ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is the transcription of the weekend on Self and Selflessness that Gelek gave for students and friends of Jewel Heart Holland in april 1986. Added to it is a series of two lectures on I and attachment that Rinpoche gave at the Nijmegen University a year before that, April 10th and 17th 1985.

This third edition is moderately edited. Due to the difficulty of the subject in the first edition we transcribed everything Rinpoche said. However, where many repetitions are very useful to the listening audience, to the person reading they sometimes work confusing. So we edited more with the hope of a clearer presentation. A glossary is provided. Any mistakes one may find are due to the limited understanding of the transcriber.

The drawing on the front-page, , the embodiment of wisdom, is by Marian van der Horst.

Nijmegen, 3rd edition, april 1998 Marianne Soeters © Ngawang Gehlek 1993

CONTENTS

I SELF AND SELF-LESSNESS...... 3

II I AND ATTACHMENT - 1...... 25

III I AND ATTACHMENT - 2...... 35

IV GLOSSARY ...... 41

I SELF AND SELF-LESSNESS

Welcome to whatever you may call this, a seminar, a workshop or a symposium. What are you calling it? You don’t know? So welcome to the sort of gathering we don’t know. The subject we are supposed to discuss here also we don’t know, because it is the ‘lessness’; self and selflessness. Lessness is what? Nothing! So, welcome to the talk on the subject of nothing.

Establishing the basis of the self Actually, the subject of nothing is one of the fine subtle points of the Buddhist view or the Buddhist method to gain a strong personal development in the spiritual path. Before we touch that, we have to touch a little bit of the basic Buddhist background. You all know that the self is the basis of all functioning and selflessness is the profound viewpoint. The basis of all has to be established first. The basis of all means the I or self. Whatever name you use doesn’t matter; it is borrowed terminology anyway. But understanding is very important. So, first the self has to be established, the question of what really self is and what the self does.

The continuation of the person The self, or let me call it the I, is a phenomenon on which I function. It is the basis of my functioning. I have come from a previous life, I am staying here and function and I will go to my future life. I have come from a previous life; that has to be established. I have come from a previous life, because in this circle of existence – according to the Buddhist thought – there is no new-born. Whatever number of persons exists in this circle, that is it; there is no new-born. If there would be a newborn, than there would have to be a beginning. Buddha has emphasized there is no beginning. As a matter of fact, this question was raised to the Buddha: ‘When and where has it started, the I of the person?’ Buddha chose to remain silent rather than to answer it. And the reason why he chose to remain silent was an indication that there is no beginning. So, every person, whoever is in samsara, always has been there. Yet, there can be an end to samsara. Buddha has very clearly said: There is no end, yet it is not endless. When he said: ‘There is no end’, he meant no end at the beginning side. In the is clearly mentioned: ‘There is no end, yet it is not end-less’. meaning: there is no beginning-end, but there can be an end. The end will be an individual end, not a collective end. I must give you an idea of how we have come from a previous life. I cannot prove it to you in black and white like two plus two equals to four, however there are many ways to point at it. We are definitely a continuation. We are also impermanent. When I say we are impermanent, it means we are changing. I am referring here to the subtle , not to the rough impermanence. The rough impermanence you may understand as death, the subtle impermanence is changing from minute to minute. From minute to 4 Self and Selflessness minute we are changing, yet we are continuing. A continuation of discontinuity – that is how human nature functions. When there would be a starting point, there could not be a continuation. For a change to occur there has to be something before that. If there is nothing before, how can it be changed? So, it is continuati- on, like yesterday’s man has a continuation in today’s man.

This life. Take Marianne. Today’s M is a continuation of yesterday’s M. Right? Yes! Yet today’s M is not yesterday’s M. Yesterday’s M is a passed M and today’s M is the present M and tomorrow’s M will be the future M. Today’s M cannot be yesterday’s M. Today’s M cannot be tomorrow’s M. But it is M; it is continuing. If there is no continuation than you have a totally different person. But M is not a totally different person; it is the same person. So, it is a continuation. Do you get my point? That continuation of the three days will also cover three weeks, will cover three months, will cover three years and also can cover three lives, if you like to. Okay. The childhood of today’s M is the result of the young, little baby M. That is a continuation too. So, the baby M, the baby born, is the continuation – now you may not call it M – of the person in the mother’s womb.

In between death and . Now comes the difficult point. How does that person get into the mother’s womb? Here is the difficult point. I am not educated in the western sciences, I have no idea what explana- tion they give, but whatever I know, I’ll tell you. Just the combination of a father and a mother does not produce a child. It is also necessary that a being enters in it. You get my point? If no being has entered, there is no person. No way. Where does that being come from? It hasn’t grown in there. It is the spirit, or whatever name you give it. A being without form has to enter into that. That baby-being has a karmic connection with the father and with the mother, and also his own karmic causes have ripened to be born as a human being. Also his time has come. The being makes contact and somehow gets stuck in there. In our terminology we call such a being a bardoa. The is ‘the state in between’. It is the state in between death and birth. Not necessarily the moment you die you will be reborn immediately, nor necessarily you won’t be reborn immediately. It depends on the of the person and on whether the immediate causes are available.

A bardoa is a different person, different from what we think it is. A bardoa has a tremendous karmic power. According to the Abidharma, the Buddhist metaphysics, it has a tremendous karmic power. By that power it goes everywhere, not blocked by doors or walls. Bardoas do have a body, but that body is not a physical body of bones and flesh like we have; it is a mental body. It is a subtle body, yet it has a shape. That shape is not visible to our human eyes. It is visible for persons who see ghosts. Seeing ghosts is not necessarily spiritual, neither is it necessarily bad. Certain people have that karmic power and some ghosts purposely try to show their form; that is why they see them. That is nothing to be shocked by. Similar to people who have the karmic power to see ghosts, spiritual developed persons have the power to see everything, so they also see them. Otherwise they are only visible among themselves. What does a bardoa look like? It does not look like in his previous life. We always have a picture of a deceased person according to the previous-life look. But the bardoa carries the future-life shape. So, when people tell you, ‘I see your father’ or ‘I saw your great-great grandfather the other day’, it is a big question whether that is really the great-great grandfather or not. I don’t mean those people are all telling lies. They definitely see them in the shape of the parents or great-parents or whoever they see. But the question is whether that is the very person or not. My answer is: No! This may be shocking. You may say: ‘Is the person lying? No. However, it is not the person. For 99,9% sure. 100% I cannot give, because there are some cases. But for most of them it’s no. What happens is this. Every human being is born with spirits that hide under the cover of the human being. Those very spirits are always with you; they live under your shadow. It’s like the body and the body-aura. Some of them help you, some of them harm you. Everything is known to them. No matter how secret you may keep something, they have that knowledge. Whatever question you may put, they have the answer. An exception are religious rituals that have been protected by higher power; there they can’t come in. I am sure a number of you have seen that during certain initiations some gifts are given to the spirits and they are sent away. So, whatever happens during that period is not known to these spirits. Self and Selflessness 5

If in the level of , anybody tries to come in and tell you: ‘I am your grandfather’, the first question you ask is: ‘When my grandfather took initiations at such and such a ’s place, what name he got?’ In 99.9% you get no answer. They’ll tell you, ‘I was not there’, or ‘I was not allowed in’, or ‘I was sent out’. This is the sign that this very spirit, which claims to be the person is not that person. The spirit is not lying. These spirits function under the shadow of that very person, so they carry the name, they carry the identification, everything. Therefore this is the sign that it is not that very person, it is a different [being]. Unfortunately human life is shorter than their lives, so when the individual dies, those very spirits don’t die. They then remain without any shadow or protection, so they respond to all sort of things for a while. After some time their time is up and they will die. That is why – as you may have noticed – in some places at a certain time the spirits are very active, and sometimes certain people may tell you the spirit activity is going down. That means their time is up, or they change their lives and will also be another being. Bardoas have a mental body, so they don’t get stuck anywhere. Wherever their mind goes, their body reaches. When you and I have to travel, our physical body has to be dragged along either by train or by plain or whatever. But as a bardoa you don’t have to, because though a bardoa has a shape, it doesn’t have a ‘material’ form made out of atoms, like we have. They have a mind-body, a mental or astral body. Wherever their mind reaches their body reaches. As we sit here we can definitely think of the streets of New York or the streets of New Delhi. Right? The moment you think of the streets of New York or New Delhi, you can get some kind of a picture, following the sound or following what you have been seeing before.

There are two things. You can build understanding following sound and you can build understanding fol- lowing form. E.g. if you have been somewhere and you’ve seen something, you have a memory built. Or you have seen a picture of something and you have the memory of it. The moment you use the name again, the mental idea clicks to your previously built mental picture of it. That is the second way of understanding. If you don’t have any physical picture, you build up some kind of picture by hearing about it. That is called understanding following sound. These are two important points of mental functioning: following words and following forms you get a picture in mind. That very picture will be flashed back in your mind the moment you use the word, say the name of a New-York street. You understand? So, the moment a person with a mental body gets that flashback, he reaches there. That is the beauty of a mental body. This goes for enlightened persons, it goes for ghosts, for samsaric gods, and for bardoas. They are all the same in that. Bardoas have karmic power, it is not spiritual power. Persons who have spiritual power can reach somewhere and can function there, because of their spiritual power. But those who do so because of their karmic power, are limited in the things they can do. The moment that karma is finished, they can no longer do it. This is how the bardoa can go to any place he wants to, without any trouble, except for one place: wherever he or she gets stuck on the future birth.

Rebirth. How does that future birth happen? If you are going to be born as a man, you feel attachment to the female. You already have a strong attachment to both parents together and in case you will be born as a man, you have strong attachment to the female and you enter in [the union]. The moment you enter in it, you see nothing but the small little organ of the father, nothing else. So you get angry or shaking. The bardoa or mental body depends on karmic power. It is not strong; any shock will make it die. So, the direct cause for a bardoa to die in the bardoa-state will be one of these shocks. Therefore, the moment they die their mind is stuck in there and that is how the being enters into [a new body]. The moment the being enters into it, the person starts functioning. So, that very being is the continuation of this bardoa. This very bardoa is the continuation of whatever his previous life was. Because the moment someone dies, it is not like a candle being blown; there is conti- nuation. If it were a blown-out candlelight, it would be finished. Right? It is not like that, it continues. Twenty years ago it was very difficult to talk about the continuation of life, particularly to scientists. Today educated scientist cannot say it is rubbish; they have to think twice, because there are too many evi- dences. Just now you and I may not carry any memory of a previous life at all, but there are a number of 6 Self and Selflessness people who have flashbacks of a previous life, particularly at childhood. Many evidences there are, many. Also people have been reporting very clear incidents. There are many people who are able to recognize every single person they knew in a previous life, what they said, what clothes they wore, who their parents were and how they died. So you cannot deny it. Whether you accept it or not is a different matter.

Circling in the circle of existence So, there is continuation. Where do these people come from? Not necessarily human beings remain on the human level and not necessarily animals stay on the animal level. And not necessarily samsaric gods will stay at the god level. It is always changing. There are a lot of people who think that human consciousness is higher consciousness and that it is always going up. But according to the Buddha it is not. You go up, you fall down, you go up, you fall down. That is samsara, the circle of existence. The end of high up is low down; the end of low down is high up. It is always circling. It also could be direct up, direct down. Could be. So, not necessarily human beings will come back as human beings or remain human beings forever. It all depends on your karma. We call it karma and that now has become universal language.

Karma is the natural law and its functioning totally depends on the individual. It doesn’t depend on anybody else. It does not depend on the Buddha nor on anybody else what is going to be my future. You get my point? It certainly does not depend on Buddha. If it would depend on Buddha, I would be very lucky, because how can Buddha do something bad to people? As I am one of the people I therefore would have a good future. Right? Unfortunately no! Unfortunately it does not depend on the Buddha; it totally depends on me! Now the question is: How? When it totally depends on you, why don’t you do something good? Why don’t you do something nice for yourself? That is the question and that is the problem too: wanting to do something good, but not be able to. Why you can’t do something good? Number one: you don’t know. Number two: even if you know, you can’t do it. Why not? Because you are used to; you are not used to do good and you are used to do bad. Everyone of us is. Bad things we do not have to teach to children; they’ll pick them up automatically. For good things they have to take efforts. Why bad things we pick up easily and good things we don’t pick up easily? Because we are used to it, not only in this lifetime, but many lifetimes. You repeat your own character, because you are used to it. Whatever way you like to live, if you keep on living that way, you get used to it. Then even if you try to be nice, after a few days you repeat the same thing again; it automatically goes in that direction. That is the explanation why people do bad things. For good things you have to take hardship, efforts, try to correct; for bad things you don’t.

Ignorance and wrong view. How come we are so much used to bad things? Because of our ignorance and because of our wrong view. The ignorance makes the wrong view. Wrong view is: what is not true we accept as true; what does not exist we view as existing. That wrong view we have from the beginning. That very wrong view makes us do all sort of bad things, all the time. For example, I do not exist truly, but I accept myself as existing truly. Therefore that very I will develop [the idea of] my. When you have an I there, you have a my. The moment you develop my, you have developed my friend, i.e. the one I am attached to, and my enemy, i.e. the one I hate. By attachment and hate you do all kind of things, you act like a monkey with or without realizing. You do everything just because of these two. Attachment and hatred are there because of wrong view and wrong acceptance [of myself as being truly existent]. Now the question comes in: if we are continuing life after life and if – as Buddha has mentioned – there can be an end, how can we get to that end? How can we get that circle ended? That is what we are concerned about, more than about selflessness. You get my point? Whether it is a self or it is selfless, what difference does that make to me? What does make a difference to me is how I am going to be better off. That is what we are more concerned about (unless you want to make it philosophically clear, but that is a different matter all-together). What is the method to end this circle? A lot of people may say: ‘ has so much emphasis on love, compassion, discipline etceteras, so these are the methods to end the circle of existence. Not at all! Neither the discipline, nor the love, nor the compassion works on this. I cannot say totally not, but as was Self and Selflessness 7 very clearly mentioned by in his root-text of logic, Pramanavartika or Ascertainment of Valid Cognition, Love, compassion etceteras are not the direct antidotes to the ignorance and therefore do not cut the circle of existence. If somebody says: ‘I have been meditating on love and compassion for eighty years and I did not cut any samsara’, I will not be surprised. Surely not, because you are doing the wrong thing. Cutting samsara, ending the life of the circle, is only possible by understanding and applying wisdom. The wisdom part works on this. You may raise the question: ‘Are in this case love and compassion, and discipline not necessary at all? They are also necessary. Why? Let me talk to you according to the Buddhist view.

Choosing a spiritual path As a person interested in spiritual development you have an ultimate aim. Right? A person without aim is not in the spiritual path. You may have an aimless aim, a goal-less goal, that doesn’t matter, that is different matter altogether, but you must have an aim or goal. If you don’t have an aim, you are not follow- ing a spiritual path, you are just moving. We have a saying in Tibetan: Even if you are carried and washed away by the stream or current, you still think you are swimming. You may have no power at all, you may be swept away by the powerful water, but you still think you are swimming; that is exactly what happens when you don’t have an aim; you don’t know what you are doing, yet you are still doing something. Or you are sitting in the car, you drive on every highway available and you don’t know where you are going. Those are exactly what happens when you have no aim. A lot of people think that is great. Yes, it looks great; you cover all the roads and you burn all your petrol and it is great on your pocket, but you get nothing. That’s it. Driving in your car on every highway is okay. You waste a little time, you waste a little money, you waste a little car, and you lose one or two days; that is all. But if you do that on the spiritual path, you are losing tremendously! You don’t know how expensive it is and you are paying for it. You have tremendous values in your life, a value of your time, a value of your opportunity, and you are losing all of them. And that very value, that very opportunity, that very chance you never get again; 99,9% certain not. By sheer luck you might have got this life; you’ll never get it again. Buddha has given an example. A blind tortoise lives in the ocean and a yoke drives in the ocean. The blind tortoise comes up once in five hundred years only. If he were not blind, he could look around and see where the yoke is and then come up, but he is blind. The chance that the blink tortoise puts his head in that yoke is the chance for a fortunate human rebirth. Such an opportunity, such a valuable life we have. You waste that by going everywhere; you reach nowhere, you just go, go, go. That’s what happens, particularly in the West, where you have a lot of different spiritual trips. Spiritual trips which have an aim, a purpose, where people have gone, where people have reached, which have a value, fine, wonderful, you need them. I am not saying Buddhism is the only way. No! There are hundred-and-one ways. But if there is nothing in it, no aim, no goal, nothing, if you just move, move, than you waste your time. I saw people on a spiritual path – as they call it – where they teach you how to become a cloud. You keep on meditating that you become a cloud, and that is it. They will also teach you how to walk on the fire. But what do you get? You don’t become a cloud. When you walk on the fire, you have at least some excitement, you get little bruises on your leg and you walk across. That’s all. They teach you the whole day that you can walk on the fire and you are meditating that the fire is cool and icy and that your feet are this and that; you keep on thinking that for the whole day and in the evening they will let you walk across the fire. But mind you, you have to pay over hundred US dollars for that. And that is called spiritual. Walking and gaining bruises, that is no spiritual gain, is it? Really, I feel sorry for that. It is wasting a lot of time and energy. If you can afford to waste the money it doesn’t matter, but time and energy is more expensive than money. 8 Self and Selflessness

So for any spiritual path, whatever you follow, you must see it has a good aim. You must see whether people have followed it and whether somebody has reached that goal. Is it possible or not possible? These things we have to look into first. You cannot take a spiritual path like a dog takes liver. Well, even a dog, if you throw a piece of liver to him, will smell it before, so why can’t you do that? You get into trouble and once you get into trouble it is very difficult to correct it. A wrong guide and wrong teachings can definitely do bad things. There is a story about this, the story of Angulimala. During Buddha’s lifetime, somebody was taught: ‘If you can kill one thousand people within one week, you will be totally liberated.’ This person carried a knife and started killing everybody. After some time the whole village had run away, because he was killing them all over. And of every person he killed, he cut the thumb and put it on a string and wore it. That is why he was called Angulimala, ‘garland of thumbs’. After some time he had killed nine-hundred ninety-nine persons; he only was short of one to fill up the thousand. We all know that by killing thousand people you don’t liberate yourself, don’t you? Every sensible person knows that, but that is what happened because of a wrong guide. Sometimes it can happen that somebody teaches you to do dirty things which you may consider a great sacrifice. Under a romantic title they make you do something funny and you think that you are doing something great. In reality you may totally be wasting your life; moreover you accumulate a tremendous amount of non-virtues or – in plain language – sins. And who is going to be responsible? Who is going to pay for it? Only you, only me, the one who is doing it. Nobody else. Sooner or later, today or tomorrow, this life or next life, you will definitely be paying it with your own flesh and your blood. That’s what happens we do when we have the great opportunity to do something wonderful, something fantastic, to gain permanent happiness, totally off the pain and the sufferings and instead of that you act the other way round. How wasteful it will be! Where are you going to get that chance again? This is really a sad thing. For that one has to be careful.

