Archive Result

20051008GRGRFR4M3

4mind 3: 1.18 hours

Questions after discussion groups:

Audience: What is the limit of development that could be achieved by having faith in something/someone that actually does not have the qualities, such as the "Buddha's tooth"? Is faith alone enough to act as cause of development?

Rimpoche: In the story of the dog's tooth the old lady believed it was the Buddha's tooth and did a spiritual practice according to that belief. The practice she was doing was purification, prayers, circumambulations, prostrations, mandala offerings. She would have also done practices for accumulation of merit. The dog's tooth is a dog's tooth. However, once you open yourself up, then the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are always there looking for opportunities to help and serve. When they looked at the woman who believed that the dog's tooth was Buddha's tooth and they saw her doing sincere practices, they connected with that and the blessings of the Buddha were passed through - even though it was a dog's tooth. How big is the role that faith plays and how much reality of a holy object is there? I think faith plays a major role. This is not for you educated and intelligent people though. If you look at the Tibetan system, there are three categories of practitioners:

1. intelligent - they can analyze, think and gain wisdom by themselves with a little guidance and help.

2. medium intelligent- they can still analyze and understand and meditate, but they need a lot of guidance and support. This is actually true for you people too

3. not so intelligent - they can neither analyze nor understand, but they can simply pray. For them the faith works. You cannot deny the effectiveness of simple faith.

However, you cannot really rely on the simple faith. It is blind faith. It did work for that old lady. If she had faith only and if there were no blessings of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, nothing much would have happened. Also, even if she had faith, but didn't do anything to follow up, I doubt whether the faith alone could have delivered the goods. But her practices of accumulation or merit and purification along with the faith made it work. To sum it up: Will faith alone work? Probably not. But it gives an opportunity for Buddha, Dharma and Sangha to channel the blessings plus the woman also worked hard.

Audience: Please explain how the guru-disciple relationship can be established. How much personal interaction between guru and disciple needs to be there for it to work and is there a possibility for it to work if there is no personal one-on-one exchange?

Rimpoche: Traditionally, if a person listens to a teaching from a guru and if that person thinks, "I am learning from the guru" and if the guru also thinks, "I am teaching this student", then the learning of even just one word is considered to be the establishment of the guru disciple relationship. Sakya Pandita said,

The measurement of whether somebody is your guru or not is whether you have learnt one verse of dharma from such an individual. If you learn a verse of dharma from someone but don't consider that person your lama then you will take rebirth as a dog a hundred times.

It depends also on what kind of teaching it is. If it is really a teaching and if the teacher thinks, "I am teaching" and the student thinks, "I am learning" then that establishes the guru-disciple relationship. However, if the teaching has been presented as a lecture or dharma discussion, as a symposium or seminar, then I don't think it establishes the guru-disciple relationship at all. The motivation of both, the one who is giving and the one who is taking the teaching works that way.

Do you need a direct relationship between guru and disciple? That would be considered the best. But for example today there are large numbers of people including us, who would consider the Dalai Lama as our teacher. Do we have a direct relationship? No. Is he our teacher? Yes. That tells you something.

It also tells you that the relationship is actually established on the basis of the teaching. Some people think they have to have a very personal, private relationship and they start chasing the teachers around. If you do that, it is nothing but a pain in the butt. I am sorry to say that. Sometimes people go too far in chasing after the teachers and that is not so great. On the contrary, it can open the doors for other negativities.

The relationship really is the teaching. This has to include transmissions, whether oral transmissions or explanations. It also includes initiations. Sakya Pandita's comment which I quoted earlier may sound a little extreme, but it is a little hard to judge within the dharma thing.

Most of you here have been with me more for at least a couple of years. So it may not be wrong to say it here: The ultimate, true guru-disciple relationship is total enlightenment. When you become fully enlightened you obtain enlightenment in the mind stream of the guru. That does not mean that you lose your individual identity or your individual mind. I think it is just like space. You absorb into it but you still maintain your individuality. That individuality appears in the form of whatever yidam you are practicting, whether it be Heruka, Vajrayogini, Yamantaka, Guhyasamaja, Tara or whatever. Within space-like enlightened mind you maintain your individuality.

