition for your internal anger to come up. You say, ‘How dare that person boo me?’ Your internal neuroses are making contact with external conditions. When anger rises, your pride and jealousy also rise. It is like when the lion rises. The lion roars and shows his fangs and claws. So these delusions rise together, because we have internalized them. When we try to develop some positivity, like appreciation or even intelligent understanding or faith, we have to push ourselves for each of them. We really don’t get it. We have to push ourselves, trying to appreciate. We have to talk ourselves into appreciating. We have to work hard, because we have not internalized that. When you have internalized something you don’t need much effort. Any little outside condition will do. From the point of view of anger you don’t even have to get booed. It is enough if somebody gives you a little different look. You get ready. That is how we have internalized. Dharma means that in the same way as we have internalized the neuroses, we should now internalize positivity. When you get that done, you have a real spiritual development. It is nothing external. If you think it is spiritual to fly in the air, look at birds. They fly in the air all the time. If you think it is spiritual development to be able to remain under water look at the fish. They remain under the water. When we ourselves were fish, we remained under water for the whole of our life. However it made no difference. The worms, ground hogs and moles remain under the ground during the winter. Then in spring the same old mole comes out. That is not a spiritual achievement. Once again, spiritual achievement is when it makes a difference to your neuroses, when it reduces your attachment, your hatred, your jealousy. If you find yourself a different person, kinder than before, more patient than before, more understanding than before, then it is affecting you. That is what Dharma really means.

Can we get that without efforts? No, we cannot. We have to put in efforts. Number one, you need the effort of understanding and number two, you also need various other supports in this. What prevents positive results from materializing is our obstacles. Again, the obstacles are not external, they are internal. Internally, when you have a really powerful anger and hatred, it is difficult to develop anything else positive, because this powerful monster-hatred is standing there blocking it. Our job is to remove that. When you remove those obstacles you can get through. Anger, hatred, jealousy, etc. all these are obstacles. Especially ignorance is the most important obstacle. You have to work against them.

How do you do that? There are two ways.

One is thinking. I should say meditation, but I really like to say thinking. This means understanding, analyzing and internalizing. That means developing it within you. First you have to understand what you are doing. We really cannot change anything if we don’t understand what we are doing. You may sit like this or sit like that, but whatever you do is not going to do any good. You can spend all the time you don’t have on that. From sitting quietly you can get some mental relaxation, that is fine. That is also important. But you need more than that. First you have to understand what you are up against, what you are trying to do. You have to ask, ‘What am I faced with? What is my purpose here and what am I doing? What is my problem?’ You will find ‘My problem is my anger, my problem is my attachment, my problem is my jealousy, ignorance, hatred’. Then you will begin to think, ‘Can I live without attachment? I am enjoying it.’ You have to think like that. Without thinking that you are not going to get anything done. It is easy to think about anger. Nobody likes to be angry. Nobody will acknowledge that they like to be angry. You know why? Because it is embarrassing. With the exception of a few people there will be nobody who admits, ‘I like to be angry. I want to be angry all the time.’ People will not be able to say it, because they feel embarrassed.

This is an important point. You are embarrassed because you think, ‘The other people will think that I am terrible. How can I be an angry person - I can’t admit that.’ So there are two aspects. You cannot admit it to yourself because you know it is a bad thing. The second reason is that you are embarrassed in front of other people who will look at you and say, ‘There is an angry person’. You don’t want that. Buddha’s experience is that it works to use these two reasons. You say, ‘If I do this, I will be embarrassed in myself, and if other people come to know I will be ashamed of it.’ Use these two mental faculties when hatred, anger, jealousy arise. Think, ‘How embarrassing are the things I have done. It is so shameful that my ears become red.’ These are the two mental faculties that we have to use to cut down the neuroses.

Just now the neuroses are using these two mental faculties.

end of side A of tape forty-eight

Side B of tape 48 of 09/16/97

This is true Dharma practice. True Dharma practice is not a philosophy and not a ritual. It is dealing with your individual neuroses. We have to remove the obstacles. In order to do that we have to know them. Knowing and handling them is the main thing. Can that alone do it? Buddha said that it can’t. You have to have a lot of support. The support again is not external. External support is good, but more important is the internal support. You need a lot of strong, powerful forces that are able to bring things together. We refer to that as positive karma. There is room for blessings. Positive karma is the most important. That is why rejoicing is recommended as one of the quickest ways to develop positive karma.