Therefore, following the spiritual path is nice and wonderful, but following the right spiritual path is some- thing one has to take care of. Nobody else will take care for you. Everyone now is advertising in newspapers, saying: ‘I am the great one, my system is wonderful, this is the best.’ Whether it is Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, ‘newism’ or whatever, they will say: ‘This is the greatest, this has ever existed’ and bla bla bla. So is it for you to judge, because you have only one life. You don’t have two lives; you have only one life. What are you going to do with it? Waste it? Or are you going to achieve something? The choice is yours. So better see to it. Really this is very important. And when the time comes to die, what did you gain out of this life? You have to see it. Therefore it is very important that when you choose a spiritual path, you choose it nicely, correctly, properly. See whether you are getting any benefit out of it or not. See how much time you have passed on it, and look whether the amount of time you passed on it and the benefit you got are in balance. You check with yourself. If you did not get benefit, you must crosscheck: did you do it correctly or wrongly? If you are sure you did everything correctly and you got no benefit, then there may be something wrong with them. Then don’t stick to it. Try to find something else, or try to find out what was wrong and correct it. Otherwise you waste all your time. So, if you are carried by the water and you think you are swimming, and you keep on swimming till death comes, you get nowhere. That is very important, particularly for spiritual followers. That is my personal suggestion for spiritual friends.

Selflessness or emptiness I mentioned to you how the self enters in, and how it functions, how it exists. Self definitely has to be existing. Though you may say you’re self-less, self has to be existing. If the self does not exist, I do not exist. If I do not exist, you do not exist. And that is not right. I am sure you do exist. I am sure you are listening and I am ninety percent sure I am talking, unless I have gone mad. So I do exist and that is why I can talk and you are listening. So, you are existing and I am existing. And if you and I exist how can we be selfless? That question we have to deal with. Self and Selflessness 9

Selflessness is a very important point and no doubt has a very important position in the Buddhist philos- ophy. It is a very important subject and very difficult to understand. So I want you to pay quite good atten- tion. Why is it necessary to know selflessness? Tsongkhapa has mentioned… Tsongkhapa is a great Tibetan master of the fourteenth century. From the eleventh century onwards there has not been any great master in Tibet besides Tsongkhapa. I am not saying that Tsongkhapa was a great master because I am following the Gelugpa tradition that Tsongkhapa founded. I am not making sectarian propaganda, but he is! His works and particularly his presentations of emptiness, have really been proved to be great work. What happens when you cannot present emptiness properly? When people cannot present the emptiness properly, they say: ‘O yah, it is empty, so there is nothing’. Then they will say: ‘Yes, but it means everything’. And then after some time, it becomes: ‘Neither it exists nor does it not exist’. After some time it becomes something wonderful to feel, but difficult to speak about. Then it becomes very difficult and the point you finally come to is: having no point at all. That is because you were not able to establish the emptiness properly. Once you are be able to establish the emptiness, it is not difficult. If you put your focus in the proper direction, it is not at all difficult; it is very easy, very clear. The only thing is to focus in the right direction. Otherwise you be neither here nor there, then what is it? Sometimes they try to make beauty out of this ‘neither exists nor not exists’. There is not such a thing that neither exists nor not exists. If you exist you exist. If you don’t exist, you don’t exist. How can it be both? This is common sense, really. So therefore it has become very important to know about emptiness properly.

Selflessness is nothing but emptiness. The moment I am saying ‘emptiness’, don’t think of empty. Think of full. Emptiness is full. Totally full! But the fullness is empty, again. Okay, keep that in mind. Knowing the emptiness is necessary. Why? Tsongkhapa has said: If you do not have the wisdom Realizing the way things are, Even though you have developed the thought Definitely to leave cyclic existence [renunciation] And the altruistic aspiration to highest enlightenment, The root of cyclic existence cannot be cut. Therefore make efforts at means Of realizing dependent arising. , The Three Principles of the Path vs. 9 He said: ‘If you do not understand the emptiness properly and if you do not get the wisdom properly, no matter how much you devote yourself to the renunciation or the altruistic mind, you will never, never, never be able to cut the root of samsara; therefore...’ And he did not continue by: ‘try to understand the emptiness’, but ‘therefore try to understand the dependent arising’. He didn’t say not to try to understand, but he did not emphasize to understand emptiness. He emphasized to know the dependent arising. Buddha chose to call the logic of dependent arising the king-logic to the understanding of emptiness. Through proper, sensible, logical reasoning you gain understanding. Out of the hundreds of different logical ways Buddha chose the logic of dependent arising as the king-logic to understand emptiness. A sort of master-key it is. Tsongkhapa emphasized that in order to cut the root of samsara, it is necessary to know emptiness and because of that you try to understand the dependent arise. So, he does not make us look into the empty side, but into the fullness-side. When you understand the fullness-side it becomes easy to understand the ‘empty’ side. If you look for the empty on the empty side alone, you won’t understand it at all and that way people get difficulties. The right angle to look into emptiness, is dependent-arising; looking from the fullness-side into the empty, not from the empty-side into the fullness. This is the first point that should be clear.

10 Self and Selflessness

Emptiness is also called perfect view or shunyata1. As long as you have not developed this emptiness, not only you have not cut the root of samsara, but out of the five paths, you only will be able to master the first path; you won’t be able to go beyond that. There are five paths in and even in . If you do not look for the emptiness in the proper way, you are unable to cover the second path and beyond.

I have only quoted Tsongkhapa, I did not quote from he sutras. If don’t quote from the sutras, people may think this is only the Gelugpa viewpoint. In order to make clear that is not the case, I quote from the called King of the meditative stabilizations, the Samadhiraja sutra. In there is mentioned clearly: If the yogi does not destroy the self and the fearful look, then no delusions can be cut and it will be just only an ordinary sitting. This is a very important point. The root of samsara is ignorance or – with a different name – self-holding, true holding, true acknowledging, or self-acknowledging. Nagarjuna has said: No matter whatever other causes you apply, they will be unable to bring . Nirvana is peace. It is one of the four Buddhist seals: 1. All products are impermanent. 2. All contaminated things are miserable. 3. All phenomena are empty and selfless. 4. Nirvana is peace. Why is nirvana considered peace? It is free of the pains, the sufferings and the problems that we encounter in the circle of existence. Nirvana is a sort of separated ‘city’ at the other side of the chain. When is said: ‘No other cause can bring peace’ it means: no other cause will be able to cut the root of samsara, therefore it cannot lead you to nirvana. You get it? That’s it what Nagarjuna’s words mean. I am trying to present quotations of the sutra and of Nagarjuna in order to further proof Tsongkhapa’s view.

Then you may raise the question: ‘Okay, if the wisdom of the understanding of emptiness – and whatever wisdom-path – is the direct cause, you may not need any other work, such as accumulation of , purifications, working on the six paramitas, renunciation, or even , the altruistic mind’. You may think this way. That is again not true, they are also necessary. They may not be a direct opponent to the ignorance, but they are not to be ignored, because Nagarjuna further has said, (and these words are sometimes even used as dedication): The Form Body of a Buddha Arises from collected merit The Body of Truth in brief, Arises from collected wisdom.

Thus these two collections cause to be attained, So in brief always rely Upon merit and wisdom Nagarjuna, The Precious Garland, vs. 212-213 Why? Because at the level of total enlightenment you get two things: the embodiment of the accumulated merit, called rupakaya or form body, and the embodiment of the mind, the mental development, called dharmakaya or truth body. So, you need two things and you need both in order to reach your aim. The aim of Buddhist followers of the spiritual path is total enlightenment, at least from the mahayana point of view. If you are followers, your aim is to reach to the -level, which is peace or nirvana. Whether you cut the root of samsara and attain the arhat-level or you obtain the total enlightenment of buddhahood, it is necessary to have both. Nagarjuna’s disciple has said:

1 The word for emptiness. Self and Selflessness 11

If a bird wants to cross the huge ocean, fly to the other side, it is necessary for him to have two wings. Similarly for persons like us, to cross the ocean of samsara and go into the total enlightenment level or nirvana, it is necessary to have the two wings: the wing of the relative and the wing of the absolute. The wing of the relative means the relative part of activity and the wing of the absolute means the absolute part of activity. When I say absolute it means the ultimate. Ultimate means the wisdom, which means emptiness, shunyata. It is called absolute, it is called ultimate, the ultimate truth, or the nature of phenomena. So both are necessary. By having the one the other should not be ignored; it should be paid more attention to. This is the beauty of this path. You know, when wrong understanding of emptiness comes in, you begin to ignore the relative part, so you don’t care what the society says, what society feels, what they do, everything you ignore and you become a funny one. That is because of wrong understanding of the truth. It will make you crazy on the relative level. True understanding can make you perfect, not crazy at the relative level. This is very import- ant! Balancing is an important point. The moment you understand the truth properly, it automatically is balanced: Emptiness is the nature of dependence; dependence is the nature of emptiness. You have to understand both, they depend on and support each other. That’s why both become important in order to achieve our aim.

For you and me, in our level right now, to get a real good idea of what really absolute truth or emptiness is, is absolutely impossible without depending on a proper guide. From the Buddhist point of view Buddha’s teachings are followed. But the problem is: Buddha’s teachings carry two different teachings: direct teachings and indirect teachings. Indirect untrue teaching means: for some purposes or another Buddha says something else. That is why Buddha himself has emphasized to see which is the direct part and which is the indirect part of his teachings. That is very important.

A little Buddhist history to show the authenticity of the teachings What happened in India. What happened when Buddha died? Today we have the Tibetan, the Sanskrit, the Chinese, the Mongolian and even the Japanese version of Buddha’s teachings. The Thai, Sri Lanka etc. do have a version of the Tripitaka2. We Tibetans, the Chinese and the Mongols have what we call the Collected words of the Buddha, known as Kanjur. The teachings were not recorded during the Buddha’s lifetime. He did not write them down and they didn’t have tape-recorders those days. However a lot of people did have a photographic memory, maybe even better then our tape-recorders nowadays. What happened is this. After Buddha died seven ‘Holders of the tradition’ came one after the other. And during that period they had the first council. It was held in the presence of people who had been with the Buddha during his lifetime. When they sat down, they started repeating whatever Buddha had said during that period. Mostly the Tripitaka and all other teachings have been recalled. So in any sutra you open today you will find: ‘Thus I have heard: Once the Enlightened Being was sitting in the place, or in somebody’s house, or on the road, or somewhere in the park, somewhere on the mountain or something. There were a number of people, this much , this much bikshus and this much lay people. And then he said this, this, this..’ And then at the end it is said that when Buddha said this, everybody was very happy and respectful. In other words, the people quoted what Buddha had said. Those people were . They had overcome their delusions, they had a special power, the power of non-forgetting, a photographic memory. So they repeated what Buddha had said and that way they were able to carry Buddha’s words on to the next generations. During the second council the corrections came, mostly corrections of rules, because excuses had come up. Buddha had for example emphasized the monks not to eat in the afternoon. On those rules

2 The ‘three baskets’ of teachings: the collection of teachings on discipline [vinaya], the collection of teachings on transcendental wisdom and method both [sutra] and the collection of teachings on metaphysics [abidharma]. 12 Self and Selflessness they had made some excuse, like if before you eat you breathe over the food you can eat it and if you turn two fingers three times round on the bread you can eat it. So the vinaya had become shabby. Seven- hundred arhats met together, these things were discussed, debated and finally proved to be wrong and were corrected. That was the second council. The writing down only came at the third council, about four hundred years after the death of Buddha. During the period of Amithaba buddha – the buddha before Sakyamuni buddha – there was a king and that king had a funny dream: some monkeys played a trick and after that eighteen people came and fought over one piece of cloth; they kept on fighting, fighting and at the end everybody had one piece in hand and they went home. The king went to the Buddha Amithaba and said: ‘I had a funny dream, what could it mean? Maybe it is bad for my kingdom or maybe it is bad for my subjects, what is it?’ Buddha Amithaba said: ‘It is not about you, not about me, not about the teaching, it is looking into the future. On Sakyamuni Buddha’s teaching there will be a big debate and during that debate eighteen different views will come up, and finally all eighteen will be proved to be correct.’ That is what happened: eighteen different viewpoints have come up in the four hundred years after Buddha’s death. The eighteen different groups had their debate and finally all eighteen views were proved to be correct. The third council was attended by bodhisattvas, arhats and ordinary people, seventeen-thousand altogether. It was at this time that they began to get trouble with that memory of repetition of Buddha’s words. Everything that ever had been repeated, they started to write down. So, the writing actually started much later then that Buddha lived, but the time and the gap are not supposed to have influenced the writing at all.

However correct words and incorrect words appeared. Translations have been done from Sanskrit into , from Pali into different languages and there were corrections and mistakes; there are bound to be. Therefore the Tibetans had a lot of work to find out what is right, what is wrong and all this. Big, big problems we went trough. Buddha himself had mentioned that in order to correct and in order to make the clear distinction between direct and indirect meanings, the teachings were going to be clarified by Nagarjuna. Buddha himself has said: Four-hundred years after I die person named Nagarjuna will come and he will clarify what I said. A person named will come after six hundred years and he will further clarify my words. Nagarjuna and Asanga have come and have presented the teachings in the proper way. Nagarjuna carried out only the wisdom part of it. And that was not easy. He had to go through a lot of trouble; he finally even had to go into the land of the nagas3. He got certain books from there and then he was able to present the wisdom properly. Nagarjuna wrote six books on Uma, the viewpoint. Asanga carried out the method part of Buddha’s teachings. Asanga could not present the prajnaparamita points properly, so he had to depend on a retreat, in which he tried to meet Buddha . After twelve years of solitary retreat he was able to talk to Maitreya and was able to see and clarify the difficult points. He wrote five books on that. Asanga chose to call it ‘Maitreya’s work’. We rely on those sort of reliable works. The direct words of Buddha sometimes you can’t take literally. For example one of them tells that there was a king who has killed his father. He was very regretful and went to see Buddha. Buddha knew that if he would tell him: ‘Killing a man is bad, killing a father is far more bad and in addition to that your father is an arhat, and killing an arhat is even worse’, it was not going to help this fellow at all. So, when the king came and said: ‘I have done a tremendous amount of mistakes, Buddha forgive me, help me, because I killed my father and he is an arhat’, Buddha said : Father and mother should be killed, what are you worrying for? And the sutra there said: If you destroy all the subjects, you will obtain enlightenment.

