Archive Result

Geleg Rimpoche Lectures

New York,

"Attaining Lasting Satifaction"

“Morality Today”

20060406GRNYALS

a.clark transcribing

(everyone: "May all beings have Happiness......")...And welcome here tonight, everybody. And (inaud. '?Angela?' #00:47-4#)...is visiting us today. And those of you who know , she sings the mantra , sings round, everybody knows her anyway , she doesn't need introduction. But I believe she also has new CDs coming , releasing through out. She asked me to come for the function on the 5th May, right? 6th May. But I won't be here, so I'll be in Europe , Jewel Heart Holland. So but if you're going to be here, go and listen. It'd be good to listen. And then I think my subject tonight ,aehhhh, my job description, I call our (inaud.?Kathy? #01:38-2#), you know, (laughs) my job description tonight says " Morality Today" . That's what it. "Making moral choice can be a confusing matter in to days conservative and fundamental climate." (laughs)...this is my job description, getting from the our program department."Reducing our negativity begins our development of all that is good." So , three moralities, I just read. " Refrain from the negativity causing harm. Two. Development of positivity (sic #02:46-5#) creating virtue. Three. Benefiting beings." "Advantage of pure morality. One: morality addresses negativity and the causes of negativity and therefore my suffering and the cause of my suffering," so I thought this little more woooo (?) stating, " two: morality bring spiritual development and help, help me move along the spiritual path to Enlightenment. Three: morality creates the ground to develop equanimity, compassion and wisdom. Four: morality makes me accessible to others and able to help others . Five: pure morality is one of the causes of precious human life." My job description is over. Besides that there's some mental faculties comes in. I don't think it belongs there today anyway. So , that's my job description. So it means subject what I have to talk tonight is morality today. So you have heard the division of the moralities , you have also heard the benefits of it. That's why I read it , so it makes it easier . Question really now rises is this: the morality. Is this something necessary ? #05:04-4# or something that we have to have it? Or , we all can be immoral. So, no one would like to be immoral. No one. I'm not going to see any hands. Is there anybody who is going to immoral? I'm not going to see it unless somebody else just wanted to make fun of it. Other than that, no one is going to raise their hand. So , therefore, four is not going to be , no one would like to be immoral. But morality is , I mean the , morality really counts a lot of the people thinks, a lot of people think morality may not be that important. Some people! But I really think it counts. It is so funny, I was talking with some body, some body yesterday in Ann Arbor, well I'm talking about morality , that person says , but jokingly, said, ' Republicans being too much hang ups , they don't have any sex. And Democrats have so much sex.' That's what this person told me. (laughs) But I don't think that is the issue here. It's not the issue, because the moment we talk morality, people immediately start looking at the sex or sexual orientations, or sexual preferences , or what ever. That's how we notice today. Am I wrong? Well I hope not. That's what I read. I think that's more or less that's how the people looking today. When Buddha is talking about morality, of course there's sexual part of it is one aspect, but this is much more than that . Morality is very , ethics and conduct of a good life is actually based on the moralities. There's much more beyond the Democrats and Republicans, who likes what and who has too much or has too little. It's going beyond that. One most important thing , what we know , what Buddha shared with us , three most important in our lives, in our spiritual lives , which Buddha's teachings are basically divided into Three Basket Teachings. Teachings about morality. Teachings about wisdom. Teachings about concentration, meditation, and so and forth. All of those. Basically three moralities. The sort of three baskets. And each one of those baskets, actually two baskets, that is the concentration/ meditation basket , or you may even call it , Abidharma, the metaphysical aspects of the basket as the , or the Abhidharma including (? Avisamaya #09:13-5#?) otherwise there would be a problem. So either the (inaud. #09:18-4#) ...Abidharma or the (?law?) Abidharma. Both of them. And wisdom. Both depend on the morality basket. So the morality issue becomes fundamental important for ones spiritual life. So it really counts and it's really extremely important . Now the question really arises, I say it's way beyond the sexual orientations and the whatever it is. And that is really basically virtuous activity and non, even virtuous and non-virtuous may be too strong a word for some people. Let me use a positive and negative. #10:18-3#

