Archive Result

19971028GRAABWL27

Side A of tape fifty-one of 10/28/97

We have been talking about the power of dedication. Bodhisattvas create a lot of positive energy, positive karma through all sorts of ways and means. They do a lot through their motivation, the way they set up the functioning of their mind. They get a lot of these neutral things. I told you that a number of times. When you look back at today, since you woke up this morning until now, you don’t have something which you could call great virtuous actions. I mean I can’t guarantee that - some people may have - but mostly we don’t. Nor do we have done anything terrible. Most of the time we have been in between. I don’t want to use the word ‘mediocre’ here which I do use very often, but here it would be the wrong usage. It is neither very positive nor very negative. Most of the time, from the viewpoint of negative and positive actions, you will find that ninety per cent of our actions are neither very positive or negative. Even the few of us who are saying mantras will find that within reciting the mantras, within the meditation, you will suddenly realize that you are no longer concentrating on the mantra, on the deity pride or on the tsog offering that you are supposed to be doing. You are somewhere else and you suddenly shake yourself up and start again or continue. That shows you that we don’t have any great positive actions with us. These are clear signs. Nor do we have anything very negative. Occasionally, there is a little bit here and there. The majority of the time we spend, the majority of the efforts we put in is neither black, nor white, but sort of grey. The way how to color that grey in and make it white, is through the power of the motivation. Don’t ever forget that. Use that motivation, think in the morning, ‘I am glad I am alive and I have woken up. I am not going to waste my life, particularly today. I am going to make it beneficial to all beings, or at least to my family, my circle, my friends. It depends on how big your heart is. If your heart is very big, make it for all sentient beings, if it is a little smaller, make it for all human beings. If it is even smaller, make it for your fellow country men. Nobody thinks like that in this country very much. It is very Tibetan, Japanese, Indian or Chinese. America is a very different society. We don’t say much about our fellow country men. In any case you can think of your family, your circle, friends, spouse, etc.

Bringing that mind will bring continuous influence during the day, and at the end, before you go to sleep, you dedicate that. You think, ‘By the power of the virtues that I have built up, may we be able to become enlightened together. May I become enlightened for the others.’ This is the very witty way of doing it. But there are some Bodhisattvas like Avalokitesvara who is more important than anybody else, even more important than Manjushri and Vajrapani. This is because Avalokitesvara has the shepherd - like bodhimind. With this attitude you think, ‘May I wait until all my sheep have gone to safety, free of danger. I will remain and protect them and I will be the last one to go.’ In other words, Avalokitesvara is saying, ‘I am willing to wait for aeons and aeons, until all sentient beings have become fully enlightened.’

That is why Avalokitesvara is praised by Buddha as being like a white lotus - in the sense of being faultless.

Most of the Bodhisattvas however will say, ‘I would like to become enlightened - for you! [laughs]. You know what I mean? There are actually very strong reasons for that. You are able to server others better, because if your capacity is limited, you cannot do anything. When your capacity is better you can do better things for others. So there is no question about the sincerity of their motivation.

So there are two choices for your motivation. The great Hero - Bodhisattvas choose to stay behind until everybody else has gone off.

In any case, with every positive thing we do it is important to dedicate. If we don’t dedicate, there is no security. There is no insurance. We talked about purification and the four powers, how the four powers work against the negative karma, how they wipe out the negativity.

Purification is very important for every one of us throughout. Our practice does not just consist of sitting down cross - legged, meditating and saying prayers and mantras. Our practice actually is our mind working hard to purify negativities and gain merit. This is real, true practice. We accumulate two types of merit and purify two types of negativities.

The two types of negativities are the neuroses, like anger, hatred, etc. and secondly the imprints of these neuroses. The two types of merit are the relative merit and the absolute merit. So accumulation of merit and purification is our major practice. The way we train ourselves to get closer to the enlightened level, the method we have to use, is purification and accumulating merits.

Can we purify negativities? Buddha says yes. No matter how heavy the negativities might be, there is nothing that cannot be purified. No matter how heavy the clouds may be, how fearful and miserable the weather will be, eventually it will be swept away and the sun will shine and the moon will shine and you will see the blue sky again. It is exactly the same with the negativities. They can be purified. There is no reason why we could not purify anything. Remember Angulimala who killed 999 human beings and was able to purify. If he could, why not you and me? Nothing has gone wrong in our nature. We can definitely purify.

