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20030809GRALSR11

Saturday, 8.9.03 Last Day 1 session

Welcome to the closing session of the retreat. We are doing the White Tara initiation today, so I am not going to talk very long. Please generate a pure mind, particularly on the lines we have been talking about here the whole week. Pure mind in this case refers to the bodhimind, the love and compassion-oriented mind. Up to yesterday, we have concluded the method part of the teaching. This is about generating love and compassion and looking at all sentient beings as the closest, nearest and dearest, and caring for their well-being and benefit as much as for our own benefit and well-being. For the sake of all of them we would like to attain the fully enlightened level. For that we need long and healthy lives. That can be done in a variety of ways. In this tradition there is a way through the practice of deity yoga and in this case, White Tara. She is an absolutely special, wonderful, female enlightened being. She is almost the same as Mother Mary in the usual Christian understanding. You have heard all the stories a number of times. I am not going to talk to you much about this.

As I said last night, we still have to conclude talking about the mind. Yesterday we concluded the method part: developing compassion for yourself and developing compassion for others, particularly generating the bodhimind.

Today I would like to talk about the wisdom part, in a very short conclusion. If I make it too short, I may do a disservice to you. All this week we talked about what is mind, where does it come from, what does it look like, how do we know what it is, what can it do for us? The conclusion is that by understanding this we can make sure to make best use of our mind, which has unlimited scope. We can do anything.

One way to use this unlimited scope is to work for compassion and love. We touched on this briefly. But those who are in touch with me, listening to me, either during teachings in Renaissance Unity or in Ann Arbor or Thursday in New York or at any week end talk here and there, will hear that from me every day. Also those, who are not physically there can get the teachings on the internet. They are being replayed there for 24 hours after the first live broadcast.

Usually I do fewer wisdom teachings compared to compassion teachings, as perhaps by now you might have noticed. But since we are talking about the mind, how do we look at it, how do we handle it? There are a number of different ways.

Actually, concentration is extremely important. If you lose that you lose a lot. There is a way of focusing. Traditionally, in India, during the Buddha's time, there was a lot of art available. One of them was archery, arrow shooting. Another is sword fighting. So there was this outstanding master of sword throwing and an outstanding master of archery. They had a duel. The archer kept on shooting all his arrows. But no matter how many he shot, the sword man threw the sword around - or maybe he had two swords - like a wheel and cut the arrows before they could reach him. He never got hurt. Finally, the arrow shooter had only one arrow. If that one missed too, the sword guy would come and cut his head off. He was at a loss. At that moment the archer's wife said, 'Don't use your last arrow yet. Hold it, until you think he has seen me. Until then, wait.' So she went out in the middle of those two fighters, with all kinds of seductive manner and sat somewhere near the sword man. He lost a little bit of his attention and looked at her. At that moment the last arrow got him. While he was dying, he said the following words,

I have not been killed by arrows, but I was killed by losing awareness.

That is the example. Mindfulness, awareness, is very important for concentrating. How do we maintain mindfulness and awareness and alertness, while focusing on the mind? Remember, the definition of mind is: clear and lucid. We talked about what 'clear' really means from 3 different points of view. We also talked about what 'lucid' means. When you are focusing on your mind, how do you do it? There are 6 different ways. They are mostly taken from dohas and bahus??. These are Bengali poetry.

You don't have to do all six, but either of them will do. You are given a choice. This is the beauty of Tibetan Buddhism. It is really giving you tremendous choice. You don't have to have everything. If there is a lot of food, you don't have to eat vegetarian and non-vegetarian. If you eat all that food you will put on a lot of weight. Yesterday people pledged money for me to lose weight. I may have to return your pledge money, if you start putting on weight.

1. When you are looking at the mind, don't let it be under the influence of wandering and sinking, like clouds covering the sun shine. Let it be sun shine. Let it be without clouds.

2. When eagles fly in the sky, they don't have to put in as much effort as humming birds. They glide smoothly. The do it almost effortlessly, without flapping their wings. They just soar. In the analogy, if you put in too much effort into focusing, you can't sit. If you don't put any effort then you lose focus.

3. The waves of the ocean only have a little movement on the surface. In the depth there is not so much movement. The bigger the quantity of water is, the less the movement in its depth is.

4. If a small kid in a museum looks at a bright painting it will see the big picture, but not the details. But even if you don't see much detail, it is fine.

5. When a bird flies in the air it doesn't leave any footprints in the sky. Likewise, you should observe the mind and there should be nothing left.

6. When you shake a cotton cushion or cloth and put it down, it will settle. It will softly land. It is not like a football or basket that will bounce back.

These are the six different ways. So, it is good enough to see the general thing, like the kid in the museum. It is not necessary to see all the details. Hope and doubt will be a problem. It is important not to have so much hope and so much doubt.

By doing that, you will get to the nature of the mind. You will see that it is clear, lucid and pure. Now a number of people will consider that as wisdom. Gyalwa Ensapa and Tsong Khapa, however, insist that this is the relative truth of the mind, not the absolute truth of the mind. That doesn't mean that it is not a big deal. It is a big deal. So then we go home, to our home. On the basis of this relative nature of the mind you have to focus on reality. There is nothing better.

Let us look into the Three Principal Aspects of Tsong Khapa's teachings.

Interdependent appearance – infallible.

Emptiness – inexpressible reality.

As long as these two seem separate,

Buddha’s insight is not understood.

As long as the relative truth and absolute nature of truth itself are perceived as separate, you have not understood what Buddha was talking about.

Perceived simultaneously without alternation,

Seeing infallible interdependence

Destroys objective identity.

With this, the analysis of wisdom is complete.

There will be a time when you don't have to alternate between seeing the relative part of mind and absolute part of the mind. You will be able to see them together, not contradicting each other. That way you don't have the fault of extreme nihilism, nor the fault of extreme existentialism. Free of these extremes, by seeing the relative existence you will see the empty nature. By seeing the empty nature you will see the relative existence. When these two get together you see that cause and effect is something you cannot destroy. At the same time you also see the true nature of lack of intrinsic existence. When you see these two together you will begin to get the absolute truth.

Further, appearance eliminates the extreme of existence.

Emptiness eliminates non-existence.

Emptiness itself is cause and effect.

Understanding this protects from these extremes.

This verse is extraordinarily good. By seeing appearance it destroys the [intrinsic] existence. By seeing the void, it destroys the nihistic point. This is just opposite from the common way. Commonly you would say, 'He is there, because I saw him and he is not there because I didn't see him.' Here it is the total opposite. It is almost like counter culture. Here you say, 'It is not there because I saw it, and it is there because I didn't see it.'

This is an extremely important and difficult point of absolute reality. Even among the traditional Indian philosophical schools, Buddhapalita was the only one who really got this among all the followers of Nagarjuna. His followers split into two camps. Only Buddhapalita really got it, the rest of them had a so-so understanding. I mean, they are great, but not really on the point. For everybody existence was supposed to block nihilism and emptiness was supposed to block existentialism. But here it goes the other way round. I have no doubt that science is going to prove this one day, for sure.

Out of all that mind business, the conclusion will be to bring love and compassion to all and bring yourself to total enlightenment for the benefit of all others. That is the compassion part of it. What we have just been talking about is the wisdom aspect. The combination of these two will be able to deliver the goods of the body and mind union of enlightenment. If you like to have more mystical language, you call it the 'union of clear light and illusion body'. This is total enlightenment.

With that I would like to conclude talking about the mind at that level. Now lets go back to doing the White Tara longevity initiation.

End