Ever positive deed and every positive karma is coming out of morality. Ever negative deeds and every negative karma is coming , both out of a lack of morality. So, as I said the other day, I don't know if I said it here or not, somewhere I said, the faith is the fundamental basis , Did I say this here? maybe not. Maybe I'm not (inaud. #10:57-3#) so. Anyway , so , I don't even know what I said what , now this , you know, so. Any way, the , oh, no wonder what happened, somebody pulled this. Thank you. I was wondering why this is too far. So , I said the other day, faith is the fundamental basis. (Tib. #11:30-3#) ....so the faith is like a mother who gives birth to her children. And then I talk about not the blind faith. Intelligence faith. I wish I remember why did I talk this. It's within the last week but I don't know where, so , anyway. Just like that morality is the real ground of all our spiritual development. Without which no spiritual development can really develop. So, morality really comes and it is important . And what is that morality? That morality really is keeping your own commitments, vows, in tact. What ever your vows and commitments what ever you have. So keeping vows intact and commitments intact. And that is really is fundamental morality is that. If you can keep your vows and commitments intact, then it becomes, you know what we say, preach what you practice. Right? We said that. Oh , the other way around . Practice what you ....Huh? (audience) ...Is that right? (audience) ....Why? (audience)....Huh? Yeah. Okay. Alright. So, the other way around. Okay. So that really becomes , it means true to yourself. To be true to yourself really means keeping your commitments, whatever your vows , commitments , and avoiding negativity, and building positivity. And that's why , basically, when division comes here, restraining from negativity, which means causing harm, causing harm to self or others. Self or others, is actually I would like to draw the line where the positive and the negative . It is very hard to say what is good and what is bad, as you know. We can , I used to talk of very often , what's good for Communist Chinese is bad for Tibet. And good for Tibetans is bad for Communist Chinese. I mean , this is and example. So I mean it's very hard to say the good and bad. We always say ' it's good, it's bad'. #15:11-8#

But on what basis, we say. Sometimes we even go too far . Good person, bad person. Where do you make the division sometimes. You know, sometimes I would clearly notice. Some people who agree with our political, spiritual , economic ideas we call that person good person. Don't we? You do. Very often we do. And does not agree with us we call them ehhhhh...I don't know. #15:52-2#

(audience laughter) Huh? We may not give them name but we don't call them good person. So the good and bad we judged on the basis of, on the basis of whether you agree with me or not. It comes to that point. Which can be very wrong. Which may be right, but it can be very wrong. If I like or if I'm addicted with a terrible activities, harming people, killing people, lying stealing , you can mention it ,anything. So who ever agrees with me , that becomes good. And who ever disagree with me , truely real good, at once becomes bad, because the person doesn't agree with me. Same thing with our administration policy. Who ever agrees with the Bushes , then they're good people. And who ever doesn't agree, then they're bad person. Which is the definition, (laughs)... I'm not going to let you say it, okay, go ahead. (audience: i was just going to say, and maybe you were going to get there , but i was wondering about something we talk about: tough love. like when you have a child or a friend or a parent who is got real problems and it would be harming them in some way if you say to them, you know, shape up , you can't stay here or whatever, um, throwing them out or whatever, but on the other hand you think you are doing it to help them. you're harming them allegedly in the short run , allegedly helping them in the long run,.... #17:59-2# GR: Well, lets be you're going into detail and then I have not reached that yet. I can talk to you that. Um. There are ways and means of handling that. Quite clearly. Quite clearly. But, we're not there yet. We're just at the general level of good and bad. So, yes this is one example. You are also giving us one example, true. And they're there. But it's very hard to make a decision on what basis we call it good and bad. This is a big moral issue , too. So, I try to draw a line where Buddha seems to be clearly telling negativities cause harm. Not seems to be , clearly stated negativities cause harm. So which means negativities are creating harm to the other person and the opposite of that , (inaud. #19:24-7#).....to self. So when ever, what ever , causing a harm is considered negativity. And what is harm , what is not harm, we could go talk that for hours. And that is different issue, altogether. But , hurt, if we cause hurt, if we start hurting people, including your self, and this is negativity. #20:01-6#

