Archive Result

19971111GRAABWL28

Side A of tape fifty-two of 11/11/97

Giving is something extremely important in our practice. If we can’t give it away, we can’t let it go. I have been talking about that all day since this morning with various people. I did not dramatize it. If I did it would sound like here in the text in verse eleven,

Without any sense of loss, I shall give up my body and enjoyments

The Bodhisattvas are training to give, without any sense of loss, even their body. That is where the story comes in from Buddha’s previous life times when he gave his blood to a tiger. Can we really do that right now? No, we cannot. But should we train ourselves to be able to do that? We should. What are most of our fears based on? They are based on the inability to give it away, to let it go. We are afraid of anything that happens. Am I going to die? What is going to happen to me? Am I losing my companion? Will I be lonely? All these questions and sufferings we have are there just because we cannot let it go. That is why Buddha kept on nagging the Bodhisattvas, ‘Train yourself to give your body away.’ That means to give away your life. Buddha himself, during his previous lives, did that - and not only once. The story with the tigers is not the only one. There are hundreds.

All the fears we have are built up because we cannot let go of the attachment to the self. We want to protect ourselves, but that might not really be self - -protection. We project it as self - protection.

When it says to give away our enjoyments, that is talking about the wealth, which means food, clothes, shelter, the necessary things. Traditionally, they would talk about horses and elephants. Today we can talk about cars and planes and so on.

Not only that. Shantideva says,

As well as my virtues of the three times

Even if we give up our wealth and even our body, we may still have the motivation to get some greater benefit for ourselves from that. That is why you train yourself to let go of all your virtues also, the virtues of the past, present and future, the three times. You think, ‘I am letting it go for the benefit of all sentient beings. It is not so that somebody may have a little less pain or a little more comfort. Basically, when we talk about benefits, we talk about the benefit of all beings. What kind of benefit? We are talking about temporary and permanent benefits. With regard to the temporary ones I am not talking about aspirin for headaches. Here it means to have a good and peaceful, happy, wonderful life. That is temporary benefit , not permanent benefit.

Buddha is telling the Bodhisattvas that permanent benefit means total freedom from all negativities and their consequences. Total enlightenment is a permanent benefit. We are not talking about today and tomorrow but about the long term goals of the benefit of all living beings. The goal is to make all sentient beings free from all neuroses and all sufferings. It also means providing them with the total knowledge of the awakened state. For such a purpose we should let everything go. It is not that because somebody wants your body, you let go of it. That is why right now we should not try. You are really training your mind. In our mind the biggest attachment is to ourselves. We think we are attached to our companions and to funny things. But the biggest attachment is to ourselves. Whatever we do, however we function, we see our mind automatically reacting in the way of ‘I am protecting myself’. It always works on that level, except in two cases. One is when you are in a happy - go lucky situation where you don’t care about whatever is happening. The only other level where the mind does not operate that way is when the person has true understanding. These two can look very similar - you can make a lot of mistakes on that, so you have to be careful. Naturally, with no sense of understanding, there is just a happy - go lucky state or worse than that, some kind of lukewarm state, no feeling, no caring. In that state you also may not feel that pain or that pinch, but that is not the right point to be. It is an example of an immature person, an immature mind that cannot take responsibility. It is different from true understanding that can really let go.

In the sutras Buddha says

Those people who remember and dedicate the positive karmas that come from your mind and mental faculties to the benefit of all beings for the attainment of enlightenment, are called wise persons.

If you are wise you dedicate your positive karma for some positive result. How do we dedicate future positive karmas? We think that we dedicate whatever positive future karma we will be able to accumulate. So this is in the form of motivation. It is a nice way of dedicating.

Not letting go is not so much attachment, but more stinginess. It is part of attachment, but it is not really attachment. Many people think, ‘I have strong attachment, so I can’t let it go.’ Talking about strong attachment, somebody lost a watch here last week. So the person who does not have strong attachment to their watch, could you please come forward and collect your watch! So not letting go is stinginess. That appears in every part of our life. It goes for everything. We cannot let it go, so we hold it. We do that with our physical body, with our companions, our relationships, everything. It is very strong. The biggest attachment, of not letting go, is within ourselves. It involves our body and our name, our reputation. In this country you can sue for damage of your reputation. This is interesting. Any value is calculated on the basis of the green dollar. That is why we can sue for anything. But when you look at life, the things that are really good for us, are not the green dollars. It is happiness and peace, freedom from suffering, freedom from pain. But people somehow measure everything in terms of dollars. They say, ‘You have damaged my reputation. Now I sue you for a million dollars.’