3 Mythological beings that live in the deep sea, and that preserve the wisdom teachings. Self and Selflessness 13

So if you kill your father and mother, are you going to obtain enlightenment? No, no. Buddha doesn’t mean the physical father and mother, he means the father of selfishness and the mother of ignorance. If you kill the father of selfishness and the mother of ignorance, then you obtain nirvana. That’s why you have to differentiate between indirect and direct words. Buddha is such a nice gentleman, I believe. He is such a clever teacher. For whoever tried to talk to him, Buddha knew the way they could be helped best and talked according. That is why these direct and indirect trouble came. So he himself made clear: ‘Four-hundred years after I die Nagarjuna will come and he will correct and after six-hundred years Asanga will come and correct.’ Nagarjuna came and corrected. As a matter of fact Nagarjuna lived for nine-hundred years. That is unbelievable but it is commonly accepted, except for one view; that says there are two Nagarjuna’s, one four hundred years and the other one six hundred years after Buddha. They said one is the father and one is the son or something like that. Whatever maybe, whether there is one Nagarjuna or two Nagarjuna’s, it is Nagarjuna’s work. So we base on Nagarjuna’s viewpoint. Any Tibetan tradition, whether , , , or Gelugpa, they all follow Nagarjuna for the wisdom. Among the many disciples of Nagarjuna one is called Buddhapalita. (I try to go back slightly to the Indian history in order to prove this to be correct.) He tried to present Nagarjuna’s words. Nagarjuna had made Buddha’s words very clear, but his presentation is very rich, very dense and very heavy. Even one word can have an explanation of one or two volumes. So Nagarjuna’s views were presented more clearly by Buddhapalita and Chandrakirti. Buddhapalita’’ commentary on Nagarjuna’s work is called Buddhapalita. (The author’s name is put on the book. He didn’t write another one, I think that is why). Chandrakirti wrote two root-books and two commentaries. One root-book, Guide to the Middle Way4 deals with the meaning of Nagarjuna’s root-book Treatise on the Middle Way5. The second root-book of Chandrakirti, Clear Words, commentary on (Nagarjuna’s) ‘Treatise on the Middle Way’, deals with the words of Nagarjuna’s work. These are the basic points and the reliable sources, accepted by all different scholar-saints. Also the yogis and practitioners who have gained spiritual developments, accept these as the authentic root. These are the authentic root-sources on the perfect viewpoint, all from the early Indian pandit period. So far about the authenticity of the teachings on the viewpoints and the importance of the early Indian masters and their works, which lead back to Buddha.

What happened in Tibet. Now the question of Tibet comes in. How did the viewpoints develop in Tibet? I’d like to do a little Gelugpa-propaganda on the viewpoints presented on shunyata, emptiness. Tsongkhapa’s viewpoints are the first and foremost among all traditions in Tibet. How? All Tibetan traditions follow the words of Nagarjuna, Buddhapalita and Chandrakirti, no doubt. However the presenta- tion of the emptiness slightly differs. Tsongkhapa came much later. He was born in 1357 and died in 1419. Tsongkhapa was searching for this perfect viewpoint and he had the outstanding masters of that period, lama Lodrag of the Kagyu tradition, who had a vision of Vajrapani almost man to man and lama Umapa of the Sakya tradition, who had a vision of Manjushri man to man. Even so, Tsongkhapa was not satisfied with the explanations given by the Tibetan scholars. He could not properly find what Buddha really had meant by ‘Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form’, the famous words you find in the Heart sutra Shariputra, form is not different from emptiness. Emptiness not different from form. Form is the emptiness. Emptiness is the form. Sensation, recognition, conceptualization, consciousness, also like this. Shariputra, this is the original character of everything: not born, not annihilated, not tainted, not pure; does not increase, does not decrease.

4 In English with commentary: Kelsang Gyatso, Ocean of Nectar. London, Tharpa Publications 1995. 5 There are several translations in English, a/o. by David Kalupahana, Nagarjuna, The Philosophy of the Middle Way. New York, Suny 1986. 14 Self and Selflessness

Therefore in emptiness no form, no sensation, no recognition, no conceptualization, no consciousness. No eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of touch; no eye, no world of eyes until we come to also no world of consciousness. No ignorance, also no ending of ignorance, all the way through to old age and death, also no ending of old age and death.

No suffering, no cause of suffering, no nirvana, no path, no wisdom, also no attainment because no non-attainment. Heart Sutra, English by Allen Ginsberg He asked a lot of different questions to his master lama Umapa, who decided to put Tsongkhapa’s questions to Manjushri. Though Tsongkhapa is believed to be and is the manifestation of Manjushri, he was born as an ordinary human being and functioning as an ordinary human being. He didn’t have the right to talk to Manjushri straightaway. So he put those questions through lama Umapa to Manjushri. And after some time lama Umapa started acting like a messenger. Whatever Tsongkhapa said he passed on to Manjushri and what Manjushri replied he passed on to Tsongkhapa. After some time he didn’t know what the question was and he even didn’t know what the answer is, he didn’t know what he was talking about. Then Manjushri suggested Tsongkhapa should go in retreat rather than be doing these sort of things. Then lama Umapa said to Manjushri: ‘Excuse me, but don’t let him go into solitary retreat, because he has thousands of followers and he is giving them teachings and helping them.’ Manjushri insisted. Then lama Umapa asked: ‘How long?’ and Manjushri said: ‘As long as he needs it, could be ten years. So, they all kept on begging Manjushri: ‘Please, don’t let him go.’ Finally Manjushri had to put a little more pressure and asked lama Umapa: ‘Do you think you know better than me?’ So finally he had to give up and Tsongkhapa went into retreat. After a few years Tsongkhapa started having visions himself, but he was somehow very careful. When Tsongkhapa went into retreat he had only eight people with him, selected by Manjushri through lama Umapa. They had no food, they had to depend on leaves and seeds of trees, and they had to live on juniper seeds for a long time. Tsongkhapa started having a vision of the thirty-five buddhas on the other side of the mountain and he decided to ignore them totally, because he was not sure whether it was a real good vision or an evil manifestation. That it also could be. So Tsongkhapa didn’t pay attention to the vision, neither hoped nor doubted, but ignored them. He kept on ignoring the thirty-five buddhas totally. Then he got visions of Manjushri, Avalokiteshvara, etc. They came closer and closer, up to quite near, up to man to man and even started talking to Tsongkhapa. Tsongkhapa refused to acknowledge them, totally. Even Manjushri he totally refused. Persons like us – leave aside a vision – if we get a slightly different dream, how much noise we will make! But Tsongkhapa totally refused. And Manjushri kept on telling Tsongkhapa: ‘I sent you to retreat, I did this, you sent that message through lama Umapa, I gave this answer, that answer’, and even then Tsongkhapa kept on totally ignoring. He wanted to make sure. So he had some difficult questions. A few of them, I think, first he thought of putting to Manjushri and later he did not. He thought that if it is the real Manjushri, lama Umapa will let him know. So he kept on ignoring totally. Finally Manjushri got fed up, had to go back to lama Umapa and said: ‘Please tell this fellow up there this is a real true vision, he shouldn’t worry about it.’ So till he got the message from lama Umapa, he ignored the visions totally. After that, in the visions Tsongkhapa had man to man contact. Like we talk to each other he talked to Manjushri, the embodiment of all wisdom of the enlightened beings. He needed more than anybody else Manjushri for this perfect view. So he came to talking and questioning and finally he wrote the short text of the Three Principals of the Path6, which is totally based on Manjushri’s words, and particularly on this viewpoint. So – as I told you – most important from the beginning is not to emphasize to understand the empti- ness, but to emphasize to understand dependent arising. These are Manjushri’s techniques.

6 Elaborate teaching on this text: Gelek Rinpoche, The Three Principles of the path to highest enlightenment by Je Tsongkhapa; a commentary in Tuesday night teachings. Jewel Heart transcript, Nijmegen 1994. Self and Selflessness 15

That way Tsongkhapa got a clear understanding of what emptiness is, what Buddha meant by ‘Form is emptiness, emptiness is form’ and ‘There is no nose, no tongue, no ear..., all this. When he began to understand it, he wrote a book called Tang gyi, The Essence of True Eloquence, which means clarifying the direct and indirect teachings. In that he said : I understood it properly, because of the true kindness of Manjushri. Now I explain it with a good heart. The Essence of True Eloquence, prologue This is how Tsongkhapa worked hard to get this perfect viewpoint. His presentations of the perfect view are slightly different from those of the other traditions. If we do not follow the viewpoint of Nagarjuna, we cannot get anywhere. Chandrakirti has said : Those who have been beyond Nagarjuna’s presentation cannot find liberation at all. Because when they present the absolute part of it, they lose the relative art; when they present the relative they lose the absolute. And if you cannot present the absolute and relative both together, how can you present the perfect view? No way. When you go beyond that, you cannot establish liberation at all. In an earlier part of his life Tsongkhapa wrote The golden rosary of eloquence. When he wrote that, a number of Tibetan scholars jumped on him, particularly the great Tagtsang Lotzawa and Bodong Panchen Choglae Namgyal, a very famous Kagyu master at that time. A great scholar. He had a white , around which he used to go and walk. Around the stupa he used to have four secretaries – each on one side – dealing with four totally different subjects. On one side somebody was dealing with grammar and poetry, on another side astrology and so on; four totally different subjects. While walking around his stupa he started dictating whatever subject the secretary on that side was dealing with and on the next side he started dictating another subject. Going around the four sides, he dictated four totally different subjects: astrology, medicine, and poetry. And his poems were beautiful, not of topmost quality, but real good ones. So this fellow going around the stupa, was doing all these four things together and that is why his works piled up to 135 volumes and even then, I think, the work was incomplete, because his works have never been published in Tibet. There is only a copy of the manuscript which in the seventies has been published in Delhi. He wrote so much, so fantastic! Really an unbelievable amount of work, on Kala- chackra, on Guhyasamaya, on this, on that! Really volume after volume you open en it continues, con- tinues, fantastic! Bodong Rinpoche and Tagtsang Lotzawa jumped on Tsongkhapa the moment they read his Golden Rosary. They said they laid on Tsongkhapa a number of objections, called the ‘eighteen laws of contradictory statements'. It were not mere statements but more than two volumes were written on it. Later, after his presentation of emptiness Tsongkhapa wrote a praise to Buddha. In that he wrote how wonderful Buddha is, how he presented the emptiness. On the basis of Buddha’s presentation of emptiness, Tsongkhapa wrote a short praise of about ten pages in poetry form. That praise became quite popular in central Tibet and the beggars had started memorizing it and were saying it on their way beg- ging. When Bodong Rinpoche was in Bodong staying in his house and heard the beggars, he heard one of them saying something very important and very nice. Bodong immediately started listening and decided by his mind it had to be a work Nagarjuna which he had not seen. Just when he had decided that, the words came: And I studied numerous treatises Both Buddhist and non-Buddhist, But, still outside, my mind Agonized in the trap of doubts. So I went to the night-lily garden Of the treatises of Nagarjuna Prophesied to elucidate correctly The method of your unexcelled vehicle, Free of extremes of being and nothingness. 16 Self and Selflessness

So he said: ‘If it is not from Nagarjuna, it has to be from Chandrakirti. Who else can it be?’ But then the beggar continued : And there I saw, by the kindness of the guru, Everything illumined by the garland of white light Of the eloquent explanation of the glorious Moon (Chandrakirti) Whose expanding orb of taintless wisdom Courses unobstructed in the sky of the scripture, Dispelling the darkness of the extremist heart, Eclipsing the constellations of false teachings; And then and there, My mind attained relief at last! Praise of Buddha Sakyamuni for his teaching of relativity. in: Thurman, Life and teachings of Tsongkhapa, pg. 99-107 Now Bodong jumped from his seat, ran down the house chased the beggar, caught him and said: ‘Who wrote this book? Who?’ The beggar said: ‘It was done by Tsongkhapa.’ ‘Tsongkhapa did this!?’ That was shocking to Bodong and he asked the beggar to repeat and repeat it. And he wrote it down from the mouth of the beggar. He started reading it and said: ‘The eighteen laws that I have been writing are a very great mistake’. Immediately he packed and went to Central Tibet to meet Tsongkhapa. However, he was too late to meet him. Only two days before he reached the , Tsongkhapa had passed away.

Emptiness – shunyata So that very shunyata is very important. The difference between is on the importance and the presentation of shunyata. Chandragomin, an early Indian Buddhist saint and scholar who wrote a praise to Buddha, has mentioned : Those who are not following the emptiness properly, Even though you go to the highest level of meditation, when somehow one day something happens, the power of the will be shocked and finishes. When that happens, you instantaneously increase your delusions and you a total fall-back. The topmost level of meditation is a samadhi called ‘peak of cyclic existence’. That is a deep concentrated meditation that goes on for eons. It is called the level of: ‘you function yet you don’t function’. It is a sort of half-dead type of existence. Once you get a fall-back from that, you become all over again quite a stupid person, because you have been sitting in samadhi too long, Buddha has recommended his disciples and followers not to go into these , not even into the first actual level. There are four form levels and four formless levels of samadhi and each again is divided into three: the preliminary level, the actual level and the conclusion level. The preliminary level of the first samadhi stage is recommended by Buddha to be developed. It is the stage where you gain stability of mind, which we call zhiné or shamatha. It is the mind that does not go away from the object. You gain the power of control over your mind; that enables you to focus on an object as long as you need to. Buddha has recommended not to go beyond that. Buddha has recommended to cut the samadhi after that level and then use what we call vipasyana. That is more or less analytical meditation rather than concentrating. In Tibetan it is called lhagtong or ‘special seeing'. It is the seeing level and the specialty you see is the emptiness. Buddha has recommended to switch at this point to cutting the root of samsara, to deal with that here instead of going up all the seventeen level of samadhi. Chandra- gomin has praised Buddha for that : The followers of Buddha, even if they do not attain the actual stage of the first samadhi, they are able to cut the root of samsara. It is like removing the eye-ball of the evil. That much effective you can function.

Self and Selflessness 17

Four schools of thought on emptiness. Now what is that very, very important emptiness or view? Selflessness, nothing more. If you try to dig, dig, dig inside all that, it is selflessness. You may say: ‘Yes, I heard that, I know there is a self there, I am sitting, I am talking, I am listening, I am very much there, I can see it, I can feel it so how can there be a -less of self? Or is there something else to be -less?’ In other words, selflessness is -less of what? From the viewpoint of presenting that -less of self there are a tremendous amount of different views, hundreds of different views, Buddhist as well as non-Buddhist. Buddhism recognizes four main theoretical viewpoints. 1. There is the lower viewpoint held by and others. There selfless is being -less of an independent, permanent, self-existing self. We perceive an I, as an independent self-permanent creator or functioner, a sort of ‘the one’ type of thing; from that one is to be -less. 2. A little better than that: the self which is existing by its own substance, the independent substantially existing I is the I that one is to be -less of. Did you get me? 3. The Cittamatra or Mind-Only school is divided into two: the more and the lesser intelligent one. The intelligent part of this school and certain parts of the fourth one, Madhyamika School, – Nagarjuna’s followers but not the group of Buddhapalita and Chandrakirti – say something better than the previous ones. They say: the self which is not labeled and presented by a perfect mind, is independently existing without depending on the labeling of the true mind; from that one is to be -less. (I am giving you these, because by giving those different views you can understand it better and better. If I just would give you the ultimate viewpoint, you will not understand a word of it.) 4. The Prasangika Madhyamika School. This is the ultimate viewpoint, Nagarjuna’s correct viewpoint presented by Buddhapalita and Chandrakirti. That is: not just only labeled by the mind alone – the difference lies in the just! – but and also existing from its own nature; that is the actual self one has to be - less of. Because of this, because of the -lessnes of the self, Manjushri has stressed to get to know the dependent arising. If you know the dependent arising, then the selflessness is easy to understand.

Dependent arising What does dependent arising mean? (1) Both lower schools will say: dependent arising means depending on cause and effect. (2) The lower Madhyamika School will say: Dependent arising means that things depend on parts and parcels. The table depends for its existence on the shape of the table, the name of the table, the legs of the table, the top of the table etc. If you start taking it into parts, take the top off, the legs off etc., then you don’t have a table any more. But when you don’t have a table then, it does not mean you understood the emptiness of the table! Then emptiness would be very easy. But the table’s existence does depend on those parts. That is dependent arising. (3) Buddhapalita’s and Chandrakirti’s viewpoint is: Dependent arising is being dependent on the perfect object and the perfect mind which perceives and labels the perfect object. Existence is dependent on this basis. We call that the subtle dependent arising.