The second one is requesting teachings. That is Buddhist terminology. What it really means is to make the resources available for the individual - whenever and whatever you need to help yourself, to challenge your neuroses. Whatever your needs are in that respect may be provided. That is what requesting teachings really is. Making the needed tools available - that is the teaching. The teacher is like a guide. The guide can show you what to do and what not to do. If you are learning to be a carpenter, the teacher will teach you what instruments you can use for what purpose. He shows you the different kinds of wood, the two by twos and four by fours and tells you that you can cut it this way and that way, use this tool for cutting and that tool for making holes, this gun to put nails in, etc. Dharma works the same way. The Dharma teacher tells you that neuroses are not good. We are talking about anger, attachment, jealousy, etc. Then he tells you that against anger you have to use patience, against jealousy compassion, and so on.

The actual work has to be done by you, nobody else. A professor is just talking about it, he gets paid anyway.

So internalizing the Dharma is the most important. In the beginning you have to know what to do, then you have analyze and then you have to internalize. That is your spiritual development. It is not one short step but a long process. The way to measure your own spiritual development is by looking at how many steps you have taken, how much you have cut down your neuroses.

I have two friends. I am not going to name them. They are very well known. In a recent conference they had a debate and one of them got up and told the other one ,’Shut up!’ The other one said, ‘Wow, after fifteen years of zen meditation, that is you now. Just look at you!’

When I was told about that I thought that both of them are in a big soup. They are both in trouble. Again, the problem is externalizing. It has not been internalized. If you leave Dharma as a philosophy or story or history then it does not work. It does not have to be done in a big way. Do it one by one. Deal with your anger for a while. Deal with your attachment for a while.

Attachment is another big, painful thing. When it is there it is exciting and wonderful. I don’t see it much here but in India they have this sugar chemical which they apply to a little piece of paper and put it outside. Then all the flies will come, because they like the taste and when they eat it they die. Over here we use this sticky paper on which they stick and die. That is how samsara works too.

If there is such a thing called devil inside of you, he needs something to hook you. That is why we are attracted to the sweet side of things. But if you compare that sweetness with the pain you have to go through afterwards or side by side together with the pleasure, it lasts much longer than the short moments of pleasure. If you remove yourself a little bit from the internalized neuroses and step out and watch, you will see how much pain you go through because of attachment. We go through a lot. Yet we don’t recognize that. We think that we experienced something different, something better, but that then somebody did something and ruined it. We automatically try to blame somebody else and if there is nobody to blame, we blame ourselves. This is just increasing our own suffering. So attachment is nothing great, it is not good. But we enjoy it very much. We all do. In the same way angry people actually enjoy being angry. People think that the pain is pleasure. We need to know that pain is pain. We don’t really know pleasure because we have never had it. So anything different that we feel, we consider that as pleasure. Knowing is important. I don’t mean that you have to become a scholar, but you have to know yourself, know your own neuroses, know your own antidotes to these neuroses. Actually you have to be very much alert and ready to attack any neuroses that arise.

One of the earlier Tibetan teachers said, ‘I am waiting with my spear near the door of my neuroses. When they come I am ready to hit them.’ That sort of alertness you have to bring in within yourself. That is the true spiritual work you do. That is the true Dharma work. You are truly helping yourself. You will not find anything else. It is wonderful to go and seek blessings. It is nice and wonderful and makes you feel good. And thats it - good-bye. But the day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute work, is what you have to do. Nobody else can help you. The way how you do it is by working against the neuroses. Try to internalize the antidote to the neuroses. Then it will work effortlessly. Can you do it by understanding and meditating alone? No. That is why you have to have the supporting activities and that is why we talk here about rejoicing, requesting for the information, requesting [the teachers] to remain forever and also the dedication. All these preliminaries are necessary. Without them the actual thing does not work. If you have no preparation, you cannot expect the actual development to come. We would all like to have the real bottom line information, the real essence -whatever that is. Unfortunately there are no pills to develop that.

Normally you can go and get a prescription from the doctor, go to the drugstores, get the pills and feel different. Here it does not work that way. You have to collect any ingredients in this pill yourself, and not only that, you have to be the pharmacist, the collector of all the ingredients, the one who puts them all together and the one who eats that pill. That is why knowledge is necessary. That is why knowing how to handle it is necessary. That is why concentration is necessary. Otherwise you will not be able to internalize anything. Analyzing is necessary because otherwise you won’t know what is what. All of those combined together plus merit which pushes them, is necessary to make things work. This is why we also have the requests to remain.

