Archive Result

20030413GRJHNLCom02

0:00:00.0 That is the example. Internal ego power is so strong. Both the Hindu leaders and Muslim leaders, even though Gandhi was threatening to go on hunger strike to death they still went ahead with the division.

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0:00:32.8 That division today is still affecting Kashmir and all other things and those two states fight each other, with atomic bombs in each of their arsenals.

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0:01:02.7 That’s because the internal ego of those leaders such as Jinna and – I don’t want to say Nehru, but some conservative Hindus, both will not listen.

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0:01:30.9 So even though Gandhi made peace prevail, but ego blocked all this. That’s what I mean. Even though peaceful means are tried they cannot work completely until the internal ego is subdued.

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0:02:22.3 So that’s why self-compassion is needed, otherwise we destroy ourselves. We hurt ourselves when we harm others. We do all the bad things to ourselves. We know that cigarette smoking is bad. But we don’t stop. That means we are addicted. I know that sugar is poison for me. But I love eating chocolate. Luckily what I have here is sugar-free.

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0:03:38.4 That’s how our addictions hurt ourselves all the time. We get together with people, we produce children, then we fight, then we separate. All that melodrama of our lives. That is one example. It is all how we have been destructive to ourselves.

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0:04:49.3 We commit suicide, we torture ourselves, we punish ourselves, we are angry with ourselves. We declare war against ourselves. All that is the consequence of self-hatred. Who else is doing it except ourselves? Our attachment ourselves makes us do all kinds of things. We operate on ourselves to change our looks. We go under operation to change the color of our skin. We do so many operations and after a little while the person looks like – you can’t even tell who they are.

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0:06:36.5 That is self-destruction due to self-attachment. Michael Jackson is in such a thing that he can’t even come out, he has to be covered with towels and God knows what. He even thinks the children have to do that, so he has this baby covered with a towel. You can see it through the window. That is how the self-attachment is hurting ourselves.

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0:07:39.4 There are so many examples that our own negative emotions hurt us all the time. How many of us don’t get along well with our parents? How many of us won’t get along with the mother-in-law? Then the next is the mother. All of those destroy the peace in the family. And children, don’t forget, how much you love your kids and now how many problems you face with your own children – all of those come from nowhere else except within each and every individual’s self-destructive thoughts and emotions.

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0:09:24.3 How are going to take care of that? Many people will say: it’s not a problem, let it go. But you are not happy. You twist your body. That is a clear sign you are not happy. You can do nothing. You behave like you are hopeless and helpless. And that creates suffering between you and your children. We are getting trouble from both, yourself and your children. Or yourself and your own parents.

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0:10:48.7 So, we may say this is human nature. I will say that is not the case. It is man-made problem. We have to recognize the problem and deal with it. How are you going to deal with it? When your children are small you may beat them, but it is not allowed. When they are big, if you hit them once, they will hit back. Then what are you going to do? You can’t kill them. So the pre-emptive strikes don’t work here.

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0:11:58.6 You have to say: Good bye, Mr. Bush. Killing them first before they kill us doesn’t work here. You can’t apply that. So you have to go to Mr. Buddha and ask him, “What do you think?” So you know what Buddha says? “Have self-compassion”.

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0:13:01.1 You will say: how? I am angry, he is angry, my children are angry, how? Mr. Buddha will say, “That’s because you don’t understand. You are not getting it. Try to understand the situation, then have self-compassion”. Why are you angry? Because your son is not listening. You have brought him up since he was this small and fed him and protected him and now he doesn’t respect you.

0:14:10.9 DT

0:14:13.9 He is a shameless person. Yeah, from the parents’ point of view it can be true. The mother-in-law is different. She will say, “How did this mother bring the boy up? Terrible.” And the blame will go to the mother, not the boy. The mother will put the blame on the boy.