The relationship between guru and disciple is very deep. It is not a matter of one session or one retreat. It is not even a matter of one life. Disciples always consider the guru to remain there as guru, whether they are living or whether they have passed. This is very deep and especially when you get into vajrayana it gets much deeper and more profound. The guru is considered almost like the creator of the mandala. The guru creates the mandala of the yidam. Within that mandala the individual disciples are being initiated. Within that mandala we practice. Within that mandala we obtain total enlightenment. Within that mandala we function in order to help and serve all other sentient beings. It is a very, very big thing - perhaps one of the biggest things possible. I cannot see anything bigger than that. If you look from that angle it is very vast and very profound.

We read in the lam rim tradition about the relationship between guru and disciple. There are stories here and there. We learn about the points of benefits and advantages and disadvantages. These are simply talking about the mundane level. But I think the relationship goes far beyond that in a very profound way.

This is not so much about the guru as an individual. As Kyabje Rimpoche has said it is about the guru as representative of the enlightened beings, as the representatives of the enlightened society. It is like a bridge between the enlightened and the non-enlightened. Like we said earlier: it is like the magnifying glass that collects all the sun rays and begins to bring the spark onto the collected hay. That is the deeper meaning behind it. It is not really about a magnifying glass, sun rays and a heap of hay. It is something very profound.

I don't see any other relationship as deep and profound as this in the human dimension. We consider becoming engaged and married a very big thing. But this goes very much beyond that. And it goes for life after life.

Maybe I am absolutely stupid and know very little about it, but you can see in the Christian tradition that the nuns say that they are married to God. You can look at it from the point of view of celibacy, but you can also look from another angle. Maybe it is part of the mystical tradition in Christianity. I don't really know. I am just thinking aloud.

It is not about a single person who is teaching. It is about the whole enlightened society committed to helping the individuals. For example, this morning I read to you that Buddha Vajradhara had committed, "I myself will take care of you. And if I am not doing it through the gurus, then through who else?" The individual guru is a vehicle for the enlightened beings to work. You cannot say that the guru is not doing anything, but the whole enlightened society is behind it. I might have mentioned something like that in the Chittamani Tara teachings, because there is a commitment of a guru yoga there.

The idea is that you visualize the guru in whatever form is prescribed by the ritual but you think that it looks like your own root guru. Some people have a number of different gurus so what you do is to think that they are all included in one being. All of that is possible because of this idea: that Buddha Vajradhara is the real guru. And that appears as the yidam. We call that gyal wa kyab dag dor je chang. It is almost like a creator. We call it manifested, but to say it straight forward: it is created.

Audience: It seems that according to the Mind Only school of Buddhism, faith alone should be enough. But in terms of the madhayamaka the achievement of the Buddha's mind would be a dependent arising and therefore could not come through faith alone. It would have to faith plus a competent guide plus the lack of obstacles plus effort. All these factors have to be there. Am I on the right track with these thoughts?

Rimpoche: With your second remark you are on the right track, but the Mind Only school does not accept that faith alone can deliver you enlightenment. The Mind Only school does not accept external identification of the individual, however, they accept mind as inherently existent. Whatever is inherently existent is very difficult to change. In the Tibetan tradition, whether you are nyingma, kargyu, sakya or gelug, everybody is thinking within the madhyamaka view, and that also within the system of Nagarjuna and Buddhapalita. The Mind Only school does accept full enlightenment, no doubt. But I don't think there is any Buddhist tradition that thinks faith alone can deliver the goods.

Audience: How does a student know they are on the right track and not make dharmic errors?

Rimpoche: Everybody makes dharmic errors. Whether you are on the path or not, you have to check with your own mind. A lot of people will think, "I couldn't do my daily practice for a while, now I am distant from dharma." I am not saying that you shouldn't do your daily practice. I don't want to accumulate the negativity of people not doing their daily commitments. That's not what I mean at all. But my honest true opinion is this: when your mind is influenced by dharma, even if you are not doing any formal practice at all, you will react differently. If something big happens, wonderful of horrible, you will be looking at the dharmic source. You will gain understanding and you are dealing with it.

That means you are still on track. You are not going fast enough on the track, but you are still on track. The Buddha Dharma is such that it is very hard for any one to get off the track, no matter even if you decide completely to go in the opposite direction. Even then it is very hard to get off the track. This is because it is extremely effective. Buddha's teaching is such that it really penetrates into the mind stream of the individual. Somehow it leaves something there, even though you may think you have abandoned it completely.