Last Sunday I was with two teen-age boys. One of them said, ‘The other day I was slightly nudged by a delivery van. I wish he had knocked me down so that I could sue him for a million dollars.’ Then the other one said, ‘Forget about it. No money in the world can buy you health.’ Then the first one said, ‘Oh, yeah, maybe. I will think about it.’ Even the kids think like that. So we really try to measure our happiness and success in terms of the green dollars. That is not good, but you cannot go against society either. If everybody is facing East you cannot face West. That is a traditional, old Tibetan and Chinese saying. You have to go along with that. But you go with understanding.

Verse twelve

By giving up all, sorrow is transcended

And my mind will realize the sorrowless state.

It is best that I (now) give everything to all beings

In the same way as I shall (at death).

The translator has put death in brackets because it is not there in the Tibetan text. That is interesting. You are letting go the mind’s tightness of holding back. We really want to have things, we can’t let it go and we really suffer. It is very common with us, particularly in our relationships - especially when it comes to relationships which are not working. Here we can see that people are suffering more and more because they just cannot let it go. One person wants to go and the other will not let go. It is miserable, really miserable.

There is a Tibetan street song which particularly the people involved in construction work would sing all the time. I can’t remember the details of the song, but it says that when somebody wants to go and the other will not let them go, that is the most miserable thing that could happen in your life.

When you are letting go you are cutting the hold of attachment and of stinginess. If you are letting go you should do it for the benefit of all sentient beings, for their ultimate benefit, not just some little bit here and there. This is what the first two lines are saying

By giving up all, sorrow is transcended

And my mind will realize the sorrowless state.

This is the method of getting freedom, of cutting fear, of cutting the real source of contaminated suffering which we experience all the time. We simply cannot give. That is the reason why Buddha says, ‘Give your body away.’ Buddha himself, in one of his previous lives, has given his body to keep a tiger family alive.

Aryadeva is another one. It is a nickname. Translated from the [Sanskrit and] Tibetan it means ‘The one - eyed guy’. We used to call Bob Thurman Aryadeva. [because he has one artificial eye]. Really, if the Tibetans would refer to Thurman they would always say Aryadeva, never Thurman. They understood the meaning. I think even Thurman understands it now too.

Aryadeva became famous for giving away one of his eyes, just because somebody asked him for it. He just took it out and gave it to him. Thurman does the same, he sometimes takes his plastic eye out. That is exactly how Aryadeva has done it. Initially Aryadeva was happy to give away his eye. But then he looked back to see what the guy was going to do with that eye and he saw that this person put it between two rocks and smashed it. At that point he felt sorry that he gave it away. For that reason he did not get his eye back. Otherwise his eye would have been restored. That is why generosity should not have any hesitation or hope for return or any strings attached. That is what Buddha said.

In our case, if we give something, we want to make sure that it goes towards a good cause. We want to know what happens with it. This is the material way of looking at it. I am not criticizing it. It is good, nothing bad. But from a spiritual point of view, once I have given something away, it is no longer mine and I don’t care what you do with it. It is like if I give my shirt away. Once I have done that, I don’t care whether you wear it or whether you use it as a cleaning rag or as a blessed relic, whether you use it as a toilet paper substitute or whatever you do. It is yours.

That is the important point of giving. Once you are at the level of giving your body it does not matter what people do with your body. You have already given it. When you have such a mind, when you have trained your mind to be able to do that you will be free of all the pains that you normally go through, particularly the pains of not letting go, what we call the strings of attachment. Even if we let something go we want to know what is happening thereafter.

Even if we die we hope to return or we leave something that we can look back on. We leave institutions, we set up a memorial fund or some kind of continuation of work. Maybe it is great and wonderful to continue the work, but on the other hand I am thinking, ‘When the person dies let them die.’ Why must Elvis Presley be still alive? We all come into this world for a purpose. When you have fulfilled that purpose you have completed your work. Then you should go. Why do you want to hang around? If you go it also gives the next person an opportunity to come up. Otherwise you are occupying that spot. You are like a dictator or a king who wants to remain forever. So even when we are about to die we plan to look back and revisit.