How do we do it? Do we have to go to somebody and tell him what we did? Buddha said that this was not necessary. The important thing is to remember and acknowledge the action. If you don’t acknowledge that, but then say that you want to purify, what is it that you are going to purify? You might as well spend time on doing your laundry. At least you purify the dirt out of your blue jeans. So we have to remember the negativities we have done. I am sure we remember some, like the bugs we killed, and the spiders which we put outside in the freezing cold. We do all that type of thing all the time. We have that crazy mind that wishes somebody to be dead, to be killed. If you watch your mind, there is no limit and no reason in it. Our mind projects all sorts of funny things. When you have that sort of mind trouble, that is negativity which needs to be purified.

We have talked about the four powers which Buddha said will purify the negativities. The first and foremost which we really need is compensation. With most negativities we hurt somebody, either mentally, physically or emotionally. We hurt living beings. We hurt the bugs, we kill the spiders, we run over the snakes or hit the skunks. When you hurt somebody you have to compensate. It is absolutely necessary. Even in the western tradition this is being done.

I was watching a movie the other day on TV. There were some kind of terrifying ghost activities. Somebody had done something bad to a young girl at a school and those ghosts came to punish him. Ultimately they found the person he had harmed and was still alive somewhere and so he apologized and after that he was okay. Then the ghost had become a ghost because somebody who was by now in the grave had some experiences and so on and finally that was okay too. So even in the western tradition the idea of compensation is there. Another way is to ask the person you have harmed for forgiveness. If that person forgives you it is fine. It has worked. But if that person refuses to forgive you and instead creates more trouble, what are you going to do? Therefore Buddha does not recommend to make big announcements. Some people may prefer it, saying that they have got it off their chests by telling it to somebody. That maybe true to a certain extent. On the other hand it is not necessarily good to tell people everything you did. What you really have to do is to convince the harmed person. If you are wealthy, you can give them a million dollars. That will probably convince them. But it could also make them more mad. They may throw that million dollars in your face. Who knows.

People’s mind functions in such a funny way. There is really no blanket way of explaining. Each and every individual has their own very private way of how their mind functions. You are the only person who knows how your mind works. So if you apply such a method you have to think what suits you and apply the method accordingly. Do not do something because So and So said so. So what? Even if Buddha said so, so what? Buddha said many things. On one occasion he said that you should kill father and mother and destroy your retinue and country as a way to obtain liberation. Does he mean that? Certainly not. There is an idea behind that, there is purpose for saying that. You really have to use what suits you.

What is generally recommended in terms of compensation is to have love and compassion for the person. But you never know whether that person is enlightened or not, so you also take refuge as a means of compensation. So you pray to him or her and for him or her. To enlightened beings you take refuge and for non - enlightened beings you develop compassion. In that way you are compensating them.

Then you also need regret. As I have said before, if you don’t know what it is that you want to purify, you might as well go to Mr. Stadium. That is a laundromat around here.

Then, when you have strong regret, you will probably think that you don’t want to repeat that action.

Then, of course you need an antidote action. That is absolutely important. If you have killed somebody, save a life. If you have lied to somebody, try to tell the truth for once. If you have been angry, be patient. And particularly, as is the Bodhisattva’s way, develop love and compassion. This is great purification.

Remember, we read that passage in the Bodhisattvacharyavatara saying that meditation on love and compassion can purify even the heaviest of negativities. There was something like that. Then the meditation on emptiness, the nature of reality is also very important. But for us, at this moment, trying to think about emptiness is too confusing. So let us leave it there for a while. When the time comes, we will pick it up. Actually, when you really see the emptiness you solve the whole mystery of life. The whole mystery comes out of ignorance. When you see emptiness you clear the ignorance. This is called wisdom. In the Bodhisattvacharyavatara there is a whole chapter on wisdom but it comes much later.

Then of course, it is recommended to do the Vajrasattva recitations or read the dorje chöpa, which is translated as Diamond Cutter Sutra. There are countless activities. Even if you use your perfect motivation continuously for one week, two weeks or three weeks, you can use that as an antidote action to purify. That is how it works. Doing it once, will that purify? I don’t think so. It will help, it will make some dent. But when you put in constant efforts every day, that makes a big difference. That is why purification is part of the practice. When you do it all the time it makes a difference. It does not take that long. Even if you cannot say the 100 syllable mantra of Vajrasattva, you can simply say OM VAJRASATTVA AH three times or seven times. If the four powers have been built, it works. That is the best way to purify our negativities.