There are a number of examples I remember. When I was young there was one very well known incarnate lama. At the Tibetan government festival he was sitting above me. There were three or four of us: Domo Geshe Rimpoche, myself and Serkong Rimpoche. We had to be sitting together. Next to me was Domo Geshe Rimpoche. On the other side was Mang gam O ser Rimpoche. He went to India in the early 50s. He denounced Buddhism completely and became a Christian priest. He made his living in India by doing physical work. He used to pull jeeps and cars.

Ribur Rimpoche belongs to the same native area as O ser Rimpoche in Mang gam. Ribur Rimpoche went especially to India in 1956 to see O ser Rimpoche and try to bring him back. There are long stories in between. I can't get into it. But at the end of it, no matter whatever O ser Rimpoche pretended to be, he not only turned out to be a perfect Buddhist but also a perfect vajrayana practitioner. His reincarnation now has been selected by the Dalai Lama and seems to be a very effective young incarnate lama, very good in giving divinations and very active, now in his late 20s.

So it is very hard to get totally off the track. You may do better, that is always true. You can always do better anyway. There is no limit until you become fully enlightened.

Audience: What is the importance of visualizing the guru?

Rimpoche: A few years ago I was in my living room, playing with the remote control on the television and suddenly there was an announcement on the television on one of those channels. It was one of the Harvard professors saying that the best way to learn is to visualize. I thought to myself, "Hello, we have known that for 2600 years and you call that a "discovery"?" Don't we say that a picture speaks more than a thousand words? A visual image makes a great impact on the consciousness. We know that. The visualization techniques are originally vajrayana techniques. You learn the techniques through visualizing. One of the purposes of vajrayana is to cut out the ordinary perception and the ordinary appearance. Ordinary appearance is acceptable but perceiving these ordinary appearances to be true is considered a negativity in vajrayana. That’s why we talk about purity, the pure vision of the pure deity, the pure mandala. This begins by visualizing the pure state. The visualized state then becomes reality. Therefore visualizing the guru becomes extremely important. It is the external guru connected with the internal vision of the guru. This then becomes your own guru, your own practice, made by you for you, yours only. That is how you create it.

This is not only true for the guru but also for the yidams. In the lower tantras you visualize the yidams in both ways, front visualization and self-visualization. In the higher tantras you visualize yourself as the yidam. To make it work, the material you use is the visualization of the guru and the guru devotional practice. Therefore, in my opinion, it is extremely important. Perhaps it is more important than the external, physical guru. Milarepa said,

While I am sleeping, I am meditating. I have a wonderful teaching here. I wish everybody could have this. While I am eating I am making a tsoh offering. I have such a wonderful method. I wish everybody could have it. While I am sitting, I have the guru on my head. I have such a wonderful method, I wish everyone could have it. While I am looking at the palms of my hands, I have the guru on my hands. I have such a wonderful method. I wish everyone could have it.

Milarepa of course was not carrying Marpa on his head or on his hands, nor was he carrying around his picture. It was the visualized guru who became reality.

Audience: What processes did Tsongkhapa use to know when to stop disbelieving his visions and take them serious?

Rimpoche: Well, I did mention it: first, when Tsongkhapa had visions of the 35 Buddhas on the mountain tops and the visions of Manjushri and Tara, he totally ignored them. Then he got word from one of his teachers, Lama Umapa, that the visions were real. First you see visions as just visions. Later you begin to talk to the "hologram" appearance over there. You ask them tough questions that you know the answers of. Then it is gettting more and more profound. Before Je Tsongkhapa had direct contact with Manjushri, Lama Umapa was acting as a translator or postman, delivering messages back and forth between Manjushri and Tsongkhapa. Many of the answers were already available, but Tsongkhapa checked and re-checked whether the answers were correct. Only then he decided to take teachings.

Not only Tsongkhapa did this, but a great many masters in many traditions had visions. I had correspondence and blessings of one old monk in the Dagyab area. Everybody told me about Joke Lama Yeshe Wang Dak. He was known as Lama Yeshe Wang Dak. He used to live in a hilly remote area in Dagyab, Eastern Tibet. He had a lot of nun-disciples. There more monks too, but more nuns and lay people. He had a retreat area where he stayed but he also walked around and gave teachings. During his teachings a lot of deers came and listened too. So the monks and the deers started pushing each other for space. At one time one monk got even pushed over a cliff by a deer and died. Normally they didn't hurt each other, but rushed there together. I think there were even more deers than human beings listening to Lama Yeshe Wangdak's teachings. I had correspondence with him and received blessings from him, but I never met him.