0:14:54.6 DT

0:15:00.9 The truth is that both are at fault, the mother and the boy. The mother wants the best for the boy in the world. Or the girl, doesn’t matter. The mother’s perception of the best in the world and the individual kid’s perception of what they want is miles apart.

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0:16:00.9 You don’t compromise, being stubborn, you try to drag the kids to where you want them. You try to reward them or punish them, you do all this so they reach the point where you want them to reach, never considering what they want to do for themselves. And vice versa too and that is the problem we don’t understand. And that is a lack of compassion. That is wrong thinking, lack of compassion. You don’t think the other one is a human being with thoughts, mind and body.

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0:17:34.0 They don’t think the mother is a human being with mind and body, but they think she is the mother, not a human being. Another point is that when they are small you tell them what to do and you never know when to stop. So these are the problems. And you are willing to go all the way no matter what it costs you, trying to get that person to change their minds, through strong ways.

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0:18:52.4 You are trying to count the weight of the love between mother and children. You are doing too far. People count on the love and affection between mother and child and you push them too far. It breaks the camel’s back.

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0:19:30.5 The stubbornness of the people takes up a huge room. No compromise. And then comes anger. Then hatred. The problem becomes bigger and bigger. Right? That is the problem of not having compassion. One simple example and there are millions.

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0:20:31.3 My problem is a problem. Who is going to take care of it? It is a problem that has to be solved. Who is going to solve it? My point is: if you don’t recognize your problem as problem, who will? If you don’t help your trouble, who else will? That is because you don’t have compassion for yourself. We in west are great to recognize the problem.

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0:21:38.7 We don’t sweep that under the carpet. In the East we do sweep it under the carpet and we cover it up. Here we try to solve the problem. And that is helpful to so many people. But what about ourselves? Since it is brief, I can’t say that much. On top of that you also try to solve others’ problems, but don’t know what to do.

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0:22:54.2 That’s because we never tried it for ourselves. You don’t know how much I can buy and how much I can sell. So you try to sell more, because you never tried it on yourself. Atisha said, (quotes in Tibetan),

When you think of yourself, you have a lot of suffering. You don’t have joy. When you think about that your hair pores don’t move, you have no feeling. So how can you expect to have compassion for others’ problems?

0:24:51.4 DT

0:24:56.6 That is and experienced, reliable guide who shared his own experience with us. If I don’t care about myself, how can I care for you? That is the reality. So when you don’t have compassion for yourself, you can’t expect to have compassion for others. It will be just a joke. It will be conservative compassion. You know what that means? When Bush was running for president he said that: I will be conservative on compassion. I am joking.

0:26:36.0 DT

0:26:39.7 What he really meant was: I will be conservative and have compassion. But what I am saying is that he thinks: I will be very conservative on compassion. That’s because you don’t have self-compassion. You don’t feel it yourself, you can’t imagine yourself being wounded in the war. You don’t think of yourself getting killed in the war. You cannot imagine the pain and the suffering and losing your loved one and dear ones, losing their lives. you cannot think that while sitting in the comfort of Washington.

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0:27:54.1 That’s why I said that compassion has become a buzzword. Anyway, we should not do that, so we must have compassion for ourselves, and if we don’t, who else will? Some people will think, “Oh, I am doing good service for others, I don’t mind whatever happens to me.”

0:28:35.5 DT

0:28:39.3 Yes, very good, but if you go down, who is going to do your job? It’s great that you do it but when you do down, who is going to do the job? What are you going to do? These are some reasons. There are zillions more. Think in your life, all right, meditate on your life. That is a more conservative, mystical point. Meditate on all your problems and how you are doing to solve them. How are you going to take care of them? Who is going to take care? I am in the habit of saying, “think”, but I should say “meditate”.

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0:30:10.7 We are also very good at giving advice to others. If anybody has a problem we are ready to take the position of adviser. When you yourself have problems, you don’t know what to do. One of the great Tibetan teachers, Guntang Jambelyang, said, (quotes Tibetan)

When your stomach is filled with food and there is nice sunshine

You are great dharma practitioners.