The best way to accumulate merit is to do the seven limb practice which we do in Jewel Heart all the time too. It starts with

I bow down with body, speech and mind.

Shantideva himself has said

The Buddhas have thought for aeons about the best and easiest way for people to practice and they have come to the conclusion that the seven limb practice is the best.

Traditionally, there are at least a couple of pages that you have to say in this practice. But these days, time is short for us and in our list of priorities the least important thing is our spiritual practice. The things we want we cannot let go of and therefore we have not much time left. So to our spiritual practice many of us give the last priority. There is no time. That is why I have made it shorter and shorter. Now we are down to one line for each of the seven limbs! If you make it even shorter than that and just put the words We practice the seven limbs, then, unless you can correspond those words with what you know about them, it does not work. I don’t think we can. So we need at least one line, so that when we say I bow down in body, speech and mind, we can at least bring in our admiration and the desire to seek the enlightened beings’s qualities.

At the second line I purify all my negativities you can think about the four powers. At the next line about rejoicing you can think of all people’s great deeds. Finally you request teachings and for them to stay forever and dedicate everything.

So the essence of the practice here is purification and accumulation. You train your mind, since the mind is what makes all the difference. There is even a school of Buddhism which is called Mind Only School. For them nothing counts except mind. That may be a little extreme and is therefore not recommended as the final viewpoint. But the mind is that much important. The mind - that is how we feel, perceive and project, what we understand. These are the activities of the mind. We have recognition, we have awareness.

Some people say that everything is deception, illusion. They say that nothing matters, because in the end there is just zero. Sometimes people think that all of our experience is only a hallucination and in reality there is nothing. These people would probably not see a difference between gold dust and sand.

This is a purely cultural, traditional Tibetan joke. When you want to illustrate how stupid somebody is you say ‘His ears are like those of a donkey.’ Why? If you take a handful a sand and put it in its ear, the ear will move in order to get rid of it. If you put a handful of gold dust n the donkey’s ear, the ear will move too. The donkey cannot distinguish between sand and gold. It cannot distinguish between solid rock and gold, between turquoise and dollop. Actually, most of the turquoise found in Arizona is actually dollop.

You have to look at reality carefully. When you say that everything is illusion and hallucination you are going too far. Buddha said that there are two truths. He never said that there is just one truth. We tend to think that truth is truth, that is has to be like this or else it is not true. But Buddha taught that there is absolute and relative truth. This view has tremendous value. Enlightened beings, spiritually perfected persons, who have defeated all negativities, who have attained victory over their negative karma and neuroses are telling us that there are always two truths.

From one angle you may say that everything is meaningless at the end, but from the other angle you say that everything has meaning and reason, everything has its function, makes a difference, gives you pain or pleasure - it is real. The gold is gold, the sand is sand, the rock is rock. There is a big difference in value, in nature, in perception, in projection. There is a difference. That is why relative truth is necessary. Otherwise, gold is emptiness and rock is emptiness. Instead of gold you could send someone with a couple of pebbles and buy out Ted Turner’s CNN. You cannot do it, because relative truth stands. Truth really means that you stand on your point which cannot be contradicted or defeated by reality, whether relative or absolute. That is the essence of truth, both truths combined together. In our mind we may think, ‘It is only mind. If I project well, I am all right, if I project wrongly, I will be wrong.’ There is some truth in it, but it is not the total truth. But when you train the mind, you train it to accept reality, to accept both truths, relative and absolute. That is the essence of the Buddha’s teachings. It is said

Enlightened beings know that there are two truths, but they never accept a third truth.’

You may say now, ‘What about the Four Noble Truths?’ But that is a different way of looking. There is absolute and relative, nothing else. The real bottom line truth is the combination of both, absolute and relative together. Therefore the gold does not become pebbles, pebbles don’t become gold. These differences are there. That is why everything functions in society. That is why the stock market goes up and down. It is the relative truth. When somebody loses millions of dollars in one day, that is true. They did lose that. When somebody else gains a million dollars the next day, that is also truth. You may say that all this does not matter, because it is just about a piece of paper. That is also true, but a piece of paper can also make a hell of a difference.

The main point I started with is the dedication. It secures what we have got. It secures our positive karma. Just as our negative karma can be purified by using the four powers our positive karmas can be wiped out by hatred. It can happen in a matter of seconds. Just like a fire is able to consume acres and acres of forest in a matter of seconds, anger and hatred can wipe out all the efforts which you have put in day after day, week after week, month after month. You can blow it through one little outburst.