Subtle dependent arising The subtle dependent arising is what we’ll talk about now. Subtle dependent arising is not true emptiness. However, knowing the emptiness through the dependent arising will protect the individual from falling into the nihilistic viewpoint. Here it has to be the Middle-Way Viewpoint, in Tibetan Uma, also called the Central Path. That must be free from the two extremes: nihilism and ‘existentialism’ or eternalism. If you proceed towards emptiness through the introduction of the dependent arising, you don’t have the danger of falling into the nihilistic viewpoint. Therefore it is important. From the point of view of dependent arising all phenomena exist because of: the base on which you label, the mind which labels and the labeling itself. There is nothing which exists from its true nature, without depending. Similarly I exist on just the combination of my body and my mind and my name labeled on it. Remember every word of this line, because this is important! I do not exist on the combi- 18 Self and Selflessness nation of my body and mind without it being labeled. My body and my mind also do exist by combination and they do not exist from their own true nature. Therefore, there is no thing which exists from its own true nature. It is or has been existing just on the combination and also just on the labeling. Without that nothing exists. Therefore any mind which accepts true existence has been proved to be a wrong mind and the object on which the recognition of true existence is given, is baseless. Did you understand that? The mind which says: ‘This is truly existing’, the mind which acknowledges true existence of all phenomena, has now no base. Because there is no phenomenon which is truly existing from its nature. If there were a thing truly existing from its own nature, then it should not be dependent on other things. When something is depending on something else, it means it cannot stand on its own. When a person has to depend on a walking stick, it means he cannot walk by himself. If you can stand by yourself, there is no reason why you have to depend on a walking stick. Depending on a walking stick itself proves that you cannot stand by yourself. Similarly when you are depending on your combination, you are dependent, you cannot stand by yourself. So the mind which perceives that you exist from your own true nature, has no base. You do not exist from your true nature, because you are dependent.

Let me make it more clear. Let us say a person has been elected as a president. Ronald Reagan has been elected as president of the United States. Looking at Ronald Reagan you and I will recognize him as president of the US, perceive him as president, project him as president, call him president, and acknowl- edge him as president. It looks as though his presidency has been existing from its own nature. It looks like a natural-existing presidency, but he does not exist naturally as president. He is simply labeled as president; a correct object was labeled by a correct person in a correct manner. Do you get it?

Labeling. There are three points here: the labeling has to be done on a correct person, by a correct authority, in a correct manner, which means it can not be contradicted by any other true perceiving mind. His presidency is dependent on all these factors. If it were not dependent on all these factors, he would have been president from the beginning. If so, the moment Ronald Reagan was born, the president of the US would have been born. But nobody said at that time: ‘The president of the US is born’; they simply said: ‘The baby is born’. Right? The base to be qualified as president was not there; the factors on which a president depends, had not yet come about. Till all the factors are complete, he will not be called president, he will not handle as president. So many factors are involved. The labeling is absolutely important, without labeling it cannot work. However, you have to label the correct object, it has to be done by a correct authority and on correct conditions, otherwise it does not work. Suppose we call somebody Mr. President. We label him president. If you do so, it will only be a nickname. He will not become president by that, because the object that you label is not correct or the person who labels is not the correct person to be labeled that way. So labeling one also has to be very careful about. The person that is fit to be labeled as a president, is labeled so on the correct base, by a correct authority, in this case the American public that elected him. Take the candidate of the opposition. Before the election by the American public, he is labeled as candidate. That means he is labeled as president from the party’s point of view. But neither is he acknowl- edged as president nor will anybody call him president; everybody will call him a candidate for presidency. Nobody will call him president, though he was labeled so by a big party. Neither he acknowl- edges that nor do the people call him president, because the labeling authority is wrong. That is simple. Similarly all other phenomena are labeled ‘This is this, this is that’. Without labeling nothing can exist. Similarly I have been labeled. If I had not been labeled, I could have existed from my own true nature and ever since I am born, you’d have said: ‘Gelek is born’. Nobody says: ‘Gelek is born’, because Gelek does not exist from its true nature. Like that everything depends. The existence of John, the existence of Gelek, the existence of Marianne, the existence of the table, the existence of everything depends on labeling. You get it? Now I put it the other way round. If you say: ‘Okay, labeling is important; I accept; let me label the gold as brass and the brass as gold’ will that be okay? No. You cannot label gold as brass and brass as gold, can you? Well, someone may do it, but that does not mean the brass has become gold or vice versa, Self and Selflessness 19 because the object you label is not the correct object. That I have been trying to say with the example of the elections. There are three commonly accepted, important points needed for the labeling: 1) it is commonly accepted by a relative true mind, 2) there is not a direct contradiction from a relative true mind 3) and there is not a direct contradiction from an absolute true mind. So even in order to label, you have to have three qualities. The existence of you, me and everybody is dependent on the labeling and on the basis. Just on the combination of the basis and the labeling all are dependent; the labeling also has to have the three qualities. A commonly accepted mind is called a correct mind or a true mind. No contradiction by a true mind means no contradiction by a real reliable mind. The absolute mind should also have no objections. Those three points I have mentioned. I give you an example. Let us say you are going through an open area. From a distance you see a pile of stones or other material to mark the road. When you see that from a far distance, you may acknowledge there is a human being there. You don’t see it is just an object. You say: ‘There is a human being standing there’. You discuss it with your friends and all look and acknowledge it as a human being. Now what happens? You have labeled that as a human being. After that you accepted it as a human being. The second mind, the second moment, immediately start talking: ‘What is that man doing there? Who is he?’ All sorts of things come up. Then another man comes walking from that side into your direction and reaches you. So you ask him: ‘What is that man doing?’ He’ll say: ‘Which man?’ He will look behind and you say: ‘That one.’ ‘Oh. That is not a man; that is a pile of stones’. ‘Oh, a pile of stones!’ The moment you know that it is a collection of stones and not a man, the labeling as a man and acknowledging as a man will disappear. It disappears like a breath put on a mirror. That is what they mean by: a true mind is contradict- ing your mind. Your labeling has been contradicted by a true mind, therefore it cannot stand. A true mind here is the person who came and knew for sure. So anything that is labeled has to have a correct authority that is labeling. If a wrong authority is used, it becomes totally something different, like the example of the nickname of president. A lot of people call their own son their prince. You labeled him that way, but it becomes only a nickname; he does not become prince at all. But suppose a king and a queen had a son and they lost him, he had gone somewhere else. Then he is in reality a true prince, but nobody will call him prince, so he will not be acknowledged as a prince. Even though there is a true object, there is no true labeling.So the labeling, the mind that labels and the object that is labeled have to be correct. It should not have a con- tradiction from a true mind. If there is contradiction, it will go like ‘pffff’.

Everything is dependent on the existence of the combination of body and mind, and labeling. Now take me, Gelek. How does Gelek exist? Gelek simply exists by just the combination of Gelek’s body and Gelek’s mind and on top of that somebody calling him Gelek. So by combining the label, and just the combination of body and mind of Gelek, Gelek exists. If you go and search beyond that: ‘Where is Gelek? Which part is it, is it the head, the legs the ear, the nose?’ If you go and search, you will never, never, never find him, because he is not there. He only exists just on the combination of body, mind and labeling together; beyond that you cannot find him. When you take my head off, when you take my legs off, when you take my arms off, when you tear me into two or three parts and then look at it and say: ‘Where is Gelek?’ there is no Gelek. That doesn’t mean you have understood the emptiness of Gelek. You simply found that Gelek does not exit from his true nature. If Gelek would exist from his true nature without depending on the combination of the body, the mind, and the name, then when you would take the name apart, the body apart, the mind apart, you still should be able to point out: ‘Here is Gelek, this is the body – let it go, this is the mind – let it go, this is the name – let it go, here is the person!’ But you never, never can point it out. That is the sign the person does not exist from his own true nature. Yet I do exist, I am talking. So, how am I existing? Simply just by the combination of my body and my mind together and on top of that you label me Gelek. So Gelek is here, functioning on the relative level. When you look for Gelek, from my side I exist, I produce the body, I produce the mind and here is 20 Self and Selflessness the combination of it. From your part you label it: ‘Here he is’. First your mind label him, and then you perceive him. So Gelek perfectly exists, perfectly functions. Beyond that you can’t find him. You get me?

Audience: If I don’t label you, you are still there? Rinpoche: No. If nobody labels me Gelek, how can Gelek be there?

Say, you have built a new house. You divide the house into four different rooms. From the point of the house just simply rooms exist. Then you will label them: ‘This the bedroom, this the living-room, this the kitchen’ etc. After you labeled them, you will acknowledge this as bedroom, this as living-room, this as the kitchen. The kitchen exists, the bedroom exists and the living-room exists, whether there is furniture or no furniture in it. Before the owner labeled them, there were some rooms of which you didn’t know what is what. Did the bedroom exist? You say: ‘It should be existing, but I don’t know.’ The sitting-room also should be existing but you didn’t know. Or the sitting-room and the bedroom may not exist at all. The owner could have made everything storeroom, who knows. So the bedroom and the sitting-room are existing just because there are walls and a roof and somebody labeling them that way.. Just on the walls and the roof and somebody labeling it as sitting-room, it becomes a sitting-room. And it functions as a sitting-room, it is a perfect good sitting-room. You get it?

The object to be refuted When you look at yourself and you just say ‘I’, that I is the bases of all functioning and is called the relative I. That is the I which has come from a previous life, which is staying here and which will go to a future life. But when you go beyond that and try to find more, and you find some true existing I, something more powerful than just that normal ordinary I, a powerful, solid something, it is the I which is to be refu- ted. We call it the object to be refuted. I give you an example. Say it is slightly dark, not very clear. There is a multi-colored rope laying on the path. You see it from a distance and you say: ‘Oh, there is a snake.’ Now, when you said: ‘There is a snake’ you have labeled the rope as a snake. The second mind will acknowledge a snake: ‘Ah, there is a snake, be careful!’ The third mind is that you get scared: ‘Really, there is a snake. It may bite!’ Now what has happened? Three levels: first there is just the labeling mind, second there is the mind which projects it as a snake, third there is the mind which perceives it as a snake. The fourth mind comes when you are really scared; it will further acknowledge it as a snake and make that thought solid and strong. Another example. Suppose you are standing here in public and I will call your name: ‘Hey So and so’. ‘Ah, somebody is calling me’. You acknowledge it. So, you say: ‘What is it?’ ‘Hey, you thief!’ ‘Me, a thief?!’ Immediately your voice goes up: ‘How dare you to call me a thief?!’ Right? There you perceived that I which is strong and solid, functioning from its own nature. When it goes stronger and stronger, deeper and deeper, it says: ‘When you call me a thief... wow...brrrr!’ Something like that. There is something solid inside you and you also project something solid. That solid something also you perceive. The object I or self which is to be refuted, is not the ordinary self, but is that strong sort of independent-on-anything I, that I which is a dictator from behind. Not the mind, but the mind that perceives that, is what has to be refuted. When you look deeper and deeper and deeper into yourself, how can that I be possibly there?

This requires deeper and deeper thinking. And after some time you will find a mind, that says: ‘Hey, is I not there?’ It is like you lost something, something huge and you feel totally empty, gone. Deep down you feel: ‘I am totally gone.’ You get it? That very moment is your beginning of finding the self-lessness. That self which one is -less of, is actually not a self itself, but a mind which is perceiving the self in such a manner. The object of the mind which perceives the self in such a way, that is what is to be refuted.

I forgot to tell you a very important thing; I jumped off it. When you are called, you not just simply acknowledge the name, but there is more. There is something solid which is the base of the person who enjoys, or who suffers. Really a solid something you project. What you projected you will perceive by your mind. The mind which perceives that projection is sometimes called the ‘simultaneously born fearful Self and Selflessness 21 view’. It is called fearful because from that view you are starting every trouble. It is simultaneously born, because it doesn’t need any preparation, it just pops up of its own. How fearful it is doesn’t depend on the I itself, but on the perceiving. So the actual self that one has to be -less of is the self of the perceived projection. When you lose that projection, then you’re beginning to see the true mind.

Absolute and relative existence Refuting the projected I will not refute the I as the basis of all functioning. Because I do function. I function on the relative level. In absolute reality I do not exist. If I would exist in absolute sense I would have been existing without depending on anything else. But I don’t. Therefore I do exist only on the relative level and I do not exist on the absolute level. If I exist on the relative level, it is good enough to be able to exist. If I function on the relative level, it is good enough to be able to function. If I do not exist in absolute sense, it is not good enough not to exist. If I exist relatively, it is good enough to exist. That is the main point. I am sure you are familiar with that. If a person is existing relatively, that is good enough to be existing. If a person functions relatively, that is good enough to be able to function. For example, look into the mirror. You do not exist in the mirror, however you can remove your make-up by looking in the mirror, so it is good enough, it works, it serves the purpose. Similarly existing relatively is good enough to be able to exist. Because relatively you have to find cause and effects, you have to find the person functioning. But in absolute sense the person does not exist at all, so that is not good enough. You get it? No? Alright. If you exist relatively, it is enough. If you do not exist absolutely, it doesn’t matter; you still exist. You don’t have to exist absolutely, relatively you can function. Like in the mirror; you do not exist in the mirror but you can function.

This way you can see how people can function on two truth-levels: the truth of the absolute level and the truth of the relative level. That is why Buddha has introduced not only the , but also the two truths: the absolute truth and the relative truth. On the relative truth-level you function, you cause your karma to give results, you function – fine, perfect, wonderful; in absolute sense you do not exist. If we would exist truly absolutely, then cause and effect could not function, because I would not be able to change at all. If something is absolutely solidly existing, how can you change? You cannot. So things become changeable only because you do not exist in absolute sense. When changeable, karma can func- tion. You can create different causes, so you can have different results. So the emptiness functions as a base for karma, as a base for every dependent arising. Yet, that dependent arising, that functioning of karma, when you look for it in absolute sense, you cannot find it, it is zero.

Conclusive remarks This is the rough idea of selflessness. The more and more you read about it, the you hear it, the more you think about it, the more you will begin to connect with it and you pick it up more and better. Really. This is an important point. I don’t think that by talking alone this can be clear and understanding can be produced. If it does, it means something is wrong. It can’t be. It has to be gained. Gradually you get into it deeper and deeper. That is why some people chose to call it : ‘Even if you want to say it, you cannot say it....’ Meditation on emptiness is absolutely incredibly difficult. Because the object of the meditation is the emptiness itself. So first and foremost you have to meditate on dependent arising, how dependent arising functions. And there are also different viewpoints of dependent arising. There is karmic dependence, there are a lot of other divisions dependent arising. For the emptiness you have to think of depending on the mind which projects and the base on which you project, the combination of those. And you’ll realize that when you depend on something, you do not exist by your true nature. If you would exist by your true nature, there would be no reason for depending on other factors, like I explained in the examples of the president and the snake. 22 Self and Selflessness

That way you can think more and more, as long as you are able to function, as long as you don’t knock down the karmic system, the , and whole relative part. That cannot be knocked down; it has to be functioning. All functioning has to be carried out on the relative truth. The absolute truth has to be carried out on the zero; that is shunyata. Shunyata is zero, the empty figure. In the Tibetan word for shunyata, tong pa nyi... you put a zero. The absolute truth stands on that and the relative truth stands on the karmic functioning and everything. Yet, if you see these as two separate paths, two separate views, again you have not understood selflessness. These are not to be understood as separate, but you should be able to understand them as a one base, one functioning, together, one helps the other, one brings the other. Dependent arising brings that the absolute does not exist. Because if something would exist from its true nature, there would be no reason the be dependent. Tsongkhapa made it further clear : On the appearance side, the infallible relativity of dependent arising; On the emptiness side, an understanding of the lack of true existence: So long as these appear to the mind as separate, One still has not achieved the insight of the Masters. The moment you have the big gap, the separation between the emptiness of the absolute truth and the rela- tive functioning, as long as you have that gap, you have not understood Buddha’s true teaching. When the two understandings occur as one, without imbalance, Then simply perceiving the unfailing (conventional reality) of dependent arising Destroys the misapprehension of the ultimate nature of things. At that time the sense of the view (of emptiness) is complete. Tsongkhapa, The Three principles of the Path vs. 10-11 By meditating, after some time, when without putting off the one, you pick up the other one automatically, together. Then while you will see the karmic functioning – the causes and results – you will also see the emptiness point of it. And when you look at the point of emptiness you will also see the relative point of the karmic functioning. If that happens you got the sign you have understood what Buddha means by: ‘Form is empty, emptiness is form!’ That one word is making all this trouble. That is the wisdom which cuts the ignorance. And the moment this understanding of wisdom grows within the person, you have understood the selflessness, true selflessness. The moment you understand the true selflessness, that perceiving mind [we spoke about] has been totally cut out. The moment that perceiving mind is cut out, the whole of samsara is cut. That is the time or the point where you are called arya, where you are called a special person, where you are no longer under the force of some karmic forces that push you around. This is the point where you gain control over your life. That means: how long you want to live, where you want to go, where and how you want to be reborn. That is the point where you control everything by yourself without depending on others. That is the selflessness. I hope you understood, I hope it was not too Greek.

Audience: Is the emptiness the same as the absolute? Rinpoche: Yes emptiness is absolute. Yes, absolute is emptiness, emptiness is absolute.

