dzongsar jamyang khyentse rinpoche on "parting from the four attachments" (seattle 2011)

PARTING FROM THE FOUR ATTACHMENTS { zhen pa bzhi bral } If you are attached to this life, you are not a true spiritual practitioner. If you are attached to samsara, you do not have renunciation. If you are attached to your own self-interest, you have no bodhichitta. If there is grasping, you do not have the View. ༈ ཚ་ེའད་ིལ་ཞནེ་ན་ཆསོ་པ་མནི། འཁརོ་བ་ལ་ཞནེ་ན་ངསེ་འབྱུང་མནི། རང་དནོ་ལ་ཞནེ་ན་བྱང་སམེས་མནི། འཛནི་པ་འབྱུང་ན་ལྟ་བ་མནི།

PARTING FROM THE FOUR ATTACHMENTS ... part 1/15 (zhen pa bzhi bral) by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

I am assuming that most of the people come here to hear this so that one way or another, this becomes a help to their spiritual path and practice. In this case then it is important you listen with a proper motivation. Of course if you are here only to observe;

and if you are here just to increase your knowledge on some of the Buddhist thoughts or if you want to fulfil so...me of your curiosity, you are still very welcome but then in this case you have a different kind of motivation. But for those who are seeking some kind of spiritual path, then it is important that you have the right motivation. The right motivation to hear the teaching is… some sense of having a right value, seeing the value of the dharma, and within this context, at least on the intellectual level of revulsion or if not, some kind of seeing the futility of samsaric value, the worldly value. This is important as a cause for listening to the teaching. And then if you are pursuing a higher path such as the Mahayana path, it is important to keep in mind that you are listening to this, not just to liberate yourself but liberate all sentient beings. So this is traditionally which is required and also for the practitioner, very important. Not only you listener but the expounder of the teaching, myself, such kind of motivation is important. Now as Rinpoche requested me to share some dharma. As said again and again in the sutras, to read, write, explain, hear, contemplate, even to have a dharma text in our dwellings is so important in the degenerate times. So in this regard we are very fortunate that even at this age and time we find ourselves. We put so much effort in listening to the teaching. So this should be considered very auspicious and this is due to the request by Rinpoche. As Rinpoche requested, these two days we are going, I'm going to share little bit of knowledge and the teachings that I received mainly from the Sakyapa masters, choosing the subject of “zhen pa bzhi bral” or "Parting from the Four Attachments". This is almost like a signature teaching of the Sakyapa lineage. It was first, even though “zhen pa bzhi bral” or “Parting from the Four Attachments”, is considered purely a Mahayana path, it was actually discovered by a great tantric master, Sachen Kunga Nyinpo in his vision or dream. He dreamt of Bodhisatva Manjusri and Manjusri spoke these four statements. I think easily a Nyimgmapa would consider this as a treasure teaching. Later on, Jetsün Drakpa Gyaltsen, another great Sakyapa master, also composed very practical and enlightening commentary. This is a text worthwhile for you to explore if you have time. And then much later, Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo also had a very clear summary of the teaching of “zhen pa bzhi bral”. This is something that is easily available these days. But as you will see, the “Parting from the Four Attachments”, just like the “Four Thoughts of Gampopa”, is very practical and easy to remember, yet all-encompassing instruction. And theoretically speaking it is also, you will notice that “zhen pa bzhi bral”, or the “Parting from the Four Attachments”, really gives you the Mahayana path in a nutshell. So I repeat: “This is a Mahayana teaching. This is not a Tantric or Vajrayana teaching although it was first invoked by a great tantric master”. Even though the author of this “Parting from the Four Attachments” begin with ༈ཚེ་འདི་ལ་ཞེན་ན་ཆོས་པ་མནི།,"If you are attached to this life, you are not a true spiritual

practitioner". We begin with this. I think it makes sense to actually talk a little bit about the last point, འཛིན་པ་འབྱུང་ན་ལྟ་བ་མནི།, "If you have grasping, you do not have the view".

Because I think it is important for us to know, as a dualistic human being, as a human being who is packed with emotion. We always like to know what it is, what is there in it for us. What will this do for us. I think, beginning with, if you will have attachment to this life you are not a true spiritual practitioner. And then going on, if you are attached

to samsara, you do not have renunciation. If you attached to your own self-interest, you have no bodhicitta. All of these make sense if you see the value of the last point, which is “If you have grasping, you do not have the view”. Other than that, why should we abandon attachment to this life. That's ups and downs. Yes, we have problems in our life, but many times we also enjoy our life. There are lots of things going wrong in our lives but a lot of times, everything goes right for us. Similarly, why should we abandon attachment to samsara? The lives that we have. Again, it is good to have friends, it is good to have companions, it is good to have a goal, it is good to get graduated from good schools. And then why not? Such interest is the most important. Even the Buddha himself said, “You are your own master. Who else can be your master?” This is what Buddha himself said. So what is wrong with attachment to oneself? After all, isn’t that the only thing that we have…the self, me, myself? So this is why I think it is good that we begin with exploring on what do we mean. What do Manjushri mean or Sachen Kunga Nyinpo mean by “If there is grasping, you do not have the view”. Why do we need the view? Of course, right view. It all boils down to do what is it that we want? What is it that we are looking for? … ultimately, and also relatively, but more ultimately. One can say, it is safe to say, no matter who you are, we are all looking for some sort of happiness, some kind of satisfaction, some kind of fulfilment. This is what we all want, from the smallest insect to the largest animal. This is all what we are looking for. Of course the definition of fulfilment or happiness differs, depending on the circumstances and situation. For the small insect, probably, a mere, meagre one-bite of food to get by for a few hours, maybe a satisfaction. All the way to very sophisticated kind of satisfaction. The definition of satisfaction: such as collecting stamps, if you are able to collect stamps, and “obscurer” stamps, the better; or climbing Mount Everest. All kinds, all of these are happiness, fulfilment, satisfaction; the definition of it differs with everyone, every being. Every being has a difference. And because of that, all religions all kinds of endeavour on this earth, science, technology, political systems; all of these, one way or another, you can say, they are all designed to bring some kind of satisfaction, some kind of happiness. They are all designed for that. At least, that is what we think they are designed for. Now the Buddhist or the Mahayana answer to this… this pursuit, this endeavour is…as long as you have the wrong view you’ll never be satisfied. And you know, there is something else. Not only do we want to be satisfied or happy, we are also looking for some kind of permanent, long-lasting happiness. Permanent, unchanging kind of satisfaction. Unconsciously or consciously, that is what we are looking for. And if that is what we are pursuing, definitely, as long as you have the wrong view, you will not really manage to get that kind of everlasting satisfaction or happiness. So this is why the view, having the right view is utmost important.


So now the next question is what is the right view? Before we… the right view, as taught in the Madhyamika, or as taught in the Mahayana, sutras and shastras. Even though the actual view itself is so simple, the simplicity itself has become a challenge. It is so simple that our emotional and intellectual mind might not be able to accept. So for this reason we end up havi...ng all this long-winded tools and methods and gradual leading towards this right view. The absolute right view, because it is so simple, it’s so difficult to express. This is a bit like this. If you are to explain how salt taste to someone who has never tasted salt, you have absolutely no way to make this person understand how salt tastes. So the only way you can do is to give this person sugar, and some other non-salt stuff. And then each time, you tell them, “This is not it.” And this list of “This is not it.” is basically what we call Śrāvakayāna, Pratekyabuddhayāna, Bodhisattvayana, Mahayana. Of course, all the way to the Tantrayana. As the great Nyingma master, Longchenpa said: “When a person point with a finger, pointing at the moon, many end up looking at the finger instead of the moon”. So in the process of leading the people into the right view, the challenge is to lure them, the challenge is that the technique and the method to point at, pointing at the right view always ends up distracting them from the right view. This happens a lot. But now to make it practical. You know, "zhen pa bzhi bral" is very practical and I should try to keep that spirit - practicality and simplicity. To begin, what is wrong view? Obviously, everything that we think valuable, such as praise, criticism, gain, loss. All of that if you contemplate, we know. For instance, praise - if you contemplate carefully, we know, we will find out that it is very futile. Yet, we get so manipulated, manipulated, influenced by a small word of praise. Criticism, similarly if you contemplate, as Shantiveda and many other great Masters have advised us, again and again; if you contemplate, criticism, really it is futile and essence-less. But we make such a big deal. From a very small criticism, could create long-lasting depressions and loss of confidence, so on and so forth. So if you look at so-called worldly values, thinking that criticism is so important, not to have criticism is so important, longing for praise. These are wrong views. And as long as you have that, you are not going to be happy. You will never have a fulfilling life. And this you have experienced many times. How many times have we had praise. In our lifetimes, how many times have you been praised by others. Many times, but it is never enough. Actually we have not been criticised many times. Because many times we don't encounter people who are brave enough to criticise us anyway. Because they have their own selfish motivation. Not necessarily out of compassion or kindness they will not criticise you, but they have an agenda to praise us. So many times, actually in our lives we get little criticism but mostly we get criticised in the teachings by our teachers. But because we put such a value to this criticism as something to be avoided, we have suffered a lot with one or two basically and occasional criticism. Similarly - attention. We put so much emphasis on attention from the people. We long

for attention. We don't wish to be ignored. But if you contemplate on this, this is also very futile. Many times, for instance, the things that we humans think, you know, manifest – for instance, the modern world puts so much emphasis on individual rights, space, right to express, so on and so forth. In pursuit of these individual rights, we ended up alienating ourselves. Because you are, you have worked so hard to establish this right to be alone. So, finally, you are kind of successful. Everybody's getting the message and then allowing you to be alone. And suddenly you get alienated and you feel lonely. Then you need attention. And when you are looking for attention, usually you want attention from someone who has mind. And that is not so bad, if this thing has only mind but no mouth, or if they have mouths, but speak a different language, such as barking; if they are barking or whining, that is fine, because we don’t know what they are saying anyway. So we kind of decided; yes, I think he likes me because he is wagging the tail. We actually don't know whether that's true. But, the majority of the time, we like attention from someone, not only who thinks, but who has mouth and worse, someone who thinks quite excitingly. That is really inviting trouble. Your partner is like a lump of meat who, occasionally, grants a few words here and there. It might not satisfy you. So then, you like to stimulate yourself will the partner’s hobbies, and what he or she read or not read, or what kind of tools he or she use, what kind of outfit he or she wears, whether he or she shaves or not. All these have become important. And we will know that this hasn’t really brought us a long-lasting and ever-lasting fulfilment. Many of us, we have changed our partners, probably more than changing our underwear. Still we are looking for this soul-mate. This happens many times. So now we realize that putting, making such a big deal out of this; this is really not the right view.


So then we move on. Okay. Now we’re looking for the right view. Remember, Manjushri or Sachen Kunga Nyinpo said, “If you have grasping, you have the wrong view”. And what’s wrong with that. If you have the wrong view, you suffer. You go through pain. And we are now at the moment that we are establishing what is the right view. To do that we first explore what are the wro...ng views. Then, we contemplate again and again, and we realize that actually it is not these worldly, externally worldly things that exist in this world …friends, families money, power, political system, I don't know, traffic system, the house that you live in, the neighbour, the country that you live in. Actually, externally, really it is not that there is something wrong with these. Actually, fundamentally, it is...there is one fundamental wrong view, and that is cherishing oneself.

And we are going deeper than something, we are going much deeper here when we are talking about the right view. If there is one self, then it is understandable to cherish that. But from the Mahayana point of view there is no self to begin with, to cherish. The notion …me, I, is a total imputation, is imputed towards things that are transitory, ebbing, drifting, fading, deteriorating, every second, every moment. When we call our self me, I - what are we looking at? What are we pointing towards? We usually point at your body, your feeling, your perception, probably your consciousness, and your activity - what you do. And if you look at these, none of these have a truly, solidly existing entity. Body is changing, decaying, falling apart every second, every moment. How our body used to be ten years ago, is not how it is now. Same thing, our feeling - how we feel, this morning when we get up. Maybe a good mood., but for no reason now, bad mood. Maybe in the afternoon it will be good mood again. Our mood, our perceptions, our feelings, our value, we used to be very fond of and certain, I don’t know, certain political systems. Now, towards the end of our lives, we may detest the political systems. Everything, nothing that we think remains the same. So who is this me? When you are looking at this me, when you are contemplating and try to find out who is this me? You will not find a solid entity or substance you can refer to as me. And yet and yet, clinging and cherishing the self is the strongest emotion we have. So, once and for all, we need to deal with this. You see many of the things I'm telling you is coming straight from Shantideva’s analyses in many of his chapters in Bodhicharyavatara. You know, you know how we get annoyed - by a temporary deception. For instance, like you expect so much to see somebody and from a distance you see a scarecrow. You get so excited that there is at last a person there. You rush towards the scarecrow and for your disappointment you see ragged clothing hanging from some stake. And then you get temporally disappointed. It has taken time, it has exhausted certain amount of your energy. But the deception of the self and clinging to the self is much more serious than this. It is as futile and as illusory as the scarecrow as a human being. But this illusion of self is going to, and it has been ruling ours all the time. Even as I speak this might mean some kind of intellectual sense. Yes, if I look at my toes, I can’t find myself. If I look at my lips, I don’t find myself. Where is myself? As Shantideva thoroughly analysed it – bone is not self, blood is not self, vein is not self, head is not self, and so on and so forth. If you go through all this, yes, intellectually, it makes some kind of sense that there is no self, but try to skip your lunch today. Immediately, the power of the self; not only skipping lunch, but skipping lunch is not so bad. After skipping lunch, be with your usual annoying friend, who will annoy you much more. So this deception of the self is even as, myself, more than half a century, I have sort of been “marinated” by the Buddhist lamas and blessed, but, even as I speak, my intellectual mind kind of believe that is no self, my emotion does not believe it. It's really difficult. At least, at least we know what is the wrong view. To really think that there is a self is a fundamentally wrong view. As long as you think that is a self, truly existing, that is a wrong view. And if you think like that, like a torrential rain the emotions will come. All the reasons for the emotion to pour. This is one way to establish the right view. And then, lastly, do we stop there with the right view? No,

actually not. Okay, earlier, we have developed that gain, loss, criticism, praise; yes, to see them as very valuable is the wrong view. So intellectually, we kind of, at least intellectually, accept that they are not that valuable. And now we think that there is as a self, truly existing self is the wrong view. We kind of intellectually accept that; at least, intellectually. But are we finished here? This is the last one: (Tibetan sentence) Bluntly speaking, if you think there is no self, and if you are grasping that there is no self, you have no view; any kind of grasping. As long as there is this notion: “This is it”, you have no view. In other words, when you attain enlightenment, and if you think: “ Ah, finally, looks like we have reached there”. Looks like we haven’t made it because you thought “Ah, finally..”, because there is a grasping. In the Mahayana sutras and the shastras, the path to non-grasping is taught very, very extensively. In the Mahayana, mainly this is established through analysis and analogy and lastly, quotations of the sublime beings. Analyses such as Seven Chariots Analyses by Chandrakirti: Where is self? What are the relationship of the self with the aggregate or the form. Are they one, are they separate, are they independent? Which one is the container? Which one is the contents? So on and so forth. Through this kind of analysis, we come to the conclusion that there is no self, truly existing self. My stress on truly existing self is something to be, you know, highlighted. Because relatively speaking, there has to be a self. There has to be, even as we begin teaching, I said, we should all have the right motivation: to get what? To get enlightenment. There is a self, that is trying to shirk off samsara and awaken to the state of nirvana. The analogy is like the…there are many Mahayana analogies and examples. Like a rainbow, for instance, a certain amount of sunlight, moisture and angle of sunlight, rain and also the distance from you and the rainbow. When all of these causes and conditions are together, there is something called rainbow. Beautiful, intact. Colours and shapes are not chaotic. It’s all very ordered, dimensions with breadth, everything intact. But clarity, its colours, its vividness, its intact sort of order, none of them makes the rainbow truly existing. When the causes and conditions are there, it appears to me there. That’s how the Mahayana sees everything.


When you're looking at me, when I am looking at you, as we sit on this chair, as we are underneath this ceiling, this ceiling, this noise that we hear - all of these are just a temporary collection of all gatherings of few or lots of causes and conditions put together; and then there is a phenomena called us, teaching, listening, noise - that's all

there is. That is the analogy in the Mahayana. And the quotations of the sublime beings are infinite. If I am quoting Buddha, let's call from Vajracchedikā Sūtra, Buddha even asked his disciple, in fact, the so-called mediator of the sutra, Subhuti. You know, the Vajracchedikā Sūtra is almost like a dialogue between Subhuti and Buddha. And after about how many pages, about forty pages of discussion between the Buddha himself and Subhuti, Buddha then asked: “What do you think, Subhuti? Do you think that Buddha taught?” And then Subhuti said, “No, you never taught.” And Buddha said, “Excellent, that‘s it. I never taught”. Such kinds of statement goes on. Buddha said, “If somebody thinks Buddha is beautiful with thirty-two major and eighty minor marks, this person has the gravest misunderstanding of all. I think, towards the last stanza, he said, {Tibetan}, those who see me as a form, those who hear me as a sound, they all have the wrong view; so and so forth. The right view is established. Now I know this is not really the right moment but just as a reference. In the Tantrayana, (there's a painting upstairs, Tilopa and Naropa), in the Tantrayana, without relying on the analysis, analogy, or probably even the Buddha’s quotation, but totally relying on the trust from the student and the skill and wisdom of the teacher, the right view can be introduced through mundane act such as hitting somebody’s head with his own shoes. This has happened a lot. In fact this house that which we are dwelling right now is partially the lineage holder of a person who got the right idea, the right view after been hit by a shoe. But that's Tantra. We are not going to talk about that here. It is not the occasion So this is a brief jumping towards the last stanza, (Tibetan) “If you have grasping, you have no view”. I wanted to introduce you this first because there's a saying in Tibetan, “If a businessman, if a business person, doesn't see a profit in something, there's no point of doing business”. You have to see what is the profit? What is the point of doing business if you don’t see the profit? Likewise, dharma practitioner must see what is it that they are aiming for? Or what will they get out of, you know, not having attachment to this life, not having attachment to selfishness, so on and so forth. So this is why I briefly visited the last stanza, the last line, which we will come back again and again in the course of our discussion of the three other points. Now, if we go back to the first one, (Tibetan), “If you are attached to this life, you are not a spiritual practitioner”. I will try to give you some picture of this instead of explaining. My very good friend, Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche…once I went to see him and he has this old Buddha statue. You know, you could say like fourth-century, fourth-century antique. And in many - not, not so much now - many Tibetan lamas have this kind of old relics. When I went to see Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche, he was busy. First he was polishing with a sand.., what do you call, sandpaper? Sandpaper. You know, me, someone who is so attached to this life, immediately, “What are you doing? You are ruining the value!” You know, anyone, the antique dealers – they love to have it as old as possible. There are actually in Kathmandu and many different places in Kathmandu, they have even a technique and even a…what do you call it… factory that makes the new statue looks like old statue. There's even a recipe I used to actually know it…some lemon juice,