But when you are facing difficulties

You are worse than even thugs.

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0:31:55.6 That is the reality, why? People don’t know what to do. Then they go advising people and you know what advice can they give? There are great, good psychologists and then there are some psychologists who are so much driven, at the end of the rope and almost crazy themselves. That’s because you are not dealing with the problems in yourself. You don’t have self-compassion, you really don’t care for yourself.

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0:33:22.6 It is a careless, lukewarm personality. Ask yourself if you want to be like that? Your natural answer will be: no, I want to be good. Unless you are going too extreme and say, “No, I want to be bad.” Then you are going off. But naturally, a lot of intelligent people do that. The psychologists call them borderline personalities. I personally don’t know any of the abc of psychology. What I have been talking to you about is the meditative material that great Buddhist teachers have given for 2600 years to so many people and I try to put them into modern terms, with today’s examples and dealing with people’s lives today.

0:35:25.4 DT

0:35:43.1 This way of thinking is meditation. Burning incense, beating gongs, sitting cross-legged, folding your hands, these are gestures, not meditation. Sitting down and pulling your mind away from immediate activities, focusing on one thing and even counting your breaths, all of them are relaxation methods. It is very similar to listening to music. It is very similar to having entertainment, because your active thoughts are processing in one circle, one stream and forcefully withdrawing your mind and give yourself time to relax. For me that’s a tool.

0:37:58.4 What would you do thereafter? Thereafter, the experienced meditation teachers will then guide you to re-tool, to think in a different way about your problem, rather than spinning out. That’s what we call meditation. You can’t re-think if you are speeding through all those other thoughts way over there.

0:39:02.2 DT

0:39:10.1 So forcefully pull out and put your attention inwards, count your breath and settle down and in that way forcefully take the attention of the spinning mind away from somewhere and bring it over here and relax a little bit and then think. A lot of people do this. They do it for a lot of different purposes.

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0:40:05.4 For example, Silva Mind Control. Then you have hypnotism and all of them, because the mind is brought from actively spinning to a level of relaxation and a neutral position, and then any suggestion can be accepted if you not thinking.

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0:40:50.3 If you are brilliant or intelligent it is not easy to hypnotize you, unless the person cooperates and refuses to think anything else except what that person tells you to do. That clearly shows how delicate our mind is. That clearly shows how capable our mind is. That clearly shows the capacity of our mind.

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0:41:46.7 Skillful teachers can guide the mind from that level, when you begin to focus. Sometimes here in the West we have gone too far and don’t think by ourselves. The moment you have an opportunity to think yourself or you reach a dead end you begin to cry. Not only some people don’t cry, but are so sad and go into depression.

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0:43:08.3 Some depressions are so bad that people go crazy and even get institutionalized. Some are even worse than that and have to given injections and more. We all know this. This is not a mystery to us. It is happening right in front of our nose and we see it every day. That is the lack of self-compassion. If you have self-compassion, if you take care of your own problems you don’t visit there at all.

0:44:04.5 DT

0:44:13.9 This is Buddhism. Some people told me, “this is purely psychology”, but I don’t know head or tail about psychology. That is how Buddha taught us how to meditate. If you say that’s psychology, then fine, it is psychology. What’s wrong with psychology anyway? Anyway, that’s what I feel. Do you have a question over there? Go ahead

0:44:54.8 Audience: I have been reading the book of Sogyal Rinpoche about the Tibetan way of Living and Dying. He says you have to have a very good master to guide you. Where is that guide here for us? Another thing is when I see the pictures in that book I see Tibetan masters sitting devoutly at some lake in the Himalayas. But we don’t have that here. It is flat here, how does that practice work here in our reality?

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0:47:31.1 Rimpoche: To answer that question, I thought I had been giving that guidance from morning till now. I also thought we have provided instructions from time to time and giving you that guidance. I also thought we have senior students coming over here, giving you courses and lectures and all of them provide that guidance.