In one way it is good. I am criticizing here, but you have to understand it does not mean that I don’t like it. I have to criticize it because I am trying to tell you here that we should let it go once and for all. From that angle I do criticize. That does not mean however, that you should let all your work go to waste. If somebody can carry it on, it is great and wonderful. But our motivation is sometimes different. We know that we are going to die, so we somehow plan to look back.

One of the important reasons to give your body away is that while you are here and have control over your body you can dedicate it. When you die, you have to give up your body anyway. You cannot take your body around with you. There is no way you can take it. So you will have wasted that body without any dedication at all. So while you have it, why don’t you dedicate it - even if you don’t give it physically. You are not allowed to give it physically, you are not capable and it is wrong to give it physically. However, it you have the mind of giving it for the benefit of all, if you can pray that you want to give it without any hesitation at all, you get all the benefits. When death comes it will take your body away anyway, whether you like it or not. It will go. So we might as well take advantage of it now while we still have it.

That goes for everything. If you look in the traditional Buddhist sutras, Buddha does this dedication, ‘Without any hesitation I give my children, wife, horses, elephants, wealth and everything.’ That does not mean that Buddha did not love his wife and children. But he did not let himself get tied up with the string of attachment. That is the important thing. The next verses make it even more clear.

In verse twelve it says, By giving up all, sorrow is transcended. This is talking about nirvana. It means that my mind will attain nirvana. Samsara is suffering, nirvana is peace. We always talk about it that way. So my mind obtains peace when I am able to let go. All the spiritual traditions, with or without knowing, have their teachers yelling and screaming, ‘Let go.’ If you ask them what they mean by that, they may well give you a little explanation. But the main idea truly is not to have the string of stinginess which is part of attachment, tie you up. You can’t have that even for your body or for your mind. As long as we have that we cannot get rid of all our fears. We are afraid of something happening to us. Who knows what the mind can think? Just sit for five minutes and watch what comes up in your mind. There will be zillions of different things, unimaginable things will come up. Each one of them creates fear. And there is sadness. You feel that you lost something, that you could not hold it. That sadness of losing and the fear of what is going to happen next, all that makes us suffer. We cry and do all sorts of things and even go into depression. All of that is because of that.

Everybody thinks that generosity is wonderful. Everybody thinks it is wonderful and nobody questions it. When we think about generosity we think it only refers to being happy to get our cheque book out and write out cheques. That is fine, but we are not talking about that. Here we are talking about letting go of your body, your life. Once you let it go you don’t care. It does not mean that you don’t look after it. You have the responsibility of being the keeper. Yet you don’t really have to suffer. Can you see that? Think about it more. You cannot understand that in one lecture here or a talk here and there. You have to keep on thinking about it. The key to defeating your fears, the key to defuse the fears, is generosity, letting it go.

What also happens is that even if you want to let go, a part of the mind may let go but another part of your mind is still holding on. This is the normal, natural process. There is nothing wrong with that. People may think, ‘I used to be okay, but now I can’t let it go, because I am afraid of doing it.’ You may think that this is a new fear, but that is not true. You are beginning to recognize your old fears. These points are very important - each and everyone of them.

Nirvana, the Sanskrit word, is translated into Tibetan as tharpa. It means that somebody got away. He made it and got away. From what? From the suffering. In our normal language we would say it is freedom. Nirvana is freedom. You have got freedom from the sufferings of the contaminated body and the contaminated label. In one way our body is great and wonderful. On the other hand it is contaminated - definitely. It is caused by the Second Noble Truth, is part of the First Noble Truth and provides the base for all our sufferings.

In verse twelve it further says,

It is best that I (now) give everything to all beings

In the same way as I shall (at death).

You may say, ‘Maybe I could give away one finger and keep the other nine for myself.’ There are certain traditions and teachings - even as part of the Buddhist teachings - who would do that. Chinese Buddhist traditions in particular do that. They will wrap cotton around one finger, dip it in oil and then burn it like a light, thinking that this is one of the best purifications. In the case of the Chinese nuns, they put fire on their heads and burn ten to fifteen holes in their heads as part of the ordination. All that is emphasizing the giving away of the body, but not all of it, just some. Mind is such that it cannot let go. So these ceremonies are not only training the mind but physically, you let go.