tomato, soya sauce also, I think you have to put it, you have to bury it underneath, you know, stuff like that…basically make it look old. And here he is polishing it with sandpaper and then painting gold. Looks completely like any souvenir shop, you know, those, you know like Indian, very kitschy Indian, you know, Ganesh statue with overly painted, you know, shining. He made that. What a lesson. Because the real value is this is the Buddha’s statue. This is what Nagarjuna said, (Tibetan), “Even if it is made out of wood, a Buddha’s form should be respected as the Buddha himself, and that is far, more important than seventh-century, fourth-century. That is very this life. You know you are attached to this life. You know, thinking in terms of, because you see the statue of the Buddha in many monasteries are basically considered as an asset. That’s wrong, isn't it? They are not assets. Not at all. They should never be considered as an asset. And similarly all the things that you see in the monastery – silver and gold-plated cups and bowls for the Buddhas, offerings - they are not asset. If you are a Dharma practitioner, if someone blatantly in the daily-light situation takes it, you should be closing your eyes and in fact rejoice. That's how it is. Grasping towards this life. Let me tell now this famous story. Je Kadampa, student of Atisha Dipamkara, I think, was told by the master, “You should practice Dharma”. He thought, okay, chant mantra or something Iike that. After a few days, the master came, “You know, you should practice Dharma”. Then he thought, okay, maybe, you know, circumbulate stupas and do this kind of thing. Again the master, after a few days, came, “You really should practice the Dharma”. So this went on…like he tried like retreats, he tried pilgrimage, he tried to do meditation; even meditation, can you believe that? Even meditation. He really sat long time. Finally he gave up and said, "Look, I tried everything and you keep on still saying must practice dharma, as if I haven’t been. So what do I do? The master said, (Tibetan), “Give up attachment to this life”. “ If you are attached to this life, you are not a dharma practitioner”, and by the way, this statement is big. This statement is really, really big. I am the best example for not being able to do this. Really I'm not being humble or doing anything. I'm actually taking a bit of a chance to confess this. Monastery - I always ended up thinking it is my asset even though sometimes I feel like selling all my monasteries. Who knows who will buy it. More likely I have to pay people to buy it. Centres, disciples, you know, disciples, the patrons – they are all asset. Terrible! They’re all in your address book - the names, their e-mail addresses, their personal numbers, twitter numbers – it doesn’t matter, whatever. They have to be within reach; sending them birthday cards, “Goodness, gracious” This is all coming from attachment, because you don’t want to lose contact with them, isn’t it? So that one day when you need, I don't know - a potato peeler? You call them. Do you have that? You know this what I do. I have all these people from every corner of the world. I actually need to send them just a postcard. Once in a blue moon that also, and it is because, the thing is this. Maybe I give you my secret away. This is how I think. They have the ego. They love themselves so much. So as long as they have this weakness, I will have no shortage of my business. In fact I really don't want them to crash their ego or selfishness. If they do, that will be it. Spiritual, what do

you call it, inflation? What do you call? So, you know, you just say “Hi”, or something; you know, it really makes them so happy. But I also don’t want them to invade me all the time. So I also lose myself in the midst of pretending that I am busy, you know, I'm not available – but whenever I need something, just send something and they always do something for you. The disciples are asset. All of these have become asset? This is what I mean by attachment to this life. This goes on. I don't know whether you really like to hear all of this, but… And once in a blue moon, I actually think of practicing Dharma. But even that is so convoluted, mixed and stained by attachment to the self, I mean, attachment to this life. Majority of my prayer and aspiration, I have found myself praying for, you know, long life, my own long life, good health. That's a big chunk of attention to this life, isn’t it? Very, very seldom, I think of enlightenment. Even more seldom is the enlightenment of others. Who cares about others? Who cares? Just myself. But that is very, very seldom. Only when you, you know, I don't know, I have to say this is the power of the words of the sublime beings. Only when you read like the songs of Milarepa, most of the blessings, you know, one can call it a blessing or a force, then you end up like “Hey, I have to really think about this. I really have to think about delusions and illusions. I really need to wake up from this”. But, that’s very, very difficult. And why not? Since I’m in the mood for exposing myself. Kunkhyen Jigme Lingpa said, “ It’s easier to give up attachment to wealth than fame.” So true. Both fame and wealth, is actually worldly, of cause, obvious. And isn’t this funny? At least, if you have wealth, you can get things done. But the fame is really, kind of pointless, but attachment to fame is more difficult, really difficult. What I am trying to get to this is. Kunkhyen Jigme Lingpa’s quotation, “To give up wealth is easier than to give up fame”.. This is really true. I thought on both accounts, the fame and wealth, I used to think, you know, I'm quite flexible with this, with both. And especially with the fame, because I thought, I have a twisted one on this, by the way. It is really slippery, very slippery. Okay, I thought I was not interested in fame – just small amount, not big. But I realized two things. One actually the reason why I'm not that interested in fame is because I want to do hideous things. You know like hideous, kinky stuff. And then I have this fear that if I become famous there'll be thousand people watching me all the time. So you see, this is not so, this is not like no attachment to this life. This is very much this life. Very much this life, very much, Another reason why I realize, this is a more obvious one. I was enjoying the fact that not everybody, just a few people, I was enioying the fact that I'm famous for not wanting to be famous. You understand, very dangerous, still very attached to this life. Still very attached to this life.


I am just...to summarize everything right now. Recently because of my age - middle

age crisis, you see - I feel kind of like, you know, empty, and hollow; you know like I have done nothing. All that really stubborn, not so strong, but stubborn, very, stubborn kind of - I don't know whether it qualifies as a depression – but some kind of feeling empty. Now, the reason why this is connected to attachment to this life or not, is because I realize, instead of using that empty feeling, instead of really using that empty feeling, that hollowness, as a stepping stone to really bravely going into some kind of really, really serious Dharma practice; I find myself always trying to fulfil that empty feeling, with some other means like... ah, this is a very subtle one. I find myself wanting to go to places like India or Bhutan or Tibetan environment more and more. And by the way, this comes from a very strange motivation. Because I feel like when I go to places like Australia or Europe, where there is no so many Dharma situation, then there is a part of me really wanting to go back to India. And then go to India, then I realize actually I don’t practice there at all. Because I kid myself, deceive myself thinking these prayer flags fllaggng, the prayer wheels are turning, and the trumpets are blowing. All of this makes me feel that I am within the dharma circumstance, therefore I am alright. So escaping from lack of dharma, in a very strange way,. If you are not clear about this, we can discuss this - this is quite an important one actually - because it is basically not a renunciation mind at all. It is resorting to the spiritual materialism. And this happens a lot when you have so much attachment to this life. Anyway, (༈ ཚེ་འདི་ལ་ཞེན་ན་ཆོས་པ་མིན། ) if you

have attachment to this life, you know, Sachen Kunga Nyingpo said, you are not a dharma practitioner. You are basically a worldly "byed ten pa" . What is "byed ten pa"? Worldly being. Humans suffer with two kinds of suffering – “brel” and “phongs”. Brel Phongs. “Brel” is busyness, right? Busyness. Human beings suffer by being busy. Oh, this is very complicated actually. Being busy, but also at the same time, wanting to be busy. There is a very good film that you should watch. I forgot the title now. Al Pacino is the actor. It was an earlier (film) of his. He became jobless, so he had this. He bought two telephones and when actually people call him to give him a job, he actually makes his friend ring the other phone, something like that. And when his phone rings, and then he said to this person, “hold on a minute” - pretending he is so busy, pretending he is getting lots of offers. And in fact refusing some of the job offers: “I can't really do that this week. Can we sort of do it next week?” Busyness, we are busy, at the same time, we can't bear not being busy. And “phongs” is poverty. Poverty mentality? Poverty - feeling that we don't have enough. We don't have enough. We don’t have enough software, we don’t have enough friends, we don't have enough, I don’t know. We just, we never ever think enough. Basically, attachment to this life manifests this way. Really not being able to relax. Not being able to, not being able to really not being busy. Not being able to really not being busy. Oh, so tough. It’s important to be busy. If your phone is not ringing you are not nobody these days. It has to ring. Like that. Then not feeling enough. This other manifestation of the sign of attachment to this life.

Okay, we conclude this one soon, with a summary of, with this statement I want to make. But this might all make you think: “So what do we do? Should we quit our job? Should we all go to a cave, mountain, shave our heads, become (Tibetan) monks? Not necessarily, I told you. Even in the monasteries, even in the hermit, even in the caves, there are things that you can attach. In the hermit, the things that - in the hermit, in the cave, information that is (if the hermit wants and can’t get rid of that longing for information). In the caves, information which you can get is faster than the highest broadband Internet connection. This is so true. I have so many people who I kind of lead their retreat in everywhere. Many of these retreatants - they hear the news about things I never heard even though I am going round the world. So not necessarily it is true, by giving up your present job, and life and the family, this is some kind of renunciation. In fact, many times, just because we are lazy and we are selfish, we tend to give up our job and family in the pretext of quest for spiritual path. This is just yet another attachment to this life. I think this is kind of very, very brief, based on some of Shantideva’s work, Sachen Kungo Nyingpo’s commentary and a lot of my own fabrication. So, that’s the first point. Lunch is around twelve? So we have about twenty minute. If you want to ask questions? Question: Rinpoche, Thank you. I have a question about how you work with motivation or view, other views on intellectual beliefs, like emotionally true at the moment. How does that translate into action? Meditation question: you know if I am taking care of my two-year daughter or working in the world, how can I say I have a motivation to benefit others if I am caring for someone when I am doing work? How is that motivation, but when I am actually doing it, it is easy to think that I own the motivation, but in the action part, still in a way of holding the view or in emotional real time... Rinpoche: OK, you know, in the Mahayana path, the quintessence of the Mahayana path is that of bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is sort of categorised as ultimate and relative bodhicitta. There is a reason for that. But we will discuss this later. Within the relative bodhicitta, also there is something called application and aspiration bodhicitta. There is definitely a really good reason for that. To answer your question, as Longchenpa said, for the beginners like us, the best is aspiration. Even more important than actually doing it. Aspiration. Big chunk of the beginner practitioner’s life should be spent on aspiring. Really, I didn’t make up this one. Very important. Question: When I kind of try to practice bodhicitta, then I look into, I look deeply into, not only my intentions, but the person in front of me, the person’s intentions, his inner intentions, his deeper intentions, and my deeper intentions, and I got so confused in the cause and conditions that bring that kind of lunacy in front of me. And I was so fascinated by that huge, vast cause and condition sea, so that I feel like not like those masters who are really pretty straight-forward and doing things immediately. Quite clearly, I, I....

Rinpoche: OK, in the Prajnaparamita Sutra and any many other sutras, Buddha said - to judge and to value, evaluate other people’s actions and intentions, actions and especially intentions, is absolutely difficult. Only an enlightened being, a sublime being can tell this. For the beginners, it is not even your job. Because if you think about something, anyway it is your thinking. Who knows whether that’s what he or she is thinking?. Anyway, it is not your job. So then to your self, yes you're very right. Many times we really don't know what is our real intention. We don't know how to have the right intention. We don't know what is right intention.. Even though the right intention comes, most on the time, you know, mixed with many, many, many mediocre intentions, wrong intentions so on and so forth. Yeah. This is why Shantideva and many people say “ For the younger bodhisattvas, they should, as I said earlier aspiration but specially. Even in the aspiration; this is what Sachen Kunga Nyingpo said: (Tibetan). This is what he said - I don’t know what to pray for? I don’t know what I am aspiring, what should I be aspiring for? But I know Manjusri and Samantabhadra. They have their aspiration. So I am going to aspire to accomplish what they are aspiring. That’s what we should do. Question: Can you help us to solve the tiny ordinary things?. Like I take ordinary things, mysterious things, like I saw the driver who took me here were “you”, and all these people on my way were “you”.So I think that is pretty stupid. I just cannot help thinking that. Rinpoche: Oh...you know, lots of things that we think are like this. It doesn’t really matter. I think it is okay. It’s not really harming you, if it is not harming you... Actually it makes me comfortable, so... Rinpoche: That’s good. Then go ahead. Thank you. Rinpoche: Anymore? Question: In my job and life situation, I feel like I am going through a very intense period of laziness and selfishness; sometimes, seeing that I am not really being able to bring myself to care - not sure how to work with that. Rinpoche: I think very related again I'm sure there is a specific answer for this which I don’t know. But I will tell you. The most appropriate and something that will really work is aspiration. And I will tell you why. I think, I think the aspiration needs to be explained. Aspiration. First of all, mind is much more powerful than anything else. You understand? Your body and mind - mind is obviously more powerful. Without the mind your body is really an inanimate object. Mind is very powerful. It is the mind that is doing all this liking, not liking, happy, not happy, all of that. Okay. It is the mind that becomes, that acts as a vessel for all the emotions such as love, compassion, anger, desire, all of these infinite emotions. It is for this reason also great masters like Shantideva said:

“ Only discipline that we need to is taming, discipline of taming the mind. Other than that all the other disciplines is really not necessary”. Buddha himself said “ Taming the mind is the quintessence of the Buddha”. So this - endless of this. Okay. I think even in the mundane world, we sometimes express this. It is the thought that counts. You understand? So, wish is so important. Many times one why we are conflicting, why we have so many conflicting thoughts, is because we have so many different kinds of wish, targets, aims, that we learn from parents, teachers, environment. And many times these wishes and these aims conflict and they contradict each other. So this is why, aspiration, especially aspiration of infinite aim such as enlightenment of all sentient beings is so important. Otherwise, small incidences, or small situations of cause and condition, if you have to tackle each and every, it would be very exhausting. And then lastly, what you need to know is that you need to really have aspiration to understand the illusory aspect of everything, Including the aspiration itself. So really aspiration. Actually I'm not so, I an a little bit unclear here but I think that's a sutra that mentions about how out of three countless eons, the bodhisattvas spend one countless eon just doing aspiration. It actually makes sense. If you keep on wishing, wishing and wishing, this will then become your leading thought. Also aspiration immediately, specially if you are doing like Samantabadra’s Aspiration, to read this, it will already work with your humility or pride. It will already work with your pride, and bring the humility. When with this humility you have come much less vulnerable. When you have so much of this pride, then you are much more vulnerable. So you are easy target to all the situations. Question: Maybe, this is all the same question - to attachment to recognizing the nature of mind. I have my aspiration, I have the aspiration... Rinpoche: Very good. I repeat this quotation a lot. This is again coming from Shantideva. I am loosely translating this, of course. He said: “ There is one, in order to dispel the suffering, there is one ignorance that a practitioner is allowed keep for the time being. And that is thinking that there is enlightenment. So my aspiration, is to have a meeting with you while you were here, and for you to give me instructions for recognizing the nature of mind. Rinpoche: Oh, goodness. That is really, what do you call it? That really falls literally to the category. You know, in the Mahayana, if you were to ask what makes a Mahayanist? Okay, what makes a Buddhist? You know, probably if you follow the four seals, then you become Buddhist. One of them is missing, you are not a Buddhist, right? Likewise what makes a Mahayanist? (Tibetan) If the ground is emptiness, path is characteristic-less, fruit is beyond aspiration, right? Wish-less. These three, if you, if you are missing one of them, then you are not a Mahayanist, right? So what I am going to tell you is what you are aspiring literally falls to the third one. Basically, what I'm saying is I am myself, high and low, searching for my mind. I can tell you where I have looked my

mind and haven’t found there, that much I can tell you. Fine, I’ll take it. Rinpoche: Okay. That’s good. OK.

PARTING FROM THE FOUR ATTACHMENTS ... part 6/15 (zhen pa bzhi bral) by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche The term “shenpa” in Tibetan, I guess it is translated as attachment. It’s something to ponder with. The Tibetan word “shenpa” has this connotation of, among other things, some kind of sticky, stickiness. Not only stickiness, first of all. Probably the stickiness, itself, is all right, but stickiness as an effect - totally baseless. Earlier we were, I was giving an example of scarecrow. It’s only because of a cause and condition, that a person see a scarecrow as a human. Other than that…you cannot hear? Can you hear? It’s better? I’ve never have a good karmic connection with producers of mike. I was talking about the Tibetan word “shenpa”. “Shenpa” connotations – there is an element of stickiness. And worse than stickiness, is something, eh; it is a totally misunderstood mental factor. The example I was bringing this morning, looking at a scarecrow and due to cause and condition, you see this scarecrow as a human. But that’s not even one single element within the scarecrow that can be remotely, that can be remotely misunderstood as a human. But when the cause and conditions are gathered, this kind of perception can appear, but not only the perception, as time goes by, we develop attachment. And we really develop this kind of strong attachment. And attachment, attachment or “shenpa”, therefore is always being misled. In other words, it’s never seeing the truth. It’s always looking at something totally false and thinking it is something other than the false. So it is bound to give us disappointment. This morning we talk about “,༈ ཚེ་འདི་ལ་ཞེན་ན་ཆོས་པ་མིན། “, that if you have attachment to this life, you are not a practitioner. You are not a spiritual practitioner. I like to add a little bit more on that one. From the worldly point of view, so-called spiritual methods, spiritual path is totally useless. You understand? So in fact the question, “What is the purpose of life?” - is a very, very confusing question, to be asked to a Buddhist, especially a Mahayana. This longing to be useful, and to be useful, is very dangerous from the Mahayana’s point of view. It's anything that is worldly. Okay, from the point of the worldly, - everything that is spiritual has to be useless. If it is at most useless, then this means that it is quite close to spiritual. For instance, the spiritual - I want to tell you this because the rise, the rise of spiritual materialism, emerged by trying to make the spiritual path as a useful product or a useful thing. Ah, my fellow Tibetans might not like me to say this, but when I went to Sri Lanka,

there is something that they do which is very inspiring to me. I went to Sri Lanka as a tourist - incognito. So there’s something wonderful. First thing, they lead the visitor, is a, when you go to a Buddhist temple, the first thing they lead you to a holy object is a bodhi tree. A bodhi tree. And it makes sense because bodhi tree is to represent or to symbolize, or at least to remind us what has happened two thousand five hundred years ago, so-called enlightenment. That is very beautiful. Now if you don't have enough of sightseeing, then they take you to, the next thing they take you to is a stupa. From the worldly point of view, stupa is very useless. That's no toilet inside. There's no bedroom. This is just a mound of, you know, like stones, yet it represents the mind of the Buddha, so on and so forth. Now if you really want more, then they take you to a temple, with all the paraphernalia, you know, the sitting room, you know, the best place to sit, shade – to protect you from the sun, the rain - all that usefulness. This is actually much highlighted by the Kadampa people also. They long, they pray to be out-casted from the human society. They long and they pray to be found by the stray dog. Such kind of sayings exists in the Kadampa tradition. (Tibetan phrase) So abandoning the attachment to this life has a lot to do with how much we are prepared to be useless. From the worldly point of view, eh - from the worldly point of view, if our great masters such as Naropa and Tilopa, if they come today, most probably we will not open the door for them, because they don’t look that useful. They’re a little smelly, probably a lot. They don’t abide by social norms. They, you know, they’re not what we, conventional people, think, ah - respectable. Now, the next stanza or the next line – “If you have attachment to samsara, you do not have renunciation” - this is covering a very big subject. It’s actually covering up to, these two lines actually cover the whole Shravakayana path. So, in a way, this whole line, one shloka, actually covers the whole Shravakayana, Pratyekayana and the Mahayana - so the three vehicles, especially the second one. (Tibetan phrase). Many lamas of the past have said, “No one wants to suffer, nobody wants to have suffering, but very few people don't want samsara. There’s a difference, you know, here. Not wanting the suffering and not wanting the samsara, is different. Most of the people who don’t want to suffer – they cling on to samsara with the strongest grip. In fact many of so-called philosophers say, it is a bit like this. The samsara that we think we don’t want, we as dharma practitioner, okay, dharma practitioner - the samsara that we think we don’t want is only an idea of samsara. For example fake samsara, the samsara that you read in the books like, you know, the “Jewel Ornament of Gampopa” or “Words of My Perfect Teacher” – hell, burning, mincing, roasting, you know, all that kind of samsara. So the samsara that we don’t want is a “idea” samsara. Similarly the nirvana that we are all thinking of wanting is also a fake, and example of “idea” nirvana. Actually, the real nirvana, no one wants. Very few want, as I was telling you this morning. Real nirvana - I don't think anybody wants these days. Real nirvana, if you really, even get close to the real nirvana, it is very scary. Your life will be so boring there, from the worldly point of view, from the worldly point of view. Yah, from the worldly point of view it would be so boring. If you attain Nirvana, all notion of