And I like to draw, I'm drawing right there , whether any (?inaud. ?teaching?#20:13-5#) ..that cause harm to any one including self I would like to say negativities . Vise versa, right? vise versa, if any (?inaud? #20:30-8#) cause help , self included, considered positivities. At least we need a place where we draw a line , where we draw a line, and I'd like to propose to take that line. Because otherwise you know, good and bad is such a thing that it's all truly it's a relativity, it's a dependent arise. It's a true dependent arise and that's why just like this side and that side, the expression of this side and that side is a purely dependent , we call that this side and when you walk across to the other side this side becomes that side and that's dependent arise. Just like that good and bad is becoming in our mind ' that's not right'. If you do that , you are losing the relative truth. We may become completely over powered by absolute truth and we are rising off the relative truth. So therefore for causing harm is considered definition a negativity. And morality, one of the first , Buddha divided three ways. The first division of morality is restraining from the negativities. It is interesting , if you don't kill anyone, just sit there and if you don't kill anybody, do we have pure morality of not killing? No. I can see the heads going round and round. That' s right. We don't have pure morality of not killing because we did not have opportunity to kill. And if opportunity arises and you have every possibility to kill and then you restrain and not kill, not killing , and saving a life , and then it becomes Karma , positive Karma of not killing, and positive morality, good morality. How ever, there is and exception. This funny, we have introduced. The exception is if you have taken any vows. If you have vow of thou shall not kill, that's the usual thing , you know , thou shall not kill if you have taken that vow, because of that vow , while you are sitting not killing anything, you still have positive Karma of not killing because of the power of the vow. That is how important the vows are. That's why people take vows. Vow is not just commitment . Vow is not just a promise note. Vow has that value. So that is why I said the perfect morality is perfectly maintaining our vows, whoever it is . Perfectly maintaining vows is the perfect morality. And a vow does have that power of doing nothing #25:21-2#

can be changing into the positivities. That's the reason why people take vows. Even though we may not be able to take vow of uh, what you call it ? Celibacy. However , there are lot of lay vows. What do we call it , Upasaka vows. (?Tib.? #26:00-5#) There are Upasaka Vows. Upasaka vow , there are a number of Upasaka vows, you know. Even, oh, forget it . I'm not going to talk about it. I'm not here to talk about it anyway. And Upasaka vow is actually lay vows. Lay vows. (Tib. words #26:34-9#) So there are like eight different self-liberation vows. And there out of that , five are the vow of celibacy, and three are lay vows. Upasaka vows. (Tib. words #27:01-5#) In addition to that , to that , that twenty four hour vow, that Mahayana vow you can take. So basically, there are four different kinds of vows. So if you take those vows , and there are ways and means of taking them, any way , the benefit what I told you where you do nothing , after taking vows if you're not breaking the vow , you're doing nothing, you may be having fun or eating your dinner and doing your chores or sleeping or whatever you do , it builds the virtues up. Constantly because of the vow. Just like we do a good investment in you know whatever, money market or whatever you do in this , and well when the money was invested and where ever you go , whatever you're doing , but the money keeps on working for you. And that's what it is, at least they advertise. So that's right. That's what it's supposed to be . And that, one who can do that , people may call them wise ,too. And one cannot do that , people may call it something else. So likewise in the spiritual path , the vows do that , real investment. Because it works for you. Twenty=four hours a day. Even you are sleeping or wandering or even drunk. Your vows, because of your vows , the virtue, unless you're not engaging in harming. Well, you may argue it's not doing this harmful for you , that's a different story. You can....Not yet. So if I started opening the conversation here, then I made exception for Elizabeth because she raised her hand there immediately , so. But if I keep on doing that then I won't be able to speak. So that is the restraining of wrong doing. And actually truly speaking by commitment, by giving a commitment, by taking a vow, thou shalt not kill, so then if you don't kill you have constantly, continuously having not killing vows . Same thing with the stealing. Same thing with the,anyway,ten negativities that we have. That means restraining from the negativities. Too, development of positivity #30:28-4#

