Archive Result

20051210GRMLLLR18

If you don’t dedicate, your virtues can be destroyed by anger. 0:00:12.6 Chinese translation So the dedication will guarantee it’s not wasted. Chinese translation Why? Simply, the characteristic of the karma is such that the karma created for a purpose will not destroy whatever you do until the result is given. Chinese translation That’s why it’s a safety measure. Chinese translation Now you may raise the question, ‘Alright, karma is definite, so nothing whatever you do, what am I purifying?’ 0:01:15.4 Chinese translation It is the same thing. Non-dedicated negative karmas can be purified. Chinese translation Because they don’t have safety measure. Chinese translation And no one dedicates negative karma anyway. Chinese translation So that’s why it’s purifiable. Chinese translation And that includes seven limbs Chinese translation and that is the fourth or fifth prerequisite. Chinese translation

And the next is making strong supplication and requests. Chinese translation Actually there are special prayers for it. 0:02:23.5 Chinese translation However, we use mantras. Chinese translation Like OM MUNI MUNI MAHA MUNIYE SOHA. Chinese translation Oh I remember there are two different ways of saying it: OM MUNI MUNI MAHA MUNIYE SOHA or MUNI MUNI MAHA MUNAYE? SOHA. Chinese translation The Locho Rimpoche came to Jewel Heart in the United States and insist you have to say OM MUNI MUNI MAHA MUNAYE? SOHA because 0:03:06.9 Locho Rimpoche says ‘I don’t know anything about Sanskrit and this and that but 0:03:12.6 Khunu Lama…’. A great well known Khunu Lama Rimpoche who is great Sanskrit scholar and Tibetan Buddhist teacher and who passed away many years ago but Khunu Lama Rimpoche insist you have to say OM MUNI MUNI MAHA MUNAYE? SOHA rather than OM MUNI MUNI MAHA MUNIYE SOHA. 0:03:33.7 Chinese translation

Khunu Lama Rimpoche is Indian not 0:04:01.0 [inaudible- shizang?]. Chinese translation He’s from the Kinnaur side Indian thing and he said Indian speaking person and sort of he lives in Varanasi among the Indian sadhus who don’t even know. Chinese translation Then other mantras I’m not going to even explain. Then you know supplicating and praying and all those. Chinese translation Ok that completes prerequisites. Normally, lot of people call it 6 preliminaries. It’s not preliminaries. If you call it preliminaries and you think ‘Oh that is for those people who don’t know anything, they’re supposed to do, not for me’. 0:05:21.1 Chinese translation And also it is very important, major practice within ourself, really major, daily practice, that’s what you can do. Chinese translation

You may have to think ‘What do I do? I just simply go and pray, put a joss stick, and then pray or is that the one? Or what am I supposed to do?’. So your answer is here, that’s what where you begin, that’s what where you do, this is the our- not preliminary- prerequisite. This is where you begin, this is where you start, this is what you continuously do till you become a buddha. So not even a prerequisite, it is a major thing you can do. 0:06:32.5 Chinese translation If you want to know, look in any Buddhist Tibetan or non-Tibetan, even look in Chinese tradition, you have the offerings and they call it incense offerings or all of those. You do have it, I mean everywhere you look you have. You may not have all 6 or 7 together but you have one here, one there, one here, one there, you’re going to find all of them. The advantage of the Tibetan thing is they put them all together, make a simple little thing here. 0:07:28.4 Chinese translation The organizers keep reminding me I should give them opportunity to ask questions and answers so we have about 25 minutes or so, so if you have questions. Chinese translation

Audience: May I ask a question with regards to killing? Say, if the house is invaded by white ants, so you know, we do not want to kill and yet if we do not kill, as you say sometimes Buddhism is contradicting. So if we really do not want to kill, the house will be destroyed. If we kill, what should we do? Should we just say prayers or mantras or how do we practice?