Selflessness is important, but it takes very long to understand and get through it. But still, Dharmakirti has clearly said : Even those who still have their doubts will tear existence to tatters. By just talking and just thinking in that direction alone, the moment you develop doubt on that [independent existence], that by itself alone, not totally destroys, but sort of tears samsara into parts. Therefore, what you people have to do is, try to gain understanding of the emptiness side simulta- neously with the relative functioning, like development of bodhicitta, renunciation etc. So, the relative point and the absolute point, together. At first don’t even try selflessness at all. First and foremost you have to try to contemplate: ‘How do I function? Who is the I? Where is it? How is it? How does I bring my? How does my bring my friend? How Self and Selflessness 23 does my friend brings my enemy? How does my friend bring attachment? How does my enemy bring anger? How it functions? And then you go back: ‘Hey, what is the so-called my friend, my enemy? Where is that my? Which or what is that my? And then you begin to look and you say: ‘What is that I? Where is it? Who is it? What is it? How it looks like? On what level it functions? What is that me? This is how you gradually get into it. If you do so, one day definitely you’ll find that empty, and you’ll find that that very big I has gone somehow. And you feel totally lost, gone. Even the fear of being not there will have developed. That is the sign of the beginning of going in the proper direction of finding the selflessness. That can be further developed and then you’ll understand the functioning of the relative. And when you further develop the relative functioning you can see the absolute, zero point. And then, you must be able to combine them together on a person, on me. So when that happens, that’s it. That is what you need. It is a very high level, but that is what happens. I also believe and not only I believe, but it is true and it is said so too, that by meditation alone, or by working alone, by study alone, you can’t develop this at all. Full stop. It also simultaneously the accumula- tion of the merit, praying, and getting blessings. Also the understanding needs further developed by: first hearing-understanding, then thinking, then meditating. And when all of them come together, it can click: ‘That’s it!’ It is the chance of clicking that you have to wait for. That is it. Thank you so much.

II I AND ATTACHMENT - 1

The subject given for to-night is ‘I and attachment’. Before we go into the Buddhist viewpoints of ‘I and attachment’ I’d like to give you a view about Buddhism in general and particularly about , because some people have misunderstanding about Tibet in general, about Tibetan Buddhism and also about vajrayana Buddhism.

Buddhism: hinayana, mahayana, vajrayana Many people moment they say ‘Tibet’ something mystical comes up, a western concept of Shangrila, something very mysterious and beautiful and everlasting, all sort of funny ideas. Well, if I disappoint you I am sorry, but there is no such a thing as a mysterious, everlasting Shangrila according to the western concept of it; that does not exist in Tibet or in Tibetan Buddhism. The second point is: Tibetan Buddhism is not different from the general Buddhism. There are slight differences among the Buddhist practices, of course. The Buddhism you find in Thailand, Cambodia or Burma and the Buddhism you find in Tibet are slightly different; not because Buddhism is different, but the practice and the way it came from India is different. Originally, as you all know, Buddha appeared in India. And Buddhism is very much an Indian rather than a Tibetan religion. Buddha was born in India and taught in India. From there King during his reign organized missionary activities towards the south: to southern India, then to Sri Lanka, then to Thai- land and all these areas of the theravadin tradition. Sometimes it is referred to as hinayana, ‘smaller vehic- le’, but people in the South don’t like that name; they chose to be called theravada [tradition of the elders], which is a perfect name for them. Then another school ran towards North-India and is called mahayana school; maha is big, yana is vehicle, so it is called ‘bigger vehicle’. May be I am wrong, but I really do think that when the first organi- zed missionary type of thing started, they purposely chose not to send the mahayana teachings out. They kept them as a sort of inner treasure, particularly in the monastic universities, like and Vikramalashila. You know, you don’t give everything what you have. Then of course, when the Muslims came to India, the teachings couldn’t stay anymore in Central India, so started shifting from Central India to the Bengal area and further north. That northern school carries the mahayana plus the vajrayana teachings, which are part and parcel of the mahayana teachings. That went into Tibet, China, Mongolia and all northern part. So the Buddhism what we have in Tibet is very much part and parcel of the general Buddhist teachings. There is no difference, except for some later small developments here and there. Basically it is the same principle.

Now the difference between these two vehicles: mahayana and hinayana or theravada. From the Tibetan Buddhist point of view, we look at hinayana as a the basic Buddhist teachings; mahayana has in addition a lot that was not given in the hinayana teachings. 26 Self and Selflessness

1. The basic hinayana teachings concentrate on the path of renunciation. At that level you are dealing with the problems that you as an individual face, with the individual practice and the individual develop- ment. The first things you get, are the problems of attachment, anger, hatred and so forth. Hinayana is di- rectly dealing with that, particularly with attachment. Therefore renunciation is the foremost basic impor- tant teaching the hinayana teachings must content. That is something that should not be ignored and one should not look down upon. 2. Our problem is that if we practice renunciation, if we are dealing with the basic individual problems so much, we may develop an attitude of ‘I could not care less about what happens to others’. If one is con- cerned so much about oneself, one’s own problems and how to overcome them, then automatically one develops some kind of ‘couldn’t-care-less’ attitude. To overcome that the mahayana teachings come in. They basically teach to be totally dedicated to the benefit of other sentient beings. Mahayana is more being of service to other people than being concerned with yourself. 3. In addition to that there is vajrayana or . The moment I use the word tantra I get a very big problem. If in India I use the word tantra, they immediately understand black magic. If in America I use the word tantra they immediately understand some kind of sexual relation. In South-Asia, the moment I use the word tantra they understand charming other people, harming each other, trying to conquer the other one by some sort of mysterious power-exercises. I do not know when I use the word tantra in Holland, what you will understand. But, I must make one thing clear. When we talk about Buddhist tantra we are not talking about black magic, we are not talking about mysterious things, we are not talking about sex, we are basically talking about a method with which we can overcome our problems, delusions and illusions very, very quickly. It is one of the quickest and one of the most dangerous ways to overcome our problems; quick and dangerous both, advantage and disadvantage both.

What is Buddhism? A lot of people say Buddhism is a kind of religion. I say no. Whether Buddhism is a religion or not, I can’t really say. What Buddhism teaches you, is a way of living and a way of thinking. It is more or less a pres- entation of how one should think and how one should live to be able to handle one’s life. That is its major emphasis. Buddhism never, never demands you or asks you to come and pray, nor does Buddha tell you: ‘You have to believe me because I said so.’ On the contrary; Buddha said about two thousand five hundred years ago: Monks and scholars should Well analyze my words, Like gold [to be tested through] melting, cutting and polishing, And then adopt them, but not for the sake of showing me respect. He says, ‘Look! No matter whoever you are, a disciple of mine, a follower, one of my monks, just an admirer or may be just a spectator, check very carefully what I say. When you try to buy gold, you cut that piece into two different pieces and rub them with different stones and then you burn it in the fire. And when you are convinced it is gold, you take it; otherwise you throw it away. Similarly, whatever I say you rub with your intelligence and you burn with your own experience, you try to check it with your own and with others' thoughts; if it makes sense take it, otherwise don’t. This is how Buddhism started. So I do not know whether it is really a religion or not. Definitely it is a way of life. For sure. Because its teachings are totally based on Buddha’s own experience. Buddha says he is just like anyone of us; his intelligence is equal to us. By chance he has been able to practice, by chance he has been able to do something and he gained some development and has become a buddha. Somehow we are left behind. Either we didn’t have the opportunity or we had the opportunity but we have been lazy. Laziness is one of the reasons we are left behind. Today we are looking up and Buddha is looking down. Unfortunately. We could be looking down and he could have been looking up. Whatever Buddha taught was totally based on his experience, like: ‘When I had this problem I applied this as a counter-measure, as an antidote. So I gained this development. And now I became like this.’ That is totally what Buddhism is. When you look into it you find nothing mysterious. It is only about how you think and how you act. Therefore it could be called a way of living rather than a religion. I and Attachment - 1 27

When Buddha obtained what we call enlightenment... Sometimes in Sanskrit it is referred to as nirvana. A lot of people think that to experience nirvana or enlightenment, you have to die. That is a misunderstanding. Not only people think that, but also they use the word pari-nirvana as a sort of death- anniversary. Referring to nirvana as a death-state is totally wrong. If by obtaining enlightenment, the ultimate achievement, you would have to die, I think it would be too bad. Really. Buddha has obtained enlightenment, he has obtained nirvana within his lifetime and after that for another forty years he relayed his experience. When Buddha had obtained enlightenment, at first he kept silent, because as he said: Deep, peaceful, perfectly pure, luminous, uncompounded, and like nectar is the I have obtained. Even if I were to teach it, it could not be known by another. Certainly, I must remain silent in the forest. Lalitavistara sutra, The Voice of the Buddha, ch. 25 He said: ‘I found something like nectar, profound and deep, but if I try to talk about it to anybody, nobody will be able to understand me, therefore I choose to remain silent.’ So Buddha kept silent after his experi- ence. Then of course people came and tried to persuade him and then he started teaching. As he said he had found development like nectar, profound and deep and all this, naturally the people did expect something fantastic, miraculous, beautiful. But well, the moment he started teaching, the moment he opened his mouth, the very first word he gave us was ‘pain and suffering’. We call this first teaching the Four Noble Truths and the first one is: pain and suffering. He never said: ‘Something wonderful, nice and beautiful’. He only said: ‘Pain and suffering’. There is a very important reason behind this: our nature, the nature in which we are caught, the nature we are brought into, the nature we are all in, is full of pain. I’m sorry. Particularly in the West a lot of people do not like to hear about pain and suffering. They say: ‘Why should I care about misery, problems, pain and suffering? I rather like to hear something beauti- ful and nice’. People hate it, but that won’t help at all. Not hearing it won’t help. If that would help, we would have wiped out all problems, but we haven’t. By not talking about the pain, it doesn’t go away, it remains there. Pains and problems are part and parcel of our life. No matter whatever you do, you can never avoid it, for the time being. I didn’t say totally, but for the time being. Because these are part and parcel of our life. You may not like to hear about it, but in the spiritual path you have to talk about pain and problems. If in the spiritual path people tell you beautiful and wonderful things only, it will not help you at all. If that could help you, we all would say: ‘How nice you are’, paint a nice color and say ‘good-bye’ and go away. That won’t help. A good spiritual guide is a person who is able to point out to you where the real problem lies. Our problem is the pain. People don’t like that to be pointed out. A lot of people like to hide miseries, hide some of their faults. Hiding won’t help. It has to be pointed out where the problem lies. Therefore Buddha chose first to mention the pain. It’s our nature. Our true nature is pain. No matter whatever you may think, no matter wherever you may be, east or west, south or north, up or down, your life is full of pain and prob- lems. Why? Because of only one reason: we think too much of ourselves. We recognize ourselves as ‘I am the most important’.

I am the most important You may not like it, you may not think I am telling the truth, you may not like to accept it, but think about it: you like to be the best; you like to be better than your neighbor, you like to be the best in your class, you want to be more famous than the others, you like to be the best person. All this leads to ‘I am the most important’. That is the very basic problem we have. But then, if you search: ‘Where is that I, the most important one, the great dictator?’ I am quite sure you’ll never find it. It is very difficult to find it. Yet, we think we are the most important one. I am sure I do think I am the most important one. We have a saying in Tibet: 28 Self and Selflessness

When I see my father is fighting with others, I would like to see that my father wins. But when I have to fight with him, I would like to see that I win. That’s it. Whether you like it or not, we really feel: ‘I am the most important’. From I we develop my. From there we develop my friend and my enemy. My friend I love. I love him or her, because he or she is my friend and I must help him or her because he or she is good to me. And my enemy I must harm, because she or he hates me. Attachment and hatred are developed from here. They don’t come out of the blue sky. It is a wrong thought, they are based on, for sure. But in that wrong view, that wrong concept and wrong understanding, we travel. Therefore whatever we do is creating pain, with or without realizing. Not only it is in the nature of pain, but also we again create causes for more pain to continue in future. This is the job of I. Everybody has that. This causes very much trouble. You have to recognize it, you have to find it, and then find a way to deal with it. The most difficult thing is to find that I. You can’t find it. People will say: ‘Well, of course I’m there, I’m inside somewhere’. But where? Are you the same as the body? Or separate from the body? The same as the mind? Or separa- ted from the mind? A lot of people do not think the body is I, but most people think the mind is I. According to the Buddhist thought the mind is certainly not I, because mind has a lot of divisions, so the I would have to have divisions. There are many points here. I do not like to go into this just now, because it may create more confusion than help. Basically with the I the basic trouble comes in. Whether that basic thing I does exist or does not exist has been a matter of a big discussion between two great philosophers called: Nagarjuna, the famous Buddhist philosopher, and Shankaracarya, a Hindu philosopher. Shankaracarya accepts that the I exists. They call it atma. I can’t say much because I don’t know very well what Shankaracarya taught. The Buddhist point of view is Nagarjuna’s thought and that says: ‘That I does not exist independently, from its true nature’. Independently, that is the main thing. There are many different Buddhist thoughts and theories and many different levels of thinking about in what way the I exists, how the I functions, how my will function. Ultimately Nagarjuna’s thoughts are considered to be the best on this point. Suppose I tell you that the I doesn’t exist, that I am not existing. That doesn’t mean anything to you, it doesn’t help you, it doesn’t make you understand it. You have to find it by yourself, thinking very care- fully, analyzing, putting in various reasons and thoughts. Hearing that the I doesn’t exist, doesn’t help you, because it doesn’t convince you, it does not make you understand the object of wisdom, and it does not make you understand the opponent of the wisdom, which is the cause of all pain. It needs its own little exercises, which you have to do You have to find it. Because of a wrong conception of I, we have a lot of wrong thoughts. I don’t know how it functions among us here tonight, but many people really do carry wrong concepts. Take life. Of course, life is impor- tant; I’m not going to say that life is not important. But people do consider it more or less the only thing. People consider security the most important thing, something to be built up in one’s life, something to hold on to. These thoughts are there because of the wrong concept of I. Particularly security is a field onto which we hold very strongly. Savings, the money, we hold as very important. We say: ‘When you need it most, you’ll have it.’ Truly speaking, the day you need it most the material security will not help. That’s for sure. One of the Tibetan spiritual masters has said: Even if you have food enough for hundred years, that day you have to leave with an empty stomach. Even if you have clothes enough for hundred years, that day you go alone and naked. That’s true. When I said: ‘The day you need it most, I didn’t say it openly, but it is the day when you die, the day you have the most sorrow, when you need most. That is the day, naturally, that all material things will let you down. I do not know about the spiritual things. May be it helps, maybe not, who knows? It is supposed to help, I am sure it helps. Material things, for sure, do not help. We consider our body very important. We are very much attached to it. We care so much about it. It is born with us, but even that we have to leave behind. Even though we were born together, the body lets us I and Attachment - 1 29 down; so on what else can we depend? All the securities you built up will let you down on that day. You are going alone. That is our main situation. That is the major pain we have. Whatever related matters we do, suffering and pain is part of it. Dissatisfaction. We won’t be satisfied with things, we have to change all the time. And of course dying and taking birth are in the nature of pain. It is our part and parcel. All that is because of the wrong concept of I what we have. The moment you have a correct conception of the I, then, I believe, every single pain will stop. Then, according to the Buddha every single functioning thing is revised. Because what we call samsara is the circle of life. That circle is very much continuing. That circle cannot be cut in between. Only at the level of this ignorance it can be cut. The moment you cut the ignorance the circle starts functioning the other way around, so it stops. The moment it stops, the pain stops. That is Buddha’s view of the wrong concept of I.

That’s all I have to say tonight. If we have any questions we can discuss them now. I made it purposely short, because when we exchange ideas and thoughts it is much more meaningful. Who would like to say something?

Questions and discussion Audience: I listened with great sympathy to your lecture and still I have a rather obvious question. It always struck me as a little bad obstacle when listening to Buddhist lectures, that in a certain way a deal is made to the I. You have to get rid of the illusion of the I. Now the I is supposed to be the motive or causal agent to get rid of the illusion of the I. It strikes me as rather paradoxically. If the I is appealed to in the exercise of getting rid of the illusion of the I, then who is the I that is supposed to do the work? Rinpoche: That is a very important question. Actually when we talk about the I, are we really talking about one I or are we talking about different I’s? That is one thing you have to think about. When you talk about the I being the cause of all trouble and when you talk about the I coming from the previous life and func- tioning here today in this life and going to the future life, are we talking about one I or are we talking about different I’s? This is the question one has to raise first. The I which has come from the previous life, which remains here and will go to the future life, that I may not necessarily be the object of I-lessness. The ordinary understanding of I and the philosophical understanding of I, are again two different matters. So each one of these different thoughts and ideas have its own object of I.. The I that is the base of trouble and the ‘I am living, I am going’ are two different I’s. The ordinary I, which is just existing, just able to function, exists on the combination of body, mind and – most important – the name, given to a correct object, by a proper authority. I exist on the combination of that alone. That is the relative I, which functions. And the I that is the base of all trouble, is the absolute I. So the work has to be done by the relative I. The relative I may not be the agent of the delusions and illusions, but the absolute I is the cause. So the absolute I has to be destroyed by the relative I. The relative I is the I which is functioning. And the absolute I is the I which is the base of all trouble. The division is not based on the object. It is the concept, the point of perceiving, the presentation of the I, that makes the difference. Again, I don’t think there are two I’s. The division has to be made on the concept of recognition only. That’s why it is a hard point.