You know I always say those six paramitas the generosity , morality, patience , enthusiasm , concentration, and wisdom. These are the tools of the Bodhisatvas. Bodhisatvas, when they do anything , these are the tools. So , like wise, we try to copy the Bodhisatvas. We are sort of Bodhisatva copy cat. We copy, really we copy what they do. And that's Bodhsatvacaryavatara. Bodhisatvas Way of Life is all about it . Copying what the Bodhisatvas do and try that we try to copy , hope to be taking the in their foot steps, that's what we do. So, the major activities of the Bodhisatvas are six paramitas. And each one of those six paramitas must have all six , I keep on saying that. The morality must have the generosity of the morality. Means very generous. Not be very conservative. Just like George Bushs' compassion. You know. Conservative compassion. Very conservative on compassion. That means conservative compassion. But , be, no, don't do that. Be very generous on compassion. And have a moral, morality. Morality of compassion. The question what earlier that Elizabeth raised will come under this category. Morality of compassion. Anyway, so you can think. I'm not going to deal with that just now. Ok. The question of , ok , let me deal with it , otherwise it doesn't make sense here. You raised the question. Ok, let us say , let me take a very drastic example. Sort of drastic example. The question where every body will say no , that is would you give money to a substance addicted, or alcoholic , substance addicted person in the street. If he or she asked. Think yourself. What are you going to do? Most probably number of people will think I like to be intelligent , I have wisdom , in my generosity, and therefore I should not give that money to this person because that person will simple use take additional drugs, that's all. We're going to think that way, right? More or less, we think that way. But then the question rises, if that person has terrible, terrible withdrawal symptoms what would you do? Terrible withdrawal symptoms could be life threatening . Would you be conservative or liberal? (laughs) That's the question. You have to answer your self . You have to see the consequences. Could be dying . Could be losing a life. It may become a question of saving that individuals life. Or maybe just an additional , unnecessary blow, what ever it is. #35:20-0#

That's why I said generosity needs wisdom. That's why I said morality has to be generous as well have wisdom. That answers your question, the same thing. Yours is very gentle, mine is a little more drastic. And second point, creating virtue or development of positivities is simply , I mean that's obvious, simply you are not entertaining hatred or anger. And then you do have , to me a great morality, great morality person should not be entertaining hatred at all. Hatred is negativities. Hatred harms people . Hatred brings violence. Violence brings violence. Violence kills people. You know that. So the great morality should not be entertaining hatred. That is morality. It may not be Mr. Bennets' morality, Bill Bennets' morality. Remember,during the Lewinsky period in ten days he wrote "American Morality" book. He wrote it in ten days and published it and came out in ten days and called and that is "American Morality", Mr. american moralitys' morality. So, what, Mr American Morality's morality will encourage us to develop hatred. But hatred is harmful. That to me is to me personally it is immoral. Not a morality. That doesn't mean we have to be a door mat either. Door mat who sits by the door and everybody walks over and moves their feet on it. We don't. The hatred is not only the answer, I mean hatred is not the answer for anything, for us. Honestly. Today we see almost hatred is the answer. The incident of 9/11 didn't help us at all. So , anyway, so what is really the answer ? I mean today I look at , we have , you know , whatever it is , you know we have constantly printing news today. If you look at that . We have so many enemies. The first was Isis, then we have Communism, we have dictators, and now adays we have terrorists. Right ? All of those, constantly, continuously, we have. What is the true answer for that? Does really hatred going to help us? Or protect us ? Is it really? The answer we saw all the time: no, no, no. #39:54-0#