Rimpoche: Thank you. That’s what I’m talking right now, the purification. Right now I’m talking the purification. We keep on saying ‘We’re human beings. We do make mistakes all the time.’ As a matter of fact, we have to make mistakes just to survive, ourself. It’s very unfortunate. Killing a white ant or red ant or insects is sometimes becomes absolutely necessary and that is again noticeable. We notice and we hesitate and we may have to do it but then there’s more than that. Not noticing, not knowing. Let’s say we drive a car on the dirt road- how many insects we are going to smash under the tyres? And as we eat vegetables, when we harvest the vegetables, when we’re growing the vegetables, how many insects? Each one of those, the ground that you pick up, turn it over- how many insects?

And when we’re eating meat, it is the flesh of some living animal. That is the real flesh that we are cutting and eating. So every deed we do, everywhere we have this. It is unfortunate, that why the Pure Land is great. We should all be in Pure Land but unfortunately we are not. And that’s why we have this purification. Apply by four powers, purify. As I said earlier, when you kill someone, you cannot bring back life. However, at least we promise not to repeat, for the time being. And the promise we break and in particular in a tropical area like this. I mean the insects are everywhere and if you don’t take precaution, you’ll be completely swarmed by the mosquitoes and you’re going to have all kinds of disease and all illnesses, no doubt about it. So you got to take all these precautions. There’s no way.

I used to live in Delhi earlier. It’s full of cockroaches, so much so that when you come from upstairs, your bedroom at night, goes in your living room, goes in your kitchen, turn the lights on, whole cupboard, whole floor is covered with cockroaches. Suddenly they will disappear with the light on but you know, so what else you use? You use DDT powders which is bad for you, which is bad for everybody and we did not know the DDT is totally bad in the United States 20 years ago but in the third world nations, the DDT is the only thing they use. So we really make a bomb out of the DDT powders and throw. And so we try to take precautions way before the summer begins. We try to disinfect and do all that, it becomes less. However, completely avoiding killing is not possible and that’s why the purification is there. That does not mean you can take advantage of it and then do that either. You can’t help it.

Audience: Rimpoche, if we are meat-eaters and one way of overcoming it is, as Rimpoche says, is to purify. But purifying has one element of regret and promise not to do it again so how do we solve this problem or dilemma?

Rimpoche: Very good question, really very good question. Very good question. At least, during the period of purification, we really sort of regret and brings the repentance. Then we keep on breaking it again. That is our human nature. What to do? It’s human nature. You’re right. Once we make a commitment, then you should not eat it, you should not do it. But then our habits is such sometimes even the requirement of our physical body is such. So with regret, you have to eat again. Honestly. It is regretfully. I’m not trying to use diplomatic language here. But it’s really true. So that’s it. There are a lot of helpless points are there but you know it is the Buddha who says there is negativity, it is Buddha who says you can purify, it is the Buddha who says these are the ways of purifying so that’s what we’re counting on. 0:16:31.4 I don’t think we have satisfactory answer but that’s it.

Audience: Rimpoche, is it right to say that if we have to kill for food, it’s better to kill a big animal, one life to feed many mouths rather than many lives to feed one mouth?

Rimpoche: Good question. I don’t know the answer. [Laughter] The reason why I say that is because there are certain teachings that say the bigger animal you kill, it has bigger negativities. Certain areas they’ll tell you the more you kill, the more negativities. Both seem to be true so I don’t know the answer for that. Tibetans have old answer and that is, they say by eating meat alone does not have negativity because the animal did not get killed for you and that is true to the old Tibetan economic system. It’s true. Because meat market’s not such a big thing. Mostly it’s ordered, ordering. When you order, you order how many yaks- four, five, thirty, fourty, whatever. So every animal that’s slaughtered, they become sort of this slaughter for the family of that and the persons of those and they really becoming truly killing for that particular family, particular person, particular that thing. And that is very heavy but if generally you’re buying, they killed already anyway generally you’re buying doesn’t have negativity that much. That was the old answer.

However, in the economic system what we are in today, it’s a demand and supply. The market economy, economisation what we have is demand and supply. When there is demand, whether it is for A or B or C or D but it’s for the demand. So therefore, it is almost like ordering earlier. So today’s economic system is say demand and supply relationship that really makes this not an excusable just by saying it’s not made for you. That’s my opinion. 0:20:09.0 But there are a lot of this type, you can’t help it. That doesn’t mean you can’t help it means completely ignore everything. That’s also not good but with awareness, and make best use of it. And way to make best use of it, there are a lot of answers from the various places they give you.