Outbursts are also not necessarily that bad. I am trying to make a distinction between the temper tantrum and real anger. There is a big difference.

There is a difference between praying and dedication. Praying is just wishing. You may be wishing that you become enlightened, that you do not to have any more suffering, that you may be free of neuroses and attain nirvana. That is praying.

When you dedicate there is something more. It is like when you are buying a house and offer a down payment. When you try to buy something with a down payment in your hands it is different than if you have nothing to put down and just wish to buy something. If you have nothing and go to the bank wanting a loan of two hundred thousand dollars, the chances of the bank giving you the loan are next to nothing. When you dedicate you say, ‘Look, I have done all this. I am using this as a down payment for becoming enlightened - and not only me but everybody. I am putting this down to get everybody free from sickness. That is how you dedicate. Think about it. Whenever you have something to put down and then negotiate a loan you have a better bargaining power. Right or wrong? This is our American culture. It is the truth too.

All this is actually to make ourselves fit to train our mind. Now the actual training of the mind. What do you train your mind in? First is the activity of generosity. People like to be the objects of generosity. They enjoy and appreciate that. But there are always limitations. We never do it free of limitations. We always have conditions attached.

Indonesia is seeking a loan from the World Bank. There is big economic trouble. The International Monetary Fund is willing to give them a five billion dollar loan provided they do this and this. Singapore also comes up and offers a huge loan provided certain conditions are met. There is a big difference in how traditionally the eastern societies and the western societies look at generosity. People in the West are really generous. But along with that there is something else, there are some strings attached. Somebody is promising to give ten billion dollars to the UN, one billion every year. That person said that there is still a billion there this year, even after yesterday’s crash - but there are strings attached. The person who gave it likes to be known and likes to have publicity.

end of side A of tape fifty-one

side B of tape fifty-one of 10/28/97

..........they spend the money and we get the benefit. Don’t ever forget. That is what happened for Ted Turner. That is that part. But if it is me or you doing that, is it true generosity? True generosity should not have any hope of return. There should not even be the hope of good karma. The really true mind of giving never has any personal agenda attached to it. That is true generosity. The paramita of generosity [transcendental generosity] has gone beyond normal human expectations. As long as you are trying to pull strings, it is not genuine, because there is an agenda. Jiang Zemin is here today having coffee with Clinton unofficially. Officially it is tomorrow! [laughs]. So both try to give something to each other and try to control each other. These are the wonderful diplomatic games they play. It may look very nice, however there are so many personal agendas involved in that. With that mind set, whatever you give is not going to be pure generosity at all. I am not even sure whether from the spiritual point of view such giving is moral or whether it is even immoral. We can really think a lot about that. It is easier to do that exercise with Clinton than with ourselves. We can blame him. He can take all the blame and then he bounces back. [laughs]. Generosity should be without any hope of return, there should only be the true idea of giving and sharing. Can we do that? That is the big question. Will I be able to do it? Sure, all the enlightened beings have done it. What is wrong with me? I can definitely do it. But how? You have to train your mind in giving. Give anything. First give your dirty old socks, then an extra shirt, then an extra coat and so forth. Ultimately you will be able to give your life, body and virtues - everything, for the benefit of all beings. This is said in verse eleven:

Verse eleven

Without any sense of loss

I shall give up my body and enjoyments

As well as all my virtues of the three times

For the sake of benefitting all.

We should give without any hesitation, without any sense of having lost something, without any feeling of wanting to pull back. Ted Turner today made that announcement of giving one billion dollars a year to the UN until he has given ten billions. So they asked him on TV today whether that was guaranteed even if his stocks went down, and he said, ‘The stocks not going down is a condition for me to do that.’ So after offering, he made the conditions. Generosity should have no conditions. If you don’t have it, it is fine. Nobody can force you to give if you don’t have it. But true generosity has not hope of receiving anything. We can make a beautiful nice present for our companion with the hope that he or she will like us better. That is attachment - generosity, not a generous generosity. So you have to train your mind to be able to give. Try first with the yellow vegetables. You know - the vegetables in your fridge that are getting old and yellow, take them out and give them to somebody without any attachment. Or if you find in there some blue butter, do the same thing. We had a lot of blue butter in Tibet. Some of you will know that they put this very smelly butter into the tea that they give you.

Aud: It was rancid butter.