It is always no because it creates more, any action that we take, hatred , no matter whatever we take, it creates more hate, more dislikes , more anger that becomes hatred , so we create more whatever , terrorist or enemy. So it's not an answer. We cannot wipe out of the world map every one who deserves...(laughs)... not possible. So it doesn't work. Honestly. Changing , that's the word, changing of minds, the "Tricycle" has a , a day called 'changing day' or something , right? (audience #41:04-6#) ...change your mind a day, yeah. So, whether, whatever it is ,but changing of the mind does help. Does help. No matter who ever any body who has a thought, who has a mind, whoever have mind, if you keep on beating up that person or that animal, you know it's a very clear example, our domesticated animals, like take a dog or a cat or something, tear it up, if you've been kind to the dog all the time, give it food , health, happy dog, do this, the moment you come in, moment you come back from the work, when you open your door, the dog will be wagging the tail will be waiting for you, and doing everything whatever the dog knows, stand up on, do what ever they know their dog will do that. Right? Yet if you keep on beating the dog, the moment you come near the dog open the door the dog will run under the bed , somewhere else, hiding some where and never come out. Right or wrong? So that is just one single clear message that we said people respond positively , nicely for the nice kind gestures we do. No one can change their mind under the barrel of gun. No one. You may say ' yes, yes, yes,' for the time being. But mind never changed. Probably from the mouth you say 'yes,yes,yes,' but from their heart probably say ' to hell with you'. Or maybe they're using F word. That's is what happens . Violence can not change peoples minds. They change even worse. No matter how, you know , this , I don't know whether they're saying English or not, we have a saying in Tibetan: no matter how big and huge elephant might be , even a small little ant can bite the elephants toe. The do. We have a saying. No matter how tiny it might be , they bite elephants toe. Maybe doesn't affect anything to the elephant, by one or two or three, but when there's a lot of them does affect too. So that's clearly violence, force cannot change. That really means #44:58-9#

hatred doesn't help us. Hatred is harmful. Proper morality should protect us from hatred. Maybe I should send this speech to Mr Bennett. Anyway , that is the second point. Is that quarter to nine already? Is it? How did that go? Alright . The third point of the morality here is of benefiting. That is , first one is not harming , second is helping. Helping, it says benefiting beings . Very Buddhist language. But commonly acceptable would be benefiting all human beings. And yes all living beings. So it is basic good human beings , basic human morality will demand that much . Not be harming , restraining from the harm, and helping. As His Holiness always calls that : kindness and compassion is universal religion. And that's the , that what it really is . So that's why I begin this conversation this evening , I said morality goes way beyond sexual orientations. (laughs) Sexual preference, whatever. Way beyond that. That's the way I begin my talk. Now you see when we talk about morality, this is, this is just very brief , very brief , what I have to throw here is just you know like you know a spoonful of whatever, barely flour, that would be Tibetan. (Tib. words #48:02-7#) I'm saying , you know, if I don't talk about it's Tibetan staple food because Angela may think she's wearing Tibetan dress, so she may think I've become non-Tibetan. That's joking. (laughs) So, anyway, so that is , this is really just teaspoon full of barely out of huge bag of about morality. But basically, what I want you to take home is what you already know. No one would like to be immoral Everyone would like to be morally perfect. Morally perfect means morally bringing positive, positive deeds, bringing positive deeds, avoiding negative deeds, are the morality here. If you have good morality of restraining from the wrong doings , that brings positive virtue within you, positively. That's the reasons why the traditional masters have encouraged to taking vows. l have a few seconds here so I can talk a little bit about the vow here. Although, I would just, can I say it in English? I was just joking,thought ask Anavella(?) #49:53-4#) did, are you Upasaka? Which means did you take the #50:00-0# Upasaka lay vows? See, keep on smiling at me and that's ehhh and that was the answer. So , and that was a nice answer. (audience laughter) and I would like to bring that up here , you know, because if you think Upasaka vow , the moment you use a vow you may think you have to be some kind of miniature celibacy, right? Celibacy. Miniature celibacy. In a way, yes. But on the other hand within the Upasaka there are five different categories. One is called (?yong tso gen yi? #50:49-8#) (repeats the words) That is the complete Upasaka, complete vow taking. The there's four type, fourth one, third one, second one , and the single one. I think the language is wrong, I mean really . I think we call it the single one, double one, triple one, and quadruple one. So means, they have out of the basic four negativities, one has taking vow of not engaging in one single. Like I said , thou shalt not kill. Or thou shalt not steal. Like that. You can take one only , or two only , or three only, or four only, or fifth. Fifth is intoxication, any way. Fifth is intoxication. Question is third , uh , you know I mean, shall not kill , this is more or less refers to human beings. But other animals and all are sort included, may not be full negativities, but second to the one comes in. That includes cockroaches, which now the spring is here so now the cock roaches are coming , right? So you can protect them right from the beginning before they came up what ever you know you have to do, if you can protect yourself against all this (?sprays ? #52:36-4#) but if you take them right from the beginning before the (inaud. #52:47-3#) and then you don't have to kill them during the,throughout the summer period. If you're constantly maintaining that . I used to do that in Delhi, when I was in Dehli. You know, in the middle of night I get up , come to the kitchen, you go srrrrrr (imitating sound) and thousand of them will go out of the way. So what I started then, there's no winter or spring in Dehli,you know it's just , there's no winter but before the spring is completed started taking the precausions, then is much much less and almost none, if you could do that. So that's my experience. So you don't have to really kill. Although, taking a vow , thou shalt not kill will be human beings. Directly. But. And thou shalt not steal. That you know. And then, what is it ? Lie. This is black lie. Not every lie. Those used car dealers are exempted. (laughter) Not their lie. I mean that is the , and this sort of black lie. Black lie is leading people a terrible way. Such as when you don't have any spiritual development you pretend to have it. And so you are really leading and all those fake gurus that you see around are included in this. (unclear: "that's a black lie"? #54:37-2#) Now the sexual misconduct. It's very simple. People may think it's very difficult. It's not at all. If you heard. If you cross the line , that is sexual misconduct. Simple , straight forward. #55:03-0#