Dagyab Rimpoche, who lives in Germany now, did meet him a number of times, because he is the head of the entire Dagyab province, a mini Dalai Lama for the Dagyab province. Just last year I asked Dagyab Rimpoche, "What about this Lama Yeshe Wang dak?" Dagyab Rimpoche said, "Oh I can tell you about him." At one time, being the head of Dagyab, Dagyab Rimpoche issued an order that Lama Yeshe Wangdak should appear before him. So he actually came and met him. Dagyab Rimpoche asked him a lot of questions and he replied, "Well, let me ask Tara tomorrow and then I will let you know." Any difficult points, spiritually as well as mundane/political/economic points, Lama Yeshe Wang Dak would consult Tara about. He promised to get all the answers by next day.

For example, Dagyab Rimpoche asked him whether he should go to Chamdo on the invitation of the Chinese. The Dagyab government officials had decided not to go. After asking Tara, Lama Yeshe Wangdak's answer was, "You should definitely go." So he went. So this lama had a person to person relationship with Tara and she answered many of his questions. And no one has ever claimed that any of the answers had ever misled anyone - not only on the spiritual path, but even in the mundane political and economic field, including family matters.

However, there are also wrong visions. The "three channels-purified" visions are not easy to get. It requires a tremendous amount of spiritual standards of the individuals. "Three Channels Pure" tells you that ordinarily, the three channels are blocked. The energy cannot flow through the right and left channels, because there are knots. If the three channels are pure it means that the knots have been cleared. That is not simple and can only be done in two ways: one is at the time of death, which is a physical process and the other is during meditation. There are those masseuses who may tell you that they open your heart channels. I don't know what they are talking about. They must be doing some external kind of thing. But I don't think they can truly open the channels and chakras. If that is so easy, why aren't we all enlightened?

That is the mystical, vajrayana aspect. From the sutra aspect, you look from the angle of the five paths, where the first two are the path of accumulation and path of action. The path of action itself is divided into four: Heat, Peak, Patience, Best of Dharma. At the patience level you have pure visions. At that time the images talk to you. You can have conversations with the images, that is if the images are properly consecrated. That is even possible in the non vajrayana tradition, pure, straight forward sutra path. At the patience level you can have pure visions. There were a great many teachers who tried to punish some of the dharma protectors. They would take the images down from the altar and lash the images and talk to them. The visions at some point become reality and you converse with the enlightened beings.

Audience: Please share some personal experiences of guru devotion with your teachers.

Rimpoche: The number of my gurus has continuously increased over time. Now I have thirty-four. In some cases it is questionable, whether I have to consider them as guru or not. I have been very, very fortunate, when I look back. I have had a great many masters. There were publicly well known great teachers like Kyabje Ling Rimpoche, Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche and Kyabje Lhatsun Rimpoche. Also my own father Demo Rimpoche and then Locho Rimpoche and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Then there is my own private teachers who are not so well known in public but who spent 24 hours with me, giving teachings. Particularly there was my first teacher who was a great being. He really kept me and sent all the attendants away. As far as my incarnate lama status is concerned, my own estate from my previous incarnation did not amount to much, but from my father's side I had quite a number of retinues. After this teacher took me in he sent away all attendants, including my nanny. I was three or four years old. The nanny stayed for a while near by, because she was not allowed in the monastery. She stayed in my cave, not too far away. I must have been crying at night, so this teacher would take me to the corner of the balcony, and from there I could see the light in my mountain cave and he would say, "Your nanny is there". He really became very kind for me and I became extremely devoted. That doesn't mean that I didn't get angry at him. I got angry a number of times. He couldn't help it, sometimes he had to beat me. I don't know what I did at the time, but after a while I decided to give him pay back. When he was standing there barefoot, beating me up, I started pissing on his leg. That was my way of pay back! I still remember that.

Those of you who know me may agree: I have no quality, but I don't really get angry. Anger and hatred is something very far away from me. I don't get it that easily -though I scream and yell sometimes. I have had to do that occasionally in my life, otherwise I become a whimp. Sometimes I might have done it a little too fast.