Audience: So it is rather a conceptual division that makes the problem here. Rinpoche: Yes.

Audience: What is the definition of those different I’s? Rinpoche: You cannot make definitions of these I’s. Only from the perception point of view you can make a division. Our mental thoughts project many different things, this is why the whole thing is referred to as wrong concept or wrong view. Why is it wrong? Because in reality something may not exist at all, but we project it, we conceptualize. I believe we do that even more at the moment we begin to think about it. The moment we begin to go into it, we project more and more of these types of I. I know it is very difficult; it is something which has to be cleared in a gradual process. I don’t try to say ‘It is something to feel, but you 30 Self and Selflessness cannot experience it’. No, I am not saying that. But I think gradually it becomes more clear. One just cannot say this exactly.

Audience: If the conception creates different I’s, the conception also can have the different I’s disappear, also the only one that does remain. Rinpoche: Which will be the relative I. The relative I is not the object of emptiness. Emptiness is being empty of the absolute I. The absolute I doesn’t exist, so it is only projection. If it would exist we would be able to recognize it and when you can recognize it you can present it, so when that is the case it cannot be empty, because it is there. If it’s there it can’t be empty. Since it is not there we project it, that is why our mind is all wrong concepts. A wrong concept can disappear by a proper understanding.

Audience: What is the reason that all conceptual I’s are there and that the relative I is not a conceptual I? Rinpoche: What you mean by conceptual again? Audience: An I which is created by conception. Rinpoche: The relative I is not a I which is created by conception. Audience: Why not? Rinpoche: Because the I created is a big, big thing that doesn’t depend on anything, that dictates from its own nature. The relative I doesn’t do this. The relative I just depends on the combination of three things. The absolute I is the object I which doesn’t depend on anything, which is only based on our recognition and in reality is not there. This is the Buddhist view, in particular Nagarjuna’s viewpoint. It is very important. You have to remember this: If things are existing relatively, that should be good enough to be able to exist. If absolutely something does not exist, it is not good enough not to be existing. This is the basic thing. I am sorry if I confused you more, but that’s what it is. Relatively existing is good enough to be existing and if absolutely one does not exist it is not good enough not to exist. Okay? I’m sorry, it is tricky.

Audience: I have a practical question. When you understand the philosophy behind the I or the ideas of Buddhism, understanding is one thing. When you talk about ‘attachment’ then how do you do that in practice? Rinpoche: Very important. Thank you. How to do it? I-lessness or self-lessness is considered to be one of the most important wisdom developments, yet one of the most difficult points. In Sanskrit it is called shunyata; you can call it understanding of emptiness, or voids. I call it emptiness. When you talk about emptiness, many people do think emptiness is empty. No! Emptiness is not empty. If emptiness would be empty, it would be the easiest thing. Unfortunately emptiness is not empty. Emptiness is full. Even in the Heart Sutra, where basic emptiness is presented, it says: Shariputra, form is not different from emptiness. Emptiness not different from form. Form is the emptiness. Emptiness is the form. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. There is no thing separate from emptiness. There is no emptiness separate from form. In emptiness there is no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue…. Therefore emptiness is not empty; it is full. If emptiness is full then why it is called emptiness? Because it is empty of something. Empty of what? Empty of self. Then the second question you raise is: Empty of which self? The self we think to be the most important dictator from behind, the fundamental important dictator from behind. You search where that fundamental dictator is. Okay? But then you realize there is no fundamental important invisible dictator. Once you realize that that dictator behind does not exist, it does not mean I don’t exist. Not at all. I do exist, because I sit here, I talk, I drink. I do exist, yet I am I-less, I am self-less. Because I am -less of that important dictator. This is how it practically works.

Audience: Who dictates the action then? I and Attachment - 1 31

Rinpoche: The action is dictated by the ordinary self, the ordinary I. Let us call him John. The ordinary John simply exists because of the combination of John’s mind, John’s body and John’s name. Unless and until John is called John by a proper person.... I use the word ‘proper’, do underline that. If called by a wrong person, you will say: ‘No, he is not John, he is Peter’. Therefore it needs naming by a proper person and then John exists. If any one of those parts and parcels, either the name or the body or the mind, does not exist, the moment it does not exist, John doesn’t exist. As long as this combination of three just exists, John does exist, John functions. So, the existence of John is very much dependent. Therefore John does not exist from his true nature. Therefore John does not exist in absolute truth. So in absolute truth John is empty. Okay. This is practical, truly speaking. In absolute truth John is empty. Empty of what? Empty of an ‘I which is independent.’ What does independent mean? It means: You don’t depend on anything, you exist from a true nature. If you exist from a true nature, you don’t have to depend on. If I can stand up by myself there is no reason why I have to lean on a walking-stick. So the moment you depend on a name, the moment you depend on a certain thing, it shows you are not standing on your own. Is that right? Yet it is very difficult to recognize it is not there. It requires a lot of meditation, a lot of thinking, meditation.

On meditation What is meditation? It is a beautiful name, everybody is fascinated by it, it is very popular nowadays, everybody does it, it is another fashion. What is really meditation? A lot of people say: ‘I am meditating.’ So what do you do? Sitting there with crossed legs, with some different hand-gesture, thinking nothing, just sitting there, like a Chinese laughing Buddha? That is totally wrong concept of meditation. Again: what is really meditation? I am sure quite a number of you meditate, but have you ever thought what meditation is?

Audience: I think I try to lose the dictator I. Rinpoche: Through meditation? How? Okay, that is one of the important meditations, no doubt. But to lose the dictator I, you require much of two different types of meditation. We have concentrated meditation and analytical meditation. Everybody accepts the concentrated meditation as meditation; many do not accept the analytical meditation as meditation at all. But, to lose this particular dictator I, to let him lose his control over me – the relative I – I am required to think, to analyze, to recognize the object and to find it is not there. That the concentration meditation alone cannot do. That requires analytical meditation. Concentration meditation is also meditation, but for this particular problem we are talking about here today, you need both, analytical and concentration meditation. If you don’t analyze, there is no way you can find that that I is not there. If you just tell: ‘That I is not there’ and you keep on meditating ‘That I is not there, that I is not there’ you are doing nothing but hypnotizing yourself. You have to get convinced through analytical meditation, through proper thinking. And the most important reasoning for that is the dependent arising. If I stand on my own there is no reason for me to hold the walking-stick; If I have to depend on the walking-stick, it shows I cannot stand on my own. Every phenomenon exists because of dependent arising. And that is what you have to meditate on. That is the sharp weapon which cuts this misconception of I. For that you need both types of meditation.

Since I raised the question ‘What is meditation?’ I feel it is my duty to answer. Meditation is nothing but to get your mind used to a certain way, a certain object. Take for example concentrated meditation. If you concentrate on a certain object, your mind is simply getting used to sitting and concentrating on that one object. You may think: ‘Then what about those developments and all this?’ If you control the mind, if you have the power to put your mind on any object for a period that you want to spend on it, all those devel- opments will automatically come. Meditation is nothing important. It is something very simple. (Talking about the I is very difficult; talking about meditation is very simple and very easy.) Meditation can be done on anything. You can 32 Self and Selflessness meditate on a glass, on a plate, on anything. When you get used to it, your mind will remain there, as you want it to. Very simple. There are problems; only four different ones: up, down [excitement and dullness] and that also rough and subtle, that’s all. As long as you overcome the four problems, your mind will remain on any object; you leave it there as much as you want it to remain there. Once you have developed that power, develop- ments like pleasure in the body and pleasure in the mind, come in as a by-product. Once you have the basis of the concentration meditation, you can do the analytical meditation. Analytical meditation does the major job on cutting the delusions and illusions or whatever ‘shows’ you have. Concentrated meditation will only give you the power to put your mind on certain things. When you concentrate on certain things, then your power of concentration goes up. There are different levels of concentration. There are a/o four form levels and four formless levels. But Buddhists do not follow that. Buddha considered those a waste of time. Buddha insisted that the moment you gain the power to concentrate on an object as long as you want to, then instead of going through all sixteen or seventeen form- and formless levels, you shift your focus to the analytical meditation and you develop wisdom. That’s the difference between Buddhism and former Indian meditations.

I noticed that a lot of people when they think they meditate are just sitting blank. That’s unfortunate. Sitting blank and thinking nothing is blindness. Blindness is the blank which is not good. I am sorry to say it, but I have noticed that a lot of people do even teach: ‘Get your thoughts out and make everything empty, make your brain empty’. That is making you lose your intelligence. I cannot really say it is not a good meditation, but Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, does not recommend that. For a simple reason: temporarily it is helpful, but temporary help will not help you on the long run. Why not? Because pushing your thoughts and delusions out is suppressing them. Things cannot be suppressed, no matter whatever it may be. If you keep on suppressing then at some time you’ll burst out. That is not good. You cannot suppress. You have to get deeply into your mind, see where the faults are then climb up from there. Simply saying: ‘No, no, no...’ will not help. It will burst out after some time. To certain people it will help up to a certain extent, I don’t deny that. Particularly if people have problems, to a certain extent you can use it as a help. However, as spiritual development I don’t think it is recommended, because suppressing things will not help. Some people like to meditate by looking at a certain object. That is also helpful for the beginner, but it is not good in the long run. Why? If you look at an object and concentrate on that, you are training the eye, you are not training the mind. With meditation we try to train the mind.

Audience: (…) Rinpoche: To learn to recognize ignorance is one of the important meditations, yes. Because all our wrong views, our wrong concepts, according to the Buddha come out of ignorance. When we talk about ignor- ance, we are not talking about the ordinary ignorance of not knowing something, but about the big ignorance of the totally wrong concept of natural phenomena. Recognition of this and then finally des- troying it and then overcoming this wrong concept is called wisdom.

The aim of Buddhism is buddhahood or enlightenment, the ultimate achievement that any being can obtain. All the methods given are focused to achieve that particular aim of the highest enlightenment. It consist of two: the wisdom part and the method part. The method part carries all different activities, like renunciation, love, compassion, building merit etceteras. Wisdom is the other part. The combination of these is what will achieve the ultimate, buddhahood. That is why I said that introducing the ignorance is one of the important points.

Audience: How can it be that all over the world so many people live with wrong concepts? It is so simple just to change your concepts. I and Attachment - 1 33

Rinpoche: According to the Buddhist thought we are very much used to it. We have ‘meditated’ so much on the wrong concepts, so our mind got used to it. To take our mind away of something we are used to and put it in the opposite direction, is hard. Therefore it is difficult.

Audience: Is it possible to reach enlightenment by Christianity or is it only possible by Buddhism? Rinpoche: I’m am sure one can achieve it through Christianity, through Islam and Hinduism too, if the methods are properly used. Buddhism, I believe, is one of the methods. But if you don’t use it properly even Buddhism can go wrong. That goes for any one of them.

Audience: Can you tell us more about the relation between the big and absolute I at one side and the sour- ces of anger, rage on the other side? Rinpoche: Our wrong concept definitely has that very important I, holding you from behind. We want that particular I to be the most important, the most outstanding. We may deny it, however if you go on asking questions, you find you want this, you want this, you want everyone of them. Ultimately you realize that if you go on, you want the most important position, the highest, the best. The whole thing is the desire which we have. We are used to that. You have it, I have it. If you are enlightened I don’t know, but otherwise everyone of us will have it. When you have that desire and you can’t achieve what you want, then you get angry. All sorts of trouble start from there. You also create a lot of problems because of that. You go behind your means to achieve it. I believe, this is our true nature, with or without realizing you go through that. And suddenly you realize that it is not possible and then you say: ‘Wow, I am the most important, intelligent, right and the best one, but somehow it doesn’t work.’ So you sort of completely fall down. This is because of the wrong concept of I. The wrong concept of I builds up a most important imaginative position and you work for it so hard and you also add your emotions to it. Suddenly when you realize it is not going to be achieved that way, you’re flat, you fall into parts. It is all the wrong conception.

Audience: About being the most important. The most important is buddhahood. And in that case.... Rinpoche: Okay. That’s a different matter altogether. If you accept buddhahood as the most important, the I wants to be buddha. The I wants to be the most important. You may say: ‘No’, but quietly you accept: ‘I want to be a buddha, yes.’ But then what? If you say: ‘That is wrong’ I will say: ‘No.’ But: ‘I want to be the universal king too’, well, that may be too much. Wanting to be something more than you can be, is where all the problems start. Becoming a buddha is different. That is something that can be achieved. And the methods of achieving will give you the best way to clear all thoughts and faults and delusions. Therefore I don’t think it is a bad thing. A lot of people do think desire is bad. I don’t think all desire is bad. You have good desire and bad desire. The desires to become a buddha and that is a desire which should not be thrown out.

Audience: Is that because the I who is having the desire to become a buddha is not the same I as the one who wants to be the most important? Rinpoche: It depends on what level the bodhisattva is. If it is an arya-bodhisattva then it is the relative I which functions in that way. If it is not an arya-bodhisattva but an ordinary bodhisattva, then it is the big I what we ordinary people have, which functions that way. At the level of the arya-bodhisattva the division comes in; the big I will have been pushed out and the relative I will carry the desire and finish off his job.

Audience: So one helps the other? Rinpoche: It doesn’t mean the relative I helps the absolute I. No. You simply carry out your work, the I- work continues; not the work of the big I continues but the work of the relative I.

Audience: Does the relative I have more possibilities to reach the aim of Buddhism than the other I? Rinpoche: The aim, buddha, will only be reached by the relative I. The absolute I will never reach buddha- hood, because the absolute I does not exist in reality. 34 Self and Selflessness

On the spiritual path As I said the Buddhist teachings are totally based on the experience of the Buddha. Buddha himself had so much trouble. He had illusions as much as we have. Between two-thousand five-hundred years ago and ourselves today there is no difference for whatsoever. Yet Gautama has been able to practice; he recognized his problems, has been able to overcome them and has become a buddha. And we not even know our problems yet, we don’t know what is the ignorance, we have a confusion about the I and we don’t recognize it. That is simply because either we have not had the opportunity or we did not put enough efforts; laziness or apathy is pulling us down. If we take the opportunity today... We have the experience developed by Buddha and his followers and many others and their experiences have been relayed to us. Any practice that we do is sort of ready-to- do. It is almost like a TV-dinner, ready to eat. If we take the opportunity, I’m sure each of us can achieve buddhahood. But if we don’t take the opportunity and we continue as before, we’ll continuously go on.

It is very good that you have a spiritual interest. Why do you have spiritual interest? For a variety of reasons. Most important thing is that there is something to achieve. Most of you know the materialism is not the answer. When the materialism is not the answer, it has to be spirituality which is the answer. When you look for the spiritual answer you go an unknown road. Please, this is very important. When you go on an unknown road you have to be very careful. You have to know first, to tell you the truth. If you don’t know, don’t try. In spiritual matters some people have a little information here, a little informati- on there and then you try many things, which is sometimes not good. Sometimes that creates problems. Very recently I came across someone teaching kundalini practice. Kundalini practice is a very high practice, if you practice it properly. If you don’t do it properly, it is simply a physical exercise and with this practice one can get a lot of trouble, too, even the teacher himself. That teacher was teaching hundreds of students every week. And he himself was very much in trouble, he didn’t know how to handle certain energy-movements within his body. That was simply because of following the wrong method. So anything you practice under the name of spiritual practice, first learn about it. Do not do something of which you do not know what it is! Do not try many things here and there. Try something which is sensible. First learn it and see whether anybody who has practiced it, has developed something. If you follow their footsteps, I am quite sure you can reach the same place others have reached. If you try some strange new combination you get strange-new-combination results, which could be big trouble. , a great Tibetan master, has said: If you try to meditate and think without learning, you are like a man without arms trying to climb the rocks. If you try to meditate without learning, it is just like that. What would you think about? I raised the question: What is meditation? If you don’t learn, what are you going to do? Sit idle. So learning is very important. Without learning you cannot think about something. Without thinking you cannot meditate. Without meditating you cannot achieve. So, learning first. Second: thinking. And then: follow it. And I am sure you will reach. Everyone of us is capable, everyone of us has the opportunity, everyone of us can achieve if any other person has achieved it. The only thing we need is a little more effort and a little more concentration, that is all. So I am sure everybody can reach it.

III I AND ATTACHMENT - 2

The subject chosen for tonight is the continuation of the last week’s talk ‘I and attachment’. It is a very strange subject and a very interesting one also. Strange in the sense that in Buddhism and particularly in Tibetan Buddhism the presentation of the I is totally different from what you probably expect it to be. Normally people do expect the I as most the important, very powerful and very fundamental, the base of all things. Tibetan Buddhism has a totally different way of presentation.