family, relatives. foe, time, space, dualistic distinctions, have all disappeared. If there is no more dualistic distinctions - imagine, from the worldly point of view, from the samsaric point of view, from the dualistic point of view, how can we even have fun? How can we expect? How can we eagerly wait for the next application - to be downloaded? How can we eagerly wait for this exciting new film, about coming this spring in the theatre near you. None of this exists because none of this, you know - the whole dualistic distinctions have dissolved. You cannot also think about the past, like those good old days. When we were young, when we were roaming round the streets of Seattle, in Pike Street, you know, like eh - drinking and making merry, or I don’t know. Eh, all of that doesn’t exist. Past is gone. You cannot make future plans. Part of the big fun that we have is making future plans, isn’t it? All of this doesn’t exist. So how much do we really want? This is why there is actually two sets of samsara and two sets of nirvana – the fake nirvana and the fake samsara, and the real samsara and the real nirvana. So the real samsara, of course, we never want to get rid of; we really love to have it. The fake samsara is what we are trying to get rid of. Fake nirvana – we are kind of boasting to other people for wanting a fake nirvana. Real Nirvana – we are not even thinking, you know, of getting close to it. To stick, you know, sticking with the actual stanzas, (Tibetan phrase), you might want ask this question:” Why distinguish between this life and samsara?” You know, there is four, right? If you have attachment to this life, you are not a dharma practitioner. If you have attachment to samsara, you have no renunciation mind. Isn’t our so-called this life also samsara? Yes, but here we are talking about the gradual path. So it is possible that some of us may be so tired with this life. It is possible that some of us completely be revolted with so-called this life, this glory, this fame, - all this, all this samsaric existence. It is possible. But some of this people may still be longing for higher rebirth, such as being reborn in heaven; and this is what need to be clarified here. Just because you don’t have attachment to this life, does not mean you have no attachment to samsara. You could still be longing for higher rebirth such as god realm. And as I was saying, this is really, this is covering a lot. Let me give you some practical advice. Maybe, not advice - example. I can’t give you advice. Example. Probably that’s something I can do. Mm...This is a phenomenon that has happening for many centuries and it is still happening. The second line portrays something that is happening these days quite a lot. By which I mean this trend, this fashion of many people wanting to meditate. This kind of, you know, I should be encouraging that – you know it’s good. Contemplation is a very, very, you know, important wealth. I think that it could help the world if there is more contemplation. But this time we are talking strictly from the Buddhist point of view. So, from the Buddhist point of view, from the Mahayana point of view. all that yoga and all these stress-free related meditation are absolutely not good. Because why? They are all wanting - this is nothing to do with not wanting to be in samsara. In fact the five-star resort meditation class are purely so that they can be in samsara much more. The Buddhist corporate, I mean, the corporate business-people CEOs - they go for retreat for five days. And then, of course, when you sit and sit and meditate, you get some kind of relaxation. You get

free from stress – all so that they can be stressful and work and be mean, and be selfish and be destructive to the world. So this is the kind of thing we are talking here. Even the meditation that we do is not necessarily aimed at destroying attachment to samsara. Actually I tell you, you know, maybe I'm wrong here, but some of the vipassana course that is going on, that I’ve been hearing, that I’ve been sort of interrogating, There are lots, there are very; it’s too much concentrated on working with the stress. I'm worried about this. Just because, you know, my Buddhist patriotism is coming out. I'm worried because Buddhism get so narrowed down to... Buddhism, yes, something to do with vegetarian, used to be; it’s like that; something to do with smiling and peaceful guy walking up and down; and then a little bit of non-violence. This is all good, this is all good, this is... I cannot dispute that. That‘s why it is dangerous. I cannot dispute that because they are all real. Such good thing that’s happening, But now, the most dangerous thing is all of this contemplation and vipassana, and all this sitting, and all this is hijacking Buddhist wisdom. And this is very dangerous. Buddha does not even care how much you can sit. You can put your butts on that cushion until it rots, but if the root of the samsara is not destroyed, it’s absolutely useless. If you can dance in some real party for whole night, but with that, if you could really still your emotions and really make your evil really unsettling, that is much, much better than nine days of vipassana. Because that is the whole point. So I want to make a point - to be stress-free is not the aim. First of all, I should tell you, I think it was a few years ago, there was this saying that I heard that Buddhist are the happiest people, Buddhist are something like that. Very dangerous this thing, very dangerous; unless the happiness is another term for, you know, dualistic- free kind of happiness. Just this happiness is not what Buddhism is aiming for. Chandrakirti said this again and again and again. In Madhyamakāvatāra he said: “Idiots, idiots – now this is all my bad translation, so please – that idiots do all kinds of bad things and go to hell. Idiots do all kinds of good things and go to heaven. Both are idiot. Only the wise one will try to go beyond bad and good. And some sense of samsara and nirvana, heaven and hell. Very important. This really encompasses a lot of subjects here. Morality and other issue; ethics and morality. Ethics and morality is not - is only a secondary point in Buddhism. It is very important that you know.

PARTING FROM THE FOUR ATTACHMENTS ... part 7/15

(zhen pa bzhi bral) by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

(Tibetan phrase) This was what Shantideva said: “All these methods, such as ethics,

morality, generosity, patience, diligence - all of these are taught by the Buddha, only in

conjunction with the wisdom. If there is no wisdom, none of this is a necessity. In fact,

all of these are cause of pain. Morality is a pain. Ethics is a pain. They cleared pain,

eventually, probably not for a few days. And they actually cleared pride. This is very

important that you know because otherwise you have so much paranoia, that even to

the extent of where the cigar went, if you recall. How can you judge ability of a person,

whether he could be a president or not just from a simple innocent-looking cigar –

where it went on not? All this is because morality and ethics, that has no wisdom, has

caused so much, you know, paranoia and kind of …eh. Yes, there is a lot of Buddhist

phrases like that, those which have no wisdom. This is very important. I am still talking

about the second line, by the way. I haven’t got, I haven’t, I didn’t go astray.

If you can recall the example that I gave this morning - how to talk to somebody who

has never tasted salt. How to introduce, explain how the salt tastes like? And the only

way do this is to by giving thing that is not salt. That's what happening here. If you

have attachment to this life, you are not a dharma practitioner. You’re basically a

worldly, materialistic person. If you are – if you have attachment to samsara, like

morally perfect, generous person, patient - very, very patient. He or she’s very patient.

He or she’s very, very diligent. But all this generosity, patience, and discipline - all done

without, I mean, with attachment to fame, gain, comfort, attention, fear of criticism -

you have not, you don't have renunciation mind.

There’s so many examples like this but – somehow this afternoon all the examples I'm

thinking, like all kind of personal; that kind, that could be embarrassing. I know I

should not feel embarrassed because even feeling embarrassed, that means that I have

something to lose. And, come to think of it, the something that I am afraid of losing is

something very worldly. But you know, this is so typical. We have this Mahayana excuse.

All for the sake of all sentient beings, I can wear a Rolex watch. For the sake of beings,

other people I can drive - I don't know - Humvee? Especially, Rinpoches like myself.

You should be thanking yourself for not being responsible for Rinpoche because you are,

you really – eh, you are not attracting karmic debts. You don’t have to – you know,

hypocrisy, that we have, I should not be saying we – I am going through; you don’t

have to have. And that hypocrisy and the genuineness – genuine concern for other

people – they are, they’re so close. So, so, so close. Am I really driving the Humvee for

the sake of all sentient beings? I could.

Actually, one of my root teachers, spent many of his years here in Seattle - Dezhung

Rinpoche. Khabje Dezhung Rinpoche. I studied a lot from him. I received almost all the

Mahakala teachings, Vajrayogini teachings and also many Sakya teachings I received

from him. And he used to actually – he is a great scholar, he is one of those very rare

accomplished beings who actually taught, I heard, Tibetan alphabet in George – the

Washington University? Such is the merit of sentient beings. I don't how to put it.

Anyway, he used to tell me, because I told him once, you know, what does he think I

should do. Should I just go into retreat? Actually, I told him, because that time Khabje

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and Dezhung Rinpoche were together, some kind of picnic, in

Nepal, in a park called Godawari, it’s a park, and there they were sitting quite leisurely.

Because both of them are students of Chemchok Kunga Lodro,- they have so much to

catch up, so to speak. Because, Dezhung Rinpoche, after many years in Seattle, he

came to India.

So in between, I asked both of them - what should I, you know, I really want to, you

know, maybe do like three-year retreat, or…I don’t know why I asked that. I'm sure I

didn’t mean it. Anyway I talked about doing a long term retreat. After their compassion,

I am sure they know what I’m really thinking, but you know, they are so compassionate

and skilful, they sort of, you know - their skilful answer was so great. Both of them,

almost like, as if they were speaking together, said that: “No, no, you know, you should

wear the brightest - you know, I was talking more about, you know, I don’t want to,

you know, I don't like crowd, I can't handle crowd, I feel nervous, I don’t know how to

handle crowd, I don’t like people. You know, like I would rather, you know, hide

somewhere in a corner, in a quiet place. And they were jokingly telling me that I should

wear the brightest, I should make lots of loud noise. And then Dezhung Rinpoche said

that when he was here in Seattle, every morning he goes to, he goes to University and

he takes bus. And there he would chant “OM MANI PEME HUNG” loudly. And he told

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche that – just so that he cleared the karmic connection with

whoever hears him.

You see, easily I could think why not? Let’s get a Humvee, paint solid gold, have a

glaring, what you call it, boom-box and then drive through the town. But these are very

dangerous. If you really, really do that, if I really do that, I should not enjoy the ride of

Humvee even for one moment. Every moment personally I should not feel the comfort.

Then might there is a chance that it’s benefiting others. If I begin to feel kind of

pompous, what do you call it, kind of very big, kind of very, like, eh - if it is kind of

helping my importance, then, then, then, it’s back to the second one. Then it’s not

really, it’s really nothing do with, eh, no attaching to samsara. Then it is back to, again,

actually the third one in this case. But so what I'm saying is - it’s difficult not to be

attached to this life. Even more difficult to be attached - it’s difficult not to be attached

to samsara.

The next one – (Tibetan phrase). We’ll explain further. But before that I want to visit

the next, I mean, the last stanza again, because that is the core - that is the key to all

the other paths. If we lose that, then we have no path. Right view. Okay, for those who

are studying Buddhism, more academically it might help a little bit. So let me come this

through more intellectual angle. In between, we could also try to reflect towards the

practice that we do every day – that meditation. Because the view, should we all revisit

- in fact a mundane simple act of burning an incense, ideally should be accompanied

with the right view. And then I say right view, I'm not talking about with the right

motivation of burning this incense for the sake of all sentient beings, may whoever

smell of this incense, may all achieve enlightenment - not just that, not only on the

aspiration level. But even on the absolute level, as you burn the incense, at least in the

beginning, a practitioner must have this, must have this, eh, at least kind some kind of

acknowledgement that incense, the person who is burning, the act of burning the

incense, the object of offering such as buddhas and bodhisattvas - they are all equally

illusion. Equally as illusion as; illusory as rainbow. Even the object of offering, the

buddhas and bodhisattvas, even they are illusory. But of course, the word “illusory”

may be deceiving you, some of you; those who are already used to it, maybe you are

quite comfortable with it. But illusory does not necessarily mean – it is not a negation,

negation word. Just because it is an illusion, it isn’t, we are not despising it basically.

Illusion is all we have. And illusion is what is driving us. So this is why the right view is

important.

But anyway as I said earlier, let’s come to the angle of more like academic, more

intellectual side. It is believed, I think actually this sutra is the Dasabhumi Sutra. Yes,

Dasabhumika Sutra. In there, there is a mention of how Buddha taught. And the way

Buddha taught is infinite, because actually, only the Buddha is the perfect teacher. Now

this is not a theistic praise.

I’ll give you the example. Someone like me today, if I am teaching you - by the way,

right now what I'm doing is not really considered teaching. Just parroting, and just like,

you know plagiarising from here and there, you know, putting things up together and

throwing up, throwing it, that’s all. But meaning, guiding people, leading people, until

you are Buddha, we can only generalise. Someone like me, I am definitely generalising.

As you reach, as you become better and better, I mean in a sense of, as you become

accomplished - the first bhumi, second bhumi, third bhumi - all the bodhisattva stages,

then of course you generalise less and less and less. So what do you mean, what do I

mean by generalisation? For instance, if I'm the Buddha and if you come here for

guidance and you are sitting here and you ask me for guidance - it doesn’t matter what.

Because I'm the knower of the three times, or I don't have the dualistic distinction of

time, I will know exactly what kind of mood you are in, what kind of constitute,

constituency? - constitution you are in, what kind of, what food you just ate, what kind

of argument you had, what kind of excitement you're waiting for the next, you know,

after this - all these I will know. So based on that I will know what to teach, or not

teach. It doesn’t matter, you know. This is how precise. So this is why only and only an

omniscient being is the best teacher. Other than that, more or less, all the

bodhisattvas – they generalise, and us, of course, we generalise.

So the example of generalisation is all these yanas – you know, Mahayana

Shravakayana. This is actually a big chunk of generalisation, actually. It is a bit like –

Oh, I have a guest and he's Chinese. Oh well, let’s get a noodle, as if all the Chinese

like noodles. I have a French, oh, red wine, why not or something like that. American,

hamburger - anything that will open their mouths as wide as possible. Even chewing

gum, you know, will, will suffice. Like that. If you, so that - it works. It’s a wild guess,

but it’s a very educated and also now you will know why the lineage is important.

Lineage and the tradition. Because the “guess job” are very well preserved by the

lineage holders. We know as we are not an omniscient being, we can’t deal precisely. If

you can deal each and every being precisely, lineage is absolutely no need. Since we

need kind of guess job, this guess job has to be really well tested, preserved and well,

sort of, what do you call it, eh, well preserved and tested; eh, tried, you know, that is

important. So this is why the lineage becomes important. Okay, this is, I just want to

tell you this first.

But anyway in the Dasabhumika Sutra, it is said the Buddha taught many, many, many,

many ways; so many ways. In another sutra it is said that even when the Buddha

cough, four people heard his coughing and four people heard different things. A doctor

heard something. I am sure he heard something like Buddha is sick or something like

that. Eh, an old lady heard something and she got the benefit – of, you know, seeing

the truth and all of this. There’re many, many examples like this. Buddha taught many

different ways. Out of this, in one occasion, Buddha taught (Tibetan phrase), which is

twenty different kinds of way of enlightenment. He taught that - twenty different. Okay.

And this twenty different is things like skye ba med pa, (Tibetan terms) - you know, all

that. There is a list. You can find it in the sutras. Anyway, the twenty, twenty different

categories - out of this twenty different categories, one, actually the first one, skye ba

med pa - how do you translate that – non-arising, non-arising? Non-arising is one word,

non-arising is what is being taught by Nagajuna and the gang. This is what all this

sunyata business, emptiness and all of that. So now imagine how the Buddha’s teaching

can really go so fast, so, so, so fast.

And I like to, since there’s some Sakyapa people here, I want to tease them a little bit.

In certain sutras, in one Sutra, Buddha said this to a monk,

“So what do think, holy monk, - (now I am going just) - if someone thinks all compound

things are impermanent, all emotions are pain, all, what is it, everything has no

inherently existing nature, nirvana is peace or extreme-less, - do you think he’s doing

the right thing?” This is what Buddha asked.

And I think the monk’s reply was “I don't know”.

“What do you think?” asked the Buddha,

“I don’t know. Can you please answer me this?”

Buddha said “Imagine this - you gather all the garbage in the city, pile up in one

position, and then you think this is all precious jewels - do you think you are doing the

right thing?”

The monk said, “Of course not. He is hallucinating, he is making belief, you know, he is

completely wrong”. Buddha said, “Exactly. That's, that’s exactly same as this. If

somebody thinks all compound things are impermanent, all emotions are pain, all,

everything have no inherently existence nature, nirvana is extreme-less - this kind of

monk who thinks this way – they are as idiot as someone who thinks all garbage is

jewels”.

I just want to present you this because Buddha has, his view, and his vision and his

teaching is not fixed in one. It’s just like, at the same time, it’s not like, whoever come,

you know it is not like entertainer – whoever wants to hear something, he says that’s

not. Longchepa said (Tibetan phrase) all his teachings are actually connected, It looks

contradictory, but actually not. It’s all paradoxical. Anyway the whole purpose of the

Buddha’s teaching is pulling the rug out of your feet, just as you are beginning to settle

down on the rug.



Okay, Buddha with the begging bowl, bare feet, thirteen Golden, you know, all of that,

just as you about to settle down with that kind of notion of the Buddha, he pulls the rug

out of your feet; with earring, consorts, blue colour, all this Sambhogakaya business,

which we don’t want to talk about. I don't know why we end, we end up, end up

always going there. Anyway, the non-arising, that one word, has all this Madhyamika

sutras and the shastras. I just want to tell that what we are going round and round is

one fraction, the smallest fraction of the Buddha’s teaching. Non-arising. And this,

(འཁོར་བ་ལ་ཞེན་ན་ངེས་འབྱུང་མིན།) is very well connected to that teaching of non-arising. Why not, why

non-arising? What is the special interest in non-arising? How about non-abiding, and

non – (what is it?) - non-cessation, and non - all of that, other nineteen other subjects?

Why, why don’t we choose some, you know, more positive thinking? Why, why, why, a

negation? Non-arising. There’s a reason for that. This is more for the intellectual

academics, those who wish to sort of. There is a good reason for you to know that,

because - I really want you to know, especially the younger generation, young Buddhist

- that Buddhism is really a, totally its own civilization, is really, really – it’s not just a

survival kit designed for a certain location in Asia. It's not that. It’s really, really, you

know, all pervasive.

This is why in Buddhism you will not find like “how to get married” Sutra. You know,

there’s none. Imagine how would you do that? As a Buddhist you have to be truthful.