This particular texts then has a lot of dedications. There is a general one, then a dedication for healing, one for clearing hunger and thirst, for not becoming poor and so on. There are quite a few verses of dedication. Then, after these verses, the actual training of the mind in love and compassion will come.

That is about it. Today we did not start anything new. It is was sort of joining up whatever we have talked earlier and this section here together. I will now have to go a little faster than I used to. I hope to be able to cover three or four verses in one evening so that we may finish one day. Are there any questions?

Aud1: [When you only think of others, aren’t you ignoring your own needs?]

R: Good question. I just like to make a very blanket sort of statement. If you are ignoring yourself, your own needs - whether spiritual or material - then you don’t love yourself. On the other hand, if you think, ‘I am the most important one, I need everything, I am more important than others’, then that is the other extreme. When you think, ‘I don’t need anything, I am fine, I can manage to ignore my needs’, that is one extreme. By pointing out the two extremes, you know that you have to go in the middle. Caring will develop into love. If you don’t care for yourself, you cannot expect to love yourself. It is not possible. How can you love if you don’t care? Really, it is not possible. Caring is the basis for developing love. Particularly, when you look at yourself and you are completely ignoring yourself, you are completely crazy. On the other hand, if you think, ‘I am the center of the universe, I need everything’, then you are on the extreme to the other side. Both are crazy. I am sorry, I put that very bluntly. But sometimes it is good to hear that.

Aud2: Is that a modern expression of what is known as the ‘Middle Way’?

R: Whatever it is, modern or ancient, but it is the Middle Way.

Aud3: You said that you stand guard at the door to keep the delusions out.

R: No, you are on guard to strike at the delusions. The delusions are already inside. It is like knowing that there is a thief in your house. You are sitting near the door, quietly waiting for the thief to make some noise so that you can go and catch him.

Aud3: So then you fight with honor. But what can happen is that the person at the door can sometimes be overcome.

R: You are right. But I don’t think persons like us, at our level, in the beginning, will fight. You strike and the delusion will disappear, run away. You avoid them. I think that comes first. Engaging them in a fight - that comes a little later. That is for a person who is capable of fighting, of challenging. In the beginning you deliver a strike and then you run away -both sides will run away, you know. And then you meet again. Does that sound funny? People are giggling. But that is what it is. Yes, you can be overpowered and the neuroses can be overpowered. Who knows what is going to happen. We know that ultimately the truth will win, right? That is what we say. But who knows what really is truth! One thing we know. The neuroses are giving us suffering and the antidotes to the neuroses are clearing the suffering. That much we know. Nobody really knows what is good and what is bad. But we know what is suffering and what stops the suffering. We can see and feel that.

Aud4: Do you mean to say that things can’t be extraordinary in terms of progress? I am not talking about flying in the air and remaining under ground and things like that, but sometimes I like to think that some things are extraordinary in terms of the philosophy and so on.

R: There are extraordinary things. I am not saying that there is nothing extraordinary. But one should not run after the extraordinary experience alone. If something extraordinary appears to the individual, that is fine, no problem. But if you are chasing the extraordinary all the time, you get nowhere. It becomes a wild goose chase. I am not saying that it is bad to have extraordinary feelings. But if you only try to get such feelings back again and again, trying to make them longer, then that becomes a wild goose chase. It is a problem. We waste our time. Instead of grounding ourselves and perfecting ourselves, all our time, energy, life, opportunity, facilities and so on, is then spent on a wild goose chase.

Aud5: You often say that we have to start with ordinary love. But I always equate ordinary love with attachment, desire, wanting someone or something. Is it not a trap to concentrate on ordinary love?

R: It is extremely difficult to differentiate between attachment, desire and love - whether that love is ordinary or extraordinary. We hide between the words. We say that attachment is no good and love is wonderful, we say that pure love is great. However, you can watch your own mind, if you pay very good attention, and see how desire makes you feel and how something else can make you feel joyful and appreciative and how you don’t feel so much desire in there and it does not bring you any pain. You can feel that within you. Those feelings - at whatever mental level you get them - are considered as the beginning of love. You consider the other feelings as desire for something, wanting, grasping - that is attachment. That is on the level of ordinary love. Let us not even talk about extraordinary love yet. We can deal with it later.

end of side B of tape forty-eight