Emptiness or shunyata Of course I is the base, the foundation of everything. Without I there is no way and no hope that I can function. And of course I have to function. I have to speak here tonight, I have to sit, I have to listen to you, I have to reply, and also I have come from a previous life, I am in the present life and I will go to a future life. And if I am not here, I cannot do all this at all. So I is the base of all functioning. It is also important to know where this I remains. Whether that I remains with me as one-ness, or separate from me; whether it remains with me at all, or not. These are the things we have to look into. Say it exists with me, then the question is whether it exists within my body or within my mind, whether it is the same as my body or the same as my mind, whether it is separate from my mind or separate from my body. All these questions are the Tibetan Buddhist way of looking into the I. The most important accepted theory in Tibetan Buddhism is Nagarjuna’s viewpoint of emptiness, shunyata. It is presented in two different ways: the shunyata of articles and the shunyata of beings. The shunyata of beings is the I-lessness, which is nothing more than selflessness. When I use the word self- lessness, don’t confuse it with selfish-lessness. It is just the self as object and then its -lessness. I as object and its -lessness.

We have to find out how this works. We look into the I, we search the I. Definitely when you search the I along with the body you will never, never be able to point out ‘this part is the I’. Similarly within the mind you will never, never be able to find the I, again. From the Tibetan Buddhist point of view we divide the mind into fifty-two different categories. If you go and search the I within one of those, you will not find it. For example, if somebody is looking for a table and you take the table’s top off, you take the table’s legs off, you take every part of the table out and you say: ‘Ah, there is no table’ and then you say: ‘Oh, I understood the emptiness of the table, because when I take the parts out there is no table left’, you have not understood it. That is not understanding of emptiness at all! All these complicated matters are involved. That is why I said it is a funny, or rather a most uneasy, uncomfortable subject, difficult to speak about and difficult to understand. But I am sure a lot of you, people are interested in it, it is something you are dealing with. The moment we say emptiness we must know emptiness is not empty. Emptiness is full and fullness is empty. Similarly, if you read the Heart Sutra, it starts with: 36 Self and Selflessness

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. That means straightaway emptiness or shunyata or voidness, all different terminologies for the same thing. The first and foremost thing is: emptiness is full and fullness is empty. Then we have to find out: Empty of what? The shunyata of a person, the shunyata of me, is emptiness of me. That is empty of what? Empty of I. Of course I have to search. I cannot say: ‘I don’t exist’, because I am speaking, I am living, I am working; as I told you earlier. If I exist, yet still am I-less, then I have to find out why and what this -lessness of I is. Nagarjuna, the great philosopher of the Middle Way viewpoint, has said: Things only exist on a perfect object on which a perfect mind will call a perfect name. Similarly I also exist on the combination of my body and my mind and on that combination a perfect authority calling my name. On the combination of that I do exist. That is what it is.

When you begin to search: ‘Where am I and who am I?’ you’ll find that question is very difficult to answer. We are not talking now about shunyata and all this, but right from the beginning the question: Who am I? What am I? Okay, I am a human being. Who am I? Of cause everybody will have an answer: ‘I am John, I am Mary all different names.Say my name is John. If I would be truly John, then I should exist independently as John, and not have to depend on other matters. Then the moment I was born, John would have been born. The moment I was born, my parents did not say: ‘John is born’, my parents definitely have said: ‘The baby is born’. It became John only after the name John was given, not before. So definitely I am not John. Okay, I am not John, but of course I am John the driver. The profession comes in now. Unless and until you learn your driving, you never were a driver. The same with John the engineer, John the carpenter, John the executive, whatever. So, what really is happening with us? Between the name and the profession we shift the gears and therefore we will never, never be able to look into it. Actually our deep mind, our deep consciousness, doesn’t like to acknowledge that we are not truly existing; therefore we have the name and profession. If you take out your name, if you take out your profession, if you take out your body, if you take out your mind, then where are you? And who are you? Then people won’t know how to answer all this. Yet you cannot say you are not there, you are very much there. You cannot say John is not there, John is very much there. John sleeps, John works, John steers, John steals, John gets caught, all this, you cannot deny it.

Dependent arising or interdependent origination We have a mind which gives recognition to that big I that was born together with us. Now what really has to be done? Whoever is looking for emptiness, has to destroy the object of that mind which gives a great recognition to the person called I. You understand? As the strongest reason to argue with that mind Buddha has recommended to use the reasoning of the interdependent origination or dependent arising. That reasoning is called ‘king of the logic’. Dependent arising will proof that the particular object recognized by a self-born mind, does not exist from its own nature. The moment I say ‘dependent arising’ automatically I understand having to depend on something. If a certain part is missing, the thing cannot arise, cannot exist, so it is dependently arising. I gave the examples of the president What example should I give here? Let us take a president. A president arises dependently, therefore a president does not exist from its true nature. A president is an example of dependent arising, because for a person to become a president he needs to be fit to be a president, has to be elected a president and also after election an authorized person should say: ‘From now on you are the president.’ Right? Unless and until that has happened to him, nobody call him a president. The day when he was elected and was told he is president, from that day onwards he will think: ‘I am a president’ and the others will also call him president. So to be a president very much depends on a perfect or authority to call by him a perfect name. Notice my words. First I said: to be fit to be a president. Suppose the person is not fit to be a president, then no matter whoever may call him whatever, he does not become a president. You understand? The traditional Tibetan example is this. From a distance you see a shadow. You keep on looking at it and you see it sometimes becomes bigger, it sometimes becomes smaller, it sometimes moves to this side, I and Attachment -2 37 sometimes moves to that side. You say: ‘Ah there is a man.’ And you all say: ‘Yes there is a man’. You recognize that as a man and you see that as a man. Suddenly somebody comes from the other side and you ask him: ‘What is happening with that man over there? He has been standing there since very long.’ And that man will say: ‘Where?’ And you point out to him where the shadow is. And he’ll say: ‘Oh, that is not a man, it is a tree trunk’. So unless and until this man comes and tells you what it is, you have a mind that is recognizing that as a man. From the moment the person comes from that side and tells you: ‘There is no man’, since that moment that mind which recognized that as a man, has disappeared. Why it disappeared? That particular name cannot be proved to be a perfect name, because the object on which you give the name is not fit to be the object. Now, if you call somebody who is not fit to be a president, a president -say of an organization among yourselves- then it will become a nickname and an insult. That is when the object is not fit to be so. So for I to be able to exist as the object of I, it should be a fit object and also the person who calls me should be a proper authority, because if the wrong man calls me with a wrong or even with a right name, it will not become my name. You understand now? The object has to be the right object, the name has to be the right name and the giver or the caller has to be the right person. On the combination of that I exist. That shows: I do not exist from my own nature. Buddhists have four different viewpoints on this and considered the highest recognition is Nagarjuna’s presentation of the I. Nagarjuna’s I-lessness is: to be less of the I which is existing from its true nature.

So, if there would be an I which exists from its true nature, then we should find it when we go and search where and how this I exists. Which way? As a name? As a person? As a mind? With the body? Without the body? Separate? Oneness? There are many, many ways of searching.. One way of searching is a logical discussion called the four-cornered discussion: If the I exists with the body, then it should exist (1) as oneness with the body or (2) separate from the body or (3) both ways i.e. as oneness and separate, or (4) neither way, i.e. neither oneness nor separateness.

To make it short: my existence very much depends on the name and the label; it almost totally depends on the label rather than from its own nature7. I exist only as a combination of my qualities and my name on it. I do not exist separately from my name nor do I exist separately from my qualities. Also I do not exist as oneness with my body, I do not exist as oneness with my mind. My mind and me is totally separate, mind is mind, I am I, It is my mind, it is not my and mind together. The mind is not me, the body is not me, but everything exists from me. Because of me my mind exists; because of me I have my body. Because of me I have my close ones. And when I have my close and near and dear ones, I have my attachment. And when I have me and my then I have my enemy and I develop my hatred. So that I and that attachment and that my and that hatred all exist, exist in the way I just now have mentioned. In other words, the mind which gives the recognition of an I which is without depending on the body, mind and name and all this, is the object of I-lessness. So, in true nature I do not exist at all. So you cannot really build the concept of attachment, anger, hatred, a name, prestige and everything; it all is built on the concept of I.

This is the concept of I-lessness. In true nature I do not exist. Yet, still you have to present the I functioning because of the dependent arising. The dependent arising is the most important reason that I do not exist from true nature. This is the most powerful logical reason which proves the I doesn’t exist from its nature. This is very brief the view on the I. If you like to discuss anything, you are most welcome.

Questions and discussion Audience: Of the questions that have come up during our coffee-break, one most important question is: What is the reason why the I or I-lessness is important? Rinpoche: That is a very important question. In the teachings of the Buddha the major aim for individual people is to get enlightened, not only enlightened from the knowledge point of view, but from the spiritual

7 On the labeling see page 17. 38 Self and Selflessness point of view, i.e. to obtain the highest position that a human being or any being can obtain. In order to develop that position, in order to gain that enlightenment stage, the requirements are only two. One is method, the methods through which you can purify all your mischiefs and the methods through which you can collect merit or virtues or good work. The other one is the wisdom, which is very important. When we say wisdom, we refer to the understanding of I-lessness or shunyata or emptiness, without the under- standing of which you will never, never be able to touch the ignorance.

Ignorance is considered to be the root of samsara, the circle of existence. Buddhism believes life goes in circles; past, present and future lives circulate. The circle of existence is functioning from the root of ignorance. We are caught inside this circle. It is the circle which carries all the pains and miseries and problems that we are repeating one after the other, endlessly and – as Buddha says – also beginninglessly. No one can say: ‘This is the beginning of any individual’, so it is beginningless. There will be an end, 0not a total end, but individually there is ending of the circle. The end is only possible when the root of samsara, which is the ignorance, is touched and cut. Only then the circle stops. The circle does not stop anywhere in between; it only stops at the root-level, which is the ignorance. And that ignorance can only be handled by the wisdom. Therefore the understanding of shunyata becomes very important. One of the great scholars has said : No matter how much development you have of love and great compassion; Since it is not the direct opponent of the ignorance, it will never cut or affect the individual’s circle at all. So, without the wisdom the continuation will remain. You may get a better life in the future, but even then the root is not cut and samsara is not ended and you will continue to function in it. So to cut the root of samsara it is absolutely necessary to have the wisdom. Wisdom means understanding of shunyata. Ignorance means the recognition of self as independent, self-functioning, dictator. It has to be recognized that that mind is the ignorance. Therefore I-less has become very important. It is a very deep subject, really. All Buddhist philosophy is built on this.

Another question was: What is dependent arising? On the combination of my mind and my body and on the basis of the right person and the recognition of the right name, I do exist. So my existence very much depends on this. That is very briefly the idea of [subtle] dependent arising. I do not know how to make that further clear8. On the other hand in Buddhism we believe in the rule of karma, cause and effect. That is another very important field where the dependent arising goes in to. Another field that cannot be ignored is the twelve links functioning in one’s life. It is called the twelve links of dependent origination9. According to the Tibetan tradition it are twelve, according to the Chinese tradition eighteen links. Whatever way you choose, it works in the same direction, slightly different. That is about death, birth, living, creation of the body, development of the mind, etc. So there is the karmic dependent linkage, another one is the imputational dependent arising and another one is this twelve links of the functioning of existence. All these are dependent arisings.

Audience: Why do you assume then that the I existed previously? From the logic of your exposition I would say it is only the situation in which we recognize in mutual dependence, in mutual relativity, in mutual name-giving our own situation, but how do we know if we go on and think this self in terms of the I separately through the ages? On what experience can we do that? Isn’t this contradictory? Rinpoche: No. Today’s I exists and functions because of the imputation and dependence on all the materials which exist today. That I is the continuation of I which was yesterday. And that yesterday’s I and material were the continuation of the day-before’s and the week-before’s and the month-before’s and the year-before’s and so and forth’s I. So we can go quite easily up to the womb and so and forth. On the other

8 On dependent arising see page 9 and page 17. 9 To be found in: Denma Locho Rinpoche, The circle of existence, Jewel Heart transcript. I and Attachment -2 39 hand it is a continuation also. That is why it is only yesterday’s continuation and the yesterday’s I did function. Though theoretically speaking the yesterday’s I is not the I of today, however it is the continuation. And that continuation also is in the nature of impermanence -let me add up- and subject to change, every minute and every second. Therefore it is a matter of continuation of discontinuity. I think it is a very good question which you brought in; it enables me to bring things up.

Audience: You mentioned compassion and ignorance. And you said that if with the whole of compassion you remain ignorant, it doesn’t help. Did I understand you correctly? Rinpoche: What I said is: Love compassion etceteras are not the direct opponent of ignorance, therefore it does not help at all. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t help at all. You know, the non-virtuous actions and virtuous actions have direct opponents and direct links. For example anger and patience, stinginess and generosity, wrong morality and morality, laziness and enthusiasm, a wandering mind and concentration, and ignorance and wisdom. They are a sort of direct opponents to each other. Therefore, in order to cut the root of samsara – which is ignorance – no matter how a heavy love-compassion you may have, it doesn’t do the work, because it is not its direct opponent.

This is one of the most difficult subjects, really a difficult subject what we have been talking. If you discuss this sort of thing, I believe you get tremendous benefit. Dharmakirti, one of the Indian pandits has said: The moment you raise a little doubt on this, that itself will tear samsara into pieces. You know what samsara is, the circle of life. That really gets cut into pieces, because the whole samsaric functioning is based on this ignorance-recognition viewpoint. So whether you have understood anything or not, built up anything or not, most of you people, I think, have torn our samsara into pieces. So, I think it is quite good.

Thank you so much.

IV GLOSSARY

Abidharma (Skt.) The systematized philosophical and psychological analysis of existence that is the basis for the buddhist systems of tenets and of mind-training. As one of the branches of the buddhist canon, the Tripitaka, the corresponds to the discipline of wisdom, whereas the sutras correspond to the discipline of meditation and the vinaya to the discipline of morality. Arhat (Skt; Tib. drachompa) ‘Enemy destroyer’ or ‘foe destroyer’. One who has overcome the forces of karma and delusion and attained liberation from cyclic existence and thus has obtained arhatship, the spiritual ideal of hinayana buddhism. It is the culmination of the four stages of perfection: in succession one becomes stream-enterer, once-returner, non-returner, arhat. The arhat has achieved nirvana, but not buddhahood, because he does not return out of compassion to teach others as the mahayana bodhisattva does. Arya (Skt; Tib. pakpa) Title meaning ‘noble one’. It indicates one who has attained the third of the five paths, the path of insight/seeing (Tib. tong lam) and so through an understanding of emptiness, has gone above the world. Bardo (Tib; Skt. anubhava) Intermediate state. The state of consciousness between death and rebirth. It begins the moment the consciousness leaves the body and ceases the moment the consciousness enters the body of the next life. One remains in that state anywhere from a moment to forty-nine days. Bardoa A being in the bardo. Bodhimind (Skt. bodhicitta; Tib. jangchub-kyi sem) ‘The awakened mind’, ‘the awakening mind’ or ‘mind of enlightenment’. Bodhimind or bodhicitta is the altruistic motivation of a bodhisattva: a mind that is directed towards the attainment of buddhahood, for the sake of all living beings; the fully open and dedicated heart. Once one has generated the bodhi-mind, one enters the first of the bodhisattva paths, the accumulation path. The bodhimind is of two main types: relative or conventional and absolute or ultimate. The former is also of two types: that which aspires to highest enlightenment as a means of benefiting the world, and that which engages in the practice leading to enlightenment. Ultimate bodhimind is the latter of these placed within an understanding of emptiness. In maha anut- tantra bodhimind is of two types: the red bodhicitta, which symbolizes female energy; and the white bodhicitta which symbolizes male energy. These are represented by ovum and sperm respectively. In this context buddhahood is the unification of these two forces placed within realization of mahamudra. Bodhisattva (Skt; Tib. jangchub sempa) Also referred to as ‘child of the Buddha’, ‘spiritual hero’, or ‘fortunate one’. A bodhisattva is a living being who has produced the spirit of enlightenment in himself and whose constant dedication, lifetime after lifetime, is to attain the unexcelled, perfect en- lightenment of buddhahood for the sake of all living beings. The term bodhisattva refers to those at many levels: from those who have generated aspiration to enlightenment for the first time to those who have actually entered the bodhisattva path, which is developed through the ten stages (Skt. bhumis) 42 Self and Selflessness