Here is a man and woman, and you said, “Oh well, you are about to get married but

you know what, everything is impermanent. You might get divorced, you know, stuff

like that. And you know, if you are loving each other, you know what that is? That is

actually pain. Should we say that? So actually Buddhism is not culturally-bound survival

kit, by which I am saying a lot. Survival kit - many, many religions I think is a survival

kit - how to protect their women, how to protect their faith from the dust, so and so

forth. I am not going to speak more on this. I will be politically incorrect here, if I speak

more. But this happens a lot so it’s not like this.

Okay, why non-arising? Okay. We are talking about attachment, remember attachment.

Four attachment. To get rid of four attachment – “zhen pa”. When we talk about

attachment, obviously, we are talking about an object to which you are attached to.

Isn't it? The first one is this life. Second one is the samsara. Third one is yourself.

Fourth one – much more sophisticated attachment. Attached to what? So generally a

thing - anything. It could be God. It could be anything I think. Anything, you know any

kind of thing. A thing is analysed in Buddhism …a thing is analysed in Buddhism with

the analytical tool of all kinds.

But let’s begin with a thing must have three stages. (Tibetan phrase), Birth, Genesis;

(Tibetan phrase) Abiding; or (Tibetan phrase) Exhaustion. And exhaustion. If a thing

does not have these three things, then it is not a thing. You understand. Then it is like

it’s not a thing then. It has to have the manufacturing situation, you know, abiding and

expiry kind of thing. You understand – a thing. Everything is like this. You and I,

birthdays, the birth, the death and now. All compounded phenomena have these three

qualities, these three attributes. Out of this three we choose to talk about the first one.

And the reason is, out of this three, human beings are traditionally more interested in,

“Where did we all come from?” This is why all this, you know, in the beginning so and

so came and he did this and he did that. The original, manufacturing date,

manufacturing place, its authenticity – all of those happen to become an important

issue. So this is why where it came from is so important. And here actually I, I thought

about this. I think you already know the answer. Have you ever managed to answer

this question? Which one came first? Chicken or the egg? Did you? Exactly. This is what

Buddha's teaching. Not only chicken and egg. Everything is like chicken and egg. We

don’t know which one comes first, so therefore you cannot pinpoint a first ever Genesis.

There is no such thing. There is no such thing as a first ever arising because all cause

and conditions are like chicken and egg. Which one comes first we don't know. Of

course this present egg comes from this present chicken, this much we know. But we

are talking about Genesis. We are talking about the original cause. So this is why

Buddhists are never interested in the original cause or the original end or stuff like that.

Because they are all dependent arising. Nothing is solidly, independently existing in the

beginning or now or later. So this is why grasping that something exists independent

from any other thing is wrong. That is the theory that is established through the

analysis.

Okay, if the practitioners, the yogis here are getting bored with this – all the academic

and intellectual stuff – how do we do this in the practice? The method is simple. It’s

actually too simple that you will not be able to do it. You know what is that, the

quintessence of the Buddhist method? It is to do nothing. Do you know that? Really,

this I am not making it up. This is written in every text. In fact some of the

Nyingmapas – the titles of their books are like “Ma bsgoms par sangs rgya ba”. “Ma

bsgoms” means non-meditation, right, non-meditation, right? Buddhahood without

meditation. Some might think that it is kind of like going out a bit too much kind of that,

you know, title. But is not, it is not. Nothing - doing nothing. Of course, doing nothing

like.

Okay, but what is the really doing mean? What do you mean by doing nothing? Nothing

like not eat, not drink, not prostrations, no reading, no mantras. Are we talking about?

Actually not. Those are not even considered doing. Those are, even though they are

doing that kind of, they are a shadow of doing. They don’t really harm you so much,

anyway What is the real doing? Grasping. That is the real doer and the doing. Grasping.

Like the honey, like the glue, we grasp. Sticky, you know, sticky? Wherever we go we

leave our traces - just kind of embarrassing. Like we – the grasping. And when I say

grasping, here on the fourth line, I'm not only talking about the grasping “Wow, what a

beauty”, you know, that kind of grasping. That's already a shadow of the shadow of the

shadow. That’s already cause That’s already a cause.

Basically any form of distraction, the moment you are distracted, you are grasped, you

are already doing the grasping. The moment you are distracted, including - “Would I be

distracted? Oh, oh, I'm getting distracted”. You were already distracted to the fear of

distraction. This is what Jigme Lingpa said (Tibetan phrase) - “It is important not to get

distracted but I have seen more people who are ebbing their life away with the fear of

getting distracted”. So we are talking, really, sort of very high level kind of technique

here. So okay then, then, okay, then, next question, okay. I'm not supposed to distract.

Wow, that’s difficult. I can see why distraction is so delusional. Distraction leads you to

delusion. This I can see. But how can I just, how can I even begin doing that? And

even if I begin to do that, how can I maintain that?

Ah, for this, Shantideva said, (Tibetan phrase), loosely if I translate (Tibetan phrase) –

“Which, the base of shamatha, having a good base of shamatha, vipassana alone will

destroy the root of the emotion. Therefore, first, the meditator must establish a stable

shamatha. To do that, that (Tibetan phrase) but in order to establish this strong stable

shamatha, first you have to tone down at least your attachment to this life, samsara, all

of that. That's why all this renunciation, ALL this, all this, all this is a necessity. Yes the

actuality is very simple, doing nothing, not grasping, it makes kind of intellectual sense

but your habits is always going to invade and bog you down. So basically all this

paraphernalia of Buddhist practices to really wrestling with the habit. You have to work

with this habit. This is why all this happens to be necessary. This is I think enough for

the academic, for the Madhyamika point of view of the last stanza, I mean the last line.

If you have any questions, maybe this is a lttle intellectual. If you have questions, you

can ask me now, if not, I’ll just go through. Any questions? You have question? Okay.

Question: Thank you very much Rinpoche. Your teachings have been very helpful and

we’re so happy to have you here. Eh, I was thinking of making a request that you come

to us already since I have a chance. On last night Rinpoche’s teaching, I was wondering

if you could talk a little bit about the chicken and egg process regarding shamatha and

its relationship to freedom from attachment. You were just discussing the way in which

if you can cultivate some freedom from attachment, then you can begin to, eh, relax

your mind and, eh, what we might call practice of shamatha meditation. But often I

think a lot of American Buddhists find that they only begin to understand when they do

a little bit of shamatha meditation first. And eh, I don’t know whether there is a

particular aspect that I would like you to clarify, but I was just wondering if you could

talk a little more about how that interplay works between…

Rinpoche: Actually it may be possible. I would not oppose that. Mm, I think letting

someone settle down, their emotions, their thoughts with shamatha might be helpful;

and then instead of telling our students to sort of settle with that – “I think that is the

final goal”. I think the teacher - it’s important for the teacher to actually then stir this

calm abiding shamatha with vipassana. You see the thing is this. Eh, shamatha and

vipassana, I don’t know whether you realize this, Shamatha and vipassana is a dicho –

dichotomy? What do you call it? (“Dichotomy”, from audience) Yes it is a dichotomy. As

much as we need shamatha for vipassana, do you realize that they are actually, “enemy”

maybe too strong a word, but they, they are designed to, eh, cancel each other. So

after a fair amount of shamatha and relaxation, it is important for the teacher to have

this bravery, this courage to bring the vipassana information. And vipassana is not

necessarily, you know, sitting like this. Vipassana could be what we have been doing all

day. It could be hearing and contemplation. Of course - meditation. But vipassana is

what’s happening. This is also vipassana. If you consider, if you have the right

motivation in the beginning, answering questions – really, you know, like basically

unsettling the emotion, and the ego, and its hideout, is already vipassana.

Student: Thank you, Rinpoche.

Rinpoche: Okay. Any other question?

Question: Thank you, Rinpoche. How to apply the notion of going beyond good and bad

in daily life? Especially that you mentioned morals and ethics are secondary?

Rinpoche: Oh, at the moment, better not.

Student: Okay.

Rinpoche: If you are a beginner, if you are a beginner, meaning – there is a way to test

this. Skipping the lunch is one way. The other way is you know like – put a plate of shit

and a plate of good food and see whether you have any preferences.

Student: Okay!

Rinpoche: But having said this, I don't you to think that is a faraway thing. Never it’s far

away. It could happen this evening. It could happen, you know, I mean, you know,

your friend will come back home and then they find you with a plate of shit and food.

This could be happening today. Right now, as a beginner bodhisattva, our aim is to

aspire for that. To long for that. Long for being able to eat the shit and the food

without any preference. That's what we should be longing for. This is important – the

longing. The longing for un-longing the long-able.

Student: Thank you, Rinpoche.

Rinpoche: Because, what it does – this longing – do you know - this is good. I want to

extend this a little bit. This longing - longing for un-long able. The purpose of this

longing is it cancels, it really works with all these unnecessary samsaric longing. You

understand? It is a trick. Basically, partly, it is a trick. It is. So it’s not like, you know, it’s

not like “Hey, you know, you shouldn’t want this, because I will give you this”. It’s not

like that. Buddha is not - what Buddha is saying is, “Actually you should not want this

because I have nothing to give you actually”. It’s not like you should not, you know, but

the thing is we know, you and I know, by longing this it’s going to give you pain.

But what are you longing for? Remember, I said it boils down to wanting to be happy.

And for us it’s the liberation - liberation from dualistic distinctions. And it’s not like the

lure is some kind of dualistic birthday cake or something like that. It’s not like that.

There is no; of course, there are, out of the skilful means of the past lamas and the

bodhisattvas, there are concepts like Sukhavati, pure realm. Even in a school, a school

in Japan, I think Pure Land Sect or the School - wonderful. It is important. This is a bit

like a carrot for the donkeys. It’s important. This is like enlightenment, nirvana,

Sukhavati, pure realm, eh, pure land – all this is like a carrot. Okay. And by the time

you get close you know, you become, you will not normally be a donkey. So carrot is

useless. Anything else?



Anything else. Okay. We shall go through this then. Non-grasping. If you have a

grasping, you have no view. If there is grasping, you have no view, right? If there is

grasping, you do not have the view. A little bit more about that. Probably still a little bit

more academic and intellectual but this time, let’s explore a – because what I've been

telling you is more how... the sutras have presented, very briefly, though, very briefly.

They present the non-arising, the emptiness, sunyata, nothing to grasp because

everything is sunyata. If you are grasping you are contradicting with the truth. If you’re

grasping you have to have something to grasp. But there's nothing to grasp. This much

we, we understand.

Okay. But now there's a difficulty. Of course, because of us, you know. This sunyata,

emptiness, non- arising – as I was saying, there is a difficulty, and the difficulty is this. I

put in (Tibetan phrase) words. He is good, he’s really good. We have two kind of

weakness. We have overly believing in believable things. That’s one weakness - overly

believing in believable things. The second weakness is - overly not believing in things

that are not believable. In other words, you and I believe that this is a strawberry. You

understand - because why? Because we are distracted by a lot of things. We are

distracted by its - what do you call it? Pall? Pause? We are distracted by its shape, and

of course the colour inside and then - Ah, yes, of course, this has to be strawberry. And

then of course - the education - this is strawberry, from the kindergarten onwards.

Then, of course, the function, you know - strawberry juice, it works as a strawberry.

And then the consensus – we all agree this is strawberry. So it’s a strawberry. So we‘re

distracted by existence. This is important, please don’t forget, this is very important.

One of the roots of depression is this. I'm telling you. Then the other is things like next

life, buddha-nature, you know, next life, past life, Buddha - where ? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

this bronze statue, all of that, but where is the Buddha? Or things that, that we cannot,

what you call it, grasp and think. Well the classic example is like the horn of a rabbit,

and stuff like this.

But anyway, practically things that we cannot - things that cannot be - it’s unbelievable

things, unbelievable things. Overly not believing to things that are unbelievable,

remember? This is important to establish in your head because, what it does is this. We

all have this. This constantly shifts us to nihilism and eternalism - all the time. Like that

- so yet another cause for depression. Uh, this going back, forth. And the Tantric people

have another problem which we don’t want to talk. They indicate another problem too,

but which we don’t want to discuss this right now. Existence, nonexistence, four plus

four is eight, not five. Things like that.

And this is serious. This is serious I don’t know how to explain this. Even, even a

meditator, when they look at mind, you can fall into this, this nothing. Mind has no

colour, no shape, nothing. Or, some really, really, you can really go bananas. You know,

halos, my mind with a shining heart shape, slightly broken these days, you know, like

inner child - what is it? Inner child, isn’t it? The California, all of that, aura, energy, the

liquid, I don’t know, all kinds of things like this. And this I'm serious really. This has

manifested the whole world. The whole world is manifested this way.

There are people like, eh, Donald Rumsfeld, who are actually by-product of more the

existence. Existence? Yeah, existence - the overly believing in believable things. By-

product is Donald Rumsfeld. And then there are people who are distracted by non-

existence like - what is his name? - film “Bowling for Columbine” - Michael Moore right.

And there are people like Michael Moore or sometimes Chomsky. Is it Chomsky? Neo

Chomsky – who, what is his name? Naomi? Naomi Chomsky, Naomi? Yeah, Noam -

Noam Chomsky, right - kind of really sad, everything’s not true - basically all the

Liberals. Republican – oh, I am using my right, left hand to indicate. No, no, switch.

(Voice from audience) That’s true, that’s true, yeah, exactly. So you understand? I'm

talking about. Things like Michael Moore – by-product of overly not believing in things

that are unbelievable.

That's how the world, the whole work, not only as a nation, but even, even as you

order a cup of espresso. By the time the espresso arrives to your, in front of you; by

the time it goes inside your mouth, and it sort of slowly goes through you, there will

lots of this thing, you know, like going to here, going to there, going

to here. This is how we fall. It’s a big battle, I tell you; it’s a really big battle. I try to

think about some, some practical, eh, examples. I can’t think of it today. But anyway,

so even Buddhism, in order to establish the truth, the ultimate truth, and in the process

of trying to understand the truth, the habit of going this way or that way still influences

us.

For this reason, for those who are going towards more this way, there are great beings

like Nagarjuna, who could help, who could sort of, you know, straighten you up a little

bit. And if you go towards more this way, there are people like Asanga or Maitreya, who

would try to put you this way. This is not the Buddha’s problem by the way. Because

Buddha really - his teaching was very simple. It’s just because we have these going

back and forth problem, that’s why we need to be, we need to establish the view this

way. By the way, you know, all these words, my God, for it is not necessary. Basically

what I'm trying to tell you is that emptiness in the last sentence - emptiness within this

last sentence, there is a tradition of teaching both the emptiness (sunyata) and the

tathagatagarbha (buddha-nature). So emptiness, okay, this is what you can go back

home with - basically. Emptiness is not a negation. It is not a pure negation. It is not

purely saying no to everything.

The emptiness, so when we say no grasping – Oh, yes, this is what Buddha said to

Kashyapa - an ego grasping as big as Mount Meru is okay, he said, really; but a

grasping towards emptiness, even as small as a sesame seed is very, very grave. It’s

this. So, you know, emptiness is not a negation, it is not like evaporation of moisture, it

is not an exhaustion of fire. It has its quality. And this quality is difficult to express.

Because the moment we talk about the quality, you and I, as human beings like to

think in terms of function, how to use. And religiously inclined people like you and me

always like to think in terms of halos, and sort of very gentle look and blessings. You

know, religiously inclined people like you and me, like to think in terms of blessings.

Does this exist within that? Yes, it does. And this again – okay, there’s actually a big,

big – this is a big subject.

So, Khabje Dezhung Rinpoche, he said (Tibetan phrase) – he’s “Calling the Guru”,

slightly to the Tantrayana - it’s okay, we use it as example. If you pray to the guru –

this is after the Calling of the Guru – he said, the real blessing that a student can

receive is when there is no more grasping. That is the quintessence of all of the

blessings. It’s very similar to what Jigme Lingpa also satd. In Jigme Lingpa’s statement

about how to make wishes - when you do the Protector practices, you know like

Mahakala. He said, when hundred of what you wish does not come true, does not come,

and yet when thousand of things that you dare not wish comes true, this is a fulfilment

of the Mahakala or the Protectors. And in this tradition here, non-grasping is the real

blessing. Because when you have no more grasping, you have nothing to lose. Nothing

to gain, of course, but you have nothing to lose. When you have nothing to lose, you

have no stress. You have no – what do you call it? You don’t have a reason to grasp

towards something.

Okay, so anyway, those who wish understand this emptiness and qualities of emptiness,

please explore two very important traditions in Mahayana Buddhism, which is

Nagarjuna’s and Aryadeva and Chandrakirti and all of those people. And then there is

Maitreya, Asanga, and the, eh, many other sort of, eh, tradition, I mean this two

tradition who clearly explains the sunyata or the quality of sunyata. Okay so that, sort

of, I just, eh, sort of eh, have an intellectual, more of an intellectual approach to the

understanding of non-grasping.

Now as a practice, since this is a Mahayana, the actual practice of non-grasping,

according to the Mahayana, has to come from hearing, contemplation. With the hearing

and contemplation you develop a confidence to the truth of emptiness. Once you

develop this confidence, then what? Then you do nothing. except stabilize this

confidence again, and again and again. And how do we that? Through both meditation

and post-meditation. During the meditation, you relax. Whatever comes into your mind,

all you do is stare at this thought. We don't make any judgement. You don’t try to

grasp, of course not. You don't try to register if there is any good thought that comes in.

You don't try to reject if there is any bad things, bad thought comes in. All you do is

just stare and stare and stare. What happens is, as you keep on staring these thoughts

- normally you do not stare to these thoughts. Normally you follow one of these

thoughts. Once you follow one of these thoughts, you get entangled by many more

thoughts. Then this produces the whole story of samsara.

But this time as you just stare, gradually the thought begins to fragment and derail;

and less and less entanglement. This, of course, does not mean that you will end up

having no thoughts or no mind or no cognition. Yes no cognition, cognition is the word.

What it does is it really weakens the strategy and the force of emotion, dualistic

thoughts. When this gets reduced, everything that is considered good and important in

the past is not necessarily good and important. Everything that is, anyway everything,

basically your outlook towards the world will change. It does not mean that suddenly,

you know, everything become like a heaven, because even heaven is just a concept

anyway. So at the same time as you develop this wisdom, you also, at the same time,

simultaneously, gain compassion - compassion to those who have no knowledge of this

kind of truth. And having no knowledge of this kind of truth, they roam around in

samsara endlessly and pointlessly. To them you end up becoming very compassionate.

And because of this wisdom and compassion together, everything ends becoming a tool,

and especially as a bodhisattva, you apply generosity, discipline and patience - all these

infinite bodhisattva activities to enlightenment of sentient beings. And when

enlightenment, when you’re in the process of enlightening all sentient beings, there is

no fear, there is no exhaustion. You don’t feel, ah, discouraged. And more of this, I

think we will talk tomorrow. Okay, if there, I think if there is no question, we will stop

here.