0:48:44.4 DT

0:48:51.9 I also thought that the Himalayas and the plains of the Netherlands are equally to the same standard and status of being part of Mother Earth. The plains of the Netherlands are equally good as the mountains of the Himalayas – equally cold too!

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0:49:44.6 Even though you don’t have mountains here you have the ocean. What’s wrong with the ocean? What’s wrong with the Netherlands? That’s what I am trying to point out here by saying we have a problem. I don’t want to get heavy on you but I think that’s the reality we have to acknowledge.

0:50:23.6 DT

0:50:39.6 The people in the Netherlands are as capable if not more, to become enlightened as those who are living in the Himalayas. There is no difference from the people’s point of view, really, honestly. Yes, we speak different languages, we look different. People in the Netherlands are tall, people in the Himalayas are short. We need a pedestal to get a hug around here!

0:51:48.0 DT

0:51:51.0 or to get a kiss or whatever. That is the difference. Otherwise, the mind is the same. It functions the same, it thinks the same. Anyway, those are my thoughts.

So where did we get to? Psychology or no psychology, if you treat that as instruction on how to meditate, then that’s what it is. If you treat that as transmission, then that’s what it is. If you treat is as a lecture or talk, then that’s what it is. If you make that practical in your daily life in Tilburg, then that’s what it is. Your daily life is what you do every day in your life and we have those negative emotions, anger, attachment, hatred, fear, jealousy, all of them will occupy and dominate our mind all the time.

0:53:58.7 DT

0:54:09.5 If you don’t balance and rebalance them with caring, love and compassion, then what are you left with? That’s exactly what I am talking about. I really try to take it away from the old, but true to the tradition, away from the abstract, but dealing with our everyday life, that’s what I am trying to do. I am really trying to deal with it, what we do in our daily life here in downtown Tilburg.

0:55:04.1 DT

0:55:13.7 If that is not dealing with our everyday life then I don’t know what else. I am sorry. Okay, shall we continue where we stopped? So these are the reasons I can think of to have compassion for ourselves. I hope you will change your mind. Will you?

0:56:04.9 Audience: I am busy with it.

0:56:04.9 Rimpoche: That’s very good, you can’t answer that overnight, you can’t answer that with one sentence, you have to think it over for a long time and that thinking is meditation. When you see that self-compassion is important, then you need to do know the suffering. There comes the First Noble Truth of Buddha’s teaching, the Truth of Suffering. We all have plenty of them. I don’t have to spend too much time on that. Each and everyone of us has so many of them here and there and at every different time. If not the mother-in law it’s the son-in law, if not him, then it’s the grandfather and do on. We have constant problems going on all the time.

0:57:45.2 DT

0:57:59.2 Even if all those are okay, there are sickness and illness. There is no end to it. As I told you earlier: you got rid of Hitler but you get other dictators, one after another, Stalin, Mao and so on, one after another they come in. Now Saddam Hussein is gone, but some new guy will come soon, who knows, somebody will come up.

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0:58:53.0 That the reality we are in. Do we have to be stuck with this or can we do something? The experienced people tell us: yes, we can do something. You can defend yourself from them. All the traditions have come because of that. The Judeo-Christian tradition has come because they want give help. The Hindu-Buddhist tradition has come because they want to share their experience. Everything, including new age, native American traditions, everything, aborigines, all of them have come because of that reason.

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1:00:09.0 Even scientists have come because of that reason. Scientific development is to help, to serve, not to control. These are the reasons why they are here. These are the reasons why you should have self-compassion. These are the reasons to have compassion for others as well. Exactly how I feel you will feel the same. That’s why you don’t hurt other people. In one of those small rituals called chötren they say (quotes in Tibetan 1:01:16.8),

Take the example of how you get hurt and because of that, don’t hurt others

That is the reason to have compassion not only for yourself, but for others. Now the question is: what is compassion? I am sure everyone of you have an idea of what compassion is all about. If we have a lot of time we can talk about, but I have to conclude soon, so compassion from what I understand is a mind that wishes to remove suffering from people including yourself. That is compassion.