In the Bodhisattvacharyavatara it is recommended to give away everything at the same time. Don’t try to hold back anything. How much effect that would have on the individual! Right now we hold back. Just look at the things we tend to keep. Forget about the body Forget even about useful things. There are so many unnecessary things we keep. Look in your basement and you will know how much you have. Look in your storage rooms, even in your living room and dining room. Every little thing in there will have some use at some stage and then you keep it and cannot let it go. We should let it go. Look at the difference between how we think and the way Buddha wants the Bodhisattvas to think. We even call people who give away things irresponsible. Sometimes we may admire them. I am not criticizing anybody, but I have to talk that way so that you get the message.

Naturally, at the time of death you lose everything, everything together, even if want to keep it.

end of side A of tape fifty-two

side B of tape fifty-two of 11/11/97

That is why we have to train our mind against that stinginess, that mind that ties you down with attachment to things. By the time we die we will lose everything together, so why do we not right now give not just some but all? In the verse it says that this is the best. It is the best because it can achieve a very good purpose. It can give us freedom. When you really look at it in detail, it is not so much anger and jealousy, although these are there. When you look down deeper it is the inability to let go, holding on. So letting go of all at the same time is the best. This can achieve the purpose. When we die we will lose everything anyway. So why don’t we give it away while we have it and make the best use of it?

I was talking yesterday with somebody about endowments. If you give things while you are alive you achieve the purpose of whatever you are dedicating it to. So you are taking the advantage out of it. You make sure that you spend your wealth for the benefit of beings. With that you give yourself a boost for enlightenment. In Buddhism you have that. Buddha keeps on telling that to people repeatedly. We have to find the best way of making our wealth and money benefit ourselves. It is not that we want your endowments for Jewel Heart, but really, honestly speaking, it is one of the ways you can help yourself. I am not waiting for you to leave your endowments to Jewel Heart. By the time you go I will be gone already. I am the oldest one here anyway. But I am thinking that it will be of benefit to yourself if you can make use of it. I tried to tell that to people before but most did not get it.

So here it is recommended to give your body while you have it. That is why this is the key to freedom. The best is to give it for the benefit of all sentient beings - which includes ourselves. We will definitely get benefit. Generosity is also the cause of becoming wealthy. It is the best investment for your future lives. Many times when you look at it, those people who are spiritually developed, get things that they need effortlessly. Perhaps not completely effortlessly, but without much hardship. Where does that come from? It is your previous lives’ efforts of generosity which you have put in. That is what you are cashing in. It is not your investment in Wall Street, a cheque you can cash in, but it is your previous life’s invested wealth of generosity which is coming back to you.

In one of Buddha’s previous life stories it says

Sometimes our wealth is like a blessing by a poisonous snake. Whatever it touches becomes the cause of suffering, of fighting for your next of kin, for your children. Why don’t you give it away while it is with you, while it is under your control. Why don’t you make it beneficial and free from becoming causes of suffering? By having the mind of giving, the Bodhisattvas accumulate a tremendous amount of luck and fortune.

That is one of Buddha’s statements. In another one he says,

Our body actually has no owner. There is no meaning, there is no essence. It is going to be destroyed. It is going to be the cause of suffering. Why don’t you make it useful and beneficial for yourself and others? One who cannot do that is not called a wise person. One who can give it away has no fear. One who does hold it has fear.

These are Buddha’s statements here and there. Further Shantideva now says in the next verses about what happens after giving:

Verse thirteen

Having given this body up

For the pleasure of all living beings,

By killing, abusing and beating it

May they always do as they please.

Verse fourteen

Although they may play with my body

And make it a source of jest and blame,

Because I have given it up to them,

What is the use of holding it (dear)?

That is right. Once I have given my body away to all living beings, let them use it or abuse it. Let it be the subject of accusations, the basis of making fun. So what? It is not mine. You can say, ‘Who are they talking about?’ It is true, in giving it away, you are cutting the self - identity which is giving ourselves suffering. This is so important. Whatever they want to do, let them do it. It is not mine. Why should I worry about it? Why should I get hurt when somebody is making fun of me, making jokes about me? Why should I get irritated if somebody is accusing me of being fat? There are two points to look. You can think, ‘I have given that body for the benefit of all sentient beings. So it is theirs. Let them say whatever they want to say. It is wrong on the other hand to think, ‘Why are you calling me fat? What is that to you?’ We don’t have to think about it that way. It will cause trouble. If they want to say that I am fat, let them say it. It is fine. As long as I am comfortable it does not worry me. But if my fat body gives me diabetes, this causes me suffering. Then I have to worry about it .But just because somebody is saying that I am fat is not worrying me. That is one way of looking at it.