As one of those another means to make our life comfortable, I tell you, Buddhism is the

worst; really it’s the worst. It’s really – Really! You read any sutras and shastras, it’s the

worst. It’s not designed to make your life comfortable and happy. In fact it is the first

thing that Buddha said – know the suffering, know the cause of the suffering. Buddha

never taught the teaching, the Dharma to make this life workable, fixable. It’s never the

intention. This is important to know. And really, probably the modern Buddhist – they

may not say this but the consequence of many things they say and they write, end up

asserting that Buddhism is another gadget to make their life comfortable. I'm serious. If

there's any closet American or the European, eh, neo-Buddhist here, speak up. I'm

ready to argue with you here because this - this is very, very important.

But I tell you I totally understand the resentment and resentment towards the issue of

reincarnation. Many, many Buddhists seem to almost treat the issue of reincarnation as

the Buddhist “fart”. That’s something, that you know, like it is there and now, it’s

already sort of gone out – please, you know like sooner it evaporates the better. I don't

know whether you know this but this, this, there’s a lot. I have myself thought about

this a little bit. I think there're several reasons for this. I think one is - in India there

was this big movement started by Dr Ambedkar and Dr. Ambedkar, himself was

“Untouchable”. And as a protest against, eh, oh thank you; as a protest against the

caste issue, I think, anyway, this a long story,

Dr.Ambedkar converted to Buddhism and he even today, even as recent as last year,

there was like two or three hundred thousand, eh, Untouchables taking, took refuge.

Somehow it so happened, that Dr. Ambedkar and his followers, the Buddhists - their

idea of Buddhism does not accept the reincarnation. They somehow insinuate that

reincarnation is a Hindu business. Unfortunately they tend to, sort of, shy away from

any kind of subject of reincarnation. This is one.

Another thing - in the West especially, this may touch some sensitive issues here. But I

will be speaking this. You know things like – this is giving you an example. Like if you

ask how about those innocent children and women during the World War II under the

Nazis? They were innocent. You know, this children, all of these. Now for the Buddhist,

especially if you’re understanding the karma, the word “innocent” needs to defined. Yah

of course, they, this children, they didn’t do like any of this espionage, or any of this

political, you know, they are not politically guilty or anything. But the fact that they

suffered has got to do with karma or the cause and conditions of the past. And this, I

think, for a lot of people is so difficult to accept, I think in the modern world. You

understand?

That's just one - some of the many reasons why the, karma or the reincarnation is

treated as a “fart”. I'm telling you this now. The other, the other reason is as I said

earlier, is this reincarnation business – the “tulkus”, like me. And it’s getting really

worse because suddenly every pregnant woman ends up, you know, sort of indicating

they have a good dream. You know, you understand? And then, you know, then all the,

you have heard all these, you know, like political and nepotism and all these things.

And suddenly we have, never been before, never before in Tibet history this kind of

situation. But now even a mediocre Khenpo dies and then he will have at least six

reincarnations. This happens a lot. So because, and this is a lot to do with geography,

political situation and it is, it’s very sad actually. I would say it’s really understandable

why some people feel almost like disgust towards all this reincarnation business.

Because, eh, you know, within Tibet itself, it has created equally, I don’t know, equally

amount, I mean, reincarnated lamas have done a lot of good. They have also, now

more than ever, brought so many questions. They have raised more questions than

answers - so all of this is not helping the actual, actual phenomena of reincarnation.



Now for you and me today, to go through (༈ ཚེ་འདི་ལ་ཞེན་ན་ཆོས་པ་མནི། ) “If you have attachment

to this life, you are not a dharma practitioner”, you and I need to accept reincarnation -

especially if you are following a dharma path. And for that kind of thing, what kind of

reincarnation are we talking here? This I want to explain a little bit. Actually sceptics,

the scientists or objectivists who say they don’t believe in reincarnation - yet, it’s a kind

of irony - yet they believe in time. This is puzzling. Anyone who believes in time, there

is no reason why you can’t believe in reincarnation. I will give you some explanation

here.

First of all, bear in mind in Buddhism, ultimately we don't believe in reincarnation.

Remember we don't even believe in a thing to reincarnate, to begin with. Everything -

from emptiness, emptiness, from blah, blah, all of that - nothing, no increasing, no

decreasing, no enlightenment, no ignorance, nothing - ultimately we don't. Relatively,

specially according to Chandrakirti, (Tibetan phrase) without analysis, without

theoretical analysis, without logic, completely “nyam nga” - how do you translate this

“nyam nga”? (Voice from audience) - Prima facie? (Voice from audience - “Prima facie

or at first glance”). Yes, at first glance, at first glance I think that's good. That’s good -

because everything what we accept is basically at, at first glance. We don't really

remember everything, things like “Oh, see you tomorrow”. Who knows? You know

maybe we don't. Everything we do - “See you later” - everything. So on that level, we

accept reincarnation. We accept. And there is a reason.

Okay, furthermore, like between yesterday and today, you were here yesterday,

wouldn’t you? Some of you, many of you - you were here. If I ask you “Yesterday’s you

and today’s you, are they the same thing?” Can’t be same; otherwise you wouldn’t be

needing moisturizer because you don’t change. You’re, you’re stuck. Again, if you said

there’re two separate things, then I have to teach all over again. What, what you have

heard yesterday is not going to benefit you. It’s not. But, relatively you have, we have

to accept, you and I have to accept there is a continuum of you and me, from

yesterday to today. Actually the Tibetan word “yang” means “again” exist - can one say

exist? Becoming - again becoming or again exists. And in a way, in a very subtle level,

between yesterday and today, there has been again becoming or again existence.

Within this level we can talk about reincarnation, but it is not as simple as that though

because, eh, because somehow - yes since we are only teaching Mahayana - this is

where the Tantra is good, you know Tantra people are very good at this but - let’s

forget that. In the Mahayana, somehow we have to establish that the mind and the

body, although they have so much connection as a container and contents (Tibetan

phrase) - they are separate noted entities. They are separate, two separate things. This

is a fundamental relative view that needs to be discussed again and again and again.

To a certain extent you know, for instance, like you can think about New York now, but

does not mean that your body is there. You can think of all kinds of things, but does

not mean that you are physically doing it. Right? Ah, you can cut your hair but doesn’t

mean that a little bit of your mind is gone together with that. So this much we know. At

the same, we also know if somebody steps on your toe, you'll feel pain, not the toe only

feel pain. You understand? You’ll get upset. So a little bit on this level we understand,

but on a much more subtle level, I think we can't really accept like - okay, when I die

my body is going to disintegrate, buried, and cremated whatever. Then what - where

does my mind go? This question is difficult to establish. This question is difficult to

answer. I mean it’s difficult; it’s not like impossible. Just needs lots and lots of time to

establish this. This, for instance the whole second chapter of the

Pramanavarttikakarika – I think, right?

Pramanavarttikakarika, by Dharmakirti, is dedicated towards that.

But, anyway, what basically, I just, you know, probably, this is beside the point, I mean

probably it’s not important for your dharma practice if you are concerned about the

practice. But I needed to clarify this - (༈ ཚེ་འདི་ལ་ཞེན་ན་ཆོས་པ་མིན། ) ”If you have attachment to this

life then you are not a practitioner”. Based on that logic, I mean based on that

understanding what we have just gone through, as I said yesterday, not only that

meditation course in the five-star resort but even the so-called Buddhist, the modern

Buddhist, who don’t seem to accept next life - for them - then I will not consider them

as a dharma practitioner. Because they don’t accept the next life, why they meditate?

Must be for this life. They say this actually, some of them, they say that “You don’t

have to have a next life in order to have a purpose for meditating because by doing the

vipassana this life, what it does is it’s going to make this life comfortable, and more

sober and sane and all that. To be sober and sane for just this life, I tell you, it’s not

the end for that, for that dharma practitioner - anyway, according to these guys.

Okay, the third point, (རང་དོན་ལ་ཞེན་ན་བྱང་སེམས་མནི།) - If you have attachment to this, if you have

attachment, if you have attachment to (Tibetan phrase) your own self-interest, your

own self-interest, you are not a bodhisattva. Mmm… (long pause) Wow, this is a very

big subject. This is the heart of the Bodhisattva-Yana path. We are talking about the

bodhicitta. And I hope, as there’s no other way to put this, more clearly than this. “If

you have attachment to your own self-interest, you are not a bodhisattva”. Probably

this is one of the best ways, but there is a danger here. The danger is - you know, we

say this, even in our mundane life - “He’s so selfish. He’s, somebody’s so selfish”. When

we say somebody is selfish, he shouldn’t be that selfish. I am so selfish. I shouldn’t be

that selfish. At that time, we are talking about detachment from one’s own self-interest,

but here talking about not interested in your own self-interest. Different - very different.

When we tell somebody he’s very selfish, we are not really worried about whether there

is a self or not. We are only worried about whether he is selfish or not. Isn’t it? In this

chapter, in this section that has to be included.

In fact, the fact that somebody is selfish - is a fundamental illusion. Not only it is wrong

thing, morally and you know, even appearance is not good, that somebody is only

interested in themselves but fundamentally it is a deception. It is as strong deception as

if you think. It is, it is really delusional. You know if you think you are a cow, right now,

all of you, all sitting on that chair, really seriously thinking. You feel like what you call it?

Regraduate, regug,- what? Regurgitating and if you feel like licking someone right this

very minute, you can try if you like, but we will consider this as a delusion. You are not

a cow. I don’t see you as a cow. It’s that, it’s exactly same. Me, I, self - it’s as

delusional as thinking that you are a cow. You, you understand? You know like my tail

is like wagging, what do you call it? Tail wagging, right? And I feel like licking

somebody’s face or moving your ears like this. Just like that. This level we have to think.

In this regard I will tell you this. Let’s talk about renunciation first. When we talk about

renunciation, what makes you think that renunciation is the right thing to do according

to the Buddha dharma? What makes you think renunciation is the right thing to have

right at the beginning. Oh, you know, you’ll say – because all these worldly goodies –

you know, they distract you, they entangle you, they make you addicted to this, they

make you co-dependent, all of this, isn’t it? This is all very well. This is all fine. This is

all true. But this is not the right - this is not the ultimate answer, though. It is you have

to know this, eh. Why in Buddhism, renunciation - “ nges-'byung” , “ nges-'byung” - is

stressed? Not because what you are going to renounce are evil, devil incarnate,

seductress, not because they are some kind of, you know, evil thing. Not because of

that. Fundamentally, of course, that also on the surface though, but the real reason is,

they are all illusion

There’s actually nothing to renounce it. There's actually nothing to give up. It’s your

stupid mind thinking “Ah, his face really looks salty, you know, like what do you call it?

Salivating, is it? You know really like salivating like looking at somebody's face. You

know it’s all your delusion. There is no salt on your neighbour’s face. This, so, let’s say

I’m the human being and you’re all cow. And you all are looking at each other and

really attempting to lick the other person’s face because you think there is salt. Is it salt

that they are attracted? Something like that, isn't it? What is it, then? I heard that it is

the salt, anyway. Yah - then what will I think? I think you guys are really going crazy.

First of all, you are not a cow. Secondly, there is no salt! So what is it they wanted to

lick? This is how pathetic the situation is.

So when, we talk about reincarnation, no - renunciation – when we talk about

renunciation, we are talking about really fundamentally, really knowing the truth of the

samsara. When you know this truth of the samsara – suddenly, let’s say your tongue is

already about four inches out. And you are like one centimetre close to somebody’s face,

and this sweaty face, let’s say. And then you wake up from being cow, and you are like

THIS close. You are about, then you “What! What am I doing?” How embarrassing! This

is how you would feel, isn’t it? So, re…, renunciation of the great arhats are a bit like

that. (Tibetan phrase) This is what is written in the sutras. The vastness of the sky and

the vastness of the (Tibetan word) palm? – palm of a hand – equal. Or the amount of

gold and you know, dust – is equal. It’s all again sandcastle. It is a game that children

play. Why not, if you feel that it’s kind of liberating them, yah, play along. But if it

collapses, it’s not a big deal. That is the true renunciation growing, isn't it?

If we think, if you are, eh, if you are to renounce something that is truly existing, really

like a G-string, really, really like yummy stuff. If they are there - “Wow” – our battle is

lost. How many books there is in Kangyur that talks about illusion. Not so much actually.

How many books in the Seattle library that talks about other yummy stuff? The battle is

forever lost. You know billboards, advertisements, newspapers, education, friends,

family, just - this is what I mean. If everyone becomes even a mediocre genuine

dharma practitioner, the world economy will collapse - because there will no interest

then. The healthy economy really relies so much on continuous visualization of “cow”,

and believing in it really wholeheartedly. Where did this come from? What? (Tibetan

phrase).Yes, I am sorry, today, I am not thinking very well. It’s all scattered.

Right - (རང་དོན་ལ་ཞནེ་ན་བྱང་སེམས་མིན།) Yes, that’s right. So we were talking about “If you have

interest in your own thing, interest, if you have attachment to your self-interest, you

are not a bodhisattva". This can be understood on this level which we just talk at.

That’s the highest level. Based on this wisdom, of course, even on the relative level -

cherishing oneself; let’s assume there is a self. Even on that level, cherishing just

oneself but not others, is from the management point of view, is wrong. It does not

exist, you know, there is no such thing as me alone having fun, the rest of the people –

who cares. It doesn’t work like that. Everything is interdependent.

Oh, I don’t think I have to elaborate too much. The whole situation on this earth is, the

deterioration of the earth, is very much to do with cherishing the self. It’s because of

that, not because of George Bush at all. It’s very unfair to blame him. It’s because we

need to take shower. It’s because we need to, you know, sprinkle water on our mown,

eh, this lawn. It’s because we need to drive car, each and every one of us. Stuff like

that. And there is like the whole China, India, waiting to do that; already accomplishing

to do that. So, actually, eh, someone like George Bush – I think he has purified a lot of

the karma, for being the catalyst and the scapegoat for many of, every one of our

individuals cherishing the self. So, I don’t think I need to elaborate too much on this.

Bodhisattva attitude is really a timely attitude. It’s really one of the, probably, the only

strategy to save this earth. It’s not too late - Never too late. (Long pause)



So anyway, if I just briefly go through the categories for the bodhicitta - there is

actually I think, I already mentioned this during the question and answer. There is

relative bodhicitta and ultimate bodhicitta. And probably this is important. At the

moment, most of our understanding of the bodhicitta has a lack of understanding of the

ultimate bodhicitta. This is n...ot good. Bear in mind bodhicitta must accompany,

bodhicitta must never lose that ultimate aspect – the wisdom aspect. There is a reason

I'm stressing this. Because we often hear people making comments “Oh, you must be a

great bodhisattva”. And then we ask why? “Oh, you know, he smiles a lot and he never

throws tantrum. He’s so patient, too lenient towards our – this touchy feeling, our

understanding of the lovey-dovey bodhicitta”. Not a good way to understand this

bodhicitta.

Bodhisattva’s method is infinite. Nothing can, you cannot judge. Nothing. Bodhisattva’s

aspiration – we were talking about the aspiration yesterday – it’s infinite. I was told by

my gurus, and it has to be like that and should be like that. It gives you the freedom. I

myself when I am in a sober mood, I aspire. My aspiration is to become, I don't know,

it’s doesn’t matter which order, but I want to become, you know, Premier of China,

President of the United States. That’s what I aspire a lot. I have actually offered a

hundred thousand butter lamps in Bodhgaya - aspiration is mainly to become a black

woman Republican American president. So please if you are writing a will or something

in the future, tell your children to, if in the future, like two or three generations later, if

there is a woman, black woman, running for president – vote for her.

And also, also the president of the, eh, eh, the National Rifle Association – is it? Very

much and, and there’s also the Chinese premier. I mean, I’m even considering the

prime minister of Brazil, it’s not a bad idea – stuff like that. I'm just sharing you this

because I think the clear activity, clarity of the aspiration should be infinite. Of course,

you can always settle with kind of self, selfish-oriented kind of not too courageous, but

comfort, comfort-oriented aspiration like to be reborn as Bill Gates’ pet dog. I'm sure

you will have, I don’t know, every day two sausages, but that could be not that

productive. But who knows? Maybe other dogs can get some connection.

Within the relative bodhicitta there’s aspiration, aspiration bodhicitta and application

bodhicitta, as we talked yesterday. And we talked about aspiration bodhicitta as

probably the safest for the beginners, the safest path to enter. Buddha himself said to a

king, (Tibetan phrase) “Oh, King, you have so much things to do. You have subjects to

take care. You have, you know, economy to take care. You have all your crewing to

look after You have no time for reading and contemplation and all the others but I

could give you an equally powerful method. And finally, when the king heard the

instruction, it happens to be aspiration. So aspiration bodhicitta, I think it is very, very

important. It doesn’t have to be aspiration that is already there, printed, composed - as

I just demonstrated, it can be anything. But, the point of the aspiration is not just to

become powerful and rich and influential and all that - but have the aspiration of

making the sentient beings get connected to the truth, one way or another. That is

what you have to be aspiring for, the truth, to make the other people understand the

truth, the ultimate truth, the truth. That should be the spine of the aspiration.

As for the application bodhicitta, again it is infinite. Generally we classify six or ten

paramitas. This is a good category to follow - some kind of guidance, guidance sort of

structural outline. But as Shantideva said, many of the application bodhicitta is not

really permitted to be practiced by beginner bodhisattvas, such as cutting your own

limbs and feeding to hungry tigers. And this is all because beginner bodhisattvas may

have no enough understanding of the emptiness, and therefore the bodhisattvas, the

small-time bodhisattvas, if they do it forcefully, it may create, it may cause

disillusionment, loss of trust, loss of heart, loss of trust in their own confidence. So

similarly many of the bodhisattva applications are something that you have to, you

don’t have to apply right from the beginning. This is important, by the way.

I can’t remember the words today. Oh, yah, (Tibetan phrase). This is from the

Bodhicharyavatara (Tibetan phrase). In fact there’s two traditions of the bodhisattva

practice - one coming from the Yogacara school and the other coming from the

Madhyamika school. Most of the time in the Tibetan tradition - both exist, huh, we take

both – most of the emphasis is on Madhyamika tradition. And in the Madhyamika

tradition, there is something so nice, which is (Tibetan phrase) “All the bodhisattvas’

activities and applications and discipline, I shall step by step engage, not right at the

beginning”. Say you have taken the bodhisattva vow today does not mean that you

have cut your legs tomorrow. Step by step. In fact so well taught this one by

Shantideva, he even suggested to give things by your right hand to the left hand like

this. Days and days you have to do this – your giving. Then what do you do. You begin

to give vegetables - slowly, slowly. See, because, “dewa shepa” sugata, blissfully gone

sugata, blissfully gone path of the Mahayana should never be painful right from the

beginning. According to your capacity, according to your ability, you apply. And then

Shantideva said, (Tibetan phrase) - If you tried to get used to it, there’s nothing on this

earth that he cannot get accustomed with. One day even to cut your neck for the sake

of many, many people, you will not even budge or blink your eyes. You will do it like a

swan plunging into the lotus lake, happily and willingly. Because Shantideva said – ah,

bodhisattva is wise and because of his wisdom, it’s like when he can see the profits, so

to speak, of doing this out of, by doing this temporary small penance, but so much gain,

he'll plunge into this without any hesitation. Can we take a toilet break? I think it’s

better, yah. .