R: That is what I mean - butter that has become blue. So start from there. Start with your dirty socks. Then go a little further, where you feel a little bit of a pinch and where you appreciate [the things that you give]. That is how you can train yourself. The Bodhisattvas will have no hesitation to give their lives - if the situation is fit to give it. They will give their eyeballs, heart or kidneys, if they are fit to be given. Not only do they have no hesitation, but they will rejoice, they will enjoy that. That is because of mind training. We ourselves should not do that, we cannot do that, we are not capable of doing that, but we can pray that we will be able to do it.

Even praying will also train your mind and create an opening in your mind for the possibility of doing something very great in the near future. Your mind is beginning to open. Right now we don’t have that capacity, but it will bring that capacity quite close.

Buddha calls those who can dedicate their positive actions ‘intelligent and learned people.’ Those who can also dedicate their future positive karmas right now, even if they don’t have them, are called by Buddha ‘the most learned and great intelligent persons.’

Through that we will begin to cut our stinginess. Normally we hold on to everything. Forget about our own body and mind, but even all our posessions. If you move into a house and you are there for two months, how many things will build up! We just cannot let them go. Each of these things seem to have some usefulness at one time or another. When you look at something twice before throwing it away you will put it back. Right? That is how our things build up. You look at these things and think, ‘It will have some use somewhere, I will be needing it.’ You keep on filing. On the other hand what you are losing is a tremendous amount of space. You lose the tidiness, cleanliness. That will even invite mice and rats. All this because you can’t let things go. So we should train our mind. Let it go, be generous. Give it away, whatever it is.

It is one of the great qualities in this country that if you want to give something away there are lot of agencies which will utilize that the best way they can. There is the Salvation Army, Purple Heart, Save the Children, etc. There are many of them, especially Christian organizations who do a tremendous amount of that kind of work. When you are in a Third World country in some remote area you will know how much they give. You really have to appreciate that. There is no way you cannot appreciate it. Mother Theresa is one vivid example. But there are hundreds and thousands of people doing the same thing in every corner of the world who might not have received the kind of recognition Mother Theresa has. We have to appreciate that. If you wanted to give away an extra pair of pants or a sweater, you can either deliver it to the Purple Heart or even just call them. They will come and pick it up. It is made very easy to become generous. Don’t be like me who keeps all the old clothes for years and years and after four, five years starts to wear them again. That is my habit. When I wear something, people will comment, ‘Oh, is that new?’ and then I have to say, ‘No, I have had that for four or five years. Maybe I am wearing it for the first time’

If you give things away in generosity you have benefits. Ultimately you will lose those things anyway, for sure. Everything, whatever you have, you will lose. You will lose even your body. You are going to die. None of is going to stay here forever. We are definitely going to die and at that time will lose our body too. At least right now, from the prayer point of view I think that I may be able to give my body to whoever needs it. May I be blessed to be able to do that. Thinking like that is a great training of the mind towards generosity.

In the same way we can train our mind in morality. When I use the word ‘morality’, I am not talking about the sexual orientation of the individual. I am talking about people, their commitments and their vows. When you train the mind you become perfect. I have said that mind makes all the difference. Our perception changes, our projections will change. After all, joy and misery is the perception and the projection of the mind. So the experience is there. And if you want to make a difference you can make it there. Physical pain and pleasure is also very close to the perception and projection of the mind. Is that true? Some people are shaking their heads. But think really carefully. Just take sexual activity. How much of that is really pleasure and how much is really pain? Look how we project and perceive. When you feel something different, you label that ‘pleasure’. We can go as far as piercing our skin everywhere and pulling strings through that. Because you feel it you project that as pleasure, so you like it. You want to do it again and again. If you look from the point of view of pain, you would not do it. Look into your own personal experience, see how much is pain and how much is pleasure. It very much goes according to how we project and how we perceive.

Attachment exaggerates. When you fall in love with somebody you will project that this person is a hundred times more beautiful inside and outside than they are in reality. When you are getting upset you do the same. You think that that person is a hundred times worse than he or she actually is. This is the perception and projection of the mind. Therefore you have to train the mind so that it will not go haywire. The mind should be treated like a horse trained for racing. When you train the race horse it will know how far and how fast and which way to go. Likewise we train our mind in positive ways so that ultimately we are the winner. We, the individual, gain. We will have less sufferings, more pleasure and joy and we will not have misery.

A friend of mine called me last night a little after midnight, crying. She said that some old friend from whom she was separated has done some miserable things. That came out in some newspaper article. So she said, ‘I have been foolish and he cheated me.’ I told her, ‘Forget it. You should be happy and joyful that you are no longer dealing with that person any more. You are lucky.’ She was a little surprised and laughed a little bit. The real truth is in the perception and projection of the mind. When you are miserable you can find out why it is not that bad.