So, that's it basically. And then intoxication. It's not just alcohol. It's total intoxication. What ever you get intoxicated, whatever substance you use, that is intoxication. That becomes, if you take all five, it becomes complete Upasaka vow. And then you have (Tib. words #55:33-3#) ...and then if you take the (Tib. #55:38-2#) that's the , on top of that there's another one ,sixth one, and then you can wear a monks robe. (Tib. #55:47-4#) So, anyway, so I don't know if that is any use for you or not and I just when I'm remembering I emphasize vows. So the moment , I was making joke with Anavela(?) but when she was sort giving nice long sweet smile that reminded me I should bring that whatever behind that because the peoples question of what it is , you know? So, that's I thought I'll bring that up, so basically what you again remind you to take home , morality is exactly what Buddha kept on saying, which I call "bus stop Buddhism". Avoid negativities, build positivities. "Bus stop Buddhism " is the sort of over all cover of morality. I've finished my talking. I promised you to allow you to ask questions. Go ahead. (audience asks: " when you take vows or you take precepts or whatever don't you also have an obligation for doing the positive acts so that for example with (inaud #57:33-3#) and you are an investor, you invest in a company in the stock market and that company acts in a way that its' (unclear word #57:44-7#) or its' behavior is harmful to human life or animal life , how far does that responsibility go when you,you know....") GR: ....take a postcard and walk near the company. (laughs) (audience. #58:03-7# "...you can't always know once you have the vows or ignorance...") GR: well, let us , I don't mean to be sarcastic but let us do what we know, let us begin from there and beyond what we know the more we know and we become more we each get it we will know more and we will find more solutions. Let us begin with what we know. Honestly. Lets let Elizabeth your second time.(audience #58:37-3# " i know , but i'm speaking on behalf of my neighbors and they all won't ask this question. some of my neighbors , um , we didn't hear the sex thing".) GR: What? (audience: " we didn't hear the sex definition. morality. they don't know what sexual misconduct is or sexual harm". ) GR: Oh, well , I did say don't hurt ,if you cross the line that is sexual misconduct. You heard that . Now, I'm glad you asked question that ,you know. If you hurt you've gone across, that's it. Looks like normal question and let me call it a day. Thank you. (audience: " By this merit , may I quickly attain the state #59:54-2# of Enlightenment......) ( end recording)