The second (Tibetan phrase) which is - lf you have attachment to samsara, it is not a

renunciation – and the third (Tibetan phrase) – If you have attachment to self-interest,

you are not a bodhisattva. Eh, the first one, the second one, see, actually even if you

go to the first one, (Tibetan phrase) - If you have attachment to this life, you are not a

dharma practitioner. If you can manage to abandon attachment to this life, what it does

is, it takes you away from being a materialistic or being just a worldly samsaric being to

the spiritual. You’ll, you, elevate yourself from being ordinary worldly, materialistic, any

ordinary being to a spiritual person. And on top of that, if you can abandon attachment

to samsara then, eh, you have elevated yourself as a practitioner of the Shravakayana

path. And then if you can practice the third one, abandon attachment to self-interest,

then you actually elevate yourself from being merely practicing the Shravakayana path

to the Bodhisattvayana path.

Okay, now still continue with bodhicitta – and we were talking about the application

bodhicitta. And I also told you about, in order to qualify mind as bodhicitta – “citta” is

kind of mind, you know, bodhi mind - in order to qualify mind, an ordinary mind, as a

bodhi mind, it has to, has to definitely, you cannot do without, is that it has, that it

needs the wisdom, which is therefore, eh, therefore we talk about the ultimate

bodhicitta - okay. Now the ultimate bodhicitta is, as we talked yesterday, and as you

have been told many, many times, of course the ultimate should be beyond expression

(Tibetan phrase), cannot be expressed, cannot be contemplated, cannot be discussed,

all of that. And we talked about the salt, and remember the example, but we can talk

about what is not wisdom first, so to speak, and then establish a view so that

practitioners like ourselves can have some kind of vague idea that what we have

imagined is not the ultimate truth.

This is we talk about (Tibetan phrase) - how it appears is not how it is basically. It

appears beautiful like a rainbow, you know, the bow, you know, the beautiful shape, all

of that, but in reality it is just a temporary appearance, you know, something like that.

It’s all like this table, for instance; (Tibetan phrase) this table - temporarily it is a

transitory collection of few things put together and then suddenly in our habitual mind

we think it’s a table. That's all there is; and it functions as a table, of course. And

consensus – yes, everybody agree this is table. But from the time that you walk in, if I

have been sitting on this instead of this, then you’ll be thinking “Oh, Rinpoche is sitting

on a strange chair today”. So the idea of table will not exist right from the beginning.

So what we can do to approach to the ultimate bodhicitta is through hearing and

contemplation and meditation.

Through hearing, what do we do? What we have been doing is kind of, I hope, you

know, we are doing hearing and contemplation. Hearing is what you are doing now.

Contemplation is actually a wage, waging a war between your, eh, theory and emotion.

That’s basically kind of contemplation. Is it really, you know, is the theory really

working with your emotion? And I tell you because some of you who have been

studying giant philosophy like Madhyamakavatara, you will know that Chandrakirti had

used different opponents to argue with. And please, you should never think that

Chandrakirti is such addicted to argument. If you think of this properly, you will realize

all those opponents are the representatives of our emotion. They represent our

stubborn, logical, rational emotion of mind. That’s how we establish hearing and

contemplation, and then meditation.

Once, you establish a confidence, vague will do actually, but if you have a really strong

confidence, even better; then what do we do? You know, once you; it’s a bit like this –

you are learning a language, which you have never learned before. And then the

teacher gives you a shape which looks like this and then teacher says “This is kha”.

Let’s say you are learning Sanskrit, and that is, and then what do you have to do? You

have to get used to that. So that in your normal time, I don't know, let’s say there is a

big fire and then you have to really, you know, exit yourself from this room and the

only sign is this Sanskrit letter “kha”. So at that time you’ll immediately remember this,

so to speak, you understand? You just have to get used to that - that view, so through

the hearing and contemplation, you develop a certain confidence. Okay yes - five

aggregates are not self, form is not self, you know, things like that, argument, all of

that. You should not spend too much time on this. If you spend too much on this you

become very intellectual and the intellectual analysis never ends. Who was it? Some

Kagyupa master said (Tibetan phrase) – You know, until your discussion stops, there

will never, there is no end to questioning and answering.

No end to, so any way, you develop this confidence, and then you have to get used to

it, used to this view. So for that what do you need? Well, one thing we know what we

need - is we need a stable mind. If your mind is not stable if you mind is a bit like a

(pause) hook, sharp hook? Lots of sharp hook on the wall. And if all the phenomena are

bit like eh, crumpled-up sweaters, and then you throw these sweaters on the wall, one

way, one way or another, one of these hooks will hold these sweaters. And these hooks,

if the hooks are kind of solid and big and, you know, kind of big solid hooks, it is kind of

okay, because it is easy to take it out. But most of these hooks are very tiny, you know,

sort of very, very tiny hooks , and the hook itself is so tiny that, that almost like a

thread, so that the sweater that you throw on this – the thread and the hook become,

you know, intertwined and very difficult to undo this thing.

So you need a stable mind. So what do you for the stable mind, to really develop the

stable mind? You apply some tricks. And those tricks are wonderful, I tell you. Those

tricks are - we bring another hook. Say “Here try to throw your sweaters only on that

hook. The rest of the hooks, every time you feel like throwing your sweaters on the

other hook - don’t, throw it only on this particular hook. This is what the shamatha

people do. They tell you to concentrate on breathing in, out, in, out, or something like

that. Or I don’t know, a small stick or a book or a Buddha statue or something like that.

Basically it is a trick. I'm sure you, you know. I no need to tell you, you know, stupid to

think your air that is coming from the nostrils is so divine that by concentrating on that

will lead you to enlightenment. It’s got nothing to do with that – it’s just a trick. By, by

forcing yourself to think only that, only throw on this one hook. What it does – in the

beginning it makes you realize there’s all these hooks, all these hooks which you have

never realized before. You are actually looking at these hooks and think that they are

part of the sweaters, remember. By concentrating on one hook, then you realize “Ha,

there’s so many hooks”. So many, many meditators – they go to the instructors and say

“I can’t concentrate. I’ve too many thoughts”.

I am actually designing a medal, by the way. Any time, every time when a student

come and say “I just can’t meditate. I’ve too many thoughts” - I’ll give them a medal. I

am designing a really nice beautiful medal. It is the biggest achievement, I tell you.

This is the first ever, you know, victory. At last, you know who’s the enemy. Until now,

you are like this, sort of kid, who is in the middle of a battlefield, who knows something

terrible is happening, but you don’t really know who is the enemy and who is the friend.

You are lost. Now you know, at least from whom you should be escaping from.

PARTING FROM THE FOUR ATTACHMENTS ... part 12/15 (zhen pa bzhi bral) by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche So and so you develop the shamatha but that is not the aim - remember. That is never the aim. That is the aim of the Buddhist chauvinist. That is the aim of the Hindus. Now they love this. And I think these days, the five- star resorts. They also like this, but Buddhists – you are not supposed to settle on this one because it’s not, no point if you have (pause), if y...ou have this, I am going to be, I’ll tone down my remarks. It’s no, it’s the, you know, the shamatha achievement is the, the epitome…because of what, epitome, isn’t it? (Tibetan phrase) - epitome of hypocrisy. The pure shamatha resort is the epitome of hypocrisy. All the emotions, all the stresses and thoughts come down. Then you, with your smiling face, you go round and boast about how your shamatha is, how your meditation is. You know, it makes you really, really - I have seen some orange Californians (laughter) who even move like this. They’re orange, can you believe that? Why are they orange? I mean their skin, not the dress. Really, like strangely orange. I think they are eating carrot pills – I have a feeling. There is, you know, there is in France, you can eat carrot pills, I think so. And many of them, they, I don’t know whether it is a plastic surgery or a liposuction or a.... It is the powerful only shamatha. I don’t know, it has to be one of them. The way they move, the way they kind of move, the way they, their lower jaw moves, especially – they move with the shamatha. Or maybe, as I said, it’s something to do with surgery, I don't know. So, yes – so - not good enough. Tilopa said, remember – if you want to have clear water you do not stir. Let it be and then the clear, really, really clear water. If you really want to get rid of the mud, you have to do something else - for that - vipassana. And that the vipassana instruction is infinite. Please don’t think that vipassana is just like sitting and watching yourself. That is not the only vipassana. Please, if you are making notes, write it in bold. That is not the only vipassana. Vipassana can be anything. It can

be like what Tilopa did to Naropa. It is something to do with awakening. It has to make you really see the truth. Not so easy this one. Anyway, since I have to do my job, explaining to you - just briefly, vipassana can be taught, can be, please underline the word, can be taught, based on what we call (dran pa nye bar bzhag pa bzhi) - the Four Mindfulness, Four Mindfulness. These are quite good, you should do it: (lus dran pa nyer gzhag) - mindfulness of body, right? (tsor ba) - feeling; (sems) - consciousness or mind? mind; (chos) - it’s like the dharma, the reference phenomena, basically. I, I want to go through one by one – too much. Eh, I will just give why we do that. It’s quite interesting, actually. (dran pa nye bar bzhag pa bzhi) - very, very interesting strategy. This is an amazing Buddhist strategy. When we think about ourselves - me, I; this thing now, I – you are always thinking about either your body, your feeling, or your mind or dharma, meaning that man, woman, American, tall, short, white, I don’t know, red, white, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims. I don’t know – you, you always think in terms of a reference – father, mother, children. These are the four. You always refer to either, either all of them or three or two or one - you are thinking, when you say me. Okay (dran pa nye bar bzhag) - mindfulness? That’s how you translate? (Reply from translator). Foundation of mindfulness, close placement of mindfulness? That’s good. Emm, I’ll tell you right now. Let’s say, just pick one, okay, body. We don’t have a mindfulness of our body. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean that if somebody is stepping on your toes, you will not feel it. No, no, of course not. But usually, when you think about your body, you are always thinking in terms, you are not really mindful of its - how should I put it? Okay, when we think about our body, usually we are always thinking of our body within the context of Kenzo – Kenzo, is it or Yoji Yamamoto, is it – the designer? Oh, Armani – Armani, Armani – Giorgio Armani? Guess, Banana Republic, Chanel, ah, Slim Machine – machine or what – pills, eh, diet; you understand what I am saying. Magazines, what is the present, eh, what do you call thing to, what is the present ultimate size of something, you understand, like legs or I don’t know, shoulder or whatever, you understand? That’s how we think about our body. This is a very gross example, of course. We are always thinking about our body in connection to fashion - you know, size - how someone will look at you. You know, just think, when you makeup yourself, when you dress yourself up, this is the most ridiculous thing that we do, eh. When we make ourselves, makeup ourselves, groom ourselves, you know like, like this – who, who makes the final decision? Yourself – ah, I look good, (laughter) the best. Of course, the other people who you see, “Oh, wow, you look good.” Of course, they have to say, (laughter) they have to say, they have no choice. They have to. They could get fired if you don’t say this. They could get fired – you know, all kinds of reasons. You are not the only one who is doing this. Even if there is like half of feet of a shiny spot somewhere in an elevator or somewhere, where you can see your own reflection, you’ll groom yourself. This is how much our body, we are not mindful of our body. We are mindful though, we are mindful

in a very twisted way. We are mindful, relying on the other object – the other reference. So what’s the problem with this? Oh, big problem. Loss of confidence – suddenly you see somebody who is much fatter than you, then you think – Oh, I wish I am more chubby. You know, I look so skinny. I look like a stick. You know, like I wish I have this kind of moustache, I wish, you know, I am tall, I am shorter, I am thinner, all of this. That’s why I was telling you earlier all the gym business, all of these is thriving because of lack of body mindfulness. Yoga, six-pack, is it? What, what do you say - six-pack? What does that mean? What is that? (Explanation from translator) Shape of? (laughter) Ooh, all of this. So, so, actually, so that’s why you have to be mindful of your body now. The general rule for (lus dran pa nyer gzhag) is, okay, general, the most easy way is sitting and sitting and be aware of your body. Actually, in the Kagyupa tradition, Drupka Kagyu and the Kamtsang Kagyu, all of this – they have this, they have as a, as a ngondro for the, you know, Six Yogas of Naropa, and stuff like that. Anyway we are talking about Tantra again. But there is a very, very good advice from Lama Shang, and then, eh, eh, Karmapa Mikyo Dorje - all of this people have excellent advice on this one. Just, just sitting - just sitting. Sometimes, they call it “rdo rje, eh, rdo rje skyil krung” or something like that. It’s basically a technique of just sitting. It’s a wonderful technique. I have, my appreciation to this, actually become after I visited to Japan. In many of the Zen monasteries, they actually tell their students first to do, about a year or two even, to just sit. And I was reading some of the Zen masters’ teachings, Dogen Zen. I think Dogen, and he said that, I sort of gathered, you know, that the word “just” ends up becoming more and more and more profound as you practice. Because at this point, just sitting means no standing, no sitting – I mean no walking, that’s all you can understand. But the word “just” is so profound. Anyway, so, because actually the technique of just sitting is probably one of the safest because if we move, you make yourself so vulnerable to lots of things. If you - you can do body mindfulness by moving - but if you, if you are a beginner, if you, if you decided to do the moving-body mindfulness, you may be victim, you may be victim to lots of other obstacles, such as remote control, I don’t know, cheese grater, eh, things like that. You, you see lots of things, you get attracted, you feel like doing those things. You understand? Otherwise, the body mindfulness is clearly explained by Shantideva in his Bodhicharyavatara - so much. For instance, (Tibetan phrase) things like how to wash your, eh, tent, he said not to do this, but wash like this. (Tibetan phrase) And things like if you, if somebody ask you which way to the, you know, direction – then instead of showing him like this, you should show with all your fingers. And stuff like that in the Bodhicharyavatara. Though you may think it’s all Indian sort of traditional Indian custom, probably but not so. In a way, this is all (lus dran pa nyer gzhag) - how to move and to be gentle, you know, like (Tibetan phrase) you know, things like a cat, like a thief, you should walk gently and quietly, you should have smile all the time. This is all a detailed explanation on (lus dran pa nyer gzhag) - mindfulness of the body.

It gets deeper, of course. He explains about just, you know, just watching, just being aware of your body. What does that mean? Going beyond all kinds of things; like right now, I never tell you – can I, I always, I will say, I, I will never say to someone like Taylor – can I shake your bone and skin, and vein and sweat, and blood? Can I have the pleasure of doing that? I will not say that. You understand. I will say - can I shake your hand? As if there is a something called “hand”. There isn’t. There is nothing called, you know, (Tibetan phrase) there’s lots of analysis like that. And then, also like we never, when we look at our hand, we never think in terms of – it’s always changing, it’s a decaying. We think the same hand shook Robert De Niro’s hand five years ago. It’s not true. Robert De Niro, the hand that shook Robert De Niro’s hand is gone, finished, dead, never is it going to come back. Things like that. So the impermanence of it and the interdependence of it, and then not only that - parts (lus dran pa nyer gzhag) - when you are aware of your body, you, you will begin to think in parts. And when you think in parts, it’s really, it’s quite something. I tell you, it’s really. Once I was in Delhi and it was like 48 degrees heat. What is that in Fahrenheit? Really hot. The black top on the car – it was melting, and suddenly, the electricity goes off. So of course, there is no air condition. There is no fan. So for about an hour or two, it’s still okay. But then, after a while, I begin to see my nose, tip of my nose. I begin to actually see it. You know, it’s like, it is becoming a hindrance, you know, like (Rinpoche demonstrated - laughter). And then, I begin to even see some of the inside parts. You know, like this. Actually I was hallucinating basically because of the heat. Well, hallucinations, maybe. Maybe that’s how we should be looking at our body. When you begin to see your body in parts, you’ll be very surprised. Things that you love is actually, not necessarily unlovable, but it’s, it’s a very, you are, it’s bit like stroking – stroking, is it – stroking a skunk. It’s bit like stroking a skunk. You know, it’s very strange. It’s very beautiful. It’s really nice. It’s really furry –furry is it? Furry, but you know, anytime it can do things (of a skunk). (laughter) So, if you look at your everything, everything what you just, right of course, there is actually, you know, there is also an exercise beginning with thinking that there is pus, blood. And then I tell you – this is another thing - when you think of your body in parts, what it does. You will realize Mr. Giorgio Armani has never thought that level. You understand what I mean? Giorgio Armani won’t work anymore, because you are thinking in parts. Giorgio Armani only works in whole, when, when things are kind of put together. It is, it is, yah, it’s. I don’t want really to say it’s disgusting, it’s not actually. It’s just very strange, very strange. It’s just like a walking lump of meat, walking skeleton with balloons of liquid, you know, jiggling – is it, what do you call it? Jiggling? And it’s really strange. And things so like nails coming out, I don’t know why it does that? Slowly, slowly coming out, and the hair growing, overnight actually. Overnight it grows, I don’t know why? And things like this - there is another flat thing that’s in-between, you know, like two – something called tongue. They, they look very strange too; stuff like that. So like this, through this, you look at your body. So what it

does is it will again, what it does – the main purpose is it will really clear a big question mark about how much should you really cherish your body. And eventually ask this question how much you should cherish yourself. Remember, we are talking about the self – if you have attachment to the self, you are not a bodhisattva – how much you should really cherish? Is it cherish-able? The skunk – how much, how much is it really, you know, like worth it? Oh, you know, I don’t want to be sounding too, you know, like nihilistic here, and pessimistic. Shantideva said (Tibetan phrase) what, and there’s also, I can’t remember, you know, all these root texts which I learnt in the past – all gone, cannot think. Anyway, Shantideva said, like a, this body is like your slave, give some food, some wage, let it, let it take you to the other shore. He means a lot with this. The same thing with a lot of us, your body is not your slave; your body is your king, the master. That’s why even for the ridiculous piece of clothes such as tie, you spend so much hours choosing it, because the body has become the master. Yep, that’s, that’s just a brief run-through on (lus dran pa nyer gzhag) and then similar thing for (tsor ba, sems, chos) – all of this. So through that, you can develop vipassana. Before we, five more minutes; okay, one thing before - I tell you this before I stop. So, you might ask – okay, so we are talking about bodhicitta. So now, how should one practice the bodhicitta? We are told the bodhicitta mind is a wish to enlighten all sentient beings, but from the way we’ve been discussing this morning, it sounds much more complicated. My answer is if you wish to enlighten all sentient beings, that wish includes everything what we have been talking this morning. Shantideva said this – you know, read Shantideva; he’s really good - really, really good. He said who on this earth have wish you enlightenment? Yes, your parents have wish you long life, good health, lots of money, lots of friends. Yah, yah, all your gods may have wish you to migrate to their own land, stuff like this. But who would wish enlightening all sentient beings? This is the supreme-most kindliness because enlightenment, after all, is not a state, it is not some kind of land where you can migrate to. It is recognition of the truth. Wishing that truth to everyone has to be the highest and the best and the most powerful kindness. And I will include, I will conclude this morning by saying, as Patrul Rinpoche said – “Kindness is the key, being kind. This is, kindness is the stepping stone.” I think if there is a hierarchy between love and kindness, kindness should be the, like the President and love should be the Chief of Staff. Kindness – much more important. Okay let’s take a lunch break.