1:02:28.1 DT

1:02:42.1 You Europeans should know better than me. The word compassion comes from Latin and even in Italian it is com pati. If you think on those lines you get the meaning, which is the combination of karuna and compassion together, in the Indo-European languages. What you conclude what you really get is that com pati goes to meat or flesh, we forget all these steps, there is a big step where it goes to meat or flesh and all that type of thing. When you think of reincarnation, that also includes the word flesh. Compassion is com patos. [Latin: to suffer with]. Okay, anyway, you people should know better than I do. That’s your language.

1:04:06.8 DT

1:04:19.4 I know the Italian meaning because the person who helped me to write my book is Italian and told me about com pati and this and that, and anyway, really at the end the message is this: the desire to separate the pain from the individual. That will be the bottom line of compassion.

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V 1:05:09.8 The bottom line of what life tells you and what Buddha tells you is the same. Wanting to separate my pain from me is self-compassion and wanting to separate others’ pains from them is compassion. That provides us the fundamental basis for our spiritual work. Why? Because how I remove my pain from myself and how I remove pain from others [is the same way].

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1:06:22.9 Pain and problems are not permanent. They are not born without cause. They exist because we have the conditions. We create the conditions, we create the causes and when the causes meet with the conditions the result appears. That is the reality. What is the cause? It is our confusion. Traditionally we call that ignorance. That means not knowing.

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1:07:45.8 But here it means not knowing because you are confused. It is confusion, ego-oriented, on the ego-grasping point. That is the real cause. So how do you solve that problem? With wisdom. That wisdom is knowledge. The knowledge that understands reality. The knowledge that solves the mystery of human life. That’s all wisdom. In Buddhist terminology it is called emptiness.

1:09:00.7 DT

1:09:03.9 That does not mean emptiness in the sense of nothing exists. It is empty of everything existing. (laughs), it has no inherent self-nature, it is because causes and conditions coming together. Solving the problem here means making sure that the causes don’t meet the conditions, making sure you knock all the conditions out. When the conditions are out, even when you have the causes, they cannot give the results.

1:10:20.0 DT

1:10:30.2 Or, if you don’t have the causes, even though you have all the conditions, there is nothing to connect. So that much for today.

1:11:03.8 I think that much, unless you have questions.

1:11:23.9 Audience: Yes, we have to look for the causes of the problems, but how to do that?

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1:11:53.4 Rimpoche: Meditation. Analytical meditation. Analyze the causes and conditions. Avoid them. Find out where the confusion is coming from. Is there truth in the conditions? Are we hanging on something which is not there? Are we dominated by something really heavy over there? These are meditations. That’s very simplified, there is a lot more. If it’s there, then how? In oneness with myself or separate from me?

1:13:22.4 DT

1:13:28.2 If it is oneness with me, that’s a very problem to destroy. If it is separate from me, why do I worry about it? Ultimately you are going to find that the huge problem we project does not really exist. When you realize it doesn’t exist then you begin to realize you have been totally confused all these lives.

1:14:29.9 DT

1:14:32.7 How do you know it doesn’t exist? Because it is interdependently established. It is dependent on parts and parcels, the combination of them, not a single, solid one. (Quotes in Tibetan 1:15:11.6) “Because it is interdependent there is no true existence”.

1:15:33.7 DT

1:15:38.4 This is called the King of Logic. Make it simple, you will see it. If it is really produced it does not mean it is independently existent. Take Jewel Heart. It is a collective thing. I am not Jewel Heart, you are not Jewel Heart, he is not Jewel Heart. If you search in that way there will be no Jewel Heart. Yet, collectively together, it becomes Jewel Heart, right?