I did receive quite a lot of beatings from some teachers, especially from the one who taught me the technique of speed reading of Tibetan books. Now I completely forgot, but I used to be quite good at it. He beat me up quite a lot, and after some time I even forgot to get upset or angry.

I appreciate all of these teachers and try to look at them as enlightened beings. That doesn't mean that I don't see their faults. I had one teacher who lived with me who taught me the debating. Living with me was not so easy in those days. We were in a tiny little room with two beds. I was sitting on one and he on the other. He was there all the time. And he never slept at night. He was always dressed up and sitting on the bed. He never lay down and slept. He read books all night, except sometimes he did fall asleep. To be able to read at night he had a butter lamp and then, if he fell asleep his head would come close to the butter lamp and he would burn his face in different places. He would wake up, shouting "OUU" and that would wake me up too.

Then some other teachers of mine would sleep all the time. But to me there is no difference, whether a teacher is known as "His Holiness" who comes with retinues and banners and trumpets, or whether it is somebody who sits next to you and tries to teach you. It is the same. I always try to build an image of the guru in Vajradhara form or Tsongkhapa form and think that in reality each and every one of my gurus are there. They are one, they are separate, they are all in this. That is how I maintain my relationship with all of them.

Also, almost every one of my teachers has been extremely kind to me, particularly those well known teachers and those who were living with me, for sure. I felt free to talk to them any time. Sometimes I would get scolded, but not so many times.

Locho Rimpoche gave the Guhyasamaja teachings in Garrison last year, and I was sitting there with Za Choje Rimpoche next to me, a young incarnate lama. Za Choje asked me after a while, "Why does Locho Rimpoche respect you so much? When I was studying in Drepung with him, we young incarnate lamas were tormented by him. He was always scolding. Here he listens to you and laughs. How come he respects you like that?"

But all my teachers were like that to me, including Kyagje Ling Rimpoche and Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche. Except one time. Normally, when Kyabje Ling Rimpoche came - and the same goes for Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche - I would try to help them and hold their hand and they would lean on my and walk around. One day in Dehli I tried to do that with Kyabje Ling Rimpoche but that time he twisted his body away from me and indicated he didn't want to talk to me. I followed behind a little bit and noticed his manager was giggling a little bit. I followed him for a while to the railway station and bowed to him and then he said, "Don't come and see me until you have shaved your moustache!" So he didn't like the moustache. I had kept that for some months, and it was growing quite slowly, because I don't have strong beard growth. Anyway, I went home and shaved it off immediately and came back and saw Kyabje Ling Rimpoche. He said, "Oh, now it is okay." And after a while he said, "I was not really upset with you, but His Holiness the Dalai Lama does not like it if you wear a beard. So if he sees you he may get upset and I don't want you to go through that. I thought I better tell you first. "

I was wondering what I had done wrong! On the other hand, when I fell from the monkhood, neither Kyabje Ling Rimpoche nor Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche showed the slightest hint of displeasure. None of my teachers did. Instead, many of them started to support me. [laughs]. Lets not go into that. Normally it is a great disgrace to give up the monkhood. So my teachers have been extremely kind to me. I can almost say that I have total devotion to each and every one of the teachers from whom I have taken even the slightest teaching of dharma at my own request. That includes teachers from the nyingma tradition, sakya and karyu tradition as well.

Okay if there are no more questions, lets eat. You can make any kind of prayer as food offering. It doesn't have to be an external display. In most of the guru yogas you dissolve the guru to your heart. Then, every food that you eat, if you have blessed it, you can use as a feast offering to the guru in your heart, who is also in the nature of the yidam and in fact in nature all buddhas, yidams, dakas and dakinis - the total refuge. Eating that way is probably the best thing you can do. It follows Milarepa who said, "Every food I eat becomes the tsoh kor, the food offering to the guru. I have such a wonderful method, I wish everyone could have it."

If you don’t want to do it this way, you can also visualize all the Buddhas, gurus and yidmas in front and then bless all the food. Blessing means three things: purify, transform and multiply. The inner offering blessings will tell you that. OM AH HUM represents that. You are making that essence offering in your visualization and you can also use the left overs in your blessing.

We have a prayer that we can say together:

Buddha the peerless master, dharma the peerless protector, sangha the peerless helper - may we make offerings to the three precious protectors.

You can say it quietly under your breath. Don't say it loud. That becomes show biz. If you do that your practice becomes a show biz and that's is not so good.

Bon Apetit

end of 4mind3