and culminates in enlightenment, the attainment of buddhahood. Those who have embarked on the path but have not yet gained direct perception of the meaning of emptiness are called ordinary bodhisattvas; those who have attained the path of seeing and can in meditation directly perceive emptiness are called extra-ordinary or superior bodhisattvas or arya bodhisattvas. Buddha (Tib. sang-gye) Lit. ‘awakened one’. Title of one who has attained the highest attainment for a living being. It refers to one who has completely purified (sang) all the defilements, the two obscurations, and completely expanded (gye) or perfected his mind to encompass all excellences and knowledges. A fully enlightened being is perfect in omniscience and compassion. Every being has the potential to become a completely enlightened buddha. There are countless buddhas. Buddha Sakyamuni ‘Sage of the ’, name of the buddha of our era, who lived in India 563-483 BC. He was a prince from the Sakya clan. He taught the sutra and tantra path to liberation; founder of what came to be known as Buddhism. His mundane name was Siddharta Gautama. Buddha Sakyamuni is the fourth of one thousand buddhas that are to appear in this world age. Buddhapalita [circa. 470-550 C.E.] A great Madhyamika master. His great achievement was the elucidation of a main work of Nagarjuna. Because of this work he was later regarded as the founder of the Prasangika sub-school. Candrakirti (ca. sixth-seventh century C.E.) The most important madhyamika philosopher after Nagarjuna and Aryadeva. He is regarded the ‘ultimate’ disciple of Nagarjuna as he is the elucidator of the essence of Nagarjuna’s message. He wrote famous commentaries on Nagarjuna’s work, such as Guide to the Middhe Way (Skt. Madhyamikavatara). So he is considered one of the highest authorities on the subject of the profound nature of reality. Concentration (Skt. samadhi; Tib. ting dzin) The ability to focus the mind single-pointedly on any chosen object of meditation and keep it there. Concentration meditation is one of the two main forms of meditation, the other one being analytical meditation. Also see Samadi. Delusion (Skt. klesha, Tib. nyong mongs) A thought, emotion or impulse that is pervaded by ignorance, disturbs the mind and initiates actions (karma) which keep one bound within cyclic existence. That which makes the mind impure. Delusions are mental factors. The three root delusions or the three poisons: ignorance, attachment and hatred; from these many others arise. Dependent existence or interdependent origination or dependent arising or inderdependent relationship. (pratityasamutpada) Any phenomenon that exists in dependence upon other phenomena is a dependent-related phenomenon. All phenomena are dependent-related because all phenomena depend upon their parts. Sometimes dependent-related is distinguished from dependent-arising with the latter meaning arising in dependence upon causes and conditions. However, the two terms are often used interchangeably. Dharma (Skt., Tib. chö) Buddha’s teachings and the realizations that are attained in dependence on them. One’s spiritual development. ‘That which holds one back from suffering’. Also, any object of knowledge. Emptiness (Skt. shunyata, Tib. tongpa nyi) The absence of all false ideas about how things exist; specifically the lack of apparent independent self-existence of phenomena. Enlightenment (Tib. jangchub) Full awakening, buddhahood. The ultimate goal of buddhist practice, attained when all limitations have been removed from the mind and all one’s positive potential has been realized; a state characterized by unlimited compassion, skill and wisdom. Existentialism or eternalism (Tib. tak-ta) Belief in an unchanging ego or self-nature in either persons or phenomena. One of the two extremes to be avoided; the opposite of nihilism. Five paths According to dharma a path is necessarily an internal path. There are mundane and supramundane paths. A supramundane path is any path leading to liberation or enlightenment, for example, the realizations of renunciation, bodhicitta and the correct view of emptiness. Strictly speaking only superior beings, aryas, posses supramundane paths. The five paths are: 1. path of merit or path of accumulation (Tib. tsok lam); 2. path of preparation (Tib. .jor lam); 3. path of seeing or path of insight (Tib. tong lam); 4. path of meditation (Tib. gom lam); 5. path of no-more-learning. The first two paths are the paths of ordinary bodhisattvas, the following two paths are the paths of arya bodhis- Glossary 43

attvas or superior bodhisattvas, on the fifth path the bodhisattva has become a buddha. The paths in hinayana carry the same name but differ in the practice. Form realm The environment of the gods who possess form. Formless realm The environment of the gods who do not possess form. Four Noble Truths (skr. catuh-arya-, Tib. pakpei denpa zhi) 1. The truth of suffering; 2. The truth of the causes of suffering. 3. The truth of the cessation of suffering. 4. The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering. They are called ‘noble’ truths because they are supreme objects of meditation. Through meditation on these four objects we can realize ultimate truth directly and thus become a noble, or superior being. Gelugpa The tradition of tibetan Buddhism established by Je Tsong Khapa as a fusion of older sects, sometimes named Ganden Kagyu, also known as the New , The name means: wholesome way or: virtuous tradition. The three great Gelug monasteries are Ganden, Drepung and Sera. The other main traditions of Tibetan Buddhism are the Nyingma who go back to Guru , Sakya going back to Sakya Pandita, and the Kagyu going back to Marpa-- Gampopa. Heart Sutra The essence of wisdom sutra. Of the several perfection of wisdom (Skt. Prajnaparamita) sutras a very condensed and famous one. Hinayana. Sanskrit term for ‘Lesser Vehicle’. The Hinayana goal is to attain merely one’s own liberation from suffering by completely abandoning delusions. I or self or ego (skr. atman, Tib. nga) Buddhism does not accept the existence of an independent, self- existent, unchanging ego or self, because if such were to exist, a person would be unchanging and would be unable to purify himself of fettering passions and attain buddhahood. Rinpoche often refers to this one as ‘I rinpoche’, ‘the Big Boss inside’, the ‘Queen Bee’ or ‘Dictator I’. There is acceptance of a relative, impermanent, changeable, conscious entity, which is the continuation of life, linking one’s former life to this life, and this life to future lives. Ignorance (skr. avidya Tib. marikpa) The root cause of cyclic existence; not knowing the way things actually are and misconstruing them to be permanent, satisfactory and inherently existent. The delusions that gives rise to all other delusions and the karma they motivate. Ignorance can be eradicated by the wisdom of emptiness. Inherent Existence The illusion that people and things exist by virtue of their own essential characteristics alone, independently of any conditioning factors. Ignorantly assenting to this illusion is the basis for cyclic existence; wisely dispelling it, the basis for enlightenment and liberation. Inherently existent, truly existent, existence from its own side or existent from its own true nature are interchangeable terms. Also see: Self-existence. Also see: Emptiness Karma (Skt.; Tib. le) Deeds. Term referring to actions and their effects. Through the force of intention we perform actions with our body, speech, and mind, and all of these actions produce effects. The effect of virtuous actions is happiness and the effect of negative actions is suffering. Mahayana (Skt; Tib. tegchen) ‘The great vehicle’, called ‘great’ because it carries all living beings to enlightenment or buddhahood. It is distinguished from hinayana, which only carries each person who rides on it to their own personal liberation. It is the vehicle in which refuge is taken in the scriptures revealed after Buddha’s death (and propagated by masters such as Nagarjuna, Asanga, etc.), as well as in the earlier scriptures accepted by hinayana. Also, unlike the hinayana, whose basis is renunciation, the basis of the mahayana is great compassion; and its aim, rather than personal nirvana, is fully omniscient buddhahood. The practises of a bodhisattva. Mahayana includes both the vehicle of perfections (paramitayana) and vajrayana. Madhyamika (Skt.; Tib. Umapa) One of the two main schools of Mahayana tenets. A system of analysis founded by Nagarjuna, based on the Perfection of Wisdom sutras of Shakyamuni buddha, considered to be the supreme presentation of the wisdom of emptiness. There are two divisions of this school, Madhyamika-Svatantrika and Madhyamika-Prasangika, of which the latter is Buddha’s final view. Merit The wholesome tendencies implanted in the mind as a result of committing skillful actions. That positive wholesome tendencies or energy has the power to create happiness and good qualities. 44 Self and Selflessness

Method Any spiritual path that functions to ripen our buddha seed, i.e. our growing buddha nature. Training in renunciation, compassion, and bodhicitta are examples of method practices. Naga A non-human being not normally visible to humans. Nagas usually live in the oceans of the world but they sometimes inhabit land in the region of rocks and trees. They are very powerful, some being benevolent and some malevolent. Also the nagas are said to have preserved the wisdom teachings of the Buddha. Nagarjuna Saint, scholar and mystic of Buddhist India, born about four hundred years after the Buddha, who revived the mahayana in the first century AD by bringing to light the teachings on the Perfection of Wisdom, the of wisdom, according to the myth handed over to him by the nagas. He is author of the fundamental Madhyamika work and founder of the Madhyamika or Middle Way school of tenets. He is said to have lived five hundred sixty years due to his alchemical ability. Nihilism (Tib. che-ta) Belief that phenomena are completely non-existent. One of the extremes to be avoided; the opposite is eternalism. Paramitas Six perfections of the bodhisattva. The perfections of giving, moral discipline, patience, effort, mental stabilization, and wisdom. They are called perfections because they are motivated by bodhicitta. Prajnaparamita Sutra (Skt.; Tib. par chin) Perfection of Wisdom sutra. The scripture with those teachings of Sakyamuni buddha in which the transcendental wisdom, the wisdom of emptiness and the path of the bodhisattva are set forth. There are nineteen versions of different lengths, ranging from the Heart Scripture of a few pages to the large one of Hundred-Thousand stanzas Prajnaparamita (Skt.) Perfection of wisdom. Transcendental wisdom, being the profound non-dual understanding of the ultimate reality, or the voidness, or relativity, of all things. Personified as a goddess, she is worshipped as the ‘Mother of all buddhas’ (Sarvajinamata) Rebirth The entrance of consciousness into a new state of existence after death and the intermediate state. Samadhi (Skt. ) A state of deep meditative absorption; single-pointed concentration on the actual nature of things, free from discursive thought and dualistic conceptions. Samsara Cyclic existence; the recurring cycle of death and rebirth under the control of ignorance and fraught with suffering. Self-existence The mistaken conception that things exist independently from their own side rather than being dependent upon causes, conditions, parts and the process of conceptual imputation; the wisdom of emptiness is the understanding that all things lack, or are empty of, even an atom of such self- existence. Selflesnesses (Tib. dak mepa) Two selflessnesses: personal selflessness and phenomenal selflessness, both being descriptions of the ultimate reality, which is the absence of the two ‘selves’, the realization of what is called ‘transcendental wisdom’ or prajnaparamita (687-763) A great Indian Buddhist teacher, meditator and scholar, most famous for his masterpiece, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. Shamatha (Skt.; Tib. zhiné) Mental quiescence or meditative equipoise. The tranquil, single-pointed settling of the mind on an object of meditation for a sustained period of time. A degree of concentration characterized by mental and physical ecstasy. The nine stages leading to shamatha are degrees of concentration Shunyata See: Emptiness Stupa (Skt.; Tib. chorten) Indian buddhist were dome-shaped monuments containing relics of the Buddha or his disciples. Their tibetan successors are usually purely symbolic; of any seize and material, they are of carefully-defined shape and proportions and represent the Buddha’s mind. Sutra (Skt.; Tib. do) The teachings of Buddha that are open to everyone to practice. This pre-tantric division of buddhist teachings stresses the cultivation of bodhicitta and the practices of the six perfections. Tantra (skr., Tib. gyu) Literally ‘thread’ or ‘steam’ or ‘continuity’, the ‘stream’ or ‘tread’ of innate wisdom embracing all experience. Another name is: secret . The texts of the secret-mantra teachings of buddhism. The esoteric teaching of Buddha. The essential practice of tantra that distin- Glossary 45

guishes it from sutra is bringing the result into the path. The practice involves identification of oneself with a fully enlightened deity. The tantric stages of the path are called nag rim. Also see Four classes of tantra Tantrayana The post-sutra vehicle of Buddhism, capable of leading to the attainment of full enlightenment within one lifetime. Also called ‘the diamond vehicle’, i.e. vajrayana, or mantrayana. Theravada ‘Vehicle of the Elders’. Tradition of buddhism following its earlier style of practice and understanding of scripture. Sometimes called hinayana. Its final goal is arhatship. Three Principles of the path Famous text by J Tsongkhapa. The three principles are: 1. Determination to be free, 2. Bodhicitta or altruistic mind, 3. emptiness. Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) Lit. ‘The man from the onion land (Tsong)’. Je Tsong Khapa was a great fourteenth-century scholar and teacher who reforming the Kadampa tradition restored the purity of buddhadharma in Tibet, thus founding the Gelug tradition. His many treatises finalized the work begun by Atisha of clarification and synthesis of the vast body of Indian scriptures and schools of practice into a unified exposition of sutrayana and tantrayana paths. He wrote several lamrims, the most well-known one is Great exposition on the Stages of the Path, Lam rim chen mo. On the stages in tantra he wrote the Great exposition of secret mantra, sNgags rim chen mo. He is regarded a full en- lightened being and along with Longchen Rabjampa (1308-1363) and the Sakya Pandita (1182-1251 an emanation of Manjushri. That is why he is called Jamgon, ‘gentle lord’, indicating that he and the deity Manjughosa -form of Manjushri- are of one essence. He is regarded as the synthesis of Manjush- ri, Avalokiteshvara and Vajrapani and therefore regarded as the embodiment of the wisdom, compassion and power of all the buddhas. Two truths All objects of cognition have two modes of existence, called ‘truths’. The truth of appearance or relative truth or conventional truth (skr. samvrtisattya) is the aspect of existence according to worldly convention and expression. And the absolute truth or ultimate truth (skr. paramarthasatya) is the voidness of all phenomena, the mere absence of inherent existence, the reality of existence. So, the absolute or ultimate truth is emptiness; all other levels belong to the relative or conventional truth Vajrayana (Skt.) Secret mantra vehicle. The advanced means to quickly achieve buddhahood -within one lifetime- for the sake of all sentient beings. Its method is bringing the result into the path. It is also called: tantrayana. It is part of the mahayana, which is divided into sutrayana and tantrayana.

GELEK RINPOCHE

The spiritual director of Jewel Heart is Gelek Rinpoche. Born into the family of the Thirteenth , Rinpoche was recognized at the age of four as incarnation of Tashi Namgyal, the abbot of Gyuto Monastery.

From the age of four, Rinpoche studied in the Drepung Loseling Monastery with Tibet's greatest living masters, Gelek Rinpoche and later earned the Geshe Lharampa degree. This distinction, the equivalent of a Doctorate of Divinity, typically requires twenty-five years of study. Rinpoche completed it in half the time due to his outstanding insight and excellent memory.

In 1959, Rinpoche fled Tibet, seeking refuge in India, where he continued to work diligently to maintain and preserve the Tibetan tradition. He assisted the United

States Library of Congres by cataloging Tibetan publications, and began editing and printing rare Tibetan manuscripts and oral teachings. There are now over 175 volumes in this series. Many would certainly have been

lost to humanity had they not been published.

In the late 1970s, Rinpoche was requested by the Senior and Junior tutors of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to become more active as a teacher. Since that time, Rinpoche has traveled extensively and is known to his students for his practical application of Buddhist teachings, his vast knowledge and experience, and his warmth and humor. Since 1986, Rinpoche has lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, though he travels frequently to teach at Jewel Heart centres throughout the world.

JEWEL HEART

Jewel Heart is dedicated to the preservation of the Tibetan Buddhism and to the practice of this rich tradition within the context of contemporary American life. Through activities such as on-going public programs, study groups, sponsorship of cultural events, and retreats, Jewel Heart's principal goal is the fostering of inner development. Its programs teach methods for translating the meditative states of love and compassion into effective action. Jewel Heart's spiritual director, Gelek Rinpoche, is committed to furthering these aims through teaching and practicing the tradition of Tsong Khapa.

The name Jewel Heart was chosen to represent the organization because the heart is the essence of the human being, and the jewel something of great value – considered precious. Through embracing the preciousness of our life and developing our qualities, inner peace will grow, and our actions will be influenced by compassionate concern for others. It is to this end that Jewel Heart dedicated its efforts.

The Jewel heart logo contains three graphic elements: the spinning jewel wheel, the lotus, and the flame. The central wheel symbolizes the three jewels of Buddha, Dharma, and . The Buddha represents our potential for enlightenment. The Dharma is the spiritual development within each individual. The Sangha is the community of those individuals, who have developed wisdom, act as guides.

In nature, the lotus rises from the mud, yet remains pure. Similarly, we are capable of rising above ordinary conceptions and putting love and compassion into action in daily life. The flame that surrounds the jewel wheel represents the fire of wisdom, consuming all obstacles and bringing insight.

JEWEL HEART Head Office: 208 A Ashley, Ann Arbor MI 48104, USA. Tel. (1) 313 994 3387 Fax: (1) 313 994 5577 Homepage: jewelheart.org

JEWEL HEART Chapters are to be found: • In USA in Ann Arbor, Birmingham MI, Chicago, Cleveland OH, Lincoln NE, New York, and San Francisco. • In The Netherlands in Nijmegen, Den Bosch, Tilburg and Utrecht. • In Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, Gerik and Panang, and in Muar. • In Singapore.