The other way of looking is , ‘I have already given my body, so let them do whatever they want to do. Let them make jokes or whatever they want to do. Anyway, who are they talking about?’

So generosity gives you a shield against those pinches and those darts which Ram Dass was talking about that came out of his brother’s mouth. [Rinpoche refers to a story by Ram Dass when he was high on LSD and invited to an important family dinner which he could not skip. His brother attacked him verbally during the dinner, but Ram Dass saw the utterances coming in the form of darts out of his mouth towards him. He calmly picked them out of the air and put them on his plate in front of him.] So the generosity gives you that shield. You can see how important generosity is when you look at it in detail. It is not that you should be able to share a little bit of money or old clothes or dirty socks, but we are talking about giving away the body, dedicating it to all sentient beings, so that it belongs to them. Let them play, let them accuse you, let them make jokes. Then you think, ‘I don’t own it any more, it is not mine.’

So that is important. If it was not important Buddha would not emphasize it. It may sound a little bit shocking and surprising but we will see the difference to how we think and respond with that normal, little pinch which we feel all the time. The mind of generosity is important, including wishing and praying that we may be able to give away our body. Those of us who say the Six Session Yoga say that every day:

Thus my body, life and wealth I forsake’

And ask for your aid to only please you.

and

Land, body, wealth and all virtues collected,

For the sake of all mother sentient beings I gladly release.

When you recite these verses you know what to think. But does that relieve you from any responsibilities for your body? No, you are the keeper. You have to look after it, you have to protect it and you have to make sure that you don’t hurt anybody else. You cannot let a driverless car drive around. So this is how you meditate. It is a deeper way of training your mind. It is the real essence of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara. Actually, this is Step One. Step Two will tell you how responsible you are, so that you avoid the problem of the driverless car.

Aud1: Would you say that the willingness to receive is also part of generosity?

R: How can that be generosity? From one angle, you could say that you are willing to listen to somebody when that benefits them. So from that point of view it maybe generosity [of giving your time]. Otherwise, generosity is supposed to be giving, isn’t it?

Aud1: But accepting somebody’s gift seems to be a form of giving too.

R: I don’t know. I can only see it from the angle of listening to somebody. Somebody wants you to listen and you give them the opportunity to share the suffering. What they want to tell you is about the suffering they go through. Sometimes, when there is somebody to listen to you without making any judgement, so that you don’t have to be afraid that this person is misusing the information, then that can be very helpful. From that angle the receiving of that information may be an act of generosity. It is also an act of ethics. These things are all very much interconnected.

From the point of the receiver of a gift, whether there are strings attached or not, you receive it. It is for you to untangle those strings. This is your job.

Aud2: When you were talking about giving away your body, for some reason the image of those Buddhists monks came to my mind who burnt themselves in protest against the Vietnam war. Wasn’t that suicide though?

R: Well, there are two ways of looking at that. I am glad you raised that. Actually, I did not like that. I saw the footage on TV during the Vietnam war. There were some monks sitting there and they had kerosene oil around themselves. They put kerosene over their bodies and also in a circle around themselves. I was a sceptical person then and in particular I was a young monk. So two things went through my mind. One, the senior monks must have convinced that monk that it was a very important purpose and aimed at relieving the suffering of zillions of people. So that monk was convinced too. In a nice way of speaking you could say he believed in the cause. In a not so nice way you would say he was stubborn. He made the additional fire around himself, so that in case he wanted to run away he couldn’t. That is what I thought at that moment. I never liked that idea. Does that go according to Buddha’s teaching? No, certainly not.

Aud2: These monks were burning themselves symbolically to show how destructive that whole war was.

R: Yes, but at the same time they were sacrificing a human being. It is true, it is symbolically telling you how you are destroying yourself. We don’t really know whose idea that was and what motivation they really had. Did they want to draw political attention, did they want to show the world that we are destroying ourselves, or did they just simply draw attention? We will never know all this.

Aud3: I was impressed at the time with that monk’s non - attachment to his body. Whether he had real non - attachment or not, I don’t know.

R: I remember thinking when this was shown on television, ‘Was that to draw political attention or to show something to the world or just to draw attention, or is it even corruption?’ There is definitely some corrupt parts in Buddhism. It also had some benefit. But did that really cause benefit enough to justify sacrificing a human life? I have no answer to these questions.