On the other hand, if you are living above the clouds and you don’t know how to perceive and project, it is not that great either. It is the mind which makes a big difference in everything. So let us work with the mind. The Bodhisattva’s way is to work with the mind.

It would like to say this to you: This is Buddhism, this is not psychology. I don’t know head or tail about psychology. This is also not philosophy. It is practice. It is Buddhism. It is a way of living and functioning and thinking. If you want to call that ‘philosophy’, sure, in that way it is. It is actually philosophy with practice applied in your life. You may say, ‘But that is not religion!’ If you think that religion has to be monotheistic, then it is not a religion. It is a way of life. But if you think of religion as a practice that makes the individual a better person, then, yes, it is a religion. So it is the combination of all of these. It then becomes very scientific. It is really and truly an inner science. You are dealing with the mind scientifically. That is how it can make a difference to your life. Otherwise, simply going through some rituals, saying a few prayers, doing beautiful chanting, lighting some candles, etc. may be great, but what is that going to do for me when I have to walk in downtown Detroit?

The essence of the Buddha’s experience is something that we find in ourselves. No matter if it is a sun shine day or a rainy day, or whether it is snowing or stormy, you move steadily. Don’t run. That is a joke for somebody but they did not get it, I think. You know I move very slowly. So I get the blame. Whether it is snowing or whether the sun is shining, the lama does not move, he does not go faster. Anyway, that is not what I mean. What I mean is that this mind training can be used in our lives whether the sun is shining or whether there is a snow storm. You always have it with you.

You have heard statements from people in other parts of the country. One person said, ‘I noticed this thinking has crept into my life. When I am sitting at the table making my decision, I notice it is there and I hesitate, I am worried that somebody else may get hurt.’ The magazine Vanity Fair interviewed a lady friend in New York. She is member of Jewel Heart. She was asked whether Buddhism made a difference to her work. She said, ‘No, except when I have to fire somebody I feel three times more for the person I am firing than for me, the person who is doing to the firing.’ So something must have stuck somewhere.

Besides that, it is one of the best ways of having a friend when we are down. When we perceive that we are being rejected by the whole world, there is somebody within you who tells you, ’Hey, you are perceiving wrong. That is not true’

You know, we do that all the time. How many times have we thought, ‘I have been rejected by the whole world!’? Most of us do. There may be nobody to console you. But this understanding, this training of the mind is there, to stand with you, talk to you, ‘Hey, it is not true. It is what is called delusion, I am perceiving wrong here. I am projecting wrong. Maybe one person rejected me, but so what? Hundreds may accept me. What is wrong with that?’ Anyway, I have talked too much.

I am going to stop here. Are there any questions?

Aud1: I was reading in the lam rim that when you have delusions you should let them develop so that you can see them and work with them. But how do you let them develop?

R: The question is what do you mean by delusions?

Aud1: For example jealousy.

R: Okay, if you are jealous you should let that develop until you punch somebody’s lights out. [laughs]. Then when you have punched, you can throw out all your jealousy. Do you think that is good enough?

Aud1: I am talking about when you want to develop wisdom.

R: And I am talking about when you are fighting. I am just joking. It depends on the individual to a certain extent. I am not sure whether you need to let the delusions rise. I don’t think so. But you have to be able to recognize them, to make sure that it is jealousy that is coming up. The recognition itself is a very important point. If you really have to let it rise, let it rise until you recognize it. I don’t recommend to let it rise beyond that. I don’t see any reason. That is only possible for somebody who is able to transform it - but that is a long shot. That is what I personally feel.

Aud2: When you said that the motivation influences what we do during the whole day, is it enough to develop that motivation first thing in the morning or do I have to recollect it repeatedly during the day?

R: If you have to remember your motivation every minute you will not be able to do anything else. Therefore have a strong motivation set up in the morning and if you need an occasional reminder, remind yourself, if you don’t need it that is fine. Let the mind have the influence of that motivation. As long as the influence is there, it will make a difference. When you lose the influence then it is time for you to reset it.

Aud: What is absolute merit?

R: That is the merit which is connected with emptiness. All other merits, including the bodhimind, are called relative merit. These are the two direct causes of creating the dharmakaya and the rupakaya, the perfect mind and perfect body of a Buddha.

end of side B of tape fifty-one