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1:16:37.5 Think on those lines. These are the points to think about. That’s how you are going to find it. Experience is not enough over here. Why? Because experience can mislead you. You have to prove that your experience is correct. If your experience does not contract, if any intelligent, right mind does not contradict your experience truly, then your experience is correct. When it contradicts then it is wrong.

1:18:10.5 DT

1:18:24.9 Yes, spiritual development is experiential. But every experience is not necessarily reliable, just like memories. How many times do we see that our memory is wrong. In one instance, if you have ten different people watching together you will have ten different memories. That’s how the lawyers make their living. Really true, so in the spiritual path we have got to do the same thing. We get a lot of experiences. Sometimes when we get sick with jaundice we will see the snow mountains yellow.

1:19:51.8 DT

1:19:53.0 That’s our experience. But it is wrong. Sometimes when you get hit on the head you see a lot of stars coming down. That’s an experience but it’s wrong. Why? Because when there is no more effect of being hit on the head those stars are gone. When jaundice is over the snow mountains become white. So every experience also has to be tested, by you, nobody else. It is nobody’s business but your own.

1:20:58.7 DT

1:20:58.7 The best test is given by your own intelligence. That’s why I put so much emphasis on people to having faith. But not blind faith, but intelligent faith. These are the points that I would like to raise today. And as I said earlier, hopefully many of you are coming to that retreat.

1:21:50.3 I always make that point. Once a year I come here and try to do some Vajrayana and non-Vajrayana teachings so that people can get some of whatever I know a little bit. This is very good here for a 2,3 hour thing. But the real thing you are going to get in the retreat. If you are not so busy, to try to make it. It will make a difference to your life. It doesn’t make a difference to me, but to your life.

1:22:41.4 DT

1:23:11.8 Before we close, what did we do today, and what can you take home? We talked about compassion: compassion for ourselves, compassion for others and about what compassion means: to remove the pain from ourselves and from others and wisdom means that the big lie in our life is really a big lie. The truth is collectively existing, through conditions. People die because of the wrong conditions. People are alive because of the right conditions. You need to right balance of energies.

1:24:57.9 DT

1:25:06.4 When that is there the life force remains and we call it life. When those conditions change the life force goes from this body and we call that death. That is the reality of life and death. This shirt of mine is blue. If I keep on washing it, unless it gets torn, one day it will become white.

1:25:59.8 DT

1:26:03.0 So the idea of a blue shirt is mistaken. The idea of a shirt that right now has a blue color is correct. The blue shirt depends on the blue color and the shirt together. When the blue goes it is no longer a blue shirt. You know it, I know it, but we don’t think about it. That is how the blue shirt is emptiness. Nobody says there is no blue shirt, but the blue shirt is emptiness in nature.

1:27:00.9 DT

1:27:08.8 And if your white T-shirt gets mixed with a blue color in your washing machine then you have a blue T-shirt. Geshe-la’s robe, if you keep on washing it will soon become white, especially the upper one he is wearing. That’s a joke.

Anyway, thank you so much for spending your time and I really hope you get some idea of what wisdom is and what compassion is and most importantly, we must have compassion for ourselves. We must help ourselves. Otherwise, who else will do it?

1:28:13.8 DT

1:28:24.4 Nobody will help, except ourselves. God is too busy. Buddha has gone for lunch. Who else is going to help? That’s a joke, but the idea is that Buddha, God or whatever, the enlightened beings always want to help, but they can’t help if we don’t cooperate. A couple of weeks before coming here I was asked to do a Sunday service in a church for 2,000 people. I was supposed to give the sermon and I gave the sermon. The funny thing is that there is this traditional old Tibetan saying: The enlightened beings, even though they have such a strong compassion and want to help, they are throwing their compassion’s hook everywhere, but we are not giving the ring of faith. No matter how they are swinging their hook, they can’t hook in anything. But if we have intelligent faith that provides the ring for their compassion hooks.

1:30:33.4 And then they can help. But first we must provide the ring of intelligent faith.

1:30:46.7 DT

1:31:10.3 Thank you