I will begin talking about holy war, since it’s a fashionable thing to talk about; because,

dharma practitioners are jihadists actually. We are struggling. Strugglist? Is there such

word? We need to wage war, holy war. And in Buddhism, there’s one enemy – every

religion has their own enemies, infidels, you know, and in Buddhism, there’s no

exception. We have one enemy..., and that enemy in Tibetan is called “yang”. I guess

you can translate this as distraction. The constant distraction, minute by minute,

moment by moment, second by second - this ongoing distraction - so it all boils down

to that. So-called jealousy, anger, pride, all the emotions that we usually talk about -

they are just an extension of distraction. They are different expressions of distraction. It

is different, you know, different manifestation of basically one thing, and that’s called

distraction.

Also, the eight worldly dharmas that we kind of briefly run through yesterday; like

longing, like fishing for praise, like escaping from criticism, longing for attention, fear of

being ignored. All this is basically different manifestations of distraction. We are

distracted to certain value, and this is why we put so much emphasis on trying to get

what we want, and trying to avoid what we don’t want. So distraction is basically the

only thing that we are dealing with. That’s not so simple, and the reason why it’s not so

simple is because many times, so-called “the antidotes” for distraction are just another

version of distraction. And this is necessary because unless, we call it (Tibetan phrase)

disciple of superior faculty, unless you have, you have such a capability to get the point

of non-distraction instantly, it’s difficult. So we need to, like a, like if you have a thorn

inside your palm, you need another thorn to take it out. Likewise, in order to throttle up

more hideous and graver distraction we need more wholesome and more, eh,

seemingly harmless distractions to begin with. And this makes everything so difficult.

This makes the path more confusing, I guess.

And I was talking about ability - unless you are the, unless you are a disciple of superior

faculties, right? The superior, superior faculty is not something that you can acquire or

establish through, you know, like study and contemplations and research. Mainly the

superior faculties is something you have to acquire through, in Tibetan we call it “bsod

nams”, which is basically, I guess, can be translated as merit. In other words, it is an

ability or a very special cause and condition. If the cause and condition is not right, it

won’t work. This is clearly demonstrated in the case of, for instance, Milarepa. After,

and by the way, I think maybe I am getting distracted; but the life and liberation, life

and liberation of Milarepa is one of the best ever in the Tibetan history. Because almost

all the Tibetan great masters of the past – they all appeared to be good, right from the

beginning. They are all born good. They are all good right from the beginning and then

they somehow become a little bit better, that’s about all (laughter).

Whereas, Milarepa is something that we can kind of identify with. With all due respect,

he was a murderer. And he wasn’t, he didn’t murder just one or two or here and there.

He murdered a lot. He was, eh, a very unique and... Anyway, after he did what he, he

did, then when he met this Dzogchen master, he received Dzogchen teachings and

nothing happened, if I make the story short. And next morning, this Dzogchen master

said “Even though the Dzogchen teaching itself is so precious, it looks like there is no

right dependent-arising, or right conditions between you and me”. “And I think”, this

Dzogchen master said, “I think you have a certain connection with this great translator,

Marpa”. And even as he mentioned the word “Marpa”, the name, Milarepa already felt

ecstasy. And of course, many of you know the life and liberation of the great Milarepa.

When Milarepa first encountered Marpa Lotsawa - Marpa Lotsawa wasn’t sitting on a

throne and wearing a proper hat, about to give some impressive sermon. He was, in

fact, ploughing field. So he was immediately as, immediately at the sight of Marpa,

Milarepa, once again felt something. That really changed not only Milarepa’s life actually;

that changed thousands and millions. And I believe, it has changed lives and the

thinking and the system of the people even in the West. Today the lineage goes on. So

when we are talking about a disciple of superior faculties, we are talking that level. But

for those of us, like you and me, we need to go through lots of gradual training. We

need lots of gadgets. We need lots of tools, which we also have to be ready to discard,

when the new toy or new gadget is given.

So, anyway, as I was saying, our sole arch-rival, our enemy – the fundamental, the

main enemy is distraction. Ignorance is another name for distraction, basically. The

reason why I need to tell you this is because we were talking about mindfulness, earlier.

And because, our main problem is distraction, it makes sense that we also have one

weapon actually. There is only one weapon and that sole weapon is called mindfulness.

All the other Buddhist training, such as love and compassion, mind, you know, like

immeasurable thoughts, six paramitas, ten paramitas – what else? All of these are

basically an extension of different kinds of manifestation of mindfulness. This what I

have been telling you although I may have exaggerated here and there a little bit –

extracted from, eh (Tibetan phrase) which I don’t know (Sanskrit name). Do you know?

So, “dran pa” mindfulness – is actually the main thing. And, by the way, when we say

mindfulness, it’s not only a remembrance. It can be, but it’s much more than

remembrance. The most profound level of mindfulness is not even remembrance. It is a

pure, direct cognition. This is what we are aiming at. And this can only be qualified as is

stated by Sachen Kunga Nyingpo and Jetsun Drakpa Gyaltsen, (Tibetan phrase) as long

as you have grasping, the moment you have grasping, you have no mindfulness. Do

you know why? Because the moment you are grasping, do you know what’s happening?

When you have the grasping, you are occupied. You are engrossed. In other words,

you are worked up. When you are worked up, you are busy. You are occupied. So,

obviously, you are not mindful. In other words, when you are worked up, completely

spaced out, often, you know, many times - almost literally, we walked around with our

mouths open, flies might go in and even have time to come out. This, this level of

complete spaced out – this is what we go through.

So, I am trying to connect with (འཛིན་པ་འབྱུང་ན་ལྟ་བ་མནི།). You know, we were talking about

bodhicitta, and when we were talking about bodhicitta, we were talking about the

ultimate bodhicitta. The ultimate bodhicitta is basically understanding the truth. And we

talk about understanding the truth, we say truth is ungraspable. Not because there is

something, because it’s a, not because it is a mystery, but there is no truly existing

truth that needs to be grasped. This is why if there is grasping, you do not have the

view.

As a summary of all of the, all the four points, eh, as a summary to this, I was thinking

of quoting quite a good explanation of Dezhung Rinpoche’s (Tibetan phrase) who is

actually related both in the worldly sense and the spiritual to Drakpa Gyaltsen, and

Kunga Nyingpo. Ah, because we talk about if you have attachment to this life, you are

not a dharma practitioner; if you have attachment to samsara, you have no

renunciation; if you have attachment to the self-interest, you are not a bodhisattva; and

if you have grasping, you have no view. Okay, and right at the beginning, we talk about

why we are even interested in this – because we all want to be liberated. The liberation

is the final and ultimate definition of happiness, according to the Mahayana. Liberation

is what we are looking for.

So, in connection with this, let me explain this a little bit. Because it is a path, we have

to talk about samsara and nirvana, a little bit. Samsara and nirvana, this notion of

samsara and nirvana can be only established within, within the cyclic existence. I don’t

know how to put this. I will explain this. See, waking up from a dream, waking up from

a nightmare can be only talked about if there is a phenomenon called sleeping and

dreaming. Then you can talk about waking up. This is important to tell you, by the way.

Why? Because, many people think “Oh, yes, samsara does not exist, but nirvana kind of

exist”. Because we think nirvana is so precious, that has to exist. So we have a certain

animosity towards the samsara – we are talking at intellectual level – we have some

kind of, we think what we are longing for must exist. Otherwise, why we should, why

we even long for, why we should long for? But the great Nyingmapa master,

Longchenpa said – this is a very good, this is such a good example, I am still not been

able to express this properly. I tried to with many, many different audience, but I am

not doing a good job. It’s a, it’s written very clearly in the Self Commentary of “chos

dbyings mdzod”, it’s the, eh, Treasury of the Dharmadhatu - one of the greatest. It’s

one of the greatest text that ever came about, even on earth, I should say. Really

amazing.

There, Longchenpa gave such a beautiful example. He said, if you sleep and then you

dream. Before you dream, whatever you have dreamt does not exist. Let’s say you are

dreaming an elephant. Before you dream, that elephant does not exist. Of course,

before we sleep, that much we understand. But even as you dream, even as you dream

the elephant, actually the elephant is not there. You are only dreaming. Now you wake

up. You have no more elephant, but that also is not true. The elephant hasn’t gone

somewhere. All the while, you have not moved even one inch from that bed – before

the elephant, during the elephant, and after the elephant – you are exactly sitting,

sleeping in the same spot, never move one inch. It is a fantastic example.

If I try to explain this - our subject here - see, what we are trying to get, we should be

really, what we should be really aiming for is the realization that we have been sleeping

in the bed, the same bed. But what we have, but because, because of dualistic, you

know, habits and all of that, this is forgotten. So, temporarily, we are supposed to long

for goodbye to the elephant. We are supposed to long for the disappearance of the,

what, the elephant, even though the elephant actually never existed before the sleep,

during the dream – therefore it cannot disappear. Keep that in your mind, and then I

will explain a little bit about (Tibetan phrase) – explanation on how the samsara –and-

nirvana game, samsara- and- nirvana game keeps on playing.



It is quite well explained by Sonam Tsemo here. Ideally we can elaborate this - Sonam

Tsemo’s, you know, presentation. But I think this is going to take a long time. Basically

it is a thorough explanation on twelve interdependent co-origination. I am some of you

are familiar with this; you know, the twelve interdependent co-origination. From the

“ma rig pa”, you know..., all that, mmm, “'du byed”, all of the ignorance, the karmic

formation, so on so forth and all the way to birth and the death “rga shi”. This diagram,

this categorization is one of the most clever categorization, I tell you. If you understand

the twelve interdependent co-origination, you will understand the necessity of

reincarnation. You will also understand how the game of samsara and Nirvana is being

played by our mind. But today we are making, we are going to make, let’s make it very

simple.

First, Sonam Tsemo said (Tibetan phrase), first you will look at an object. Let’s say this

is a, okay, oh, you know, you see the object. And as me when I am looking at the

subject, instead of seeing it, seeing this as in parts, you know, atoms, molecules, and

just all different kinds. Instead of seeing this as in parts, instead of seeing this as

interdependent phenomena, insisting this is as ever-changing, not even one moment

lasting as a permanent, instead of seeing that; and also instead of seeing as a - what

call it - aggregate of several transitory collection - due to my habit, due to my education,

the first thing I will think of “Ha, strawberry”.

This is what happens. I will see it as a whole. I will see it as a permanent – really. I

believe that from the time that I picked up this strawberry until now, I'm holding the

same strawberry - see. There's an element of thinking that it is the same strawberry. So

on and so forth. So, there is abundance of ignorance already, even as I look at the

strawberry. Now, after that, - then what do, then what? Craving - I really like to eat this;

and because “sred pa” is the craving, and then of course, I have already taken it - “len

pa”. These are what we call (Tibetan phrase). I don’t know how to translate this. I don’t

know, maybe (Tibetan phrase and words) How should I put this? Ah, mm, defilement,

defilement of defilement, or defilement of emotion - something like that, I think.

Anyway that is what we call defilement of, this is the first defilement. You understand –

it’s very important.

Now what? After that, after this (Tibetan phrase), defilement of emotion, I think so -

then this leads to, this breeds action. Not only mundane action of chewing and putting

it into the mouth, but buying, sorting, worrying about whether is organic or not - all of

things like this. All kinds of action and of course, the action then give birth to “srid pa”

the existence, becoming. This is what we call (Tibetan phrase) defilement of action or

karma. I hope this will make you realize that when the Buddhists talk about karma, in

fact, Buddhists are talking about different kinds of emotion or defilement. Karma is

actually a defilement. It is a defilement –karma. Okay.

Then once you develop this action and once this is now become good strawberry, bad

strawberry Japanese strawberry, American strawberry, whatever – when it becomes

something, becoming “srid pa”, then comes labelling – form, of course, corresponding

consciousness. “Skye mched” is like an element.

“Reg pa” – touch, feeling, eh, touching, touching (“reg pa”) and “tshor ba” which is the

feeling and then gives birth, and of course birth leads to death. And this, this last, this

last thing that I have been telling you is what we call (Tibetan phrase) the defilement of

arising, of birth. So when we say it defilement, we are talking about three kinds of

defilement - defilement of emotion, defilement of action and defilement of becoming or

birth. The fact that it exists; it has coming into existence. Okay, once you have that,

once you have this game, you know I was using a strawberry - even a mundane object

such as strawberry can have complete three sets of emotion or three sets of defilement.

Once you have that, then you have the samsara. And where there is samsara, there's

also a nirvana. Why?

This is big subject. I don’t know why I brought this up. You know in the Mahayana and

also in the Shravakayana, you know, we call it (Tibetan phrase). When we try to

understand how the samsara and nirvana function, what I have just explained very

briefly. First the ignorance, then - creates the action and so on and so forth, and all the

way to the birth and the death – right? Now a monk, let’s say, this is a classic example.

A monk, usually in ancient India, during the Buddha’s time, or maybe even after that –

a monk is usually given a small piece of bone or maybe, big piece of bone, I don’t know,

a bone basically. And then the monk would put this bone in front of him, look at this

bone and ask what is it? Obviously it’s a bone – eh, sign of death, death. So then the

next question you ask is where does the death come from? Birth – where does the birth

come from? So you go backwards. You go backwards and then you try, you finalize it

all emerged from one thing - which is defilement of emotion, distraction basically.

So the samsara and nirvana game is played or not played this way. If you play, you

encourage the defilement of emotion, which will encourage the other two emotions. If

you want to stop, you discourage the defilement of emotion, which then discourage the

other two. This is how you play, you play the, what you call it, the game of samsara

and nirvana. And it’s for this reason, all the teachings, but especially (Tibetan phrase) -

if you have attachment to samsara, you have no renunciation; if you have attachment

to the interest, to self-interest, you are not a bodhisattva; if you have grasping you

have no view. This is specially taught because of this, what I have just explained to you.

I think this has really made you so much confused a lot. I will let you ask some

questions. How’s that? Yes.

Student: Actually, just now, you have talking about the question I was thinking this

morning (some parts - inaudible)..Just now, you said that the elephant never exists

when we were dreaming. So what we supposed to long for, to be awakened?

Rinpoche: Yes, hmm, longing - longing is only necessary. We talk about longing; okay,

we talk about the longing because we are assuming you are dreaming the elephant.

That’s why we have to talk about longing. If you are not dreaming the elephant, then

no need. You don't have to wake up from that. Yes, you know.

Student: Do we have the safety to be awakened anyway, when the time is up?

Rinpoche: We have a safety? You mean do we have alarm clock to wake up?

Student: We have to be awakened when the time is up. When the whole world

awakens...

Rinpoche: Oh, when the time is up will. (Laughter) No, no, no, this is good. This is good.

This time is up is very interesting. In the Buddhist, in Tibetan we call it (Tibetan phrase).

It’s actually very interesting - almost, unbelievable, unviable so to speak. For instance,

when the great Shariputra, you know, great master – when he was asked by a

merchant, very old man to be, to become a monk, requesting him to become a monk –

Shariputra, with his kind of mediocre omniscience, looked at him and he didn’t see any

base of merit so that he can receive these vows. So, he said no need. “You know, I

can't give you”. And then the poor old man – he cried and all of that. And then Buddha

found out and Buddha said “Oh, Shariputra couldn’t, didn’t see. His omniscience is still

not developed. He didn’t see far enough”. Once this merchant was a pig. He accidently

went round a very holy relic, stupa. And because of that, just because of that, he,

almost by accident, he accumulated some kind of link. And based on that, all kinds of

merit can be established. So basically, my answer to you is the alarm clock is built in.

Student: Why is...the Buddha, dharma, sangha (inaudible)? I heard another version of

this story– this old man who has 84000 lives and…went round stupas…

Rinpoche: Oh, to make it louder, that’s all. Okay. Yes, yes, many, many stories like that.

This is why we should build stupas. No, no, actually, it’s true. This is we need to build

stupas, or you know, clear representation. Okay

Student: Rinpoche, in the third point in the text, you say if someone who has no

bodhicitta, you have been translating...as if you are not a bodhisattva (inaudible)? Is

there a difference?

Rinpoche: Oh, I think it’s my mistake. I think we should say bodhicitta. If someone who

has bodhicitta is a bodhisattva. So I can get away with that.

Student: My second question was if you meet a bodhisattva – how would you know?

Rinpoche: Oh, unless you are a bodhisattva of the first bhumi, or maybe at the end of

the path of application, very difficult to know - very, very, very difficult to know. This is

actually stated by the Buddha himself that no one can tell. Okay.

Student: I have a question about why reincarnation is important, as you were talking

about and it is also connected. This is a question that when I go home, leads to doubt

and loss of confidence, generally. The other part of it is that I am supposed to learn

liking a shirt, I am supposed to accept uselessness, and eh, longing for what can’t be

longed for, longing for what can’t be longed for. Basically, that’s the human situation,

those things - you have ambition, passion, so…mm, it seems a little dangerous

sometimes to use the language of attachment and talk about what’s unknown,

Rinpoche: Oh, that’s one thing that is definitely we know; but actually I don’t know, I

shouldn’t say definitely. One thing that is obvious is that we suffer. And obviously,

people like you and me - we don’t want to suffer – right? So the path is “mya ngan las

'da' ba” as we call it. “Mya ngan” means suffering. “Las ‘da’ ba” means goes beyond.

Actually that’s the common term that we use for Nirvana. It’s not so much to get

something - it's more to do with transcending something, something else. Really

Nirvana – nirvana is maybe more – “mya ngan las ‘da’ ba” is a good word.

“Tathagata” is also good. Mmm - anyway going beyond suffering. What we know is that

we do suffer. We know the cause and condition of suffering, we know we suffer. This

much we know and we can long. This is what Shantideva said (Tibetan phrase) in order

to dispel the suffering, one ignorance you are allowed to keep right now. That’s what

I’ve said .Anyway what was that reincarnation business?

Student: It seems like you almost got to the point in saying that it’s - I don't know why

I have to believe in reincarnation beyond, beyond the impermanence and dependent

arising explanation of it.

Rinpoche: Can you elaborate this a little bit?

Student: Well, dependent arising seems to imply death is going on all the time.

Rinpoche: You mean, if you are hearing dependent arising, if you are including

reincarnation within that, that’s fine. Then you don’t have to hear it separately.

Okay it’s this. If you - I know what, what's bothering you, I think. You know what

qualifies “nihilism”? Nihilist, nihilist, nihilists are someone who believe certain things do

not exist; you understand? Certain things do not exist. You understand? That’s nihilist.

If you believe nothing exists including the nothingness you are not another body, you

are not a nihilist. You understand. If you believe that nothing, you know (Tibetan

phrase) you know, everything - remember if you believe that nothing exists including

the non-existence, then you are not a nihilist.

Now, if you don't believe in reincarnation, but you believe in this thing going on here –

me and you talking like this - then you choose to believe this but you choose not to

believe what you don't see. Now, that’s nihilism. That’s why we have to talk about

reincarnation. Is that the one that you are going on about?



- THE FINALE

Student: I was taken you to mean literally we have to believe in a next life, because if

we didn’t, we’d run round raping people. You said that this morning.

Rinpoche: Yah, yah, yes, you better believe you might be reborn as a butterfly, yes.