Mostly, in the Vajrayana tradition, the food is changing into some kind of practice. Like Milarepa says, 0:20:56.7 Sa sheng sa sheng… Milarepa says ‘While I’m eating, I meditate. Whatever I ate, it becomes great feast tsog offering and I have such a great method but others don’t have. How happy I will be if others have it’. Milarepa also says 0:21:33.0 Nye sheng nye sheng… ‘While I’m sleeping, I’m meditating. Every sleep I change into clear light. I have the method, others don’t. How happy I will be if others know how to do this.’ And there are a lot of those type of things. So these are not really applicable for us at this moment but hopefully, they will be. Very straightforward on the karmic level. Simple, straightforward. Answer what I give you earlier, it is almost helpless situation, hope for the best. Any other questions anybody?

Audience: Rimpoche, I have a question about rejoicing. You said that rejoicing is the best investment in getting merits but should we be in a situation where we are able to do something good but we sit back and hope for others to do that and we rejoice, should that be the case or should we do it on our own?

Rimpoche: Always better to do our own. The rejoice is bonus. It’s bonus. Additional thing. It is the icing on the cake. So the actual cake is the real or own personal efforts that we put and then you can put the icing on it. And that is the bonus plus everything so here, we’re short of merit in order to develop bodhimind and that’s why they give this method. Sort of really, that’s how it is. 0:24:24.0 Ok? Get it? Ok thank you.

Audience: Rimpoche, you touched about commitment being and then if you can, then you invoke the wisdom being. First, can you elaborate a little bit about the wisdom being. Second, at the end of it do you dissolve the wisdom being before you finish your practice? Thank you.

Rimpoche: Thank you. The commitment being over here, as I said, the Buddha or whatever we have imagined and the wisdom being is the actual Buddha’s mind, actual Buddha’s self and why do we invoke and all of those, there’s a lot of questions and sometimes even unsatisfactory answers such as we invoke although wisdom beings are always there, we invoke that. Invocation is done to satisfy rational mind. The rational mind could even say the same thing- invocation is also done by my mind, nothing else happen. You can easily say that but these are the traditional answers. The true reality really is the enlightenment level, at the enlightened level, it’s unlike us.

Mind and physical functions same way. Mental and physical functions same way. In our cases, our mind doesn’t have physical, actual, physical limitations. The walls doesn’t block us, distance doesn’t block us, for our mind. We can sit right here, right this moment keep on thinking downtown New York, Manhattan or you know New Delhi or Tokyo or Beijing or whatever Amsterdam. All of those, without any limit. But physical, there’s a limitations. You can’t travel but at enlightened level, mind and body becomes one and therefore, there’s no limitations. So whatever the mind, when you pray and invite, what really the enlightened do is they think about it, the moment they think about it, they’re there. That is what I believe the wisdom invocation means.

And so, the last question what you said- finally what you do, dissolve it or not. Practice such as this, almost all practice have a dissolving system but over here, it is endless sort of bottomless thing so we just dedicate, nothing more but whatever you do, it doesn’t matter. We may think well we’re making them wait, it’s not a question of making them wait, they’re waiting anyway all the time, really, truly. But creation of mandala is a different story. Mandala’s created and the person is supposed to be focussing on the mandala until you dissolve, if you lose the focus and then maybe breaking the mandala. So that’s why dissolving coming up quickly everywhere in the mantra creation, mandala creation system. But in this sort of thing, if there’s not so much dissolving things come in and also there is not so much advantage of dissolving here. Advantage of the dissolving is actually the mind to be building, training the mind to be able to touch with the original sources. That doesn’t really apply much in sutra teachings so that’s why it doesn’t come up much I think. Thank you and my usual expression here is we have to close the shop. The shop will be reopened tomorrow at 10am. 0:30:06.1 Chinese translation