Aud4: Thich Nath Than actually explained in a book a lot of what went on at the time. He said that the first monk who did it was a senior monk and he did it in all sincerity, without any grandstanding. At the time, especially for the Buddhist community there seemed to be no hope, there was just despair. Everybody was at a loss of what to do. He said that subsequent younger monks who also burnt themselves probably did not know what they were doing.

R: I tend to agree with that. The first was sincere and thought it through and the others....I don’t know. I saw a picture of a young monk burning. I can still see that picture in my memory. You can never tell what goes on in other people’s minds. What we can do is learn from that. It might have served a purpose. In that we rejoice. It is wonderful. But we also have to acknowledge that there is corruption in Buddhism. Every good thing is not necessarily a hundred per cent good and every bad thing is not necessarily a hundred per cent bad.

I have been accused earlier of being too much black and white. Now I begin to get accused of too much grey and not enough black or white. [laughs]. Let us look in a positive way. Those monks who burnt themselves gave their lives for the benefit of all beings. Let us rejoice in that and get the benefit. In that way we can take advantage of it, no matter what the reality might have been. I don’t want to leave the subject with some funny notion of my critical mind. They definitely have drawn a lot of attention to the conflict and increased people ‘s awareness of it. We know it was not a great war. In general, all wars are terrible, but this war was particularly terrible. So we can rejoice in these monks’ sacrifice.

On the other hand, remember that the real true generosity is to be able to let it go, whatever it is, without strings attached. You may begin with small things like food and then some money, until you finally , without hesitation, you can give anything.

We have a lot of strings attached. They go everywhere. You never know what it is. They go between human beings and possessions, they include reputation, popularity and so on. The key is really to cut through all that.

Aud5: In a way, there are always strings attached, even when you wish to take somebody’s pain away. Your own pain of not being able to bear a child’s pain for example can be so great that you would be willing to do anything just to relieve it of that pain. But still, it is based on attachment.

R: Why do you say it is attachment?

Aud5: Because there is something you cannot let go of.

R: But that is compassion.

Aud5: I never thought of compassion having the quality of not letting to.

R: I am quite sure it has. You know we talk about compassion being important in the beginning, the middle and even in the end, after you have become fully enlightened. In that case, compassion does not allow you to let it go. I don’t think it is attachment. In the case of you and your son there may be attachment involved. But that is not necessarily the case with all the children that you see. I don’t think we are talking here about the point of not letting go. Maybe that is where we begin to see the difference between the Mahayana and the Theravada. It is not that the Theravadins do not have compassion. They do. But maybe you begin to see something in there. I don’t know. Every desire is not necessarily a bad desire. The desire to free somebody from suffering I do consider that as compassion, not as attachment. You have to experience that and find the answer for yourself. I don’t think you actually can give the answer in words.

Aud5: When you have the aspect of achieving nirvana there is the process of going towards selflessness. That experience is free. But at the same time, you can have concomitantly the experience of others’ suffering as your own.

R: I don’t think Bodhisattvas are without pain either.

Aud5: Perhaps that is their capacity to take over the suffering of others.

R: I don’t think so either. I don’t think they have to take over others’ sufferings at all. They may love to take the pain of others on themselves, but they don’t have to. That is why to become enlightened, not just for oneself but for all beings, becomes extremely important. That is why we always talk about enlightenment. It is just because of that. It is not like in that story of Milarepa where he projected his suffering onto a door and that made the door crack. That is some kind of dramatized thing. That is why the enlightenment is so important in the sense that not only you have to become enlightened, but everybody. With children, you [have compassion] because of their weakness. In my case - I don’t know whether that is good or bad - but I noticed within me that whenever there is somebody suffering, when there is an argument going on, I always like to take the side of the weaker person. When everybody thinks that there is something wrong with a certain person I like to take the side of that person. I was the only one who was sticking up for O. J. [Simpson] the whole year of the trial [laughs]. Everybody was blaming him, so I took his side.

Aud6: I am surprised that Bodhisattvas still experience suffering. But in general I think that one’s own suffering helps in opening one’s heart to other people.

R: That is absolutely true. Suffering is useful for that. That is why Buddha discovered suffering first and why the First Noble Truth is the Truth of Suffering.

end of side B of tape fifty-two