Student: That doesn’t make sense to me, either, because you said we have buddha

nature – so why should we worry that we should worry that we’d be so crazy like that?

Rinpoche: No, no, buddha nature is your - what do you call it – it’s your, your wealth,

you understand? But whether you will use it or not - we don’t know. Butterflies also

have buddha nature but as they are not tapping on it, it’s totally un-functioning, you

understand. You can't, you talk almost as, you know, you are looking at milk, right?

You're talking as, you’re talking like this.

You are looking at milk and said “There is butter in it – let’s wait.” You have to churn.

Of all the people, you should know this. So just, you can’t bank on the buddha nature,

buddha nature because it has to be appreciated. It has to be worked on. By the way

does that does make the buddha nature better also, this is something you’d need to

know. You, working and practicing the dharma and all of that, does not make the

buddha nature better. And you going round, roaming round, robbing banks and doing

all kinds of things for life after life, is not making the buddha nature go worse. It stays

as it is. What you can do, so through the practice of dharma, the spiritual path, what it

does is it uncovers that potential; you know that. So what was the question about

reincarnation, going back?

Student: Well, it’s taking you literally to mean that it had to do with this sense of giving

up attachment to this life. That kind of scares me to give up attachment to this life. It

seems that it’s all I have.

Rinpoche: And then, so...

Student: And there seems, I don’t know, it’s the language thing, right? Eh, eh, you said

just sitting was less dangerous.

Rinpoche: Could be – then.

Student: Could be – like that because it’s simple – that kind of language.

Rinpoche: Okay, what’s that got to do with reincarnation?

Student: Because when we start talking about we’re giving up this life, it seems easy

to....

Rinpoche: No, just sitting could be, just sitting could be very well a method of giving up

attachment to this life. Goodness, you know, you should, sitting on a cushion, hours by

hours, hours after hours, any normal people will think you're really wasting your time.

Student: And it’s the useless thing too. I mean I don't like the idea of giving up

ambition.

Rinpoche: What?

Student: You know, to be useless. That's a hard one to swallow, because then you’d

be...

Rinpoche: Of course, yah, from the worldly point of view. From the worldly point of

view, dharma is useless. And if you want to be a spiritual person, you have to do that

and that is scaring you, is it?

Student: Yah

Rinpoche: Oh, I see. Oh. well, then I will take a bit of credit. I've done a job. What is it?

Student: Right, I think I have run out of steam.

Student: I’d been working for an environmental, non-profit. Example of an egg; so, I

was thinking when you said “it’s never too late…” (inaudible) So, what do you mean by

that?

Rinpoche: Never too late…you mean. Oh, just there’s lots of raw cake, raw, raw eggs

Student: Rinpoche-la, as Rinpoche mentioned at the beginning of this course, the

“Freedom from the Four Attachments” belong to the Mahayana teachings, so would you

please briefly explain to us what are the differences between the teachings “Freedom

from the Four Attachments” opposed to the Vajrayana teachings? And I personally hope

that this brief information would be an auspicious connection for Rinpoche to come to

Seattle again, maybe in the future to give us some teachings. And also, what are the

methods to do self-examination on ourselves to know if we are actually practicing

Tantra teachings properly based on a proper base of Mahayana practice?

Rinpoche: Okay (long pause) You know, all the sutras begin “Does have I heard”

(Tibetan phrase). There's a reason for this. It's a, it’s an amazing setting for the

beginning of speech, I should say - really. Also it is one of the greatest and most skilful

disclaimers (laughter). Ananda is saying “Thus, I have heard”. We don't know whether

the Buddha said this. “I have heard this”; it goes on (Tibetan phrase) “at one time”,

meaning Buddha may have said something else, in a different time. And that the

disclaimer is again swiftly strengthened by bringing some richness - when the Buddha

was on the Vultures Peak, places mentioned, surrounded by maha-bodhisattvas,

bodhisattvas, arhats, so on and so forth. I want to tell you this because it also indicates

that when Buddha taught, there are many different listeners – listeners of all different

capacities. In the Tantra, it’s believed, it is said, when Buddha taught the first Four

NobleTruths, ('bden pa bzhi) - when Buddha said “Samsara is suffering and the cause

of the suffering is emotion”, you know - the four, the five arhats (Tibetan phrase), they

heard it, you know, in the context of Four Noble Truths. But the vidhyadharas, (Tibetan

phrase), we call it vidhyadharas - they heard it totally opposite. They heard Buddha said

“Samsara is bliss, emotion is the wisdom”. Ah, this is how the tantra departs from this

kind of statement, you understand.

So, this is just sort of backdrop on how the tantra differs from the sutras. Also in the

sutra, problem, problem and the solution looks quite different, like the pencil and eraser.

They look different, you understand? So they are different in the sutras. But in the

tantras, problem and solution look very, very similar. In fact in the Mahamudra and

Mahasandhi tradition, problem is the solution – you understand? And this is stated in

the tantra again and again, like the Heruka Galpo, Hevajra Tantra, Chakrasamvara

Tantra like so many, many ways. In the Chakrasamvara Tantra, Buddha said, the

Vajradhara, I should call him – by then, he has, he was the head, Vajradhara, no more

Shakyamuni - he said, “One that binds the idiot, the things that bind the idiots liberates

the wise”. Things like that.

So yes, tantra is very, very, very different. And you ask the second question which is a

very important question. Having said all of this, never ever, ever, ever imagine tantra

without the bodhicitta; which is the core of the Mahayana practice. There is no such

thing. If you lose the bodhicitta, all the tantric practice such as the deity practice like

Chakrasamvara or Kalachakra – it is as obscure as any kind of shamanist practice. In

fact many of this Tantric could be, you know, increasing your pride, ego, desire and this

is why we have seen a lot who they say they want to practice the tantra – but in fact,

they would just want to use their sausage, more than usual. And within this pretext,

they say that, they claim and this happens a lot. The bodhicitta is so crucial, so crucial.

Since we are talking about this, we can actually even go to the root. Actually we cannot

forsake Shravakayana also. So no tantrika should say “Oh, you know, Shravakayana,

Theravada, Hinayana - we don’t need this” – because if you get rid of them, you have

lost your root. If you have no root then the tree, the Mahayana is lost. If there’s no root

and the tree, where is the fruit and flower of the Vajrayana - so all of them are

important. And this is one of the great things about Buddhism that has been translated

into Tibet. Because somehow in Tibet, the tradition, all the traditions like Sakya, Kagyu,

Nyingma – all traditions have the complete message and the skill to practice the

Shravakayana, Mahayana and the Tantrayana together. They even call it “sdom gsum”

three vows in one go. And this is quite precious. And this is something that you will not

find in places like - of course not, of course not, I would – you know, they don’t have

this – places like Burma, so to speak. Okay.

Student: ( Not audible)

Rinpoche: Okay, okay, this is a good question, so I should carefully answer this. Eh, you

have to read a lot. Because the karma, reincarnation, if you really want to understand

thoroughly, because it is taught in all different pockets of sutras and shastras. But from

the top of my head, I would strongly suggest that you read Madhyamakavatara or

Madhyamika Karika by Chandrakirti or Nagarjuna. Chandrakirti, I am sure somebody

could help later, yes. It’s very important because it is a really good analysis about

original cause, the Genesis. And you’ll end up, realizing that none of them believe in

Genesis. Okay.

So this is very important but then where does all these things fit in – like incense, the

lamps and the flowers, circumbulation and the rosary, and all of this? For this you have

to read like Jatakamala Sutra. It’s actually quite nice to read those because it is all full

of stories like monkeys and elephants, and… And, mmm, if you can, if you can, I don’t

know, if you have the guts because some of these books, my goodness, so dry.

Buddhists logic or pramana - pramana – logic? – Buddhist logic, very important, eh, like

inferential logic, direct cognitive logic; those are very important. I think those will help

us to understand how the Buddhists think. Bottom line, the Buddhist think – I am

talking about generally - Buddhist think nothing comes accidentally, nothing. And this

nothing even includes exhaustion. So like mind, for instance, and the body are two

separate entities; body exhausts because it decays or somebody chops you on the head

or something like that. But mind – the only way to discontinue the mind – kill the mind,

if you like; destroy the mind is by getting enlightenment. Until then, it will continue. So

things like that; you have to understand the cause and conditions of logic. And it’s

actually, it’s actually…yes; and we Buddhists are very proud that we are the followers of

cause, condition and effect. And just to make the matter, the matter very complicated

here - since the lady has asked something to do with the tantra - but even though we

are so proud that we are the followers of the cause, condition, effect and logic; once

you embark on the Tantrayana, especially in the Mahamudra and Mahasandhi tradition,

then none of the logic, cause, condition and effect work. None of them because by the

time you reach to this level, they will say logic is the, logic is responsible for making

everyone stupid. So really, you know, logic, we go beyond the logic. And this is only the

tantra, I mean, not only the tantra but definitely the Tantra. Because, then, then, then,

you know, that’s enough, I think I’d said enough. Okay, are we finished with the

questions? Yeah. Okay. I think we have like maybe some time left which I will conclude

the “zhen pa bzhi bral” (Parting from the Four Attachments) here.

Everything what we have been discussing, I try to extract from the writings of mainly

Shantideva, and as you have noticed, I also quoted other Masters, probably, at least

vaguely on the intellectual level, some of these may have make sense. But to practically

apply any of these is very difficult. As earlier, the gentleman has said - to get rid of

attachment to life, this life - is very scary. When we hear these things, we kind of see

some truth in it, but to actually wanting, to actually apply this method is difficult. And of

course renunciation, renunciation of samsara – wow, it gets even more difficult; and

then attachment to the self-interest – even more difficult to get rid of. Then of course

grasping – that’s almost like our nature. Without that we cannot function. So how are

we ever going to really apply these methods practically, in our day-to-day lifetime, in

our day to day situation? This is probably worthwhile to discuss.

Eh, Maitreya said towards the end of (Tibetan phrase) Uttaratantra, “Hearing the

dharma so important” And this is what you have been doing the past two days. You

should hear the dharma, again and again. Bad news towards the ego; bad news

towards attachment to the self; depressing news towards the, depressing news, you

know, going against self-cherishing, all this. You have to hear it again and again, even

if you don't like it. You should make time and space and energy to do this - really

important. Hearing the dharma Is like the door to the path. Hearing the dharma closes

the door for the wrong view. Hearing the dharma protects you from all kinds of doubt.

So yes, keep on hearing the Dharma.

Next contemplation – discussing, arguing, contemplating, how much is this going

against your attachment to this life, attachment to samsara, attachment to your own

self-interest, grasping? How much of this hearing is going against all these attachments?

You should do that that also. Because what this will do, this will make, this will help you

to make use of what you have heard. You will become skilful in making use of what you

have heard - the information. Now the hearing and contemplation alone is not enough.

That is very good but that’s not good enough. If we have time, let's say one hour, just

an example - the hearing and contemplation should take over, this two should take over

about half an hour. The next half-an-hour should be spent on meditation (Tibetan

phrase). Now, the meditation is a very, very vast term. At the moment, meditation

immediately rings the bell of sitting straight, shoulders straight, all of this, isn't it?

Actually, that’s not necessary the case. Even in the sutras we have read (Tibetan

phrase), you know things like even the chanting, reciting - these are all considered

meditation. Not necessarily sitting straight and quiet and you know.

So within this context, I have to tell you something quite important. One the reasons

why even though everything that Is said here kind of intellectually makes sense, but

difficult to apply - is habit – and the habit, the on-going habit and of course, the

attachment itself. So habit, habit is, habit makes you weak. You know, I think we know

this quite well; because if you, you know, like an addiction. Basically habit is an

addiction. When you are addicted to something, means you are slave of something. You

are not at all together, you understand. You have a habit of smoking, habit of drinking,

habit of gambling, meaning part of you or all of you is controlled by a certain situation.

So when you have this on, this habit, you have no ability. Because the small amount of

ability you have is already occupied by whatever your habit wants you to do. So then

what do we do now? How do we counter that? We have to create the ability, create the

ability. How do we do that? This is, I don’t know the, “bsod nams” is the right, I mean -

merit is the right word to translate “bsod nams”. We should create; we should

accumulate merit, anyway for now “merit” is what we would use.

Yes merit, you need the merit. You need the merit to create the ability. You basically

need to take over the territory that you have lost to the habits. This is basically what we

call accumulation of merit. And I will tell you why. You may be thinking all this offering

that is made here, like few cups of water, bowls of water; you may think that this is

sort of “I guess, we have to make offering of water to the Buddha, because he likes

water? - Or because he's thirsty? - Because he needs some food time to time?” But that

is never the reason.

The offering we make, when we make an offering, lots of things are being involved.

Lots of things are being done and you …that’s lots of involvement. Of course, there is

the expenditure, there's effort, there’s a time, and then there is the, you know: yah, the

effort of trying to put it properly, clean beautifully, aesthetically, all of this - and going

back to the uselessness. From the worldly point of view, from the Wall Street point of

view, from the Wall Street point of view - every day changing seven bowls of water in

front of a non-blinking bronze Buddha statue is totally useless. Why do we do that?

Much better if you change the fish - what do you call it? - fish bowl water; at least there

is one being inside who requires changing of water. But this Buddha statue - it doesn’t

drink, it doesn’t understand what we are doing – why do we offer this and change this;

and make such a big hoo-ha of, you know, how many bowls, the bowls should be this

way and that way? But this is precisely why we do this.

We do these for the sake of doing it, not because we are longing for some kind of

reward. Oh, yes, for seven years, finally Buddha said to you “You have been diligently

putting those offering bowls properly.” Nothing like that - we know this. All our merit-

making devices, all our merit-making methods are basically to counter the habit –

attachment. This is why it is so important that you accumulate merit; so important –

really. If you don't have the merit, 99.9999 per cent things you cannot do. What do you

do? Forget dharma; even in the worldly situation, if you don't have the merit, you can’t

do anything. You can’t even, eh, you can’t even have a good date, I tell you, if you

don’t have a merit, a proper merit. If you have, if you don’t have merit to listen, you

know, you will not hear, you know, first of all, you will not even know the existence of

the Dharma, the existence of the Buddha. From this point of view we are very

fortunate – especially you, you guys. Shakyamuni Buddha came miles away, 2500 years

ago; under the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya a long time ago. And you, you have nothing to

do with Shakyamuni Buddha but you are attached to this, you are kind of attached to

this Shakyamuni Buddha and what he said instead of, you know, doing some exciting

things these past two days, weekend here – there is so many juicy things to do out

there. But instead of doing all that, you decided to spend time here. That means you

have a certain link or karmic, karmic link or connection with this. And that’s, that’s

already, the lady was talking earlier, that’s already a base for the merit.

Based on that one should really accumulate merit because, as I was going to say, if you

don't have the merit, even if you know, if you know the existence of the dharma - to

hear the dharma and to hear it properly, to hear it so that you will not misinterpret, and

so much so that the merit is so important. If you don't have the merit, just as you’re

about to hear something so important, somebody in front of you coughs and you’ll miss

it. It works other way round too. If you have the merit, just at the right time when you

should not be hearing something, somebody will, with the blessings of the buddhas and

bodhisattvas and your merit, you will not hear it. And this is good. Merit, accumulation

of merit therefore is important. So how do we accumulate merit now? Since we are

sticking with the Mahayana tradition, I will only explain on the Mahayana level.

According to the Mahayana tradition, we call it (pause). You know, Mahayana, “Maha”

means greater, supposedly greater; and there is a reason (Tibetan phrase). You know,

like motivation is greater and the means is greater. So how do, how do we qualify the

greater means? Accumulation of merit can be done easily, swiftly, painlessly and

accumulate so much merit within a small time with very little effort

There are many methods in the Mahayana but most popular is what we call “yan lag

bdun pa” the Seven Branch. This you should do. Prostrations to the buddhas and

bodhisattvas - basically surrendering your body, speech and mind; accepting them as

superior than you, is the prostrations. In other words prostration is going against your

ego directly, pride. You can visualize your body into billions and prostrate and that

amount of merit you can accumulate easily. Making offerings of imagined and

unimaginable and real offerings such as incense and flowers to the buddhas and

bodhisattvas – that’s one way – this directly goes against miserliness. Again you can be

as creative as possible. Exposing your misdeeds in front of the buddhas and

bodhisattvas, not hiding them, exposing it, then rejoicing after the good deeds of eh,

other beings; not only the good deeds, the result of the good deeds. And then asking

the buddhas and bodhisattvas to teach and then asking the buddhas and bodhisattvas

to remain in samsara until the samsara is exhausted. And then finally dedicate all the

merit to enlightenment of sentient beings. These are called Seven Branches of making

the merit and this is something for those who are practicing the buddhadharma. These

are indispensable. So through this, if you do that, you will surprise yourself one day

when you wake, you will find easy to get rid of attachment to this life, get rid of

attachment to samsara, get rid of attachment to the self-interest, just like how an adult

would get rid of attachment to a sandcastle.

Renunciation, the definition of the renunciation would be changed. You’ll realize that

renunciation is doing good things to you. It’s no more a sacrifice. And then you will also

see the fault of grasping and therefore you will pursue the non-grasping path and the

non-grasping will also become your second nature. And when that grasping free, frees

you from itself, liberation, enlightenment, nirvana, Buddhahood is achieved. Starbucks

coffee will still go on, not to worry; the local grocery shop will still go on; nothing, none

of these are going to turn into gold or silver - it doesn't matter. Everything is as it is.

But your attitude towards everything has changed forever. And that’s called liberation.

And I feel like a deaf musician - I'm playing the music but I'm not hearing. I'd never

been to this liberation that I'm talking about; but I'm talking about liberation. I hope

and pray that you will achieve this liberation.

Before we close this, as some of you know, initiated by some of the lamas, my friends

and especially Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche here – god only knows how we end up into

this, but anyway we are initiating a major work of translating the words of the Buddha.

Eh, we feel that it’s a, it is a very, very, very humongous project. The finishing of the

translation might happen after about hundred years; and even that we feel that it is like

long winded in one way, big vision if you want to put it nicely. But we also feel that

should that there is, there is urgency because most of these older Lamas, Rinpoches,

and the scholars, monks who understand the classical Tibetan works that are found in

old texts like Kangyur and Tengyur, are slowly, slowly evaporating. And therefore we

have formed this task of translating the Kangyur, and I am sure my colleague, Jhinwei,

will explain to you. But I want to tell you I do this with a big bravery. For those of you

who have the time and energy and inclination - try to become a translator so that you

can also contribute to the work of translation because… And for those who have

younger children if you can also brainwash them into becoming the future translator,

would be really good. So this is my request but I think there are more information with

Jhinwei who will tell you now. And then that’s it. I’m very happy to be here. I’d been

dragged into this by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. The only thing I managed was to bar

him from the teachings I am giving here (laughter).

THE END

Dedication of Merit

ge war di yi nyur du dak

Through this merit, may I quickly orgyen lama drub gyur ne

Accomplish the level of the Oddiyana Lama and through that dro wa chik kyang ma lü pa

May all beings, without exception, de yi sa la gö par shok

Be established at that level.

dzongsar jamyang khyentse rinpoche on "parting from the four attachments" (seattle 2011)

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